01 Sep 10 Breaking : Twitter announces security updates proactively : All 3rd party apps can no longer store password & new T.co URL shortening service
Well, Twitter just sent out an email with significant improvements to their security model – something that Mark at Facebook just doesn’t seem to consider a priority over monetizing the trust of his 500 million Facebook members.
The highlights from the announcements by Twitter (full email details after the break) include:
- There are 250,000 3rd party apps that connect to Twitter
- All 3rd party apps will have to use the OAuth authentication method, and will not be allowed to ask for – or store – the actual Twitter user name or password
- Launches t.co – their very own URL shortening services … will be interesting to see how this plays out with dominating URL shortening services such as bit.ly
I’m impressed by this news… social media is wonderful, but the skeptics who are avoiding it (which includes a vast majority of “normal” non-tech and early adopter folk) should be reassured by this proactive approach by Twitter to making their environment a bit more secure.
Now, if only they could continue to work on the ever present FailWhale-powered site outages… 
Full email received:
Tags: IT Security, micro-blogging, Social Media, Twitter, Web 2.0
01 Sep 10 RéseauContact offre 7 jours de membre privilège gratis suite au problème de recherche
Le site de rencontre RéseauContact éprouvait des difficultés techniques avec le moteur de recherche interne sur leur site depuis presqu’une semaine entière !
Ils avaient publié des informations tout le long de l’interruption de service qui affectait seulement une partie des fonctionnalités du site – cependant, essentielle car la recherche est évidemment utilisée par la majorité des membres pour trouver des personnes ou des profils qui correspondent à leurs besoins ou intérêts.
Aujourd’hui ils ont réussies à résoudre l’enjeu entourant la recherche et ont annoncé que tous les membres payants – des membres privilèges – ont eu un crédit sous forme de 7 jours d’abonnement additionnels.
Ça, c’est du bon service à la clientèle… et important car l’industrie de rencontres en ligne est hyper compétitive – RéseauContact est un site Canoë qui appartient à Quebecor.
Tags: dating sites, downtime, français, online dating, RéseauContact, sites de rencontres, Web 2.0
14 Jun 09 Chitika hits 50,000 publishers – congrats! a great way to supplement your Adsense & other website revenue methods
I’ve managed website monetization strategies for quite a while now, and first started using Chitika about 3 years ago or so, when they were essentially providing widgets to online stores that would pay a commission. At the time, it was a murky fit if you already had Adsense running, since it involved an option to insert their code to deliver ads in a contextual manner (adjusting ads based on the content of your page)…
At the time they offered 2 types of ad integration for website publishers; either through a fixed keyword method (where you chose a keyword to indicate products to be placed from their pool of advertisers) and a contextual method where they would place ads based on your page content. At the time, Adsense was the biggest (perhaps only significant?) player in the contextual text ad game, so it was hard to really give up the “sure-fire” Adsense revenue to experiment with Chitika. I did try it with the specific keyword method, but their product advertiser range was quite limited – mainly electronics; and as such it didn’t work well with our non-electronics based sites.
That all changed around a year ago, and now they have a great advertising model, where their JavaScript-based ad code only appears to visitors arriving from a search engine. Basically their ad code recognizes the search string that your visitor used on the referring search engine, and then Chitika displays relevant ads based on that particular keyword. It’s not purely contextual, and therefore can be used in tandem with Google Adsense – the latter program specifically disallows for the use of concurrent contextual advertising spots.
This way, it’s only your visitors who arrive from search engines who see the Chitika ads, and you get paid per click that your visitors do on the ads. The payouts are quite decent, and it’s fairly uninstrusive for your visitor base.
Congrats to Chitika who just reached 50,000 publishers! If you own a website, I highly recommend you try out Chitika and get a few extra dollars flowing your way.
Tags: AdSense, Chitika, Monetization, ppc, Web 2.0
03 Jun 09 Official : Microsoft to close Office Live Affiliate Program
OK, so admittedly, I haven’t been maintaining the site over the last few weeks (check the right sidebar for my Twitter activity tho’)… regardless, just got a note from Adrienne Erreca of Commission Junction that pretty much confirms that Microsoft will be ending the affiliate program for Office Live.
I don’t think that MSFT is unhappy with the affiliate model, rather it’s most probably a rebranding strategy (Bing it, you’ll see)…
Office Live was pretty much MSFT’s first foray into SaaS cloud computing targeting small and medium businesses that were (for the most part) already exploring online tools like Google Docs.
Did anyone make any coin referring visitors to Microsoft Office Live? They’re paying $1 per registration for their service – but only until June 30th!
Here’s the official news:
From: Microsoft Office Live [mailto:owner-membermessaging@mx6.cj.com]
Sent: Wednesday, June 03, 2009 8:31 PM
Subject: Microsoft Office Live affiliate program to close 6/30/09Robin Majumdar,
We’re writing to let you know that the Microsoft Office Live Small Business affiliate program will be closing 6/30/09.
We appreciate all of the time and effort that you put into promoting the program and wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly at aerreca@cj.com or 805.730.8377.
Sincerely,
The Microsoft Office Live Affiliate Team
Adrienne Erreca | Sr. Program Manager
Commission Junction | a Valueclick Company
Tags: Adrienne Erreca, affiliate programs, Microsoft Office Live, Monetization, Web 2.0
