The Biz

Within our industry, each site shares similar goals, audiences and desired actions. By staying focused on our goals, we can best serve the needs of the various stakeholders that we interact with.

Aaron Wall created an interesting post called How Many Stakeholders Does Your Site Have? It's an article that every enterpreneur and Internet marketer should read.

Aaron states that the Common Stakeholders of Every Site are:

content creators
customers
suppliers
site members
bloggers
mainstream media
topical experts
other high authority link sources or publicity sources
search engines

For me, it help put into perspective the fact that our efforts at Voices.com reach beyond our customers and suppliers. There are co-creators in our content, such as the readers and commenters on the VOX Daily blog to the listeners and audio correspondents on our podcast, VOX Talk.

We are also responsible to maintain the integrity of the website so that each new visitor feels welcome and knows that they are joining an online community.

The idea of integrity can also apply to the website design. How so?

A well-designed website ( from color schemes, font sizes and navigation ) will ensure that visitors have an enjoyable experience. Secondly, other webmasters will be more eager to link to Voices.com. Hey, we're always up for trading links.

Finally, with all of the above in place, the search engines will not only discover new material on the website, but rank the pages according to their relevance.

To date, we've been extremely fortunate with dozens of #1 rankings and hundreds of Top 10 placements on Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask.

If you're a business-owner or Internet marketer, remember your stakeholders and you'll be rewarded for it.

In a report issued by Merrill Lynch, lead broadcast analyst Jessica Reif Cohen said a CBS/Google deal would likely be "wide-ranging" and would include both advertising and content elements.

"Although no deal was announced, we believe that the companies continue to negotiate terms of an agreement," wrote Cohen, referring to CBS chief Leslie Moonves keynote Tuesday at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The sticking points could revolve around control of advertising sales and the size of a revenue guarantee that Google would pay to CBS for being able to monetize its television content through YouTube and other Google sites.

With respect to the advertising sales arrangement, Merrill Lynch speculated that it would primarily be focused on CBS' radio inventory and would not likely include any network or local TV station time.

As I've covered earlier, Google has recently stepped up efforts to expand its presence in offline media, especially radio and print media.

It's estimated that a Google deal to sell 10% of CBS Radio's advertising inventory would generate approximately $200 million in revenues and that the upside for CBS would be two-fold:

First, attracting new small business advertisers to its platforms alla Google's experience with search, and second, creating a more efficient sales model that reduces the friction/cost of selling advertising.

Naturally, Madison Avenue is protesting the development stating that a potential Google deal is initiating the commoditization of advertising time and related pricing pressure.

Does Madison Avenue have a case? Leave your thoughts below.
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Technorati tags: google | google audio ads | audio ads | audio adsense

Today, Apple announced that it has indeed developed a revolutionary mobile phone, that is operated all with the touch of a finger. That's right, no buttons and no stylus -- it's a true touch-screen.

The much hyped iPhone was introduced by CEO Steve Jobs himself at Mac World 2007, the annual gathering of Mac enthusiasts in San Francisco, California.

According to Apple:

iPhone combines three products — a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching — into one small and lightweight handheld device. iPhone also introduces an entirely new user interface based on a large multi-touch display and pioneering new software, letting you control everything with just your fingers. So it ushers in an era of software power and sophistication never before seen in a mobile device, completely redefining what you can do on a mobile phone.

A video of the keynote presentation is also available online.

In Steve's speech, he mentioned that Apple had been working on the iPhone for the past 2 1/2 years, which goes to show that innovation at the R&D (research and development) level will eventually reveal great products that stand head-and-shoulders above all others in comparison.

If the past success of the omnipresent iPod is any indication of future success, the Apple iPhone is sure to be a hit.