Recently, Wall Street Journal has a series of articles about behavior targeted advertising industry called What They Know. I sometimes go to Starbucks to use Internet. A few months ago, Starbucks decided to offer free WiFi inside the coffee shop. I am curious what cookies (browser cookies, not eatable cookie) Starbucks WiFi tries to set in your user browser if you use Starbucks free WiFi.

So I enter a Starbucks coffee chop, clear all Internet browser Firefox cookies, visit the wikipedia.org website (WSJ reports that wikipedia does not set any third-party cookie on the user browser), which will be redirected to Starbucks WiFi start page. I accept the Starbucks Term of Use. Then I check the cookies in the browser and find cookies from 7 sites are set. 2 of them are from Starbucks site, i.e., coffeblogs.starbucks.com, and starbucks.com. The other 5 are from third-party, google.com, facebook.com, addthis.com (sharing and bookmarking service), ads.jiwire.com (mobile advertising), and tags.jiwire.com.

Overall, I think behavior-targeted advertising, a.k.a. personalized ads, is a good thing to Internet. It's a win-win-win for users, publishers, and advertisers. For users, they will see more relevant ads and coupons. So ads will become more useful and attractive to users; for publishers, they will make more revenue from advertising, thus produce more high-quality contents, survive and thrive; for advertisers, they will reach users what they really target at, thus improve their ROI (Return On Investment). But I agree that the Internet advertising industry should develop a better way to provide transparency and control to Internet users, although I think 90% and maybe even higher percent Internet users do not really care about behavior-targeted advertising and privacy.

Many people are happy about the free WiFi offered by Starbucks. I hope Starbucks can continue this free service by making some revenue from behavior-targeted advertising.

Source: http://wirelessbay.blogspot.com/2010/08/cookie-of-wifi-at-starbuck-coffee.html

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Using Social Media channels like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogs and YouTube helps increase visibility and your Google rank too. Optimizing these channels in the right way will help drive traffic to the website. Most brands and organizations use these top five social media platforms in their business and incorporate ways to gain profitability. Social Media Optimization is the need of the hour. Brands like Starbucks, Zappos, Dell... use these social media platforms to the maximum and reap various benefits.

Having a Facebook business Page is the first step to getting the most of social media. Recent reports state that more than 3.5bn pieces of content are shared each week on Facebook! There are more than 50% of the brands marketing on Facebook, as it helps build relationships and establishes credibility and trust. Having a Page that talks about your brand and selling your brand image to millions of people online is the key. Initiating discussions, polls, and making it as interactive as possible gets people coming back to your Page for more. Making it as visual as possible with images and videos and interesting contests, give always etc. is a great way to optimize Facebook.

Twitter, the best microblogging site is growing in leaps and bounds! Twitterers are blogging on things that matter and on every field and aspect of life. Tweeting can be done anywhere anytime thanks to various mobile and iPhone applications. News, images, videos etc can be easily shared in a short span of time. Twitter allows users to follow like-minded people and share ideas and knowledge faster than any other platform. Following the right profile and updating tweets must be looked into. Overdoing it gets very annoying, also tweets don't last long. Hence make sure to tweet at the right time using the right tool. There is various Twitter tools out there that help you follow the right profiles, schedule tweets, add images, videos etc... Do try them out and optimize Twitter for your business in the right way.

The most popular Video Sharing Site, YouTube, is another way one can optimize social media. It is the third most visited website. Most brands today have a YouTube channel that has videos that talk about their company, products, offerings, demos, interviews, events, announcements and many more. Some have third party videos that do the job of spreading the message for your brand. Having a YouTube channel lets you add friends, who comment on your videos, subscribe to your channel and this in turn increases views which are the only measuring factor for YouTube. It’s streaming two billion views per day!

The world's largest PNS – LinkedIn, is getting businesses and organizations hooked onto it. It is seen as a channel that not only gets you grab the right job and business deals, but also where professionals ask questions, participate in discussions, conduct polls and arrive at what's best for their business and career. LinkedIn now has 70 million members, with one million company profiles! Places like India are seeing a rapid growth in LinkedIn users. The integration of various LinkedIn applications such as Twitter, Slide Share, Polls make the platform more appealing. One can have a personal profile, group profile or a company profile on LinkedIn, each having its own merits.

Lastly, it’s the good old blogs that give you the liberty to share views and opinions on just about anything under the sun. Blogs need to be optimized so that it is read by people who matter; also it ranks high in search engines... Blogs that are updated regularly have greater chances of being ranked high in search engine results. Incorporating RSS feeds is another way to increase your blog subscriptions, and followers. Having a blog that talks specifically on a nice subject is the key. Company blogs like Microsoft and Sun Microsystems have been great examples. Blogs are an excellent way to market your brand image, sell products and services, maintain and acquire customers... and many more. Blogging and then tweeting your blog post, sharing it on Facebook, MySpace is a good way to share your content, which in other words is known as Interlinking.

Get the most of these big five for your social media...

Source: www.jeffbullas.com


Source: http://buzzuka.blogspot.com/2010/08/big-five-of-social-media.html

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This was my morning drink before I stirred it up. Yum! I thought the bottom part looked cool. It's a grande vanilla bean frap with 2 floating shots, just in case anyone wanted to know why it looked like that :-P

Samsung SL720 f/3.4 @ 1/30 sec

Source: http://deebs365.blogspot.com/2010/08/day-53.html

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