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ValueClick, FastClick Post Strong Results

I believe that this is a good move by ValueClick. As many of you know, I work for a child company of ValueClick right now, Commission Junction. I pass by FastClick’s offices everyday driving to work, so having their offices so close to ours will prove to be a benefit I think.

FastClick’s business model and current client list will help improve the infrastructure of ValueClick and give it more credibility in the industry. ValueClick, and all of its child companies, now own more than 50% of the Affiliate Marketing and general Marketing industry. ValueClick has become the primary player in the industry.

Who are ValueClick’s competitors? Google (AdSense), the newly founded PPC platform by Yahoo, DoubleClick.net, Linkshare, ShareASale, and many other smaller companies. ValueClick now is the dominant player and I think that they have a solid foundation to move on with in this industry.

ValueClick reported strong results for the second quarter, exceeding its guidance for revenue and net income. Revenue grew to $54.6 million, an increase of 58 percent from $34.6 million in the year-ago quarter. Net income for the quarter was $8.1 million, or $0.10 per share, compared to $5.5 million, or $0.07 per share, for the second quarter of 2004.

Revenue growth was led by ValueClick’s media properties, which gained 89 percent year-to-year, while its affiliate marketing business grew by 37 percent. According to James Zarley, ValueClick’s chairman and CEO, the affiliate business grew because of the addition of quality merchants like Buy.com.

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IEBlog : Standards and CSS in IE
In addition we’ve added support for the following

* HTML 4.01 ABBR tag
* Improved (though not yet perfect)

It’s about time. IE 7.0 still presents a lot of problems with CSS and functionality, but they have come a lot closer and makes life a little easier on us web developers. Yet still, many things go unsupported and leave us in a crutch to still create a separate IE specific CSS style sheet in order to give IE the functionality it needs. They are still just slowly making progress.

1. New Packages - You can now choose from four different packages: minimal, typical, full, and developer.
2. Siriux is Back - The Siriux theme was ported to the new theme system.
3. User Contributed Themes - There are now more and more user contributed themes
   to choose from.
4. New Installer Log - G2 generates now a log of the core module installation
   process which will make it much easier for you to provide the necessary information
   and for us to help you.
5. Many, many bugs fixed.

Gallery has done it again! Gallery is hoping to push out the FINAL release within two weeks. A lot of good things are happening with Gallery and I’m excited for it. you can check out my gallery and see if you like some of the pictures. I have a lot of fun taking pictures and posting them, so head on over! =D

As I have seen in the past few months, a lot of people wanted Greenzap to be a scam. A lot of people created whole sites based purely on the opinion that they thought Greenzap was a scam. It has now been proven that Greenzap is NOT a scam. Greenzap has proven themselves to be a new company that has a great future. Podcasts, newsletters, real mailings, have all proven this. I’ve since received flyers from Greenzap notifying me of different things. They have devoted a lot of time to coding this new company and putting it together as new source.

Is Greenzap accepted on eBay? You bet. Greenzap is now being widely accepted throughout eBay and is becoming more and more popular. More and more stores are starting to accept it, both hard cash and webcash.

Many people are wondering what this webcash is. Well, webcash is something Greenzap created that has value. It’s used for transactions. While paypal has mostly free transactions, people doing hundred or thousand dollar sales on Paypal, you will start to pay high fees. Greenzap has started the method of using webcash to keep those costs down. Where someone might pay $7 or $9 in fees on Paypal, Greenzap will only charge you $1 or $2 which helps keep the costs down. This new business model is very interesting.

In the end, I trust Greenzap and I may consider start using them as my cash processor for online services depending on how much I spend online. I recommend everyone sign up today and start Zapping =)

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While reading Forbes.com I came across some interesting information. Apple’s own Steve Jobs is trying to think ‘outside the box’ again. Steve is considered one of the wealthiest people in the world right now, as he was listed on the list of the 400 richest Americans.

With that in mind, just think about the money he can invest and use. Next, Steve was thinking one that how cool it would be if Apple moved into the wireless cellphone industry. You may be thinking, WHAT, are you serious?! Well, yes, I am serious. Apple has already started developing an iPod/cell phone with an alliance with Motorola to help development. What exactly is their goal for doing this? Apple wants to make it easier for all kinds of businesses to enter the mobile market.

Apple is expanding, once again, to the cell phone wireless industry to try to stretch their horizons. Apple has plans to release their first model later this summer (so yeah, really soon because there isn’t much summer left.) I am eager to see what Apple has to offer the community of the mobile market. Apple has put out incredible products in the past, lets see if they are able to keep the standard on this one.

Blingo.com has recently launched itself into the Search Industry and has done so with two feet first. They are offering free prize give-aways simply for using their search engine. But you may initially ask the question, why does it say ‘Powered by Google’ on top. Well, the search results are powered by Google and they are using an interesting method of searching and site design. Blingo.com has simplified the searches down and started by offering prize give-aways just for using the search engine so that they can get popular.

To date, they have given away over 7,000 prizes to people around the US. Yes, the US. This California based company is only offering prizes to people in the US. Why only in the US?

Blingo.com blog says..

These laws require us to submit certain information about our prizes and, in some cases, we even have to file bonds guaranteeing that we’ll give away the prizes we say we’re going to give away.

This company launched this year, 2005. The company is made up of a small team of successful entrepreneurs and coders. The co-founder and CEO used to work for iAmaze, which was acquired by AOL.

I personally think this is an interesting concept and people have attempted to this before. NetBux.org attempted to do this before while giving away cash simply for using the search engine. While netbux faded out, many other companies have been developing and sprouting into similar, yet different ideas.

I see a future for them and I hope they are successful, but we will see where they end up in 6 months, a year, 2 years, from now. Something to keep your eye on =)

Amazon.com has recently turned 10 years old. They posted on their site, an image of their old site (seen below):

I think it’s evolved a bit…what do you think? :P

As always, I was browsing the web again. I’ve writing some articles about AJAX and Flash and I hadn’t really looked further into the products of Macromedia. So I took a moment to go browse Macromedia.com and see what they were up to since the acquisition a few months ago. On the front page I see this new product called Breeze.

It seems that Breeze is a new part-flash integration product that lets you stream live video from sources and then use it as a meeting platform. I think this is a brilliant move for Macromedia because they were limiting themselves with Flash and this new product will give them the flexibility they need for the market. The technology today is growing faster than it ever has in the past and for a company to make in the industry, they have to be good. I think the Adobe+Macromedia team up is good for both companies so that they can share knowledge instead of battling for who gets the better product out faster.

I believe the product Breeze is a step forward for Macromedia. One of the top clients that is using Breeze today is SalesForce.com. I see good things in the future for Macromedia and I know they have the means to get there.

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