Ever knew what an Online Reputation Monitoring tool is? Well it’s exactly what it says, a tool that you use to have your brand under a big zoom.
BrandsEye is a new service by Quirk eMarketing, that you can use to protect your brand, track and quantify the exposure you have and see what other people are talking about you.
For those that haven’t heard what BrandsEye is about here is how it works.
They will track every piece of online text that mentions your brand, including blogs, press release websites, twitter and more other. It then tags and ranks them according to the relevance and the credibility of the source, in real time, and using a set of statistical learning algorithms and some sort of human intelligence processes they come out with the final score.
The score is highly customizable offering all sorts of charts that will help you better understand your brand and what it needs.
Who’s going to be interested
First thing that popped into my mind was that I am already able to track my brand (Alex Ion for example) for free, using services like Google Search, Google Notifications or Technorati. Why should I pay the rumored $750 price?
The answer was simple. They’re going after large brands, the upper end of the markets and they don’t plan to compete with the services I mentioned. Aim high is usually what makes money. They’re doing it.
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Last year FriendFeed entered beta testing and on February 25th after raising $5 million, they managed to launch their service. Ever since, everyone at the corners are talking about how great FriendFeed is. I had to give it a try myself and see with my own eyes and so I did. I signed up for an account.
Voices in the market say FriendFeed is the Twitter of 2008, the hot startup on everyone’s lips, but to be honest I wasn’t very impressed with their concept because there are already places like Spokeo, Second Brain or Social Thing, but they win when it comes to accessibility and easy usability.
But what are they really good at? You can add different accounts from blogs or other social networking services and FriendFeed will aggregate them so that your friends can “follow” you and see what you’re up to. But wait, isn’t this exactly what you can do on Twitter? Probably so.
I don’t know about you but despite the fact that I get more and more “friends requests” I’m not really impressed with what FriendFeed has to offer. However, just like twitter they may have their own people to join that will make it big. I wish them luck!
Hey guys, it’s time for a little announcement. Next week, 25 to 28 March, the 2nd annual “New Media Marketing” conference will begin at the Gallagher Estate in Midrand, Johannesburg.
The event will be organized by the International Quality & Productivity Center (IQPC) and people invited are going to get the chance to listen to experts talking about new social media strategies and incorporating SEO into a company’s marketing. For many of us chasing certain keywords in Google search ranks was quite a challenge and knowing that this niche is changing whenever a second passes by, I am sure the discussions are going to be very interesting and will probably catch fire.
BizCommunity reported that “the two-day New Media Marketing lineup includes Mike Stopforth, Vincent Maher, Colin Daniels, Avusa; Allan Kent, Paul Jacobson, Jonathan Bishop, Leon Orsmond, Rudolph Muller, Arthur Goldstuck, Rick Joubert, Jenny van Niekerk, David Wessels, Grant Shippey, Patrick Collings, Justin Hartman, Herman Heunis, Matthew Buckland, Lize Esterhuizen, Mike Balkind, Eric Edelstein and Tyler Reed”.
The official partners for the New Media Marketing conference are zoopy.com. They will be responsible for filming, photographing, podcasting and blogging it for all those that are not going to attend. Now that I mentioned those interested to attend, you can get a 25% discount voucher if you are interested.
Ladies and gents bloggers, there is a new release to the most-loved blogging platform, Wordpress. A few minutes ago they’ve just announced their 2.5 version that is going to bring a lot of goodies for those in need of more and more features on their blog. They promise “customizable dashboard, multi-file upload, built-in galleries, one-click plugin upgrades, tag management, built-in Gravatars, full text feeds, and faster load times”.
Don’t expect just a few add-ons to what we were used to, because Wordpress 2.5 is not just a cover, it was built from the ground-up to offer you a better place when writing or managing.
Restyled dashboard
To be honest the dashboard was something given, not wanted. Except looking for new links I wasn’t using it for anything else. The new dashboard has a nice new feature. Add your own RSS feed and edit the way you want data to be presented. That’s cool.
Navigation
There is a new layout for the navigation bar: Write, Manage, Design and Comments. Simpler is better. Don’t worry everything is there, it’s just better organized.
Managing articles
I really like the way articles are showed on the manage tab. Now I can have quick access to those much needed tags and it looks uncluttered.
Writing
This is probably the place where we spend the most of our time when logging in the admin area. Just like we’ve been used with, only those options we use frequently are being shown while the others are waiting for just a click to activate. The new writing panel is smart (they say) and will remember the way you’ve left it and the best feature they’ve added is a fullscreen-mode for the visual editor.
*** I advise you to do all the backups before installing the new Wordpress 2.5 because no one knows what bugs we may encounter.
After launching a new profile layout, Facebook is now testing a new instant messaging service. It should be available to the public (probably) some time this week.
The first thing you should know is that this is a web based service that will be built into your Facebook page and not software you install on your computer.
It was rumored to be built on the Jabber open source platform like GTalk, so Instant Messaging clients like Trillian or web chat service like Meebo or eBuddy could support it, but later info showed that it won’t be, at least not at first.
If you remember AOL buying Bebo for $850M last week, this new announcement with Facebook’s IM service is coming in a very sensible moment. Will people forget about AIM and the Bebo deal will turn out to be a bad investment? Probably, but we can’t say for sure.
TechCrunch is waiting for the first screenshot and will make it available asap.
Ladies and gents if you remember our Springleap coverage last month you probably know that if you submit your t-shirt design and people like it, you may win some prizes.
The guys did it again, this time with a marketing solution to get blogs/Internet exposure and came up with a SEO contest. So they needed designers the first time to have what to sell and all they need now is people talking about them.
But let me tell you more about the contest. It’s starting today and ends on April 1st. This is when a number of judges will open up google.com and will search for – springleap – and will award points to the first three URLs (obviously 3pts for #1, 2pts for #2 and 1pt for #3). The total votes will be counted and the winners will get R500 for number three, R1000 for number two and a “whopping” R2500 for number one.
As you can see their marketing strategy is great and believe me there’s going to be a lot of buzz on this SEO contest mainly because it’s money involved. What I would enjoy the most is to get some numbers from them, that tell us how many new buyers they got from this campaign.
Right now, for – springleap – BandwidthBlog is #2 and we plan to either stay there or climb one step further. I wish everyone luck and let the games begin.
Bebo, the social media network founded in January 2005, similar to Facebook, Myspace or Yahoo!360 is going to be acquired by AOL in a $850 million deal that involves cash. The site is pretty big and highly appeals to those living in the United Kingdom, New Zealand or Ireland.
The whole Bebo network has approximately 80 million users and is being managed by some 100 employees operating in offices in the UK, San Francisco and Austin, Texas.
“What drew us to Bebo was its substantial and fast-growing worldwide user-base, its vision of a truly social web, and the monetization opportunities that leverage Platform-A across our combined global audience. This positions us to offer advertisers even greater reach and marketers significant insights into the desires and needs of consumers.” said Randy Falco, Chairman and CEO of AOL.
A few weeks ago everyone speculated on AOL partnering with Yahoo, so I guess heading to Bebo, they’re probably not interested. Still, I don’t think negotiations are closed if we count Yahoo’s interest for social media networks and Microsoft’s interest for Yahoo.
I’m really interested to see how’s Google going to move on the chess board, because things are starting to complicate day after day. What do you guys think?
(photo by Matt McAlister)
Bandwidth blog has been nominated in the 4th Annual South African Blog Awards for best Technology blog and best post on a South African blog. If you have enjoyed reading our web 2.0 and other tech related coverage please take a second to vote for us. We have worked hard this past year to bring you cutting edge social media coverage from local and international web 2.0 startups.
First nomination – Best post on a South African blog, The offices of today’s leading internet companies made it to the Digg homepage with over 500 diggs.
Second nomination – Best South African technology focused weblog
This is a very competitive category with big industry names filling out the nominations list. Here’s some of the most viewed posts on Bandwidth Blog from the last year:
South Africa’s top startups to watch (Was published in print)
Afrigator beta launched (Was picked up by ReadWriteWeb)
24.com launch Laaik.it social media aggregator (Breaking news)
The offices of todays internet companies (Reached the Digg homepage)
Microsoft wants Yahoo – $50 Bil (follow up – Yahoo rejects offer)
If you want to vote for Bandwidth Blog just hit the SABA badge top left which will auto fill the categories Bandwidth Blog is competing in. Check out some of the other categories and scroll to the bottom to vote.
Good luck to the other nominees!
Bandwidth Blog sat down with Rafiq and got the low down on his latest project, biggest achievements and becoming a TV star for being online 24/7.
Rafiq, introduce yourself and describe some of your daily activities (daily routine)?
Rafiq Phillips – Web AddiCT, QuirkStar and co-founder of www.idrive.co.za.
My daily routine will be aired on TV pretty soon and i do not believe in re-inventing the wheel, you’ll be able to see it all there. Google reveals all too. What they didn’t show was me spending time away from the internet: With awesome Friends, not enough with my family and recovering from a heart smashed into more pieces than there are web pages indexed by Google.
You recently won the Top ICT Youth Innovator in Africa Award – what has that meant for you?
Nokia-Siemens were the category sponsor for at the African ICT Achievers awards. It’s still in the early stages but there are some awesome things about to happen. How about a Bandwidth Blog scoop when it’s official? (done deal – ed)
Last week Carte Blanche filmed you ‘living on the internet’ which ended up at cafe Neo – tell us more about what you did and how you experienced being behind the camera?
The Carte Blanche crew followed me around for 2.0 mornings. from waking up in the morning (yes there was a camera in my face when I opened my eyes) reaching for my mobile phone to go online to my daily SEO work at Quirk eMarketing, twitter, facebook, blogging, IM, MXit, Flickr, Shozu and ended up meeting with Charl Norman and the other half of idrive.co.za and Web AddiCT(s); – Miguel dos Santos at Caffee Neo. We did bit of an interview, the cameras didn’t really bother me. Just was a bit weird being woken up with a camera in my face and having to walk into the QuirkStation 5 times for them to get the perfect shot. Yeah, and it was laundry day too.
who do you think is the hottest web startup in SA?
*shamless self promotion time*
It was Guy Kawasaki who once said, “Make meaning, not money.” I believe the hottest web startup in SA that was not built-to-flip is www.idrive.co.za. A vertical search engine that connects learners drivers throughout South Africa with credible driving schools via the web, mobile and MXit. It’ll make the roads we all travel on safer by ensuring those more likely to cause a fender bender are actually taught the basics right by driving schools who actually know what they’re doing.
Another web app I believe will be huge internationally is the Online Reputation Management tool BrandsEye – it enables you to extract the knowledge required to make key decisions which will affect your brand’s future in real-time. BrandsEye then goes one step further and allows you to quantify your online reputation letting you benchmark against your competitors and yourself. I first became aware of BrandsEye pre-alpha when Quirk while monitored their own Online Reputation with it. Whenever I mentioned Quirk in a blog post on Web AddiCT(s); there would be this funny referring site in my stats. When I confronted them about this I was told it was top-secret. Rob Stokes later invited me to beta test the ORM tool and I was pretty much impressed. I wonder if I’m allowed to talk about this… let me stop there. *Disclosure – i joined Quirk 9 months later.
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A lot of people speculated some time ago that the user-driven social content website, Digg, is going to sell but they were wrong. It’s been a few months since the last rumor, but here we go again. TechCrunch has inside tips that Kevin Rose may actually sell this time having two media companies and two Internet giants, Microsoft and Google, to make their bids.
The investment bank Allen & Co. was saying last year that Digg would probably accept offers below the $300 million mark and they were probably right because Google is prepared to bid in the $200-$225M range.
Who’s buying is very important, especially to Microsoft who’s the only company to serve advertising on Digg for a three years contract. If Google buys it then the contract will probably be terminated and Google wins, this is why Microsoft will probably go higher.
I wasn’t expecting it so soon, and to be honest I think they will lose a big portion of their users when the sale gets a green light. What do you think?
