Digital Marketing Consultant

By Marshall Kirkpatrick / May 5, 2011 12:25 PM / from ReadWriteWeb

It just so happens that something like that may now be under development in the most official of venues. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) announced today the formation of a new Web Real-Time Communications Working Group to define client-side APIs to enable Real-Time Communications in Web browsers, without the need for server-side implementation. The Group is chaired by engineers from Google and Ericsson. It sounds like Opera Unite to me (see video below), but democratized across all browsers. It sounds like it could be a very big deal.

Below: Here's how Opera described its Unite technology at launch two years ago. Opera is always several years ahead of its time.

"These APIs should enable building applications that can be run inside a browser," the new Working Group's charter says, "requiring no extra downloads or plugins, that allow communication between parties using audio, video and supplementary real-time communication, without having to use intervening servers (unless needed for firewall traversal, or for providing intermediary services)."

The working group is focused on the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that devices will use to implement these connections, but is working with an IETF group developing a technical protocol for transmission of the data between browsers. The first indication of this work appeared two months ago with the discovery of a mysterious flag inside Google Chromium.

The W3C's new working group on all this is chaired by Harald Alvestrand of Google and Stefan Håkansson of Ericsson. It plans on meeting regularly through February 2013 and is placing a special emphasis on ensuring users have control over and are aware of what media they might be transmitting from their browsers to others.

By Audrey Watters / March 14, 2011 7:13 AM / ReadWriteWeb.com

Although digital technologies have been changing the face of the news for at least the last decade, we have finally reached a important milestone: more people now get their news from online sources than they do from physical newspapers.  That's according to the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism, which has just released its latest report (http://stateofthemedia.org/2011/overview-2) on the "State of the Media." The study finds that, "By several measures, the state of the American news media improved in 2010," but that improvement did not extend to one important sector - newspapers - which continued to see a decline in revenues, readership and newsroom jobs.

According to the survey, 46% of people now say they get their news online at least three times a week, surpassing newspapers (40%) for the first time. Only local television is more popular among Americans, with 50% indicating that's their regular source for news.

The declining revenue and subscriptions for newspapers have resulted in many closures and layoffs. Indeed, newspaper newsrooms are 30% smaller than they were in 2000. But according to the survey, most Americans don't seem terribly concerned by the loss of this news source. Twenty eight percent said the loss of their local newspaper would have a major impact on their ability to keep up with local information; 30% said it would have minor impact and 39% said it would have no impact.

In a report (http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2011/Local-mobile-news.aspx) that accompanies the State of the Media report, Pew finds that more people are turning to their mobile phones for local news; 47% of Americans report they get at least some local news from their
cellphone, although their interests seem to be in information that's practical and in real time: weather and restaurant information, for example.

Interestingly, while nearly half of Americans say they get their local news via a mobile device, just one in 10 use an app to do so. And of those, an even fewer percentage pay to use those apps. This raises questions for the news industry as it's unclear whether people are willing to pay for online content, even if their local newspapers disappeared.

Nonetheless the Pew Research Center insists that, "Local news remains the vast untapped territory." "While local has been the area of greatest ferment for nonprofit startups," reads the report, "no one has yet cracked the code for how to produce local news effectively at a sustainable level."

[This article I have stolen from ReadWriteWeb because it is so relevant to what we try to get client to understand that I just wanted people to understand that it is not just we who preach this]

An "About Us" page is a good way to provide this information and to assure people that your company has the experience and the skills to meet their needs. And your "About Us" page should answer these questions:

• Who are we?
• What do we do?
• When did we start?
• How do we do it?

Typically, an "About Us" page contains a company description - "here's what we do" - and company mission - "here's why we do it." But it's just as important to highlight the team - "here's who we are."

That "who" should include images (photos or avatars) and biographies of key members of the team. The biographies can highlight educational background and work experience. Clearly, if I'm visiting a website that offers financial services, I'd like to see that the founders have degrees in something other than Folklore. If you offer marketing services, a background in marketing helps. If your startup has a particularly compelling story or angle that adds to your uniqueness, make sure you tell it.

Not everything on an "About Us" page needs to address the business world per se. I am intrigued that Infochimps' COO once operated a tugboat. And I like knowing that Learnboost's developer can be tracked down via his Foursquare check-ins (perhaps that information should be mandated for all developers).

For most people who interact with your website, this may be the opportunity to really humanize your company. You don't want to waste it.

Six Revisions argues that the people who click on the "About Us" fall into three categories: first-time visitors, regular users, and people who want to work for you. When it comes to "About Us" pages for startup websites, I would add to that list "potential investors." In all these cases, you want to be able to provide enough information to convince visitors to become users, fans, investors.

Granted, not every visitor to your website is going to click on the "About Us" link. But for those who do, you want to be sure that the content on that page really gives an insight into not just what products your startup offers, but who your startup is.

[You want to know more about how to do it right?  See our WSI wisdom book.]