Internet Marketing

Recently, a new TLD (top level domain) was launched to the internet, .tel. .tel addresses are the newest way to store all of your personal or business contact information in one, easily accessible, place on the web.

Forget Web 1.0 and 2.0, Web 3.0 is the next generation of the internet.

Think of Web 1.0 as a library. You can use it as a source of information, but you can't contribute to or change the information in any way. Web 2.0 is more like a big group of friends and acquaintances. You can still use it to receive information, but you also contribute to the conversation and make it a richer experience.

Web 3.0 is your own personal assistant. Web 3.0 will make tasks like your search for movies and food faster and easier. Instead of multiple searches, you might type a complex sentence or two in your Web 3.0 browser, and the Web will do the rest. For example, you could type "I want to see a funny movie and then eat at a good Mexican restaurant. What are my options?" The Web 3.0 browser will analyze your response, search the Internet for all possible answers, and then organize the results for you. (How Stuff Works).

Web 3.0 is the clearly the future of the web. While it is filled with numerous uncertainties, when it arrives there is going to be major change in the internet.

My last post listed top social media trends for travel and tourism. One of the suggestions, made by Klaus Hidebrandt was to get your CEO or top executive involved in social media. The most current trend to introduce this idea? ExecTweet.

ExecTweet is Twitter spinoff site that just displays tweets from select executives, making it easier to track the big shots on Twitter. It is published by ad firm Federated Media, and sponsored by Microsoft. The site "collects" tweets from various executives and puts them in one stream. Some of the best known company leaders that are currently using this service include Craigslist's Craig Newmark, Virgin's Richard Branson, and former AOL head Steve Case.

ExecTweet may be one path to cash for the famously revenue-free messaging service, as according to All Things Digital, Twitter is taking a fee for powering this new Microsoft-sponsored service.

Will ExecTweet be the new trend for the head honchos? Check out http://www.exectweets.com/ and decide for yourself.

Last week, I attended the PhoCusWright Blogger's Summit Workshop held at the ITB conference in Berlin, Germany.

The workshop was entitled "The Top Social Media Trends for Travel & Tourism" and featured a panel of 5 major bloggers. Each member of the panel was asked to provide his 3-5 top Social Media Trends for 2009:

Darren Cronian

• Mobile
  
• Twitter: companies are going to have to become more social and interact with the consumer
  
• Travel companies will start using more social media
  

Klaus Hidebrandt

• Social Media 2.0 is all about communication with the consumer. Companies need to know, understand, and execute social media at a top level.
  
• Get your CEO or top executive involved. Employees love it. Customers love it. There is no more powerful way to humanize your brand.
  
• The future lies in companies that adopt EVERYTHING: one brand and one media is best.
  

Kevin May

• Twitter: 974% of traffic in UK in 2008
  
• PR: people are thinking more cleverly in terms of PR. They are using different forms of media both online and offline for campaigns.
  
• Crowd-sourcing: making sure you know what is happening in a network digitally.
  
• Hyperlocal: creating niche services for a localized community
  

Martin Schobert

• Feedback 2.0: a lot of comments, learning how to communicate with a social internet
  
• Maps will be the new interface.
  
• More CONTEXT: the right content offered to the right person at the right time
  
• Do your homework. Define goals clearly with social web and have B2B conversations
  

Vasco Sommer-Nunes

• Volume of mentions will become part of a greater measurement metrix, such as "share of voice", to determine success in social media.
  
• Personal publishing on the web will continue to increase, thereby increasing the share of user generated content.
• Companies will react and hire a social media guy to listen, help and educate users
  
• Cross publishing will become stronger, i.e. publishing into several communities from one web site or mobile phone.
  
• The travel industry will embrace social media even more than other industries, because people love to talk about their vacation and show others where they´ve been!
  

After the panelists presented their trends, the audience was asked to interactively text in their picks to have a final list of 3. Although the majority of the panel's trends focused on social media sites, especially Twitter, the audience's choices end up being strategies.

Audiences Choices of Top 3 Social Media Trends with the greatest impact in the next year:

Twitter, the social networking and micro-blogging service, seems to be sweeping the nation. Twitter allows users to send and view others updates (called tweets) which are 140 characters in length. Like Facebook, Twitter originally started for others to be updated on the happenings of their friend's daily lives. The main difference between Twitter and Facebook is that Twitter encourages a dialogue, allowing opportunities to be built with people which would not have otherwise occurred. It has quickly shifted directions as now many celebrities have adopted Twitter, as well as businesses. Twitter is quickly becoming a communication medium of choice between companies in a variety of industries and their customers.

Twitter allows people to connect with your business on an up-to-date basis. The social media site can be used to increase your brand visibility and converse with your customers as up to the minute deals and information is posted. You can even make online Twitter coupons at twtqpon.

JetBlue, Crystal Cruises, Carnival, British Airways, and Virgin America are great examples of businesses that are using Twitter to keep customers in the know. Their Twitter posts feature sales and deals, travel tips, and current flight delays and cancellations, although Virgin America seems to be setting the bar in the Travel industry sector.

Want more travel industry Twitters? Click here for "50 great travel tweeters." (telegraph.co.uk)