Internet Psychologist
As if the power of Google, MySpace and other big players isn’t enough to convince you of the need for user-generated content, consider a report in this week’s New Media Age magazine. A report on page 6 is headlined News International seeks user content for new free-paper site. The story …
Reuters, the world’s leading financial information and news organisation, has just invested $7m in blogging. They have announced that they are to use the services of Pluck, providing the outputs of blogs as part of their news service. The fact that such a respected news information organisation like Reuters is …
If your web site doesn’t include the option for user-generated content, the chances are it won’t be the kind of web site that is required in the near future. Up until recently the web was one-way – someone published a web site and someone else read it. Now, new technologies …
As the Christmas trading season takes force online, retailers are being urged to ensure their web sites don’t annoy visitors. So what’s the most annoying thing you can do? Add a pop-up advert. According to research from Taylor Nelson, 84% of people find pop-ups “extremely annoying”. Dead links are also …
I was giving a talk in Newbury the other day and there just happened to be a reporter from the Newbury Weekly news there. The result was a highly positive article on blogging for businesses. I gave away my book on blogging and they took a photo of me presenting …
I was chatting with Karen Skidmore today and we were discussing why women don’t take part in Internet activities as much as men do. I know that’s a sweeping generalisation but we agreed that on business sites, such as Ecademy, the bulk of the discussion is performed by men. Then …
If you needed any more evidence that the intermediary market is disappearing, you only need to look at the latest info from Hilton Hotels. The company has just reported that it expects to get $2.5b in online bookings for this year, compared with just over $700m four years ago. The …
I’m currently at the Professional Speakers Association’s annual congress at The Belfry. Two speakers today have confirmed something that many web site owners don’t appear to know. And that is the fact that people connect to what you say and what you write at the emotional level. They might justify …
Clearly plenty of people believe the Internet has potential. That’s obvious from the latest Netcraft survey which reveals there are now more than 100 million domains listed on the Web. However, the survey also shows that the vast majority of those (around 60%) are inactive. Over 60 million domain names …
Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, is concerned that if the development of the Internet is left unchecked it could lead to the spread of misinformation. Some would say that is already happening. You can find plenty of web sites that are blatantly untrue; you can …
Like it or not, your business will have to change. That’s because human behaviour changes from time to time, even though the fundamentals remain the same. In a new report out today on TV watching habits, there’s an interesting nugget in the details. It seems that 28% of teenagers watch …
Once again, Google is showing us the future of the Internet. Today it seems that Google has bought JotSpot. This is a “wiki” gadget – essentially it allows your visitors to create your web site. It’s used by many big players on the Internet. For instance, Ebay uses JotSpot to allow …
The days of mass audiences are over. I remember as a child when a typical TV programme would get 15m viewers mid-week, sometimes 20m. The BBC used to attract around 12m people to its Radio One breakfast show. Almost half the nation used to listen to Noel Edmonds in the …
In the past few days I’ve been reading about the increased use of bans on blogging. One company held a meeting where it banned anyone from blogging. The company, Nielsen, is a well known and respected media business, so why did they ban bloggers from their meeting? They claim it’s …
Just when you thought you had this infoproduct business cracked, along comes Adobe to mess it all up for you. For several years now, people have been getting used to – and liking – the PDF format which allows you to publish your books online and for your readers to …