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How to use video to expand your business in a YouTube world

What are the rules for making effective online videos? How do you get viewers from a video? Who are the role models to examine?
The Wall Street Journal offers up answers in Lights! Camera! Sales! How to use video to expand your business in a YouTube world. The key takeaways:

Be Funny
Tap Into Current [...]

Did Yahoo Stores lose $20 million in one day?

2007 is a turning point for “Cyber Monday” — the year this invented concept turned from obscure marketing gimmick to industry rallying cry. The best part is that customers seem to be playing along.
Every rose has its thorn, though… and this year, perhaps the most dramatic prick happened to Yahoo Stores. Yahoo Stores [...]

Secret Strategies for Viral Video

“Viral video” is the talk of e-commerce these days; everyone’s wondering if they could be the next Will It Blend phemon. In today’s crowded media landscape, though, it’s easier said than done.
That’s why there’s such a storm around a recent TechCrunch post called The Secret Strategies Behind Many Viral Videos. In it, a [...]

Slow Servers on Cyber Monday

According to Keynote Systems (as reported in the WSJ), up to a third of retail websites are seeing major slowdowns. Some sites are 400% slower under heavy customer traffic. Sears.com actually locked out customers for a big chunk of Friday!
No retailer wants to “lock the doors” on customers. Site uptime is [...]

Cisco Telepresence Magic

Cisco and HP are aggressively pushing “telepresence” videoconferencing. It’s pretty amazing how this distant cousin of online video is pushing the envelope of communications. It’s not hard to imagine a future where a teleconference is almost as good as an in-person meeting, except for the handshake at the end.
Today, these systems cost $200,000 [...]

What is “professional quality” video worth?

Everyone knows that higher production values are worth something. Of course, the rise of popular “two kids with a camcorder” video shows that it’s not the only important factor. So the question is, how important is professional quality production, when it comes to online video?
Here’s a neat way to figure out the answer. [...]

the Rackspace outage — could it happen to you?

The blogosphere is abuzz over Rackspace’s major outage last night. Apparently this is the first major outage in many years for Rackspace, a data center provider famous for its promise of “100% uptime” and “fanatical support”. Lots of Internet services pay the Rackspace premium (typically 2x the cost of competitors) for that assurance.
Last [...]

Online Video: it’s not just for the kids

The YouTube phenomenon continues to capture the attention of marketers who want to capture the younger demographics. Even we sometimes refer to the “YouTube generation”, assuming that online video is an under-25 pursuit. How accurate is that assumption?
At the Streaming Media conference in San Jose this week, Mary Hodder of Dabble pointed out [...]