Patrick Pichette joined Google as its CFO on August 12, 2008, and since then, he’s seen the company through both good times (a stock price of $620 per share) and bad (try $262).
Tags: financial, good times, google-as-its, mood-at-google, organization, stock price, Technology, telecom conference
A while back, WebProNews had a conversation with RateItAll President Lawrence Coburn about how the long tail of search is getting more competitive. Companies like AOL and Demand Media are working on dominating long tail searches with content across a broad scope of article subject matter. We had another conversation with another company that is doing this, called Suite101 , which is placing an increased amount of emphasis on SEO to up the competition in this space even more. Suite101 President and CEO Peter Berger took a break from Olympics mania in Vancouver (home of the company’s headquarters) to tell us about it. “Making sure well-written articles get found online involves continuous hard work and search engine knowledge,” says Berger. “We know that in order to help our writers get their stories found, we need to increase our expertise in the area of search.” That’s why the company just hired search strategist Aaron Bradley as its SEO Director to implement new SEO tactics across its articles. Berger tells WebProNews Suite101 attracts over 25 million unique monthly visitors. The company’s revenue comes from advertising – mainly AdSense, but other networks have been integrated as well. They don’t charge writers fees, but they have a strict submission process. Only 20% of writers are accepted, with 80% being turned away. Writers are required to submit work samples and resumes before being accepted. The first article must be submitted before it goes live, but after that, articles go live and are then reviewed by editors. Berger says “quality is key,” and is the reason he doesn’t seem too worried about competition from big name brands like AOL. That, and he says most writers want to write for numerous publications, so even if a writer does work for AOL, there’s a good chance they’ll submit to Suite101 as well. Presumably Berger is hoping the hiring of Bradley will help with the competition in terms of search engine traffic, the company’s biggest traffic source (though they do see spikes from social media as well). One writer for Suite101 achieved a monthly earnings record of $5,000 for articles published at the site, which splits revenue with its writers. It will be interesting to see how quickly that record is surpassed with the company’s new SEO efforts. Naturally, the more quality articles the site is able to obtain, the more content it will have out there in the search engines, and if their SEO efforts are as effective as they hope, they will be getting a lot more eyeballs and clicks on their ads. Berger thinks writers like Suite101 because it’s the “closest” they can et to “actual professional editors in a lot of cases. Quality, he says, is the “key differentiator” between Suite101 and its competitors.
Tags: content, networks, olympics, peter berger, Review and Story, Search, vancouver
Small and medium-sized business (SMB) marketers are becoming increasingly convinced of the positive results of video email, social media and personalization, according to a new report from GetResponse. Over 80 percent of respondents plan to use video emails in 2010 and over 90 percent of SMB marketers who use video emails report it delivers significant conversion rates. More than half of respondents said video emails can increase click-through rates. One in three marketers believes video can improve brand image and increase customer loyalty. Over 20 percent of marketers believe that video emails can also reduce support and training costs. Only 4.7 percent of email marketers do no see any benefits from using video email. “Today’s marketers are mindful of the importance of delivering relevant content and one-to-one messaging based on preferences and behaviors,” said Simon Grabowski, founder of GetResponse . “It’s all about putting the ‘human element’ back into marketing through the use of video and social media conversations.” Other highlights from the survey include:
Tags: GetResponse, medium sized business, Review and Story, Simon Grabowski, subject line, survey, three-marketers, through-the-use
About five months ago, Google started a contest to determine where its Street View trike would take pictures in the U.S.
Tags: bit-interesting, detroit, faneuil, institute of technology, National, Nbsp, official-google, participation, send-the-trike
Google announced today it has acquired Picnik, a cloud-based photo editing service. The company consists of about 20 employees. “Google processes petabytes of data every day, and with their worldwide infrastructure and world-class team, it is truly the best home we could have found. Under the Google roof we’ll reach more people than ever before, impacting more lives and making more photos more awesome,” says Picnik in its announcement. Picnik lists the following as its features: – Fix your photos in just one click – Use advanced controls to fine-tune your results – Crop, resize, and rotate in real-time – Tons of special effects, from artsy to fun – Astoundingly fast, right in your browser – Awesome fonts and top-quality type tool – Basketfuls of shapes from hand-picked designers – Works on Mac, Windows, and Linux – No download required, nothing to install The basic version of Picnik is free, but there is a premium version with more features available for $24.95 a year. “We’re not announcing any significant changes to Picnik today, though we’ll be working hard on integration and new features,” says Google Product Management Director Brian Axe. “As well, we’d like to continue supporting all existing Picnik partners so that users will continue to be able to add their photos from other photo sharing sites, make edits in the cloud and then save and share to all relevant networks.” “We’re very impressed with the Picnik team and the product they’ve created, and we’re excited to welcome them to Google,” says Axe. “We’re looking forward to collaborating closely with them to improve the online photo editing experience on the web. In the meantime, we encourage you to head to Picnik, import some of your photos from Picasa Web Albums, Flickr or Facebook and try your hand at photo editing in the cloud!” Financial details of the acquisition are unknown at this point. Should Photoshop makers Adobe be worried?
Tags: acquisitions, browser, flickr, linux, online, online photo editing, photo, picasa web albums, truly-the-best