CardMarketing 2.0

Like most financial services sectors, the cards industry has its own terminology that can be confusing to the man in the street. Words and terms we all take for granted, from APR and SVR to handling fees and moneyback, can often be confusing. Well maybe the New York Times has the answer.

Internet advertising in the UK grew by a massive 41.2% in 2006, smashing through the £2 billion barrier and sauntering past the amount – £1.9 billion – spent on national newspapers. These phenomenal figures, issued by the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), underline the seismic shift in ad spend as marketers move their budgets from more traditional media online.

Get rid of your PR agency now, ditch 'em, send 'em on their way. They cost you an arm and a leg, but are they really worth it? Just where's the ROI? Well I say, just forget the PR. Sack the media specialists. Just beg for your coverage instead.

Card Marketing 2.0 isn't just about how issuers can use the internet to market their products. It also looks at how the more personalised and engaging 'two-way' communication strategies underlying Web 2.0 can be integrated into conventional offline channels. There's no better example of this, at present, than LaSalle Bank of Chicago's use of its Illiniois ATM network to market to new and existing customers.

A person I've never met before sent me a link to a random blog entry on serendipity the other day. I've always been fascinated by chance, contingency and – how Nietzschean of me – throwing the dice, so I read it and it made me think. Well actually, that's not entirely true. It didn't so much make me think as feel, or rather, have a feeling.

The first weekend of March saw the USA Today website redesign go live. Most of the excitement – and there was a lot of it across the blogosphere – surrounded the numerous social networking, or 'community' features. Among other things, USA Today readers can now:

Interesting article in the New York Times on the weekend. It seems Cisco, the Silicon Valley networking giant, has the technology assets of Tribe.net, the social networking site, in its sights. This on top of its February acquisition of Five Across, a platform for social networking and communities. Now, why is a company like Cisco so interested in social networking? Hasn't it got bigger fish to fry?

For a fabulous explanation of Web 2.0, check out this cool little number on Vidipedia, the free video encyclopedia. Web 2.0, it reveals, requires us to rethink a number of key concepts, including copyright, authorship, ethics, aesthetics, governance, privacy, commerce and, if that wasn't enough already, identity and ourselves.

Like Techcrunch's Michael Arrington, I can't see ChaCha ever working. ChaCha, if you haven't come across it yet, is a new breed of search engine that pairs users with a human guide. The idea is that, if you're having trouble finding something, or can't be bothered to find it yourself on Google, Yahoo or whatever other search engine you're using, a battle-hardened 'live search expert' will do it for you, and in real time.