Posted 08/17/09 at 05:08:50 PM by Andy Salisbury

Twitter has made recent moves to get rid of web promotion company uSocial by claiming that their means of advertising count as spam.

uSocial’s CEO Leon Hill claims that the accusations from Twitter are false. “The definition of spam is using electronic messaging to send unsolicited communication and as we don’t use Twitter for this, the claims are false.” He believes that the claims are because of their service, which allows users to buy followers on the popular microblogging site.

“The people at Twitter who are sending these claims are just flailing around trying to look for any excuse they can, though it’s going to take much more than this if they want us to pack up shop,” stated Hill. “We’re not going away that easily.”

So what do you think? Are the folks at uSocial trying to make a buck in a spammy way, or should the folks at Twitter back off? Make your voice heard in the comments.

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Posted 08/11/09 at 02:15:18 PM by Paul Lilly

While Amazon's Kindle seems to receive most of the attention surrounding e-book readers, don't count Sony out of the running. On the contrary, Sony has started tweaking its marketing strategy to better compete with the Kindle.

Last week, Sony introduced two new e-book readers at comparatively affordable price points of $200 and $300, with the higher priced model sporting a touchscreen interface. In addition, Sony reduced prices at its online e-book store for new releases and New York Times best sellers by $2 a pop. And finally, Sony has also started offering a handful of newer titles for free from authors such as Brenda Jackson, James Patterson, and others.

"I think the trend toward lower-priced devices will help to encourage adoptions, and it also helps that Sony's best sellers will now be priced at $9.99 -- down from $11.99," said Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst for Forrester Research. "Even though there are many books priced lower than $9.99 in their online store, just being able to add this price point has psychological appeal."

Epps went to say that while Sony is moving in the right direction, it still needs to do more to make it easier for consumers to find the e-book content they're looking for through its online stores.

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Posted 07/05/09 at 03:24:23 PM by Justin Kerr

How much is a Twitter account or Digg vote worth? uSocial.net thinks they have the answer to that question with a recently announced new service that will sell social media accounts or votes to companies or individuals having trouble doing it the old fashioned way. $87 USD buys you (or your company) 1,000 followers added over 7 days, or as many as 100,000 over a one year period for $3,479. It turns out money really can make you popular both online, and in real life.

I have to admit however, I find it somewhat doubtful that companies would find these “purchased masses” very responsive, and in fact, uSocial itself claims “we'll Tweet our followers three times a day, every day for a month to go and check out links directly to the content that you'd like promoted.” This type of ad spam would have any normal user searching frantically for the unfollow button, but it certainly points out how modern social media is just as vulnerable to abuse as telephones, or the post office.

uSocial.net is also responsible for launching a program last year that allowed companies to buy votes on Digg and StumbleUpon. Both companies have issued cease-and-desist orders to uSocial, which according to a statement from Digg, have been ignored.

Is this the ugly side of social networking? Let us know what you think.

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Posted 05/26/09 at 03:45:23 PM by Mark Edward Soper

Ready, aim, SPEND! That's the approach Microsoft is planning for Bing, its new search engine, Advertising Age reports. How much coin is Redmond prepared to spend to market Bing (previously code-named Kumo)? Somewhere is the $80-100 million range, Ad Age says, compared to Google's non-recruitment ad spending in 2008 of around $13 million. But, can spending 6-8 times as much as Google give Bing the jump it needs?

Microsoft's ad push (helmed by ad-agency powerhouse JWT) will not, unlike the recent anti-Apple campaign, mention Microsoft's search rivals - instead, the planned ads will ask consumers if search works as well as they'd like.

How about the product itself?

People who've seen the Microsoft product suggest it's useful and has some nifty filtering tools, even though it's not a markedly different-looking interface, at least for text search (some of the multimedia search results, however, do look quite different from how Google currently displays them).

When will Bing shove aside Live Search? The Register says "June," and also suggests keeping an eye on the D: All Things Digital conference this week for more details.

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Posted 04/13/09 at 10:03:21 AM by Paul Lilly

No one has been more critical of Microsoft's first attempts at responding to Apple's "I'm a Mac" ads than myself, and I still contend that those quirky commercials featuring Jerry Seinfeld missed the mark wider than Brett Favre in a critical game (you Jets fans still steaming over a 3-interception, 24-17 loss to the Miami Dolphins know what I'm talking about). Judging by the comments in those earlier blogs (see here and here), either expectations were disparingly low, or other PC users really did find a certain charm in talking about chewy computers or watching Bill Gates do a geriatric robot.

This time around I'm more than willing to give credit where credit is due, and it belongs to Microsoft for its latest offensive against Apple. Microsoft has finally zeroed in on the high price tags that accompany Macs, and it isn't letting up. The first ad featured a woman named Lauren on the hunt for a 17-inch laptop under $1,000, and not surprisingly, she wasn't able to find one in an Apple store. "I'm just not cool enough to be a Mac person," she concluded. Not long after, a second ad emerged, this time upping the ante to $1,500 and featuring a member of the opposite sex who surmised that "Macs, to me, are about the aesthetics more than they are the computing power. I don't want to pay for the rent, I want to pay for the computer."

See what happens when a mother-and-son duo take on Microsoft's "Laptop Hunters" challenge after the jump. 

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Posted 03/07/09 at 04:27:24 PM by Justin Kerr

When we first broke this story, though it came from a credible source, it was a bit hard to believe. Microsoft is in the software business, so what is all this talk about softwear? Turns out it’s all true and the official Microsoft website for the product line has now launched. The project is being managed in collaboration with thinkcommon.com, and the designs certainly are… interesting.

The majority of the shirts are tributes to the olden days of MS-DOS, but my personal favorite is “The Misdemeanor”. This classy tee (shown above) sports Bill Gate’s mug shot, and is sure to make you a hit at parties (not guaranteed by me or Microsoft). The shirts supposedly retail for a very reasonable $10, and the website can help you find a store near you.  

So is this brilliant marketing or painful to look at?

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Posted 12/08/08 at 12:01:17 PM by Mark Edward Soper

Advertising Age (via Cnet) reports that Microsoft and rapper Common are teaming up with ad agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky to put classic Microsoft imagery from the '80s and modern remixes on T-shirts. Yes, the line will be called "Softwear by Microsoft."

The first two designs unveiled bring back memories of MS-DOS (if you've forgotten all the DOS you ever learned, be sure to see our 50 Skills Every Real Geek Should Have article for a refresher) and the days when MicroSoft was two words. You can see more designs, including Common's remixes, at the Softwear by Microsoft website.

So, how about it, Redmond fanboys (and fangirls)? Are you going to embrace your roots, or do these designs make you hit your reset button? Join us after the jump for your chance to sound off.

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Posted 09/16/08 at 02:20:14 PM by Paul Lilly

Barney the purple dinosaur became a 90s phenomenon that still airs on television more than a decade later, so naturally the only logical conclusion is to attribute the runaway success to him being purple. Why else would Yahoo put so much effort into a new campaign imploring users to "Start Wearing Purple"?

To be fair, purple has been Yahoo's official color for some time now, though you wouldn't know it by the red colored logo prominently displayed on Yahoo's homepage. The new campaign kicks off with a kooky video that serves as an intro to several purple designated features, including Purple Picks, a daily series of links picked out by Yahoo's editors which "highlight the people, trend, fashion, and companies that exemplify life in the purple lane," and even Purple Merchandise, with everything from Yahoo Pony shoes to a purple Mimobot Code Ninja 1GB USB flash drive.

Is Yahoo on to something here, or is this another example of Web 2.0 having gone wrong?  Check it out, hit the jump, and give us your thoughts.

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