After last year’s acquisition post, I thought it would be interesting to look at 5 great acquisition targets for 1st quarter 2008. I do not have financials for any of these companies, so I am working from a base of technology and visibility. For each company I list, I have also listed a possible buyer along with my commentary on why the purchase makes sense. Do you agree or disagree?

AOL

Buyer: Yahoo

Why: Yahoo needs to expand its base of distribution for the Yahoo ad platform. What better way than to acquire the population segment who uses AOL and loves it? AOL users click ads which means a potential cash win for Yahoo sa they could integrate contextually-relevant advertising into AOL, something AOL doesn’t do currently. It would also give them access into Hulu thru the AOL Video portal. It might even perk up the employee morale which I read has been quite low this past year.

Zoho

Buyer: IBM

Why: A couple times each week I read about IBM wanting to own the services market. Acquiring Zoho would give IBM a foothold into Web 2.0 and since Zoho targets the small business, would give IBM a chance to sell the small business on even more IBM-based services. It could even help IBM to slowly become a household name again in the Web space, something that they have no real presence in today.

Clicky

Buyer: Webtrends

Why: Webtrends is so completely out of the Web game, it’s sad. I remember beta testing the first version of Webtrends in the mid-90s and watched the company never move forward. Clicky is hot, both from the application-side and the buzz-side, and could be a good fit for Webtrends. Most small businesses need simple Web analytics and while Clicky is more robust than just simple, it would give a slow entry into the current Web market for Webtrends. That is of course if they actually want to move forward, something I’ve wondered for eight years now.

CrazyEgg/ClickTale

Buyer: Omniture

Why: To help Omniture move further into the Web testing market and provide a rounded suite of tools for their clients. Last year I said that CrazyEgg should be acquired by a large creative agency but I’ve changed my mind and am going with Omniture. CrazyEgg and ClickTale provide the testing and Omniture provides the analytics - I could see some nice A/B type testing with these acquisitions.

Pageflakes/Netvibes

Buyer: Yahoo

Why: Both Pageflakes and Netvibes have good footings into the early adopter, "cool techie" segments. This is a segment which Yahoo lacks on but could be a very influential segment for buzz. Completed correctly, Yahoo could (once again) start to get their search and other products in front of the early adopter, blogger crowd which can be an excellent way for Yahoo to get messages out and have forced use of their technology.

Note: Zoho is a current sponsor of CN.

Day #8 in the Ten Days of Holiday Gifts comes from CrazyEgg. The CrazyEgg service helps you understand where your traffic goes and how they interact with your site. CrazyEgg founder Hiten Shah describes the service as, "CrazyEgg helps you visualize your visitors. What that means is that it gives you a clear understanding of where people are clicking on a web page with visual heatmap and visual overlay. It is mainly a testing platform that helps you improve your web site.". Check out our full interview with Hiten.

Just for readers of CenterNetworks, CrazyEgg is offering Ten (10) Free Accounts for life. To enter for one of the passes, send in an entry using our contact form. We will select the winners this weekend!

(I’ve turned off comments on this post to avoid any entry confusion)

I’d like to thank each one of you for your loyalty and patronage over the past year. I’ve got a full recap coming but it’s simply amazing where CN has grown and of course it’s thanks to each of you. Like the Wine Man says, "It’s a lot of you and a little of me and together we are changing the tech industry." (I tweaked it a bit).

With that said, I’ve been working hard to line up a variety of exclusive Holiday Gifts for you. Over the next ten business days, there will be one gift each day. From service discounts, to premium beta access to free conference passes, we’ve got something you will like!

In the graphic below, you will note one slot with ??? in it. That’s because I have left one slot open. I’d like your feedback on who should fill that slot and I will go after them! Leave your ideas in the comments. And if you have a service to offer as a treat, contact us. It can’t be a free service is the only rule.

Here’s who’s participating — pretty impressive lineup!:

• OurStage - 12 free song downloads
• Compete - free credits towards the search analytics tool
• Clicky - two free pro accounts
• Freshbooks - 30% off new subscriptions
• TapeFailure - 40% off new subscriptions
• Drop.io - free premium upgrade codes
• CrazyEgg - Some pro accounts
• Future of Web Apps in Miami - 5 free conference passes
• CenterNetworks - 50% off job board posts

You won’t know which Holiday Gift will come which day nor what time - so be on the lookout! Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to All!

Has one of your stories hit the front page on Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc? What I find is that the traffic from these social sites is great (some sites live off this traffic) but the conversion is horrible. Many speak about the way these users spend less than one second on a site and do nothing on the site itself. No RSS pickup, no ad clicks, nothing, a pack of sheep moving from site to site. This is frustrating for me as a marketer — all of these visitors and no real way to capitalize on them. Even if they would just take my RSS feed for a day, I would consider that a win. A click on an advertisement would be gold - not because I might pick up a few cents but because my sponsors would see a higher rate of return and my visitors would learn about these services (which I handpick).

I decided to change the game for some of these social visitors. I spent a good bit of time analyzing exactly what these users do when they visit CN. And the results were sad. Visit the page, leave. Over and over I saw this pattern thousands of times. In my new test group, users clicked the ads an average of 7% more and picked up the CN feed 12% more than in the non-modified group. I consider that a huge gain. The key is a simple thing I learned early in my career as a salesman at The Wiz. Welcoming someone by name will increase the likelyhood of a purchase. A person’s name is the most beautiful sound they can hear. In this case, I used the referring social media site as their name.

The test was relatively simple. I used "seconds" to define whether the visitor would be part of the "modified" group. Odd, yes - even, no. Both groups saw the exact same article and same Web site. The only difference was the inclusion of a "name" box for the modified group which is shown below (it’s a mockup example). What this name box did was call out to the user "Hello!" and drew attention to it.

The box included the following elements:

• Welcome from x site
• Message about RSS with orange RSS icon
• Targeted ad

As for the specific ad types, gadget ads appear to work best for Digg visitors, while content ads worked better for Stumblers.

The great thing about what I setup is that only visitors from those sites saw the box. Many sites will run a "Welcome Digg’rs" type message when their story hits Digg but everyone will see that message. So not only are you not welcomed by name, you are welcomed by someone else’s name. I found that this tactic didn’t work as I had hoped over the past year.

My test has concluded and I am very pleased with the results. The next step is to refine the Welcome box and determine what it might look like going forward. Should every Digg user see it every time? Should a user be able to close it permanently? How far can I push it before I annoy the new visitor. It’s important to keep the brand and trust high.

As you can see a simple change returned dramatic results. And it has me wondering, who else can I welcome?

(tools used include: GetClicky, CrazyEgg, TapeFailure and ClickTale)

The team at ClickTale have released a report from data they gathered from users of the ClickTale service. It would be great if other services such as TapeFailure and CrazyEgg did the same thing. As long as the data is not identified down to the individual service user, this type of data can do two important things: teach us about trends and sell their service! The report provided by ClickTale is very detailed and is a great selling point for why you should be using ClickTale.

The report released today discusses amount of scrolling a site visitor is willing to process. What would be great is to know what type of sites make up the report. For example, people might be more willing to scroll further on a blog than on a product site or a corporate brochure, etc. Most blogs seem to have a good bit of scrolling, especially on the home page.

A few of the interesting conclusions from the Scrolling Report:

• Almost identical percentages of page views (15%-20%) reach the page bottom regardless of page height.
• It appears that regardless of page height, scrolling reach is very similar on the relative scale with some resemblance to a linear model (or a very flat exponential): between 64% to 68% of the page views are likely to reach the 1K pixel line and 15% to 20% will reach the bottom of the page.
• It appears that visitors scroll in a relative way - about the same percentage of page views will reach the middle of a web page regardless of the actual page height in pixels.

Do you believe that blogs have changed the way we scroll on a Web page? From the old days where the belief was to fit as much as possible on the first screen, I would say they have. Check out our previous ClickTale coverage.