Back in the late 90's when I got into the field of Internet marketing there was a popular expression in the industry that played off one of the new bumper stickers of the day: WWYD - What Would Yahoo Do?
Ten years ago your site had officially "arrived" when it was listed in Yahoo's directory of the web and Yahoo held a dominate position in the Internet marketing industry as they had so many eyeballs visiting their various properties, like My Yahoo or Yahoo Mail. Yahoo was the leading "web portal" - as Wikipedia defines as "a website site that functions as a point of access to information on the World Wide Web." Back then portals were seen as the main jumping off point for how people would access the web and Yahoo and rivals like Excite and Lycos fought for the eyeballs and loyalties of users.
As I post this, the two most popular tech articles at the New York Times are a report that Yahoo is expected to layoff several hundred employees and an article talking about how the expanding and evolving MySpace (the website with the most pages viewed in the world by the way) has grown and is changing under the ownership of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook are getting tons of visitors and business press while courting Madison Ave. advertisers and their huge ad budgets. Yahoo is profitable and by no means dead, just laying off folks in less profitable business segments, but clearly they no longer dominate the industry as they once did.
Last week in my previous post I asked the question: Does MySpace Make Internet Marketers Look Bad? In my opinion, sometimes profiles or ads on MySpace do reflect negatively on the industry, just as annoying TV commercials or poorly targeted direct "junk" mail do in those industries.
Spam, hideous banners and irrelevant pop-up ads (remember the x10 camera?) were the predecessors of today's fake MySpace profiles, but we as web users and marketing industry pros have adapted. Online marketing vehicles that are effective in producing results for clients will flourish over time, even if not every foray is a success. If companies can make money advertising on or being a part of the MySpace community, the site will survive and look good (most of the time).
There are well-founded criticisms of MySpace and other social marketing sites, so we Internet marketers need to address these issues with solutions, such as effective ad campaigns and profile sites for clients, and promote and educate the public about the many examples of firms doing things right.
To me, success always looks good. It's good for business too.
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