Gasta Networking success PT1

The Next Phase of Social Business Networking is Here! By: Business Wire | 27 Jan 2009 | 09:57 AM ET Text Size AVENTURA, Fla., Jan 27, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Analysts have been talking about how Social Networking will be transformed into a new Business Networking platform in 2009. In today's economy, everybody from small businesses to major corporations have been cutting back on their advertising budgets and moving towards Social Networking as the next phenomenon in business marketing.

Networkers United Worldwide (www.nuworldwide.com) is a brand new community of social business networkers that share the same vision of helping each other in growing their businesses by referring business to one another, exchanging tips and ideas, educating, promoting and connecting with each other on a localized or global basis.

The group believes in the Giver's Gain Principle. Give to people first, and in return you will get business back. It is a very simple law of attraction. The community was started on LinkedIn and Facebook just a few weeks ago and growing exponentially by the day. Our goal is to have over 500,000 members by March 2009 and 5,000,000 members by the end of the year.

"We are overwhelmed by its success and the quality of our members. The feedback we're getting from our members is only positive for setting up such a great and needed platform for business referrals," says founder Daniel Pansky.

The principle behind this was started in September 2008 when Victoria Blintser (Daniel's wife) decided to expand her LinkedIn profile. Upon expanding her profile and setting up the business group, she is now considered one of the biggest success stories on LinkedIn. This has led to many opportunities including joint venture offers, consulting offers, radio appearances, and the offers just keep rolling in by the day. Four months ago I was a struggling Real Estate broker having problems finding the next deal in one of the toughest Real Estate markets in history. Today, four months later, my business is on turbo charge to where I can't hire enough real estate agents fast enough. We are currently selling bulk portfolios, all thanks to the power of social business networking.

www.nuworldwide.com is absolutely Free to join and Free to use for the entire business community worldwide. Members can go ahead and utilize the NU Worldwide platform, or set up their own groups pertaining to their desired subject or business. The group offers free services to all their members such as tips, social business networking strategies, and guest moderators from the world's top leaders in Social Business Networking.

SOURCE: Networkers United, Inc.

CONTACT: Networkers United, Inc., Aventura Daniel Pansky, 954-239-7093 www.nuworldwide.com Copyright Business Wire 2009 -0- KEYWORD: United States

Gasta News; New Media Age Report

This week new media age reported that Google saw search impressions on its Content Network grow by over 300% year on year - an amazing statistic for something that doesn't seem to get many headlines (nma 29 January).
AdWords, naturally, is Google's piece de resistance, being far and away the most successful form of online advertising. But Content Network really isn't that far behind, if not necessarily in terms of revenue, and along with Google's display ambitions is starting to drive Google's core search business.
Efficient Frontier's UK Search Engine Performance Report Q4 2008 showed Adsense search ads generated by Google Content Network now accounting for 6.4% of all UK search impressions, up by 308% from 2.2% last year.
This is still a long way behind AdWords, at 81.8% of all impressions, but fast catching up Yahoo (8.4%) and well above Microsoft (3.4%), according to the report.
The catch-up isn't really surprising: Google's really pushed the Content Network hard this last year, rolling out new formats and better reporting.
In contrast, Yahoo last month announced the closure of Content Match, its text-based equivalent to Google's AdSense.
The company said it was because it saw the future in rich media, rather than text ads, but surely Google earning $1.68bn (£1.15bn) in revenues from AdSense in Q3 last year rebuts this view.
What I find most interesting is that while the discussions over Microsoft and Yahoo's failings in the search market have normally been with regard to AdWords, it's now the Content Network, not even a priority for Google, that is the biggest competitor.

Gasta News: Digital Industry awaits the Carter Report

It will be a case of Get Carter as the Digital Industry rushes to find out the proposition of Stephen Carters report on Digital Britain.

The digital industry is buzzing ahead of Stephen Carter's much-anticipated Digital Britain report, but let's not forget the compelling vision at the centre of Carter's report: the aim to make the UK a world-leading digital creative capital.
Speaking last week, Carter hinted at a need to create greater opportunities and protection for the creative industries, in order to help the UK become a location of choice for the content industries. The plan is to create the regulatory framework and structures to help shape a Britain that is fit for purpose in the digital future.
Reports today suggest Carter will push for BBC Worldwide to be freed from its regulatory shackles to allow the commercial organisation to become a "British rights company on the global stage".
It's part of Carter's vision to ensure British content continues to be exported around the world in order to reap the economic and cultural benefits. With the UK largely viewed as a leader in digital advertising, it's time the content and technology industries were awarded the same kudos.
Carter's vision is imperative as the global content market accelerates. The UK market needs to create infrastructures that support the nurturing and growth of home grown talent and businesses.
Channel 4 CEO Andy Duncan has said the report could be one of the most important elements in deciding how the UK competes in the global economy. He believes it could determine how Britain contributes culturally, creatively and economically through the turbulent times ahead and has urged the UK media industry to work together to support the UK's cultural and economic future. Duncan's not wrong on this point. The potential to create an established vision is both necessary and inspiring - if it works.
Interestingly this comes ahead of the Competition Commission's decision on Project Kangaroo due early next month. While local rivals and the CC itself have major concerns about the potential lessening of competition in the UK market, the shareholders - ITV, Channel 4 and BBC Worldwide - have always argued that Kangaroo is crucial to the UK's ability to compete on a global stage as the likes of Hulu and iTunes continue to grow internationally.
With Carter's vision likely to stir up much debate in this area, is it possible that the controversial video-on demand service may still manage to limp across the line?

Gasta News:UK Government Open data

The UK government has launched a competition to find innovative ways of using the masses of data it collects.

It is hoping to find new uses for public information in the areas of criminal justice, health and education.

The Power of Information Taskforce - headed by cabinet office minister Tom Watson - is offering a £20,000 prize fund for the best ideas.

To help with the task, the government is opening up gigabytes of information from a variety of sources.

This includes mapping information from the Ordnance Survey, medical information from the NHS, neighbourhood statistics from the Office for National Statistics and a carbon calculator from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

None of the data will be personal information, the government is keen to stress.

Mr Watson is hoping to attract a wide range of people from "the technology community we already work with, to hard-core coders to adolescents in their bedroom".

He admits that throwing open public data could be a risk but he believes that it will yield results.

"If someone comes up with a great idea we will make a prototype and then hopefully a fully-fledged piece of technology that will make peoples' lives better," he said.

"I strongly believe in co-design and in the digital age it makes sense to work with citizens to make public service better," he added.

To help inspire ideas the team behind the idea has put dozens of examples of innovative ways of reusing public information on its Taskforce wiki.

These include a website which maps crimes around the UK, the FixMyStreet website, which allows users to alert others to litter, vandalism and graffiti in their local environment, and the prototype RateMyPrison, which invites those who visit friends and families in jail to comment on the experience.

Technology commentator Bill Thompson was one of the first to see the Show Us a Better Way website, which details the competition.

"It's great to see a government department with enough sense to realise that it doesn't have all the good ideas," he said.

"There are terabytes of expensively accumulated information sitting in databases, but it goes unused and unexploited because of restrictive licenses and lack of awareness," he added.

The government will evaluate the ideas over the course of the summer.

Gasta.com to offer white label Hosted Search Engine Solution

Gasta.com is gearing up to offer geographical regions, companies, cities, and industrial sectors the opportunity to launch their own geo-targeted and white label branded hosted search solution. You can launch the branded search engine in a matter of hours and select from a variety of advertising and content partner solutions such as Google adsense, pay per click, you tube,blinx, Mirago, Ikojo, Yahoo mobile, Msn Live, and virtually any other content partner you sign up for. The fine details are not fully finalized as yet but this is a thrilling development.

CTO of Gasta search networks, Stuart Manning said " This is were the SME sector can build their own search brand, we will provide them with the platform and they can take in content from whatever source to build and develop revenue streams, there is no search boxes involved, everything is white label to meet the needs of the sites owners, and they controll the content, this is another innovation in the fast paced web 2.0 search development sector from Gasta.com"

Gasta will also build in the contextual advertising platforms of SearchMatch and InstantAds so site owners and operators can sell their own advertising inventory to their own clients and customers., track statistics and offer reports. More To follow.

Gasta News On Venture Funds Europe

Gasta News On Venture Funds Europe

http://www.tornado-insider.com

Similar to previous years, European venture capital activity has started off with a bang this year. Already over 170 technology investments have been recorded, raising approximately €920 million. And there is more to come, judging by a series of successful fundraisings by Europe’s investors. This past week alone, 4 successful closings of new funds were announced.

German early-stage venture capitalist Target Partners announced the first closing of its new fund, Target Partners Fund II, at €61.5 million. The firm received commitments from private individuals, family offices and institutional investors, including Morgan Stanley, LGT Capital Partners, Bayerische Beamten Lebensversicherung, RWB RenditeWertBeteiligungen and CS Strategic Partners. The new fund has a target size of €120 million. It will mainly invest in start-up and early-stage companies from the German speaking countries, with sectors including IT, communications, Internet, media and clean-tech.

UK venture capital firm TLcom Capital also held a first closing of its second fund, TLcom II. Funding commitments were in excess of €50 million. The target size of the fund is €150 million. The new fund will focus primarily on revenue-stage technology companies across Europe. Returning investors, European Investment Fund and Access Capital Partners, have been joined by Italy-based Finlombarda Gestioni SGR - the investment arm of the development agency of Lombardy - and a group of limited partners associated with IDeA Alternative Investments. IDeA AI is an investment initiative recently launched by private equity group Investitori Associati, Wise and DeAgostini. TLcom II expects to invest in 12 to 15 companies over the next few years. A second closing is planned later in the year as the fund is now also talking to other institutional investors.

Meanwhile, Finnish venture capitalist Inventure completed the first closing of Inventure Fund Ky. The fund focuses on early-stage high-tech investments in the Nordic countries, primarily Finland. Investors investing in Inventure are European Investment Fund and Finnish Industry Investment, in addition to several undisclosed institutions and private investors. The current closing is completed at €35 million and has a final target of €50 million. Inventure aims to invest in 15 high-growth companies with significant value creation and return potential. The firm targets innovation clusters such as software, electronics, semiconductors as well as industrial production and material technologies.

Concluding, 360° Capital Partners announced its final closing with more than €100 million under management. The European Investment Fund, AGF of Allianz Group, Banca Sella Group and Natixis are the main new investors in the venture capital fund. It will invest in European companies, mainly in France and Italy. The new shareholders are joining CDC Enterprises, Credit Suisse – Alpha Associates, Partners Group, Gruppo Banca Intesa San Paolo, Wilshire Associates, Paul Capital and Coller Capital, who had already committed in the first closing which took place last year. 360° Capital Partners invests between €2 and €5 million in first or second rounds of financing of high-growth innovative companies operating in segments including ICT, Web 2.0, diagnostics/medical devices, and clean tech. 5% of the fund is dedicated to seed-stage companies.

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Gasta Big Snap Campaign News

Microsoft will launch a six-figure competition-based marketing campaign for Live Search next week as it attempts to boost the search engine’s user numbers.

The ‘Big Snap’ campaign is a partnership with Virgin that offers prizes including Virgin Atlantic flights whenever people use Live Search.

Based on the card game Snap, search results will also display cards that, when turned over and matched with another, win a prize.

The campaign’s digital agency, Thin Martian, has also developed bigsnapsearch.com to support the promotion.

Paul Davies, MSN and Windows Live marketing director, said, “Searching is the second-most popular online activity after email and this campaign is designed to enliven people’s everyday search experiences. We wanted to create a compelling mechanic that would motivate and excite users while driving traffic and increasing query volume on Live Search.”

Live Search has 3.5% of the global search share, according to COM Score, behind Yahoo! (13.1%) and Google (66%).

Gasta Tech News: Mobile TV

Mobile TV is not that far away, Gasta.com has been looking at the leading companies that are ready to offer the middlepath software to enable mobile devices to become Mini television recievers.

Mobile TV services are based on two different technologies: the incumbent 3G-based services and the now emerging DVB-H-based services. Axel Technologies' solutions enable mobile TV services based on both technologies. The company's flagship product, Salmonstream Mobile, enables the implementation of full digital mobile TV service based on DVB-H. In addition to comprehensive middleware products, the company develops user interface software that supports several digital television standards.

Gasta Tech News: Mobile Email for the Masses

Mobile Email for the Masses

Until recently, mobile email use has been limited to business users who can afford to buy an expensive smartphone and are willing to accept a costly data plan. But there have been strong signs over the course of 2007 that the age of mobile email for the masses is upon us. The combination of the adoption of industry standards enabling push email on mass market feature phones and affordable service plans is set to make mobile email for the mass market a reality. Evidence of this shift is seen in particular in emerging markets, where fixed-line infrastructure is limited and PC penetration is low, whilst mobile phone penetration is soaring.

The mobile operators in emerging markets now have the opportunity to make the mobile phone the primary method of accessing the internet, with mobile email probably being the most popular application for both business users and consumers. As a result, I can see mobile email consumption in the emerging markets of Asia, the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe leapfrogging the 'developed world' in Western Europe and the U.S., which will mostly remain limited to high-end business user email.

However, to make this happen, it is important to use middleware that can support the majority of the mobile phones that are already out there in those markets. Communication only works if it can be sent and received; so, by using standards such as IMAP (LEMONADE), SyncML, and email-to-SMS conversion, we will see email and synchronization services extended to every single mobile phone on the planet.

While we are all drawn to sexy new devices such as the Apple iPhone, the fact is that smartphones represent only a tiny portion of the addressable market. The vast majority of phones in use today (and in the foreseeable future) are mass market feature phones. Therefore, it is essential for service providers to offer push email and synchronization solutions that work well on the phones that are already in users' hands today. In 2008, the time is right for mobile data pricing plans to fall and, as customer numbers increase, we will start to see mobile email becoming the next generation SMS.

*Source: Visiongain Mobile Email Market Report

Gasta News: Google to Aquire AOL?

Imedia has a story about a rumour, Gasta News picked up this rumour before but the latest development by yahoo/microsoft makes it even more interesting now.

News of Microsoft's unsolicited bid to buy Yahoo may have far-reaching implications for the mergers and acquisitions frenzy that has come to dominate interactive industry headlines. According to a report in The New York Times, a redrawing of the industry landscape could put AOL in play.

While rumors have long circulated about AOL's parent Time Warner looking to spin-off the internet giant, a united Yahoo and Microsoft -- still a big if -- could prompt Google to reconsider its position with respect to AOL.

Google, which handles search for AOL, already owns a 5 percent stake in the company.

Gasta Advertising: CPA model

Gasta CPA Model is proving more and more popular.

Mason Wiley: Writing on Imedia Connection

Advertising on social networks can be very expensive -- with little payoff. Here's an easy solution to this cost problem.

Social networks are commanding attention -- for good reason. Millions and millions of people visit them daily (and to many an employer's chagrin, hourly). Given the sheer number of users and their length of stay, the big social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook and others should be an advertiser's paradise. But they're not -- yet.

Ironically, the huge number of impressions generated by social networks poses challenges for advertisers. For example, buying all those eyeballs on a cost-per-thousand (CPM) ad model can be prohibitively expensive for many. And unlike sites centered around a specific interest, social networks attract so many different types of people that targeting is difficult. Behavioral targeting offers promise, but hasn't yet evolved to the point at which it can guarantee a positive ROI.

A new ad model has emerged that can. The cost-per-acquisition model (CPA) provides advertisers with a guaranteed way to ensure ad efficiency, while also opening the door for social networks to monetize more of their traffic.

The benefit of CPA for advertisers
The CPA model is ideal for social networking sites because it eliminates virtually all the risk for advertisers of buying on a CPM basis. As a performance-based model, advertisers pay a fee only for the results their CPA campaign generates. That result can be any transaction specified by the advertiser. For example, an advertiser places a CPA campaign on ESPN.com. Rather than paying for all the people who see that ad, the advertiser only pays the publisher for each user that not only clicks on the ad but also follows through and completes the desired action as defined by the advertiser -- anything from an email submit or qualified lead to a sale or paid membership.

Through its 1:1 ratio of pay-per-action, CPA changes the rules for advertisers. The need for narrow targeting to eliminate ad waste becomes irrelevant since there is no waste. Similarly, there's almost no possibility for click fraud since advertisers only pay for results. And unlike CPM, the results of a CPA campaign are directly verifiable through tracking technology, which enables advertisers to determine which ads convert and which do not. For example, an A/B test of landing pages can be measured against the actions completed via any number of creatives or landing pages as well as the conversion processes. The path to purchase is easily tracked back to the source, including the placement of the original creative.

But the single greatest appeal of CPA for advertisers is that it is performance-based. With advertising costs directly tied to results, it provides them a way to advertise with full accountability and control. Advertisers simply establish the actions -- signups, sales, leads, etc. -- they want to reward, and establish how much they're willing to pay. If online publishers think the campaign will generate sufficient response with their audience base to meet revenue goals, they can choose to run the campaign.

Certainly, by running campaigns based on the promise of a potential future reward, publishers are taking a risk. But given that CPA campaigns are more aggressively focused on generating response than the many revenue-sharing campaigns available, it's a gamble that has been paying off for them. Now, social network publishers are finding that CPA can pay off for them, too.

The benefit for social networks
Like any publisher site, social networks want to maximize advertising revenue. Cost-per-thousand is the most prevalent model they use to do it, and it seems to make sense because CPM focuses on the number of impressions generated -- and these sites generate a lot of them. The problem is that these impressions come from an incredibly broad cross-section of the population, many of which can be irrelevant to a given advertiser. As mentioned above, although these sites generate billions of impressions, targeting the right ones is challenging. While targeting users based on where they have clicked (behavioral targeting) can help improve the odds, it is by no means an exact science or a guarantee that a sufficient number of users will perform the desired action.

These inherent challenges under the CPM model have limited the appeal of social networks for advertisers. The result has been a tremendous surplus of excess inventory that despite all best efforts just can't be sold. And a lot of those billions of impressions have gone un-monetized. But now that's changing thanks to CPA.

With CPM, the advertiser assumes the risk by paying the publisher for uncertain potential results. In CPA the publisher assumes the risk by running ads for uncertain potential payments. But when its remnant inventory at issue, the publisher runs no risk; it is inventory that would otherwise go unsold. So it only stands to reason that a social networking site will make more money running CPA ads on remnant inventory than it can just selling space based on CPM alone.

Conclusion
The CPA model is not new, but it has evolved to be a highly cost effective way for advertisers to use social network sites, and an effective way for social networks to generate increased revenue. And new widgets and applications are emerging for social networks that can make CPA even more powerful in the future.

Gasta Video:Prepare for Web 3.0

This is a facinating article by Phil Cooper about the advance of video and (UGC) user generated content on the Internet

Gasta.com has just launched its own unique video services great for 'mash up' mixs and 'speeding through' every body wants the 15 minutes of fame.

Prepare for Web 3.0

Phil Cooper, CEO, Utarget Networks

Video continues to expand rapidly online. This new market has been driven by users, both consuming and generating video. Professional digital producers, big and small, are now responding to this user demand by delivering their content online. Short form video is proliferating on the open internet and this may well extend to long form video content. Advertising is becoming the main revenue model to propel this market. Walled garden services may well become submerged under an open internet video tsunami.

Doubters should look at the US market to see the large amount of video now online. But advertising on US TV is holding up compared to the UK. Online spend over there remains proportionally only half that of the UK. So we’re behind the US in putting video online (by about 18 months) but, it would seem, ahead in the web encroaching on TV. It seems UK users are moving from TV to online particularly quickly. ITV and other commercial channels are finally responding to the threat as convergence looms ever larger.

Utarget is proud to have launched the UK’s first online video advertising net work in June 2006 and to have since led the growth of the UK video ad market. YouTube has demonstrated the huge user interest in video but has equally high lighted the problems in monetizing uncontrolled and variable content. In contrast, we represent video ad inventory across top tier websites offering quality content. As of this month, we’re pleased to include the leading online video pioneer, Blinkx, within our network.

Other networks and major sites now offer targeted streamed placements for video advertisers around well produced short and long form content. In addition, there are video players supplied with rich syndicated content, such as Roo Media and Brightcove (as well as our own ad supported player). Through such players we have sites where video is the hero. These aren’t traditional text based sites but broadband TV channels. Most are ad funded but some are brand sponsored. They’re the future of online and show the video market growing and maturing.

Video ads will become the key format for brand advertisers online. They’re increasingly attracted to video ads as the online format that uniquely offers the impact and reach of TV. Our experience is that online usage is evolving from lean forward to more laid back due to the browsing of online video. It will never be couch potato but new media specialists will increasingly have to compete against big agency TV departments as the two media converge.

From our market position, Utarget is now seeing a sharp upturn in overall video spend in the UK. Test budgets are rising to £20,000 and more clients are willing to invest by equipping their agencies with creative of appropriate length for online. Expect this to rapidly accelerate. We predict that a large part of TV will be distributed online by 2010.