SOMEWHAT FRANK

AOL Redesigns Seem To Be Paying Off

The latter part of last year, AOL redesigned a number of its channel offerings including News, Sports and Money & Finance in an effort to increase engagement and traffic starting with AOL News in June 2007. According to a recent release by AOL, it appears that these changes are paying off. The redesign offers a cleaner design and more blog-like social platform than before which might have contributed to increases in key metrics like Page Views and Unique Visitors.

TubeMogul Distributes & Tracks Online Videos

Getting your online video distributed on multiple sites on the Web can be a bit of a time consuming task but TubeMogul looks to make your life a lot easier. With Berkeley-based startup TubeMogul, you can simply upload your video once and then configure it to be sent to a number of video platforms at one time (i.e. YouTube, Blip.tv, MySpace Video, etc). TubeMogul, founded by a handful of Berkeley graduate students, also offers video metrics for all the videos that you upload through the service to help paint a more clear picture of exactly how your video is performing online. This could come in pretty handy when it comes to selling advertisements around online video. TubeMogul recently announced a series A round of funding from Knights Bridge Capital.

AOL Gets Goowy, Acquires Widget Startup

AOL has just announced the acquisition of Goowy Media, a San Diego-based Flash startpage, widget and desktop application startup. One of Goowy's bi-products is yourminis a slick startpage that I previously reviewed and named one of the best beta products of 2006. It is pretty rad.

Goowy's widgets can be distributed to just about any page or social network on the Web (as shown below) which is comparable to offerings by ClearSpring, Widgetbox and Gigya, which have also been getting buzz in the widget advertising space. These distribution capabilities will come in handy on myAOL as well as helping to syndicate AOL network content. Goowy also offers widget metrics in a dashboard that closely resembles the feed metrics dashboard of FeedBurner which was acquired by Google for $150 million.

Microsoft Bids On Yahoo, Facebook Numbers Released, OpenSocial or OpenGadget?, No Tipping Point?, DEMO08 & Technology Tomorrow

Photo of the Week: This week I spent time at the DEMO08 conference in Palm Desert, California and I snapped this shot from my hotel room balcony.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 02.03.2008

Social Network Advertising & 2008 Web Predictions, Online Giving Sites, Twitter Communications & Design Trends

Photo of the Week: Happy new year!! taken by Solveig with sparklers.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 01.06.2008

Lemonade Stands Go Online To Make You Money

I spent many summer days as a child attempting to sell lemonade to anyone that passed by. I cannot say it was that lucrative a business and recall spending a lot of time waiting and waiting for lemonade customers. Aside from a solid suntan from my hours spent waiting I also learned that lemonade stands are all about location, location, location. Lemonade has taken the idea of the "lemonade stand" to the Web making it easy to recommend items you like on sites where you already have visitors.

Knols Announced, Clearspring Widget Ad Network, YouTube Partnership Program, Mahalo Social Search & Coding Monsters

Photo of the Week: I witnessed the Penny Harvest first hand this past week in Rockefeller Plaza in New York City as they look to raise 100 million pennies for charity. The river of pennies was pretty amazing - I have never seen so many pennies in one place.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 12.16.2007

Help Finding A Nintendo Wii

Are you looking for a Nintendo Wii? I know some of my friends are. One of my friends is even thinking about getting in line at 5 o'clock in the morning at the Nintendo retail store in New York to try and snag one. The store only allows you to buy one Wii at a time if you are one of the lucky souls that gets one at all. However, there may be a few other options on the Web that might be less time consuming and physically challenging to get your hands on a  Nintendo Wii.

Google Apps Future, Mobile Phone Novelists, Edgeio Shut Down, Zuckerberg's $40m In Stock, MyStrands Funded & 100% Biodiesel Jet

Photo of the Week: This photo was taken by Joey Wan while she visited Laguna Beach recently. It had me California dreaming!

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 12.09.07

Facebook Launching Ads Outside The Network?

Facebook has been blanketing the headlines for months now and it has heated up more with Mark Zuckerberg speaking at TechCrunch40 and the Web 2.0 Summit in the past few weeks. Mark recently hinted at an advertising platform launch coming soon and my friend Nick O'Neill of at AllFacebook has been reporting on for the past few weeks. Apparently the Facebook ad platform will not just focus on the Facebook space but will also go outside of the Facebook network and place advertisements on the Web which will place it in direct competition with Google Adsense and other similar services.

HumanFlipbook.com

Have you ever given a stick figure life with a flipbook? Erbert & Gerbert's has put its own spin on a flipbook by creating what they are calling the first ever human flipbook. It is posted at humanflipbook.com. It's a very artistic and clever way to passively promote the Midwest-based sub and club sandwich shop.

Google Phone Details, Dapper Facebook App Maker, Clown Co. Named Hulu, Personalized & Social Search and The Sexual Relationship Database

Photo of the Week: I found this unique view of the Washington Monument in Washington, DC this weekend.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 09.02.2007

HotSwap: Video Listings For Used Autos

Buying a car is a definitely a pain in the butt, as it takes a lot of time and effort. I have been thinking about it for a few months now but haven't yet rallied enough energy to do it. Wouldn't be nice if buying a car could be done by simply watching an online video? Now you sort of can.

HotSwap offers free online video auto listings that could make buying a car as simple as watching an online video. HotSwap users can search by color, style, price, mileage and ZIP code and keyword. HotSwap offers users to watch, save and share videos as well as comment on them too.

HotSwap could save both buyers and sellers time and money as many car dealer and car classified Web sites do not offer a rich video experience and often charge sellers to place ads. HotSwap may be the first site I have seen offering video to assist people selling cars online - oh did I mention it is FREE to create a listing?

I think HotSwap is a great idea and I am surprise it took this long to see this type of site appear. Currently, it seems to be light on the number of listings on the site might be a hint that it is going to take a little time for people to adopt. Also it appears the videos a little short in length but the limit is 100MB in size. Maybe Cars.com should take a look at this type of offering as a video plus some additional photos would be the ultimate online auto listing. Check out the screen-shot below or watch the video of the car I found on HotSwap.

Facebook Growth, Content Worth 4.3B, Twitter vs. Pownce, Podcasting Tools, Sphere Success & CrunchBase

Photo of the Week: American Flag on Parade at Dewey Beach for the 'Running of the Bulls' taken by Matt Hirschmann.

Somewhat Frank Weekly Tidbits: 07.08.07

Facebook Sees Flood of New Traffic from Teenagers and Adults
In the months prior to allowing open registration, Facebook.com’s traffic hovered at approximately 14 million visitors per month. However, after Facebook opened its doors to the general public, visitation accelerated to reach a level of 26.6 million visitors.

Your Content is About to Be Worth $4.3B
MediaWeek reports that advertising on social networks, blogs and other venues where consumers produce content is about to become a much bigger business than it is now. It's on pace to be a billion-dollar business this year. However, by 2011 it will grow to $4.3B.

Twitter v Pownce: It’s The API, Stupid
Nik Cubrilovic compares Twitter to Pownce and believes that there are two key things that Twitter has done well that Pownce has overlooked completely.

CrunchBase
TechCrunch quietly rolls out a web 2.0 directory of companies and services.

MyBlogLog: DNS for People
Ian Kennedy explains MyBlogLog's strategy. They want to build a platform which allows you to get to know someone through what they produce and share, collectively, across all networks and the internet.

Podcasting Toolbox: 70+ Podcasting Tools and Resources
A great list of podcasting resources aggregated by Mashable.

'Hyper-Local' Site Backfence Shutting Down
Backfence emerged about the same time, a couple of years ago, as InsiderPages, Judy's Book and Yelp. Now it appears to be closing its doors.

Classified Info: Craigslist Alternatives Compared
The online classified sites compared.

Sphere Quietly Nailing Its Business Model
Instead of focusing on building a better blog search engine (an area that Google now dominates after a recent Technorati refocus), Sphere has spent its time developing technology that automatically finds blog posts related to whatever a user is looking at

Netvibes, now with one less CEO
GigaOm reports on some changes at Netvibes which includes the departure of Pierre Chappaz. Chappaz is leaving Netvibes and instead will be focusing on Wikio, his personalized blog and news search service that is now said to have two million unique visitors a month.

Ztail Simplifying Selling Stuff Online

Have you ever looked around your place and noticed you tend to save things, lots of things, that you no longer need, want or care about? If so, you might want to sell something on Ztail, an eBay compatible Alpha application. Through a partnership with Compete.com, Ztail surveyed 2,500 registered eBay users about what stopped them from selling online. Eighty-five percent (or 2125 people surveyed) said online selling was too hard and time consuming.

Ztail is focused on simplifying selling by searching product and transaction data for millions of items and automating the listing process, creating the basis for the simple, intuitive and effective Click Once, Sell Everywhere model. Ztail aimed to bypass a complicated and lengthy process, and simplified it into three easy steps:

Find your product, Publish your listing, Share your listing.

Once the listing is created, Ztail plugs the user into his or her own social media and instantly distributes the listing to selected friends via blogs, email and social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Finally, Ztail offers tools to help users track and adjust activity in their personal MyZtail pages. 

Bill Hudak and Dave Keefer founded Ztail in 2006, with a combined 20 years in online experience at companies like Google, Netscape, ePinions and Shopping.com. Bill and Dave have watched online commerce develop from its infancy and created Ztail to make selling online quick and easy for everyone.

I set up an account, followed the directions and personalized my ad within a few minutes on eBay, edgeio, Google Base, oodle and vast. GigaOm offers additional perspective on Ztail as well.