Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

It's no secret that it's extremely difficult to monetize short-form, user-generated video on the Internet. YouTube is the obvious example of this reality.

While everyone is struggling to find answers to this supposed dilemna, the answer is really right before us: create long-form video and put it up online.

Why? People using the Internet have already let it be known through surveys and polls that they are more than willing to exchange watching ads for free content.

Oddly enough, it's just the opposite for short-form video, as viewers have no interest in watching ads in exchange for viewing short video content on the Internet.

There's nothing better than a discount during tough economic times to remind people of your products. That's what the Cheesecake Factory (NASDAQ: CAKE) is doing today, by offering up $1.50 slices to their customers.

When some of our products are considered more luxuries than necessities, we need to do whatever we can during these times to keep them in the minds of consumers.

In this case, cheesecake isn't considered a necessity by most people, rather it's more of a guilty pleasure. Because it usually costs more, it's one of those products not apt to be purchased by consumers when deciding how to allocate their resources.

So to that end, taking advantage of a day like National Cheesecake day is a good excuse to market to consumers with this type of discount.

The nonprofit research and education organization, Media Research Center, is sponsoring a new online TV platform dedicated to conservative-leaning people and ideas dubbed Eyeblast.TV.

While it deals with political issues, it also includes a dose of humor to go along with it.

The site is set up to include video and audio segments from citizen journalists who want to share their viewpoint and work with others. Participants can also enjoy social networking features and make new friends or connect with old ones.

An earthquake originating east of Los Angeles shook a lot of the all buildings in the city, but as of the time of this writing, no injuries or power outages were reported.

The earthquake struck at 2:42 p.m. EDT, and was measured at 5.8. although other reports had it at 5.4. Either way, it's considered an average quake. It was centered about 30 miles east of Los Angeles, close to Chino Hills community. Some landline phone service in the area was reported.

So far witnesses said it was felt as far east as Las Vegas and as far south as San Diego. Nearby Orange Country reportedly felt the earthquake strongly.

The latest entrant in the search engine battles is Cuil, pronounced "cool," which hopes to be the company to break the strangelhold Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) has had in the search market.

What may make this a particulary interesting company is its original team, which has a strong background in search success, and which Google bought its technology from in 2004 for the purpose of upgrading its own search system.

So Anna Patterson, husband Tom Costello and former Google engineers - Louis Monier and Russell Power hope their latest creation will do what no one else has been able to: challenge Google in its core business.

Here's some of the points the company is trying to differentiate in:

In what I found one of the stranger comments and articles on YouTube and its potential for generating a profits, the manager of Avril Lavigne - Terry McBride -asserted she's going to make about $2 million from all the plays her videos have had on YouTube. The problem? There's nothing to base that assertion upon but shifting sands of opinion.

McBride said at a London music conference this month that ”There’s about a $2 million cheque waiting for her for all her YouTube plays.” When asked how all that's going to happen by Silicon Alley Insider, McBride was clueless.

Admittedly, McBride has no idea what Google pays out for streaming and ignorant of the split between rights holders. He even adds that there probably won't be any meaningful payout for Lavigne for up to three years.

He hasn't even seen the first of what the royalty payments will be from YouTube.

With what is called a market, being essentially a living, organic reality, it's amazing and instructive to see how extraneous stimuli affect how consumers interact within that market.

Some think that negative "macro-economic issues" will cause their businesses to fill, but that isn't necessarily true.

For example, we'll probably continue to see record-breaking results at movie theaters in the U.S. because people will stay closer to home, and consumer less expensive entertainment. So even though some businesses may suffer some, others can thrive.

Another example is the weak U.S. dollar. Even though that may have a negative impact on Americans visiting popular tourist destinations, it also draws foreign visitors because the exchance rate is considered a bargain to them. So you have those two opposing dynamics working at the same time.

The man behind the inspirational video that went viral on the web, Randy Pausch, succomed to pancreatic cancer today at the age of 47.

Pausch became widely known from his video called the "Last Lecture," on what somone would say if it was the last lecture they would give. He lived it out before the audience and online viewers.

In the last lecture, he talks about how he achieved his childhood dreams, how he empowered others to achieve theirs, and how you can do the same.

Pausch is survived by his wife, Jai; three children, Dylan, Logan and Chloe; and his mother and sister.

I included the lecture below if you want to watch it in its entirety. It's definitely worth it.

Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Wikipedia now has serious competition, as Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) has launched its "Knol" online encyclopedia in beta.

Google describes the new web site this way on their official blog:

"The key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an author (or group of authors) who put their name behind their content. It's their knol, their voice, their opinion. We expect that there will be multiple knols on the same subject, and we think that is good.

"With Knol, we are introducing a new method for authors to work together that we call "moderated collaboration." With this feature, any reader can make suggested edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions become visible to the public. This allows authors to accept suggestions from everyone in the world while remaining in control of their content. After all, their name is associated with it!"

A lot of online marketers, especially those who's focus is on helping others succeed, have a great opportunity at this time which only comes around about every 7 to 10 years, and that is the response of people to an economic slowdown.

What pyschologically happens in a slowdown is people begin to feel insecure from the uncertainty of what the future holds, and consequently look for ways to have more control.

They also either hear about layoffs and cutbacks, or have experienced it themselves; motivating them to look for ways to not let it happen again to them.

These opens the door to marketers who serve the market that trains people to succeed on the Internet.

This is what happens during this time: a bunch of new people unfamilar with how to succeed online flood the market. This provides great opportunities for marketing educators. This of course applies to more than online businesses, but that's a different story.