Sohaib Thiab – The Story of an Internet Entrepreneur

According to Reuters, Myspace is set to launch Facebook style news feeds in the next 30 to 45 days, News Feeds allows you to view what your friends have done on the website, such as adding images/videos, commenting on a profile, becoming friends with someone else or images tagged with a friend.

Friend Feeds have become an integral part of social networks after its proven success with Facebook, friend feeds is hugely popular between Facebook members and in my opnion its one of the main diffrentiator’s between Facebook and other social networks.

In the same announcement Mypsace declared that they will allow members to create multiple profiles representing different versions of the member, which doesn’t sound very attractive to me, whats the point of creating multiple profiles? one for my family and another for my pet and a 3rd for my car? how popular this new feature is going to be is something we will have to wait for.

Other social networks added friends feeds after their success with Facebook and their contribution to increased user engagement to the website. It won’t be long before we see news feeds components on most/all social networks.

btw, Comscore released rankings for the top web properties in the UK, France and Germany, check them out here, here and here (respectively)

[tags]friend news feeds, Myspace, Facebook, Comscore[/tags]

Quick update on the new blog network I am building with Charl, it turns out the the initial salary we were thinking of wasn’t enough for most bloggers (the experienced ones) so we had to increase the monthly payment and remove any revenue share options.

The 1st blog in the network is going to be a gadget related blog, we registered the domain and the design for the 1st blog should be ready soon, due to the fact that we had to raise the blogger’s salary, were currently thinking of launching only 3 blogs instead of 5 and focus on them only until they are well established.

The original plan was to launch 50+ blogs in 2008,  but we’ve decided to launch a lower number (around 20) and have them well established, that’s way better than a larger number of lower quality blogs (in terms of content and traffic).

That’s all for now, I will share a mockup of the new blog skin as soon as I get it.

Time for another speed linking post of some the interesting posts I came across in the past few days.

• Facebook stealing Googlers at an alarming rate, Techcrunch
• Facebook is 2/3 female, Techcrunch
• Facebook marketing: how is facebook sabotaging their own PPC, Slightlyshadyseo
• Social Media Marketing is not SEO, Viperchill
• News Corp to buy Linkedin? Techcrunch
• The secret strategies behind many viral videos, Techcrunch

Techcrunch dominated this post with lots of interesting news and rumors, lets see how dominates it in the next episode of speed linking!

Thats right, I finally got my 1st Facebook app online, I’ve been wanting to do this a while ago but time didnt help much in the past month.

Your probably wondering what the app is about, well its really a simple application that I and a friend launched, it aims to gather support for Japan’s dolphins, did you know that 22,000 dolphins are killed in Japan, and its completely legal to do that! I 1st saw the news about this on The Insider, they covered the story and included some secret videos that were taken by the Save Japan’s Dolphins organization which aims to rally support of this cause and hopefully eventually putting a stop to this massacre.

The application displays a small box on your profile which includes a small msg. to explain what the app is about and invites you to display this ribbon on your profile:

Hollywood stars like Hayden Panettiere (the Hero’s star) and Matt Damon were among the people that gathered support for this casue, the insder website (link above) has some videos about there visit Japan where the killings take place.

[tags]facebook app, dolphins, Japan’s dolphins[/tags]

In response to Charl’s latest post in which he tagged me! I am obliged by the blogoshpere code of conduct to reply to his tag with my daily reads!

I am going to break them into categories similar to the ones in my pageflakes account and I wont be mentioning everything in there, only the ones that I check daily!

1- Social networking

- Rev2

A great blog for web2.0 news in general, you’ll find lots of news related to social networking there, reading their blog has always been useful and they tend to be among the 1st sites that break a new story.

- Mashable

Simlar to rev2 but focsues on social networking news, great marketplace section too!

2- Social Media

- Muhammadsaleem

Lots of useful posts in the social media category, check it out!

- Pronetadvertising

Good blog but they don’t update on a regular basis, good info though.

3- Search engine and SEO

- SEObook

Aron Wall author’s the blog, updated regularly with lots of useful information.

- SEOmoz

Probably one of the most popular SEO blogs, if your into SEO, this blog is a must read!

- Seobythesea

Another must read if your into SEO, the topics here are less SEO detailed and discuss SEO in the broader term and SEO’s effecs on the internet.

- Searchenginejournal

Good SEO tips and Search engine news.

- Cre8pc blog

Covers SEO and Usability topics. Great read.

4- Marketing

- Marketingpilgrim

Andy Beal’s blog, posts cover general marketing topics, SEO, affiliate marketing and social media.

- Toprankblog

General Online marketing blog

- Aojon

Focuses on affiliate marketing

5- Tech News

- Techcrunch

No need for introductions here, probably one of the most popular tech and web2.0 new blog on the internet. You probably need to check it multiple times per day as the guys over there never stop writing!

- Hitwise blog

Great to stay up to date with latest stats and press releases from Hitwise.

- Comscore

Want to know who’s leading the social networking arena in terms of visitors, page views and member loyalty, press releases from Comscore deliver this news.

- Webpronews Top news

Lots of channels on webpronews, top news is my favorite.

Edit: forgot to tagg! so I guess I am going to tag Khalid and Bob!

Another episode of funny video Monday, there were a bunch of videos for this week that have been rated at the same level at Funnyvideohub, so I took the liberty of selecting one of them, Enjoy!

I’ve partnered with my good friend Charl to create a new blog network other than the network I personally own (currently at 45 blogs), the main difference between the 2 networks is with the new blog network, there will be a blogger dedicated for each blog, writing on a daily basis, myself and Charl wanted to start a project together a long time ago but sadly we didnt find the time to do so.

Charl currently owns around 5 blogs that are doing very well, with our combined efforts were hoping to build 50 strong blogs in the course of 2008 if not more.

So, were currently on the lookout for bloggers in the following topics:

1. Gadgets blog
2. TV shows blog (LOST, prison break)
3. Tech blog (IT news, web2.0, social networks)
4. Football blog
5. Games blog (wii, xbox, PS3)

If your experienced in any of these topics and your available to make at least a post per day, please do contact me, were offering a monthly payment + revenue share. Don’t expect big numbers, were only starting out!

While researching the idea of building a network, I came across the below resources which have been extremely useful, and I share them with you in the hope that you find them useful as well:

• Introduction to blog networks
• 46 Things To Do Before Launching a Blog Network
• How to Launch a blog network
• How to advertise for a blogger

I’ll be posting frequent updates on this new venture, and give out as many tips as possible while we go through the process of building the new network, So stay tuned!

[tags]blog network, launching a blog network, how to launch a blog network[/tags]

Apart from Orkut which was the 1st social network to implement OpenSocial, 3 more social networks now have the Opensocial platform ready for use, they are, hi5, Ning, and Plaxo, you can check them out here:

• Hi5: http://www.hi5networks.com/developer/2007/11/hi5-opensocial.html
• Ning: http://opensocial.ning.com/
• Plaxo: http://pulse.plaxo.com/pulse/gadgets/
• orkut: http://code.google.com/apis/orkut/

Developers now have more money making opportunities besides Facebook, and with more and more social networks implementing OpenSocial, and with the platform itself evolving, the opportunities will only increase, as someone has said (cant remember who), its a good time to be a developer!

I also came across n interesting post that posted data from Rapleaf regarding Facebook and OpenSocial’s user stats, what I found most interesting is that (according to Rapleaf) female users form the biggest percentage of Facebook’s userbase, 63% to 36% to be precise!

[tags]Opensocial, facebook applications[/tags]

In this post I try to round up every monetization method I can think of that can be utalized by bloggers and website owners to further monetize their websites, some of them you may know, others might be new.

1- CPM Ads

Probably one of the oldest and most well know methods of monetizing your website, you get paid an X amount for every 1000 impressions on your site (viewing a banner is an impression)

Some of the more well know CPM ad networks include:

• Value Click Media (min. site requirements, more than 3000 monthly page views, English only, more requirements)
• CasaleMedia (min. site requirements, 10,000 monthly uniques, English and Spanish sites only, more requirements)
• BurstMedia (min. site requirements, 20,000+ monthly page views, English sites only, more requirements)
• Tribal Fusion (min. site requirement, 2000 daily uniques, more requirements)

Some of the lesser know networks include:

• BannerConnect
• MediaShakers

2- CPA Ads

Cost Per Action Ads, you get paid when someone you refer, either by displaying a banner, text link or through an email Ad, buys or signs up for something, it depends on the advertisers, CPA offers pay anywhere between $0.2 to $200 and more, the higher the payout is, the harder it is to get a lead, CPA ads or affiliate marketing is extremely popualr and extremely competetive, especially in certain niches such as ring tones, some of the more popular CPA networks include (some are aff .links):

• Azoogleads One of the more well know and highly respected networks.
• CPAEmpire Excellent support, try to get Doug to be your account manager, he’s very helpful (Affiliate FAQ)
• CPAStorm Good daily updated offers emailed to you
• MaxBounty Lots of incentive offers here, but be careful if you own an incentive site
• Hydranetwork haven’t personally tried them but I’ve heard good think about them
• Neverblueads Haven’t personally tried them
• Millnicmedia Recently applied and things look good so far
• Commission Junction Didnt like them allot, support isnt fast, but lots of offers there

Recommended blogs and forums to read discussing CPA and affiliate marketing:

• CPA Affiliates
• Pepperjamblog
• Super Affiliate Marketing blog
  
• Digital Point Affiliate forums
• WickedFire
• EarnersForum

3- Contextual PPC Ads

PPC Ads or contextual Ads, Google Adsense and Yahoo! Publisher Network (YPN) come to mind when ever you hear this term, a part from those two programs that everyone is familiar with, you can find the follow networks useful (aff. links):

• Clicksor
• Bidvertiser
• Adbrite
• Kontera

4- Popunders & Popunders

Popunders and popups are popular with sites like proxies and online arcades, they usually pay well (either CPM and CPC basis) some of the CPM networks mentioned above offer those Ad options, I usually don’t use them mainly because they piss off users.

Popular networks include:

• Adversal

5- Text link ads

A new monetization method when compared to other older methods like CPM, in this type the advertiser hand picks the website he/she wants to advertise on, price of the link is usually determined by the network it self and it depends on lots of factors (Google PR, link popularity, technorati rank, Alexa rank and others), some of the more well known sites are:

• Text Link Ads
• TNX

6- Blog reviews

If you own a blog and your not making at least some money out of it (I am assuming you do want to make money out of it) then you should definitely read on, it doesn’t matter how popular your blog is, its PR or its technorati rank to make money out of your blog (of course the more of these you have the more you’ll make) but you can definitely make some bucks out of:

• ReviewMe (advertisers selects the blog, ReviewMe recommends a suitable price for your blog depending on its popularity but you can set your own prices)
• Pay Per Post (You select the offers that your blog qualifies for)
• Blogsvertise (Advertisers selects the blog and determines the price, make sure to accept or reject the offer or you’ll account be disabled after some time)

7- Product ads

I placed these companies in their own category for a number of reasons, mainly because they are growing in popularity (thus they deserve their own point) and because they mainly display product ads, they pay on a PPC basis and most of them are contextual (optional in most), they include (aff. links):

• ShoppingAds, displays Amazon products and claims high CPC rate.
• AuctionAds, displays Ebay auctions, originally launched by Shoemoney and later acquired by MediaWhiz.
• WidgetBucks, unlike the 2 other sites, Widgetbucks displays product ads in a nice interactive widget which helps improve CTR
• Ttzmedia, owned by JohnChow

8-Toolbar installs

Lots of the affiliate networks mentioned in point 2 have toolbar offers (you get paid when a member installs the toolbar), howver, websites in this category pay you a recurring fee for users who you refer install/use the toolbar, I havent tried this type of monetization yet but I’ve seen some do well with them. This category includes one website till now. (aff. link)

• Agloco

Thats it, hope you earn more money with one or all of these companies!

[tags]money earners, top money earners, how to earn money, blogger money earners[/tags]

While I extremely liked the new concept behind Facebook’s Beacon, I can’t help but be worried about the privacy issues it raises, with more and more sites eventually use Facebook Beacon, our browsing, purchasing and general internet habits will be recorded and distributed in our news feeds, yes you can turn distributing the news feeds from Facebook Beacon off, but the data has already been sent to Facebook.

This partially answers the questions everyone has been asking, why is Facebook worth that much (15 billion)? consumer data that Facebook is gathering is and will be worth hundreds of millions of dollars if not more.

Others have been raising the same concerns and have even recommended blocking facebook beacon by disabling that javascript in pages that connect to facebook beacon. Which is exactly what I am going to do.

[tags]facebook beacon, privacy issues, privacy concerns[/tags]