Crenk » usa

Twitter Lists Goes Nationwide – Then Stateside

Dean Sherwin — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:49:00 +0000

Twitter lists is really starting to take off. Just yesterday we talked about how releasing a widget was going to bring the blogosphere and Twitter ever closer. Now Twitter lists is helping to bring populations closer – thanks to SimplyZesty.

The company have created lists for entire populations of countries to join. The first one was build by hand for Ireland with the UK version following a few hours later. Users must manually join the Irish list. For the UK they simply have to tweet #TwitterLondon (replacing London with wherever they live).

Following the rapid success of these lists they decided to launch a US version that is fully automated. It has been programmed to add users when they tweet about the homeland such as ‘#newyork’.

I think that we’re kind of straying away from what lists were originally intended for but hey, Twitter is what you make of it.

Make sure you join the Crenk list here.

Audience Science Raises $20 million for Their Online Advertising Platform

Steven Finch — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:02:32 +0000

Audience Science, an online advertising firm formerly known as Revenue Science, announced on Tuesday that it has closed $20 million in new venture capital funding.

Investors included Mohr, Davidow Ventures; Mayfield Fund; Meritech Capital Partners; and Integral Capital Partners.

Founded in 2003, New York-based Audience Science offers both an audience technology platform and a targeting marketplace.

The company says it has powered over 50,000 campaigns worldwide, and is the eleventh-largest online ad network in the U.S.

Clients include the Financial Times, Gannett, Reuters.com and New York Times Digital.

The company will use the new funds expand its audience targeting marketplace, and bolster its offering to brand advertisers, premium website publishers and online ad networks.

Google Provides Virgin Airline Customers Free On-board Wifi Until 2010

Steven Finch — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 01:59:40 +0000

Google has long wanted to make the internet faster and provide internet to everyone in the world. Google has now taken this to the next level as they are going to sponsor free wifi from November 15th to January 2010 for all Virgin Airline customers.

This wifi service normally costs $13 for computers over long haul flights and $8 for smartphones and handheld devices. Google has tried to state that they are just aiming to ease passenger stress during the busy holiday season, but im sure they will be focusing their sponsorship to get customers to use Google products while in flight.

Unfortunately Virgin Airlines only services major airport hubs in the U.S. although that service still means tens of thousands of passengers will have free access during that promotional period.

Animaroo: The World’s Online Animal Marketplace

Steven Finch — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:29:38 +0000

Are you looking to get a pet? Why not head over to Animaroo. Animaroo is an animal marketplace in which you can buy and sell dogs. For some reason this website seems a little wrong!

At Animaroo you can buy or sell a dog, see dog related websites and check out what breed you might want to purchase. Additionally, they have information on dog rescue, dog training, dog grooming and more. The site only has USA based ads at the moment but im sure this can be expanded over time to different countries and even different types of animals.

If you are a dog lover and looking for a new companion then Animaroo might be the place to look.

Kevin Rose and His 10 Ways To Increase Your Twitter Followers

Steven Finch — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 12:02:28 +0000

There is a post over at Techcrunch that seems to be getting a lot of hits today and I’m not entirely sure why! Kevin Rose the founder of Digg, Revision3 and Pownce, has written a guest post for Techcrunch which outlines the top 10 ways to increase your Twitter followers.

The 10 points that he makes seem be very basic and if you actually know how to use Twitter properly I’m sure they aren’t new to you. However what I find funny about this post is that Kevin has probably only really got his followers from mentioning Twitter on every Revision3 show that he does and by being hugely known in the USA as a tech boy pinup. It is just weird that he is trying to preach ways to increase your Twitter followers when he hasn’t really used any of these methods.

Lycos To Not Shut Down Mail and Tripod Services in USA

Steven Finch — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 09:51:45 +0000

It was reported yesterday that Lycos will not be shutting down their Mail and Tripod services as reported by Techcrunch and others.

In an article appearing this morning, TechCrunch erroneously reported that Lycos will be closing its Tripod and Lycos Mail services on Feb. 15. The information contained in the blog posting pertains to Lycos Europe products and services and affects Lycos Europe users only.

The closing of these two products by Lycos Europe does not impact Lycos users in the U.S. Lycos, Inc. and Lycos Europe are two completely separate entities and business units. Lycos, Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Daum Communications, Corp., while Lycos Europe is owned by Telefonica. Late last year, Lycos Europe’s parent company announced it would be shutting down its operations and seeking a sale of its remaining assetts.

Lycos Inc. (www.lycos.com) continues to operate social media, publishing and search services including both Tripod and Lycos Mail. Currently, Tripod is the #17 social networking site worldwide (comScore MM Dec. 2008), with millions of member pages hosted, published and visited each month.

YouTube Ads CPC Ad Platform for Sponsored Videos

Steven Finch — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 19:07:51 +0000

No more just Google Adwords CPC ads on YouTube cause they have just added a sponsored videos section. Anyone can now start and run a campaign for their videos directly on YouTube and they all based on CPC.

Concerned about costs? Don’t worry – Sponsored Videos puts you in complete control of your spending. There’s no minimum spending requirement–the amount you pay for Sponsored Videos is up to you. You can, for instance, set a daily budget of five dollars and a maximum cost of ten cents for each click on your ad.

Currently they only support users in the USA, but im sure that they will be expanding this very soon to other countries.

The World’s Top 10 Free Music Streaming Services

Steven Finch — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:25:50 +0000

Im spending a lot of time in the office recently and I’m one of those people who cant work without music playing really loud in the background. I’m sure its not just me who thinks better when music is playing loud, so I thought I would put together a quick list of the top 10 free music streaming service that are currently available. Some of these services can only be used in specific countries, but I’m sure this will change in 2009.

Pandora – Pandora is now just a USA based service. However, Pandora is a great service for those in the USA and im surprised if most people in the USA don’t already use it. Pandora is basically a music radio service which lets you listen to customised radio stations.

Last.fm – I have never really understood Last.fm myself, but they have a great service in which will let you stream music from certain artists. Some have full tracks for free to stream, but others have videos or some nothing at all.

Seeqpod – Seeqpod is basically Google for music. Seepqod is a search engine that allows users to find whatever music they want to listen too. Seeqpod can only find music that can easily be downloaded on the net, so it can be limited with some artists, plus sometimes the tracks might be corrupted and not completely work. However, it is great for making playlists.

Spotify – Spotify is a new music service that has launched out of Sweden. I have been using Spotify for several months now, even though it is in private beta testing. Though the music is streamed, it is played instantly and is partly supported by the famous P2P technology. Currently the service is only available in Finland, France, Norway, Spain, Sweden and UK. Spotify has to be the best music streaming service I have used in 2008.

Myspace Music – Myspace is of course the worlds largest social network and Myspace Music is just an add-on of this social network. With Myspace Music users can search for pretty much any artist in the world and stream the music they have on their profiles. Remember it is limited to only the music the artist wants you to hear.

Rhapsody – Rhapsody has a nice “listen FREE” search option at the top of its homepage, an excellent way to entice people to sign up for its premium service. Once you find the artist you are looking for then you can play any of the songs in their catalogue for free. However, then I realised streaming is only for the USA.

Imeem – Imeem is a mixture between music streaming service and social network. On Imeem to stream music all you need to do is to search for the artist you want to listen to and then the majority of the time they will already have an Imeem account.

Deezer - Deezer is a mixture between Seeqpod and Imeem. Deezer has some social networking aspects but mainly it is just a great music streaming service that is very easy to find the music you are looking for. All music on there is legal and free and artists actually get royalties from your streams.

Skreemr - Skreemr is very similar to Seepqod and it is just basically a search engine for music online. Skreemr is a free service that picks up free music from across the internet and allows you to play it easily. However, unlike Seeqpod they don’t allow users to make playlists.

Lala – Lala is one of the new music streaming services on the block. Lala provides free streaming to only USA users. There is a limit on how many times you can listen to a track for free, but you also have the option of purchasing that stream for $0.10 so then you have can unlimited plays. Additionally, if you want to take the tracks off the site then there is an option of $0.79 for the download.

Technorati Media Launches Their AdEngage Product. Just a Poor Advertising Network

Steven Finch — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 13:52:25 +0000

Technorati Media has finally launched their Engage (advertising marketplace product) live. Previously this new tool was in Alpha stage and only certain people could use the product. This all happened because Technorati purchased AdEngage.

Since purchasing AdEngage and launching Technorati Media I think Technorati has really lost sight of what their core business model is!

Technorati was a blog search engine that doesnt currently have really market share and presence and their product offering seems to be going down hill by the day. To compensate for this they purchased AdEngage and launched Technorati Media, which is just an ad network.

Looking at the current results from this ad network which has been in operation for several months, seem to be very poor. They are selling advertising for blogs such as The Inquisitr and Profy. The results seem to be as follows, for CPM advertising they are offering a decent CPM rate in between $1.00 – $2.00, but ads are currently only for the USA market and even then their fill rates arent 100%. For all other countries they suggest to use Google Adsense, which is fine, but unless you have a huge amount of USA traffic then this isnt really worth the effort, because what you make on USA revenues you lose on Google revenues elsewhere. In terms of selling sponsorships they also seem to be terrible, with The Inquisitr having 2 125×125 ad slots in the sidebar in which they havent even been able to sell 1 for a few months.

This is all about Technorati realising they dont have a search engine product that is any good, so they are looking for additional revenues streams which will help them eventually sell the company. Is that the way it is or am I wrong?

BuzzLogic: The New Blog Advertising Network Thats Worth a Look

Steven Finch — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 10:38:33 +0000

BuzzLogic is a new blog CPM ad network that has just launched into public beta. Unlike most other blog ad networks BuzzLogic is paying some good rates. When BuzzLogic was in private beta they were paying a minimum of $2 CPM (per 1,000 impressions) if your blog got accepted into the program.

To get accepted into the program, your blog should be hosted on one of the popular platforms like Typepad, Blogger, Wordpress and the frequency at which you post content will also be considered.

However, that all being said BuzzLogic will only pay you for US traffic. This is very limited at the moment, but as they grow im sure they will move into other markets. BuzzLogic will also pay less if you place their ad units below the fold, unlike most other ad networks.

That all being said BuzzLogic is definitely worth a look. It would be great to hear feedback from any current users! I have been trying to get Crenk into the BuzzLogic network, but they seem to be too busy at the moment to add us.

The Fun Finder That Wont Even Get Britney Spears in Trouble

Steven Finch — Sat, 22 Dec 2007 04:21:37 +0000

GoLark is an events and places website. It is similar to Upcoming.org, which is now a Yahoo service. GoLark provides information on concerts, museum exhibits, lectures and shows. The site works in a similar way to Digg, in which GoLark allows the community to submit events and then you can “hype it up” to get it to the top of the tree.

GoLark also has a great search function which is visible on all pages in the left column. It has a slide ruler in a few different categories which allows a user to find events in his or her local area quickly and easily.

The site is so simple to use and can actually be very useful, but due to the lack of users and events it is very hard to for the site to build moment, basically a catch 22. Events are need to bring in the users and users are needed to bring in the events. However, it is definitely worth joining GoLark to simply keep up on events in your local area.