Metafilter, a pioneering online community, has been forced to lay off almost half of its moderation staff and is on financial life support after its traffic from Google suddenly declined by 40 percent. The reasons for the drop — as with most things involving Google — remain a mystery
Klout — one of a number of services that are trying to measure influence in social networks such as Facebook and Twitter — has closed an $8.5-million funding round from Silicon Valley powerhouse Kleiner Perkins, and adding Kleiner partner Bing Gordon to its board of directors.
Sezmi Secures $28 Million; influx of cash comes on the heels of the set-top box company laying off 20 percent of its staff. (peHUB)
KickApps Raises More than $13 Million; white-label social networking site is working on Series C round. (peHUB)
SAG Seeks to Authorize Strike Vote; federally mediated talks between the actors’ union and the Hollywood studios broke down over the weekend. (Variety)
Sumner Redstone Under Pressure; tumbling share prices of Viacom and CBS hampering efforts to resolve debt issues of National Amusements, his family holding company. (Wall Street Journal)
MPAA Targets Fanedit.org; web community of hobbyists who make variations on movies will take down much of its site. (TorrentFreak)
Crackle Announces New Season; will debut Dec. 1 with renewals of shows like The Groundlings and new ones like Star-ving, the new comedy series from Married…with Children‘s David Faustino. (emailed release)
Eisner Might Want Prom Queen Movie; and he’s loving being an indie in the current media market. (New York Times)
New York Times Magazine Does Special on “Screens”; including How Napoleon Dynamite Stumps Netflix’s recommendations, an essay on becoming “screen literate,” and pictures of kids playing video games. (New York Times Magazine)
Aruni Gunasegaram is a popular contributor to Found|READ, so I’m now a regular visitor to her own blog, entrepreMusings.com. Tonight I ran across her current post, What They Don’t Tell You About SEO – Part 2. As you’d expect, it details Aruni’s adventures in hiring a “search engine optimization” firm to help her current startup, BabbleSoft, amp its search page rank on Google.
Aruni hired her SEO firm in December, and she finally details some of the things she’s learned from the experience, including the results of her investment and the (possibly more helpful!) perspective she gained from an independent site-ranking source, which she stumbled upon, called Website Grader.
We have seen an increase in trial account sign ups and a few more sales, but I’m still waiting for the landslide! 🙂
I know it is sometimes an experimental process with keyword selection, and I know since we aren’t selling cupcakes (i.e., a well understood product) that things might take a little longer. I know all of this and yet I still want (dare I say need) to see those results immediately because I’m fundraising…
