As you may remember, Startup America was launched in January as part of President Obama’s economic growth initiative.  It was aided by investments from Intel, IBM, HP and Facebook but also backed by some government funding.  The difference with StartUp Britain is although it has the complete backing of the British government, it is not being funded by it.  As StartUp Britain’s new site explains, this venture is created by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs:

StartUp Britain is a new campaign by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, launched on 28th March 2011. Designed to celebrate, inspire and accelerate enterprise in the UK, it has the full backing of the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and HM Government.

This is a response from the private sector to the Government’s call for an ‘enterprise-led’ recovery. We believe that many of the important functions and services necessary to foster and champion new enterprise can be open-sourced, instead of provided by government directly.  We aim to do this by creating a living market-place online for the wide range of enterprise support that is already available.

As a private sector organisation we aim to shoulder some of this responsibility for enterprise promotion with the government, re-modelling existing cost centres, and reducing the cost to the taxpayer.

Along with links to resources for businesses like “how to acquire funding,” “setting up you website” and “designing a logo” the website details deals being offered by established businesses to help those trying to get off the ground.  Google has offered a limited amount of free AdWords services, HP has offered 10% off online purchases and Blackberry has offered free copies of their start-up guide ebook.  Gloople, Pay Pal and Regus are just three more of the currently 62 companies backing the initiative.

The initiative has only started with two real aids – the lists of resources and the offers from corporate supporters.  But they look to add new features such as a “Mentor Marketplace” and a “Masterclass Platform.”

Although this is obviously a good way to advertise for the 62 corporate sponsors, it also looks like it could be a good place to start – maybe even more so for burgeoning internet businesses than traditional brick and mortar businesses.  Does this sound like a better way to go about promoting growth than Startup America?  Let us know what you think.

Was TechCrunch wrong or right in publishing the stolen documents? Tell us.

To say Twitter is unhappy with TechCrunch would be an understatement. But, why is Twitter so angry? According to TechCrunch, Twitter had given them a green light to post the information:

"It’s important to note that we have been given the green light by Twitter to post this information – They aren’t happy about it, but they are able to live with it, they say (more on why they did that in our later post)"

Twitter CEO, Evan Williams (@ev) sees it entirely different, as you can see by his following tweet:

Taking the matter even further, Twitter co-founder, Biz Stone (@biz) updated the company blog where he reiterated Evan’s statement:

"…the publication of stolen documents is irresponsible and we absolutely did not give permission for these documents to be shared."

On Wednesday, this author wrote an article giving Biz’s response to various security concerns after the hack. He briefly touched on the legality of posting such documents:

"We are in touch with our legal counsel about what this theft means for Twitter, the hacker, and anyone who accepts and subsequently shares or publishes these stolen documents. We’re not sure yet exactly what the implications are for folks who choose to get involved at this point but when we learn more and are able to share more, we will."

TechCrunch has been receiving some serious flak for posting the stolen documents. Some loyal Twitter users have even began spreading the word that they’re boycotting TechCrunch from now on:

InformationWeek has taken the TechCrunch vs. Twitter debate to a much higher level, asking Michael Arrington, founder TechCrunch, to step down.

"By publishing documents stolen by a hacker, Michael Arrington has proven he doesn’t have the judgment necessary to run a news organization. He should have the decency to step down."

TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington defends his publication of the docs:

"There is clearly an ethical line here that we don’t want to cross, and the vast majority of these documents aren’t going to be published, at least by us. But a few of the documents have so much news value that we think it’s appropriate to publish them."

So, what are your thoughts on TechCrunch vs. Twitter? Let us know what you think.

But many online businesses may be making it too difficult for customers to hand over the cash, which is a bad business practice by any account.

Here’s what people (especially men) are used to:

I go into a store. I see something I want to buy. I give money to the salesperson. I leave with the thing I wanted to buy.

But what they’re experiencing in online shopping is often different. It goes more like this:

I see something I want to buy. Salesperson asks if I’m a registered user before I can buy thing I want to buy. I don’t remember if I’m in their special club or not, so I try many usernames, emails, and passwords. None of them work. Did I forget my password? Maybe. I’ll tell them my email address and then I’ll go check my email to see if they sent me the magic words that will let me buy the thing I want to buy. I check my email, but regardless of whether the magic words are there, I’ve now lost interest in (run out of time for, been distracted from, irritated about) buying the thing I had wanted to buy because they made it too much trouble to give them my money and leave with the thing I wanted to buy.

Okay, here are some concrete numbers:

• 75: The percentage of those clicking the “forgot password” button that don’t come back to finish the purchase.
• 23: The percentage of those abandoning the checkout process at the first sign of a registration prompt.
• 45: The percentage of registered customers who have bad memories and register multiple times, some as many as 10 times, meaning sites requiring registration might have inflated data.
• 300 million: The number of lost dollars one major retailer found after taking away the registration button.

Here’s a money quote:

"I’m not here to enter into a relationship. I just want to buy something." – Customer wanting to give money to retailer to buy the thing they wanted to buy.

Best course of action:

Make it easier for people to give you their money by not requiring they register to do so. Give them a choice to register so that it’s easier for them to give you their money more often in the future or to proceed to checkout where they can give you their money immediately without the hassle of becoming your friend.

Don’t believe me? Read these posts and decide for yourself:

The $300 Million Button
Required Registration Lowers Online Conversion Rates
Top 10 Online Retailers
Checkout Inspiration From Top Converting Sites

*Energy, lending, insurance, telecom, and cable businesses excluded.
 

1. Links

If you provide good, quality content, it is going to attract links period. It is true that this will not always happen without the appropriate attention to site promotion, but once people see your content, they will link to it if it is good. It’s that simple. There are tons of sites dedicated to linking to (what they perceive to be) good content alone. That is their whole purpose.

Look at sites like Drudge Report or Techmeme or even Google News for that matter. While the ways these sites choose what content to display may differ from each other, they are each rooted in what they consider to be valuable content, and everything on these sites links out to other sites. With good content, there is no reason why sites like these (or others depending on your niche) can’t be linking to your content.

When your content generates more links, it is likely to achieve greater visibility right along with them. Whether that be from search engines, blogs, or sites like those mentioned above, more doorways are created for entering your own site. People don’t link to bad content (generally speaking) unless they wish to insult it, or are for some reason misled about what they are linking to.

Sally Falkow of Expansion Plus discusses the importance of top-rated content with Abby Prince in the following video (add to the discussion):

2. Sharing

Links are really just a way that people share content. But there is no question that as an online entity, you have to consider social networks. People love to share content via Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc. Not to mention the ones that are made specifically for content like Digg and StumbleUpon.

In fact, you might as well give readers an easy way to share your content by offering social links within it. RSS feeds are typically a good idea too. This is just one more doorway for people to get to your content, and an ongoing one at that, should they stay subscribed to you feeds (they will also keep your brand fresh in readers’ minds). Then There’s the fact that feed readers often offer their own sharing features leading to even more opportunities for more people to see your work.

These things are the word-of-mouth of the online world. There’s no reason to rule out word-of-mouth in the physical world either. For example, I might tell my mother-in-law that I read this fascinating article on WebProNews today, and she might say something like, "Hmmm, what is this WebProNews? That sounds like something that I would be interested in. I should check that out. What’s the URL for that?"

But again, if your content sucks, nobody is going to share it unless they intend to insult it. This brings me to the next reason why content should be a priority, and that is…

3. Reputation

If people are out there insulting your content, your brand’s reputation will only be damaged. Remember, word-of-mouth works both ways. This is one reason why reputation management is so important. It’s not just about your own personal reputation, it’s about that of your entire business.

Creating good content establishes credibility. When someone views your content and learns something from it or likes what they see, they will (if even on a small scale) develop some amount of trust toward you (and potentially your brand) as a credible source for information within your niche of expertise.

4. Audience

The more linking and sharing of your content, the more your audience is likely to grow. Isn’t this reason enough to make your content good? When you develop a positive reputation online, that in itself tends to snowball as well. People throw your name around a lot, and you can even become something of a mini-celebrity. Then people will be inclined to check out your content based on name recognition alone. People will see your name referenced frequently, and want to know what you’re all about. If your content is good and appealing to them, they’ll keep reading it and share your content with others.

5. Money

In the end, it is truly money, which we all seek is it not? It’s not all that matters, but in the business world, it’s a pretty good chunk of what matters. That’s why we’re all in it. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be businesses. We’d be non-profit organizations.

Well, when you have an established audience and a good reputation, the amount of revenue your business brings in is likely to increase.  If your business plan entails selling ad space, there’s nothing advertisers like better than getting their messages out to large numbers of targeted people (in this case, your audience). And there’s nobody that customers like to buy goods and services from (particularly online) than a business with a good, solid reputation. And both your audience and your reputation can be boosted incredibly by the quality of the content you offer the general public.

I’m not giving away trade secrets here. I’m not selling anything other than common sense. I know this isn’t groundbreaking advice. Yet nearly every day, I see people trying to earn a living online using wretched content, and they’re (possibly even unknowingly) only hurting their chances of doing so.

Content can be the road to riches or the path to poverty. That is why if you’re trying to run an online business, it must be a priority.

What an online vendor lacks (and what becomes a disadvantage) is one-on-one interaction with the customer. As such, the customer must put forth additional effort to find out about a product for sale. Making this task easier can make all the difference in closing a sale.
 

According to GetElastic, an online retailer should strive to answer these customer questions ahead of time to reduce purchase anxiety:

·    Quality of the product
·    Quality and reliability of your customer service
·    Will the item arrive on time?
·    Will the product be as described or as appears on screen? Is it the right color or size?
·    Will it fit? Is this item true to size?
·    What if the product needs to be returned?
·    Is this site secure (privacy, credit card information)?
·    Is this really the best price?

According to one survey, 76 percent of respondents cited insufficient product information as a reason not to purchase, 79 percent rarely or never purchase with incomplete information, and 72 percent will abandon a site for a competitor or further research, usually finding the product elsewhere.

GetElastic.com says the top ten aspects of the online purchase process rated as “very important” to consumers reflected just two prime consumer motivations: gathering information and customer support. The top five, in this order were Product Overview, Merchant’s Guarantee, Stock Availability, Quality of Image, Customer Service Links.

Consumers want complete specs, and they want to know the online vendor will be there for them if something goes wrong.

This isn’t unusual human behavior, of course. Communication scholars love to toss about Uncertainty Reduction Theory, which has been around for over 30 years. According to this theory, humans follow a predictable pattern of information gathering when they encounter a stranger.

Uncertainty about the stranger causes anxiety and distrust, and so seeking out information is a natural way of decreasing uncertainty and anxiety, and of building trust.

E-tailers, then, need to build trust by making sure information is available and easily accessed. Without face-to-face interaction and without the ability to compensate for that lack with complete information, the customer isn’t going to risk doing business.

1. Google’s Countdown of Tips

2. Jaw droppers of 2008 – what they’d rather you forgot

3. Top 10 Semantic Web Products of 2008

4. 9 Reasons You Need Social Media Marketing in 2009

5. 12 Cool Twitter Add-Ons for the 2008 Holiday Season

6. Top 10 Web Platforms of 2008

7. Top 10 from the Inside AdWords Blog

8. Gadget Picks for ’08

9. The Ten Most Popular Viral Videos of 2008

10. The Year 2008 in Google Earth

Of course, I’ve been working on a few year-end lists of my own. You may have come across my look at the year in online video or online music. I looked at the most commented on articles and WebProNews, and the year in Search and Social Media (those coming soon).

Enjoy the lists, and get ready for a whole new year with plenty of great stuff to come.

With this concept in mind, I’d like to present you with some of the most popular WebProNews articles of 2008 in terms of discussion. I’m not going by page views, or inbound links. I’m going simply by the amount of discussion that was generated from each in the comments sections. This is the stuff WebProNews readers have felt passionately about, or felt that their own two cents were worth adding to. Feel free to continue the discussion on any of them (or the overall list in general). Discussion is always welcome and encouraged here, even if that means we have to delete some ED pill links.

Let’s do this countdown style because it’s more fun that way…

25. Spitzer Scandal Sheds Light On Web Prostitution

03/13 – New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s scandal exposed a huge industry of underground activity. 

24. EFF Sues President Bush Over Internet Surveillance

09/21 – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a lawsuit against President George W. Bush and others in his administration for the illegal surveillance of emails and telephone calls without a warrant.

23. Blogging Success Takes A Few Months

08/15 – The popularity contest of blogging and gaining links and traffic doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time and work.

22. This Cesspool We Call the Internet

10/11 – Google CEO Eric Schmidt refers to the Internet as a Cesspool. Justified or not?

21. 10 Ways To Increase Pages Indexed

Jason Miller runs down some things to help you get Google to pay more attention to your site.

20. Google Devaluing DMOZ and Yahoo! Links?

10/08 – Google stopped suggesting that you should be listed in relevant directories in their webmaster guidelines.

19. Google Offers Inbound Link Advice

10/13 – Google’s Maile Ohye confirms what SEO experts have been saying for years: content and inbound links are most important, and in that order.

18. Retailers Panic Over Google Site Search

03/24 – Google draws both praise and criticism after making it easier for people to search within a small number of sites by adding a second search box to the top results for those retailers.

17. Craigslist: Little Ads, $81 Million In Revenue

04/03 – Craigslist is doing quite well for minimal advertising.

16. eBay attracts more complaints

12/08 – Problems for buyers stemming from a holiday contest add to the criticism over eBay, which ad previously been generated more by sellers.

15. American Express Guide Calls SEOs A "Waste"

03/15 – Comments from the Credit Card company ruffled some feathers in the search engine optimization community.

14. Rumor: Dmoz Selling To BOTW

09/19 – It was rumored that BOTW was looking to buy DMOZ, and speculation over Google juice was a hot topic of discussion.

13. What Google’s Matt Cutts Sees In 2009

12/07 – In an interview with Mike McDonald, Matt Cutts discusses some changes that lie ahead for Google in the new year.

12. eBay To Move To PayPal Only In Australia

05/13 – Talk of eBay going PayPal-only anywhere was sure to get people fired up.

11. Top 10 Ways To Raise Your Site In Google

02/15 – Jason Miller talks about some things you can do to improve your search engine rankings.

10. Congress To Make eBay A Rat

09/24 – Three bills in Congress would require online marketplaces and auction sites to secretly police affiliates suspected of selling stolen goods.

9. Cuil Crashes And Burns At Launch

07/28 – A so-called "Google-Killer" launched, but it crashed right after. Not a good start.

8. Yahoo Patent Filing Sheds Light On PageRank

01/16 – Yahoo dabbles in ranking algorithms that incorporate more user behavior data.

7. AdSense Earnings Down?

02/05 – AdSense earnings for many mysteriously dwindle.

6. New York Goes Gangsta With Tax Law

05/06 – Online retailers doing business in New York would be required to register with the state to collect taxes, or face audits for prior quarters for failing to register.

5. Will Personal Search Turn SEO On Its Ear?

11/17 – SEO Bruce Clay talks to Mike McDonald about how search engines will be changing in 2009, and how SEO will be affected.

4. Searching For America’s Next President

07/04 – People just love to get into heated political debates, especially in an election year.

3. Should You Stop Blogging?

10/21 – Someone calls blogging dead, and people are always going to react.

2. Seller Boycott Fails To Impress eBay

02/25 – Sellers boycott eBay. No policy changes made. Sellers furious.

And the WPN article with the largest amount of discussion in 2008 is…

1.  Google Answers Some Tricky Questions

11/10 – During a live chat Q&A, Googlers Matt Cutts and Maile Ohye, among others, faced the burning questions of webmasters around the world. Together, they put to rest some fears and myths, and confirmed some speculations.

And There You Have It.

We’ve posted thousands of articles over the course of the year, and these 25 were the ones that people had the most to say about. It was fun to go back through the archives and put the list together, as well as go back over some old comments that WebProNews readers have left for 2008. You have left your mark on the discussion, and your voice will remain in the archives for future generations to study. Thank you WebProNews readers for your contribution.

Those guys!

Another Joe the Plumber, this one in Amarillo, Texas, is about to score big time with his joetheplumber.com domain.

In case it’s possible you missed it, the debate between John McCain and Barack Obama last night was a colorful one, to put it mildly—at one point I fully expected McCain to get up and deck his opponent. From the very start McCain invoked the name of Ohioan John Whatsaburger—Wurstabooger—Whosabacher—well, McCain had trouble with the name, too, transforming Joe Wurzelbacher first into Joe Wurzelburger and eventually and repeatedly into Joe the Plumber.

McCain brought him up as an example of a small business owner who would be affected by Obama’s tax increase on those making over $250,000 per year—the upper two percent, according to Obama. McCain said Joe wanted to buy the plumbing business he worked for but wouldn’t if there was to be a tax increase. You betcha it was as memorable collection of moments since Sarah Palin brought up Joe Six Pack.

The Texas Joe the Plumber is basking in some free publicity as his Amarillo-based business is being bombarded by media phone calls. One report says he’s received offers in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for his domain, and that he’s suddenly not so attached to it anymore.

No doubt, Joe. Take the money and the publicity and run. You’ll never get attention like this again. Sell and reinvent yourself as Jake the Snake, or Joe the Guy that Got a Half-Million Dollars for a Silly Domain Name Just Because a Politician Kept Saying It on National Television.
 

Big areas of growth in online job demand were the utilities industry (which registered the largest monthly increase), education, training, and library occupations, and healthcare. The biggest gains on a yearly scale, however, come with the public administration and agricultural industries. Farming, fishing and forestry had the sharpest decline for the month, while information, professional, scientific, and technical services saw the sharpest year-to-year decline.

"On the upside, the Index’s overall annual growth rate remained steady, suggesting no major change in underlying nationwide demand for labor compared to July," stated Jesse Harriott, Vice President of Research at Monster Worldwide.

The Index over the past year

While online job demand in all nine U.S. Census Bureau regions was down for the year, seven out of those nine saw growth over the month. The biggest growth came from the West North Central region. This is attributed to the aftermath of flooding. Online job demand increased in 40 states and the District of Columbia. At the city level, the Index monitors 28 U.S. metro areas. Eight of those saw an increase in online recruitment activity. Boston showed the biggest increase, and San Diego saw a nice one as well.

The Index has a ways to go before it reaches where it was a year ago, but this might be the beginning of an upward trend.

For me, a principal reason is that Twitter lets me connect with my online community in three ways: broadcast message to everyone in that community, reply to one or more specific individuals and a direct private message to one person.

No other bells and whistles like file transfers or timelines, just simple, practical and quick text communication from my computer or my mobile device.

Gregor Hochmuth has an insightful post on TechCrunch in which he suggests the reason for Twitter’s enduring appeal is that your messages go to a well-defined audience (read his lengthy post to fully understand his rationale).

I don’t doubt Gregor’s argument that it’s all about the audience. However, I think a close second reason for Twitter’s continuing appeal is the growing number of useful third-party applications and services which provide you with all manner of ways to use and leverage Twitter, usually far more effectively than using only Twitter’s own spartan web interface.

I’ve just discovered Twellow (via ReadWriteWeb), one such third-party service that adds significant value to Twitter as it lets you discover people on Twitter via categories – labels that enable you to find people by their occupation or other such professional designation.

For instance, I found that the Public Relations category includes 1,494 people on Twitter, many of whom I’m connected with in my Twitter community.

But this discovery enabled me to see a number of other people I didn’t know were using Twitter and who I doubt I would have easily discovered without a concerted effort to look for them by their names which don’t necessarily relate to their Twitter names (as mine doesn’t).

When you look at the profile of someone in the Twellow directory, you see some very useful information about them.

Take my profile, for instance:

You can see how many categories my profile is associated with, so clicking on a category label takes you to a listing of everyone in a category. Useful.

You can also see what other social networks I’m part of; clicking on any of the links shown takes you to my profile on a particular network. Equally useful.

And you see the last five tweets I’ve made. Useful, too.

Twellow comes from WebProNews (an organization I’ve had a relationship with since 2004 when they began syndicating my blog content) who describe Twellow thus:

Twellow.com is currently grabbing publicly available messages from the Twitter.com micro-blogging service. We then analyze and categorize each of the users responsible for those messages into the various categories found at Twellow.com. By adding these people to specific categories we help you narrow your searching into specific niches where you can find who you are looking for. In addition to Twitter, we’re actively working on adding more social media services to broaden your capacity to find people who matter.

If you claim your profile, you can then edit it as you require, eg, add your real name if that’s not shown. (One thing I did notice in the PR category is the vast number of people listed who haven’t done that yet.)

A very useful resource that helps you more easily find other people with common interests.

You can read more about Twellow and how you can make it work for you in the Twellow blog.

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