Here it comes: the paid content movement.

There has been a lot of talk from larger online publishers about how to add a pay wall to their existing online content.  One notable example is NYtimes.com, who is considering adding a subscription like wall to some of its content.  Sites like Economist.com already have such a system that saves some content for its paid subscribers.  In this article, the author suggests the use of a micro-payments, or pay as you go, system.  

Of course, there are serious risks and consequences to adding a pay wall.  In the example of NYtimes.com, this would effectively eliminate a tremendous amount of inbound linking via blogs, Twitter, Facebook, etc.  With ad revenue already suffering and helping to stir up such a movement, its easy to think about the further damaging effects if you cut down on general traffic.

However, the era of free premium internet content seems limited, and there is no doubt that paid content will be pervasive in the years to come.  That doesn't mean I like it, or think it's a great idea, but at the very least a micro-payments system will help differentiate from lighter users to heavier.  And as the author suggests, a simplified, universal pay system is needed like EZ Pass or PayPal.  Otherwise, users will quickly get fed up of various pay systems and drop off.

Bing Raises Market Share

I have to say I am not typically one to take a bandwagon approach (aka Fanboy) to very much of anything online, but Bing.com has really caught my attention, as it appears others' as well .  And although pitching that Google is becoming too big, and taking Microsoft as the alternative seems nauseatingly ironic, that's some of what I am thinking.

After Vista, Microsoft saws glimpses of their mortality for the first time since probably the mid 90s.  With the emergence of Win7, Bing, and plenty of other successful endeavors, it seems they got the message.  And while Google's products are anything but shabby, it seems their arrogance is climbing at a hefty pace.  That bothers me a little bit but I suppose these large search conglomerate battles are entertaining.

Anyway, try out Bing.com, see the cool homepages, and the search itself is quite easy and accurate.  Apparently, they will be changing the home page 3 times a day to show Olympic photographs during the Vancouver Games as well, pretty cool.

Social Media Integration and Metrics

I find that these are two articles are incredibly helpful with both shaping your social media programs, and implementing metrics to measure their success.

Businesses often stumble on how to implement social programs for marketing purposes, as it differs greatly from traditional marketing practices.  Reference to this guide, can help to construct a framework in which social media programs can be applied to business processes.  From there, metrics remain ever so important to prove these programs worth.  In the past, measurements have fallen into the following groups:

Return on Engagement: The duration of time spent either in conversation or interacting with social objects, and in turn, what transpired that’s worthy of measurement.
Return on Participation: The metric tied to measuring and valuing the time spent participating in social media through conversations or the creation of social objects.
Return on Involvement: Similar to participation, marketers explored touchpoints for documenting states of interaction and tied metrics and potential return of each.
Return on Attention: In the attention economy, we assess the means to seize attention, hold it, and measure the response.
Return on Trust: A variant on measuring customer loyalty and the likelihood for referrals, a trust barometer establishes the state of trust earned in social media engagement and the prospect of generating advocacy and how it impacts future business.

However, as we progress forward and social media utilizes more advanced strategies, simply measuring actions will not sufficiently represent the effects these programs can have, or the cost...or in effect, the return.  In 2010, we should definitely see an advancement in these programs, and their evolution into fundamental marketing strategies.