03.31.06
Posted in General at 3:07 pm by Christine
I know – could you believe that I’ve not posted in 10 days, but it’s been a really busy 10 days and the time has most certainly flied – for me at least.
So until I’ve caught up on all my reading, this will be an entirely Google biased post. 
Building an online “community” definitely seems to be the key focus on the net recently. Although many good content filled sites have been doing it for years – and also the main reason why they are so content filled - but I’ve found that more and more sites are tuning into just how lucrative that could be in the search arena.
Even Google have been trying to create more and more of an online community. We can see that through their product offerings. Personalised search, Blogger, Google Earth, Calendar to name but a few, and now Google Reader allows you to share content with your friends / colleagues.
All brokers and keen stock holders take note. Now you can find everything in one (more) place. Enter Google Finance. To begin with, you no longer have to remember a ticker or mutual fund symbol. Just search for a company or mutual fund by name and you’ll quickly see all the relevant information.
“You’ll find interactive charts that enable you to zoom through different time periods, headlines mapped right on the charts and are based on Google News, which means you’re seeing unbiased and relevant results from more than 4,500 English-language news sources.”
Personally, I’ve been receiving so much “Stock Spam” recently that I can’t bear to browse the site right now 
but from my quick squizz it seems pretty user-friendly. Do you think there is demand in the industry for this and would you use it? Share your thoughts.
And Justice For All. Google has finally won the battle against the DoJ. A Judge recently ruled that they would not have to hand over their search queries. This is a great victory for all participants of the online community. Read the full Google DoJ ruling here.
Something light to end off with: Anyone for (Google) Mars ?
On a personal note:
Its Friday, it’s a great day here in Cape Town and today’s title is exactly how I am feeling right now. Funnily enough it’s also a little phrase that I’ve been running into more and more the last few days. Not too sure if the Metallica concert had anything to do with it. (just kidding
It was a fabulous concert. Joey and I were there to support the bands and join the masses for an awesome 12 hours of great music. Collective Soul, Metallica, Fat Boy Slim and the Audio Bully’s really stole the show for me. Despite the bad press the Jo’burg concert had, Cape Town definitely made up for it, and although I’ve heard some people complain, I thought it was brilliant. The longest we waited in any queue was 15 min and that was for a bite to eat.
Permalink
03.20.06
Posted in General at 5:05 pm by Christine
We all know that having your own Blog is because you’re an arrogant vain creature that wants to project your thoughts and opinions into the world of ether. (Just kidding)
Joey pointed me to this very interesting article on how Bloggers should be very careful when “sculpting your online persona”. After all your online presence IS your personal brand and ANY information that you post (or is posted about you) in the online world – whether it be forum, personal blog, blog comment, Flickr, etc ad infinitum – reflects who you are and will influence other people’s opinions of you.
This is one (highly underestimated) powerful element of the online world. So be sure that your online presence is a positive projection.
This is of course also valid for company brands online. I’ve previously been contacted by companies to help turn their online presence around. Their online brands were being slandered by competitors and the slandering pages were overtaking their own site pages on the Search result pages, so inevitably they turned to SEO as a resort to assist with increasing their presence online in a more “positive” light. And I assisted them in devising a strategy to do just that.
One of the easiest ways, and one that I use, to keep track of what people are saying about you online, general interests or perhaps a competing company is Google Alerts. Of course it only alerts you as it “finds” the “tracked items” online – which for me is also interesting as it gives me some insight to how often, and how long it takes for Google to spider those websites.
On a personal note:
Joey and I are headed to the Coca-Cola Colab happening in Cape Town on the 25th of March – main headline being Metallica. Of the 17 gigs, there really was only two that I wanted to see, being Fat Boy Slim and Metallica. Saw the line up today, and a lot of fans are going to be very disappointed as they’ve put FBS and Metallica on the same time-slot apparently for crowd control reasons.
The tickets for the event were not cheap – and I can already see a lot of fuss being kicked up about this. Had I known in advance I may not have purchased Golden Circles….So Joey and I will be getting loads of exercise during this event – as we walk about from one event to the other.
The first concert has already been at Pretoria on the weekend past, and from the response posted on HelloPeter – was not very good at all. Hopefully Cape Town will be better!
Permalink
03.17.06
Posted in General at 5:26 pm by Christine
Read today over on NYTimes that none other than the internationally acclaimed Ogilvy are planning on rolling out their own SEM division dubbed NEO Search. Initially they are planning the roll-out to Australia, Britain, Canada, China, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, Singapore and the United States. They’ve left off one important country though, but I am sure that with time this list will grow to include South Africa, since it’s actually cheaper to outsource work to experts in SA.
From a purely objective point of view, although the current market here is quite saturated with SEM companies, although I feel that there is still sufficient room to acquire a piece of this pie from a company with good offerings / deliveries.
On a different note: Google Pug - Check out one of the Google (employee) pets how cute is he!! ?
On a personal note:
Happy ST Patty’s day! I’m off to grab a celebratory drink
Permalink
« Previous entries