Leadpile’s Blog

Google was not happy with dominating the internet search world, so now they are looking at getting a piece of the pie with computer operating systems. NPR is reporting, “The research and development for the browser will feed directly into Chrome OS, which will be a free, open-source project designed to get people onto the Web quickly. Open source means any programmer can make changes to it.” Initially this is going to be more of a focus on netbooks, but I am sure if there is any success with this new operating system they will be rolling it out on an even larger scale. The new operating system will be called Google Chrome OS. So, it looks like Windows and Mac OS are going to potentially see some competition, however Leadpile is still devoted to Apple!

In recent news it was announced that there was a widespread cyber attack that hit dozens of government websites, and some nongovernment websites. While Treasury Department and Federal Trade Commission Web sites were shut down by the software attack, which lasted for days over the holiday weekend, others such as the Pentagon and the White House were able to fend it off with little disruption. These sort of cyber attacks are known as “denial of service” attacks. Websites are inidated with so much internet traffic that they are forced to be taken offline. It is not confirmed that this is 100% related to North Korea, however fingers are being pointed their way. This brings up the question about security on the internet and also with our government agencies. How can occurances like this be prevented with all the sophistication of these sort of hackers? One thing I do know is that the internet is a revolving “monster” that all agencies and companies need to constantly be upgrading their systems to keep protected.

There has been alot of Leadpile posts about payday loans, and the various states implementing legislation on payday loans. California appears to be the next state to look at doing this. A recent article in Merced Sunstar points out that bill 377 is going through the legislature to attempt to regulate payday loans, however it does not have any rate cap incorporated into this bill. So, will this bill have enough ammunition for the legislature to see the need to pass it? Only time will tell.

Leadpile will keep an eye on this most recent payday loan news, and see what happens in the state of California (if anything at all).

Can it really be? Facebook to make billions within the next 5 years? Reuters is reporting that one of Facebook’s board members is predicting this. It seems that promoting more advertising, to really capitalize on the massive amounts of traffic frequenting the social networking site, is key. 225+ million users are on the site, so there has got to be some way to monetize this site to maybe earn these billions that are being predicted. However, will it follow the trends of Twitter where there are massive amounts of traffic not being capitalized on yet? I think the future of social networking really depends on these sites figuring out an effective way to capitalize on the users on their sites. What way(s) of monetizing the social networking site(s) will work best? What are the demographics of the Facebook? Who is coming and going on the site?
The users on Facebook seem to be a lot more diverse than the other large social networking site (myspace.com). However, where did myspace go wrong………. or did they NOT go wrong? They dominated the net just a few years ago, yet times seemed to have changed when the site became more of an advertising site than a place for people to network. Let’s keep an eye on Facebook and see if they stay on the right path to really do the right thing for their network… AND earn this BILLIONS of revenue! Maybe Facebook should contact Leadpile to do some lead generation!

Is there really a good time to capture email addresses and other secure information from consumers that are visiting your website(s)? Bizreport.com thinks there is an optimal time to get the consumer to provide their email addresses, when doing their online shopping (or other online activities). So, when is an ideal time to capture this sort of information from the consumer?? The report says, “At the highest engagement level, and most times this is at the point of purchase or while consumers are beginning to shop your site. .” Why is this? Capturing this sort of information creates more customer loyalty. If you want the customers to come back to your site, or eventually react to future emails you send them, they have to trust you and the site. The report also found that since mobile marketing (SMS marketing)is so popular right now, capturing their email addresses to send them mobile updates is something a lot of consumers are open to.
These sort of rules also apply to other online experiences, such as lead generation. For instance, Leadpile captures email addresses on all it’s leads, however there are some lead types such as payday loan and auto finance where additional secure information is captured. Capturing this information at the right time is certainly key to the trust factor with the consumer submitting online requests for things such as loans.

It seems Microsoft sees some “good” in Twitter because it is incorporating Twitter messages into the Bing search results. They will be indexing some of the more popular “Tweeters” who have some good followers and tweets. I guess Twitter is not a one hit wonder that is just going to go away. The realtime updates of what people are doing, and talking about, is truly something everyone is trying to get a piece of. These realtime search results are going to be displayed in a separate area of the Bing results page, so people can stay in touch with the Twitter world.
You really can’t blame Microsoft for trying to capitalize on all this traffic going to Twitter. They have some nice competition in the search engine world with Google, and probably want to do anything in their power to make the new Bing search engine work, and work like no other search engine. Score for Microsoft!

Some very interesting information regarding women and what they prefer. Bizreport.com study finds that women of different age ranges are either on their PCs or their mobile phones more so than the other. This information is very important for Leadpile publishers because knowing your demographics and how to create sites effectively, will ultimately make or break your success with marketing. The study finds that women under the age of 25 tend to be more on their mobile phones, versus on the PC. Whereas women over the age of 40 tend to be more on their PCs. This means that mobile content types of sites should really be geared towards the younger age women, where the web based sites should really target the older women. If these two groups of women are spending their time on one or the other, really how does this affect publishers wanting to generate leads?
This really points out a few different things to pay attention to if you want to effectively market to women. If you are looking for various sources of advertising you might tend to be more effective with younger women if you are using things such as social networking, SMS marketing or Google Adsense on mobile applications. Your target audience would be younger and you would want to choose lead types that would work well with this demographic. However, if you are wanting to target a product/service to older women utilizing the traditional web would be the way to go.
This study really makes sense in the fact that the younger and younger generation will adapt to what is the most up to date technology, where older women are more comfortable in the PC world that they were brought up in. My guess would be if this study had included women over the age of 60, that they would tend to not have much involvement on the internet, and other sources of advertising would work better with them. Understanding what is going on with different demographics is very important as a publisher, because if you are not marketing effectively you waste time and advertising dollars. Studies such as this one is something to pay attention to and really try and understand, so we all can become effective in marketing our products and services to the right target market.