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Lonelygirl15, the pseudo video diary that became a YouTube phenomenon last year, has signed a major product placement deal
with Hershey for its Icebreakers Sours Gum brand, according to MediaWeek.   In a video posted on March 20 on the official
Lonelygirl site, Lg15.com, the show’s main character – Bree – is seen offering her friends a piece of Icebreakers gum, and a
close-up of the product is shown. The sponsored episode of the scripted teen drama is slated to eventually be featured on
YouTube and other video-sharing sites in the near future.  This level of product integration marks one of the more sophisticated
examples of branded entertainment to emerge from the rapidly evolving world of amateur-created online video. The Dallas,
Texas-based agency TracyLocke initiated the deal. Ad sales were handled directly by the agents from Creative Artists Agency
who represent the Lonelygirl creators.  “Deals like this are good for the community – they help us pay our operating expenses,
which has been an ongoing struggle,” said Greg Goodfried, Lonelygirl15 co-creator and winner of Hive’s name of the week

Just been totally ‘cutomer serviced’ by Be Broadband.
The sign up process is very slick, design, tone and style informative but with personality – which is not easy when you’re talking about MAC migration numbers and ADSL configuration. The only minor criticism would be the way they refer to customer care reporting – they talk in terms of ‘tickets’. Those in the industry know what a ticket is but Joe Punter might think he’s been entered in to the lottery or something. Now let’s see how efficiently the service provision goes…

Very neat model here for flash games lovers and developers alike. http://www.kongregate.com/
Developer uploads game and receives kick back on ad revenue. This level varies depending on exclusivity. Players and developers also receive points for MGM or high fun ratings – points totals enter people in to ad-hoc competitions to win cash

not much new in this argument but worth a quick peruse.

http://adage.com/article?article_id=115712

Jolly useful collection of stats regarding UK digital usage, courtesy of those nice people at i-level

http://www.i-level.com/resource-centre/statistics.php

http://www.alanoutten.com/contact.html

organic Search Rank determined by Text Content (On Page Optimisation) and Context (links in and out).

Few useful resources/tests to explore your current SEO position and areas to improve.

• Google Page Rank – higher the rank the higher traffic/ popularity
• InURL search – in google search box type ‘link:www.yourwebsite.com’ to see how many inward links
• https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/ – Yahoo’s Link explorer
• http://www.abakus-internet-marketing.de/tools/topword.html – to evaluate key word density useful for on page optimisation
• www.wordtracker.com – identifies suitable key words, volumes and competiveness Or Google Keyword generator in AdWords shows banded volume and competitiveness
• http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/ – generates up to 100 keywords

Note on meta data – care not to key word stuff too much, good to get meta desription right – aim for a unique summary of your site’s content, with a call to action – see below. But care- as keywords no longer as significant as they used to be, but still worth getting it right. Look at say page source on Admiral.com

For info on Link Building – good place to start is http://www.linkingmatters.com/

Just read excerpts from March 02 edition of Wired and it felt like bumping in to an old school friend. Still like the graphics and art direction, still manages to pull the odd article out the bag with a genuinely interesting piece. Although the web site is a little difficult to follow when it comes to reading print articles (protecting their dead wood revenues no doubt).
‘Epic History of Snack Culture’ in March’s edition is worth a quick look Goes on to talk about Snack music, Snack Culture…but wraps up nicely saying now everything has been cut up in to bite size chunks for the nano second attention span of today’s consumer…”we have more snacks now only because the menu itself has gotten longer”

Full’ish article here http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/snack.html

Thought it would be useful to compile a list of head hunters, specialisms.
Christian & Timbers – CEO/COO etc…
Kendall Tarrant – started in agency worl but now pretty much full service, and international

Heidrick & Struggles – CEO/COO big dogs

http://www.renovatapartners.com/

Straight forward and logical argument for when wikis work and fail. In essence, wikis need to be written by specialists/committed writers, writing about a specific activity “So don’t ask all web surfers to write a novel – ask fishing enthusiasts to write a novel about fishing….In other words, to paraphrase Chairman Mao: let a thousand walled gardens bloom. Just make sure they’re not allowed to run riot on each others’ turf” Evidenced this myself recently having seen the wiki put together by players of Perplex City alternate reality game. That’s dedication! Perplex City wiki here
Full article from Business 2.0 here
[Thanks Jane for pointing this out]