Facebook recently contracted Snaptu to develop its a phone application, which provides an experience close to a smartphone to over 2,500 mobile devices with Java-based apps that work, look and feel like their smart phone counterparts.

Snaptu CEO, Ran Makavy, stated:

“Our goal when we founded Snaptu in 2007 was to provide useful and innovative services to the 95 percent of mobile users that don’t have access to advanced smart phones.”

“Working as part of the Facebook team offered the best opportunity to keep accelerating the pace of our product development. And joining Facebook means we can make an even bigger impact on the world.”

Snaptu started in 2007 and received funding from venture capital firms Carmel Ventures and Sequioa Capital.

The facebook / Snaptu deal is estimated to be over $65 million.

Not only are you losing individual sales, you are losing customers and any future sales to those potential customers.

Focus on YOUR customers, don’t distract and annoy them with Adsense ads and lose sales.

If you want to be taken seriously and trusted by your customers don’t run Adsense on your Ecommerce site.

Over 80% of the people that attend industry seminars never put into practice what they learn. Why? Because they let time pass. Enthusiasm wanes. They forget. Life happens and they get back to doing what they have always been doing.

If you do nothing, none of what you learned can possibly work.

Start implementing at least one of your ”take aways” as soon as possible even if it is something small. It just might put you on the path to continue using some of the other things you learned and you won’t feel like you wasted your time and/or money.

DO SOMETHING!

After his embarrassingly brash and seemingly drug crazed 20/20 interview, Charlie created a Twitter account. Within 24 hours he was topping 1 million followers, to set a record for fastest new Twitter user to get to 1 million. He is now parlaying that into lucrative endorsement/sponsored revenue utilizing his now catch phrase hashtag #winning. He calls it a “cash cow”.

Controversy creates traffic. The ability to spot it and capitalize on the viral power of that without becoming emotional frazzled is what sets him apart in this case.

Did the public just get played big time by Charlie Sheen? You be the judge.

Many people research what the best niche to target is and choose something based on income potential alone. The problem with that is if you have no knowledge of that niche you need to spend a tremendous of time learning about the industry and it’s customers.

When you are trying to decide what niche  / industry you want to target with your Internet Marketing, website or extending your current business it makes sense to “go with what you know”.

If you start or add something where you already have expertise you can speak with authority from the outset, have an “insider” advantage and build a reputation as an expert. It doesn’t necessarily have to be job related, it could be a hobby, long time interest or cause.

A passion for the subject will show and you will also be more inclined to start with it for the long haul. The “stick-to-it-ive-ness”  is an important part of becoming successful online.

Passion+ Perseverance +Patience=Success.

I sometimes hear this comment from web design clients during a design/redesign – “I think the new website would look/be better if”.  Well, guess what. Your customers don’t give a hoot if you like your website. They only care if  THEY like it. And they vote with their wallet.

Design and cater your website to your customers needs and they will be more likely to buy your products and services. I know, it sounds so obvious, but we all get caught up in what we personally like sometimes instead of what actually works. The key is to put your personal likes/dislikes aside and save them for the artwork you are buying for your walls.

Get feedback from your actual customers, not your family and friends.  Their personal view could well be as off as our own.  Soliciting customer feedback before making any changes to your website could also save you valuable time and money.

A Google software engineer, Amit Singhal claims that Bing is using search results scraped from Google. The Google “Bing Sting” ran experiments using “honey pot” pages to prove that pages that never existed before “magically” show up in Bing after being indexed by Google. Read the whole story on Engadget

Bing is most likely aggregating from several other sources as well.

Is this “cheating”? Not really. Search engines try to index as much as possible from wherever they can get it. It does however put another ding in Bing reputation as being inferior to Google.