I’m pleased to have recently been accepted to Blogrush, which is a referral program for bloggers. I say “pleased”, because this is my second attempt!

Initially I was disheartened that I didn’t cut the mustard, but the filtering does mean that the chances of links to poor quality blogs shown on your site are reduced. And to be honest, I hadn’t published many quality posts at the time of my first application.

I’ve been a member of ‘my blog log‘ for some time. This is a similar service, which has been recently bought by Yahoo. I have to say it does generate traffic and subscribers from people with a similar interest. It’s quite nice to see the faces of your readers too!

So far, I like Blogrush - some of the links in the sidebar have sent me to some interesting blogs, in particular this one from Unlocked Profits - How To Get Free Web Site Traffic In 2008. My New Years resolution will be to write some guides for work’s website available for download…

If anyone has any opinion let me know…

• Is it easy to use?
• Does it generate traffic or subscribers for you?
• Do you think it looks spammy?
• Have you used other services to better effect?
• Is traffic not important for your blogging?

I love the design of the iGoogle Carbon footprint page.

As well as the nice design, they have added some very smart features, and use a good mix of media to make the page interesting and informative.

Sky have got involved with their “Green Shoots” competition.

It’s a great way to increase awareness - getting people involved by encouraging people to create their own content, and it’s also an excellent branding campaign for Sky.

It’s clear to see that Google have Sky in their pocket (or vice verca); the Sky search and SkyCasts are powered by Google search and Google Video respectably.

But it’s nice to see them using their powers for a good cause!

I’m still figuring out whether there is any point to Twitter…

I love the fact that it can be integrated into webpages; there are sleek plugins available; we used some for a pilot project on the PushOn Online Marketing Blog in combination with a mobile phone application Shozu which published images straight to our Flickr account. The images can also be automatically re-published to the PushOn blog, or PushOn MySpace page.

The freedom of instant one click publishing via mobile makes it great for commentary on events, however the fact that it’s so easy to do, means that it’s very quick and easy to publish crap. Big Brother have a Twitter feed, and there have been notable instances where people have said something silly and ended up in a lot of trouble.

Jaiku is a similar application to Twitter, and has had good feedback.

I think I like this ‘micro blogging’ malarkey, it’s good for sending a small amount of information quickly to multiple people with similar interest.

Jack Lail thinks it’s a bad, bad thing, but he likes it, he’s written an interesting post on the subject of Twitter.

Incidentally, I’m trying out a tool which publishes a note on your Twitter account when you post a blog entry… I’ll let you know if it works!

Another fake viral email offer has spread with impressive speed;

The viral email offers users £100, or £200 in Marks and Spencer vouchers, and claims to be a joint campaign with Persimmon Homes.

Most web savvy Internet users will be wise to the ‘Microsoft will give you £XXXX if you forward this email to all your friends‘, and ‘My rich relative has died and I need someone to transfer the inheritance funds to‘; but many companies are legitimately offering discounts, vouchers and exclusive deals via viral email marketing.

HMV, Threshers, and LastMinute.com are companies that have successfully used this viral voucher strategy in the past, so it’s easy to see how people have been fooled by this latest hoax.

Read more about this fake viral email campaign at Sophos; see examples of Viral Emails at Viral 3dge or see what PushON can do if you want to develop a real successful viral email campaign.

Friendr.net has just launched; Friendr.net has been worked on by Virtuaffinity website developer Jim Neath.

This is a new social media optimization tool, that helps people add MySpace friends to their profiles.

This tool is useful for people who use their MySpace profile to promote their business or band, without spamming the typical MySpace users who purely use it to contact their friends and associates. MySpace is a great tool for keeping in touch; but spamming can be a problem.

As Social Media Optimization is relatively new, and the scope of Web 2.0 projects is constantly increasing, best practices and Social Media Marketing etiquette will also evolve.

Here are a couple of suggestions from an article by Kent Lewis of Search Marketing Standard:

• Respect the community
• Building and maintain a consistent and robust profile (or brand)
• Engage in the community by commenting, contributing and sharing regularly
• Don’t include blatant self-promotion
• Don’t post biased information
• Don’t breaking community rules
• Don’t spam

Learn more about Social Media Optimization from Wikipedia, or a brief summary of it from PushON Online Marketing specialists.

Doubleclick is a global digital marketing company that offers ad serving, rich media, video, search and affiliate marketing.

Google has a wide audience, and offers self service options to companies of all sizes. This has been great for smaller businesses who may not have the budget to cover account management and setup fees that are often in place for Online Advertising Publishers.

It will be interesting to see what self service tools Google will make available, and if this move makes rich media and interactive advertising more accessible to smaller companies. Targetting and tracking tools are also expected to be enhanced.

Online advertising has consistently seen growth year on year, this aquisition will undoubtably contribute to further growth.