Larry Page & Mark Zuckerberg. (Image originally atlanticwire.com)

Every time you go online you are entering a war zone. It might not feel like it, but there is an almighty battle taking place between two superpowers and you are caught in the crossfire.

Welcome to the war for web supremacy. The super powers, if you haven’t already guessed, are the search behemoth Google and social heavyweight champion Facebook. The prize is you and your data.

Sure, there are other combatants in this war; Twitter, Apple, Bing, LinkedIn…even Yahoo!, but they are merely involved in skirmishes and are open to being co-opted into alliances with the main players. Amazon currently appears to be Switzerland (more about them another time).

The nature of systems like the web is that monopolies emerge. We have a dominant search engine in Google, a dominant online encyclopedia in Wikipedia, a dominant retailer in Amazon, a dominant auction site in eBay, and now we have a dominant social network in Facebook. That’s normal and has been happening in business for centuries.

But what happens when two different monopolies decide to battle for a middle ground? That’s where it gets interesting, and that whats happening now. Facebook and Google share common goals but differing philosophies.

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Yelp founder Jeremy Stoppelman in Sydney

Popular US-based user recommendation website Yelp launched today in Australia. First launched in San Francisco in 2004 by founders Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons, Yelp has grown to 14 countries and more than 61 million monthly unique visitors.

Aussies are now able to create accounts on Yelp to share their opinions about local businesses and services in their neighborhoods. Yelp’s free iPhone and Android mobile applications are available, as is Yelp for Business Owners, the company’s free suite of business owner tools.

Stoppelman was in Sydney today talking to a handful of bloggers about how Yelp was created to replace Yellow Pages, who he considered a dead tree business crying out for reinvention. Initially the Yelp founders didn’t believe user reviews would be key to the site but were surprised when they took off and became the main focus of Yelp and a major point of differentiation. Remember, this was back in the days before Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and even newcomers Oink and Roamz.

For millions of US users, Yelp has become an invaluable search resource to discover what’s nearby and how its rated.

It’ll be interesting to see how Yelp does launching in a new market 7 years later with many other location and recommendation contenders on the scene. Stoppelman is confident that the site can get good traction in Australia via their (rather ironic) partnership with Sensis (publisher of Yellow Pages) who provide the initial database of businesses and the sales force for future ad sales. Certainly the Yelp model of engaging community manager in each territory will go a long way to determining the public take-up of the service.

Yelp will be available throughout Australia; however, the company will focus its initial community-growth efforts in Melbourne and Sydney. This city-by-city expansion strategy has proven to be an effective one for the company in other markets.

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The great thing about inbound marketing is that there is no shortage of excellent tools to help you go about your job of attracting qualified traffic and converting it into something more meaningful like leads, inquiries or sales.

Here are the 16 top tools I use regularly for inbound marketing;

WordPress website. Sure there are other excellent open source content management systems available but for inbound marketing its hard to go past WordPress. Its easy to use, very search engine friendly, extremely optimisable and has thousands of great plugins to address just about any requirement. There’s a reason over 60 million people have chosen WordPress for their websites.

WordPress mobile app. Inbound marketers like to post content. Lots of content. From almost anywhere. That’s where the WordPress mobile apps come in. You can create and publish content directly from your iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry or Nokia to your website.

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Times have definitely changed. Until recently a new business would measure itself against a series of metrics like foot traffic, advertising reach and frequency, number of phone calls, number of calls or meetings by sales people, presentation to sales ratios, and of course actual sales.

But that was before the web, before Google and before social media networks took off.

In the era of inbound marketing the metrics have totally changed and I am studying them frantically in the wake of our recent NLYZR launch.

One week into my new start-up’s life I am able to track key metrics on an hourly basis to determine what’s working and what’s not. Here are some of the things I’m keeping track of:

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I’ve been pretty interested in the launch of Google+. Not because I’m a social network nut but because in my opinion G+ sends a very clear signal about how social media and search are inevitably blending.

Last week in my regular iStrategy blog I explained where I thought this was all heading and why you need to make sure you are part of it.

Now it seems every second day Google’s big plan seems to be revealed a little more.

The latest news is that Google+ profile images are appearing besides search listings, although seemingly only when you are logged in to your Google account.

This is a significant change to search. Having an image turn up in the search results attracts your attention and could definitely lead to improved click-through-rates even if the listing is not at top of page 1. Combine that with the +1 results showing up in your search and you start to see a very different vision of where search is going.

Search and social media and merging folks and those who understand this will have a big advantage.

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Google Plus is two weeks old now and early indications are that the Google team finally have a social media winner. In fact, I’m prepared to bet that Plus will be huge and I wasn’t remotely interested in their previous social efforts.

(By the way, feel free to chat with me on Google Plus)

Currently everyone is trying to work out the best ways to use Google Plus, or asking what the “rules” are? The thing is…its new, its evolving and there is not right or wrong. In the end its the community who tend to set the rules of engagement. I doubt the guys at Twitter had no idea that it would look like it does now, or be used the way it is now when they launched a dicky little SMS based service back in 2006.

So far the early adopters are the usual suspects from the IT and social media industries and community. Early stats from the first million users show that 73% are male, over 70% work in IT / computing fields with “engineer” being the number one career, 49% live in the USA, the leading city is San Francisco and there are 16,500 men “looking for love”.

Yes Google Plus is almost entirely inhabited by geeks.

But that will change, and fast. Its is estimated to hit 10 million users this week and be the fastest social network to 100 million users.

I intend to look at the benefits of Google Plus soon, but in the meantime the most obvious one is the use of “Circles” to sort or categorise the  people you are following.

The Circles are a great way to both filter and share information. My original circles were like “Family”, “Sticky” (Ie my office), “Friends”, “Acquaintances”, “Following” etc. In other words, degrees of separation from my own world.

Since then I have added geographic circles radiating out from my own world again: Newcastle, Australia, North America, Europe etc.

And finally I have created some subject or industry circles: Media, Tech Media, Industry Leaders, Advertising etc.

Most people I follow end up in a few circles. Ie. Friends + Newcastle + Australia, or  Acquaintances + Industry Leaders + USA.

The reasoning is that some information or discussions are only relevant to some groups. So, if I am discussing the New Lunaticks events or Newcastle innovation I can keep it in local Circles. Switching to “Australia” instantly broadens my Circle. If I wish to chat with or follow conversation by Industry Leaders I can filter out the other noise.

Jason Berek-Lewis tells me his circles are all based on themes but he’s not sure if that will be sustainable. Time will tell.

Like I said, its only been two weeks and there’s no right or wrong because we’re all trying to work it out. What I do know is that Google Plus is going to be big and how we use it will be important.

How are you using the Circles on Google Plus? Any good suggestions?

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Evan Williams from Twitter at Web 2.0 Summit, San Francisco 2010

I live a secret life. By day I’m a mild mannered advertising agency exec (the manners might depend on who you ask) whilst in my spare time I am building a start-up tech business.

The start-up is NLYZR. Its been around for the last 2 years in various evolving forms but now we’re getting down to brass tacks as it’s large scale commercial release is nearing launch phase.

The interesting thing is that while we’ve been using our knowledge at Sticky to create NLYZR as a business, we’re actually learning more from NLYZR that is helping the agency and our other clients. We’ve learned to think like a tech start-up and its been incredibly liberating.

Tech start-ups require a totally different mindset to that used in the day-to-day running of an agency, or any business for that matter. In fact, tech start-ups are radically different from other (non-tech) start-ups. But, importantly, we’re learning that the defining characteristics of a successful tech start-up can be applied to most industries to create something much more exciting.

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The Internet is changing fast and impacting our lives in more ways than we ever imagined. Yet many industries are ignoring the need for change and suffering as their sector experiences massive interruption.

Imagine if you could gaze into a  crystal ball and see a few year into the future to understand what the Internet will look like. Perhaps you can.

This presentation “Digital Life: Today and Tomorrow” was created by NeoLabels, with a script by Inés Leopoldo of Mitsue Venture. Its really worth a look.

Digital Life: Today & Tomorrow from Neo Labels on Vimeo.

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I’m a strong believer in the “innovate or die” approach to business.

We’re in an unprecedented age of innovation and change. Not since the industrial revolution has the world experienced such rapid advancements and wholesale change as technology has freed information and enabled incredible leaps in communication.

Over the last few years much of this blog has been dedicated to the changing nature of media and marketing; two areas heavily affected by 21st Century innovation, and it has allowed me to study business models that need to rapidly evolve or become extinct.

But these days innovation is crucial to most industries and communities. The powerhouses of modern business have been the most innovative companies: Google, Apple and Facebook to name just three. They’re now being joined by companies like Groupon (who are innovating around retail), Netflix (innovating around home entertainment) and Zygna (innovating around gaming or micro gaming). While these companies are pushing innovation previous industry leaders in the same categories are dying.

I’ve long believed that the way forward for an old industrial town like Newcastle is not to look at the past, but to embrace the future. While steel-making might have been Newcastle’s past innovation and technology could be it’s future.

Web and mobile innovation could be the path to future prosperity in Newcastle. If ever there was a town that should lobby hard to have the National Broadband Network sooner rather than later, it’s Newcastle. Running high speed broadband cable down the currently dilapidated Hunter Street could enable smart start-ups to reinvent the area as an Innovation Capital.

Cheap rents, great lifestyle and a large University all combine in Newcastle to create a perfect environment to attract talent and foster innovation.

While this vision may be a little way off, there is already a nucleus of innovation in Newcastle. They’re not making a big noise yet but I think they will soon.

And that’s where the Lunaticks Society’s next event comes in. On Tuesday 3 May they’re holding their first Digital Showcase. Its a festival of innovative ideas where presenters will be offered the chance to give an elevator pitch in a 15 minute session to an expert panel of judges and audience of digital enthusiasts, creatives, entrepreneurs and investors.

If you have a great idea you’ve been working on and want to share then contact the Lunaticks to be one of the presenters. If you’re keen to hear from some innovators then roll up and join the audience.

I’m really hoping this will be the catalyst for a new era of innovation in the area; one where businesses begin to realise they must innovate or die.

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Google has announced an initiative in partnership with business software firm MYOB to provide free websites for small and medium sized Australian companies. It’s called Getting Aussie Business Online and follows a similar initiative in the UK.

This will probably cause a panic amongst web designers and digital agencies, but in a way it had to come to this and overall may actually be good for the industry.

Already there are plenty of cowboys in the market who seem happy to design and sell websites for ridiculously low prices. In many cases these operators do untold damage to the industry as their sites are poor and the results for the client are unimpressive or negligible. It creates massive scepticism and mistrust amongst customers and perpetuates a belief that the web doesn’t help small business.

The truth is, bad websites don’t help anyone, so the sooner the cut-price cowboys are starved out of the industry the better. Perhaps the Google / MYOB offering will expedite this.

As the owner of a digital agency, am I worried about the Google / MYOB deal? Not at all.

The free website initiative is clearly a way for Google to help grow the overall market, and of course their client base. And having more businesses online with decent websites can only be good for the industry.

I’m yet to see what these sites will be like and how effective they’ll be, but if they’re decent I would have no problem referring smaller businesses to them as a way of introducing them to the web.

The fact remains that for most sites to really succeed they need a steady flow of useful and relevant information. They need to be properly optimised for search. They need to have a clearly conceived traffic conversion strategy. They need to utilise the power of social networks. We call this inbound marketing.

The web these days is about content and connections, not the mere fact that you have a website. I would suggest that 90% of the businesses who launch a free website via Google / MYOB will not do so with a professional strategy but at least they won’t have wasted their money.

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