Blogs

On Monday, Janrain, the group managing the OpenID protocol will announce a new "strong authentication" option for Web sites utilizing the OpenID login option. This new strong authentication is named CallVerifID and could replace access keys and keycard devices over time. CallVerifID uses the PhoneFactor service from Positive Networks.

Janrain explains how this new verification service works, "This phone-based authentication service can use any phone (mobile or landline) as a second authentication factor. The user enters a myOpenID username and password as usual, then simply answers an automated instant telephone call and presses #. This completes the authentication process. Complete two-factor authentication and identity protection is instantly enabled with no need for tokens, smart cards or certificates. CallVerifID is currently available for free to myOpenID users and as an additional service for business clients provisioning OpenIDs to both customers and employees."

This works with myOpenID as the OpenID provider and can work with other OpenID providers as well. myOpenID always runs in SSL secure mode which keeps the security level on high. Audit trail that will alert users to unauthorized access to their account. To signup, go to myOpenID and select CallVerifID as the authentication provider.

IZEA (formerly PayPerPost) CEO Ted Murphy is on the offensive today. Last night he asked me on Twitter to review a post on the IZEA blog regarding performance of his paid blog network versus an advertising campaign on ReadWriteWeb (RWW), an "a-list" tech blog. If you read only a few posts today, his should be one of them. In general, Murphy's analysis could work for any display advertising.

He begins by explaining that he purchased a one-month advertisement on ReadWriteWeb for $3,000 and then purchased $3,000 worth of paid posts within the IZEA network. The paid posts came from 220 publishers of all sizes across the network.

His analysis then goes on to determine that 725 clicks came from RWW over the month while his paid blog posts delivered 832 clicks and that the paid blog posts will continue to return some value over time as the posts live on forever (whatever forever means in Internet years).

Murphy also notes that by posting the "job" on his network, he had at least another 500 of his paid bloggers check out the company - that's already nearly more than RWW sent. He ends the analysis with the following statement, "people clicking links in sponsored posts have a genuine interest in the site they are clicking through to." The average Internet user has no idea what sponsored means. I've tried to explain this to Jason Calacanis as well but shrugged it off.

Was IZEA's product the right one for the RWW audience? For example, last month TechCrunch ran a sponsor ad for car tires. Do people looking for the latest tech news care about car tires? Are they in the "zone" to go purchase a set of 170R15s? We know nothing about the people who visited from either RWW or the purchased blog posts. How many from either actually "converted"? Murphy leaves this out.

While Murphy's analysis isn't spot on and there are some huge holes in his theory, he is pushing the conversation of display advertising versus paid posts a step further. It's a good discussion to have. And for clarity, I am not in favor of paid reviews. I am totally in favor of advertorials on blogs. Mark my words that by the end of 2008 we will see advertorials on blogs as a normal course of business.

Murphy makes a challenge at the end to Pete Cashmore, Robert Scoble and Jason Calacanis. He wants to run a paid post on one of their sites and compare the results to a wide campaign using the publisher network on IZEA. I assume he won't get any takers for the test.

Jakob Nielsen recently published two interesting research statistics that help explain why display ads don't work.

First, Jakob says we read a very small amount of the text on most pages. Apparently we only, on average, read at best 28% of the words on the page and most likely around 20% of the words.

Second, in an older article from late last year, Jakob also says users avoid anything that looks like a banner. This may seem obvious, but the interesting thing to consider is that all web pages on a given site (and even across the web on different sites) are likely to have the same pattern for what looks like an ad vs what looks like content. Your eyes quickly learn that anything that is on the sides, or anything with a border around it, or anything that looks photographic is an ad.

Newspapers and magazines generally do not have any such easily to discern pattern. Pages are generally laid out manually by a designer on an issue by issue basis. Smaller ads are blended in with the content, breaking columns and such so that advertising will have unavoidable and unpredictable proximity to content. Moreover, many ads take up the full page which requires at least some minimal scanning before turning the page. And because the ads are often so big, you almost can't avoid at least seeing a bit of it before turning the page. MORE »

Below are five of the newest startups according to Killer Startups for the period ending May 9, 2008. Check out previous Killer Startups posts.

3DegreesInc.com - Carbon Calculator

3Degrees is a site that focuses on protecting the environment by supporting clean energy and carbon reducing projects. The name comes from the scientific projection that in 2100 the earth's temperature will rise by 3 degrees Celsius which will cause huge environmental issues that will affect society. 3Degrees is a great site to visit and educate yourself on the impacts of pollution and ways in which you can reduce your negative contribution.

Custom Communications out of the U.K. have put together a series of posts regarding the top brands on YouTube. The story isn't about how brands are embracing YouTube to effectively communicate their message. Instead the list focuses on which videos related to a brand has the most video views and how the specific video could affect the brand, both positively or negatively. Their "impact on reputation" score for each video is worth a read.

Here are the top 10:

1. Nike - "Ronaldinho: Touch of Gold" - Viewed 22,581,372 times
2. Pepsi - "PEPSI (Britney Spears, Beyonce, Pink - We Will Rock You)" - Viewed 14,050,586 times
3. McDonalds - "Fast Food Freestyle" - Viewed 11,744,399 times
4. Coca-Cola - "Diet Coke+Mentos=Human experiment: EXTREME GRAPHIC CONTENT" - Viewed 8,583,526 times
5. Unilever - "Dove Evolution" - Viewed 6,727,556 times
6. Disney - "Internet is for Porn" - Viewed 3,278,230 times
7. Budweiser - "Banned Super Bowl 2007 Bud commercial" - Viewed 2,149,516 times
8. Microsoft - "Microsoft Surface Parody" - Viewed 2,068,861 times. 3,322 comments
9. IKEA - "Banned Commercial - Swedish Midsummer" - Viewed 1,483,858 times
10. Toyota - "Top Gear: Killing a Toyota Part 1" - Viewed 1,132,279 times

The Nike commercial has over 15,000 comments.

We've written about Clicky Web analytics several times including our first product review just shy of a year ago. It's my favorite medium-level analytics application on the market. Why? Speed, features, the freaking addictive real-time spy and excellent support from the one person team of Sean Hammons.

Today Sean has posted about a variety of new visualization tools that Clicky now offers. Clicky has hired the team at Open Flash Chart to create even more customizations on their charting solution. Here is one basic example chart that's now possible (bar charts were available previously):

The charts update on the fly and the "compare" feature is where the charting tool shows its strength. You can compare practically anything you want to see if there are correlations between the data. Sean has created an example displaying social media inbound traffic vs. bounce rate - perfect for checking how many Digg'rs come back a second time. The comparison possibilities are endless - I already have a list of charts to create.

In the title of this column, I included, "Clicky...Shows You How Freemium Is Done." Freemium means that the service offers a free version and then premium upgrades. I said this because these new charting features are free through this Sunday and then they move to the pro account (paid). Sean gives you the first crack rock free, gets you hooked so you keep coming back to him to buy more crack. I've written before that too many startups who employ the Freemium model give away too much for free and customers never have a reason to upgrade. But giving a taste of premium features every now and again makes perfect sense for trial.

In case you are interested, we are currently running the following analytical tools on CN:

• Clicky
• Google Analytics
• Mint
• ExtremeTracking
• A homegrown proprietary analytics tool

On the CN job board, Clicky is currently seeking a Web developer.

Chris Saad, leader of the data portability Web site has posted a personal and internal note of thanks to the ever-growing community of Web users wanting more from their data. I've pasted his message below. We've written about DataPortability a good number of times before and believe that it's critical that everyone owns their data and can choose how it's used, where it's used and when it's used.

Hi Everyone,

I just wanted to write a personal note of thanks to this community. We have all commented and made statements about "Six Months Strong" or "[Insert big vendor] joins the project]," but in all the excitement I have not had a chance to share my personal thanks.

As everyone knows by now, this project started as a very small idea by a small group of individuals who wondered out loud, "Does everyone know those cool standards could fit together?" -- or "Why not create a set of best practices for implementing these standards so that all the implementations just worked" -- or "Could we prove the Web really is the ultimate social network platform?" MORE »

PriceAdvance is a simple browser plugin for Firefox and Internet Explorer that helps you find the best prices on the products you are interested in purchasing. The company initially launched last December and so far they have saved users over $100,000.

I am seriously wondering why FatWallet hasn't created something like this. They have an awesome cash back merchant gallery and this PriceAdvance plugin would be an excellent layer on top as it's alive all the time.

I am also wondering why semantic experts AdaptiveBlue aren't offering this type of money-saving technology.

Come inside to check out the PriceAdvance demo reel.

Below are some of the latest jobs posted on the CenterNetworks Job Board. Subscribe to the CN Jobs feed and get all of the jobs delivered directly to you.

Featured Jobs:

• SVP Content - Digital Media - Playboy
• Associate Marketing Manager, Yahoo! Shopping & Travel - Yahoo

More Fresh Jobs:

• Site Optimization Manager - IAC
• CSS Zen Master - SmugMug
• User Experience Designer - Microsoft Live Labs
• Online Advertising Sales Planner - NY - TripAdvisor
• Producer/mtvU - MTV
• Safari Application Engineer - Apple

Employers - Join other top companies on the CN Job Board. Post your jobs at $50/job - discounts available for multiple postings.

The super big news this afternoon is that MySpace has joined the DataPortability movement in a big way. Here's all you need to know about this announcement:

1. some of the data (photos, videos, text) stored on MySpace will be available to their friend networks which include: Yahoo!, eBay, Twitter, and Photobucket.

2. it's not really data portability, more like data sharing

3. it's live data sharing -- if you change your status from male to female, it's instantly zapped to all of the places you've shared the info. This is awesome because it makes it easier than having to remember to change it in a million social networks.

4. They will accept Facebook into their data sharing plan but Zucks gotta be the one to make the call.

SAI has notes from the live conference call and Venture Beat has detailed analysis of the announcement. Check out all of our DataPortability coverage.

Chris Saad, data portability leader sent over the following video that explains the companies that have signed up to push info in and those who have signed up to suck info out.