Do Dogs Go to Heaven? Catholics Say Yes ;-)

It's days like this that I wonder if being a Presby is the right choice for me. ;-)

COD: Outbrain creates revenue and drives down bounce rate for pubs

I have a tendency to add too many doo dads to my blog, but putting OutBrain in my content is something I don't think I will ever regret. This little widget analyzes your content and places related links and thumbnails after each of your posts or articles. Naturally, their business revolves around high traffic sites and blogs, but they also have an offering for blogs that works on most platforms.

The free widget combines links to your related content as well as coop links with other participating sites and paid links from marketers. For the marketer, the service delivers highly qualified audiences because of the tightly related nature of the surrounding content.

Here's a video that shows you the benefits, and for an example you can simply look at the bottom of this post.

Outbrain Thumbnail Widget from Outbrain on Vimeo.

It doesn't appear to materially affect page load, which is nice. I had tried a couple of other tools with less positive results. From the time I installed it, it did bring down my bounce rate. Mine tends to be high because I spend a lot of time on specialized subject SEO, and get a lot of people seemingly interested solely in a single topic. But OutBrain definitely brought it down by about 14 points, which I think is pretty darned significant. It also increased pages viewed and time spent by double digit percentages. It'd be tough to ask for more than that, right?

So, I've been pretty focused on what it means for a small concern like mine, but Outbrain is also used by a variety of very large pubs. Here's what the Seattle Times had to say about their experience with the tool:

Outbrain's widget was easy to implement, and it immediately began delivering results. Right off the bat, our users found the recommendations to be relevant and interesting. Just a few months after launching, Outbrain has driven millions of page views on seattletimes.com and a terrific click-through rate. What a great way to increase user engagement! It's been a pleasure to work with these folks.
- Heidi de Laubenfels, Deputy Managing Editor for Strategy & Product Development, The Seattle Times

Give it a try, you'll be glad you did.

COD: Puppy Tweets - the sounds of Western Civ collapsing and oh gosh do I want one

Yes this space is supposed to be about promoting new companies, but I am taking a short detour today to tell you about the most exciting new product in years -- years, I tell you!

You tweet, I tweet, heck, probably your Grandma tweets as well. But what about your best friend? Here in the United States, an entire category of family member has been PREVENTED from using Twitter. Canines.

Fortunately, the people at Mattel have acted in the interests of dog speech by creating Puppy Tweets. It's a collar on your dog that detects movement, barking, and the like, and then posts messages to a tweet stream to tell you what your dog is up to. Well, sort of. It publishes a randomly selected one of 500 humorous tweets that suggest what your dog MAY be up to. But you're not there, so who's to know if they get it wrong some of the time?

Messages are transmitted from a plastic collar medallion to a USB receiver on a nearby PC.

CNBC reporter Bertha Coombs had this to say, "Should we assume Paris Hilton's Chihuahua's tweets would be any more unprovocative than a socialite's musings? And what about Leona Helmsley's heir, the Maltese named Trouble? That pooch might have a bone to pick with the judge who reduced her $12 million inheritance."



I will concede that Western Civ will decline ever so slightly with each successive Tweet. But I have to say, I'd love one if I could get doggie daycare to install a USB receiver for my pup. Unfortunately that would require 180 PCs or so for each dog to be tracked, and even they don't have that much money.

So, as sad as it makes me, Mr. Sleepers will be silent on the Internets for a little longer, until Mattel gets T-Mobile to offer Puppy Tweets service over their network.

Snap one up here...

COD: Apture lets readers go deep without leaving the page

Trying to keep a viewer around is a challenge for many publishers. There appear to be about 10,000 places MINIMUM to find content on any topic. You may publish the definitive piece on a subject, but relatively quickly you'll find users wanting different types of information on any topic. Photos, historical perspective. Where to buy. Whatever it is. If we all wanted the same things, you could simply include them in the content. But we don't.

And so your content loses eyeballs.

Apture is out to change that dynamic. It makes it possible for consumers to see more and publishers to show more while staying on the same page. There are two ways to access Apture's semantic search and content display capabilities:

The Apture toolbar gives users the opportunity to get their fix of whatever related content they might want without leaving the content they are reading. Whether or not a site participates in Apture, the toolbar can provide related links of information. Apture gathers additional information through open APIs from leading content sources like Wikipedia, as well as Google search results.

Here's a little video demo of Apture Toolbar in action. As you can see, it links the reader with multiple types of content related to a topic, from Wikipedia links to videos, photos, maps, etc.

For publishers, Apture provides the opportunity to give consumers the opportunity to highlight any text on your pages and instantly get Apture search results. When they arrive on your pages, a little flag appears telling them that they can highlight and go deep.

When they do their highlight, the Apture window appears and provides a list of related links from YOUR site as well as open API content from a base set of sites and Google search results for sites farther afield. There are really no media restrictions -- the consumer can view other text, slide shows, even video in user initiated windows that appear in front of your content. Here's another video -- this one shows the publisher benefits:

According to Apture's research, their platform can grow time on a page by 2-3X, and pages consumed by 1.5-2X. Absolutely nothing to sneeze at in the battle for more page and ad views!

The cost to the consumer is free, and there are two ways to "pay" for publishers. They can use a basic free service that includes ads sold by Apture, or pay for an ad-free experience.

There are a couple of differences versus the contextual ad solutions like Kontera and Vibrant. With those models, the ad platform identifies the specific words that can be explored, and then shares revenue with the site for ad actions. This might have effects on time spent with content, but that's not it's primary goal. With this model, the choice of terms is up to the user, and the experience stays on (or over) the page rather than through a redirect.

There is a lot of innovation going on in the content space. This solution seems a powerful way to ensure that producers of quality content can make more money -- and thereby produce even MORE quality content.

COD: With Venmo, lending money to friends may no longer be a bad idea

We've all heard the adages related to financial relationships between friends. But Venmo is out to change the CW on friend to friend financial exchanges with a mobile app that lets to text and receive real money payments with your BFFs.

This Philadelphia-based start up connects friends (and businesses) by enabling pay by text. You simply download the iPhone or Android app and link a credit card to your account, Voila, you are ready to go. If you don't use one of these platforms, you can also join by sending the company a text message.

Here's a brief interview with one of the founders:



So why is the world aching for this application? Well, think about all the times when money comes between you and your friends. Splitting restaurant checks. Lending small sums, getting paid back, and even making small surprise gifts to lift spirits.

With Venmo, you and your friends get to avoid the $3 gypsy ATM fees (and the $3 your bank probably charges you on top of that) just by doing something you already do multiple times a day -- text.

I'll wager that transactions between buds are a prime reason for the demise of friendships. When you rely on memory or that over time "it'll all work out," there is always the risk that someone -- or even both parties -- will feel like they got the short end of the stick. Venmo makes all that would be angst and resentment disappear.

You can even include memos to help you communicate and remember what you were paying or being paid for.

The company charges nothing zip nada for transactions between friends. They make their money through transaction fees they charge local businesses that join the program so they can accept payments via text.

Hey, sooner or later we'll probably be paying for everything with our phones. Venmo can get you started with those frequent transactions between friends.

COD: Estonian start-up Pipedrive is out to transform sales management

There are a ton of tools out there for sales management and CRM. The people at Pipedrive, an Estonian start-up founded by veteran sellers, think that the focus of tool many of these tools is on contact management rather than closing deals.

It's an intriguing statement, and it got me to thinking about the complaints I have heard about many sales management platforms. The big complaint that I recall hearing related to the amount of time that they had to spend inputting and updating information in these platforms, and how the analytics in the tools were sometimes misused by sales managers to drive more actions rather than focusing on sales.

Do I really need a second alternate phone number and email address for each of my prospects?

Hey look, I get it, everyone has complaints about their bosses. But let me give you an example. I know of an ad network that has a weekly sales meeting and runs down the number of cold calls people made that week. Now sure, they also focus on dollar sales, but a friend of mine says he is consistently in the top quarter of sellings, but in the bottom half of calls during the second half of the year.

Because he says he focuses on cultivating new business in Q1, and spends the rest of the year trying to convert prospects. Is that wise? Better people than me would have to determine the answer to that.

But I feel for him. Why, he wonders, should he be chastised for not spending more time inputting and cold calling? Now, I am not a sales manager, so I make no comment on who's right here, other than to say that what everyone in the loop wants ultimately are more dollar sales. Not more calls or meetings or whatnot. In his words:

I understand that the average seller needs to be prodded to keep prospecting. But I've been selling in this city for 5 years. I know most everyone, so there are a limited number of people to cold call. And I know the rhythm of the brands with money. When they are planning and when they are managing plans. Why should I be treated like the average seller? And why should I have my calls compared to a new seller in a new market?

Which is a long and winding way of explaining how Pipedrive views the challenge. Their focus is on creating an easy to use tool that asks only for need-to-know information, and plots clients and prospects in a multi-phase pipeline process.

Their solution is designed to:

Be easy to use
Require input of only the most relevant info
Objectives based
Provide both an individual deal view and a portfolio view for the company as a whole and for each seller.



The premise is that database management and interim tasks are only relevant as means to ends, not ends in themselves. The graphical display does a nice job of viewing the business as a sales funnel, with required steps at each phase to move things along and have a consistently growing book of business.

Here's the demo vid:



Back to my pal. His selling strategy may or may not be a good one, but the reason it may or may not be good relates less to whether he fills in every field of his Saleforce, or makes 19 versus 31 cold calls during the week of August 12, and more to do with his overall deal portfolio and how he drives progress within it.

That's what Pipedrive is about. Does he have the right number of deals at the various stages of the process? Does he know which companies to focus on when the quarter ends in three days and he's $78,000 under his quota?

I thought it was rather a cool and refreshing way of examining the challenge. Spend less time on tasks and more on moving your deals along, and closing them. And for the sales manager, the tool offers a great view of where her sellers are succeeding, and where they might need advice or a bit of prodding.