MSN quietly looks for SEM community assistance

Posted: June 25, 2005

MSN realizes the power of blogs and online forums. Places like Search Engine Watch, Threadwatch, and Webmaster World have a large audience reach where every topic related to webmasters is discussed.

These forums can help shape the perception of distribution properties, advertising platforms, and affiliate programs.

The forum I spend the most time on, Webmaster World (co-moderator of the AdWords forum) has two Google employees who regularly post very helpful answers about Google. Specifically, the AdWords forum has a member who goes by AdwordsAdvisor who visits the forum almost daily to offer helpful advice and feedback.

Yahoo has a few individuals who post about Yahoo search and other products, by the member who goes by OvertureRep is sporadic at best, having only 23 posts in 13 months. While I enjoy the direct connection I have to Overture through our current rep channels, this has tarnished their online reputation as being a very standoffish company, as their support to smaller clients can often be very slow or completely ignored; and often these forums help the smaller advertisers get their questions answered, and allows for others with similar problems to find the help necessary in the future as the answers become permanent webpages.

MSN has been watching this over time. They have an individual who sometimes posts in the MSN forum named MSNdude. However, he often jumps into a thread, and then disappears (like he only checks in once a month) when other questions come up. I had a chance to meet MSNdude at one of the conferences, and he did wish to post more often, but due to job and time constraints, wasn’t often able to visit these forums regularly.

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