YouTube originally made the redesigned channels available to a select group of elite members and new users. Now however, the video site is letting anyone upgrade their channel, and eventually they’ll be moving all remaining channels over to the new version.

Swing over here for a full walkthrough.

1 suggests that the branding of any organisation or business should be of the utmost priority.  The brand would set out guidelines and actually define the business and its operations.

The other believes that your brand starts with the value of your services or products.  By focusing on, and thus increasing this value to customers, your brand builds itself.

For a small setup like ourselves, we need to brand ourselves properly to establish credibility with our clients and gain exposure/build recall.  A common notion is that branding activities can be very costly, which to a certain extent is pretty true.  Fortunately, the Internet came and changed all the way businesses communicated to each other and to the public and consumers.  It allowed brands to grow without taking a big hit on the current account.  And now the widespread use of social media has created even more channels with which businesses can engage their target audience.

Larry Light, former global CMO for McDonald’s shares his 6 rules for revitalizing brands (he applied these to McDonald’s apparently), even if you’re building a brand from scratch they would be applicable.  Read his piece here.

Maybe we are truly approaching the year of mobile. Maybe we’re not. Maybe we should just stop trying to label these things and stick to the facts. According to comScore you can add a piece of data to the mix that shows growth in the access of local information using mobile devices which will warm the hearts of app developers everywhere.

The 51% spike in users seeking to gather local information is broken out across the following platforms

comScore’s senior VP Serge Matta comments

“Given the explosion in application stores and associated marketing efforts, along with the growth in mobile phones using faster data networks, it would not be surprising within the next six months to see the number of people using downloadable applications surpass SMS for the accessing of local information via mobile devices.”

Read the full story at Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim

Well, aside from the initial reports that Bing is seeing an increase in market share, there could be an even more important benefit of the new design. Bing might just make more money per search query than Google.

As you may have noticed, Bing uses a three column design for its search results page. Having just returned from Microsoft’s Search Summit, I can confirm that this wasn’t just done on a whim, but very carefully thought out. One of the driving factors for the design, was the ability to give Bing users a vast array of data and refinement options. In essence, Bing gave that left hand navigational column a prime time spot.

So, what happens when you shake-up the design of a search results page? The search engine user breaks that zombie stare they once used to focus purely on the middle column of results. In other words, their eye starts roving. In fact, as User Centric’s eye studies have shown, Bing users–faced with a 3-column design–are much more likely to view the paid ads that run down the right-hand column.

…sponsored links on the right attracted more attention on Bing (~42% of participants per search) than they did on Google (~25% of participants per search). The participants who fixated on these links spent approximately 2.5 seconds looking at the area during transactional searches and 2 seconds during informational searches. These times were similar for the two search engines.

Now, it could just be the novelty factor. More likely, the design of Bing encourages the searcher’s eye to look beyond the typical ten blue links. If this trend holds, advertisers will be delighted at the additional engagement Bing brings to their ads. And that engagement means more money for Microsoft’s coffers!

Read the full story at Marketing Pilgrim

Over the past year, eBay has been the target of frequent criticism and was also suffering from a decline in users.  The recent moves have been confirmed by eBay as a move back to their core ecommerce and online payment businesses.

This practice of distributing rogue software has been on the rise. Read more about the attack in detail over at PandaLabs’ blog.

Newspapers are facing tough challenges from the Internet and New Media.   Over the past few years, many newspapers companies in Europe and particularly the US have been facing financial difficulties due to the decline in subscription, retail sales and advertising revenue.  Some of these previously daily papers are now circulated weekly, while a fair number of newspaper companies have gone out of business completely.  The factors that are commonly attributed to the decline in profitability for newspapers include changing demographics, the choice of alternative sources of news and of course the Internet.

So, What Happened?

The Internet has radically changed the way we obtain our news.   Countless news sites are offering on-the-minute stories through various formats like audio, video or text, all for free.  Don’t visit a news site?  Chances are you will have heard about breaking news items through your friends who are connected by instant messengers or social networks like Twitter or Facebook.

The definition of editors, journalists and reporters are also blurred, with anyone having a digital camera or even a camera phone uploading news from anywhere in the world at any single moment, all effectively becoming a competitor for a newspaper.  What’s the point of buying the papers tomorrow morning when you’ve read all the news tonight?

Lesson 1: The Business Landscape is Changing Very Dramatically

If it could happen to some of the US’s largest state newspapers with daily circulations of above 350000, who’s to say there a possibility of smaller businesses being eroded by these changing times.  With news being so readily available and for free, are newspapers income model of advertising and subscription still effective?

Lesson 2: Transparency and Quality of Services/Products

We posts news, reviews and opinions on blogs and forums.  In a channel where everyone has a voice, it is becoming easier to access brands, companies and their products and services.  It is easier to make comparisons based on merit, prices and to source for alternatives.  Even if you do not have an active presence on the Internet, your customers will be discussing about you.  Do you have any reputation management plans in place? Can your offerings stand up to and beyond the critiques?

Lesson 3: Timeliness and Delivery

With the ease of access to information and the Internet, customers are expecting to receive their services and products faster, if not immediately.  Many websites are offering web applications where customers can self-serve themselves to the services they need, reducing the likelihood of losing a customer because offices are closed at 2 in the morning.  It’s scary to learn that in a mere 6 hours (till you open for business), your customer may have fulfilled his need and no longer require your services.  Also, if your product or service requires a physical presence, can you engage the customer until the delivery is completed?

Bonus Lesson: Evolve and Prosper

This has been said so many times by so many people, but when you’re involoved in the 24/7 planning and operations of a business, it’s hard to take a moment to look at what’s happening all around.  Think in ahead though, may pay off big time.  In spite of all the gloom in the newspaper industry, the Guardian in the U.K recognized the threat and possibilities that new media offered, and was quick to adjust their business models.  Guardian’s “online news provider first, newspapers second” model has helped paved the way to a larger and international audience.  In Jan 2009, Guardian’s circulation was around 358844, while it received an average of 20 million viewers monthly online.

Last year, the number of people accessing the Internet using a mobile device totaled 1.08 billion.  Many Internet marketers were caught off guard.  It was the first time the number of mobile Internet users surpassed Internet users on a PC.  According to comScore, 22 million users access the mobile Internet on the daily basis in January 2009 compared to half that number in 2008.

A breakdown showed that the most popular uses for the mobile web were:

1) Accessing news and information

2) Social networking or blogging

3) Trading stocks or accessing financial information

4) Accessing movie information

5) Accessing business directories

What These Figures Mean for Internet Marketing

As improvements in current mobile technology make it easier to access the Internet, coupled with the fact that Singapore has one of the highest mobile phone penetration rate (76%), we will start to see exponential growth in the number of mobile Internet users as well as an increase in the volume of transactions (both ecommerce and non-monetary) over the mobile Internet.  Businesses now have a new marketing channel. The race is on for the first-mover advantage.

Why The Money’s on the Mobile Internet

1) Cell-phone Technology

The Windows Mobile smartphones had a problem with fitting a full webpage into the tiny viewport.  The amount scrolling that had to be performed to onscreen to make sense of a page turned off many users.  With Apple’s thinking out of the box, the iPhone became the offered the first competent mobile web browser. Zoom browsing was quickly adapted by other mobile devices.  More devices are being built specifically to allow users to  remain connected to the web while on the go.

2) Wider Access to Networks

With free WiFi and cheaper 3G rates, it is becoming very affordable to remain connected.

3) More Dependency on Internet

It’s getting harder to live without the Internet for the convenience it brings.  Singaporeans spend an average of 2 hours a day on the Internet on a PC.  Businesses recognize this and will develop applications for you to book cinema tickets, order a pizza, buy lottery, etc.. over your phone.  You will be more dependent on the Internet and your phone than ever before.

4) Realtime Nature

The killer reason why mobile Internet will change consumer behavior.  Consumers will have up-to-the-minute information including prices, reviews of products among other things.  Transactions can then take place immediately, regardless of where a user is.  Users no longer have to be in front of their computer and have the ability to make decisions anytime they want.

Preparing Yourself for the Mobile Internet

1) Create a Mobile/Lite Version of your Website

We still do not have access to super speeds when it comes to WiFi or 3G, so large images or files will be difficult to load on a mobile device.  Also, users who are on plans that charge by the amount of data transferred will be unlikely to return if your site is a data-guzzler.  Keep in mind that technologies like Flash and Java may not be supported in mobile browsers and you may want to use alternatives to them in you are catering to a mobile audience.  It is popular to build a seperate mini-site that recognizes the mobile browser and appears automatically in place of your regular website.

2) Integrate your Site with Mobile Features

Certain mobiles like the iPhone is able to recognize phone numbers and locations, and is able to call or a send a message to that number or display the location on a map.  This features help to cut down the number of actions required for your user to reach you, making it more likely to close a sale.  With growing integration between mobile phones and Web 2.0 applications, it will be easier to engage your customer.  Be creative!

3) Develop a Custom Application

Go the whole 9 yards!  Develop an application that reinforces or supplements your products or services.  Allow your customers to get technical support, make reservations or place customised orders using your custom application on their mobile phones.  Make it convenient and hassle-free for your customers and they will be more likely to purchase from you again.

While the new mobile technology surfacing every week may seem daunting, do keep abreast of the current limitations and start to develop your mobile Internet presence one step at a time, its never too late nor early!

You just need to sign up for a free account and create your profile.  Anytime you network, you send a text message to Contxt’s system with your contact’s 10-digit id, and both his contact details will be saved in your list.  You could access contacts from your phone by accessing the system’s “digital rolodex”.  Think about it, no need to worry if you are changing phones/jobs/addresses, since your new data shows up in your contacts’ accounts automatically.

The service is being offered in the US via SMS, but I’m sure it’s a matter of time before they go global via mobile internet.