After a few weeks, Elevator Pitch Friday is back with a vengeance. This week’s featured video comes to us from a self-funded, young male-oriented, yet-to-launch startup called BeTheBetterMan.com, with the pitch delivered by founder Eric Mayville.

The video’s a bit dark, but it’s enthusiastically delivered and straight-forward. Here’s the pitch:

As Eric describes further in the comments of the pitch:

…the options for challenges are endless as they can be user created or supplied by someone like the staff at Be The Better Man, some examples would include who can do the best Christopher Walken impression? Do you have the most bad ass beerpong table? What is the best song for the summer?

Now a Christopher Walken impersonator contest — that’s something I’d like the internet to do right. When they launch this fall, BeTheBetterMan.com faces some tough competition in their space, including the star-backed iBeatYou and video-focused Strutta.

Let us know what you think of this pitch in the comments.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Six weeks ago we launched an API for our technology database, CrunchBase. The idea was to give away lots of clean, structured data about the companies we cover, data that could be used to build new services and improve upon existing ones.

Since then we’ve seen a number of impressive things built on top of the API. And the traffic has started to add up: between July 15th and August 15th we fulfilled nearly 800,000 API requests, compared to ~1.3m page views for the website itself.

We now have over 15 projects hooked up to CrunchBase with many others on the way. Developers interested in using CrunchBase data for their own projects should check out the API documentation.

Today we wanted to highlight a few of the more sophisticated product integrations to date.

Apture

Apture is a startup trying to bring “depth to the web” with contextual popups that require no browser plugin. The product’s blog integration provides a very visual and intuitive way of navigating CrunchBase entries. Here are some examples (click on the little book icons to the left of the links): YouTube, FriendFeed and Evan Williams. Also, check out this video they compiled:

Zemanta

Zemanta, a blogging enhancement tool that launched back in March, recently integrated CrunchBase so that publishers can easily slurp in extra information like company logos into their posts.

Zemanta’s product integrates closely into blogging platforms such as WordPress, and it helps to semantically link up parts of your post with sites from around the web (CrunchBase now included). These guys have been on our case (and rightly so) to release an API for a couple of months now, so it’s great to see their implementation go live.

You can check out a demo of their product here.

Flash CrunchBase

Nicolás Parziale has created a very cool flash app inspired by They Rule that visualizes the graph of connections throughout CrunchBase. You can start with a company (such as Digg, shown below) and then flesh out different parts of the graph with your mouse. You can even input any two companies, causing the app to crawl the web and visually display all of the connections between the two.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Apple’s App Store is quickly becoming a hotbed for elite developers looking to capitalize on the store’s easy distribution model and huge exposure opportunities. Since the store’s launch less than two months ago, we’ve seen reports of apps reaching massive user bases and and collecting millions of dollars. But while the store has seen its share of its successes, it also has its flaws - most notably in the way it exposes users to apps in the first place.

The most glaring exception on the store is the lack of an all-time most popular applications list. While there are a pair of lists for current “Top Apps” (one for paid apps, the other for free), the list changes on a daily or even hourly basis. In turn, the most recently released applications dominate the list, with over half of the current list constituted by apps that have been released in the last ten days. This is great for Apple - most people turn to the Top Apps first when they open iTunes, and it’s in Apple’s best interest to always give them something new to play with.

But what about the apps that everyone should have? The ones that have seen hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of downloads, but no longer reach the top app lists because most people already have them? Shazam, the app that lets you hold up your iPhone to a speaker to figure out what song is playing, is currently ranked 16th, so it won’t appear on the home page. Tap Tap Revenge, one of the platform’s most popular games, has fallen to 20th. And Twitterific - a Twitter client that seemed cemented in the top 10 soon after the store’s launch, seems to have dropped off the list entirely.

If the current situation persists, even the very best apps will always lose out to the up-and-comers - a situation that only encourages developers to pump out applications as quickly as possible, rather than creating something really useful. Apple devotees are known for valuing polish and functionality - it would be a shame for the store to fall prey to the spammyness seen on other platforms.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web....

Whew, what a busy couple of weeks it's been. We launched our new home page back at the end of July with the goal of using a new picture each week. Then we decided to get a little crazy for the Olympics and rotate the images twice a day. About three days into the Olympics, we realized we just could not go back to one picture a week!

So a few days ago we shifted gears again. We're now giving you a new image every day, with hotspots to help spur your imagination. Sometimes we'll just show great pictures that we like; sometimes the images will be related to topical events, like the upcoming Labor Day holiday or NFL season kickoff.

We'll occasionally have images from the elections, but rest assured we'll be giving both parties equal time.

And if you don't like the picture you see today, don't worry – there will be a new one tomorrow!

– the Live Search Homepage team

by Jennifer Laycock

I scan hundreds of feeds and read dozens of articles each day so you don't have to. From hyperlocal blogging to Google AdWords "Automatic Match" to new ways to use Twitter and LinkedIn, find out the six articles I dubbed as must-read for the small business crowd today.

• If you enjoyed Matt McGee's post on Hyperlocal Blogging earlier this week, you'll be pleased to hear he's back with more. Part Two focuses on choosing a domain and setting up your blog. Part Three talks about developing a content focus and Part Four offers tips on marketing the blogs. Matt wraps up the series today with Part Five, an overview of what's worked and what hasn't. Overall, it's an excellent series for anyone looking to use blogs as part of a local search strategy.



• Frank Reid offers up a good reminder on the need to be committed to search marketing if you want to reap the benefits. Frank offers up his advice over at Biznology and points out how difficult it can be for small and medium businesses to either learn enough or trust a partner enough to get their search engine optimization and search engine marketing up and running.



• SEO Copywriting guru Karon Thackston reminds site owners of the need to get their selling points front and center in their web site copy. According to Karon, it's not just about creating a mood and using your keywords, it's about differentiating yourself.



• If you're a fan of Twitter and are looking for ways to maximize it's use, you'll want to check out a helpful list of Twitter tools over at Home Office Warrior. There were several in there I hadn't tried yet, and quite a few I find essential to good Tweeting. On a similar vein, check out "Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn That You Never Thought Of" over at MBA Explorer.



• Thinking about taking advantage of Google AdWords' Automatic Match feature to expand your paid search campaigns? If so, you may want to read the results of some testing done by Jim Gilbert and Mike Churchill over at the SEM Clubhouse blog.



• Barry provides links to a discussion in Google Groups that talks about whether Flash is still a problem with search engine optimization. While it's true the engines have announced they're making strides toward reading and properly indexing the content in Flash files, a former Googler issues a smart reminder of why Flash should still be used with caution.

Free White Paper: How to Optimize for Google
A free 10 page white paper on how to optimize a website on Google the right way - so the website succeeds.

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web.

From Search Engine Land:

• Search Marketing & The US Presidental Race, Case Study: Sarah Palin
  After reading yesterday about how savvy both US presidential campaigns seem to think they are about search marketing, I decided I'm going to take a closer look at watching them. In particular, I noticed yesterday that both seemed pretty lame when it came to tapping into rising queries that...
• Google Tests Displaying Ads Under Search Results
  Tamar reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that Google has confirmed that they are testing displaying search ads under the search results. You and I are accustomed to seeing AdWords ads at the top and right hand side of the Google search results page, but we never see them under...
• Search In Pictures: Mandi Perkins at Yahoo, Google Dance & Yahoo Safari
  In this week's Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more....
• Microsoft Acquires Market Research Firm Greenfield Online To Get EU Shopping Engine Ciao
  Microsoft successfully bid to acquire Greenfield Online for approximately $486 million. But Microsoft isn't really interested in Greenfield, it was after the company's subsidiary Ciao GmbH. Founded in 1999 and acquired by Greenfield in 2005, Ciao is an Munich-based EU comparison shopping site with user reviews....
• Ask Kids Relaunches With Cute Kids Features
  A few days ago, Ask.com relaunched Ask Kids, their search flavored for children. The Ask.com blog just wrote about the launch last night. Ask.com said the Ask Kids site was "built from the ground-up, with our own search technology." It seems like Ask.com added a "very strict" list of which...
• Human Hardware: Foraging for Information
  When looking to predict how MBA students and analysts would find information in a digital environment, Peter Pirolli found his answer in an unlikely place: animal’s foraging patterns. Pirolli, working at the Palo Alto Research Center, was trying to predict with some mathematical accuracy the behavior of humans when...
• Obama Vs. McCain: Display Vs. Direct Response
  The Wall Street Journal analyzes and compares the online marketing strategies, successes and weaknesses of the two US presidential candidates. McCain turns out to be the more savvy search marketer, while Obama does a better job at SEO and is investing more in online display advertising....
• Bill Tancer On 20/20 This Friday, Talking Search Behavior
  Many search marketers know of "data geek" Bill Tancer, who has long entertained folks at search marketing conferences with tales and observations of what you can tell about people through search trends. Bill's got a great new book coming out, Click, which shares those insights with a broader audience....

Search News From Around The Web:

Business Issues

• Analyst trims Google estimate, Forbes

Local, Maps & Mobile

• Introducing the winners of the Android Developer Challenge I, Official Google Blog
• Tip of the week: Lat Long on Lat/Long, Google LatLong
• Google to buy GeoEye satellite imagery, News.com
• Live Search Maps Goes Live in Taiwan, Virtual Earth, An Evangelist's Blog

Paid Search & Contextual

• Google Ad Planner Vs. AdWords Placement Tool: Which provides better sites to target?, PPC Hero
• Google Updates Java Client Library for AdWords API, Search Engine Roundtable
• Sample SOAP requests for several adCenter API V5.1 calls - adCenter API Blog for Developers, adcentercommunity.com
• Your guide to the Inside AdSense blog, Inside AdSense

Searching

• Google Cuts Off Forestle, Google Blogoscoped
• Windows Live Search Tricks You May Not Know About, Digital Inspiration

SEM Industry

• Cre8asiteforums Interviews Members Wit, JohnMu and Lee, Cre8tive Flow
• SEOktoberfest, 3 Dog Media
• SES: Catching Up with Vanessa Fox, WebProNews

SEO & SEM

• Online Marketing Tips Video: Utilizing Video in Online Marketing Strategies, Search Marketing Gurus
• What's Broken in the Microsoft Development Stack?, Live Search Webmaster Center Blog
• Whiteboard Friday: A Farewell to Pagination, SEOmoz
• Aaron Wall and Wordtracker team up to publish - 50 Kick-Ass Keyword Strategies, SEO Book
• Applying onsite seo to website template (or why separation of code and content is a good thing), SEOmoz
• Digital PR and SEO Series: Part 3, Online Marketing Blog
• Div ID="Header" Different SEO Tactics, Search Engine Journal
• For Local Search, It's All About the Online-Offline Gap, Search Engine Watch
• How Google Handles Flash in 2008, Former Googler Bergy Chimes In, Search Engine Roundtable
• Looking for Answers in a Search Marketing Forum? Be Specific!, Search Engine Watch
• Negative Keyword Filter for Google Webmaster Tools?, Search Engine Roundtable
• New Killer Keyword Research Ebook!, SEO Book
• Search Engine Penalties Are Scary, Says Most SEOs, Search Engine Roundtable
• Ten Top Tips for Tip Top Copy, SEOptimise

Social Media

• Yahoo Shuts Down Mash, 0-4 On Social Networking, TechCrunch
• LinkedIn Rolls Out Enhanced Groups Features, TechCrunch
• Traffic trends for Digg vs. nine other social news sites, Royal Pingdom

Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:

• The 30 Easiest Ways to Get Links and Exposure
• Digital Point's Shawn Hogan Sued for Cookie Stuffing
• How To Get Started In Social Media | A Beginners Guide
• Google Automatic Match - Measuring the Cost of Skipping Keyword Research
• 10 Meta-Search Engines Reviewed and Compared
• The Great Social Media Traffic Debate - Niche or Generic Networks??
• When Blackhat SEO IS Ethical
• 11 Slimy Internet Marketing Characters
• Giving Your SEO Enough Info to Succeed?
• Social Media Marketing: Getting Long-Term Results

A rumor is circulating that the iPhone may be finally making its way to China. The original source of the rumor is China Communications, which has cited a China Mobile insider as its source. According to the source, China Mobile will be offering the iPhone at a heavily subsidized discount in order to court the massive Chinese population, many of whom would have trouble affording an unsubsidized phone.

An article from It.hexun.com (translated here), says that the source is a member of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), and offers further details:

China Mobile will procure the handsets for their full price, and then on-sell subsidized handsets to consumers. The source explained that China Mobile could buy a 3G iPhone from Apple for USD 299 – an example price – and then sell the handset to users for USD 199, treating the additional USD 100 as compensation to Apple.

Past talks between China Mobile and Apple have failed, largely because of Apple’s past insistence on taking a portion (believed to be between 20-30 percent) of the carrier’s monthly fees from iPhone customers.

With the release of the iPhone 3G, Apple stopped insisting on a rev-share agreement with carriers. An earlier report on a possible deal explained that the largest hurdle had been removed, but there were still “practical issues” that had to be taken care of.

Thanks to The China Perspective for the tip.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.