Category: marketing

George Simpson writes in MediaLife about Madison Avenue’s ridiculous pursuit of the so-called “metrosexual” saying “A metrosexual is nothing more than a guy who finally figured out he’d get laid a lot more with a haircut, clean fingernails, his shirttail tucked in, and thus empowered, able to entrap dates in his apartment by cooking them meals.”

He says Madison Avenue has forced us to “endure this fiction that metrosexuals are an important new marketing niche squeezed, tweezed and teased somewhere between gay men, and the “hysterical heterosexuality of tits, beer, sports, cars, and fart-lighting.” [Adrants]

VeriSign, Inc. (VRSN) , the leading provider of critical infrastructure services for the Internet and telecommunications networks, today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to sell the Network Solutions business unit to Pivotal Private Equity. Under the terms of the agreement, VeriSign will receive approximately $100 million, consisting of $60 million in cash and a $40 million senior subordinated note. VeriSign will also retain a 15% equity stake in Network Solutions. The transaction is subject to certain closing conditions and is anticipated to close in the fourth quarter. [CBS MarketWatch]

In case you’ve forgotten, Verisign initially acquired Network Solutions for 21 Billion!!!!!!!!

This is actually only 60 Million in cash… and for the Registrar (the seller of domains) not the Registry, the keeper. Tools like SiteFinder will most likely keep on coming as Verisign will still be able to retain control of their kingdom.

…I’m intrigued that AOL opted to use Netscape. Naturally the AOL brand can’t be tarnished by direct association with a value service. And when free-to-air ISPs became the rule in Europe, AOL launched a free service under the Netscape brand [Jupiter European Internet Research]. Very interesting to see history repeat itself here a few years down the road. But AOL has CompuServe, and the Journal article says they even tried using that brand for the value service, but Netscape tested better. Well, duh. AOL’s kind of let the CompuServe brand atrophy. Though “Netscape”‘s lost a lot of its luster too, it’s not surprising that more consumers (at least those who aren’t super net veterans) know and trust Netscape today.

Finally, this move will put MSN in an interesting spot. AOL will have Netscape (and Compuserve), Earthlink has PeoplePC. MSN will be the only premium ISP without a low-cost affiliate. I have a sneaky feeling that won’t stay that way for long.

This is a necessary move for AOL, but still a bold one. They’re going to have to show the Street that retaining someone as a $9.95 value customer is better than losing that person entirely. And that they can build enough of a value proposition around the Netscape ISP that it competes with the other providers targeting the late-adopter segment of the consumer online audience.

[Joseph Laszlo]

The FTC says search companies still have work to do in making sure that ads placed in search results are clearly marked as such, so consumers can tell them apart. [CNET News.com]

AOL Launches 9.0 Online Ad Push….The company bills it as its largest online advertising effort to date, including a two-day blitz to reach 80 percent of Web users. [internetnews.com: Top News]

Google Search: dean: The Wesley Clark crew bought the AdWord “dean” (for Howard Dean, his competition) over at Google. Via John Robb.

[Gadgetopia]

Hardly dirty, it’s called good Search Engine Marketing…Buy where you think your audience is going to be looking.

A federal appeals court let the Federal Trade Commission enforce its do-not-call program against telemarketers, while the agency appeals a judge’s ruling that declared the rule unconstitutional. [New York Times: Technology]

Telephone regulators issue a series of guidelines to help cell phone carriers meet an upcoming deadline to let customers switch to rival companies but keep their old phone numbers. [CNET News.com]

[I found this: http://www.bloogz.com/ in my referer list. A new search engine?]*

[Archipelago]

I caught that last night in mine as well and have noticed that they visit after each post I’ve made since they started tracking me.

I can’t believe this is just launching… but now you can finally decide which Administrative or Technical contacts you want to appear in the public WHOIS database