Vegas Baby!

I’m in Las Vegas for WebmasterWorld a conference for web publishers. Most of the attendees, however, are service providers (like me) for publishers. Much of the content has been geared around search engine optimization and search engine marketing. Interesting stuff, to be sure, but a little narrow content-wise to contain any earth shattering revealations for me. Google hosted a cocktail mixer on Wednesday night where they talked about new video ad units which will be click-to-play and I saw an introduction of a new service they’re offering called ‘Google Gadgets’ which allows anyone to produce a gadget that can then be made available for any website or individual to use on their site or on their Google homepage. Kind of like a widget but more open source. The SEO folks were all excited because if someone puts up a gadget on your site, you get a link back, which helps your search engine rank. Last night Yahoo! threw a big party for all the publishers in the YPN (Yahoo! Publisher Network) Today, I’m off to an open bar/networking event at the New York-New York casino before I fly back to San Francisco. Some attendees are planning on staying through the weekend, but in my estimation, 3 days in Vegas is just about 1 too many.