Tonight for the first time I saw a bar appear at the top of my Twitter page called “Hot Political Topics Election2008″. The bar had the following links; Kati Couric, GOP, Alaska, Bush, R’s, коли под наемCNN, Dems, Russia, CBS, Hillary.

The links go to Twitter’s Election2008 sub-domain where you will basically find Summize/Twitter Search tweet results appearing for the election term of your choice. It’s packaged in a smooth red, white and blue U.S. election theme.

Twiter has this statement posted on the page:

What’s this?

We’re filtering hundreds of Twitter updates per minute to create a new source for gathering public opinion about the presidential election and a new way for you to share your thoughts.

With Election2008 Twitter is packaging it’s content in such a way that will draw attention from folks outside of the typical Twitterer. For the Twitter regulars this is old hat stuff we are used to viewing through what what was Summize and is now Twitter Search. But overall I think it will be a home run for Twitter because it will get main stream media attention. Get ready for another jump in Twitter use. Will we be seeing the whale being carried off to never never land again even more?

This also raises more questions.

• What other topics is Twitter going to package up? 
• Are they going to create a whole news site like page full of all the hot topics?
• When will the actual search box and results be integrated into your primary Twitter page?
• What’s the next feature coming around the corner?

I went to check my Comcast account today and was hit with this notice: ! It’s Time To Upgrade Your Browser. Uhh, I don’t think so. It’s time for you to upgrade your script, it’s called Google Chrome!

Hey Mr Comcast, meet Mr Chrome

Twitter finally did integrate search into my primary twitter page (& yours) and I didn’t even notice. Did it happen in the recent Twitter redesign? I can’t say for sure but I wouldn’t doubt it. So where is it? Did you not see it? Twitter stuck it down in the footer! You are correct if you say this stinks. The least Twitter could do is plop this text link up by the primary tweetin’ text box, but nooooooo, they can’t do something simple as that. How ’bout a simple search box up by the main tweetin’ box you may also ask? Noooooooooooo, are you crazy? Things gotta go by a master plan!

At the bottom of the page is where you can find this handy new feature. It’s great Twitter bought summize, eh? If you don’t have a Twitter account or you aren’t logged in to see it in the link above, you can gander at my NorthRock Twitter page or just look at this pic of it below.

The Google cache of the popular tweeter Kevin Rose shows no search link in the footer as of Sept 13, 2008. See the snagged image of it down below. I grabbed his figuring it would be cached as often and as recent as any. The cache of my page is from Sept 12 and is the same as Kevin’s.

How long before Twitter can give us a simple link? Or do we have to wait for the master plan to roll out? Sorry for the rant @ev , just had to get it out of my system.

The Saint Paul Saints baseball team and marketing gurus are well known for their grandiose and popular promotions and they have hit another homerun with the Bobblefoot promotion. This Sunday, May 25th 2008 the Saints are giving away Bobblefoots to the first 2,500 fans in attendance. The Bobblefoot is a form of the popular bobbleheads given away at many ballparks but the Bobblefoot features a bobbling toe-tapping foot sticking out from under a bathroom stall.

Of course most all will recognize the salute to the Larry Craig’s toe-tapping incident at the MSP Airport last June but the Saints like to put it another way.

“Some of the most famous dance halls in the country include Radio City Music Hall in New York, the Fox Theater in Detroit and now the list includes a restroom at the Minneapolis/St. Paul Airport. With so much fanfare around dancing, the St. Paul Saints will honor “tappers” during National Tap Dance Day.

During the Sunday, May 25 game the first 2,500 fans in attendance will receive a bobblefoot. The design is a bathroom stall, with a foot that peaks out of the bottom and “taps” up and down. The day coincides with National Tap Dance Day.

While many people tap their foot because they are impatient, others may do it because they are nervous. It doesn’t matter if your tapping style is done with a “wide stance” or is used as some sort of code, the Saints are asking all fans to tap to their heart’s content on May 25.”

Always intrigued by the Saints promotions I decided to ask Sean Aronson for the Bobblefoot photos (oops, I should have asked him for a bobblefoot!) so I could include them in this post and also if he could answer a few questions on the promotion and the Saints marketing work on and off-line. He was quick to reply and provide all the material a great media relations guru would. Here’s the scoop:

SA- There has been A LOT of positive feedback from this, but as in anything you do there are going to be people that don’t see the humor. We handle the good and bad calls and emails and we try to explain to people how we came up with the idea and what our thinking was, which of course is based around May 25 being National Tap Dance Day. We’ve been doing off the wall promotions for 16 seasons and this is just another in the long line of ideas we have come up with.

SA- Of course the media in Idaho has been calling us non-stop, but we were the #2 best person in the World on Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC show on Thursday night. The Washington Post, The New York Post, media outlets in Los Angeles and everywhere in between have been tremendous. I do want to give credit to the smokinggun.com who were one of the first to jump on this and I think that definitely helped spread the word. Bill O’Reilly’s show also called and asked for a couple of the bobble-foot dolls for one of their shows next week. The media exposure is something you can’t quantify. We sold nearly 500 seats on Thursday for the game on Sunday once word had gotten around, so that’s another good way to tell ROI.

SA- No he hasn’t but we have received a call from the man that prosecuted Senator Craig and he said he will be in attendance at Saturday night’s game and would like to get one. I thought that was pretty interesting.

SA- We have some go to people that we send out our releases too and I think with the online services and blogs taking off over the last few years they are instrumental in spreading the word. deadspin.com and the smokinggun.com are huge of course and when you have an idea that takes off like this you find out more and more about different sites. It’s the great thing about our country. Anyone can start a website and put whatever they want on it. If you don’t like the content you can respond immediately with a comment.

SA- If anyone media member asks for a credential we give it to them. It can be traditional or non-traditional. The Saints are ahead of the curve on so many things that we are often times seen as non-traditional, so we can relate to the bloggers and independent writers and web sites. They have the same access as any of the bigger local or national outlets.

SA- VITA.MN is HUGE for us. We rely on them a lot. I’ve heard of the others you’ve mentioned, but I’m not as familiar with them. I didn’t think at 31 I’d feel out of touch, but perhaps I am.

SA- Our fans can get up to date information sent via text to their phones, plus a Saints tool bar on their computer. We also started something last season where you can purchase tickets via your cell phone which is definitely ahead of its time.

SA- We use every media source that we can find. Whether it’s online or traditional we use all we can to get the Saints name out there.

SA- Usually the best ideas come on the fly like with last year’s Michael Vick Chew Toy which we had to be quick about. The next one I’m personally excited about is “Even A Monkey Can Do It” on July 16. We were sitting around a table one day and joked that a monkey could do our jobs and so we thought why not bring a monkey out here. So a monkey will do some jobs around the ballpark on that night from taking tickets, to dragging the field and even joining myself on the TV broadcast. It’s a monkey, who doesn’t love monkeys.

A few additional notes about the Saints Bobblefoot promotion and their online marketing are worth noting.

• First the idea is a dandy one and linkbait material for online use.
• The Saints phone number on the side of the stall is a great touch.
• Since this article is about marketing I want to mention the All Over Media sign on the back of the stall shows off the sponsor, nice…..
• I think most folks can see the lighter side of this and get a chuckle, overall a win for the Saints. The Saints are about fun and not getting too serious about stuff.

The Saints are obviously getting into the online world for marketing with the Facebook and Myspace pages, plus the presence at the local VITA.MN and great coverage at Smoking Gun and DeadSpin. But their Search optimization and ability to take advantage of these great promotions with their web site is lacking. Right now the Saints web site does not even show up on the first page of the Google search results for Bobblefoot.

The Saints don’t have a simple optimized title tag on their news release page of the bobblefoot promotion and I could not find a dedicated page with pictures, video, or audio on their site for the promotion. I won’t even get into linking structure and other strategies. If they created a dedicated and simply optimized page for the Bobblefoot with fun content, and put the word out through Twitter, StumbleUpon, Flickr, BUZZ and other social sites and tools along with their current channels, they could push up the traffic, unique visitors and page views big time and get that number one Google spot easily. This traffic would help garner bigger advertising rates and even bigger sponsor fees for the promotions because the exposure would be even that much more. Also if they did get into the online aspects of their promotion they could quantify their ROI in an online statistical manner.

Again I want to thank Sean Aronson and the Saint Paul Saints for the interview and the fun promotion. Even if the Saints don’t have the optimum online strategy yet, their marketing department is definitely one everyone can follow and learn something from. They never cease coming up with good stuff. I’m sure they will get there on their website and online strategies. Maybe we can check back with them down the road and see how things are going….. cheers!
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I tried to sign up for Google’s new Friend Connect this morning but encountered an error or “something bad” as Google calls it. Here is a screen capture of the error I received and below that is the sign-up page.

I’d like to hear if you have tried signing up for Google’s Friend Connect and if you were able to do it with success or if you received an error like I did….. or at least……something bad….

———UPDATE———

I tried signing up again for Friend Connect with successful form submit. Google is now looking for more site information upon site submission including info such as:

• Full name:
• Email address:
• Type of interest:
• URL of my site (for site owners):
• Site Description
• Additional information: Any info regarding your intended use of this service is appreciated!
• Page Views Per Day
• Unique Users
• How Would Your Site Use Friend Connect Please be as descriptive as possible

I haven’t had this site real active so don’t have much for stats but I am really interested to see how I can use Friend Connect in my current projects launch this summer. I wonder if they are interested in small potatoes and will let me in to this beta preview release.

Tonight I saw the post over at TechCrunch writing about the upcoming relaunch of Yahoo Buzz and how it was morphing into a DIGG style voting of news items. TechCrunch gave us the heads up that the new Yahoo Buzz beta is only open to Yahoo employees at this point but that posters have been up around the Yahoo offices plugging the site’s arrival on this coming Monday, February 25th at 9:00 pm.

Though the TechCrunch article stated the url on the posters alpha.buzz.yahoo.com was protected I had to go check it out for myself, if nothing else but see what was up with the old Yahoo buzz. At first arrival at the alpha site I came across the password protected stuff, so no go there, I decided to do a Google site search to see if Google happened to find a hidden page or even a cached bit for us. Bingo! Google had a page for us and the page was not protected. Here are a couple screenshots I grabbed, this one and one at the bottom of this post along with bullet points for the publishers wishing to get their content in front of the voters on Yahoo Buzz and even the main Yahoo home page.

The new Alpha Yahoo Buzz People catagory page is still open so go see it for yourself. I was even able to log in with my regular Yahoo account and vote for the story at the top of the page. You can see in my screen grab where it says “Thanks for voting! and the “buzzed!” count right above the orange thanks for voting message. I still wanted to find out more about this new Yahoo Buzz thing and I found one other link that was not protected. That page I found is the Yahoo Buzz Publisher page and it’s not even in the alpha sub-domain. This tells us more about the new Yahoo Buzz social news site including the following:

• Buzz gets your content on the Yahoo! network.
• Buzz features the most interesting stories and videos on the Web
• Content is ranked based on votes, search-term popularity, and what everyone is reading and emailing - right this instant
• Buzz drives traffic directly to your site to read the full story
• Users can vote for your content from your site or on Buzz itself
• Top Buzz content may be featured on the Yahoo! homepage
• mebeliStay tuned for upcoming syndication tools, including APIs and customized modules…
• Partner with Buzz: We’ll be accepting new publishers soon. Join our mailing list for updates.

Looks like we will have another social venue to contribute to very soon with Yahoo Buzz. Will Yahoo Buzz battle DIGG, Propeller, MIXX for big time social traffic? Yahoo has a big community already, only time will tell if they can get those folks to get active with the socializing of news. What are your thoughts?

One pet peeve I have had with Sphinn is checking the submits by sphinner. Many times I feel like I am missing good items that friends submit because, well lets face it, you can’t be sphinning around the clock and see them all come through What’s New. In order to check submits by sphinner now on Sphinn you have to locate the sphinner most likely through the network page where you may have to search or page for the sphinner if they are not a top sphinner on the first page.

Once you have found your sphinner it takes 2 clicks to get to their submit page. Moving from one friend’s sumbits page to the next friend’s submit page will take you at least 4 clicks(2 back to the network page, 1 on the next sphinner name to info tab and 1 more on the submit tab), that’s if you are lucky enough to have your next friend on the same network page as the previous one. This takes too long if you want to follow multiple friends and pay them the respect of looking at their submits which is how a friend might like to treat another friend.

I finally got tired of all this clicking and figured “Hey, I could use simple bookmarks in my Firefox browser to check sphinner submit pages.” And what do you know, it works like a charm! It takes me one combo click to open my bookmarks and have a big list of Sphinn friends right there on the screen next to my open Sphinn page. Then I can go down the list with 1 click per friend to see their submits. Simple, short and sweet! It saves a bunch of time and I don’t miss what those that I want to follow are sphinning. If you are wondering, it only took 10 or 15 minutes to get a nice size list of folks added to my list.

One concern with this method is you may get out of the habit of seeing the new faces and submits by folks you don’t have bookmarked. Because of this I made sure to put a bookmark for the What’s New page right at the top of my list and always check it when I check other friends. When I notice a new sphinner doing a lot of good stuff I can simply add them to my list. I also put the hot front page in my bookmarks, but I’m not sure why. The front page is probably the page I visit the least because I have seen most all of these stories already. The What’s New page is where the action is HOT!

MinnPost, a new online daily news publication launches today at 11:00 am. MinnPost is a not-for-profit news site dedicated to the Twin Cities and Minnesota. CEO and editor of MinnPost is Joel Kramer. Joel is the former editor of the Star Tribune from 1983 to 1991 and publisher and president from 1992 to 1998.

Joel and the rest of the MinnPost crew is what makes this launch intriguing. MinnPost has pieced together a cast of first-rate editors and journalists, many that have previously worked for the Pioneer Press, Star Tribune, City Pages and other Minnesota media outlets. A few names you may recognize are Roxane Battle, Dave Beal, David Brauer, John Camp, Doug Grow, Britt Robson, Jay Weiner, and Steve Aschburner. These are just a sampling of over 40 journalists that have galloped in to the MinnPost stable.

I am excited to see how MinnPost fares and if they will draw online traffic that compares with the other major media sites in town. They will be covering a full gamut of topics ranging from arts and sports to politics and news. MinnPost has stressed they are focusing on quality over quantity and I can appreciate their stance of ignoring celebrity and entertainment. One concern I have is they have said they will be publishing news 5 days a week and only a limited number of new stories and posts will be published each day. Without even seeing a days worth of stories yet, already I am afraid I will be left wanting more. With the wealth of writers MinnPost has I can only hope they pump out both quality and quantity.

Look close, do you see the light blue back ground behind the Ask Sponsored Results text? Well I just had my eyes checked today and have 20/20 vision, but looking at my notebook screen from various reasonable angles the blue (or is it green?) background is next to invisible.

I believe this hidden background along with the diminutive Sponsored Results text label is likely to increase the click through rate of the sponsored listings and Ask’s income. This would be good for the advertiser since ads should be relevant and traffic still converting, but it’s a bit deceiving for the average search user and most likely hurting the organic results click through rate.

Ask does one other thing I think is a bit sneaky. The Sponsored Results text label in the upper right corner will click through to the sponsor’s site who is in the number one paid position. If you ask me, I would click on this text thinking I would get an explanation of what Sponsored Results are, not a sponsor’s site. I would not want to be charged for those clicks if I was in the number one sponsor spot. Yahoo actually does click you through to an explanation of what sponsored results are. Neither Google nor Live have their sponsored text label linked, but Live is close to doing that with the very near surrounding area clicking through to the sponsored listings.

Ask also has all open space with the sponsor background color click through to the sponsor sites. Live does this as well. To me this seems like they are trying to collect a few extra unintentional clicks. Neither Ask nor Live have the open space next to organic results click through, just the blue underlined titles. Google only has the blue underlined titles linked for sponsored and organic results, Yahoo has all sponsored text (blue underlined titles and description) as a link but only blue and underlined titles click through in the organic results.

So you tell me, do you think these tactics are a bit disingenuous?

If you are a small business owner you may have been told your business needs a web site. If you already have a web site a bit on the retro side of things you may have been told that your site needs an extreme web makeover. You may also have read an article or two listing 10 reasons why your business needs a web site or your business will die.

Most of those lists (except the do or die scare tactic sales pitches) are usually all well and good with helpful items to include on your site like your business hours, directions, products, contact info and so on……but I want to point out the reasons behind these reasons. There may be a signal you did not see. There may be a situation you did not think of, and there may be a personality trait that fits you or your customer and has gone unnoticed. Do any of these these reasons hit home and describe you and your business?

• You have a competitive drive: If you have a competitive personality and are driven to succeed in your business, getting your business on the internet playing field can provide you with a whole new ball game to conquer.
• To learn about your customers: Information is power and collecting data about your web visitors can bring you loads of it. Learn the keywords that brought customers to your site, collect a database of products they search for while on your site, find out where your visitors are from geographically wise. This is just the tip of the iceberg, a free and basic web stats package can help you collect this kind of data plus returns on your marketing investments.
• To provide a convenience: One of the first places a customer will look for information on your business is your web site. You will provide a big convenience if you can give them what they are looking for on a web site.
• To develop trust: Customers need a certain level of trust in order to make an online or even offline transaction with a business. Providing a consistent and active web site with the basics and introducing the people behind the business will go a long way in developing that trust.
• Reputation management: Every once in a while somebody might say something negative about your business, your products or your field of business. Having a web site to present your perspective is a way to nip those situations in the bud to comfort and ease the minds of your customers.
• React quickly to events: This is related a bit to reputation management above in that the ability to react and get your message out quickly can be to your advantage. In this case there may be a positive story or event that takes place, if you can offer up some early information on the subject or show yourself to be an expert on it you may be noticed by the media and gain additional exposure.
• Engage your customers: Provide and engage your visitors with interesting, fun, and informative content so they come back to your site again and again.
• Connect with people: If you are active with your site you will start to connect with people, making new business partnerships and true friends. Opportunities are waiting for those that are in pursuit.
• People are interested: There are people in the world and maybe right across the street that are interested in learning more about you and your business. They maybe don’t want to buy one of your widgets today but some people are simply sometimes curious about your business. This may be because they happened to hear your business name mentioned some where, one of your drivers courteously let them merge into a lane of traffic, or maybe they saw your business name on a shirt at the Minnesota state fair. It’s strange how fortunate luck just happens some times.
• People don’t like to be pressured: You may not be the high pressure sales person we all have experienced at one time or another, but some people like to browse and gather information without being bothered at all.

I’m not here to tell you what your business needs, that is for you to decide. I just hope these items help you decide if a new web site is right for you and your business. Do you have any other reasons behind the reasons to share?