Its true! The image below is a link to a web site! Its not to be clicked on though … its an offline link that needs to be photographed from a mobile device to be activated. In this case, it may reside on a billboard, a poster on a telephone pole, an ad in a men’s washroom, or a tile on a train station floor. But make no mistake … it is a link to a website!

Or the Next President of the U.S of A…

Social Media is the perfect medium for spreading a really catchy concept virally. Let’s look at Stephen Colbert for example - The man is a top-notch comedian, who is also (sort of) the Greatest Living American (See proof below:)

To elaborate, Colbert recently ranked #1 on Google search results for the term “Greatest Living American”, which speaks volumes for his fan following of webmasters online. In what is essentially called a “Google Bombing” tactic, webmasters linked to ColbertNation.Com with the anchor text of “Greatest Living American” (Read more about that here)

So Google blew past it’s numbers last week but it seems it still may have a ways to go in monetizing YouTube.

Not so, for Simon Cowell. Yes, that Simon Cowell of American Idol fame.

For those of you who may not know, Cowell is also one of the judges on the UK series Britain’s Got Talent.

Enter Paul Potts. Paul who? Paul Potts. Think Pavarotti. Think phone salesman steps up to microphone, blows audience away with Turandot’s Nessum Dorma, winds up with an instant career faster than you can pour boiling water into a coffee cup and over 40 Million YouTube views. No, seriously, 40 Million YouTube views.

Further to my August 23rd post, “Yellow Pages Goes Social” I talked about how the Yellow Pages Group in Canada had launched their integration of Facebook for users who want to save and share their favorite businesses by using their link function on Facebook.com.

Darby Seiben, Senior Manager - Traffic, Distribution and eProduct Management with YellowPages.ca, posted a great update on his blog letting us know that yellowpages.ca expanded this one step further by integrating the “add to facebook” directly into the search results as well as the business profile page for every business in Canada

It’s safe to say that Digg leads the pack among the popular social news site websites. It’s not my favorite, by I do drop by often, in pursuit of the next best top 10 list.

This week, I’m reviewing Digg, by the numbers:

* Digg started out as an experiment in November 2004 by Kevin Rose, Owen Byrne, Ron Gorodetzky, and Jay Adelson. They wanted a site where “Netizens” could vote on their favorite stories of the day. All currently play an active role in the management of the site.

When I was writing my piece on “Search and the Pareto Principle” (aka the 20/80 Rule) last week, I was playing around with Sphinn (a Digg types news submission and sharing service for those in the SEO/SEM/SMM industry) and found some really interesting information that I thought might be worthwhile sharing.

Here are some of the findings as of yesterday:

1) there were 4371 profiles on Sphinn … that’s a large number of people engaging in seo/sem/smm to one degree or another

“Blogs are far easier to maintain than traditional Web sites, but they still need more effort than most bloggers are willing to supply.

This suggests that blogging is an ephemeral fad, destined to burn itself out in a year or two.”
– “Pyra Labs at the Forefront of Webblogging Phenomenon“, Hiawatha Bray, Boston Globe, March 25, 2002

Today there are hundreds of thousands of blogs — thousands of which are influential in one way or another. Top blogs like TechMeme, Engadget, Lifehacker, TechCrunch, and many others, are widely popular and influential. Other blogs like The Simple Dollar or Everyday Digital Scrapbooking are influential in a niche.

According to a recent survey by Prospero Technologies, nearly 9 in 10 marketers already using social media said they plan to “increase” or “increase significantly” their spending.

Marketers were asked.

Prospero’s 2007 Social Media Survey found 30 percent of online marketers who use social media plan to “spend significantly more on social-media applications in 2008″, while an additional 58 percent also plan to “increase” spending, though not “significantly.”

Some 59 percent of respondents reported that social media performance in 2007 met or exceeded their marketing objectives. Survey participants included major brands from a variety of industries, including Media, Education, Financial Services and Health.

The Pareto Principle, also known as the 20/80 Rule, is an interesting phenonenum that has many implications for those practicing search and social media. The concept is losely defined as; for many events, 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Its a truism so to speak, though its the rough concept that is important and not the absolute numbers. Some real life examples of this concept in action are:
a) in general, 80% of a hockey teams goals, will come from 20% of the players
b) often 80% of a company’s revenues will come from 20% of its clients
c) 80% of a country’s wealth will be held by 20% of the population
d) 80% of the postings on Spinn/Digg, etc. will be by 20% of the total number of posters
e) 80% of most tasks can be completed in 20% of the time

According to a new study from the media advisory firm, Heernet Ventures, the US print and online yellow pages market should reach revenues of US$18.2 billion by 2012, . The study forecasts market growth from an estimated US$16.95 billion in 2007 to US$ 18.21 billion in 2012. While the local print market will decline by -1.5%, online yellow pages revenues will grow by 26.7%, and that doesn’t account for mobile search revenues.