Nike released a great viral marketing video today on youtube featuring Kobe Bryant of the L.A Lakers jumping over a moving aston martin. I’m not video whiz but I’m sure it could have been done by computer graphics. Even so, it looks real and most couldn’t deny that. When you add a celebrity plus something that is unbelievable and possibly fake, you have a perfect viral marketing ad. I saw this ad when it had 8,000 views and figured it would hit the top of youtube by the end of the day. It’s about #5 right now and climbing fast.

And they will always matter. You see, for every person that says tool bar pagerank or alexa ranking doesn’t matter, there is somebody who says it does. And those people tell other people it matters and there are always new breeds of people coming in obsessed with pagerank or alexa.

Many of us agree that it in fact pagerank and alexa doesn’t matter when trying to rank our websites. Much more important is the perceived authority of your website in the eyes of google, much of that resulting from the quality of authoritative links pointing to your site. There is so much more than just ranking, however, in a web entrepreneur’s life. There is of course (gasp) selling links on our high pageranked sites and high traffic alexa ranked sites, whether through private sales or text link brokers.

More importantly, many of us are in the game of buying websites or developing them from scratch, building them into revenue making websites and selling them off for a profit. In my opinion this is why pagerank and alexa ranking still matter alot to webmasters. I have sold many sites in the past. Some were high earners that I never should have let go of but did due to various circumstances, while others were sites I just didn’t have time for and leveled off to a point where if I didn’t start maintaining them, the money would start going down. I can tell you the number of times is high that I’ve had buyers shy away from a site because they were a) suspect of high alexa ranking not “matching” the analytics or b) turned off by a low pagerank.

Now I know you are thinking they just don’t know what they are talking about, but it does work both ways. I’ve also sold webmaster related sites for far more than they are worth because a couple of bidders obsessed with the pagerank and more importantly the alexa rank that the sale went through the roof. Of course we all know that webmaster related sites have inflated alexa numbers due to the high volume of alexa tool bars or accompanying firefox extensions that people have on their browsers.

The bottom line is people are still lined up, opening up their wallets for reasons based on pagerank or alexa ranking - and savvy webmasters are still cashing in off of it. As long as this cycle continues, I don’t see why sellers shouldn’t capitalize on it. The debate between whether or not alexa and pagerank matters has been going on for years and that debate isn’t going away anytime soon. So until the people who think pagerank and alexa is important run out of money, it still matters to me.

There is lots going on right now that internet marketers should take notice to. Mashable has announced that they got one of the first beta invites to Streamy, which is the much hyped “digg-killer”. The site is ajax based, and offers real time interaction between users, something that Digg.com has failed to do so far. I think it will be very interesting to see how the digg community itself will react to a more ajax based , user friendly site. One thing is certain, Streamy.com will have some major disadvantages in the search engines being ajax based.

Taking a step back from the web 2.0 scene for a second, let’s take a quick look back into the past. Lets start with 4 years ago. 4 years ago today two landmark pieces of internet history took place. First off, Netscape Communications Corporation was disbanded by Time Warner, ending an era that saw Netscape help the internet to grow into what it is today . In 2006 Netscape would relaunch as a Digg-like user community.

With that, the Mozilla foundation was also launched 4 years ago today. Time just flies by doesn’t it? Taking a look at the past prepares us for the future, and at the very least offers a motivation at how quickly a business or idea can rise into something massive.

Moving back even further, what about 10 years ago? According to the Wall Street Journal 10 years ago blogging was born. You simply can’t say blogging is the future anymore, it’s here and it’s now. Blogging is probably the most common way for a new internet marketer to easily make money online and it’s easy to see they won’t be going anywhere soon.

If blogging is the most common way to make money online, what is the fastest and easiest? Dave Naylor says it’s the Digg.com spam problem that has been absolutely rampant lately. I had noticed it myself and recently looked into it. The ones doing it well are doing it very well and ranking for some decent keywords #1 - #3. Basically they are using Digg as a parasitic host, and then using the comment section to enter a slew of affiliate links.

Last but not least, Google is getting sued again. Two more times actually. The first is a small Chinese company that is getting contacted by several people thinking they are the search engine Google. According to the news.com article, “The search engine’s Chinese name – a transliteration of the English word “Google” – was also used in Beijing Guge’s commercially registered name”. No news yet on what hopes they have, but I imagine it will settle out of court.

The bigger of the two lawsuits comes out of Australia. An Australian watchdog (ACCC) is taking Google to court for deceptive ads. The claim involves Google’s sponsored ads, and in this case the ads had titles and descriptions of a certain dealership, but then forwarded to 1 of 2 different competitors to that dealership. There is also a good thread going on about it at webmasterworld.

That was some of the more important stuff going on right now. Lots more going on, but I gotta get back to work. Like Ben Affleck says in Boiler Room, “You want vacation time, go teach 3rd grade public school.”

Recently I have been thinking about 2007 and while setting some goals, both personal and business related, I am also trying to figure out what the next “big thing will be in the internet marketing arena.

I believe that social networking sites, and video sites, will be the big players in 2007. The term “social media optimization” or SMO will start to play a major factor in old school marketing plans. This is simply a good idea because there is so much traffic surrounding social networking sites such as myspace.com, digg.com, and of course youtube.com.

Youtube.com , recently bought by Google for 1.6 billion dollars, will be a huge marketing tool for smart webmasters in 2007. You can use youtube.com in many ways, not only to drive traffic to your website but to successfully brand your company or website to a huge database.

Staying in line with the videos, I think we will see a large influx of offline advertisers come online in 2007. We are already seeing this happen, but I think mid - 2007 it will just explode. The average internet user is getting more tech savvy and video ads will convert better, and at the very least get a potential consumer’s attention better than the classic banner ad or text link - even flash ads are getting old.

As for the webmaster looking to start a new website, or many new websites in 2007, consider starting a blog. Blogs are getting major google love right now, that is just a fact. Update your blog daily, update many blogs daily. Monetize them. Put videos on them, lots of video and visual, but make sure you put your own touch on everything. Afterall, you need to retain your visitors and build a loyal reader base when writing a blog.

2007 is sure to bring smart webmasters the money they deserve, and in large amounts. If you put in the work this year, you are sure to reap the rewards the coming months.