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I took a walk around the Ad:Tech SF show floor yesterday and checked out some of the exhibitors. One that I was really impressed with was VideoClix. They have a great new product that allows you to embed links in your video regardless of the source of the video. You can track objects within the video like a shirt for example that can also have a link to the actual shirt for sale. Good stuff.

I wasn’t able to attend the second or third days due to a conflict with my work schedule so I missed the two keynot speeches I really wanted to see. I think next year I may just take the time off work so I can fully enjoy what Ad:Tech has to offer. The show floor this year was bigger and had to span two entire floors of Moscone West. If you plan on attending next year, let me know so we can meet up for Lunch or drinks during the show.

Here’s a wrap up video of the first day (This isn’t me, I just found it on YouTube). Enjoy.

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I just got a letter from Google Adsense letting me know their video units are retiring. I have some mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I think Google should be doing whatever they can to streamline their business and keep an eye out for what’s working and what isn’t. On the other hand, video units were my biggest moneymaker when they were clicked on. That being said, I don’t use much of Adsense anymore to begin with because the ads just don’t perform well on my blogs.

For reference, here’s the email:

Hi,

We’re writing to let you know that we’ll be retiring AdSense video units at the end of April. After reviewing this feature, we’ve found that it hasn’t been performing as well as we had hoped, so we’ve decided to focus our efforts on other opportunities to help publishers monetize their sites.

We recommend that you begin removing the video unit code from your pages as soon as possible, to ensure that you can take advantage of the available ad space on your pages. At the end of April, any remaining Leaderboard or Skyscraper video units will begin directing users to YouTube.com, while other video unit sizes will automatically be changed to standard embedded YouTube players. These standard video players will display top YouTube videos, but you won’t generate earnings from them once this change occurs.

If you’d still like to display free video content from YouTube, you can do so through YouTube.com directly: visit any specific video page for the embed code, or sign in to your YouTube account to create a playlist. For more information about embedding YouTube videos, please visit http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=57788. Alternatively, if you have less than three ad units on your page, you may prefer to replace your video unit with a regular ad unit.

Although video units are being retired, other video offerings within AdSense aren’t affected. Video ads may still appear on your pages and AdSense for video is still available for eligible publishers. If you’d like more information about the retiring of video units, please visit our Help Center at https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=12182.

Thanks for your support of video units in the past, and we appreciate your patience and cooperation.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Email preferences: You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your AdSense product or account.

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

I think what really wasn’t working here is the format of the video units. The idea was that you could embed YouTube videos into your blogs and people using the player would generate revenue for you when the videos were played. The problem was, none of the sizes of the players are economical in terms of real estate on your blog. They were too big for most spaces and had a clunky interface. Perhaps they are going back to the drawing board to redesign them. We’ll have to wait and see.

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Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, StockTwits, LinkedIn. These are social networks. They exist to connect people together based on friendship, business connections or similar interests and they are here to stay, folks. Some are mistakenly calling this “Social Media” but that’s a misnomer.

As explained in this post, Social Media is a contradiction in terms. Media by its nature can’t be social if it can’t be controlled by a single source. That being said, social networking in all forms is here to stay. Read this post by Howard Lindzon, creator of StockTwits and the wildly popular internet stock show Wall Strip.

Howard states, “I don’t think you can set out to build a community. I think the best communities just happen.” and he’s right. The best, most creative and interesting communities stem from a common understanding or goal and happen out of necessity. Birds of a feather, if you will, flock together.

I use social networks to communicate to my friends, family and twitter followers the things I am doing or want them to know about. By keeping them in the loop, they can pass that word on and do more than I can do on my own to get my information out there. This is what I love about blogging and the internet. What you have to say is always going to be interesting to someone, even when you think it isn’t.

One of my friends, who is very cynical (and 10 years younger than me) told me one day that Twitter is a fad. I had to wholeheartedly disagree with him. That’s like saying Craigslist or Ebay are fads, implying that eventually they will stop being used and disappear into the ether. I assure you, he is dead wrong.

Twitter is being used for much more than just a venting ground in 140 characters or less. Real information is being exchanged thorough Twitter, gathered, disseminated and used for business purposes. I get more interesting information from the folks I follow on Twitter than almost anywhere else on the web. It’s a powerful platform when leveraged correctly.

StockTwits is a perfect example. Users post short messages about the stocks they are trading or about other trading information and by using a specific symbol (the $ in this case) before a symbol, the StockTwits engine will pick up the feed from twitter and add it to its own feed. This kind of intentional aggregation has created a community that is going to flourish and profit.

So next time someone tells you social networking is a fad, you can put them in their place and let them know that there’s much more to it than just 140 characters.

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