The traditional methods of getting a message across to potential customers are growing more and more ineffective with each passing day. Radio commercials are reaching fewer people since the onset of satellite radio and the iPod. Music lovers no longer have to wait for their favorite song to play. Radio stations can no longer hold listeners at bay, flooding them with advertisements, as they wait for their favorite song. People quickly turn the page with print ads, and TiVo has all but made tv commercials a thing of the past. I’m no longer held captive by Fox, or NBC, or even HBO. There are other ways to view their programming. Simple ways that not only spare me the boredom of commercials, but also save me time as well. And I don’t need TiVo to do it. All of us can avoid the interruption of traditional marketing.

Even online, advertising to your target audience is getting harder every day. Punching the monkey no longer works, banner ads are being ignored, and sites with popups are being totally avoided, or stopped by the latest browsers. Any smart internet browser knows that ads on the right side are transactional based, and that the information contained on those pages comes with a price. We stick to the left side. (more…)

Yahoo! Buzz is a new social media news site currently in Beta. With Yahoo! Buzz you can vote up stories to the homepage. A story is ranked based on its Buzz Score. The score is derived from search term popularity, the number of times a story is emailed from Buzz, and the number of votes a story receives.

I’d imagine Kevin and Jay of Digg.com may be shaking in their boots right now because this means huge competition for other social media sites like Mixx and Reddit. Jay recently stated that Digg is not in a bidding war with Microsoft and Google but I’m sure many companies have their eyes on Digg.com and will pownce on it when opportunity arises.
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