Posted by Kim Peterson on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 3:47 PM

The battle between Google (GOOG) and Skype just ratcheted up a notch with Facebook’s entry into the fray.

Recall that Google recently launched voice calling from Gmail, allowing (through the end of the year, at least) people to make free calls from their Gmail page. I’ve been using that feature daily to make free long-distance calls from my computer.

Some thought the new service was the death knell for online calling service Skype. But Skype showed Wednesday that it’s very much in the game with an alliance with Facebook (also known as Google enemy No. 1).

The Wall Street Journal has news of a nascent partnership that will allow people to access Skype through their Facebook Connect accounts. If the plan goes through as reported, users will eventually be able to call and video chat with friends on the Facebook page, using Skype.

The new Facebook abilities are expected to be included in Skype’s newest version, due out in the next few weeks, the Journal reported. Post continues after video:

“The partnership will more tightly link Skype’s 560 million registered users — 124 million of whom use it at least once a month — with Facebook’s 500 million members,” writes Scott Morrison.

The move shows that Facebook wants to be exactly where Google is in the future, particularly as Google starts expanding to become more of a social media and communications hub. And the news is good for Skype as well, which is looking for a $100 million IPO at some point.

Minds Over Media provides full-service online marketing services including web design Denver, SEO Denver, video production Denver, social media marketing Denver, blog design Denver, graphic design Denver, and other digital media services.

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WordCamp Boulder 2010 was my first WordCamp event. As a web designer, SEO, and online strategy consultant, I found the sessions and opportunity to meet others in the industry to share ideas and information very useful. Even though you know much of the material already because you’re in the biz, there are always things you pick up at events like these, and they provide the opportunity to learn something completely new.

WordCamp Boulder @ Boulder Theater

Attended the “Creating a Blog Community”, “Blogging for your Business”, “BuddyPress 101″, and “What’s Next for WordPress”. Of course the Social Hour was fun. Look forward to seeing the videos on WordPress.tv so I can tune into the sessions I couldn’t attend such as “WordPress Development” and the “Design Panel”.

The most important thing I learned was in “What’s Next for WordPress” session by Jane Wells of WordPress and Automatic – that was to make sure you use a capital “P” in WordPress!

Maybe I’ll head out to WordCamp New Zealand August 7-8.

Minds Over Media provides full-service online marketing services including web design Denver, SEO Denver, video production Denver, social media marketing Denver, blog design Denver, graphic design Denver, and other digital media services.

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Advertising will fail for three reasons:

There are three problems with advertising in any form, whether broadcast or online:

Consumers do not trust advertising. Dan Ariely has demonstrated that messages attributed to a commercial source have much lower credibility and much lower impact on the perception of product quality than the same message attributed to a rating service. Forrester Research has completed studies that show that advertising and company sponsored blogs are the least-trusted source of information on products and services, while recommendations from friends and online reviews from customers are the highest.

Consumers do not want to view advertising. Think of watching network TV news and remember that the commercials on all the major networks are as closely synchronized as possible. Why? If network executives believed we all wanted to see the ads they would be staggered, so that users could channel surf to view the ads; ads are synchronized so that users cannot channel surf to avoid the ads.

And mostly consumers do not need advertising. My own research suggests that consumers behave as if they get much of their information about product offerings from the internet, through independent professional rating sites like dpreview.com or community content rating services like Ratebeer.com or TripAdvisor.

Read rest of article at TechCrunch

http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Dispatch/market-dispatches.aspx?post=1619799&_blg=1,1620847

More people in the United States are falling victim to identity fraud.

A study by Javelin Strategy & Research showed that the number of victims jumped by 12% to 11.1 million adults in 2009, the biggest increase since the survey began in 2003.

“Identity fraud continues on the upswing and we believe it will continue to rise if consumers fail to take proactive steps to prevent fraudsters from taking advantage of their offline and online transactions and their increasingly exposed personal information on social networks,” said Michael Stanfield, CEO of Intersections (INTX), one of the survey’s sponsors.

“The findings of this Javelin report reinforce what we’ve been telling consumers for more than a decade — be vigilant with whom you are sharing your personal information and where you are sharing it. Protect your computer and only transact on confirmed legitimate websites,” Stanfield said in a press release.

The study said that total overall fraud rose by 12.5% to $54 billion.

Payment-card-related fraud is the most common type of crime, according to the study, with someone opening up a new account in the victim’s name. The perpetrator is often someone the victim knows, such as a family member or presumed friend, according to Javelin founder James Van Dyke.

The number of new credit card accounts opened fraudulently rose 39% in 2009, with new online accounts more than doubling, and the number of new e-mail payment accounts rising 12%.

Fraud on existing accounts rose 12%, with the vast majority occurring with credit cards.

The study also found that 29% of identity-fraud victims said that mobile phone accounts were fraudulently opened in their names.

One good thing in the report: less time to resolve identity crime. It takes 21 hours on average, down from 30 hours reported the year before.

The mobile ad space continued to heat up last week with Amobee’s acquisition of RingRing Media, a 2-year-old London-based startup, for an undisclosed sum. The move surely isn’t anywhere near the magnitude of Google’s $750 million AdMob buy or even Apple’s $275 million pick-up of Quattro Wireless, but it’s the kind of smaller-scale deal we’re likely to see many more of this year as the segment consolidates.

Mobile ad startups are hot commodities once again thanks largely to in-app marketing, which has given the segment a much-needed lift over the last year. Established Internet companies and software development companies alike are scrambling to gain a foothold in the space, much like in 2007, which saw a flurry of activity including AOL’s acquisition of Third Screen Media, Yahoo’s pick-up of Actionality, the Microsoft ScreenTonic buy and Nokia’s tie-up with Enpocket. While 2010 may not see as many blockbuster deals, the number of tie-ups could end up surpassing that of three years ago, Rich Wong of Accel Partners told me last week:

Brand managers now are spending in this medium. It’s real, and it’s genuine. I do think it’s going to be hard to have a quarterly earnings call as a major Internet company and not have an answer to the question, ‘What’s your mobile strategy?’

The landscape is far different now than it was just three years ago, though, when a handful of startups were quick to emerge in the nascent space. Recent figures from IDC indicate that Millennial Media is clearly the largest startup left on the field (see chart); the mobile search firm JumpTap is the second-largest potential acquisition despite a mere 4 percent market share. Yahoo and Microsoft claim a combined market share of only 19 percent — which may prompt the high-profile players to make an acquisition or two this year in order to build their mobile businesses.

The field also teems with smaller player that specialize in targeted areas such as search or that serve specific geographic regions. And recent growth in the space has given rise to a host of startups that play supporting roles by providing analytics and other tools. Flurry, which pocketed $7 million on the heels of its recent tie-up with Pinch Media, may be especially attractive to ad companies that don’t have their own mobile analytics operations.

So while we may see one or two more big-budget acquisitions in mobile advertising this year, most of the M&A activity will center on smaller startups. Entrenched firms with deep pockets will look to fill out the holes in their mobile ad businesses, and independent players will forge alliances to better compete with their larger counterparts. Those deals won’t make headlines, but they will reconfigure the landscape of mobile advertising in 2010.

Minds Over Media provides full-service online marketing services including web design Denver, SEO Denver, video production Denver, social media marketing Denver,blog design Denver, graphic design Denver, and other digital media services.

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When will YouTube be profitable? “In the not-too-distant future,” said Google CFO Patrick Pichette on today’s quarterly earnings call, same as he said last quarter. He did offer a “sound bite” to appease investors and industry watchers: “We’re monetizing more than a billion video views every week on YouTube.” That’s out of “well over” a billion views that YouTube recently said it gets every day. So, let’s put on our fuzzy and unauthorized math thinking cap: There are seven days in a week. YouTube is monetizing in the neighborhood of 14 percent of its total views.

Google’s Nikesh Arora, president of global sales operations and business development, noted campaigns on YouTube’s home page have been undertaken with 90 percent of the top 50 advertisers. He said 90 percent of YouTube’s home-page inventory was sold out in the third quarter. Further, YouTube is beginning to release pre-roll inventory to advertisers — not the most-liked format for watchers or many in the industry, but a good way to make money. And the site is getting more premium content; it tied up a deal with Channel 4 this morning and straightened out its relationships with the music labels in recent weeks.

Google has come a long way from last year in its attitude towards YouTube, when CEO Eric Schmidt called YouTube monetization “the holy grail” and “our highest priority this year.”

“In general we’re really pleased about YouTube’s performance — it is going very well,” said Pichette. Arora added: “We’re pleased with our ability to monetize YouTube so far, and we like the trend.”

Minds Over Media provides full-service online marketing services including web design Denver, SEO Denver, video production Denver, social media marketing Denver, blog design Denver, graphic design Denver, and other digital media services.

Contact Minds Over Media regarding online video to help promote your business and market your services online.

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