Zimbra, a low-cost email program, might be more competition to Microsoft Exchange than the company had anticipated.

Zimbra, created in 2003 in Palo Alto, California, was designed by three friends who sick of being Silicon Valley slaves. They had a vision to create an email program to rival that of Microsoft Exchange, and quite possibly may be close to achieving their goal.

Three friends, who met while working at Sun Microsystems Inc, concocted Zimbra in 2003 at a coffee shop. The team of programmers was headed up by Satish Dharmaraj, a computer scientist, and supported by Ross Dargahi and Roland Schemers.

During a meeting, the three friends decided that there was room for a new email program that would serve businesses more efficiently and cheaply than Microsoft Exchange.

Over the next few months the trio scoured the Internet for free software and began to piece together a kind of program quilt. In a few months time they had managed to piece together over 40 software programs into a basic email system. By February of 2003, they released the program and a very competitive price and soon began to garner Microsoft's business.

Zimbra's program itself is comparable to Microsoft Exchange, in that, it allows business employees to send, receive, store, and search through the numerous emails businesses receive daily. To date, there are about 4 million Zimbra users, and that number continues to grow.

Microsoft does not seem to be threatened by Zimbra's number of users; they have 140 million. Microsoft founder Bill Gates said, "They've done a good job," but says the product "doesn't even come close to the things that Exchange does."

Perhaps Microsoft should worry, though, with the rise many other companies that are piecing together software to create a new program following Zimbra's example. The companies are created and manned by software hobbyists who will work for little or no pay, they just enjoy surfing the net. The programs are then sold commerically online, saving money in marketing and sales, as opposed to Exchange's newest program which took 400 Microsoft employees years to create.

By 2004, Zimbra had generated a profit of $4 million and spent it on purchasing a Silicon Valley office for their ten employees. They later received $30.5 million in venture funding; using a portion of the money in 2005 to purchase sponsored links on Google, which would redirect queries to their program.

Zimbra grew in leaps and bounds thanks in large part to the people who contributed to it for free, such as Carlos Vidal, who updated Zimbra's coding to help translate the site. Now Zimbra offers it's program in 13 different languages including English, Spanish, German, and Swedish.

Zimbra's most notable achievement to date came when tax giant H&R Block purchased Zimbra and implemented it into 12, 000 of its branches nationwide. Microsoft has stepped up efforts to convince the company not to drop Exchange all together, and H&R Block is weighing their options carefully.

With all the success it seems that the make shift company has received so far, the creators of Zimbra say that their biggest is fear is that a company will follow their example, but create a better product. "The thing we worry the most about," says Dharmaraj, "is that somebody's going to copycat everything we've done in the last year."

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Or an important indicator, anyway. Webmaster Pubcon is packed this week.

Attendance is significantly ahead of any previous Pubcon. Brett Tabke, Joe Morin, et al. have hit a real milestone with this level of credibility and attendance. Keynotes by Danny Sullivan, Guy Kawasaki, and John Battelle created a buzz.

You hear comments in the hallways about the overall quality of content -- very high, most agree, though uneven. The format and the tightness of scheduling isn't quite caught up to more established conferences. My main gripe is that the water coolers in the halls look like they have high quality H2O in them, but are in fact, the same old highly chlorinated Las Vegas tap water. and if that's the main complaint, your show's been a success.

A great indicator of the response: I was talking at lunch with Tony Colan of Web Integrity Services. Tony's company is into a few different things, including owning a growing blog service, Blogster.com. We were talking about mutual interests in local search and classifieds (Tony helps companies like TrueLocal sell advertising direct to local advertisers, and he's pitching others in the space. I told him about HomeStars, a startup I work with.)

Tony mentioned that JudysBook CEO Andy Sack came to Pubcon expecting to stop in for just a day, and was so impressed by the content and connections that he stayed on for the rest of the conference.

Hats off to Brett Tabke and the team for being so successful in building Pubcon to this point.

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Football fanatics rejoice! AOL announced an online video contest, dubbed America Loves Football, that gives fans a chance to submit videos to win big prizes.

Are you a football fan that paints your face using the colors of your favorite team on game day? Do you want to win huge prizes from AOL simply for submitting a unique fan video? If so, you're in luck; this week AOL announced that it would host a contest for football fans across America on it's new, and free, UnCut video site.

AOL's America Loves Football contest allows users to upload their fanatical videos, based upon the week's theme or any previous theme, onto AOL's user-generated UnCut video.

Fans may use any means digital platform including camera phone, webcam, digital camera, or camcorder to submit their videos. AOL has determined that the themes will include "Extreme Tailgating", "Excessive Celebration", and "Family Football Frenzy".

The contest itself will run for ten weeks, each week debuting a new theme for fans to use. There are seven themes in all and any theme that has been released may be used for video inspiration by football fans.

Individual winners will then be chosen at the end of the ten weeks from each themed category and go onto to compete for the grand prize. No one goes home a loser though; each finalist wins a cash prize.

Voters on the America Loves Football website determine which finalist will win the Ultimate Game Day Prize, which includes a 46" Sony(r) LCD TV, Bose(r) speakers, a Sony(r) Blu-ray DVD player and a Dell(r) XPS 400 Intel(r) Viiv(tm) Media Center PC to complete the video experience.

Also included in the prize will be a "fully catered party to watch the big game for the winner and 50 of his/her friends, as well as professional installation home theater system to ensure the winner and his or her guests enjoy the party and viewing experience hassle free", say AOL representatives.

In addition to running the ten week fan contest, the America Loves Football website will keep fans updated with the latest football standings and NFL headlines from AOL sports.

AOL's America Loves Football contest is the perfect forum for any fan that has ever watched a starting tailgating at nine o'clock in the morning or painted their entire body the color of the team they support.

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One of the key components of the presentation I gave Thursday morning at the Las Vegas Pubcon conference presented the idea of press release optimization and social media news releases in the context of push and pull. But before that, it's important to understand the market opportunity with news search.

According to a report released by comScore, half of all internet users visited news sites in June 2006. Of the most popular news web sites, Yahoo News is #1 surpassing CNN, MSNBC and AOL News.

There's also an increase in the use of social media both by end consumers and the media for tracking information that interests them. This includes: blog and news search engines, social news, social bookmarks, podcasts and video. The thing that ties all of this together is RSS. RSS enables people to subscribe to the kinds of content from the channels or formats that they are interested in.

What is important to understand is that online PR is effective for direct to consumer communications as well as media relations. The bonus is that adding social media to online PR initiatives can have a multiplying effect.

Enter the notion of push and pull PR.

Push basically means the tactics used to distribute a company's news including using press releases sent out via wire services, email or fax. It also includes pitching the media on story ideas and contributed articles.

Pull activities are based on the demand consumers have for online news as well as the search activities of people in the media looking for subject matter experts, researching past news coverage and looking for story ideas. Pull PR makes it easy for the media and your intended audience to find and pull themselves to your news.

On a continum, push and pull would be on either end with media coverage in the middle. Achieving media coverage by one or both push and pull allows you to further extend the reach of your news. First, by pulling more readers to your message via the publications that have picked up your story. Second, by using that media coverage as a direct marketing promotion via email or direct mail.

Examples of pull PR:

• News search engine visibility
• Organic search engine visibility
• Social news and bookmark sites
• Blog & RSS search engines

Examples of push PR:

• News release distribution
• Pitching journalists and bloggers with story ideas
• Social Networks/Rollodex
• Paid reviews on blogs (advertorial)

One of the most unexplored opportunities for effective push PR is blogger relations. Pitching bloggers can be a slippery slope, so keep in mind the following considerations:

• Be relevant - Mass emailed press releases do not work with bloggers. Review the blog's categories and previous posts and only offer related news.
• Personalize - Blogging is much more a personal expression than writing articles in a mainstream publications and bloggers respond to personal messages. Generic and poorly written pitches will either be ignored or posted to the blog for everyone to see.
• Make it easy - Write a summary of your news with links to full versions and related resources. Many bloggers will copy paste your summary, add a few of their own comments and link to the news release.
• Schwag is good - If you have products or services that can be tried out, be sure to offer them.
• Be persistent - Many bloggers have day jobs and do not have a lot of time. Do not be discouraged if your news does not get picked up or if you do not get a response on your pitch. Try again and be persistent, but not annoying.

Fundamental press release optimization includes keyword research, placing keywords in the correct positions and frequency in the release and adding links. A social media release deconstructs the content offerred in a regular press release into sections that can be more easily scanned and used by journalists to glean story ideas.

The social media press release was introduced by SHIFT Communications. We don't follow the same page layout, but include many of the same elements including:

• Headline
• Abstract or Summary
• Key points as bullet points
• Quotes
• About the company
• Logo graphic and headshots as appropriate
• Media contact information
• Link to a del.icio.us resource page
• Links to Technorati tags
• Links that enable the reader to bookmark the release
• RSS subscription links
• A link to the release in a traditional format

After the release has been distributed and pitched, here are several post-release distribution actions:

• Post news release on company site or blog enabled media room
• Bookmark the release with social bookmark services
• Bookmark pickups with del.icio.us
• reate a MS Word doc and PDF version of the release optimized with keywords and links and embed images/media

Success can be measured through:

• Wire service reporting - impressions, reads, prints, pickups
• Clipping services - online and offline pickups
• Web analytics - referring traffic and conversions as appropriate
• Google Alerts, Yahoo Alerts - Email notifications
• RSS: Technorati, Google Blog Search, BlogPulse.com

By optimizing your press releases and adding social media, you can increase the distribution channels and take advantage of increased visibility to demand driven traffic. A PR strategy that involves both push and pull provides many more opportunities for coverage than any single tactic.

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The Ultimate Challenge from Microsoft will reward a small business demonstrating the most innovative business idea with cash and a rent-free spot somewhere in Manhattan for a year.

I can tell you what I would do with the prize from the Ultimate Challenge contest being hosted at the IdeaWins contest site. Invest the cash, sell the infrastructure supplies and software, invest those gains, and sublet the storefront space for some pure profit goodness.

I'll call the business DavidRollsLikeThat.com, and do personal appearances on TV and vlogs to explain my business strategy. Two minutes of your life, a personal appearance fee for me each time. Ka-ching!

Effective? Probably. Innovative? Not really; buying low and selling high has been a marketplace fixture ever since the first person grunted to another that he would trade a pretty rock for a properly sharpened stick.

Microsoft hopes for a singularly promising proposal as they accept proposals (better ones than mine at least) from hopeful entrepreneurs. Those have to be submitted at the contest site by January 31st, 2007, or in person at one of several Ultimate Challenge events Microsoft plans to have at sites throughout the US.

Four finalists will be culled from those entrants. The top rated finalists will be judged by their merits, and the public will get to contribute to the process by voting for their favorite proposal. Whichever one receives the most votes has points added to the totals from the judges' voting.

The IdeaWins contest has been established as a promotion for Microsoft's free Office Accounting Express 2007. The product represents their entry into the home-based and early-stage business segment that might turn to software like Intuit's QuickBooks Simple Start for their needs.

Ideally Microsoft can convert some users of the Express package to move up to more feature-rich versions of its premium small business software packages, which include accounting, CRM, and other for-pay products.

Accounting Express 2007 can be downloaded with a free license from the IdeaWins website, for Windows XP/2003 Server/Vista systems.

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After plenty of development, testing, and feedback, Yahoo has declared its Maps service ready to shed the Beta moniker and stand on its own.

Part of Yahoo's strategy aimed at snaring more of the local search advertising pie, predicted to be rising to $7.7 billion by research firm Borrell Associates, involves a combination of its Maps and Local services. Together they can get a person to a business by its online ads, and then to the physical storefront.

The service those consumers encounter online needs to meet their expectations. Yahoo has several features in play that they hope can separate them from the efforts of Google and Microsoft among others in the field.

Some of the features on the new Yahoo! Maps include multi-point routing, satellite and aerial imagery for the US and over 100 international cities, and options for working with saved locations for those who frequent a number of places repeatedly.

"In addition to releasing the new Yahoo! Maps, we're also rolling out street-level maps for Europe," Mike Lawless, product manager on the Yahoo! Maps team, wrote. "These are available almost anywhere Yahoo! Maps can be found, whether on Flickr in their photo mapping feature, Yahoo! Travel's Trip Planner product, and of course to our external developer community using Yahoo! Maps APIs."

Lawless also noted how user requests drove the addition of new functionality. Users of the new service will need Flash Player 7 and a broadband connection to connect to it.

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The head of Weblogs, Inc, who sold his blog network to AOL for a reported $25 million price tag has followed his mentor, ex-CEO Jonathan Miller, out of the company.

"By the way, touching, but not very politic, to describe the outgoing boss as a mentor, quite so publicly. Unless you're planning to quit anyway under the new regime."

That was posted at Valleywag, referring to the lengthy farewell Calacanis posted about Miller on his blog. Not long after that hit the blogosphere, Michael Arrington at TechCrunch heard some news about Calacanis himself:

We just heard from a source that Jason Calacanis has resigned from AOL. Jason joined AOL just over a year ago when his startup, Weblogs, Inc, was acquired. Most recently, he took over management of Netscape, which relaunched earlier this year as a Digg-like news portal.
I just spoke to Jason briefly on IM - his response as of now is "no comment".
Mark Evans blogged about the departure, and speculated about what Calacanis may have planned for the future:

So what does Calacanis do next? Well, clearly he believes in the online advertising model given his excitement about the IAB numbers earlier this week. The question is whether his severance agreement with AOL precludes him from working for a user-generated company or, for that matter, an online company that generates revenue from advertising.
One persistent criticism of the deal that brought Weblogs, Inc, to AOL was the idea that AOL bought the company just to gain Engadget, the Peter Rojas-run tech gadget site that ranks as one of the most popular blogs.

Calacanis may need another Engadget to build upon for his next success. Finding another blog to equal that one's success would be the real accomplishment.

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The latest complaint to social-networking site MySpace comes from city officials in Houston, Texas, who claim that MySpace pages are being used to glorify killers.

While MySpace's concept for socially-networking online appears to be a good thing, some site members choose to abuse the concept of the community.

There have been numerous complaints made by parents regarding deviants using the site as a means to communicate with young children, as well as complaints of school children using it as a tool for gossip.

Add to the list of complainants Houston's director of the city's crime victim's office, Andy Kahan. Kahan recently wrote to MySpace complaining that friends and family members of death row inmates were creating MySpace pages for them as a kind of tribute.

According to the Associated Press, Kahan wrote "Is it within your policy to allow the glorification of killers by giving them a platform to influence young minds? Are there specific guidelines within MySpace that would prohibit giving convicted felons a platform for all the world to see?"

In a report by CBN News, it was found that MySpace was one of the most popular sites for teenagers to visit, and they are not the only ones; there over 100 million registered MySpace users to date. Given those facts, it would seem that Kahan is justified in suspecting that the pages could influence young minds.

Typical MySpace pages include the interests, hobbies, favorite music, movies, and books, along with other personal details of the user's page.

The pages for death row inmates were obviously not created by actual inmates themselves, but rather close friends and family. Kahan worries that the inmate's pages are glorifying them and may generate sympathy among viewers of the pages.

MySpace pages would give the world a window into the life of an inmate through the biased eyes of loved ones, perhaps softening the inmate and making them more likable.

While there is a fine line between freedom of speech and taste, the pages are not illegal. Surely there are many profiles on MySpace that individuals wish to see removed due to inappropriate content, but how would MySpace choose which profiles to censor? Certainly no criteria could please everyone; offensive profiles would still exist.

There is really no way for MySpace to determine how they would censor profiles on their site; most criteria would simply be a matter of opinion.

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Microsoft has launched a new social networking site for IT professionals called Aggreg8.Think of MySpace but only focusing on all things IT related. On their homepage is the mission statement.

It reads "Aggreg8 is a social networking and collaboration space for the IT community. Inside you can keep track of your trusted network, find others through your network with similar interests or situations. Then you can collaborate with anyone in the community inside our working groups. We even allow you to create your own working groups, choosing if you want to collaborate with the whole community or collaborate in private working groups."

There are other sites out there that all ready have a similar concept. One is experts-exchange and another is driverheaven.net. What will set Aggreg8 apart from the others?
The answer is probably nothing.

In a blog post by Kevin Remde an IT Pro for Microsoft introducing the new site the majority of the feedback was negative. One blogger named Garth wrote," It will not let me sign in!
What is the point of having a site where you can't see anything before you sign in? Why so secretive?
This goes against the idea of what a community is all about. A community has public areas and announcements so far all I have been able to see if that this is a private group more like a secret society instead of a community." Party on Garth!

Another drawback to the site is users need a Microsoft Passport account to sign in. With two similar sites that are more established Aggreg8 would have to improve their site features and user friendliness to attract visitors.

If Microsoft wants Aggreg8 to be taken seriously by other IT professionals it seems they have some issues to overcome. If they don't the Garth's of the world will let them know.

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Ah-Ha, Bobby McFerrin and Dexy's Midnight Runners are all classics examples of one-hit wonders you may or may not remember from the 1980s. Effective one-page wonders, however, boast a more significant impact on the industry landscape than Terrence Trent D'Arby or Devo.

George Kepnick from DottedOnline.com kicked things off in today's "One Page Wonders" session, and WebProNews was on the scene as usual to provide the latest coverage from this year's PubCon.

Kepnick began the session by asking a very simple question:

What is a one-page wonder? Is it a long sales letter? A PPC lander? A SERP? A Shopping Engine?

In short, a one-page wonder is any page that convinces a user to take action quickly. There are three main incentives in striving for a page that inspires quick user action:

• Increase conversion
• Lower CPA
• Extend your reach

Kepnick stresses that one of the primary elements of constructing a one-page wonder is knowing and understanding your customers. What demographic are you trying to reach? What does it take to sell them on a product?

Secondly, a successful one-page wonder will leave little doubt about what products are being offered. Whether it's clicks, leads, products or services -- you have to be keenly aware of your product and get straight to the point in marketing it.

Kepnick noted that Google's SERPs are excellent examples of one-page wonders because clicking advertisements and navigating through organic results both demand action from the user.

Metrics lay an important role according to Kepnick. In his presentation, he stressed the importance of tracking URLs and AdSense channels for monetization purposes. You should be intimately familiar with the data your one-page wonder generates.

Since that data is always flowing either upward or downward, it is paramount that you continually test and re-test your landing pages for effectiveness. If you don't change things up, you are running the risk of becoming stale and repetitive. Take your ads and try them in different landing page configurations, use the data to find out what incarnation produces the high conversion rate.

As he concluded his presentation, Kepnick made a final point concerning user based content such as MySpace and YouTube, citing that these types of sites are good fodder for one page wonders.

Up next was Ted Ulle of The Mews Group, who spoke at length about strategies for writing effective copy for your one-page wonder.

Ulle started by outlining long copy, and it roots in direct mail. He noted that, traditionally, longer letters have achieved better long-term results with customers.

He elaborates by stressing that publishers should write copy to their best prospect. Instead of trying to pitch the whole world, instead focus on you core audience. Write "tight" and not "wide", meaning that you should stick within the narrow scope of your particular niche and how it appeals to your target audience.

Long copy works in this strategy because you are hammering away on these targets with very specific information. Ulle encourages publishers to think of their target audience as a bell curve, and write to the peak of the curve.

Ulle suggest that a good copywriter is very helpful for an effective one-page wonder, something the web industry hasn't grasped as much as traditional media. Ulle points out the success of Mailloop.com (Corey Rudl) - his target was the frustrated e-mail marketer, which was completely apparent when landing on his page. He named the problem and provided a working solution. Consequently, one sale would equate to ten more.

Writing is the essential skill here, and copy is very important for the long page approach.

Ulle encourages publishers to be engaging, write about the reader not the product, tell a story, make the prospect visualize enjoying the use of your product. Last words of sentences and paragraphs should build momentum and curiosity; this makes your copy stick.

Publishers should strive to build a flow with their content. Every paragraph ending gives the intended audience an opportunity to leave; asking questions instead can help prevent that from happening.

Because people skim pages by nature, every first word of your sentences needs to be used as bait to turn them into readers instead of skimmers. Use uncommon words or words that stand out to grab their attention.

To close the session, Ulle highlighted tips and tricks for improving copy and making your site a more effective one-page wonder:

Suggestions
• Avoid all distractions to gain focus
• Build a rhythm then subtly break the expected flow
• Change expected sayings up, unexpected change like this will catch your reader's attention
• Write for the screen, not for print
• Use a respectable font size
• Thin text blocks (no long paragraphs) you have to consider the graphic element of web copy presentation.
• Use fixed content widths
• Short sentences
• Frequent subheads
• Use an active voice, not a passive one
• Use bullet points
• Precise nouns and verbs
• Be redundant; this will capture the skimmers

Things to Avoid
• Don't double the verb and it's object
• Don't make the reader carry the information, be concise
• Too much punctuation hurts the graphic look of the page
• Don't fly solo. Make use of a co-editor and of peer reviews

So the next time someone calls your website a one-page wonder, just take a page out of Bobby McFerrin's book and "Don't Worry, Be Happy".

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