I just wanted to let everybody know who is working in the internet related field (or who is fascinated by the world wide web) that there is a great event to meet like-minded people and do some networking. It’s called Geek Dinner, an event which is happening every month in Los Angeles and many other cities throughout the United States. You don’t have to be a super nerd to attend, a little interest in all things digital is enough to mingle with this friendly and cool crowd.

I went to the 33rd Geek Dinner in L.A. which was held January 17th at the restaurant uWink located in the Hollywood & Highland Center. It’s a cool place (they call it an “interactive entertainment and dining experience”) where you can order through a touch-screen computer located on every table. The event had pretty good turn out. I chatted with many interesting people, and Heather Schlegel, the hostess-with-the-mostess, was working the room with her usual great enthusiasm.

For those who live in the Los Angeles area and are yet to join, you can check all the news on their website, the group page on Facebook – or get all the updates directly in your email inbox by signing up via  la-subscribe@geekdinner.org. And if you have a web service or your own event to promote, Geek Dinner allows you announce it to the crowd at the end of the event.

The next L.A. Geek Dinner will be this upcoming Tuesday, February 17, at the same location. You get get more info and RSVP on Upcoming.

Please spread it around and bring your geeky friends. As Anita wrote:

You know that the geek dinner is the gateway L.A. geek event. Once you start – you’ll just go hardcore on to Barcamp, Mixergy, Twiistup or one of Mahalo’s Movie Nights…

P.S. See more of my pictures I took at the Geek Dinner on Flickr.

Belated happy new year! I wish you all health, happiness, prosperity and humor for 2009!

Opposite to previous years, I started the new year by making three resolutions:

• To be dedicated to help people to make most out of the internet and grow my business
• To expand my professional network
• To learn something new every day.

Since I was curious what kind of resolutions other internet professionals made, I browsed through the web for some great thoughts. Here are my favorite resolutions for 2009:

1. Canadian Marketing Blog:

I resolve to be optimistic that businesses will remember the golden rule: You have to spend money to make money – especially in tough times. Stay top of mind with your best customers and they’ll remain loyal.

 2. Copywriters Roundtable:

- Around the clock, make curiosity a habit.  Ask questions.
- Every morning, read one piece of direct mail.
- Every day, have a set time for writing.  Never deviate from it.
- Always seek out your critics.  They’ll teach you much more than your fans ever could.

3. Growthink: Top 10 new year’s resolutions for entrepreneurs. Number 5:

Keep Launching, Innovating and Growing! While the economy may be in for a bumpy ride, make sure you keep it in perspective.  Don’t let all the negative news stop you from moving forward with your entrepreneurial initiatives.

4. Wired: 10 new year’s resolutions for geeks. Number six:

I will follow @stephenfry, @JohnCleese, @wilw, @hodgman, @greggrunberg, @donttrythis (Adam Savage), @levarburton, @nasa, and @thinkgeek on Twitter. If I am not using Twitter I will finally realize what I’ve been missing and sign up right away.

5. @drhilarius:

Stay away from the internet 20% a day, increase productivity by 400%.

What are you new year’s resolutions?

It’s that time of the year again. The new year is approaching rapidly, and I’m a little bit stunned how time is flying. 2008 was a year full of exciting, dramatic and tragic events – also for the internet business. I am sure that I’m not the only one who wonders what 2009 has in store for us.

I browsed through the web and collected the most interesting internet related predictions for the upcoming year:

- Mediapost: Digital Will Impact Five Key Areas Next Year
Great list on ‘Marketing Daily’. My favorites:

• Conversation is king in 2009 because Web presence alone no longer is enough for individuals or brand.
• The Semantic Web will create more sophisticated, intuitive, refined ways to filter information and services.
• Savvy companies and brand marketers are starting to trust consumers and enlist their assistance in product design and development.
• Another notable trend is the transmission effect, or the speed with which conversations and content spread everywhere like rapid-fire– beyond the reach of editorial controls, sites or institutions.

- Junta42: 42+ Social Media and Content Marketing Predictions for 2009
Interesting predictions of the Junta42 community. Among others:

• Twitter will be officially mainstream, but here will be a backlash against company Twitter accounts.
• Social Media Marketing will become a more mainstream approach.
• Combining traditional media with electronic media will increase.
• More brands will developing a personality or a persona to represent the core values of the company. 2009 will be the year of the personality.
• Americans are showing more and more interest in RSS.
• There will be a “gold rush” for social media as new frontier marketing platform.

- Emarketer: Predictions for 2009
Great statistical insights by Senior Analyst David Hallermann and several collegues:

• Search marketing spending will grow by 14.9% in 2009, to $12.3 billion. (Good news: Search marketing is not recession-proof, but it is recession-resistant.)
• Video ad spending will run counter to overall economic developments, rising by 45% in 2009 to reach $850 million.
• Total US Internet ad spending will increase to $25.7 billion in 2009, an 8.9% growth rate.
• Multicultural marketing will gain intensity online. More African-Americans and Hispanics are going online, through their PCs and their mobile phones, and marketers will follow.
• Online retail sales (excluding travel) will grow by only 4% in 2009—the first full year to feel the impact of the economic crisis.
• E-commerce will be a growing revenue stream for social network sites. Expect both MySpace and Facebook to enhance their self-serve advertising systems to allow consumers and businesses to buy and sell real-world goods and services.
• Advertising in the traditional media will continue to decline in the new year more than any other medium. Industry-wide cutbacks will continue, and there will be some consolidation.

- Search Insider: Search Trends To Watch in 2009
Great thoughts by the sharp mind of David Berkovitz. Three predictions which stood out for me:

• More and more consumers reach marketers through intermediary properties, likeblogs, social networks, photo sharing sites, Twitter, Wikipedia, and countless other social sites. As a result, marketers have to shift their mindset from optimizing their Web site to optimizing their Web presence.
• This fall, YouTube surpassed Yahoo as the second-largest search engine. Marketers have to adapt their strategies to n these nontraditional search sources.
• Search will shift even more beyond the PC. This includes not only mobile devices, but also television models (delivering a hybrid TV-Web experience) and GPS systems in the car (with inbuilt restaurant, attraction etc. search function). Marketers need to reach the target audience on these devices.

Other articles and blog posts with predictions for the upcoming year:

- FolioMag: 117 Magazine And Media Predictions for 2009

- ReadWriteWeb: Social Media in 2009: Our Predictions And Desires

- Fast Company: 8 Experts Predict How Web 2.0 Will Evolve In 2009

- Vator News: Consumer Internet Predictions for 2009

- Peter Kim: Social Media Predictions for 2009

- CSM Watch: Technology Predictions for 2009

- Web Video Unleashed: 9 Online Video Predictions for 2009

- Appirio: Top 10 Cloud Computing Predictions for 2009

Plus: On Twitter you’ll find a great list of Enterprise 2.0 predictions. They are aggregated via the hashtag #e20predictions. Add your own prediction!

If you’re interested in general what will happen with the web not only in 2009, but in next 10 or 20 years, you need to read the report “The Future Of The Internet III” by the Pew Internet & American Life Project” (PDF version). Three interesting takeaways:

• The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people in the world in 2020.
• Voice recognition and touch user-interfaces with the internet will be more prevalent and accepted by 2020.
• The divisions between personal time and work time and between physical and virtual reality will be further erased for everyone who is connected, and the results will be mixed in their impact on basic social relations.

Any thoughts on this? Or did you find any other great posts or articles with internet related predictions which should be added to this list? Let me know!

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A new whitepaper by search marketing firm iProspect shows that 62% of search users click on links found on the first page of search results.

Overall, 90% of search users will click on links found in the first three pages of search results. The findings show the increased importance of first page placement, along with the value of being found in the Top 20 and Top 30.

Other findings:

• 41% of respondents would either alter or abandon the keywords used in their queries if they could not find results on the first page.
• 82% of the time, respondents would alter search queries by adding descriptive words, most often resulting in a successful search.

Pretty impressive results. This definitely show how important it is to rank in the first 20 SERPs of the major search engines.

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As I mentioned in my previous post, the thing which surprised me most about my experience at this year’s Blog World Expo in Las Vegas is the fact that all the attendees – including the famous and successful A-Bloggers – were super cool, friendly and willing share many blogging “secrets”.

As a long time fan and avid reader of the infamous blog Problogger, I am especially pleased that Darren was kind enough to give me a couple of minutes of his valuable time, accepted to be “dragged” to a quiet conference room and was willing share his wisdom about blogging in a one on one interview (ca. 5 minutes).

In this interview, I ask him…

1. Why you should start blogging today
2. What his most important advice about maintaining a blog is
3. What his personal biggest rewards of blogging were so far
4. If microblogging (the latest trend) will be becomr bigger than old fashioned blogging
5. What the future of online media is (mainstream media vs. blog networks)
6. If he will still be interested in blogging in 5 years.

For those who don’t know Darren: He is one of the world’s most popular and respected authorities for blogging, the voice behind the no. 1 blog for blogging tips, Problogger, and the Vice President of training and development at B5 Media, one of the largest blog networks on the planet (which he launched with three fellow bloggers in 2005).

Besides Problogger, he also blogs at Digital Photography School, a blog with tips and product reviews around digital photography. According to Wikipedia, these two blogs get around 15,000-20,000 page views a day and over $20,000 in total ad revenue a month. (Impressive numbers, I have to say!)

If you’re interested to get more of Darren’s useful blogging tips, I highly recommend that you read his (and co-author Chris Garrett’s) recently published book “Problogger: Secrets Blogging to A Six-Figure Income”. It’s contains a wealth of valuable information how to start a blog, increase your readershop and make money with it. (Darren himself became a Six-Figure Blogger in September 2005)

Another tip: Follow Darren on Twitter (@problogger) and to check out his online activities on Friendfeed. It’s worth it!

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Robert Scoble, Hugh McLeod and Stowe Boyd during the B5 Advisory Board Q&A

One day before the official Blog Word Expo started, B5 Media – one of the largest blog networks in the world – was running a training day for their bloggers, titled B5 Blogger Summit, that was opened up to any BWE registrants that wanted to attend.  Needless to say that I did not want to miss this great opportunity to get blogging tips from the pros and get to know the people behind this rapidly expanding blog network in person.

In the hindsight I have to say that it was totally worth to take this additional day off and travel to Las Vegas already on Thursday night in order to be fresh and ready for the first session on Friday at 9 AM. Here’s why:
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