Yahoo!360 Social Networking is closing
Saturday, May 30th, 2009
This year 2009, Yahoo decides to shut down a couple of their services such as Yahoo Briefcase and Yahoo Geocities. It came to as no surprise that they’ll pull a plug also on their Yahoo!360 Social Networking as cost cutting measures. To be blunt, their social networking service lacks the technical bells and whistles that users usually favors. They would have a bit of success had they integrated that in the yahoo profile in the first place. Sad to say that yahoo is beginning to lose grip on their innovative vision.
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Reasons why Yahoo 360 fails
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As a user, I’m really wary of using any services from yahoo because of their company’s instability. Good thing that I’ve already moved on to Google’s services.
Dear Yahoo! 360° customer,
To read this in Vietnamese, please use the link at the bottom of the message.
We will be officially closing Yahoo! 360° on July 13, 2009, to focus our efforts on making your new profile on Yahoo! the place where you connect with the people who matter to you most. As a result, you will need to move your 360° information to your new profile before this date. After July 12, 2009, your content on Yahoo! 360° will no longer be accessible. Here are some details to guide you through this transition.
What you need to move to your new profile
Your 360° information will not be automatically transferred to your new profile on Yahoo!. To move your profile photo, nickname, and any personal status messages, you’ll need to first save or download them before July 13, 2009. Once you’ve saved this information, you can later upload it to your new profile. Be sure to head over to your new profile soon so you can make it look just the way you want.What to do with your blog
Be sure to take your blog with you as part of this transition process. To help, we’ve built a blogging tool for you in your new profile on Yahoo!. We’ve made the move easy; it takes just one click to take your posts with you. If you’d prefer to take your blog to a different website instead, you can download an archive of your posts and transfer them to your new blog space. Click here to read more about your blogging options.Some content will not be supported in your new profile
Please note that your new profile will not allow mature content. Also, you will not be able to take the following with you to your new profile: your 360° inbox, testimonials, friend categories, local reviews, RSS feeds, tags, or custom theme. If you want to retain any of this material, we strongly recommend that you return to your pages and download it before July 13, 2009.Your privacy settings are retained
Your privacy is important to us. Both your new profile and your blog contents will be set to “private”. This means unless you change the setting, you will be the only one able to see your profile.To help you through this transition, we’ve compiled a list of the most frequently asked questions and resources here.
Thank you for using Yahoo! 360°. We look forward to seeing you in your new profile on Yahoo!.
The Yahoo! Profile Team
Tags: yahoo 360 shuts down
Posted in Goblin News | No Comments »Adsense Interest Based ads – Good or Bad?
Tuesday, March 24th, 2009I got this curious email from google adsense one day. Incidentally I was wondering why the sudden drop of my adsense earnings. Probably I was just having a bad day.
Hi,
We’re writing to let you know about the upcoming launch of interest-based advertising, which will require you to review and make any necessary changes to your site’s privacy policies. You’ll also see some new options on your Account Settings page.
Interest-based advertising will allow advertisers to show ads based on a user’s previous interactions with them, such as visits to advertiser website and also to reach users based on their interests (e.g. “sports enthusiast”). To develop interest categories, we will recognize the types of web pages users visit throughout the Google content network. As an example, if they visit a number of sports pages, we will add them to the “sports enthusiast” interest category. To learn more about your associated account settings, please visit the AdSense Help Center at http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=20310.
Here I was working my bum off optimizing my ad placement to make the ads appear relevant to my content. Then out of the blue Google comes up with this brillant idea that will make ads irrelevant to the content.
How To Opt out/Disable Interest-based Ads
Upon logging in to your adsense account, look for the Interest-based Ads Preference. By default the Interest-based Ads were enabled. However it was discussed at the forums, despite disabling it, there’s no guarantee that google will stop serving interest based ads.
Who will be at disadvantage?
Specialized niched sites would be greatly affected the most and the Made for adsense sites. Niched sites rely greatly on search engine traffic since they target only one topic. For instance you run a site that’s all about medieval costumes. Then a surfer who previously browsed swimsuit would see that the ads on your site would be about swimwear. So the surfer might not click on the ads since what she wants is something related to what she’s looking for like medieval costumes.
Who will benefit the most at Interest based ads?
High Traffic News sites, Youtube and other general interest site will definitely benefit from this. These sites caters to all demographics but it’s difficult for them to determine what ads to show. By determining the surfer’s browser history and cookies, adsense then will show ads based on their interest.
What needs to be fixed?
While there’s nothing wrong with the interest based ads, it should be available in the channel options .The publisher should have complete control of what kind of ads they want on their site.
How do users opt out of interest based ads?
Let’s face it, not all surfers are web savvy and some couldn’t be bothered to disable the interest based ads. But at least they gave the users the option to opt out.
Here’s the link on how to opt out
http://www.google.com/ads/preferences/
Project Wonderful – Not everyone wins
Monday, March 23rd, 2009
What is Project wonderful
Project wonderful is an online advertising auction where prospective advertisers can choose adspace available and bid how long they want their ads displayed on projectwonderful adblock on their chosen site. If you’re a advertiser running a campaign, it would be a pain to monitor if you’ve been outbid.
Since my other blog was very new that time, I barely earned anything at my adsense so I decided to try it. For about a month I earned few cents here and there so that keeps me motivated enough to keep going. I kept building traffic hoping that I could increase my cost per day charge without scaring advertisers away.
After 7 months of placing Project Wonderful on my other blog, it has earned a whopping *insert sarcasm* 9.44 dollars flat. Meanwhile my adsense on the same blog has reached more than 100 dollars.
What needs to be improved?
The major problem of Project wonderful is that advertisers can withdraw their ads anytime they want. I’ve got some advertisers pulling out their ads after 5 hours which means I will only earn .0083 cents. It was a mess seeing different irrelevant ads changing every 10-15 hours. If only Project wonderful will grow some balls and get the ads locked for a day. It’s pretty much useless if somebody did bid for the adspace for $10 then cancelled their ad after few hours.
What is the minimum payout and add funds?
$10 is the minimum withdrawal via paypal and $5 dollars for minimum deposit of funds.
What Publisher is suited for Project Wonderful?
Webcomics is definitely a winner in the publisher side. They get tons of pageviews everyday and advertisers loves its whether it’s targetted traffic or not.
Verdict
As an advertiser, Project wonderful offers great advantage since you can create as much campaigns without breaking the bank.
For a content rich publishers, Adsense is still the best!
Tags: Adsense Alternatives, Online Ad auction
Posted in Goblin News | No Comments »