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DAYTON, OH, Nov 11, 2015 (Marketwired via COMTEX) — JangoMail (https://JangoMail.com) has been named one of Website Magazine’s top email marketing solutions. Each year the publication selects the best solutions from the thousands in the email industry and features them in their magazine and online. It is an honor to be included in such a prestigious group.
“We have a lot of really great features, but what really sets JangoMail apart is our API,” remarked company president, Jeff DeBolt. “Many of our large customers use our open API to do everything from sending to reporting. JangoMail’s ability to add dynamic content for personalization also sets us apart from our competitors.”
For the past year email marketing has continued to surpass other marketing channels in terms of market share. Email marketing usually has a higher ROI than any other digital marketing effort. According to the DMA, email marketing typically has over a 4,000% ROI for U.S. based businesses.
JangoMail.com customers can send transactional and scheduled mass marketing emails. Their autoresponders allow you to send email programmatically based on customer behavior. Their deliverability rates are the best in the industry and their UI is simple and easy to use.
About JangoMail
JangoMail leads the permission-based email marketing industry, offering services for transactional and marketing emails. Customers can try Jangomail for free without a credit card or contract. Over 200,000 organizations on six continents use JangoMail and its transactional service JangoSMTP to stay in touch with their customers and prospects. JangoMail offers flexible pricing and unique features for entrepreneurs and businesses of all sizes and industries. To learn more, call 1-888-GO-JANGO or visit https://jangomail.com/.
Contact:
Lara Cook
Marketing Strategist
Lara.cook@us.jangomail.com
SOURCE: JangoMail
mailto:lara.cook@us.jangomail.com
(C) 2015 Marketwire L.P. All rights reserved.
Mobile — where search continues to gain greater importance — will likely see bigger budget in 2016, as companies continue to shift search advertising ad spend from desktop. But it’s still not all good news for conversions.
Marketers are expected to put more “new” dollars toward search compared with other formats, according to eMarketer, citing a report from AdMedia Partners. In fact, 2% of respondents plan to increase search spending by more than 30%, while one in 10 marketers plan to increase search spend by 20% or more. Some 16% have plans to spend at least 15% more, compared with 2015.
Many of the new dollars will go into mobile search campaigns. The industry began to see the shift in the later part of 2015.
Google’s Product Listing Ad format also continues to grow. Clicks on these image-based ads rose 62% year-over-year in the fourth quarter of 2015, and mobile drove much of the growth. Merkle RKG reports that clicks from phones rose 180% Y/Y in the quarter.
Conversion rates remain low, however, compared to desktop. In aggregate, search partner PLA traffic conversion rates came in at 48% lower than google.com PLA traffic in Q4, according to Merkle RKG.
Overall, U.S. retailers spent more on digital marketing from Nov. 1 through Dec. 25, among Kenshoo clients, compared with the same period in 2014. The biggest increase went to mobile search and mobile product listing ads, which rose 93% and 111%, respectively, year over year.
The higher investments reaped rewards for advertisers. Total U.S. search advertising revenue rose 15% in 2015, while U.K. search revenue rose 35%. Higher conversions were a direct result of revenue growth in the U.S., although the average order size remained the same, among Kenshoo clients.
Fifty-one percent of all paid-search ad clicks in the Americas and 55% in Asia-Pacific came from mobile devices in third-quarter 2015, per Kenshoo.
Some industry experts say the money will flow into Facebook and other social sites that are a little less complicated than search platforms. Search ads, while powerful, can become challenging for some types of businesses, especially for those in competitive niches or when selling something new that people aren’t searching for yet, according to Larry Kim, founder at WordStream.
This week, WordStream released a platform to support Facebook, which is basically a mobile application. Kim says Facebook ads let marketers create new demand for products and services before consumers start searching on engines. “You also can remarket to the people who found you from search ads as they browse Facebook,” he says. “As a result, we think that Facebook ads greatly increase the ROI of search ads and vice versa.”
Madrivo earns “Gold Award” for its lead generation efforts
When it comes to doing affiliate marketing the right way, Madrivo is one of the very best, and I think the results in our case prove that.
Las Vegas (PRWEB) November 11, 2015
MarCom Awards this week announced Madrivo, a leading online marketing agency, as a Gold Award recipient in the email campaign category of their annual competition that recognizes outstanding achievement in the realm of marketing communications.
The award highlights Madrivo’s ongoing email lead generation campaign for Las-Vegas-based Lead Genesis, which has generated more than 114,000 qualified leads and upwards of $117 million in new revenue for the residential solar contractors that Lead Genesis serves.
“They had a legitimate service to offer, but few people knew about it, which means traditional marketing methods were not going to be very effective,” said Madrivo CEO Ronen Hamatian. “They needed an active campaign to target and seek out potential buyers, and that’s what direct response advertising delivers.”
Before contracting Madrivo, Lead Genesis was generating a few hundred leads per month, but Madrivo’s direct marketing efforts increased that number exponentially – often delivering upwards of 20,000 qualified leads in a single month. A more complete view of Madrivo’s methods and success can be found in this LeadGen case study published by Madrivo.
“When it comes to doing affiliate marketing the right way, Madrivo is one of the very best, and I think the results in our case prove that,” said Lead Genesis CEO James Duband.
MarCom Awards is administered and judged by the Association of Marketing and Communication Professionals. The international organization consists of several thousand creative professionals. The Association oversees awards and recognition programs, provides judges and sets standards for excellence. Judges are industry professionals who look for companies and individuals whose talent exceeds a high standard of excellence and whose work serves as a benchmark for the industry.
“To be recognized for our excellence in email marketing and set as a gold-standard benchmark for this industry is a great honor for Madrivo,” said company president Kyle Terry. “I’m incredibly proud of our team who continually strive for excellence in all that they do.”
About Madrivo
Madrivo is an integrated online media firm that has quickly gained recognition as a leader in affiliate marketing and lead generation. Madrivo offers an unparalleled value proposition to both advertisers and publishers thanks to its impressive analytics, high compliance standards, and the quality and volume of exclusive media in its networks – having delivered more than 8 billion targeted impressions and upwards of 2.5 million conversions in the past year. Madrivo created an exclusive, high-performance, invitation-only network by hand picking the highest performing and most compliant publishers and matching them with quality advertisers who demand the very best from their affiliate marketplace.
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Affiliate Marketing help needed urgently
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Must have experience with Affiliate Marketing, CPA & CPV campaigns
Must have experience with Warrior Forum, MaxBounty and ClickBank
Must know how to make or market offers, as both affiliate and merchant
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Advanced marketers are even more welcome, we’ll be glad to share business plan and high revenues with you
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Facebook Live, Facebook’s live video feature for celebrities, journalists and other public figures, is adding a new feature today: a subscribe button.
The button, which will appear in the top right corner of live videos, will give Facebook users the ability to be notified when broadcasters go live on the social network. So no more fear of missing out when your favorite celeb or politician fires up a live video on Facebook.
Launched in August, Live is Facebook’s VIP-focused answer to Periscope and Meerkat. Access to the feature is limited to people who have access to the iOS Mentions app. In September, the company loosened the reins on access slightly but still isn’t opening it up to marketers or Facebook Pages.
In today’s announcement about the new subscribe button, Facebook also released some stats about how live video is being received. A number of public figures — including Kevin Hart, Ian Somerhalder and Donald Trump — have had live audiences of more than 200,000 people, the company said. And Vin Diesel pulled in an audience of more than one million.
“Live is like having a television studio in your pocket, and since launch, we’ve been inspired by all the ways that Live has been used around the world,” Facebook’s Vadim Lavrusik and Peter Yang wrote in a blog post. “More than 60% of broadcasters are from countries outside the US, with Brazil, Taiwan and Italy among the top countries for Live broadcasters.”
Unlike Periscope and Meerkat, live video on Facebook is viewable later. That means videos like the Univision anchor Jorge Ramos’ interview with Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson are still available for viewing now:
I’m interviewing GOP candidate Dr. Ben Carson.
Posted by Jorge Ramos on Thursday, November 5, 2015
In this digital world, marketing is a profound way to increase sales and … and wants of customers in real-time is a basic online marketing technique.
Zeald is one of the largest full-service website design and online marketing companies in New Zealand. We are passionate about delivering excellent results for our clients throughout New Zealand and Australia. You can find out more about us, what makes us special, our history and our team on our website at www.zeald.com.
Zeald is looking for an Online Marketing Specialist with excellent client relationship management skills to join its Orewa based team – just 20mins north of Albany. We have both a full-time and a part-time (25-30hrs p/w) position available.
As a Online Marketing Specialist with Zeald, you will responsible for a range of activities including:
Writing advertisements for online marketing campaigns.
Implementing and optimising performance based online marketing campaigns.
Analysing the performance of specific web pages and online marketing campaigns and coming up with key changes to improve performance.
Writing persuasive copy for key sales / landing pages of client’s websites.
Working closely with our design team to create display advertisements and redesigned sales / landing pages for websites.
This is a full-time salaried role that requires a minimum of 40-50 working hours per week. Usual work hours are 8:30am to 5:30pm, Monday to Friday although a level of flexibility around start and finish times can be provided where required. There is also a part-time role available – 25-30 hours a week – 9am-2:30pm.
In order to be successful in your application for this role you will need:
A minimum of 2 years experience in an online marketing position successfully achieving excellent online marketing results.
Excellent communication skills (both verbal and written) as well as excellent client relationship management skills (face-to-face, phone-based and written).
A quick learner with a hunger to continually develop your skills and keep abreast of new developments in the online marketing space.
Highly efficient and hardworking with a high level of commitment to the role.
Please submit your CV along with a cover letter. We look forward to talking with you!
IBM is seeking an Email Marketer to join the Cloud Data Services (CDS) team. CDS is a fast-growing startup within IBM with a mission to transform how developers and data science professionals use data and analytic tools. This role will work with our campaign and product teams to create and deploy elegant email marketing campaigns that engage new prospects and nurture existing customers. Our ideal candidate is results-driven and creative with excellent attention to detail. This person should have a head for data, a love of email, and a willingness to work independently and collaborate on team projects.
What you’ll do:
Location: Austin, TX or Boston, MA
Note:
This watch is Bluetooth 3.0. All functions support android 4.3 and up smart phones.
But for iphone, not it just support answer & call, phone book, music play, camera, clock, pedometer, phone anti-lost alert. Still not support SMS, remote camera control, sleep monitoring, etc.
Features:
– 1.5 inch Capacitive Touch Screen TFT LCD.
– Time / Date / Week / Battery state display.
– Ringing reminder when you receive a call.
– Ringing reminder once your mobile phone disconnected.
– Display the number or name of incoming calls. Answer or Dial calls from your wrist.
– Stopwatch function. Support hands-free calls.
– Play the music in your phone (after Bluetooth paring).
– Sync phone book / SMS / call history (only for android phone).
– Ring reminder when your Android 2.3 or above smart phone receive a message (including Wechat, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Skype, and so on).
– Anti-lost alarm function: When cellphone left watch alarm automatically, after a certain distance to avoid lose the phones.
– Remote taking photo function: You can control your cellphone to take photo from your wrist.
– Passometer, Photograph, Alarm, Sleep Monitor.
Bluetooth push information:
QQ; Twitter and other timely information
Message push
Transmitting Range: <=10m
Language Support: English / French / Spanish / Portuguese / Italian / German / Turkish / Russian.
Charging Time: about 1 hour; Talk Time: about 3 hours; Music Play Time: about 5 hours; Standby Time: about 120 hours.
Package Include:
1 x Smart Watch
1 x USB Charging Cable
1 x Manual
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Speaker Profile: John Lawson (ColderICE.com)
Every day, thousands of small businesses and entrepreneurs miss out on millions of dollars in revenue simply because they don’t know how to utilize the Internet for marketing and selling. John Lawson does NOT bring the same old ABC stuff, John outlines actual practices for Multichannel and Social Media Marketing that will yield bottom line results and amp up your business.
American Express Open Forum
Platinum eBay Powerseller
Top Rated Amazon Seller
Amex Commercial TV Personality
John is the CEO of 3rd Power Outlet and the founder of the award-winning ecommerce industry blog at ColderICE.com. John is an Platinum eBay Power Seller, Top-Rated Amazon Seller, Social Media Personality and ecommerce analyst for Wal-Street firms. John specializes in ecommerce, social rich-media marketing and mobile commerce.
John is a very dynamic and entertaining speaker. His presentations are packed with usable, actionable information and his delivery is simply unforgettable. When the response sheets come in, you can bet John will lead the pack for satisfaction scores. Make the event memorable because John is simply unforgettable on stage.
Click Here For More Information
Summary:
If writing is an art, then, blogging is one way of using words to come up with an art. This is because people who are into blogging are the ones who are artistic on their own sense, carefully choosing words that would best describe their feelings, sentiments, wishes, desires, and everything.
Basically, blogs were first introduced as weblogs that refer to a “server’s log file.” It was created when web logging hit the virtual market. Since its inception in the mid-1990s, web…
This article from The Online Master is about:
If writing is an art, then, blogging is one way of using words to come up with an art. This is because people who are into blogging are the ones who are artistic on their own sense, carefully choosing words that would best describe their feelings, sentiments, wishes, desires, and everything.
Basically, blogs were first introduced as weblogs that refer to a “server’s log file.” It was created when web logging hit the virtual market. Since its inception in the mid-1990s, web logging gradually saturated the virtual community making the Internet a viable source of greater information.
However, with web logging, you still need a web site and domain names, but with blogging, you do not need anything just an account with blog providers. In most cases, these kinds of blogs are free of charge.
With the onset of blogging in the industry, personal journaling had been a common ground for people who wish to be known all over the world. However, not literally famous as this is not a case on being popular or well-known personality.
Generally, blogs are created for personal use. Like a journal, people can write their daily adventures, sentiments, and whatever ideas they want to express online.
Nevertheless, with the advent of the online businesses, blogs had gradually taken the limelight in providing businesses a chance to boost their productivity online. This is where the business blogs have taken the limelight.
Business blogs are, basically, created to advertise the services or products of a certain web site or online business in order to increase online sales.
Moreover, business blogs are also one way of promoting the company so that the other readers will know that a certain company exists online. With blogs, entrepreneurs are able to establish a name in the virtual market through articles that can be very useful in the reader’s life.
From there, you can make money out of blogs by simply syndicating it to your business’ web site. This can be done through the RSS technology.
So, if you are thinking to create a blog, whether for business or for pleasure, you need to know some tips that could help you get through and make your blog one of the interesting blogs online.
Here’s how:
1. Consider your audience
Even if your blog is generally personal, still, it would be better to consider the minds of your readers. You have to think of something that would interest them.
After all, most of the reasons of people who write blogs are not at all confined to their own personal motives. Most of them would love to be “heard” (or read) and would love to be known, in some way or another, even for just a minute. Hence, it is very important to come with a write up that everybody can understand, not necessarily that these people can relate to it but they can understand it.
2. Pictures speaks a thousand words
To make your blogging worth the browsing effort of your readers, it would be extremely nice if you will put some pictures in it. It does not necessarily mean you have to place a picture of yourself. Any photographs will do as long as it does not pose danger or insult to anyone who will be reading your blog.
3. Make constructive and beneficial blogs
Even if you are free to write anything you wan to say to the world, still, it would be better to create some write-ups that would be beneficial to your readers.
After all, its information technology that you have there so better be inclined to provide information rather than sheer quirky entertainment.
4. Avoid making multifaceted and complicated blogs
In order to have an interesting blogs, try not to use some highly technical and highfalutin words. After all, it is not a science discourse or a debate that you are making, so better stick to simple facts and short blogs.
Bear in mind that most people who use the Internet usually do more scanning than scrutinizing each site word for word. Therefore, it would be better to come with blogs that will not bore your readers just because you have these lengthy articles.
5. Make it interactive
As much as possible and if your capacity will allow it, make your blog interactive. Yu can do this by placing some video or audio clips in your blog.
You can even place an area for comments or for some feedbacks. In this way, you can get some impressions or reactions of other people. Who knows, you might even gain some friends just by making them feel at home in your blog site.
Indeed, blogs are not created just for the mere fun of it. It also has its own purpose in the world of the Internet.
Therefore, for people who wish to harness their craft, as far as writing is concerned, blogs are the best way to do it.
As they say, blogging is the contemporary term of creative and commercial writing.
With all the focus on digital marketing these days, you’d be forgiven for assuming that snail mail has gone the way of the dodo. But don’t throw out your stamp collection just yet. This infographic from United Mail has some facts about the ongoing value of direct mail that may surprise you!
The fact is, more people open all of their mail than all of their email. Think about it – how much junk mail do you tend to get in a day? 70-80% of consumers say that they open all of the direct mail, and 79% of them will act on direct mail immediately, versus 45% for emails. 51% of people say that they prefer to get direct mail from local shops, and 48% say the same of banks. In one study, out of a collection of 5000 prospects, there was a 3.4% response rate for direct mail – far higher than the .12% typical of email campaigns.
Omnichannel marketing is the best way to cover all of your bases as a business – and your peers agree. 80% of marketers plan to run cross-channel marketing campaigns in 2014, with 38% planning to use 3 channels and 29% raising the stakes to 4. They’re not wrong – research shows that customers spend 25% more when businesses combine direct and email marketing, with prospects 10-20% more likely to convert on direct mail. Using both approaches boosts brand awareness and recall, and creates a user-friendly customer experience. Many older customers don’t even use email, while many younger ones are savvy enough to block sales messages with inbox filters.
Make your direct mail more appealing:
Make sure your targets are bulls-eyes:
Recommended for YouWebcast: The Lead Scoring Equation: Behavior + Demographics = Customers
Does this infographic get you thinking about snail mail in a new light? Are you already benefiting from omnichannel marketing? Let us know in the comments.
NEW YORK, Jan. 11, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Tracx, the leading social business cloud, today announced the ability to provide new social analytics and other big data consumer analysis that will be useful to brand marketers, customer insight teams and other social marketers.
Tracx’s new product offering will provide customers with direct access to a massive portion of previously unavailable anonymized and aggregated Facebook topic dData including demographic information, frequently talked about web sites and other information relevant to social marketers. This information is now available through Tracx’s partnership with DataSift, the Human Data Intelligence provider.
With Tracx’s new product release, businesses will be able to quickly and conveniently surface insights into specific activities, events, brand names and other subjects discussed by the 1.55 billion monthly active members on the world’s largest social network. Facebook topic data offers text and content analysis, demographics, sentiment analysis, and engagement levels. Anonymized and aggregated Facebook topic data eliminates privacy concerns while also providing social marketing teams with access to valuable research information and other insights that are now available along with other key elements of Tracx’s award winning social business cloud software.
.Drawing insights from across the world’s largest social network will help marketers make more informed decisions and target niche segments with greater confidence levels.
“We’re extremely excited to provide our clients with an even clearer perspective of what is truly being shared and expressed on Facebook,” said Adi Kleiman, SVP of Product at Tracx. “This is a major step in being able to make meaningful business decisions based off of data from a social network that sees one billion daily active users.”
“With Facebook topic data, DataSift empowers organizations to gain a greater understanding of what people are engaging around and sharing on Facebook in a privacy-safe way,” said Tim Barker, CEO, DataSift. “I’m delighted that Tracx has joined our partner ecosystem in order to offer its clients insight into market and brand-specific intelligence on topics and content shared on the world’s largest social platform.”
Facebook® is a registered trademark of Facebook Inc.
About Tracx
Tracx is the leading social business cloud empowering enterprises to build their brand, attract new customers, service existing ones and connect with other key audiences in the social-enabled world. The solution analyzes and refines mass amounts of geographic, demographic and psychographic data from across the social web to deliver deep insights into customers, competitors and influencers. It then makes those insights actionable through its contextually driven Social Recommendation Engine, enabling smarter interactions that deliver meaningful business results. The world’s most respected and leading brands such as BMW, Kraft Foods, and Rolex rely on Tracx to identify and target audiences, improve planning, enhance monitoring and effectively engage consumers. Tracx is headquartered in New York City with offices in Tel Aviv and London. For more information, visit http://www.tracx.com.
CONTACT: Amy Inlow
203-829-5652
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Experience Level: Intermediate
Estimated Job duration: less than 1 week
I require a person with experience in web development (comfortable using WordPress), to assist/tutor me in building a website for affiliate marketing.
I know how to use the WordPress tools, and already have a WordPress site up and running. Require tutelage customizing the site to be optimized for affiliate marketing.
Hi
Interesting project,Shall we discuss the requirements in detail?Lets Discuss on PPH or Skype. Will finalize the bid once we discuss in details.
Looking forward to hear from you soon.
Regards,
Kanita Ali.
Hi John,
Do you have a particular affiliate management plugin in mind that you want training on?
Thanks
Alan
Hello,
What would be the budget for this job.?
Hello John,
I have been through your requirement, and would like to discuss more with you regarding same.
Could you please let me know the time convenient to you for further discussion? This would help me to provide you with exact quote and days required for the same.
Looking forward to hear from you soon.
Hello John,
Can we discuss this project further in detail as i am having 8 + years of experience in this field.
Looking forward to hear from you soon.
Hi John, Is it possible to have a discussion ?
Thanks
Can we discuss this project in detail, to make it successful.
Please initiate the message board and i will send you the link of my past work in wordpress.
Looking forward to talk you soon.
Regards
Hello John
I already done many websites in past, Please share the link the website, So i can review your website. I am available for discussion.
Thanks
eBay Enterprise Marketing Solutions will announce Monday the acquisition of AffiliateTraction to strengthen its hold on performance marketing and build out programmatic tools to support its affiliate marketing network.
While terms of the deal were not disclosed, eBay Enterprise Marketing Solutions CEO Michael Jones did reveal that the company’s focus is now turning to integrating technologies from AffiliateTraction, and Digital Net Agency, another recent acquisition in the past few months.
Jones says the AffiliateTraction acquisition will increase the “size of the business by more than 30%,” with operating expenses expected to rise “not more than 10%.”
AffiliateTraction’s technology manages affiliate programs through a set of tools — a feature that Jones calls “unique.” The software recommends the affiliates with which a retailer should work, and automates attribution and commissions by calculating the amount they should pay each affiliate.
The platform informs publishers about the best advertising partners by bringing in raw data about the retailer’s site traffic to determine characteristics such as the number of influencers who frequent the site.
The data serves up profiles of the traffic that might alert affiliates when they have better traffic than what they get credit for receiving. Or the merchant could make decisions on attribution that may not line up with what the traffic is worth.
Tom Barr, e-commerce director at MonkeySports, runs its affiliate program through AffiliateTraction on blogger sites to UPS.com. MonkeySports has become one in about 500 new clients to eBay Enterprise through the acquisition. The company, which sells hockey, baseball and lacrosse equipment online and offline, had been shifting some of its business to eBay Enterprise prior.
“The investment in affiliate marketing for us is between 1% and 2% of total sales,” Barr says. “The return is very good because we set the commission and AffiliateTraction has a fixed management fee.”
For each $1 MonkeySports invests the company gets back about $15, Barr says. MonkeySports also runs search advertising on engines, shopping ads, retargeting, and email marketing,
Aside from the technology and dedicated clients, eBay Enterprise Marketing gains tons of data, about 100 employees, and an easier route to take its affiliate program global.
While eBay Enterprise Marketing has a small operation in Europe, Greg Shepard, AffiliateTraction founder, who joins the company as chief strategy officer, says it puts “boots on the ground” for eBay Marketing Solutions in London, Toronto, Canada; Sydney Australia; and Santa Cruz, California.
The global position gives it a strong position to compete against affiliate programs rivals such as Conversant’s CJ Affiliate, and Rakuten Marketing’s LinkShare.
The most powerful social network on the planet just exerted its enormous control over the Internet to squash a potential competitor. Facebook, which just announced it averages one billion daily users, is actively censoring any mention of Tsu.co. The social media giant has accused the brash young startup of not complying with its spam policies and now cites every mention of the site made on Facebook, Messenger, or Instagram as spam, censoring any post that includes the site’s URL (Tsu, the popular Chinese name, is still permissible).
While the harsh blacklisting of the site might seem like Facebook using its power over online traffic to crush a newcomer, Tsu.co is no ordinary social media site. While Tsu, like Facebook, is supported by ad revenue, the website promises to give 90 percent of that money back to users who generate original content on the site. What this means is Tsu users have a financial incentive to promote their content more than the average Facebook or Instagram user, which can lead to spam or spam-like tactics for building traffic.
The social media giant has accused the brash young startup of not complying with its spam policies and now cites every mention of the site made on Facebook, Messenger, or Instagram as spam.
“We do not allow developers to incentivize content sharing on our platform because it encourages spammy sharing,” a Facebook spokesperson told CNNMoney. In fact, Facebook has promised to allow Tsu posts and mentions of the site if Tsu disables an app that allows users of Tsu (Tsusers?) to post content simultaneously to Tsu and Facebook.
This would make sense if Tsu were the only site working this way. For one, many social networks—like Bubblews, 3Tags, and even big players like YouTube—practice some level of content sharing with users. Second, Tsu works the way the Internet works. While most sites might not function in the paid-per-click model of Tsu, every content creator on any major site is at least in part being funded by ad revenue.
And there’s a very good chance that ad revenue is owed in part to a sophisticated marketing campaign through Facebook. Data analytics firm Parse.ly found an astonishing 43 percent of the traffic sent to its network of news sites came from Facebook, while Google only netted 38 percent. Similarly, a Pew Research Center report found 63 percent of Americans get their news from Facebook. Indeed, according to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, one out of every five minutes an American spends on a smartphone is spent within Facebook.
This impressive level of control over what content people see means any creator of anything online is highly dependent on Facebook for traffic. Note the mass freakout in the blogosphere when traffic driven by Facebook shares began to slump earlier this year and distinctly dive in August. Sites that rely quite heavily on Facebook shares—like Thought Catalog, BuzzFeed, or the Huffington Post—saw massive drops in Facebook shares starting this past summer, according to the Awl’s John Herman.
This fragile dependency, however, hasn’t stopped such sites from embracing Facebook wholesale, with big name brands like the one fourth of all referral traffic? Ignoring it means you’ll lose out on a large chunk of ad revenue—and being censored from it might even ruin you. As David Fagin wrote on the Huffington Post, “being blocked from Facebook in this day and age is the equivalent of being kicked off AT&T in the mid 70s.”
This is the dilemma Tsu users find themselves today, and precisely why Tsu’s CEO and founder Sebastian Sobczak and his users have taken such umbrage to Facebook’s decision to banish the company from its sites. CNN spoke to one user who posted 25 drawings of dogs every day on Tsu then advertised them for sale on Facebook—an estimated 7,500 dog drawings—before they were pulled for being malicious.
According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, one out of every five minutes an American spends on a smartphone is spent within Facebook.
What such an onslaught of content can look a lot like is spam, defined by Facebook as “sending bulk messages, excessively posting links or images to people’s Timelines and sending friend requests to people you don’t know personally.” Much of that is implicit in the design of a site like Tsu. Because the site is both invite only and relatively unheard of, it makes sense that a segment of Tsu’s users would continually attempt to lure people on Facebook to engage with their content, as well as produce as much content as possible.
But Tsu hasn’t done anything evil by doing so. All the site has done is offer a “trickle down” version of the same business model that pays for much of the Internet. If Facebook users aren’t happy about Tsu, they likely aren’t happy about any from a long list of websites that purely exist to drive ad revenue. By blocking Tsu, Facebook is challenging the notion that users and platforms can do what publishers have been doing for a generation.
One reason for that is the editorial control publications have over their social media behavior. This isn’t just about making sure the site doesn’t post anything offensive, but also managing when and how often content is pushed through sites like Facebook. An individual Tsu user, tantalized by the promise of real money as they are, might not hold the same restraint and cross the thin line between marketing and spam.
Tsu can work. A single mother from South Carolina posted a series of videos singing her daughter to sleep each night, which went viral and earned her hundreds of dollars of spending money—later netting her a record deal. The website has also found popularity with several celebrities, such as rapper 50 Cent, who has over 131,000 followers on Tsu.
But this shouldn’t be surprising. The individuals on Tsu are attracted to the service because it streamlines the money-making scheme that has built the modern Internet—the more eyeballs, the more money. Facebook knows this story well, frequently topping lists of earners from digital ad revenue. All Tsu is doing is taking the same model that made Facebook—and many, many others—famously rich and trying to spread it out among millions of users.
Ben Branstetter is a social commentator with a focus on the intersection of technology, security, and politics. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, Business Insider, Salon, the Week, and xoJane. He attended Pennsylvania State University.
Illustration by Max Fleishman
