As online ads revenues continue to weaken, impression based models are taking a beating. Businesses continue to cut costs and the last thing they need is to advertise without any tangible returns.

Thinking fast on their feet, AdBrite is converting to a pay per click model. This is really where internet beats traditional media hands down. The ability to measure the succcess of an advertising campaign, which by and large is very subjective.  I would love to know my that 1 dollar was well spent getting some dude to the “purchase-this” page of my app. 

Fast forward time, it’s about time that online advertising starts to evolve. We netizens are so constantly bombarded by imprressions that it barely makes “an impresssion” anymore. 2 great new concepts that come to mind are “click stream” and “peer push”.  Click stream being very technology driven and by tracking historical data, we are able to “project” the future and place/recommend products to the right people.  Peer pushing is a form of traditional marketing but more often than not implemented as a by-product rather than design. Small businesses especially know the value of peer pushing because nothing beats a referral from a happy customer. Someone vouching for your business will always carry more weight than yourself. Companies like yelp are doing peer reviews, which is an example of this. THeres alot more potential to peer pushing than meets the eye.

Online ad revenue for the top US players in online advertising; Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL has stopped in its tracks for Q3 of 2008. Less money for them means less money to be dispersed to bloggers and other ad-revenue based websites. Numbers wise, online ad growth from Q3/Q4 2007 was recorded at 12%, where as Q2/Q3 2008 was <1%.

 We all know the economic situation has affected the US badly and these are some of its effects. What we are seeing now will lead a trickling or ripple effect as dependencies across borders are starting to feel some of that weight bearing down.

I’m a big fan of the google empire of products. Docs/Sites/Forms/Gmail/Gtalk etc. I’m sure alot of you who use gmail know that you can embed Gtalk on the sidebar. Well now you can embed other cool apps too.

Google recently opened up APIs to developers and these are one of the first to jump onboard. Remember the milk is a cool app for you to manage tasks. Its pretty flexible for both casual users (free) or advanced scheduling features ($25/year). Instructions to add it to your sidebar available here. You DO have to sign up for the service though. I just use it casually, keeping up to date with appointments and items that i need to follow up on etc. Like a postit note attached to my gmail. 

Another cool app i added is google docs. I use them ALOT for presentations and just demo’ing stuff on the go. Google forms are very useful as well. Drawback on goog docs is that Its quite lightweight, its useful 99% of the time but it isnt a full fledged MS-word/excel with macros etc. Anyway linking it to gmail was great for me cause I’m perpetually on it.

Instructions to add apps:

1) Sign in to gmail
2) go to Settings > Labs
3) Select the cool apps you want to integrate. There are quite a few - change your sidebar to the right, etc.
4) Check Enable. Click Save

Enjoy

The FBFund started receiving applications August 2008 and receive 600 applications. 25 of these received $25K from Facebook. The real excitement is that the FBFund is divided into 2 stages, and Stage 2 is only open for developers who have won Stage 1.  Price money for Stage 2? a cool $250K.

I also wanted to point out that an app competition like the FBFund is really not comparable to a business plan competition. The ability to generate revenue and be self sustainable is only 1 out of 7 equally weighted criteria. Anyway, here goes the list of finalists: (also available here) 

• BarTab - “Send a drink to a friend, with Facebook! BarTab allows users to send real drinks to each other for only $1. Drinks are redeemed through the user’s cell phone at partnered bars and restaurants.”
• Black Drumm -”Black Drumm develops applications that helps users organize events with friends. Whether it is going to a local concert, or planning a trek on Kilimanjaro, the application seamlessly coordinates offline activities; no more chains of emails to sort through, or spreadsheets to maintain.”
• Bottle Rocket - “Bottle Rocket helps users pick the perfect bottle of wine. Users can compare wines with friends on Facebook or on the Bottle Rocket iPhone application. Bottle Rocket then analyzes the wines users have liked with ratings from their friends to make informed recommendations.”
• Check My Campus - “Check My Campus makes the college search process easier, better and more fun. The application allows current college students to share photos and videos about life on their campuses, giving high schoolers an inside look at what real life is like at these different schools.”
• Daikon - “Daikon enables users to build powerful applications on the Facebook platform without writing a single line of code. Daikon produces applications that focus on increasing the enjoyment and productivity of the Facebook experience.”
• Faithfeed - “FaithFeed is an application where users can share about their journey of faith with friends. Through the application, users can share praises, prayer requests, resolutions and the details of what God is teaching them. Users can also keep each other accountable and support each other throughout the week.”
• Good Call Sports LLC - “Good Call Football is an app developed by Good Call Sports that allows users to predict each offensive play during a televised football game, in real time, and compete nationwide based on the accuracy of their predictions.”
• GroupCard - “GroupCard lets users rally their friends to sign the same printable online card to celebrate any occassion. Each friend can add a message, upload photos or audio, and even make a gift contribution. GroupCard started at Stanford, and is already used by thousands of groups worldwide.”
• HitGrab - “MouseHunt, a HitGrab creation, is a game of epic proportions. Players are hunters, hired by the king to trap mice that infest his kingdom. For each mouse caught, users will find a reward, bringing them closer to being the best MouseHunter in the land.”
• Kontagent - “Kontagent is the leading viral analytics platform for social network application developers. Kontagent analytics provides deep social data visualization and analysis that delivers actionable insights delivered via a hosted, on-demand service.”
• Koofers - “Koofers helps students create and share information that helps with classes. Users can share old tests, quizzes, and study guides; view current and past grade breakdown and average GPA for every class and professor; review professors and read ratings before signing up for new classes, and get help from other students in the same class.”
• Newsbrane - “Newsbrane recommends news stories and other online content to users based on their interests. Vote items up and down and Newsbrane learns the stories a user wants to see.”
• Party Buzz - “Party Buzz is your source of information for what’s happening offline amongst your friends. Check out your friend’s events, discuss weekend plans, and find the best parties. Bonus feature: for each event check the median age, guy-to-girl ratio, number of singles, and more!”
• Pongr - “Pongr is a mobile price comparison service that lets you check prices online and at nearby stores. While shopping, users can share items with their Facebook friends. Pongr mobile apps, texting, and image recognition makes bargain shopping fun!”
• ProfessionalProfile - “Professional Profile leverages a user’s existing social connections into a professional network.”
• RealGifts - “RealGifts is a social gifting application that allows users to send their friends real, tangible gifts in the mail, without needing to know their friends’ delivery address.”
• Socialfly - “Be twice the friend in half the time! Socialfly lets users write their own notes about people, set reminders to talk to friends, and plan fun activities together. Socialfly will soon be available on both Facebook and the iPhone.”
• Teach the People - “Teach the People is an open educational platform. Teachers get the tools to share their expertise, allowing their knowledge to go viral, attract an audience, and be monetized effectively. Students get access to high quality, low cost education in Facebook’s social environment.”
• The Game Creators - “The Game Creators built Social Arcade, an application which users get creative and design their own game from shoot-’em-ups to platformers to racing games and more. Users can give friends the gift of a game and even personalize it.”
• TrailBehind - “TrailBehind helps users find great places to hike. Avid hikers can explore maps, plan trips, log their travels, and work together to build better maps of the outdoors.”
• Twenty20 Cricket - “Twenty20 Cricket was created for cricket fanatics around the world to connect and share their passion via an exciting online cricket manager game. Users compete to be the best team by training their players, and then challenging their friends and other team managers!”
• vDream Racing - “vDream would be Henry Ford’s favorite application on Facebook. vDream offers users access to real cars, real parts, real performance specs, and the ability to connect and compete with other car enthusiasts.”
• WedSnap - “WedSnap created Weddingbook, a social network on Facebook for those preparing for a wedding. Brides and grooms meet on Weddingbook to get advice, support, and inspiration during their engagement and wedding planning process.”
• Wildfire - “Wildfire enables consumers to discover, share and engage with interactive promotions like contests, sweepstakes and give-aways and enables companies to easily create their own attractive, branded promotions that are automatically integrated with Facebook’s social features.”

Pay you to learn from Google’s best. What are you waiting for? sign up! 

When: Tuesday October 28th, 2008 1:00PM-10PM

Where: Singapore Management University

What: Google will be holding a DevFest Singapore. Join us for a day of coding and fun, where we’ll cover topics ranging from OpenSocial & App Engine to YouTube & the Google Maps API.

Who: You! Developers. Any developers who are keen with Open Social, familair with APIs, have your own developement house. Only 50 developers in Malaysia will be selected for this event.**

To register or find out more, visit here

* subsidy of travelling and accomodation will be reimbursed by  E27 up a maximum amount of S$125. Please provide relevant copies of reciepts. Repayment process will take 4 - 5 weeks.

** Selections are done by MYE and E27 . It will be based on experience and motivation of the developer.

A bungled con-job by CEO Paul Thomas Johnson, 40, and CFO Parrish Jones, 39. Both tried to make up numbers to attract venture capital. In dark times like these i suppose a shitty company needs all the made up numbers they could possibly get. Here is what they “faked”

2006, true $500K, false $4M
2007, true $1.4M, false $6.2M
2008, true $1.7M, false $5.2M

The false revenue numbers were used to attract approximately $50 million in investment, which includes about $19 million from Ignition, a VC firm based in Washington. 

I take this particularly personally because these fruitcakes ruin the market for everyone else. If my startup is ever asked to produce “certified true copies” or go through an audit, i will know to curse this 2 morons to hell. THe very least they could do is not get caught. flipping incompetent twits.

GEW or Global Entrepreneurship Week is a week long celebration of entrepreneurship with events.
visit www.gewmalaysia.com for more details. YOU can participate in the activities as a Partner or an Attendee, so check it out.

It is also the reason why i’ve not been blogging recently because ive been busy as hell helping them out.  It’s been an honor to work with Dash, Vivian and Hui Sen. It’s not often you find people so highly motivated to succeeed at what they do, it inspires motivation in myself as well. Props to you guys.

Read Dash’s blog post about our work on the website here.

(creepy photo from Linda Gavin’s photostream on Flickr, its a little out of date, but im sure the sentiments above are echoed by the ones who got laid off) 

This is the latest in a series of revamping measures taken on by ebay. Some of you might have heard or are aware of ebays changes to it’s marketplace regulations designed to bring in more people to the ebay trading platform (but pissed off some existing ones). Anyway, now it’s gone internal. These 1600 jobs (1000 of these were fulltime employees) come from all over the world including their san jose HQ. They are expecting about $80M in costs to let these guys go and about $150M in cost savings every year. sure they are.. 

They claim to want to use the cash saved to reinvest in growth areas like Paypal, which they recently bolstered their position with an aquisition of a company called www.billmelater.com. Billmelater consolidates your shopping expenses and sends you a bill at the end of the month. Its kinda cool really. but another story for another time.