The digital battleground
Posted on March 20, 2006 by Tim Huckle
Filed Under Ramblings |
Firstly, a goodbye and thank you to one of our developers Mike Smith (aka ‘Dr Reg-Tools’) who has moved on after 15 months with the company. 15 months this time around that is; Mike was one of the original perl team and has spent many years working on the interactive investor website for various owners, shareholders and of course users. His most recent work has included the ‘expandable’ discussion / news article views, and various enhancements to the markets and equity information pages. I’m sure Mike would love us to link to where he’s working now as SEO (search engine optimisation) is one of his first projects at his new company. But alas, he left early on his own leaving do….so I won’t 
Talking of search, the way in which some ‘competitors’ use “Google Adwords” is getting a bit ‘rude’. I’m not convinced a random 3rd party site buying the phrase/keyword, “www.iii.co.uk” is a healthy way of making friends. I’ve attached what Google was displaying this evening as a screengrab, as just maybe ‘the-quote.com’ will realise how dubious it is to generate traffic on the back of other people’s brand values and remove this sponsorship. This, by the way, is two months after I asked them why the were using “interactive investor” as a sponsored term, to which they replied, “Google suggested it as a phrase to use”. Seems like it has for a few other competitors too.
Not owning the trademark to ‘interactive investor’ there’s not much we could do; however I doubt very much Google automatically suggested ”www.iii.co.uk” now did they? A new spin on the ‘digital battleground’ perhaps.
Finally, I notice “JPDM FortuneMaker” is holding another Q&A session on the DES.L discussion board, 30th March. Last time around 40 people participated and I’m thinking a live chat environment might work better for such ’gatherings of like minded individuals’ (in this case, all minds are probably focussed on hoping a rig will become available). Let me know if you think its worth a go via email or commenting here. Thanks.
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Within 12 hours of emailing our ‘friends’ the offending google ad has been removed.
I think we already have the/a mechanism for ‘live chat’ just by using the discussion boards. What we don’t have (well we do) is a way to notify the wider user base of when a live chat is either in progress “come and join in” touch or when one is to be held.
So… suggestion:
Create a live chat room (a streaming discussion board) and allow users to book it, rather like we book meeting rooms.
On booking the live chat room, the wider userbase is notified via magic icon (?) “Join in Live Chat hosted by (booking) user…
The rest will happen naturally as the hosting user will also inform people to join in.