The River

The personal professional blog of Pamela Parker -- musings on marketing, advertising, media and technology.

Testing My Bloglogs

by

Thanks to Fred Wilson, I’ve been fooling around the the My BlogLogs site, which basically adds the community layer to blogs. It seems like the simplest thing, but it’s really a revelation to see who else reads the same blogs you do. And it’s great running across people you know. Of course, everyone who is anyone is working to do similar things these days, adding blogging with social networking to see what shakes out. But this is kind of cool because it makes already-existing blogs (many of them with longstanding huge audiences) the center of those communities, which makes a lot of sense. No point in starting over, says me.

Anyway, My BlogLogs also seeks to address one of my biggest complaints about the Typepad service, which is that you can only see very limited statistics about your readership (referrers, traffic), when we all know tons more is available from even the most basic Web-hosting service. (again, plenty of companies are trying to do this right now, so My Bloglogs is hardly alone).

So, in the interest of sharing, here are some of the hottest queries getting people to my site today. Obviously, it’s a VERY limited sample. It probably says volumes about my lack of participation in the blogosphere to note the Google search is by far my most prolific referrer (and it has been for eons). And posts about popular culture (Scott Richter on the Daily Show, Ricky Gervais, Comcast and TiVo) are usually up top. Not sure what’s driving the sudden interest in Courtney Pulitzer, but there you go…

Where Readers Came From
Time	Site                                                                                                               Click Count
01:38	Google Search: courtney pulitzer                                                                      2
04:22	http: / / www.mybloglog.com/ buzz/ community/ theriver                                   2
09:56	Google Search: "jonathan safran foer" extremely mobile text code solution          1
13:00	Google Search: river books                                                                              1
00:39	Google Search: comcast,tivo                                                                             1
17:34	Google Search: scott richter daily show                                                             1
00:59	MSN Search: hitchhikers guide to the galaxy clothes                                           1
17:17	http: / / blogs.forrester.com/ charleneli/ 2005/ 06/ looking_ for_ exa.html            1
17:24	Google Search: comcast tivo                                                                             1
03:27	Google Search: daily show scott richter                                                              1

Small Town Marketing

by

We visited my Dad on the ranch in small town Texas this past holiday weekend, and I noticed a couple of chuckle-inducing bits of outdoor advertising. (Sorry no pics but the camera chips were filled with grandpa and grandson snaps.)

In the first instance, I saw the Junior High/High School sign, which school officials use to announce upcoming events, was boldly emblazoned with the logos of two corporate sponsors: Dr. Pepper and Coca-Cola. Take that, President Clinton (PDF).

Secondly, the sign for the town’s one liquor store, Tina’s Liquor, also touted another service: 24 Hour Wrecker. How’s that for cross-selling?

Video Search Referrals

by

I’ve started to get the first video search referrals via Yahoo!/AltaVista to my personal, family blog (where I posted videos of my son soon after he was born). Kind of creepy, in a way, because although I expect text to be indexed, I hadn’t realized video of my son would be “out there” in quite the same way. Such are the internets, I suppose. Most of the more recent stuff is going up via VideoEgg or YouTube. Not sure how that’ll be indexed, or if it will be, since it lives more on other people’s servers (OPS).

Anyway, the search term that’s sending folks my way is “first bath,” and here’s the video detail page about the content in question. Kind of cool to see video search delivering appropriate traffic, without any metadata. (While the text linking to that video says “getting a bath” the word “first” surrounds it pretty closely in other videos titled “first minutes”.)

UPDATE: Fixed the link to the video detail page. I guess I sort of gave away that I was posting this at the same time as I was shopping for a flame thrower for the garden. (We bought it, too, and it is very cool.)

In NYC

by

I’m in NYC for the next couple of days, culimnating in ClickZ’s inaugural Online Video Advertising Forum on Friday. I’m really looking forward to the show. It’s the first new standalone event we’ve launched under the ClickZ brand since being acquired by Incisive Media, and it’s looking like attendance is going to be excellent. I’ve already run into Gary Stein on the plane on the way over, and I’m looking forward to catching up with more folks while I’m on the road.

BTW, I’m moderating the “Publisher Perspectives” panel Friday afternoon.

Jaguar Goes JetBlue (Kinda)

by

This is pretty awesome. Jaguar is adding (as a dealer-installed option) what it calls a Rear Screen Connectivity System (RSCS). Basically, it’s an AV panel that allows rear-seat passengers to connect any digital device that has an audio/visual output. Each rear-seat passenger can connect his/her individual device, hear the audio output on a wireless headset, and see the video on an LCD screen built into the front seats’ headrests. Next time I’m a back-seat passenger in a Jaguar, I’ll be sure to bring my video iPod…

Will Someone Please Tell Starbucks?

by

Wendy’s is reportedly abandoning the “Biggie” name for its large soft drinks. A spokesman explained: “We felt like the Biggie designation is not what most customers were used to. Most people were used to small, medium and large.” Amen.

UPDATE: Friends have mentioned that this is actually a ploy by Wendy’s to get people to buy bigger sodas. I knew that. Just wanted to take the opportunity to stick up for “small,” “medium” and “large” as perfectly adequate words to describe drink sizes.