The Business July 31st, 2013: The Summer Fun in the Sun (or maybe fog) Edition

Come join us for hot fun in the Summertime before its not summer anymore and we have to have fall time fun. What I’m really saying is, let’s kill some time together before the return of Pumpkin Spice lattes!!

YOU KNOW WE GOT GUESTS.

George Chen has finally found a proper outlet for his brand of sarcasm and self-deprecation. These traits were ill-suited to the other worlds he has occupied as a musician, writer, and filler of 1099 forms. As a promoter he has organized comedy shows on a moving bus, at a still-life drawing session, and inside a comic book store. Of these attempts to put on comedy in unlikely locations, the best thus far has been the weekly showcase Cynic Cave at Lost Weekend Video (organized with Kevin O’Shea). He also co-produces the monthly multimedia show Talkies.
As a performer he has appeared at Holy Fuck, Venice Underground Comedy, The Business, and the Porchlight Storytelling Series.

Bart Freebairn is a stand up comedy comedian. He has been doing comedy for a while now and travels around Australia doing comedy to people and whatever else is around. He’s had the pleasure of performing at festivals like Melbourne comedy festival, Adelaide Fringe festival and Brisbane Comedy Festival.

He is very excited to be back where the toilets spin in the right direction. THE AMERICAN DIRECTION.

Andrew Holmgren, comedian, is a sharp-shooting merrymaker, hardboiled in the San Francisco Bay, that finds utmost joy in disseminating his humor across the country. One-part noble knave, one-part calming confidence man, and one-part evergreen mocker, Holmgren speaks with frank sarcasm and idyllic crassness. A budding star, Andrew Holmgren has performed at the San Francisco Punch Line, Noise Pop Festival, the International Hemp and Cannabis Festival, San Francisco Indie Fest, San Francisco Comedy Day, and the Sacramento Comedy Festival (earning the Best of Fest award). Also, he has opened for the reputable Will Franken and Moshe Kasher and curates the popular Get Yucked Up comedy showcase under Bay Area comedy outfit, Sylvan Productions, of which he serves as producer/artist.

And of course Steve Hernandez. When you see him, you will laugh, and you will want to hug him. He will be into that. He is big into hugs. He’s also big into producing some of LA’s best comedy shows, including the spectacular Chatterbox.

And your regulars! Nato Green, Sean Keane and the lean mean Bucky Sinister machine.

Just $5! ONLY $5.

We sell out! Get your tix in advance.

BYOBurrito and dress it in a miniskirt. It’s summer, let it all hang out.

The Business July 24th, 2013: The Put Your Hand In Your Mouth Edition

This week The Business welcomes a home town hero and co-host of one of our favorite shows, Hand to Mouth, the indomitable James Fluty!

James Fluty is a San Francisco comic and co-creator of Hand to Mouth a monthly, topic-based comedy show. He was described by tonegazer.com as “funny and intellectually stimulating” and described by the New York Times as part of a “shockingly high percentage of adults without health insurance”. He has performed at major clubs including the San Francisco Punchline, the Purple Onion and Rooster T. Feathers. He’s appeared on Current Television and KOFY TV and in the award-winning short film Tiger Cop which can be seen at Funnyordie.com. He also co-wrote and starred in the mockumentary Awareness of the Outer World which became a You-tube featured video.

Plus we are making new friends! We have two guests this week in town from New York ON BUSINESS.

Amaya Perea writes for Cracked, Hahajk, Hello Giggles, Funny or Die and her own bio. She’s performed at the Bridgetown Comedy Festival and her jokes have been featured on the Huffington Post, Splitsider, Witstream and Timeout New York.

Boris Khaykin is a comedian and musician based out of Brooklyn, NY. His stand up has been featured on the “Live at UCB” Stand Up Showcase, Collegehumor Live, Huffington Post Comedy, North Carolina Comedy Arts Festival’s “All Star Showcase”, and more.

Plus all of your regulars, with all their hands and mouths.

$5. JUST $5.

Get your tix in advance! We sell out!

BYOBurrito and use your hand to bring it to your mouth.

AdWords Site Policy Starter Guide

Quite often advertisers at conferences, or on the AdWords Community ask us “What can I do to avoid violating Google's site policies?” We thought it would be useful to create a compact guide sharing some best practices on how some common site policy mistakes can be easily avoided.

In the AdWords Site Policy Starter Guide we take a look at some of the most common site policy violations policies such as ‘bridge page’, parked domain, information harvesting and help you avoid some common pitfalls. We hope that this guide helps you better understand some of our site policies.

For more information on our site policies, please visit our AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Joshua Singh, Ads Quality Operations

What the Washington Post and Boston Globe Sales Tell Us About the New Breed of Owners

The sales of the Washington Post to Jeff Bezos and the Boston Globe to John Henry raise the question why people would want to own newspapers if they aren’t doing so for obvious financial gain.

 

There are clearly people who want to own papers for political purposes so they can directly influence debate and policy. This is certainly the case for the ultra-conservative Koch brothers, who have been trying to buy the Los Angeles Times this past year. But Bezos and Henry don't seem to fit that mold.

 

Bezos’ purposes for buying the Post are not the pursuit of profit. He certainly would produce better returns putting more effort into Amazon or another commercial firm. John Henry can expect far more returns from effort in his investment firm or his sports empire than the Globe. So why are they buying legacy media? 

 

The answers lie in human traits.  All of us need diversions. We need toys to play with; things to spark our interest and imaginations. 

 

Bezos can clearly bring ideas and expertise gained from shifting the mail order catalog concept to the web and contribute his innovative spirit to the Post.The challenges of learning the media business and trying to transform its distribution and operations are clearly interesting and attractive. And the price for the Amazon creator isn’t high. 

 

John Henry doesn’t bring great digital expertise to the Globe, but he does bring strong organization, marketing, and turn-around skills and experience to the effort.  He also has strong local community ties and bringing ownership back to Boston is a gift to the city. Especially because hating everything associated with New York is the city's pastime.

 

The newspaper ownership will also make both of them more respectable as citizens, not just as businessmen. There is a long tradition of wealthy U.S. merchants, industrialists, and traders playing citizenship roles in public life and philanthropy after achieving immense personal success. These range from Andrew Carnegie to J.P. Morgan and J. Paul Getty to Bill Gates.  

 

Some who moved into public roles have done so to gain respectability that eluded them because of harm they caused while climbing to the top; other because of a genuine desire to make society better. 

 

The sales of the Post and the Globe reveal a breed of owner who wants not just respectability or making contributions to society, but a place to use their knowledge and abilities to tackle new challenges. Whether it will help the newspaper industry remains to be seen, but it will at least inject new ways of thinking into the industry. 

New Learn with Google Summer Webinar Series

At Google, one of our goals is to help make the web work for you. Today we’re announcing our summer series of Learn with Google webinars, which will teach you how to use digital to build brand awareness and give you the tools you need to drive sales. Each of our sessions gives you deep-dive educational content, across a breadth of products and marketing objectives, in a format that’s convenient for you. Every webinar is led by Google product experts and includes time for audience Q&A. Sign up to start becoming a smarter digital marketer now.

Upcoming live webinars:

July
[Shopping] Google Shopping 101: Overview of Shopping & Product Listing Ads
[Search] Improving Your Search Campaigns with Remarketing Lists for Search Ads
[YouTube] Driving Direct Response with Video

August
[Shopping] Google Shopping 201: Product Listing Ad Optimization Essentials
[Shopping] Google Shopping 301: Advanced Optimization Tactics
[Search] Taking Advantage of New AdWords Features
[YouTube] Building your Business with YouTube Video Ads
[Social] Kick-Starting Social with Google+

September
[Display] Planning Display Campaigns with the New Display Planner in AdWords

Webinars are held Tuesdays through Thursdays at 10am Pacific/1pm Eastern.

Visit our webinar site to register for any of the live sessions and to access our large library of recorded content. You can also stay up-to-date on the schedule by adding our Learn with Google calendar to your own Google calendar to automatically see upcoming webinars.

Learn with Google is a program to help businesses succeed through winning moments that matter, enabling better decisions and constantly innovating. We hope that you’ll use these best practices and how-to’s to maximize the impact of digital and grow your business. We’re looking forward to seeing you at an upcoming session! Posted by Erin Molnar, Marketing Coordinator, Learn with Google

Creating your next channel just got a lot easier

Cross-posted with the YouTube Partners & Creators Blog.

Previously, every channel you created needed to have its own Google account login. If you’re a creator that manages many channels, you might even have a spreadsheet to organize the various email addresses and passwords you use to log in to your channels.

We made a significant improvement to the multiple channel management experience recently when we launched the option to connect your existing channels with a Google+ page. Google+ page connected channels have enhanced channel management features that allow you to manage up to 50 channels with a single login, and multiple individuals can manage your channel with their own logins.

Now, when you sign up for a new channel you’ll have an option to create this new channel connected with a Google+ page. This will allow you to create new channels using a Google account that you already use to manage your other channels and Google+ pages. This is a significant simplification of the channel signup process, so we encourage you to take advantage of this when you’re creating new channels going forward.

Create a new channel connected to a new Google+ page

1.Sign in to a Google account that you use individually - maybe it’s a Google account you already use to manage other channels and Google+ pages, or it’s the Google account you use in the YouTube Content Manager.

2.Go to www.youtube.com/channel_switcher and click Create a new channel.

3.Provide a name for your new channel and Google+ page, and click Done to complete the signup process. Remember, channels connected with Google+ pages can have names that include spaces and punctuation if that’s what you want.

Create a new channel connected to an existing Google+ page

1.Sign in to a Google account that is the manager or owner of the Google+ page with which you want your new channel to be connected.

2.Go to www.youtube.com/channel_switcher and click the name and avatar of the Google+ page for which you want to create a new channel.

3.You’ll be asked to confirm you want to create a new channel for this page, so click OK to complete the signup process.

Additional tips for your new channel

• You can add others as a manager of the new channel and page (instructions). Remember, we encourage everyone to use their own logins to manage channels, rather than using shared logins!
• Your new channel URL will look something like the URL below, so if you’d like a custom URL that is easier to remember, follow these steps.

Posted by Brett Hobbs, Staff Software Engineer, recently watched Anchorman - 8 Bit cinema!

Ambient news: All the news most people want

Ambient news is proving a significant challenge to news organizations trying to serve readers on multiple digital platforms and maintain their print and broadcast news operations.

Contemporary technologies all around us are now delivering breaking news, sports scores, and market updates on electronic screens and displays in elevators, taxis and buses, bars and restaurants, on the sides of buildings, through smartphones, and via social media.

In years past, we all had to deliberately turn to newspapers or radio and television newscasts, or at least glance at headlines at news stands, to get a quick overview of major events. That era is past.

Today news is free and ubiquitous and, unfortunately, provides all the news that most people want. This is bad news for those trying to provide news commercially.

In the past, newspapers and newscasts filled their space and time with non-news features and information designed to attract audiences that wanted only a little news. Most newspapers, for example, rarely carried more than 20 percent hard news during the past 50 years and provided a heavy diet of sports, entertainment, lifestyle and other diversionary content. Today, light news readers who formerly bought papers for non-news articles find plenty of that information for free on television and the Internet and they are abandoning newspapers and news broadcasts.

Those who remain the audiences of newspapers and new broadcasts tend to be heavy news consumers, people who want significant amount of news and serious information. They value the kind of news reporting that provides social benefits. Unfortunately, they are getting less and less of that news as publishers, news producers, and editors continue pursuing the audiences that have left them and are satisfied by ambient news. In doing so, news executives are leaving their prime audiences of heavy news consumers increasingly dissatisfied and without much incentive to pay the increasing prices needed to maintain established news organizations.

If print and broadcast news organizations are to survive and serve the purposes for which they were established, they are going to have to start paying attention to the audiences they have, rather than the audiences they wish they had.