Pandora, the excellent internet radio offering, officially settled its music royalties issue and will not be closing up shop, which is great news for consumers. Indeed, Pandora has gained great popularity via its web product and its iPhone/iPod app is one of the most popular applications out there. According to the AP:
Under the agreement, large commercial webcasters will pay copyright owners up to 25 percent of their revenue or a “per-performance” rate that is below the rates set by the Copyright Royalty Board. Smaller webcasters will pay either a percent of revenue or a percent of expenses.
This is fairly good news for users of Pandora, but what of their revenue stream? I’ve always felt that Internet radio has a real opportunity – people are very passionate about their music and for many, it’s a personal and private choice. Ever notice how people don’t always like to talk about their favorite bands or artists?
Good marketing research can map those choices of bands and artists to lifestyles and life-stages. Now that the royalty issue has been cleared, I hope to see Pandora do some aggressive lifestyle marketing with the deep variety and metrics needed to connect marketers with their user-base.
But, could a spin-off mean a real challenge to Google, in the form of AOL? Well, AOL now as Tim Armstrong, Google’s former head of North American advertising sales and now CEO at AOL. Clearly, with the timing of his arrival to AOL as CEO, Armstrong is motivated. A spun-off AOL will give Armstrong that much more latitude to clean house and do things his way; presumably, the Google way.
For its part, AOL earnings dropped 23%. Armstrong had better get his broom ready, because he’ll likely need it if AOL is become the world-class advertising and content company that it once was.
I am often amazed at how many people forget the real purpose of SEO. The motive is not to get to the top of the search engine results pages, not really. That is like saying the purpose of cooking is to heat meat, rather than eat it.
The idea is to gain greater visibility and traffic. That means all content on a page must be interesting to people. People, not search engines.
It’s a great point. Attempts at keyword saturation can be effective with respect to SEO, but often yield copy that is clumsy and choppy. The artistry of SEO resides in the ability to craft copy that is at once saturated with keywords and effective at stimulating demand or driving action.
As an Internet marketing professional who began my career in writing, it’s refreshing to see a small step away from the highly technical nature of search engine optimization. Though I admire the reminder that Gibbons delivers, it’s important to note that Google doesn’t award style points.
Owen Van Natta, former Facebook COO and current CEO of Playlist, is now CEO at MySpace.
This is interesting for a variety of reasons. Van Natta joined Facebook very early in its development, when the social network was CLEARLY behind MySpace in relevance within the social networking space. Depending on who you ask, Van Natta was either demoted by Mark Zuckerberg or changed roles to focus more directly on generating revenue for Facebook as its chief revenue officer and vp of operations in 2007. He later left Facebook in early 2008.
In light of this – let’s call it “history” – with Facebook, I can only imagine that Van Natta is sharpening his knives, ready to take a run at his previous employer. MySpace’s challenges are innumerate; yet, someone who was inside the circle of trust at Facebook has a great opportunity and the pedigree to scale those challenges in the coming months.
This has big implications on two levels, one related to the basic usability of Yelp and the other related to Online Reputation Management for small businesses. If a user posts a negative comment and a business owner responds via Yelp’s new tools, that response will BOTH be posted on the Yelp.com review and arrive in the email inbox of the dissatisfied user. This represents the large departure with regard to the site’s basic usability.
From an Online Reputation Management perspective, Yelp may no longer be a potential liability. Even if a small business generates negative reviews or complaints on Yelp, business owners now have a public opportunity to address those concerns. Consumers love a tight response loop and acceptance of feedback, so business owners will now have a classic opportunity to turn negatives into positives. Why is this so powerful? Search engines love Yelp.com’s pages and they typically reside in high search engine results for business name queries.
The Boston Bruins and their agency, Massachusetts-based Mullen, nailed their integrated marketing campaign, by tying in legitimately funny TV ads with a web-based dashboard. Perhaps most-notably, they filmed a web-only spot to coincide with the club’s playoff series win over the Montreal Canadiens:
Credit Mullen and the Bruins for using humor and sports in a way that most other clubs won’t. Perhaps, I’m just a sucker for a bear doing The Robot.
Pandora, the excellent internet radio offering, officially settled its music royalties issue and will not be closing up shop, which is great news for consumers. Indeed, Pandora has gained great popularity via its web product and its iPhone/iPod app is one of the most popular applications out there. According to the AP:
Marketing Pilgrim has a good post on 
Bloomberg was all over the rumor that 
Business owners can stop banging their heads against a digital wall!
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