Middle East Twitter users welcome brands, but ‘no SPAM thank you’ (Zawya)

Wai Khean Wong    Twitter Marketing     brands-should, micro, North, north-africa, perceptions, ten-say, their-perceptions, Twitter, using-the-micro

An overwhelming 95% of Middle East & North Africa Twitter users believe brands should engage with customers on Twitter, about nine out of ten say that Twitter has affected their perceptions of a brand or company and 50% of those surveyed have actually bought a product or service as a result of using the micro-blogging service.

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Middle East Twitter users welcome brands, but ‘no SPAM thank you’ (Zawya)

Google’s Chrome Escapes Hack Contest Untouched

admin    Web Marketing     Chrome, Contest, Escapes, Google’s, Hack, Untouched

I will file this under “I didn’t know that although I am not even close to surprised” for obvious reasons. Google gets to make a claim about its Chrome browser that others like Firefox and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 and Apple’s Safari can’t. That claim is that it survived the Pwn2Own 2010. Forbes tells us a little more

The Pwn2Own competition in Vancouver is a yearly demonstration of the software industry’s utter inability to keep its products safe from determined hackers. This year, researchers cracked Firefox, Internet Explorer 8, and Safari in minutes, winning $10,000 each, bragging rights and the hardware those applications were running on.

But more notable is the one survivor of the competition’s browser category: Google’s Chrome.

For the second year in a row, Chrome has left the Pwn2Own competition unscathed even as all of its competitors have been compromised.

In a world where security and privacy are more desired but maybe less available than ever this kind of competition is interesting. We all know there are folks out there who are interested in compromising Internet systems for monetary gain and many other times just for sport. We as end users know it exists and cross our fingers hoping it doesn’t happen to us.

While Google can talk about its victory here there is some skepticism among the researchers who participate in this competition as to just how secure Chrome really is. Apple hacker Charlie Miller was able to win for the third year in a row with his efforts to compromise the Safari browser. He also wonders about Google supposed invulnerability.

Miller argues in an email to us that Google isn’t necessarily more secure than its competitors–just that hackers hack the applications they use themselves. “Researchers tend to just pick on their favorite browser,” he writes.

This is the second year in a row that the Chrome browser was unscathed but there is plenty of speculation that this will not last. Why? As something gets a reputation of being impenetrable it gets the blood of any good researcher / hacker or whatever boiling. Also, there is $10,000 on the line each year at this competition. Which pays better than Google apparently because they have $1,337 limit on payment for security bugs.

So what is Google take on this? Of course, they have a better mousetrap

Google, for its part, would argue that Chrome simply has better security features, namely “sandboxing,” which drastically limits the privileges of a Web site to access your computer’s hardware. Google bought at least part of that sandboxing ability with its acquisition of software firm GreenBorders in May of 2007. Check out its comic book illustration of how sandboxing works.

Now that Google has put a bullseye on Chrome we’ll see just how long this streak will last.

View full post on Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim

Measuring Success Biggest Challenge in Social Media Marketing (ClickZ)

Perry Webbing    Twitter Marketing     marketing-presents, SEMPO, similar-challenges

Search marketing presents similar challenges, SEMPO report finds.

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Measuring Success Biggest Challenge in Social Media Marketing (ClickZ)

Google’s Take on the Next Generation of Online Advertising (Poynter Institute)

Lorie Therese Locara    Twitter Marketing     display-advertising, Facebook, Future, hot-services, its-proprietary, Media, the-future, touting-the-creative

Google has jumped into the discussion about the future of advertising with a series of blog posts, touting the creative possibilities of display advertising that combines its proprietary (surprise, surprise) DoubleClick Rich Media technology with hot services like Facebook and Twitter.

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Google’s Take on the Next Generation of Online Advertising (Poynter Institute)

Zimmer named VP of marketing, communications (Napa Valley Register)

Joel Carson    Twitter Marketing     chamber, katherine-zimmer, longtime-director, napa, napachamber, vice-president, zimmer

Katherine Zimmer, longtime director of marketing for the NapaChamber, has been promoted to vice president of marketing andcommunications by the Napa Chamber Board.

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Zimmer named VP of marketing, communications (Napa Valley Register)

Fertile ground of online reviews (Washington Post)

Albert Decruz    Twitter Marketing     hotly-contested, rapidly-turning

What appears to be a grass-roots marketplace of opinions is rapidly turning into a hotly contested battleground for PR firms.

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Fertile ground of online reviews (Washington Post)

In a Test of Sales Savvy, Selling a Red Brick on YouTube (New York Times)

Gary R. Hess    Twitter Marketing     best-market, greatest-salesperson, seeks-the-world, World

OgilvyOne seeks the world’s greatest salesperson in a YouTube contest to best market an ordinary, red brick.

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In a Test of Sales Savvy, Selling a Red Brick on YouTube (New York Times)

4 Tools for Lazy People to Find News Online

admin    Twitter Marketing     Find, Lazy, News, Online, People, Tools

User generated content is a buzzword people love to throw around.  The term represents all of the text, images and video people upload everyday to the web. User generated content is an amazing thing. YouTube recently hit 24 hours of video uploaded each minute. The problem with this endlessly growing mound of information is noise. When more information exists to sort through, it makes it harder to find the stuff you actually care about.

This problem of too much noise has created a market for web companies to build solutions that help individuals filter information in an effort to save time.  Taking time and effort to create ways to filter information online is hard work and most of us would rather be lazy.

4 Tools for Lazy People to Find News Online

1. BackType Me- Twitter has become a major source of news and links for many on the social web. Sometimes the balance of links and conversation is difficult to manage on Twitter. BackType, a company that is working to make blog comments more social and search able has created a useful side project. BackType Meconnects your Twitter account to BackType and displays relevant news stories and links that your friends are talking about so that you can easily click and read the ones of most interest to you.

2. LazyFeed- If looking for Twitter links isn’t enough for you, then you may want to try LazyFeed. This startup lets you select topics of interest and puts them into one dashboard. It then automatically fills each topic space with news that it believes will be of interest to you. Lazyfeed is a great option for people who want to give up control of online information gathering.

3. my6sense- Getting news isn’t only about the desktop. Mobile devices are a valuable way to get news on the go when we have a few extra minutes waiting in line or riding the train. With its iPhone application my6sense looks at supplying users with the information that is most important to them while they are on the go. Have you ever used Pandora on the iPhone to listen to music? Think of my6sense as Pandora for news and information.

4. Zite- Online social connections are easy to map unlike offline connections. Because of online social maps, services can recommend information that you may like, based on information shared and consumed by people in your online network. Google is trying to do this with its new social search feature. A new startup that is still in beta mode, Zite is working to do the same thing for news. Zite wants to use your online social graph to give you the news and information that you may care about the most.

For years Google has lead the way in answering our questions online. If these new companies have their way, we won’t even need to ask questions. What does that mean for Google?

Marketing Takeaways

Marketers are responsible for understanding and keeping track of more information than ever before. Using tools to automate tracking of information related to your industry, company and competitors can save marketers valuable times. As inbound marketing becomes a larger portion of your marketing mix having information at your finger tips will make it easier to create compelling blog posts, whitepapers, eBooks and webinars.

How do you filter news and information online right now?

Photo Credit: Kirainet

Video: How to Use Social Media to Manage Your Company Brand Online

Learn how to use social media to manage your company brand. Download the free video and learn how to manage your company brand effectively using social media.

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View full post on HubSpot’s Inbound Internet Marketing Blog

HomeGain Survey Identifies Real Estate Agents’ Top 10 Marketing Preferences (RISMedia Real Estate News)

C. Robert Dillon    Twitter Marketing     300-real, announced-survey, based-on-responses, estate-agents, home-buyers, leading-website, real-estate, Realtors, top-marketing

RISMEDIA, March 29, 2010—HomeGain, a leading website that connects real estate agents with home buyers and sellers, announced survey results of Realtors’ top marketing practices and preferences. Based on responses from over 1,300 real estate agents and brokers nationwide who completed…

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HomeGain Survey Identifies Real Estate Agents’ Top 10 Marketing Preferences (RISMedia Real Estate News)

Check Out the Companies That Make ReadWriteWeb Possible (ReadWriteWeb)

Valerie Prigent    Twitter Marketing     Companies, each-sponsor, link-below, little-more, our-readers, Reader's, readers-know, sponsors, sponsors-know, Technology, the-technology, Twitter

Our readers know ReadWriteWeb as the blog that’s ahead of the technology curve. Our sponsors know us as that, too.

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Check Out the Companies That Make ReadWriteWeb Possible (ReadWriteWeb)