1,000,000 U.S. Firefox 3 Downloads

US FireFox 3 downloads just crossed the 1 million mark with total worldwide download count at 2.81m.

Update: Over 5m WW downloads with over 2m from the USA.

View the download counter here.

The Great Failure of Geosign

Great article on how a company could raise hundreds of millions of dollars, hire hundreds of employees, then practically be shut down overnight.  Read it on the Financial Times.

Alltop is Horrible

Alltop, Guy Kawasaki’s news aggregation website that recently launched, well, is terrible.  I spent just a few minutes taking a look at it for the purposes of this blog post and was incredibly bored.  It offers almost nothing unique and is 5 years behind it’s time.  Many other websites, such as popurls (which is cites as inspiration) offer basically the same thing.  In fact, you can go to Google News and see top news or just make a newsvine page.

Did I miss something?  Anyone actually like Alltop?  (Guy, I really like you man, you have some awesome websites out there, but this one came up way short).

Researching, Creating, Launching, Advertising, and Making Money from Your Facebook Application

Now that Facebook applications can be put on any website, the time is now to make your app, whether it be to promote your website or just make a few extra bucks. This post covers the basics and is meant to been an introduction to researching, creating, launching, advertising, and making money from Facebook applications.

Researching your app:
Be sure to do the proper research on your target market and Facebook users. We previously wrote a post on Facebook stats, that is a must read before making any application.

Your application should be:
1. Viral = users should WANT to invite their friends to join the app. Top Friends and Hobo Wars are great examples.
2. Exciting = an exciting or fun app will kee users coming back and help your long term retention rate.
3. Unique = there are a ton of applications out there, so do some research and make sure your application is unique or at least separates itself from the competition somehow.

Creating your app:
There are a few options when creating your application. The most obvious is to just code it yourself, but companies like Facebookster can create your app for you. Additionally, websites like Clearspring can assist you in the coding process, especially if you are new. The Facebook Developers section also has documentation, resources, and tools to help you forge through the process of creating your app.

Launching your app:
Some applications can require a dedicated server and since some may grow very quickly, it is often difficult to forecast server demand. That’s one of the reasons Amazon launched their AWS for Facebook Applications hosting.

I’d also strongly recommend tying your application to a website. By also having a website, you’ll be able to capture brand search traffic in search engines for the application as well as use the website for updates, news, community involvement, and an additional revenue stream.

Be sure to fully test your application.  There is almost nothing worse than launching the app and having the early adopters frustrated and leave.

Advertising your app:
After making sure the app is bug free and when the app is ready to be launched, you should:

- Install it yourself and invite your friends.
- Tell your friends to invite their friends.
- Contact relevant blogs and ask them to blog about the app.
- Create a Facebook group and fan page.
- Advertise on Facebook.
- List the application in the application directory.

Making money from your app:
There are numerous ways to make money from your application. You can insert affiliate links and banners from cj.com, sell private advertising, or insert ads from a network. Most ads should be placed on the app landing page, not the actual app itself (though, it seems it’s fairly acceptable to include a small link in the app on the profile). A specialized solution for making money from your application is fbExchange, which lets you trade, sell, or buy clicks from your application or others.

Thanks to Luke from Kinoli, Virtual Marketing Blog, and Free Shipping for the post idea.

Advertisement: Feel like creating your application is a little overwhelming? No problem! Freezing Hot can be a project manager and help launch your application and get it in front of millions of users. Go over and get a quote so we’ll be in touch!

Quizzle

Quizzle, launched by Quicken Loans, is a free website that makes it simple to understand your home and money - in a single spot. Cool, considering many Americans are actually in the wrong mortgage.

In fact, the website allows you to manage your:

• Credit
• Monthly Budget
• Home Value
• Mortgage
• Rainy Day Fund

After browsing through the site, I’ve very impressed. The interface is clean and it looks like they’ve really spent some time on this website. Probably the most useful information is a free credit report. They also give you a nifty “Quizzle Score” so you see how you’re doing.

They also have a mortgage blog (which I’m subscribed to) that takes all the industry news and mumbo-jumbo and makes it easy to understand.

Quizzle is a great example of how a company can offer something new, unique, and useful (and even free in this case) and use it as a marketing technique. I’m glad Quicken Loans cares not only about it’s customers, but ANYONE with a mortgage. Go Quicken Loans!

Here’s a screenshot of the demo:

Free Wordpress Theme for Download

Here at Freezing Hot, we’re always using creative techniques to promote and advertise businesses. So, we’ve had a custom theme created and coded for Wordpress and now it’s ready for distribution. It’s a 2 column, widget-ready, blue and gold theme, which you can download here. Feel free to download, distribute and use the theme to the fullest, as long as the link remains in the footer.

With Google cracking down more and more, companies will be forced to find creative techniques to build links. Are you using Wordpress themes to build authoritative links? If you’re interested in increasing traffic from search engines, then consider getting a free, no obligation quote.

Get Free Shipping at FreeShipping.org

Fellow blogger, Luke Knowles from Virtual Marketing Blog, has launched a website dedicated to free shipping. All you have to do is visit the site, click the company you’re going to buy from, and see if they have a free shipping offer. There’s over 500 stores listed on the site, with more being added every day. Luke and I spoke on the phone and he mentioned they have exclusive coupons for free shipping and that Macy’s free shipping offers seem to be the most popular.

The site is also completely based on Wordpress, my favorite website platform. Check out Free Shipping.org and be sure to stumble it and save it to your del.icio.us favorites.

Search Wikia Publically Launched

Search Wikia, Wales’ new for-profit entity.  It’s ok, but I’m not very impressed with the relevancy of the results.  Hopefully it will improve with time.  There is a great overview at VentureBeat.

A+ to SpeedDate Marketing Team

View Video

A little weird, right? Well I, and Techrunch, both agree that this celebrity bloggers speeddate event made for great content and link bait. Great way to show off your services, get some blog coverage, and have some fun.

Blogger Content and Brand Management

A client of mine was appearing on the Google Hot Trends list and quite a few blogger blogs starting grabbing their brand keywords and displaying their keywords along, ummm… NSFW ads. Actually, they were porn ads. In addition, my client sells a kid-related item, so this was a double no-no. So, when someone is stealing content and putting it on a blogger blog, what can you do?

First, flag the content and tell others to flag it as well. Just flagging the content will not make Google take it down. They employ a “wisdom of crowds” and tend to review content quicker if more people flag the content as objectionable.

Next, make sure you report it directly to Blogger.

Unfortunately, that is about all you can do. Brand management is something that should be taken lightly. A poor brand can have a long term effect on sales. I strongly suggest signing up for Google Alerts to be emailed everytime someone talks about your brand on a blog.