I’m proud to welcome [Ryan Fujiu](http://www.calwineries.com/profile/maverick) to our blogging team at Pronet Advertising. Ryan has been working with [ACS](http://www.acsseo.com) for some time now developing [Calwineries](http://www.calwineries.com/); a social network built around California Wine. Although relatively unknown in the Internet community, he understands how online marketing works.
Archive for November, 2006
Why most social networks will fail
These days it seems like new social networking websites are popping up like it’s going out of style. The main problem with this is that most of them are being created in the hopes of making the owners rich instead of building a thriving community. Here are the main reasons why most of them fail, and how they might be able to avoid failure:
Links are more than just numbers
Last week at [Pubcon](http://www.pubcon.com) I had a discussion with someone on backward links and their importance. His view point was that backward links where only useful for search engine rankings. He also claimed that the context of the links does not matter. I also think links are very beneficial when it comes to search engines, but there is a lot more that can be discovered by analyzing your backward links. Here’s why:
Advertising with athletes
Michael Jordan, David Beckham, and Terrell Owens are all famous athletes that people look up to. If they wear a specific shirt, drink a specific soft drink or even drive a certain car everyone will copy them. No matter what they do people will mimic them in the hopes of looking cool. Because of this, athletes are commonly used in advertisements.
Say hello to ReviewMe Roy
Last week [Text Link Ads](http://www.text-link-ads.com) launched a service called [ReviewMe](http://www.reviewme.com) which competes with [PayPerPost](http://www.payperpost.com). I am not sure how successful ReviewMe will be but their marketing plan has been pretty effective at creating a lot of buzz.
Mojopages has some buzz mojo
We’ve seen companies publicly document their startups before, most notably on Bare Naked App, from Carson Systems who by the way is now documenting the sale of one of their businesses, DropSend. The latest one that I’ve been paying attention to is MojoPages. I’ve been reading their blog ever since I came across their videos on Veoh and it is very addicting.
My 50 favorite blogging resources
There are thousands of blogging related resources on the Internet which can create an overwhelming experience for anyone looking to get into blogging. Because of this I created a list of blogging resources that I use on a regular basis. Here is a list of 50 blogging resources that can be helpful to any individual and corporation looking to get into blogging or wanting to learn more about it.
Like.com’s untapped search potential
[Riya](http://www.riya.com), a visual search company just launched a new visual image search engine called [Like.com](http://www.like.com). A few months ago I did a post on [Riya](http://www.pronetadvertising.com/articles/riya-photo-search-can-be-simpler.html) and how they were making a lot of usability and search engine optimization mistakes. The CEO acknowledged my blog post and said that they were working on fixing these issues with Riya.
Going to Pubcon
Neil and I will be heading to Pubcon in Las Vegas on Monday. Neil is going to be participating in the Ad and Landing Page Site Reviews session on Tuesday so if you’re coming to the conference make sure you check out the panel. Besides that, we’ll be checking out some of the other conference sessions and hanging out at the parties at night. Maybe even sneak in a game of poker or two.
Learning from political advertisments
One of the greatest things about political elections is the TV commercials each party plays. You always see one party slandering the other by exposing dark and dirty secrets in hopes of winning the election. …
