YouTube's quest to maximize its monetary potential culminates with a night in Paris. Sorry. Wrong preposition. A night with Paris. Kicking off the premiere video site's venture into rich media advertising, Paris Hilton gets her own channel to promote her music video and album release.

Paris says:

If you show me real love baby
I'll show you mine
Um. That's not how my uncle used to say it.

The YouTube Paris Hilton channel was created by Warner Brothers through an arrangement with the site to be the first to take advantage of customized video channels for advertisers. Fox is also in on it and plans to promote the next season of "Prison Break."

Up to 100 million videos per day are viewed at YouTube, a number Michael Arrington says costs the site around $1 million in bandwidth fees per month. Having secured over $11 million from Sequoia Capital, the site already offered banner advertising and sponsorships..

It's the business aspect that worries some YouTubers. Currently, there are over 600 comments on Paris' video premier, pulling together a mixed bag of reactions. The first concerns are over the MTV-ization of the site dominated by user content. The polish is just irritating.

"Yeah, I like YouTube how it is," posts alcoholicferrets, "with its own celebrities and the random sh*t people post...I don't want it to be like MTV."

"Agreed," writes libra1019. "This is what has p**sed me off about youtube. now that it has become "famous", celebrities are all wanting to get on it to post their videos, which are edited so much that its not that great of a video. Most of them never go on these sites before they even become popular or even now to check out other people's videos."

Those sentiments are tempered with fan mail, the obligatory Beavis-and-Butthead "she's hot" comments, as well as dropped email addresses alongside date invites. Nice try, jimi_hendrix38@…

You know, you probably shouldn't post email on public sites like that. Haven't you heard the rules yet?

YouTube, Paris Hilton, Overrated celebrities,

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It took Google blogger Matt Cutts about six paragraphs to produce SEO advice that made more sense than a host of other articles on the subject.

Cutts advises his readers to follow their niche when doing SEO, and that can mean just about anything... or nothing.

It's simplicity and purity that matters in the end.

Become the uncarved block, man, as your SEO evolves around you, and promise not to use this insight for evil.

Cutts begins his lesson with a short explanation of how to change the default printer on Linux and Firefox. Yes, it's very wax on, wax off, isn't it?

That's a good place to begin because Matt was looking for that information himself recently and discovered that the answer just wasn't out there.

So he searched for the answer, discovered it for himself, and wrote it up for others to find.

And that is SEO.

The echoing silence can make your insides ache with the joyous splendor of the universe. It is so simple, yet so complex.

It is faith in a mustard seed; it's the universe between your toes.

From Matt's post:

But the larger point is that if you put in time and research to produce or to synthesize original content, think hard about what niches to target. My advice is not to start with an article about porn/pills/casinos/mortgages-it's better to start with a smaller niche…
An infinite number of niches are waiting for someone to claim them. I'd ask yourself where you want to be, and see if you can find a path from a tiny specific niche to a slightly bigger niche and so on, all the way to your desired goal. Sometimes it's easier to take a series of smaller steps instead of jumping to your final goal in one leap.
And remember, it's best if you move with the cheese.

SEO

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Microsoft has the next version of its web browser ready for shipping, and the IE team detailed a number of changes and tweaks they have made to the browser to get it ready for debut.

The future of IE7 will be its distribution through the existing Microsoft automatic update process.

Millions of machines will go through the process to put the latest iteration of Microsoft's browser product on their desktops.

And you know what? IE7 still has work to be done to bring its compliance with CSS standards up to standards.

That is a task the IE group appears to be taking seriously, as judged by program manager Markus Mielke who posted about the multitude of fixes on the IE Blog:

IE 7 is a stepping stone in our effort to improve our standards compliance (especially around CSS). As an example, in the platform we did not focus on any proprietary properties - though we may try out new features in the future using the official -ms- prefix, following the CSS extension mechanism. We also work very closely with the W3C CSS working group (which I am a member of) to help clarify assumptions in our implementation and drive clarifications into the spec.
The sound you hear is that of your favorite web developer bestowing a lengthy and inventive stream of colorful metaphors in the general direction of Redmond, WA.

Microsoft is trying, though. Mielke noted that the IE team has made over 200 behavior choices under strict mode, aimed at improving CSS 2.1 compliance.

Ultimately, though, Microsoft is placing some of the burden of compliance back on developers:

As we struggle to balance the needs of our user customers with the desires of web developers, we need your help. The only way for us to continue to improve our standards support is to get your help in changing your sites for IE7.
A variety of tools and documentation has been placed online to aid developers with those compliance issues.

They include the IE 7 Readiness Toolkit and the Cascading Style Sheet Compatibility in Internet Explorer 7 documentation, along with other items.

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Tag: IE7

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Google released its Google Base data API, GData for short, that allows developers to write dynamic and interactive applications for Google Base. This opens up the possibility of Google Base mash-ups that combine content with other services.

"The API is ReST-full and is based on the GData protocol," said Google software engineer Matthias Zenger.

"You can insert, edit, or delete items programmatically, complementing existing input means like the Google Base front-end or the bulk upload mechanism. You can also query other users' published content and access their items via the API."

GData offers a standard protocol for reading and writing Web data, combining XML-based syndication formats (Atom and RSS) with a feed-publishing system, based on Atom.

Though the Atom publishing protocol specification isn't yet finished, the final product will allow users to send a GET request for resources, like a feed or entry, and the server will return it in the Atom syndication format. Users can create, edit, or delete resources depending on need.

"The Google Base data model is a kind of RDF lite - lots of names types, simple strings in a lot of places you'd expect namespaces," says Semantic Web developer Danny Ayers. "But it's part of Google's own subweb rather than the web at large, so I guess this was predictable."

Ayers predicts on his weblog that the API could be useful in creating a Semantic Web system.

Google Base, GData API

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The Keyword Marketing Module provided by on-demand business software firm NetSuite would be available to its customers at no additional charge.

Google AdWords and Yahoo Sponsored Search campaigns can be managed from the module provided by NetSuite for its customers. Their unveiling comes a day after rival Salesforce.com announced its deal for Kieden, a company that makes a similar product for Salesforce users.

Price is the big difference here. NetSuite and NetSuite CRM+ customers have the Keyword Marketing Module available now, for free. Salesforce will charge $300 per month for Kieden users.

NetSuite described its module as a tool that will help gain a clear picture of what keyword marketing dollars produce at every sales stage. That will include tracking leads generated from keywords, through conversion, to revenue, profits, and ROI gained.

Google has contributed on the education side to the NetSuite initiative. A webinar on paid search features Chris Valle, Senior Manager of Sales at Google, along with NetSuite's Jay O'Connor, VP of Marketing.

Both the NetSuite and Salesforce moves reinforce the need and value of such measurement tools. Online advertising provides a very measurable vehicle for determining just how well, or poorly, a campaign delivers for the marketer.

Their moves also demonstrate the competitiveness in the on-demand software segment. NetSuite uses Salesforce.com as an example in one slide of its paid search presentation, where they describe CRM and Marketing Automation as one piece of a fractured puzzle of traditional software management.

For an entertaining exchange between Salesforce and NetSuite, Silicon.com picked up brickbats thrown by both companies with regards to their keyword management efforts. Someone get Marc Benioff and Larry Ellison (NetSuite's majority owner) in a cage match, please.

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Tag: NetSuite

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Gimeru. That's how they're going to say it in Japan, to the excruciating annoyance of thousands of ex-patriot English teachers, harping again that its goo-guhl, not goo-goh, it's jee-may-uhl, not jee-meh-roo.

Students will smile and say, "do you sending gimeru?" Teachers will smile and wait for the tones. Yahoo is much easier.

Google announced today that its GMail service is now available in Japanese to all who are interested. Japanese becomes one of the 40 different languages in which the company offers its web-based mail.

According to the Reuters report, since Google opened up contextual ad driven GMail in Australia and New Zealand, revenues generated by the mail service have had "quite a significant impact."

The push into the Japanese market will ride the airwaves on to mobile phones rather than to computers. Mobiles are used more than PCs for search and email - and for all things cute and dangly.

GMail

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Job search engine Indeed.com pinged me to brag on themselves a little. The company has broken the million job seekers per month barrier, a 300 percent increase in 2006.

The upswing in traffic puts the job engine, which ranked sixth among online employment services in January, nearly on par with the number of career hopefuls digging around AOL and MSN (via CareerBuilder.com, which holds a monstrous - get it? - lead over everybody).

That CareerBuilder was in first place as well as fourth and fifth, may indeed raise Indeed up to fourth place overall.

Those million job seekers conduct about 25 million searches per month at Indeed, a figure the company says is over three times more than direct competitors, citing comScore. I'm not sure what they mean by "direct competitor," though. It's hard to imagine they've outsearched CareerBuilder, Monster and Yahoo.

The success of the site, which uses a pay-per-click network to monetize it, has netted the company about 150 paying clients and partnerships with heavy-hitters like the New York Times, Boston.com, About.com, A9.com, and Gawker Media.

Recently the company added a host of new features to its core search functions. Those additions include email job alerts, RSS job search feeds, jobs by Instant Messager, Firefox and Google job search plug-ins, advanced search refinement, job search management with my.indeed, job trends and salary research.

Indeed.com

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Anybody with kids knows an unedited comment can fly from the little darlings' mouths in the most inappropriate of places, making socially conscious parents sudden candidates for a Child Services interview. Toddlers are forgivable, but what happens when post-adolescents let loose in the blogosphere, only to be quoted in the Washington Post?

WaPo's Yuki Noguchi begins with a tee-hee-hee-inducing account of 21-year-old Jared Watts, the son of AT&T senior vice president Wayne Watts. Jared doesn't really like AT&T or Cingular, for whom he also works, and blogs about the company's personal belief violating customer abuse.

Jared, saves his abuse for after work, blogging about the "middle aged wench of doom" he had to deal with that day at the Cingular Wireless store. His blog's rather difficult to find now, after former AT&T veep Josh King appears to have removed a link Jared put in the comments section of King's blog. Well, Noguchi said it was supposed to be there.

Blogger Josh Morgan believes blogging negatively about customers at your work place is a bad idea and questions Watts' judgment about that and about talking to the Washington Post about it.

"Why would Jared Watts agree to talk to the Washington Post about this issue?," asks Morgan. "Forevermore, when someone googles his name, this article will come up and he will have to explain why he referred to a customer as the 'Middle-Aged Wench of Doom.' Not all press is good press."

Oh, come now. If you've ever held a customer service job, there's always a wench of doom somewhere.

The loss of the link from King's blog follows the loss of the blog altogether, which Noguchi says was taken down for its sharp-tonguedness. Watts' blog met the fate of other public figure impetuous offspring's blogs, like Senator Bill Frist's anti-Semitic beer-belt wearing son Jonathan, and a California representative's underage beer-guzzling daughter.

But not before Wonkette chronicled both of the "sir, we have an issue" moments.

Some have suggested that the youngsters should consider their parents' positions and reputations before broadcasting their collegiate exploits to the entire Internet - especially before the Washington Post picks it up. But some should also remember that kids do stuff in college - lots of stuff…stupid stuff…really stupid illegal stuff…all the time.

Is there something you'd like to tell us about your college experience?

Didn't think so. But if you'd had a blog at the time, you'd have told everybody listening.

Blogs

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Just as Verizon has replaced the Universal Service Fund fee customers paid each month with a new fee that goes straight into their bank account, BellSouth will likewise keep the charge in place and pocket the cash.

(Warning: strident opinions ahead. Thinking may be encouraged.)

Come on, Ivan Seidenberg and Duane Ackerman. Just please, stop it. Tell your PR departments to stop trying to spin your collecting of new fees as the USF comes to an end as some sort of "regulatory cost recovery."

The regulation has ended. People are not buying the story that your companies still need to recover costs for something that no longer exists. People are not stupid enough (I hope) to look at a new fee starting as one ends, with that new fee dropping directly into your coffers instead of Uncle Sam's, and think of it as anything other than a straightforward grift.

News of Verizon's fee exchange circulated yesterday. Instead of letting customers off the hook for the extra buck or two they had been paying for DSL service, Verizon will impose a new fee that almost matches the USF charge.

CNet brings us today's tale that BellSouth has bettered Verizon's decision. Instead of knocking off a few cents from the old fee to the new fee as Verizon did, BellSouth kept the full $2.97 per month fee intact.

The email BellSouth sent to CNet is, as MasterCard would call it, priceless:

BellSouth had a different explanation for keeping its $2.97 fee. It explained in a statement sent to CNET News.com via e-mail that the charge is "to offset costs incurred in complying with regulatory obligations and other expenses. The fee also recovers costs associated with additional systems necessitated by federal regulation, as well as costs associated with monitoring, participating in and complying with regulatory proceedings, and other network and servicing requirements."
Let us reasonably concur that Verizon and BellSouth did indeed incur an expense associated with collecting, processing, and forwarding the USF fees to the bottomless spending pit we like to call "our Representatives in Congress."

That expense, as it has existed, is now over. The companies should realize some small cost savings as they no longer have to dedicate time, people, and resources to USF collection. It is probably a nominal savings, considering Verizon and BellSouth have market caps of $99 billion and $72 billion, respectively.

Instead of taking the cost savings, and maybe some intangible goodwill by passing along the savings to consumes with USF's demise, they pass along new replacement fees instead. Here's Verizon's perspective on those fees, again from CNet:

"We didn't think the standalone DSL service would be competitively priced if we put all of the cost on the service," said Bobbi Henson, a Verizon spokeswoman. "So we spread the cost across the entire base of our DSL customers. Doing this as another fee was coming off the bill seemed like good timing, since it will have little impact on what customers are actually paying per month."
Good timing, yes. For whom, though? Customers?

Again, as was pointed out yesterday, other providers have delivered standalone DSL to their customers for some time. Verizon and BellSouth seem to contend that deploying naked DSL was as monumental an undertaking as getting Apollo 13 home multiple times.

The real shame is in a month or two, this will be forgotten. They know this. No one is going to stay fired up for a dollar or two each month. It shouldn't be that way. Dollars add up over time. Verizon and BellSouth both know this. People should take that to heart as well.

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Tags: BellSouth, Verizon

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If they don't have reasonably unfettered Internet access at work, younger jobseekers may look for an employer with less draconian policies.

Employers who deploy Internet filtering software, or otherwise limit Internet access in the workplace, may be seeing qualified job hunters turn their attention elsewhere. That is the contention of Anne Kirah, Microsoft Senior Design Anthropologist, who spoke at Microsoft's TechEd in Sydney, Australia, noted the APC Magazine website.

Microsoft may have an ulterior motive in favoring the relaxing of such limitations. Its assortment of online services under the Windows Live brand arrive as advertising-supported choices. No access, means no ad views. That's not a good thing, as George Moore, General Manager Windows Live Platform, said in the article: "Our business model is advertising. With advertising you want reach."

Although employers generally fret about lost productivity on the job, that may not be the greatest concern. The potential for employees accessing adult content, and other employees seeing that content and hitting the company with a sexual harassment claim.

"Bill Gates said years ago that if you worry about internet productivity, you're worrying about people stealing pens from your stationery cupboard… there are bigger things to worry about," said Kirah.

For most people, an open Internet means access to sites and services of a much tamer nature. Catching up on sports scores, entertainment news, and personal emails draw greater interest.

People tend to be inventive when it comes to keeping up with personally important information. Mobile devices with text messaging, Web browsing, and even streaming video provide ways of bypassing the dictates of a fanatical network manager.

Judging workers by their productivity and contribution to the company looks like a more sensible way of measuring their accomplishments than worrying about them trading for a running back for their fantasy football team during working hours. Of course, if businesses adopted sensible solutions all the time, Scott Adams would run out of material for his Dilbert comic.

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Tag: Microsoft

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