The Week in Review

Facebook and CrowdStar Make a Credits Deal

CrowdStar, a social game developer, just locked themselves into a five-year deal to use Facebook’s Credits as its exclusive paid virtual currency. Since it began using Credits in December, its average revenue per user has jumped up 50 percent. The bigger question this begs is how Facebook will handle requiring the use of Credits? (Inside Facebook)

YouTube Gets You Traffic for Cheap

The average bid for YouTube ads was $0.28, versus $2.13 for Google AdWords in this experiment. YouTube ads are a very cheap way to get traffic, but they require relevant videos in your channel. Also, there are very apparent campaign management limitations. (Search Engine Journal)

V.Reader: An E-Reader for Kids

E-readers are really taking off, aren’t they? V.Tech unveiled its V.Reader this week for early readers. (NYTimes.com)

Short Professional Videos Rival TV Shows

According to a recent study from Metacafe and Frank N. Magid Associates, 31 percent of respondents said they find short professional online videos equally or more entertaining than full-length TV shows on a television. Another key finding was that more than 55 percent of online video viewers saw online video ads as equally or more acceptable than TV ads. (Marketwire)

Five Leading-Edge Mobile Companies

Monotype Imaging, Gorilla Glass, ARM Architecture, Ericsson and OmniVision are five companies that are doing some pretty great things in the mobile realm. (Mashable)

Flash and Rich Media Ads Account for 40% of Display Ad Impressions

According to recent numbers from comScore, 40.3 percent of online display ad impressions in the U.S. were of the flash/rich media variety, while 59.6 percent were standard GIF/JPEG and 42.4 percent were JPEG. Banners, rectangles, non-standard and buttons were the most popular display ad sizes. (comScore)

Nearly Three-Quarters of Online Retailers Are Mobile-Ready

A survey conducted by Forrester Research and Shop.org shows that 74 percent of online retailers already have a mobile strategy or are developing one. On average, respondents expect to spend $170,000 each on their mobile sites in 2010. (Shop.org)

Guide to Link Building via Commenting on Blogs

The benefits of blog-commenting links are clear: traffic, a boost to your PageRank and better SERP placements. How to achieve this well, however, is a whole other topic. The key is the golden rule of blog commenting: “Make your comment valuable to the post and the discussion.” (Search Engine Journal)

Why Do We Check In?

Foursquare and Gowalla are popular, but why? Different people have different reasons – among them, serendipitous meetings with friends, winning a game and as a way to track your personal history. (ReadWriteWeb)

Can RIM Be Sexy Again?

While Apple and Google forge ahead with appealing consumer devices, RIM seems to be falling behind. Here’s a five-point marketing plan for RIM to get back on track. While the plan isn’t the most feasible of presentations, it is interesting. The first point? Leverage Obama and release a “Barackberry.” (TechCrunch)

Seven Tactics for Facebook Marketers

Here are seven actionable tactics for Facebook marketers, including publishing to create interactions with/among your fans, giving people a reason to join and measuring your Facebook marketing initiatives and their impact on your goals. (ClickZ)

Windows 8 Targeting Apple?

It hardly seems like Windows 7 has left Microsoft’s stable, but there are already screenshots and rumors of Windows 8. One of the hottest points of discussion is the pending operating system’s apparent desire to unleash its own application store. (CNET)

Google Me: The End of Facebook?

Excuse the overly dramatic headline, but taken to the furthest extent, this is what the latest buzz about Google’s social media plans begs us to ask. Kevin Rose, co-founder of Digg, tweeted about “Google Me,” a “facebook competitor” that will be launched very soon, according to a “very credible source.” What it might look like is all conjecture at this point but whatever the cast, it seems likely that Google’s dog in the fight might end up looking like a puppy compared to the pit bull that Facebook has become. (PC World)

More Spectrum for Wireless

President Obama is heading a plan to introduce another 500 MHz of spectrum for wireless data services, citing the benefits for creating innovative businesses, providing cost-effective broadband connections in rural areas and increasing productivity, among other things. The proposal still has a ways to go before having any real impact on the country, but at least it’s a start. (Wired.com)

Freshness or Quality?

Matt Cutts discusses the importance of freshness vs. quality in a short video. While quality does trump frequency, the latter will keep readers coming back. He points to his own blog as an example. (WebProNews)

10 Tips for Advertising on Facebook

Making sure your ad text isn’t annoying, finding a relevant and attractive image for your ad and using Facebook’s ad estimator to help set bids are three of the 10 tips for advertising on Facebook in this post. (PPCHero)

Facebook: A Threat to Google?

Is Facebook’s toe-dipping entrance into search, along with Bing, a clarion horn signaling the demise of Google? Nope. Does Facebook pose a threat worth monitoring in the display advertising space? Probably. (CNET, MediaPost)

XXX

ICANN has given its nod of approval for a .xxx top-level domain. This seems to indicate the beginning of the end for a long, hard-fought battle to get this TLD through. One estimate pegs yearly sales to be around $30 million. The registry that would sell the TLD vows to set up a nonprofit initiative that would donate $10 from the sale of each site to child protection causes. (CNET)

IAB’s New Guidelines for Ad Networks and Exchanges

Among the IAB’s new guidelines are calls for universally defined content categories to be presented to advertisers, rating content for audience segments and the outlining of data disclosure terms for off-site behavioral targeting and third-party data. (ClickZ)

Five Reasons Why Your Startup Needs an API

Why should an API be just as crucial to have as a coffee maker or beer on Fridays? It’s good BizDev 2.0, it builds a strong developer ecosystem and they make mashups, for a few things. (ReadWriteWeb)

Saying No to Google and Yes to Clicker via Twitter

Read about one recent Harvard graduate who turned his back on an offer from Google and took a job at Clicker, thanks to a tweet. (Derek Flanzraich’s Blog)

Personalized SEO

How should you handle the rise of personalized search, from an SEO perspective? Demographics, quality content and freshness are among the key factors for future-proofing yourself. Working on engagement strategies, not forgetting about Android and not discounting PPC efficacy are also important. (Search Engine Journal)

What Developers Think of iOS and Android

According to Appcelerator’s latest survey results, 90 percent of developers are interested in developing for the iPhone, followed by 84 percent for the iPad (up from 53 percent in March), 81 percent for Android phones and 62 percent for Android tablets. Though Apple is favored today, developers seem to think Android has some serious long-term viability. (Mashable)

Google’s Love for Speed

Urs Holzle, senior vice president of operation at Google, shared some insights at the O’Reilly Velocity 2010 conference on Wednesday. Among his points were that “Speed matters,” Chrome is aiming to push the Web forward (not take 100 percent of the market) and a warning that slow sites will indeed drop down in the rankings. (Data Center Knowledge)

14.6 Billion Videos Viewed on YouTube

The latest figures from comScore show that YouTube streamed an all-time high of 14.6 billion videos during May, and broke through the ceiling of 100 videos per viewer for the first time. Meanwhile, tremor Media led all video ad networks with a potential reach of 56.2 percent, followed by ScanScout Network with 54.3 percent. (comScore)

E-Mail is Better than Social Networks for 5 Reasons

Familiarity, manageability, trust and privacy, relevancy and exclusivity are five reasons why e-mail is a more popular channel for brand interaction than social networks, according to ExactTarget and CoTweet. (MarketingCharts)

Is E-Mail Going Away, as Facebook Claims?

Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, made the assertion that e-mail is “probably going away.” Her reasoning is based on the premise that to know what will stick tomorrow, you have to look at what teenagers are doing today, and with just 11 percent of teens e-mailing daily – well, you get the idea. The funny thing is that e-mail is such a crucial part of Facebook’s success and usability. Besides the weight of the operative word “daily” in Sandberg’s prediction (based on data from Pew Internet) and the logic of looking to teens as indicators of the future, e-mail’s longevity as a record-keeping medium is also important to consider, according to one managing director at a private equity and VC firm. (WebProNews, peHUB)

E-Mail List Growth: 3 Rules

Getting people to sign up for e-mail promotions and newsletters is much more difficult than it was about 10 years ago. Three rules for list growth in this rougher environment are overcoming hesitation, honoring your side of the economic exchange and following the golden rule. (MediaPost)

Linker: Match.com for Search Marketers

Eightfold Logic’s Linker was made available yesterday. It’s essentially a social marketplace for link building – a Match.com for SEO people. (TechCrunch)

Mobile Payments in the Eyes of Paythru

The managing director of mobile payment service Paythru discusses his company, the key to making mobile payments a smooth experience for customers and whether or not we’re reaching a tipping point for mobile commerce. (Econsultancy)

Bing’s Entertainment Power Play

Bing unveiled its massive entertainment vertical, Bing Entertainment. The offering gathers music, movies, TV and games in one attractive spot. While this is a play at taking market share away from Google, consumers should gladly welcome this platform. (Mashable)

Google Ad News

Google just made it a bit easier to get all of your advertising news in one place: Google Ad News. The service is powered by Google News and allows users to subscribe to feeds, among other things. (Inside AdWords)