Monday May 11th Roundup

Heavy week for marketing stories, or maybe my attendance of the local AMA conference has just left me noticing those kinds of stories. The latter may be more likely since we’re slightly short on other stories. 

Anyhow, this week we have awesome new updates announced for GA, more PPC myths, new MS languages, and an analysis of web business models versus those of the failing “big industries”.

• We start the roundup with our friends at GetElastic, and their PPC Myth series. This one is on whether you should actually kill keywords that don’t convert. They point out several situations in which keywords may be converting, but not showing up in the report.
• Last week Grokdotcomdotcom hit on a point that we’ve been harping about: don’t fear the reap… negative reviews. In this case they are specifically talking about how trying to edit your way out of negative reviews is. They point out that you simply can not remove negative reviews any more, because there are far too many easily (and often more easily) referenced sites that will allow frank reviews of your product. Instead, embrace negative reviews, because trying to cover them up will just result in more problems.
• Although I am loathe to post lists, WinningTheWeb has a really good list of prime locations to promote your blog’s rss feed. A few of these I’ve even incorporated since reading it.

• Microsoft has announced the release of Axum, a parallel programming model for .net.

• Google has announced
  pivoting, secondary dimensions, and custom segmentation sharing in GA. I can’t wait to see the kinds of custom segments people come up with.
• Google also has a nice piece on how to use eCommerce tracking. A nice addition to our own Google Analytics power user series.

• Kim Krause of Cre8pc has a great story about the woes of being obsessed with usability. Really its just the woes of being more knowledgeable than other people about a subject, and the resulting hangups that occur.

• GabGoldenberg over at WolfHowl has a fantastic article up on the history of web industry business models and how the success of the web, as well as the failure of big industry, lies in businesses’ handling of risk. The real strength comes in its analysis of why web models were able to succeed post-dotcom, though its commentary on the dangers of large conglomeration is apt.