Information now available through the search engine includes reports regarding water and waste permitting through the Florida Department of Environmental Protection’s Web site as well as information on individual schools using the Florida Department of Education’s Web site.

Sounds a lot like Google Custom Search–something Florida surely could have set-up itself.

"Every day, millions of people turn to search engines to find the authoritative and trustworthy information provided by their government, and it is our mission to help them connect with this content," said Elliot Schrage, vice president of global communications and public affairs at Google, in a press release. "Florida has joined a growing circle of states that are taking a significant step to make their online information and services more accessible to their citizens."

It’s not the first state to get a custom search engine, California, Michigan, and Arizona are among the others that have previously partnered with the search engine.

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Marketers have come to eagerly await this, as it’s the single most thorough resource on SEM trends that any firm puts out, and the past few years it has kept getting better in regards to the depth and breadth.

From SEMPO:

Why should you take the survey?

• Taking the survey will actually stimulate you to think about the    resources you devote to SEO and paid search – which is a valuable exercise    in itself.
• First dibs – you will receive the preliminary survey results before    they are released to SEMPO’s membership.
• Support the SEM industry – this survey is highly regarded as a valuable    resource for the industry.
• 10% discount to Sprinkles Cupcakes with every five entries

Okay, the last bullet’s mine, not SEMPO’s, so don’t hold them to it. The other three reasons are good enough.

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Tanya writes:

I am a student at

San Diego

State

University

and I have used Facebook to promote to my fellow classmates new programs and activities for Campus Recreation. It is very inexpensive and easy to use. I think it cost me $20 to target 20,000 students or something.

Sincerely,

Tanya Cottrell

PS. I think Yahoo should allow niche marketing for their yahoo groups because I know some could be targeted by different industries too. Ex. I am on the Yahoo CIU Italy group which is designed for students who will be studying abroad at the University in Italy and any traveling industry business should promote on this group page because they have a captured audience.

She then added in a subsequent email:

Something else I would like to mention I know I previous commented on Yahoo but on Facebook it is incredibly easy to create groups and invite friends to join too. For example, as soon as the fires started raging here in

San Diego

a friend of mine created a group on Facebook where we informed each other of what was happening instead of the news, since the news was spread pretty thin. It was very convenient for people who lived in

San Diego

or friends who lived outside of

San   Diego

and were worried about the situation.

Also, I am studying global marketing abroad in Italy next semester and usually you don’t meet other people going on the trip until you get there but someone opened a Facebook group for our 2008 semester specifically. With our group are able to exchange advice, meet people who are going on the trip before we even go, and a bonus is we are able to coordinate flights and meetings to travel together into

Italy

. As a person learning in marketing, it is these “niche” groups that I would seek out and advertise on. If not advertise have a company account and post comments on the pages. Ex. A tour company can leave a wall post for students with a deal on weekend tours in

Europe

. Everyday there are at least one new person added to the group and a couple wall posts.

Honestly, I haven’t really noticed any of the new Facebook ads unless they have something to do with something already in my mind set. Ex. I am planning my trip for Europe so if I see an ad that says “

Europe

” it catches my eye.

 

Do you actually have an account? You should join. You would be amazed at how many adults are currently on it and as my generation grows older I don’t see Facebook becoming any smaller. We are the social chat room generation – we will always be online.

 

Sincerely,

Tanya Cottrell

San Diego State University 2008 Graduate and Marketing Executive at VivanTech

This is a great snapshot of a multitude of ways marketers and members both can use Facebook.

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The panel was moderated by Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of IAB. Panelists included:

• Suzie Reider, Head of Ad Sales YouTube.com
• Michael Barrett, EVP, Chief Revenue Officer Fox Interactive Media
• Arianna Huffington, c-founder and Editor in Chief Huffington Post
• Matt Freeman, CEO Tribal DDB Worldwide

Randy Rothenberg of the IAB started out with a brief overview citing promosing industry statistics: The interactive advertising industry is near $20 billion, there are over one billion internet users world wide and 80% of adults use the internet.Despite that progress and good news, the interactive advertising industry is at risk due to possible regulation from “anti consumer advocates”. The FTC has raised the spectre of regulation not only of cookies but reccommendations to implement opt in requirements for all ads. The regulation advocates’ position is basically, “The time for fact finding is over, it’s time for us to regulate.”

The interactive industry will only remain strong and vibrant if we respect the consumer. Companies need to watch more than what’s affecting their own organization, but also what’s happening at the federal and state levels.

Let’s talk about the “new P”. What have been known as portals are now calling themselves platforms including Google, Yahoo, MSN and of course Facebook. Is the trend towards platforms important or is it just a fad? What will the relationship be between platforms, agencies and publishers?

Suzie Reider believes we’ll continue to go in this direction with the shift towards user generated content. The idea of platform is less a label but more about giving users tools to contribute and interact.

According to Matt Freeman, platforms and user generated content create a challenge for agencies as media production costs drop, allowing users to easily create their own media. It ends the dominance in the supply chain of media production by the big media companies.

Michael Barrett says by definition, MySpace is a platform. Bringing together disparate tools that empower users to communicate, share and discover is what spurs the growth of social networking sites like MySpace.

There’s a lot of good coming from platforms in terms of data collection – enabling advertisers to get the right ad to the right person at the right time. Platforms provide publishers with monetization opportunities and they help agencies through lower costs to deliver services. “Those with the data hold the cards”.

OK, so platforms help users and agencies, what about publishers? Arianna Huffington spiced things up on the panel not only with her deep insight as a successful publisher, but more than intersting references to Ginger and Marianne along with something about weird porn woke up more than a few early session attendees.

She believes that Huffington Post is itself a platform. What started out as a political publishing brand has been a launching point for engaging users other interests as well, which spurred the launch of other topical verticals and tools to facilitate user interaction.

The more interactive tools you can give a community, the more time they spend on the platform. Community is key to platforms. AS an example, there were over 250k moderated comments last month on the Huffington Post and there are also 1800 bloggers.

Now the conversation turns to video. A year ago at ad:tech, the buzz was focused on video content and advertising. Moderator Randall Rothenberg asks, “Did that buzz live up to the promise?”

With examples like the one given by Suzie Reider involving the Opera channel launching on YouTube.com and attracting massive numbers of subscribers in just a few days, video is indeed meeting expectations. But there are challenges.

Video is increasingly important for Huffington Post and they are working to find more innovative ways to work with video advertising in place of pre-roll video ads and truncated RSS feeds. Huffington post is forgoing such tactics and providing this kind of content ad free. Readers are responding with more site visits.

Other challenges with video advertising include format lengths according to the type of content, whether it’s a produced show, made for media like lonelygirl15 or user generated content. Michael Barrett says agencies need to experiment and see what works. A 30 second pre-roll ad for a 60 second video isn’t going to appeal to anyone.

With the increased popularity of online video, many advertisers looked at video platforms as just another place to run their commercials, says Michael Barrett. The role of agencies is not to create ads, but to create ads as content. Agencies need to make brands destinations in and of themselves, says Matt Freeman.

If insertion is too obtrusive for consumers, then how do you get paid? Arinanna Huffington gave the example of a program where she and readers at the Huffington Post shared photos of themselves and their Prius’. Huffington Post “got paid” for the program and Toyota gained substantial exposure from a community of brand enthusiasts.

It was inevitable that the conversation would turn to Facebook. With the announcement that Facebook will offering targeted advertising, Randy Rothenberg asks, “How are we going to construct the line between consumer privacy expectations and the interest from marketers in social media?”

The number one complaint from consumers is to make ads more relevant and explaining what it will take to provide more personalized ads is an ongoing educational challenge. One that the IAB is undertaking with a campaign about an ad supported internet.

One of the more interesting questions from the audience concerned the future of the pre-roll ad. Will pre-roll go away and where does that leave the agencies? Is the agency best to create the content or the community?

Suzie Reider agreed with the panel that pre-rolls are too obtrusive and gave a good example of YouTube implementing an overlay ad on the bottom third of videos. There are smarter ways to get advertising sponsorship into the media.

Be sure to visit the Flickr set on ad:tech NYC 2007 as well as daily coverage on the ad:tech blog.

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John Escalera, 29 of Fresno, California, and Gustavo Razo Jr., 28 of Pasadena, have been charged with multiple counts of conspiracy, wire fraud, identity theft and unauthorized computer access. The men if convicted could receive up to 20 years in prison and fines up to $250,000.

Escalera who worked at Fresno State’s computer help desk used his access to a PeopleSoft management system to hack the password of a supervisor and then was able to get administrative privileges along with usernames and passwords of a number of people who were authorized to change grades.

The indictment says that Escalera changed his own grades from lower to higher and did the same for his friend Gustavo Razo Jr. The changes were made in 2004 but not discovered until an audit in January 2005.

Jeri Echeverria, provost and vice president for academic affairs at Fresno State sent a memo to faculty and staff that said," I would like to assure you that accurate maintenance of grade records is of utmost importance to all members of the university. Proper measures have been taken to both rectify the situation and deal with the offenders."

Escalera and Razo pleaded not guilty and are awaiting a hearing on November 16.

Search Rules Advertising As Media Diversifies

Deloitte’s 2007 State of the Media Democracy Survey revealed that 84 percent of all consumers visit a website after finding it through a search engine and 82 percent find websites via personal recommendation.

And while technophiles have been echoing Dr. Egon Spengler since at least 1984 that print is dead, almost three quarters (72 percent) of those same consumers surveyed still read magazines, and 23 percent expect to spend more time reading books this year.

Yet, if the Internet is your only source of information, you might be convinced that print publications are shutting down by the dozens and reopening online, fulfilling the prophecy that people just aren’t into paper anymore. But the reality is that people prefer choice in media, and even interpret media differently depending on the format.

Previously, I noted also the Darwinian aspect to print, the expense, the saturation of the market that has occurred over the past few decades, complete with bloated staffing, ballooning costs, high failure rates, and high barriers to entry that might account better for a seeming downward trend. But it’s more of a shift than a terminal disease. People are diversifying.

With ads, for example, the survey found that 76 percent of all consumers thought Internet ads were intrusive. Yet, if delivered via print, 64 percent actually paid more attention to them. That doesn’t mean stop advertising online, as only 28 percent said they’d rather pay for content than see the ads. But it does provide an opportunity to develop a nice cooperation between offline and online campaigns.

Or maybe Google was just fooling around when they started brokering print ad deals.

What’s happening, rather than one medium replacing or outright destroying another, is that consumers are consuming all forms of media as suits their purposes, when it suits their purposes, and from whichever angle. This could be on the train, at the coffee shop, the library, the living room, the kitchen table, their favorite chair, or the computer desk, from a monitor, a DVR, a mobile phone, a TV, a magazine, newspaper, or radio.

And not only are their choices of media and media delivery vehicles diversifying, but their creators of media are as well. Over 50 percent of consumers are watching or reading user-generated content (71 percent if you’re younger than 24), and 40 percent of consumers are creating their own content (56 percent if you’re younger than 24.)

So that means, to me anyway, that we are entering an interesting and revolutionary new world of media with unlimited choices for creation and delivery of ideas. And that has enormous positive possibilities…if we don’t blow each other up first. 

For those who haven’t heard of Tyroo, an official press release does a decent job of filling in the details.  “Tyroo, a part of Smile Interactive Technologies Group (Smile Group), is a completely self-serve ad-network offering best of breed advertising solutions for both advertisers and publishers.  Today, Tyroo boasts of over 1200 registered publishers across the country.”

And that’s not bad, although, given Yahoo’s financial state, now might not be the best time for the search engine company to make this announcement.  Details of the deal remain unknown, however, so it’s hard to say exactly what was exchanged; even The Hindu, which is often especially well-informed about Indian developments, remains in the dark.

In any event, “The cash infusion by Yahoo! will be used to invest aggressively in technology and sales network to reach out to the vast number of small and medium sized advertisers and publishers in India,” according to the release.

George Zacharias, the managing director of Yahoo India, adds, “Through this investment, Yahoo! will act as a catalyst for the entire ad-network industry, which is still in a nascent stage, in India.”

My defense and love of print media is well-documented. But the following scenario seems the exact opposite of smart.

As media online and off create green properties, print media continues to fall on hard times. This has forced more than one newspaper to raise prices. What’s one way USA Today and WSJ hope to differentiate themselves?

Glossy paper.

…glossy magazine pages may indeed be more attractive to consumer-focused ad buyers. The Wall Street Journal and USA Today are now developing glossy magazines for distribution within their traditional newsprint flagships, according to company executives and media buyers familiar with the work, Advertising Age reports. …beauty, fashion and other lifestyle advertisers are happier to spend money if their ads appear on thick, glossy pages.

Each magazine will try to find overlooked editorial space to occupy, but the reality is that living — however luxurious or active — is pretty well-represented already in magazines. The real play here is creating a lush reader experience that can’t be matched with newsprint, not to mention media outside print.

More paper? Glossy paper stock may make advertisers happy — initially. But will it reverse the hemorrhage of readers moving to an online only news diet? That better be some pretty amazing paper.

You will not win applying old rules to a new game.

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Augusta- A diverse coalition of Mainers applauded the enactment today of the first net neutrality resolve in the nation. The resolution, LD 1675, recognizes the importance of “full, fair and non-discriminatory access to the Internet” and instructs the Public Advocate to study what can be done to protect the rights of Maine internet users.

"Maine is the first state in the nation to stand up for its citizens’ rights to a nondiscriminatory internet," said Senator Ethan Strimling, the original sponsor of LD 1675. "The rest of the nation should follow suit and study what can be done to protect net neutrality."

Read the full release here.

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But, as I started to get better I was playing with my Nokia N95 phone — mostly cause Maryam kept calling me to make sure I was still alive. Many of the mobile apps really have some major holes. It’s like the authors of them don’t really use their cell phones with their own apps.

Twitter’s Mobile App, for instance, doesn’t let me click on URLs that are included in posts. I’m going to try Tiny Twitter to see if it’s better (Java required, so won’t work on your fancy new iPhone).
Google’s Mobile Reader isn’t even close to the desktop version. No river of news, no sharing, no keyboard shortcuts that I can figure out.

On the other hand, Google’s mobile search really is nice. Especially after you customize it for a while and add things like stocks, weather, and your favorite news sources.

And Google Mobile Maps rocks. I look at it everytime I’m about to get into my car because it shows live traffic data for the San Francisco area. Except I can’t figure out how to make it use the GPS device in my Nokia.

You can tell that Kyte.tv was designed by a young startup that gets mobile phones. It’s a little complicated to use and figure out what it’s for, though.

Shozu rocks on mobile phones except that once in a while photos and video don’t get uploaded so I have to open the app up and make sure that things got sent up OK. I can’t figure out why that happens.

I haven’t tried out Radar.net yet, but that’s next on my list.

Anyway, I’m staying home today. I’m also going to take some time off of reading feeds. I’ll be honest, I’m addicted to feeds and I’m not getting my work done, so gotta get off of those for a while.

What do you think about mobile apps? Which ones do you love and hate?

UPDATE: Jaiku has a new mobile version coming next week. Gotta get that and try it out.

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