Tonight I saw the post over at TechCrunch writing about the upcoming relaunch of Yahoo Buzz and how it was morphing into a DIGG style voting of news items. TechCrunch gave us the heads up that the new Yahoo Buzz beta is only open to Yahoo employees at this point but that posters have been up around the Yahoo offices plugging the site’s arrival on this coming Monday, February 25th at 9:00 pm.

Though the TechCrunch article stated the url on the posters alpha.buzz.yahoo.com was protected I had to go check it out for myself, if nothing else but see what was up with the old Yahoo buzz. At first arrival at the alpha site I came across the password protected stuff, so no go there, I decided to do a Google site search to see if Google happened to find a hidden page or even a cached bit for us. Bingo! Google had a page for us and the page was not protected. Here are a couple screenshots I grabbed, this one and one at the bottom of this post along with bullet points for the publishers wishing to get their content in front of the voters on Yahoo Buzz and even the main Yahoo home page.

The new Alpha Yahoo Buzz People catagory page is still open so go see it for yourself. I was even able to log in with my regular Yahoo account and vote for the story at the top of the page. You can see in my screen grab where it says “Thanks for voting! and the “buzzed!” count right above the orange thanks for voting message. I still wanted to find out more about this new Yahoo Buzz thing and I found one other link that was not protected. That page I found is the Yahoo Buzz Publisher page and it’s not even in the alpha sub-domain. This tells us more about the new Yahoo Buzz social news site including the following:

• Buzz gets your content on the Yahoo! network.
• Buzz features the most interesting stories and videos on the Web
• Content is ranked based on votes, search-term popularity, and what everyone is reading and emailing - right this instant
• Buzz drives traffic directly to your site to read the full story
• Users can vote for your content from your site or on Buzz itself
• Top Buzz content may be featured on the Yahoo! homepage
• mebeliStay tuned for upcoming syndication tools, including APIs and customized modules…
• Partner with Buzz: We’ll be accepting new publishers soon. Join our mailing list for updates.

Looks like we will have another social venue to contribute to very soon with Yahoo Buzz. Will Yahoo Buzz battle DIGG, Propeller, MIXX for big time social traffic? Yahoo has a big community already, only time will tell if they can get those folks to get active with the socializing of news. What are your thoughts?

One pet peeve I have had with Sphinn is checking the submits by sphinner. Many times I feel like I am missing good items that friends submit because, well lets face it, you can’t be sphinning around the clock and see them all come through What’s New. In order to check submits by sphinner now on Sphinn you have to locate the sphinner most likely through the network page where you may have to search or page for the sphinner if they are not a top sphinner on the first page.

Once you have found your sphinner it takes 2 clicks to get to their submit page. Moving from one friend’s sumbits page to the next friend’s submit page will take you at least 4 clicks(2 back to the network page, 1 on the next sphinner name to info tab and 1 more on the submit tab), that’s if you are lucky enough to have your next friend on the same network page as the previous one. This takes too long if you want to follow multiple friends and pay them the respect of looking at their submits which is how a friend might like to treat another friend.

I finally got tired of all this clicking and figured “Hey, I could use simple bookmarks in my Firefox browser to check sphinner submit pages.” And what do you know, it works like a charm! It takes me one combo click to open my bookmarks and have a big list of Sphinn friends right there on the screen next to my open Sphinn page. Then I can go down the list with 1 click per friend to see their submits. Simple, short and sweet! It saves a bunch of time and I don’t miss what those that I want to follow are sphinning. If you are wondering, it only took 10 or 15 minutes to get a nice size list of folks added to my list.

One concern with this method is you may get out of the habit of seeing the new faces and submits by folks you don’t have bookmarked. Because of this I made sure to put a bookmark for the What’s New page right at the top of my list and always check it when I check other friends. When I notice a new sphinner doing a lot of good stuff I can simply add them to my list. I also put the hot front page in my bookmarks, but I’m not sure why. The front page is probably the page I visit the least because I have seen most all of these stories already. The What’s New page is where the action is HOT!

MinnPost, a new online daily news publication launches today at 11:00 am. MinnPost is a not-for-profit news site dedicated to the Twin Cities and Minnesota. CEO and editor of MinnPost is Joel Kramer. Joel is the former editor of the Star Tribune from 1983 to 1991 and publisher and president from 1992 to 1998.

Joel and the rest of the MinnPost crew is what makes this launch intriguing. MinnPost has pieced together a cast of first-rate editors and journalists, many that have previously worked for the Pioneer Press, Star Tribune, City Pages and other Minnesota media outlets. A few names you may recognize are Roxane Battle, Dave Beal, David Brauer, John Camp, Doug Grow, Britt Robson, Jay Weiner, and Steve Aschburner. These are just a sampling of over 40 journalists that have galloped in to the MinnPost stable.

I am excited to see how MinnPost fares and if they will draw online traffic that compares with the other major media sites in town. They will be covering a full gamut of topics ranging from arts and sports to politics and news. MinnPost has stressed they are focusing on quality over quantity and I can appreciate their stance of ignoring celebrity and entertainment. One concern I have is they have said they will be publishing news 5 days a week and only a limited number of new stories and posts will be published each day. Without even seeing a days worth of stories yet, already I am afraid I will be left wanting more. With the wealth of writers MinnPost has I can only hope they pump out both quality and quantity.

Look close, do you see the light blue back ground behind the Ask Sponsored Results text? Well I just had my eyes checked today and have 20/20 vision, but looking at my notebook screen from various reasonable angles the blue (or is it green?) background is next to invisible.

I believe this hidden background along with the diminutive Sponsored Results text label is likely to increase the click through rate of the sponsored listings and Ask’s income. This would be good for the advertiser since ads should be relevant and traffic still converting, but it’s a bit deceiving for the average search user and most likely hurting the organic results click through rate.

Ask does one other thing I think is a bit sneaky. The Sponsored Results text label in the upper right corner will click through to the sponsor’s site who is in the number one paid position. If you ask me, I would click on this text thinking I would get an explanation of what Sponsored Results are, not a sponsor’s site. I would not want to be charged for those clicks if I was in the number one sponsor spot. Yahoo actually does click you through to an explanation of what sponsored results are. Neither Google nor Live have their sponsored text label linked, but Live is close to doing that with the very near surrounding area clicking through to the sponsored listings.

Ask also has all open space with the sponsor background color click through to the sponsor sites. Live does this as well. To me this seems like they are trying to collect a few extra unintentional clicks. Neither Ask nor Live have the open space next to organic results click through, just the blue underlined titles. Google only has the blue underlined titles linked for sponsored and organic results, Yahoo has all sponsored text (blue underlined titles and description) as a link but only blue and underlined titles click through in the organic results.

So you tell me, do you think these tactics are a bit disingenuous?

If you are a small business owner you may have been told your business needs a web site. If you already have a web site a bit on the retro side of things you may have been told that your site needs an extreme web makeover. You may also have read an article or two listing 10 reasons why your business needs a web site or your business will die.

Most of those lists (except the do or die scare tactic sales pitches) are usually all well and good with helpful items to include on your site like your business hours, directions, products, contact info and so on……but I want to point out the reasons behind these reasons. There may be a signal you did not see. There may be a situation you did not think of, and there may be a personality trait that fits you or your customer and has gone unnoticed. Do any of these these reasons hit home and describe you and your business?

• You have a competitive drive: If you have a competitive personality and are driven to succeed in your business, getting your business on the internet playing field can provide you with a whole new ball game to conquer.
• To learn about your customers: Information is power and collecting data about your web visitors can bring you loads of it. Learn the keywords that brought customers to your site, collect a database of products they search for while on your site, find out where your visitors are from geographically wise. This is just the tip of the iceberg, a free and basic web stats package can help you collect this kind of data plus returns on your marketing investments.
• To provide a convenience: One of the first places a customer will look for information on your business is your web site. You will provide a big convenience if you can give them what they are looking for on a web site.
• To develop trust: Customers need a certain level of trust in order to make an online or even offline transaction with a business. Providing a consistent and active web site with the basics and introducing the people behind the business will go a long way in developing that trust.
• Reputation management: Every once in a while somebody might say something negative about your business, your products or your field of business. Having a web site to present your perspective is a way to nip those situations in the bud to comfort and ease the minds of your customers.
• React quickly to events: This is related a bit to reputation management above in that the ability to react and get your message out quickly can be to your advantage. In this case there may be a positive story or event that takes place, if you can offer up some early information on the subject or show yourself to be an expert on it you may be noticed by the media and gain additional exposure.
• Engage your customers: Provide and engage your visitors with interesting, fun, and informative content so they come back to your site again and again.
• Connect with people: If you are active with your site you will start to connect with people, making new business partnerships and true friends. Opportunities are waiting for those that are in pursuit.
• People are interested: There are people in the world and maybe right across the street that are interested in learning more about you and your business. They maybe don’t want to buy one of your widgets today but some people are simply sometimes curious about your business. This may be because they happened to hear your business name mentioned some where, one of your drivers courteously let them merge into a lane of traffic, or maybe they saw your business name on a shirt at the Minnesota state fair. It’s strange how fortunate luck just happens some times.
• People don’t like to be pressured: You may not be the high pressure sales person we all have experienced at one time or another, but some people like to browse and gather information without being bothered at all.

I’m not here to tell you what your business needs, that is for you to decide. I just hope these items help you decide if a new web site is right for you and your business. Do you have any other reasons behind the reasons to share?

A small business needs to define a niche and I had to do the same with North Rock Publishing so here it is. I’m a one man shop and I like to work in close relationships with other small businesses in Minnesota looking to take their web presence to the next level. I specialize in designing web sites, blog customization and internet marketing for Minnesota small businesses.

Here at the North Rock Publishing blog I will be sharing my thoughts on internet marketing and web development for Minnesota small businesses. My target audience is the small business owner that does not understand all the technical coding but wants to learn more about building a solid foundation on the web with great design, functionality, internet marketing and social networking for their business.