Designated brand guidelines are given to start with as bloggers and social media users are invited to join in on the marketing efforts.

Users will earn money form each sale that is driven from the ad they are hosting. An online reporting system will help to keep track of the sales generated.

The new “social affiliate” tool was created by OoSocial and it’s being tested in cooperation with digital agency BLM Quantum.

Dan Clays, managing director of BLM Quantum, believes that the new tool will benefit everyone.

He said: “Brands benefit by aligning with sites run by fans who are more likely to drive a sale, while site owners can generate revenues from their Facebook page or blog.”

Source: Marketing Week

Google's Parisian Love campaign told a virtual love story to the Superbowl audience.

The search engine giant, that previously has relied strongly on word-of-mouth hype in its marketing, has turned to creative agencies for a new advertising campaign, The Marketing Week reports.

Agencies across the UK have been invited to pitch for a campaign that will focus on promoting Google’s search facilities.

It is not yet officially decided where the future campaign will be aired. Google has said it’s not looking into following last month’s campaign at the Superbowl with advertising in the next massive sports event, the World Cup.

The news follow Microsoft’s announcement of a multimillion ad campaign to promote its search engine Bing in the UK. The company is trying to gain market share by portraying Bing as a “decision engine” with Google’s search associated with information overload.

Earlier this week, Google added to the rivalry of the two companies by opening an online shop for business software. Google Apps Marketplace involves more than 50 companies offering a wide-variety of cloud-based business software.

Chris Vander Mey, Google’s product manager, said: “The Google Apps Marketplace eliminates the worry about software updates, keeping track of different passwords and manual syncing and sharing of data, thereby increasing business productivity and lessening frustrations for users and IT administrators alike.”

Sources: Marketing Week, The Guardian, The Independent

Star Trek legend William Shatner has opened his own social media website –  challenging Facebook with a little help from science fiction.

At MyOuterSpace.com users can choose to become citizens of one of six planets, each based on a particular artistic talent. For example, Oprheus would be the choice of musicians while Anteros attracts graphic designers.

In addition to the planets, different starships offer even further classification – each of them is specialising in a different artistic talent. Users can submit their CV’s to a starship project suitable for their talent and they may be selected by the captain to join the crew and develop “dynamic entertainment production”.

MyOuterSpace.com welcomes people with passion for arts.

A news article on the site read: “This project has been a labor of love for all involved; to create an arena for Sci-fi, Horror and Fantasy fans to display their talents, learn about the latest tools in technology, and interact in a unique online community that’s out-of-this-world.”

Have a look at the site here: http://myouterspace.com/

Source: Stuff.co.nz

Quote

The Internet is like alcohol in some sense.  It accentuates what you would do anyway.  If you want to be a loner, you can be more alone.  If you want to connect, it makes it easier to connect.  ~Esther Dyson

Profile

Matthew Charles Mullenweg is the founder of the blogging software WordPress.

Mullenweg was born in Houston, Texas in 1984. Before WordPress he was working for CNET Networks.

Mullenweg has devoted a lot of his time to developing a number of open source projects and is a frequent speaker at conferences. He has been listed as one of the PC World’s Top 50 People on the Web as well as Business Week’s 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

Read more about Mullenweg from his blog: http://ma.tt/

Definition

RDFa – Resource Description Framework in attributes enables rich metadata to be embedded within web documents. It’s a W3C recommendation that adds a set of attribute level extensions to XHTML. These attributes can, for example, be “href, scr and resource” to specify a partner resource, or “content” which overrides the content of the element when using the property attribute.

Lateral Thinking

Q: A man managed to visit over thirty foreign countries without his passport. He was welcomed in each country and left each one of his own accord. He did this in one day.

A: He was a postman delivering the mail to embassies.

These workshops are designed to help your business improve and grow – whether it’s by showing you how to do something new or differently tomorrow, or helping you plan for the longer term success of your business.

On our most recent workshop, every single person said that the learning would have a positive impact on their business or their role, and that they would recommend the course to others.

How to register

Contact Dan Cook (daniel.cook@codeworks.net) for further information or to book your place. Places are strictly limited and will be allocated on a first come first served basis.

As and when further workshops are finalised we will publicise full details. If there are any particular topics you feel it would be particularly beneficial for Codeworks to arrange a workshop on, please let us know.

These workshops are designed to help your business improve and grow – whether it’s by showing you how to do something new or differently tomorrow, or helping you plan for the longer term success of your business.

On our most recent workshop, every single person said that the learning would have a positive impact on their business or their role, and that they would recommend the course to others.

How to register

Contact Dan Cook (daniel.cook@codeworks.net) for further information or to book your place. Places are strictly limited and will be allocated on a first come first served basis.

As and when further workshops are finalised we will publicise full details. If there are any particular topics you feel it would be particularly beneficial for Codeworks to arrange a workshop on, please let us know.

These workshops are designed to help your business improve and grow – whether it’s by showing you how to do something new or differently tomorrow, or helping you plan for the longer term success of your business.

On our most recent workshop, every single person said that the learning would have a positive impact on their business or their role, and that they would recommend the course to others.

How to register

Contact Dan Cook (daniel.cook@codeworks.net) for further information or to book your place. Places are strictly limited and will be allocated on a first come first served basis.

As and when further workshops are finalised we will publicise full details. If there are any particular topics you feel it would be particularly beneficial for Codeworks to arrange a workshop on, please let us know.