Articles of the Day
McClatchy Sticks With CareerBuilder - Internet job site CareerBuilder.com will remain partly owned by The McClatchy Co. now that the newspaper publisher has resolved issues pertaining to its affiliate agreement with the site. Also, McClatchy’s Real Cities added 51 more Web sites from MediaNews Group to its network.
Yellow Book, IQzone Launch Video Classifieds For Web, Mobile Phones - Mobile firm IQzone rolled out a free service that lets users create, send and post photo and video ads to online classifieds via mobile phone. Meanwhile, Yellow Book USA posted links to a set of online video ads.
PopCap: Over A Third of CEOs Play Casual Online Games At Work - PopCap Games, in a survey of more than 7,100 consumers, found that nearly a quarter (24%) of all “white collar” workers played casual games on the job–for reasons varying from “improving their mental state” to “entertainment.” Playing puzzle, word or other casual online games at work actually seems to be beneficial to productivity, according to the survey.
Viral Campaigns Falling Short, Says JupiterResearch - Viral marketing campaigns are mostly ineffective, reports JupiterResearch, which found that only 15% of viral campaigns in the past year achieved the goal of prompting consumers to promote the marketer’s message.
Fox Interactive Media’s ‘Stranglehold’ For Midway - Fox Interactive Media has launched an integrated campaign for the third-person shooter game “Stranglehold” from Chicago-based game publisher and developer Midway.
Cross-Channel Sales Suit Online Apparel - How can shoppers get a sense of how clothes feel? The answer for most shoppers is simple: Go to the store. A January 2007 Accenture survey found that two-thirds of online consumers prefer to buy clothing in stores rather than online. “Apparel is a big cross-channel shopping category,” said eMarketer senior analyst Jeffrey Grau. “Traditional retailers who understand the consumer purchase process will develop strategies for driving online shoppers to their stores.”
Facebook Profiles Become Publicly Searchable - Facebook has started notifying members that its pages will soon be open to Google, Yahoo and other search engines whose crawlers index billions of pages across the Web. The move, clearly aimed at growing the number of page views on the social network, could spark a privacy backlash among users, although the company is marketing the move as an “opportunity” to let the rest of the world find them. Facebook users, have revolted against the site’s policy changes in the past.
Will Consumers Pay For Privacy? - Internet companies are collecting an unprecedented amount of information about who consumes their content and services. And while raises privacy concerns for many users, few are willing to spend money to do anything about it. In fact, a recent Carnegie Mellon/UC-Berkeley study suggests that consumers aren’t even willing to pay 25 cents to protect sensitive information. “People prefer money over data, always,” said one CMU official.
R.H. Donnelly, Call Genie Launch Voice Search Beta - Yellow pages and local search giant R.H. Donnelly has launched a four-market beta test of voice-powered search called 1-800-CallDex. The company partnered with Call Genie to power free local directory assistance service for callers in Denver; Spokane,Wash.; Phoenix; and Tucson, Ariz. Voice-powered search is emerging as a contender in the local search market, as consumers may not always have Web access via mobile phone — and calling for directory assistance (albeit ad-supported) is often the default option.
Cuill Buzz Growing Hot - Buzz is growing amidst tech and financial insiders about Cuill (pronounced “cool”), the Menlo Park, Ca.-based search startup that claims its technology and algorithms index Web pages faster and cheaper than Google can. Cuill currently exists as a landing page only, one that offers bits of information about the founders — Tom Costello, Anna Patterson, and Russell Power and a cheeky tagline: “Yup. We’re working on it.” But the team itself sparks major interest, as Patterson and Power are both former Google search alumni, while Costello was the founder of mobile Web firm Xift.
