Google Friend Data Goes Portable

Google is getting really adamant about the whole “not not not building a social network” thing. So adamant that they’re letting you take all that shared information among your peer group—including your list of contacts—all over the web now.

That’s right, folks—Google has enough social network-like information on your friends and contacts to roll out the data portability, or at least for just your friend list.

The reasoning behind the new open standard, Portable Contacts, is that many websites like to invite your friends to come participate. (Hey, it’s a party!) But when you give them your Gmail login and password (WHY?), they can scrape your whole contacts list (and, um, lots of other stuff).

So to protect your data, Google’s making it possible for sites to access Google contact lists securely and with your permission. Portable Contacts is built on Open Social’s REST data format and OAuth authorization.

So between Google Friend Connect, Google Social Bar and Google’s Portable Contacts, you can turn your static website into a Google-sponsored, Google-branded social network. Where do I sign up?  

On the plus side, Google’s not determined to be a walled garden with your friend network. On the other hand, do we really have to give them access to everything?

Google Sheds More Staff

Google continues to make itself leaner and meaner as we trudge through this economic mess. In only the second large layoff in its history (the first coming back in January of this year when they let 100 recruiters go) the target this time is sales and marketing.

As reported by ClickZ about 200 Googlers from these areas will be let go. Most of this is coming from internal auditing that has shown some significant redundancy in positions and functions. SVP of Global Sales and Business Development Omid Kordestani wrote in a blog post today

“In some areas we’ve created overlapping organizations which not only duplicate effort but also complicate the decision-making process,” Kordestani said. “That makes our teams less effective and efficient than they should be. In addition, we over-invested in some areas in preparation for the growth trends we were experiencing at the time.” 

While many will want to say that Google is struggling it seems unlikely that it is actually the case. What they appear to be doing however is continuing to evolve as a company and mature in their approach to business. In addition to these cuts there have been products shed in recent months that also signify Google’s shorter fuse on making changes. Admittedly it sounds odd to hear the word layoff and Google used in the same breath.

Mr. Kordestani said it best though with the statement that “For companies in hyper-growth such as Google has experienced it’s almost impossible to get everything right”. That statement in and of itself is evidence of growth for Google. Just like the words layoff and Google seemed like an unlikely pairing so did the terms humility and Google. These days though it appears that no one will be immune to the change that this downturn has forced. 

Imagine what it must be like at a search engine that actually has problems. Can you help us out with some info on that if you work at Yahoo, Live Search or Ask.com?

“New” Findings on Mobile Web Living

The Pew Research Center has released a report that gives some form to what many of us already know throughexperience; mobile web use takes web users deeper into their digital existence. As noted over at MediaPost the study takes a stab at coining some new phrases to describe the various types of people using the mobile web as part of their lives including “digital collaborator”, “ambivalent networker” and “drifting surfer”. While creating names for groups of people can be fun that particular set of names isn’t very flattering aside from the collaboration concept. Let’s look a little closer.

First, I will approach this a little differently than the MediaPost article because when I was done reading it I was pretty disappointed. Here’s why. This great study that gives us the ‘latest and greatest’ updates on our mobile lifestyle was based on phone interviews that were conducted in December of 2007! Of the total 3,500 people contacted over 1,500 of those were part of following up on research that was conducted in early 2006. This detail was reserved for the last paragraph which took the shine off these “new” findings for sure. We live in an era where our economy can shed millions of jobs in just a few short months so I personally think that unless this was a typo we can assume this data is already very different.

Back to the findings. While still in the minority the percentage of people finding themselves more dependent on their mobile connection to the net (40%) is a pretty intense group. At the time the other 60% were tethered to their desktop access but not real ready to make the jump to a 24/7 mobile connection lifestyle. We’ll highlight the groups back in the day that were the largest percentages.

For mobile users
Digital Collaborators: (8% of the population) Very much about continual information exchange with others, as they frequently interact with others to create and share content or express themselves.
Ambivalent Networkers: (7%) Extremely active in using social networking sites and accessing digital resources “on the go,” yet aren’t always thrilled to be contacted by others.
Roving Nodes: (9%) Active managers of their social lives via basic applications–texting and emailing–to connect with others, pass along information, and improve personal productivity.

Stationary media users include:
Desktop Veterans: (13%) Tech-oriented, but in a “year 2004″ kind of way. They consume online information and connect with others through traditional means such as email on a high-speed home connection.
Tech Indifferent: (10%) Have limited online access at home, and while most have cell phones, they bristle at their intrusiveness.
Off the Network: (14%) Lack the tools for connecting digitally, with neither online access or cell phones.

So while interesting, this “new” study seems dated already. What is your view from a totally unscientific perspective on what percentage of the population OVERALL is more dependent on mobile web usage? How do you categorize yourself? Is your mobile web usage a dependency or a fun diversion? How long will it take for everyone to have a computer hanging off their ear when they leave their home in the morning? Oh yea, and what will it all mean to we Internet marketers?

Facebook Grays: Over-35 Users Double in 60 Days

Inside Facebook regularly examines user demographics on the world’s most popular social network. The graying of Facebook trend continues, they report, with women over 55 constituting the fastest-growing demographic, while the number of active users over the age of 35 nearly doubled in the last two months.

However, despite this growth, the largest single demographic on Facebook is still the 18-25 age bracket (where I fall for one more week. Sigh.), which constitutes 35% of Facebook’s overall membership.
However, this graph obviously shows positive skew: just over half of Facebook members are past the college years (at least, I hope you’re done with your undergrad by the time you’re 26).

The graph of growth over the last 6 months (by percentage), however, is skewed almost exactly opposite. (Of course, since this is shown as a percentage, it may not be all that surprising: it’s a lot easier for a group of 50 to see 400% growth than it is for a group of 500: the group of 50 needs 200 new members, versus 2000 for the group of 500.)
[PSA: I'm not implying that people over the age of 55 or even 35 are, in fact, "gray" or "gray-haired." Thank you.]

What trends have you seen in Facebook membership? Have you noticed any changes in the last six months? Will this affect how you see or use the social network, either as a member or as a marketer?

Google to Become One-Stop Video Ad Shop

Google began its foray into television advertising just under two years ago. Last May, they took the program out of beta. And now they’re taking their commercials to YouTube and a website near you!

The new Google TV Ads Online program is rumored to be in testing, according to the Wall Street Journal and CNET. The WSJ reports that:

Google’s director of television ads, Michael Steib, said in an interview that the company is working on technology that allows advertisers to buy ads across Google TV, which sells on-air commercials; YouTube; and video on other Web sites through the the same interface. Google is testing the service, called Google TV Ads Online, with a small group of advertisers, he said. People familiar with the matter say the service — which would leverage Google TV’s targeting technology — is likely to be introduced in the coming months.

Woohoo! Just we need here on MP: commercials!

We interrupt this wonderfully entertaining blog post for a message from our sponsors.

Okay, seriously now. Greg Sterling sees wide appeal for the program—but only for short-short spots (10 seconds). While the program would face technically challenges, Greg points out “conceptually this is the right approach and it should be desirable to marketers who want both reach and targeting.”

What do you think? Are you ready to get into video advertising online with Google?

Google: Too Big for Its Britches?

I think the moral of this story will end up being something about stones and glass houses. Apparently, Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently criticized the lack of transparency in the banking industry to the BBC. So what, you ask? Well, he concludes his point by saying “Things that are too big to fail, we want to know everything about them, so we don’t have to deal with this in the future.”

“Things that are too big to fail,” eh? I feel a flashback coming on.


You really want the government and the American public to know everything about businesses that are “too big to fail”? Really?

After the Yahoo deal was dragged out for months and finally killed over the DoJ’s scrutiny, after Google is pretty much one deal away from being sued as a monopoly and broken up, are you really advocating increased governmental involvement and oversight for large businesses? Really? 

When the BBC calls you a “captain of industry,” you’re really going to call out other companies for being “too big”? Really, Schmidt?!

Valleywag asks the biggest question here: “Is Google too big to fail?” And if so, what exactly is Schmidt proposing the government do? (VW jumps to say that Schmidt proposed breaking up banks, and Google might get the same treatment, but I just don’t see that in the BBC interview, which they have video of on VW.)

What do you think? Is Google too big to fail? Should they start cowering in fear of a summons daily? Or has the recent recession proved that, although Google’s big, they’re not the kind of business we need to fear?

Corporate Responsibility? Who Woulda Thunk?

AIG bonuses are paid with taxpayer money from government bailout funds. Much is “recovered” but the damage has been done for the image of big business. Questions are raised about Merrill Lynch bonuses and pay while the embattled investment giant crumbles before the world’s eyes. Needless to say big business and executive pay get a lot of attention these days.

Tired of the bad news? How about a little corporate restraint and responsibility for a change? While not in the investment business Google still deals with a lot of money. In fine American fashion you would expect that the rich simply get richer but at Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt aren’t like most corporate gluttons. As reported in the Courier Mail from Down Under, a proxy statement filed with the SEC shows the three are taking just $1 each per year as their compensation.

Sure these guys aren’t going broke for sure.

Mr Page owns about 29.2 million shares of Google stock while Brin holds 28.6 million shares, making them the firm’s biggest stock holders and giving the duo controlling interest, according to the filing.

Coming in a distant third is that pauper, Schmidt, with a meager 9.4 million shares. How’s a guy to create a legacy on this mere pittance? 

I realize that we don’t need to go overboard and make these gentlemen seem like saints but you have to hand it to them for not taking $1 million per year for their troubles and some spending cash. These guys may actually realize that their wealth is so astronomical compared to 99.999% of the rest of the planet and they probably can’t spend even a portion of their wealth in their lifetime. Do you suspect that they actually get that getting another several million per year won’t make any difference to them but could make a difference to the company and its employees? Wow, now that would be different.

Now for those of you that would like to check up on this, Mr. Schmidt was compensated about $720,000 last year but that related to some travel and security costs. His salary however was just $1. In this day and age where greed is at unprecedented levels and acting irresponsibly regarding money this is rule rather than the exception it’s kind of nice to see these kinds of things can still happen.

One last note, Google closed at $344 per share today. How will they make it?!

Browsers Under Attack More and More

There has been a lot of talk recently about browsers and the maneuvering that is occurring in that spacedue to new releases and expiring agreements and more. While most of us would like to just talk about social media and search marketing all day it’s hard to ignore problems when they are browser related because they can affect literally everything we do as Internet marketers.

So the latest security bug in Firefox as reported by PC World seems more urgent than most. We all understand that nothing is truly secure on the Internet but we also like to think that there are not glaring vulnerabilities in the tools we use on a daily basis. As the PC World article states:

The attack code, written by security researcher Guido Landi was published on several security sites Wednesday, sending Firefox developers scrambling to patch the issue. Until the flaw is patched, this code could be modified by attackers and used to sneak unauthorized software onto a Firefox user’s machine. 

Mozilla’s Director of Security Engineering is calling this a critical issue and a fix is scheduled to be rolled out with a version update at the start of next week. These developers are calling this fix and the release of this update a “high priority firedrill security update”. Not sure about you but that kind of language sounds a little creepy.

No operating system that runs Firefox is spared on this one either including Mac OS and Linux users. Essentially the bug allows someone to plant a “drive-by download” of software by tricking a user into viewing an XML file that starts the process. This was also a public release of the hack so it makes it even more uncommon.

The PC World article doesn’t wrap up with any words to make us feel any more secure though.

While the public release of browser attack code doesn’t happen all that often, security researchers don’t seem to have much trouble finding bugs in browser software. Last week, two hackers at the CanSecWest security conference dug up four separate bugs in the Firefox, IE and Safari browsers.

Maybe these things seem bigger in light of the bad economy because these types of concerns are every day events on the Internet. When times get bad, however, crime goes up historically and now there are more avenues for a new breed of criminal using technology to carry out their plans. Something tells me this may get a lot worse before it gets better.

China and That Freedom of Speech Thingy

Remember all the discussion of China and its approach to the Internet that was heard around the Beijing Olympics? It seems that a lot of that type of coverage has slid into the background until recently. Apparently once Google gets involved these items become news again.

At this moment China’s Internet users cannot view YouTube. The Chinese government claims that it had nothing to do with the outage but its timing with the airing of footage on YouTube of detained Tibetan protesters being beaten seems a bit more than a coincidence to the rest of the thinking world.

Google’s take on this is

Google spokesman Scott Rubin told InternetNews.com that it is still working to bring its video-sharing site back online and identify the cause of the outage.

The Internet News article goes into the specifics of this incident very well. Some highlights include:
According to the Global Network Initiative at least a dozen countries with less than pristine human rights records have blocked YouTube access since 2007
The Chinese government calls the videos fraudulent and does not say that the outage is due to government activity
The CTA (Central Tibetan Administration) is accused of a propaganda campaign that coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Tibetan national uprising

All of this interesting in the context of how most of us view the Internet. With Internet access comes the freedom to do and please with it however you want. I can watch videos and interviews that are anti US government all day long if I choose to waste my time doing that. How many more police brutality videos can you see as well. No one is stopping us from doing any of this. What’s China afraid of? Is it fearful that the rest of the world will discover their human rights violations? News alert – That cat’s been out of the bag for a long time.

So back to the Internet marketing part of this. It ties back to us ever being able to truly engage in Internet commerce with a country that will shut down access to whatever it is threatened by. Do we want to do business with them? Of course, for many the allure of a billion or so potential customers may override any human rights concerns. Many companies (US government included) still do business with countries that are blatantly in violation of human rights.

So does this even mean anything at all to the rest of the world? If Google and YouTube can’t work in China will Google just abandon their efforts there? Not likely. There are too many people there.

Why Facebook’s Conceding the Redesign Battle to Win the War

Ever since Facebook rolled out its new design, we’ve heard how millions of users hate the decision, but founder Mark Zuckerberg apparently didn’t care what they thought.

Now Facebook is responding to the vocal minority–yes a few million is a minority among 175 million total users–and will look at making changes to the new layout. I won’t go into all of the changes Facebook has agreed to make because that’s not what I won’t to focus on in this post. Instead, I’d love to hear your thoughts on my theory:

Did Facebook users win the war, or is the social network merely conceding territory it’s apathetic about in order to give the appearance that its users have a say in the company’s future?

Let me explain. In Radically Transparent we discuss the importance of ensuring your vocal detractors are brought inside. We explain that you don’t have to hand over the keys to your business, just let your detractors steer the car for a while and they’ll feel like they played a part in getting to the company’s destination. You might argue that it’s not very transparent, but your detractors don’t always have the better solution, they were just pissed that you made the changes without consulting them first.

I believe that’s what is happening here. Unlike Scoble or Arrington, I don’t believe Facebook has handed over control to “volvo” or “camel” designers. Instead, it appears that Facebook is extremely smart in the way it’s handling this. It’s rolled out massive changes–ones that it knows will help fill the bank account in the long run–waited to see just how much of a push-back it met, then agreed to some minor tweaks so that the complainers feel they’ve had their voices heard. They go back to being Facebook brandvangelists and Facebook get’s to push on.

What do you think? Am I talking out of my rear, or does this make sense to you?

Social Media Industry Report Proves Interesting

Michael Stelzner at the WhitePaperSource has produced a pretty in depth report on the social media marketing industry. The industry now has enough years on it that this research is becoming more valuable to help make sense of this fast growing and often unwieldy area of the marketing mix.

The report is based on interviews of over 900 social media users of varying degrees. The findings are interesting in some areas and not so surprising in others. Some highlights include:
The Top 10 social media questions that marketers want answered
Experience levels are low with 72% of the marketers questioned having just started or only being involved in social media for a few months
As a surprise to me, owners of 2- to 100-employee businesses were the most experienced (29.3% reporting doing social media marketing for years)
Another startling finding was people aged 60 to 69 were significantly more likely to be just getting started with social media marketing than other age groups. In all honesty, I can’t imagine my parents on Facebook or Twitter!
After only a few months and with as few as 6 hours a week, more than half of marketers have generated qualified leads with social media marketing
The top 4 social media tools were Twitter (81%), blogs (79%), LinkedIn (78%) and Facebook (77%) topping the list of the Top 10. Owners preferred LinkedIn.
The least understood outlet are social bookmarking sites

As it is with all research it is important to see how it measures up to your particular situation. These are interesting bits of data and can be convincing to the many new users that are currently just feeling their way around. It’s probably fair to say that almost everyone is feeling their way around social media though because the rules are being written and rewritten even as you read this.

Any advice for social media success?

Google Rolls Out Longer Snippets and New Search Refinements

In a move that will surprise few within the industry Google have announced two new features within the Google search results, first an expanded list of related searches and second the rollout of extended snippets—both of which could affect search behaviour quite significantly.

Firstly, Google have announced the deployment of a ‘new technology’ that better understands concepts and relationships associated with a query. This technology will allow Google to offer a greater number of related searches to users via the search results (found at the bottom/top of certain searches).

For example, if you search for [principles of physics], our algorithms understand that “angular momentum,” “special relativity,” “big bang” and “quantum mechanic” are related terms that could help you find what you need. Here’s an example (click on the images in the post to view them larger):

These improvements are not merely restricted to English-based searches, searches in other languages/countries will also incorporate the new technology moving forward. In total around 37 languages should be affected by the changes.

As well as the extended related search functionality, Google have also announced the rollout of the extended snippets. Extended snippets have been spotted fairly extensively in the past, and it is largely unsurprising that these have now passed the testing phase.

In searches of more than three words, the usual length snippet may not be enough for you to judge the result’s relevance. In these situations, Google will now look at extending the number of lines for the description to allow greater opportunity to see the result in context. This in my opinion will have two main effects.

1. The description tag becomes ‘less important’. Reading between the lines this would suggest that the snippet is likely to be taken from the body of the page, rather than the site description.
2. Site structure and content becomes key. Given that Google is using the main body for retrieving this context—allowing Google to find the content becomes more and more important. Providing the essential signals to Google thus is essential.
   
   The extended snippets do not appear on all results; however, there is certainly a far wider range of searches affected by the new improvements

It will be interesting to see how the new improvements affect search behaviour, particularly with reference to the extended snippets. Given the greater amount of SERP real estate taken up by the extended snippets, and the fact that many of these snippets are returned in context, I would suggest this could significantly affect organic vs paid clickthrough.

What effects do you foresee from these changes?

Yahoo CEO Appoints Fellow NetApps/Sun Alumna as CMO

Yahoo has announced the official appointment of Elisa Steele as Chief Marketing Officer, raising the question: Is Yahoo looking to run another company’s playbook?

Yahoo hadn’t seen fit to fill the CMO role since Cammie Dunaway left the company in 2007, and now not only has CEO Carol Bartz appointed one, but she’s appointed someone cut from the same cloth. You see, Steele was poached from NetApp–where Bartz serves on the BoD–and the CMO’s resume includes a stint at Sun Microsystems–where Bartz also previously worked.

What does this all mean for Yahoo? Either it’s coincidental and the company is simply hiring the best people for the job, or Bartz plans on running the same plays called by Sun and/or NetApp. The latter, is not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes you wonder why Bartz didn’t appoint someone that contrasted her own management experience.

Bartz certainly sounds convinced Steele can get the job done, saying, "The Yahoo! brand is one of our most valuable and strategic assets, and Elisa is charged with unlocking its potential globally. Elisa has an outstanding track record in leading global marketing, branding, and communications teams, and we’re excited to welcome her to Yahoo!’s executive staff."

And the CEO also appears to pre-empt any talk that the CMO position was resurrected simply to bring in an old friend. "Yahoo!’s marketing strategy and teams have become decentralized over time - hiring Elisa in the CMO role will quickly mobilize our plan to integrate the function globally and more effectively represent the Yahoo! brand," said Bartz in a statement.

Other questions to ponder. Will Bartz appoint a NetApp/Sun alumni to the vacant CFO position? Will NetApp kick Bartz from its board for swiping its top marketing exec?

Twitter Serves More “Ads”

So why the quotation marks around the word ads in the title? It’s like that age old question of if a tree fallsin the forest but there is no one there to hear it does it make a sound? This version however reads like, “If you place and “ad” on a website and nobody paid for it is it an “ad”?

In a continuation of the ExecTweets post of earlier TechCrunch reports that more and more third party apps are appearing as ads on the Twitter site. The only difference is that they did not need to pay to be there. In fact, Twitter is doing the courting.

Tweetie developer Loren Brichter says that he actually isn’t paying Twitter a cent to get featured on the site. Twitter came to him, explaining that it wants to promote projects like Tweetie which promote “variety, relevance, and value” (apparently a number of Twitter employees use the app).

Twitter is starting to show some business savvy and brilliance here. Rather than waiting too long to introduce exactly how they intend to make money to survive they are taking advantage of the new wave of Twitter users that are still relatively new to the service and maybe more willing to grow with it. There is less likely to be a hissy fit from someone who sees the service as useful regardless of a few ads vs. the longtime “purists” who will certainly decry the end of Twitter Nation as they know it.

By helping users get more use from the application through promotion of third party apps that further engrain the use of Twitter into the lives of its users, the folks at Twitter are in effect creating a very powerful ad network of sorts. You think the folks at Tweet Deck would be cool with rev share ad agreements to support their business? They don’t exist if Twitter ceases to exist so why not? Would Tweet Deck users revolt? This one wouldn’t but who knows.

It will come down to the people who adamantly oppose the commercialization of the Internet (which are fewer and fewer and are starting to look like elitists who don’t get that the world is bigger than just them) v. those who like the service regardless of ads or not. Actually it will come down to Twitter and its investors making smart business decisions that are about a service making money. Sure they look like Internet hippies right now because of their sharing attitude but do you think that investors are concerned about the Internet’s ethos or the Internet’s profit?

So where do you land? Ads or no ads? The end of Twitter or the start of a real company?

Twitter and Revenue Make a Tweet Sound

Well, Twitter is making more noise by getting Microsoft to spend money with them for a sponsored page called ExecTweets according to Peter Kafka at All Things Digital. Because I personally don’t get why this is even attractive I’ll just give you the verbatim from the post to describe it:

Microsoft (MSFT), via its Federated Media ad network/platform/agency, is sponsoring a page that collects Tweets from various executives. Twitter will get an undisclosed payment for giving the site its stamp of approval and for promoting the site on Twitter itself. Federated says it plans on launching similar programs on Twitter with other clients. 

Kafka explains that the little box on the Twitter home page that showed up lately was just as suspected. It will soon turn into an ad for this particular offering. Seems innocent enough. Of course, there will be Twitter purists who rail against the commercialization of the Twitterverse and the end of tweets as we know them. Probably a little overdone but everyone is entitled to an opinion.

What seems most curious is the fact that it is Microsoft that is putting the money into Twitter but as an advertiser. With Facebook they anted up for an ownership stake. Now they advertise with the service that has been making Facebook jump around a little as of late. Seems that Microsoft is in the “If you can’t beat’em, join’em’” phase of their Internet strategy. We could speculate all day long about what Microsoft is doing with their Internet strategy and come away with a Grade A migraine and little more for the effort.

There are a couple of good points that are raised by Kafka as well. One is the question of how many people will actually see the ads since most heavier Twitter users are using mobile applications or desktop apps like Tweet Deck to manage the information Twitter-storm that occurs 24/7. Personally my use of the Twitter.com site is for search related needs. If it wasn’t for the search.twitter.com/advanced page I may never actually need to go to my Twitter.com page. Come to think of it I still don’t since I go directly to the search page. Of course these ads will likely be on the search results page as well so I am sure I will get an eyeful.

The other point is that most people are just not going to be that excited about a page of tweets from executives. Most people like to poke fun at these people and call them twits rather than seek out what the latest thought on their mind is. As with all of these efforts to try something new, though, I reserve the right to be completely wrong because no one really knows what will and will not work in this brave new social media world. I have to say though that this one doesn’t really intrigue me. What about you?

So what’s your feeling about advertising and Twitter? Should the purists be more forgiving so that at least the service can make some money so it can stay around? Or should it just be there for the service of the Internet elite and not be soiled by that nasty capitalism thingy?

Funny Cartoon: The Twouble with Twitters

If you’re addicted to Twitter you’ll laugh at this video (and yourself).

If you’re not using Twitter you’ll laugh at how sad us Twitter users are!

Enjoy!

Facebook Can’t Do Anything Right—Or Can It?

The most popular social network in the world just can’t get a break. They try to be new and innovative (okay, or they’re trying to rip off Twitter), and users hate it. HATE it. And Facebook basically says, “Tough.”

But anyone who’s been on Facebook for a couple years has seen this all before: almost every redesign and tweak has been met with virulent “I HATE THE NEW FACEBOOK” groups and discussions. They hated the news feed and mini feed years ago, they hated Beacon, they hated last year’s redesign, and they hate this one, too. Let’s face it: people hate change. But so far, Facebook has stuck to its guns about half the time—and even when they’ve made changes, they’ve modified, but never fully rescinded anything (other than the TOS changes)—and FB continues to flourish through all the fracas.

So will Facebook yield this time, or do they really not care what their users (not “customers,” as Frank rightly points out) are saying? Robert Scoble opines that Facebook can’t care what its users think—they’ve got to start thinking about the businesses entering the social graph. According to Scoble, this is:

when Facebook is really going to find its business model. This is why Mark Zuckerberg is absolutely correct to say he can’t listen to people who wants Facebook to get stuck in Phase Four [without businesses]. It was a nice phase, yes, when Facebook only had people in the social graph, but those days are over.

Don’t get distracted by the current design that looks sort of like Twitter. Twitter showed that businesses can co-exist on the social graph along with people. Zuckerberg is smart. He saw that Twitter was going to make a crapload of money (that’s why he tried to buy Twitter) and instead of being depressed by being turned down by @ev he decided to phase shift Facebook. . . .

Anyway, all those who are saying the new design sucks should NOT be listened to. Yeah, I know a lot of people are going to get mad at me for saying that. After all, how can a blogger say to not listen to the masses? Easy: I’ve seen the advice the masses are giving and most of it isn’t very good for Facebook’s business interests. (emphasis added) 

Let’s face it: by and large, Facebook’s users aren’t its real customers—the businesses advertising and using Facebook are the “customers,” the ones who are paying FB’s bills. Yes, the users are vital to FB and its customers, but we users like to pretend that the actual customers are not only superfluous but ruining our private community (when really, they’re the only things keeping it running. Well, them and VCs.). Facebook has to cater to its real customers to stay alive.

So a lot of this outrage is probably going to pan out to be all talk. Scoble also points out that though his wife, an avid Facebooker, didn’t care for the redesign, her usage hasn’t lessened at all. People make a lot of noise about canceling accounts and leaving Facebook forever, but I think time will show that very few are so enraged as to make this move.

What do you think? Will this move end up being the death of Facebook, or will it mark its shift to a real business plan?

Big Media Publishers Want More from Google

In Advertising Age there is a reportof the rumblings of the media giants and their apparent slighting at the hands of Google. The attitude of the article, which comes from one of the standards of the traditional media industry, is certainly protective of its turf since it refers to Google’s “undifferentiated slush of results”.

Wow, way to stay unbiased right out of the gate. The gist of this story is that the big boys of big media are complaining that Google is not giving them their due. Of course, with advertising being in the crapper they now have decided that they need to get traffic somehow and their “Oh look! There’s a search engine over there that people seem to use! Maybe we should get involved!” attitude just further validates that they are way behind the curve with new media.

So how do these big players get in the game? They get a private audience with Google through the Google’s Publisher’s Advisory Council to air their grievances with the engine in an invitation only environment. One has to wonder that if you get this level of face time with the engine that you may have figured out something by now but I digress. Members include ESPN, BusinessWeek, New York Times, The Wall Street Journal etc. You get the picture.

They also hold meetings that are closed to the press and apparently complain to each other.

Then in January, Martin Nisenholtz, New York Times Co. senior VP-digital operations, got up at the annual Online Publishers Association summit in Florida, an event closed to the press, to blast both the algorithm and the results presentation on the screen. 

They complain that their brands are not given any special notice since every result looks the same. They are concerned that bloggers, which are affectionately referred to as parasites, get some kind of special treatment through their tactics. They say the results are not relevant as well with their news not getting the attention over Wikipedia entries etc. Admittedly, they may have a point there. Then they try to sound a bit more diplomatic as well.

Publishers said they’re not asking for a leg up over amateurs and link-happy bloggers. “This would in no way mean that only professional content publishers would get an advantage,” one said. “It really just says that the original source, and the source with real access, should somehow be recognized as the most important in the delivery of results.”

At the end of April they will reconvene with Google in hopes that Google will give them details of their plans to help. That should be an interesting meeting since details for any plans these days are hard to come by I suspect the publishers may walk away dissatisfied regardless of what Google says to them. 

While this is happening they are concentrating on creating some leverage with the engines by adopting the Automated Content Access Protocol whish will tell the engines what they can and cannot use in the SERP’s and protects copyrights. How restricting what the engines can use will endear them to the likes of Google is not real clear since the Internet and restrictions have never played well together in the past.

There are big publishers though who do not subscribe wholly to this thinking. To sum up:

Some publishers concede, however, they could help themselves more too. “Google has designed an algorithm,” one said. “They don’t owe us that we show up a particular way. They do publish a whole lot about how to make your site show up as much as possible. If people haven’t taken action on it, that’s their own damn fault.” 

Wow! How logical and reasonable of that one unnamed executive. Maybe he should get a bit of time in one of these conferences and inform everyone that there are ways to do this stuff that requires more than just an attitude. So all you SEO experts get on the phone today to big media. Maybe now they’ll listen.

Salesforce.com Adds Twitter Analytics to CRM Offering

I think we can all agree that collecting customer feedback is a good thing, right?

What we may not all agree on is whether we should go out and collect that feedback in the places where our customers hang-out, or if we should serve coffee and donuts and entice them to come to us.

There are pros and cons to each approach and if you like the idea of building a customer feedback “mousetrap” then SuggestionBox.com or GetSatisfaction.com are just two of the many providers willing to provide the blueprint.

If you’re more inclined to strap on your boots, grab your flashlight, and go looking for your client’s feedback then CRM provider SalesForce is happy to be your sherpa on the journey. Back in January, the company launched its Service Cloud offering and today it’s announced the addition of Twitter support.

We’ll let VentureBeat explain how it works:

Let’s say you’re a mobile phone manufacturer, for example. Within Salesforce, you’ll be able to search for any relevant “tweets” — for example, complaints about a broken phone — track any responses, and then use the company’s Twitter account to respond yourself. Of course, you can already do all of those things within Twitter, but this makes the process more convenient, and, more importantly, allows you to capture that information and respond, all within a single application, one that lets you perform similar tasks on Facebook and elsewhere.

SalesForce doesn’t come cheap and it would be overkill to get a license just for Service Cloud, especially when there are plenty of other social media monitoring options, but if you’re a Salesforce.com user then this video demo suggests it might be worth your consideration.

PS. Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang suggests Twitter should get in on the analytics game instead of leaving it up to companies like Salesforce.

Citysearch Reviews Itself and Upgrades

Local search is an interesting animal to say the least. There are seemingly a million different directories and resources to help bring search to the street level but it is so scattered that it frustrates more often than is helps. Citysearch has been around the scene virtually since the beginning of the commercial Internet. In fact, it’s hard to do a local search without seeing a Citysearch result come up.

In an article from Internet News the discussion is about some changes to Citysearch that have been asked for by its users for quite some time. These changes now incorporate social media and mobile opportunities to bring this Internet standard up to speed. CEO Jay Herrati says that these changes have been a long time coming.

In an interview with the New York Times, Herratti admitted the changes were overdue. “We got a little bit stale. Our consumers were telling us to get modern,” he told the Times. “We need to become the next-generation local guide.”

The biggest upgrade is the ability to for users to connect to their Facebook profiles using Facebook Connnect. This will enable users to write and share reviews with their Facebook friends. The weight of getting a review from a friend in “real time” will be even more powerful than one that is done from a source that is completely unknown to the searcher. Robert Scoble discusses how Facebook is really headed in the right direction despite the backlash of users regarding its redesign and he discusses the power of this “friend review” concept. Citysearch could take advantage of this connection more than most.

In addition to the Facebook connection the service is expanding from its current 150 local city guides to over 75,000 local communities and neighborhoods. This could get interesting. Most agree that local search is still relatively untapped because of the amount of work it requires to provide the details that local destinations have to offer. That amount of locations makes one wonder just how detailed the new locations will be.

With mobile search growing in popularity and people looking for more information in a “just in time” delivery mode maybe Citysearch will breathe new life into its offering that will put them on the edge of the next wave. Whatever the result these changes should at least take care of the request for the service to be more modern.

Zuckerberg and Customers: Oil Meets Water

Over at Gawker.com there is some insider dirt being dished regarding internal correspondence from Facebook that shows its founder Mark Zuckerberg in a pretty unflattering light. In between appearances on Oprah and redesigning Facebook he has been letting the employees know how he really feels about customers. 

Apparently he didn’t stick around Harvard long enough to learn that you use the term customers when someone pays for a service. Since accounts receivable is the smallest department at Facebook with little work to do, he may want to be a little more endearing to his users.

Now let’s make one thing perfectly clear here. The Valleywag report comes from a “tipster” so there needs to a degree of restraint as to the true factual nature. It looks as if they have placed an open invitation to any Facebook employee who is less than enamored with the latest direction of the company to send along the complete correspondence that allegedly addresses the subject of customers with the following:

“He said something like ‘the most disruptive companies don’t listen to their customers.’” Another tipster who has seen the email says Zuckerberg implied that companies were “stupid” for “listening to their customers.”

Is the term ‘disruptive’ some Silicon Valley code word for profitable? I don’t think so. I thought people stopped rewarding businesses that didn’t make money back at the turn of the century. Oh wait, we have the government to do that now so maybe Facebook can get a stimulus bump! How about AIG become their first advertiser? They’ve got our the money!

The whole thing with Facebook has reached near silly proportions. There are 175 million people who use it and many seem willing to pack up their Facebook pages over a redesign so it’s fair to say that most would never pay to be part of it. Would you? Users also are not too keen on seeing advertisers there. Maybe Zuckerberg is angry because his ‘customers’ actually do know something which is that if it’s free it’s cool and if it’s commercial it’s disposable. There’s that pesky revenue problem again. Maybe he just doesn’t care because he is convinced he is always right and will do whatever he wants regardless of what anyone says. Who knows?

Wow, if only he had stuck around for that great Harvard case study about pride going before the fall! The lesson here is: Stay in school kids!

Take this Twitter Survey So We Can All Understand Corporate Use

Paul Bennett is an honorary Pilgrim and his company is currently conducting a survey to learn more about how companies are using Twitter.

His hope is to collect enough data to put together a report on how brands can leverage Twitter, and share it with Marketing Pilgrim readers.

This is one of those deals where the more people that take the survey, the more value we’ll all get out of the results.

It’s Friday, so while you’re goofing off this afternoon, take 2 minutes to complete this quick survey. The deadline is March 31st, in case you don’t have time today.

Cheers!

SpiralFrog Croaks; a Warning to Other Ad-Supported Sites?

SpiralFrog, the music download service supported by ads, has finally croaked. The service publicly launched with a bang back in 2007 but needed $9 million in funding just to keep the lights on in 2008, and now CNET is reporting the web site is no more.

In SpiralFrog’s situation, the company couldn’t overcome “a macro-economic perfect storm” says a source close to the company. The sagging global economy, combined with “the collapse of the capital markets” and rapid compression of the ad markets,” led to the company’s demise, said the source.

Part of me feels vindicated that the freemium model isn’t the holy grail that everyone predicted. After all, if a service offers free music downloads–with the user only having to endure a few ads–and still can’t survive, what comfort does that give to other ad-supported consumer sites?

The other part of me is now concerned for related services, such as YouTube. It’s a well known fact that YouTube is hardly making buckets of money from its user-created videos and the demise of SpiralFrog doesn’t offer much in the way of comfort that the Google owned site can earn its keep from displaying ads alongside videos.

Of course, YouTube has the benefit of displaying ads from the world’s most sophisticated ad network, and SpiralFrog had more issues to contend with than just ad-revenue, but it does make you think about the future of businesses that rely on ad revenue to survive. It seems that we have those that charge for their offering–Amazon downloads, iTunes, etc–and those that are still burning through VC cash because they have yet to decide on a revenue model.

There’s not much in between. It’s hard to find a company that provides music or videos and is actually raking in the cash from their ad revenue. Know of any?

Is Social Networking Slowing Down the Generational Lines of Communication?

By Nick Stamoulis

Lately it seems like the social communication behavior and methods people use to interact are more like tangled-up power lines. Years ago there were traditionally only a small handful of ways to communicate; at work, phone, fax and face-to-face. For the last ten years or so many generations have been able to adopt email as a crucial form of communication, but now there are many newer social networking methods of communication between consumers, businesses, friends and families.

How many people do you know across different generations that actually have Facebook accounts? The numbers are staggering, but to a marketer and business owner it is crucial to understand that one size does not fit all. Even though these generations tend to actively use social networks such as Facebook or LinkedIn they are still VERY different overall in the way they communicate.

Let’s start by discussing the three vastly different generations, GEN Y, GEN X and Baby Boomers. All three have very different styles of communication they prefer. Baby boomers generally rely on face-to-face and phone communication. GEN X use email, cell phones and some instant messaging (IM), and GEN Y like to text and IM primarily. These three communication differences create serious ripples in the lines of communication for many businesses and social marketers alike.

The March 2009 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine has an excellent overview of this social generation communication broken down:

Many people complain that they just can’t keep up with the evolution of technology and how quickly things are moving. All three generations use all forms of social interaction and social online networking but the way the three interact on these sites is very different.

Many baby boomers will launch a Facebook page or Myspace profile but the way each use them is fundamentally different. Many GEN Y’ers will use the online social networks to conduct all their social interaction with other peers while a 55 year old baby boomer might launch a profile and visit it once every 6 months, often times not even having an uploaded photo in the profile.

Many new technologies are adopted by GEN Y’ers very quickly leaving many baby boomers scratching their heads trying to figure out just what is the best way to reach out to this generation that sometimes feels out of reach. One generation will reach out to someone through Facebook and the other with a phone. The rapid pace of social online marketing evolvement unfortunately leaves baby boomers in the dust sometimes.

Years ago, when the baby boomer generation was 25, technological advancements occurred at a snail’s pace. Today it is quite the opposite leaving it challenging for some generations to keep up with the rate of social networking communication growth.

About Nick Stamoulis

Nick Stamoulis is a search marketing veteran who is the President of Search Engine Marketing Firm, Brick Marketing and Publisher of the Search Engine Optimization Journal.

Growth Is Not an Issue for Twitter

Most of us would be happy in this economy for any growth that occurred between Feb of 2008 and Feb of 2009. 10 percent would be fine. 50% would be amazing. 100% growth gets you rock star status. So if you are Twitter and Nielsen gave you the news that your subscriber base grew 1,392% in that period you may need to change your shorts. Ok, so maybe that’s a little too graphic but that is a pretty ridiculous number even if you don’t make one red cent while doing it (had to throw that in there;-)).

From a report on cnet, here are the results of the Top 5 fastest growing, as Nielsen refers to them, ‘member community destinations’ for the February to February time period.

As with most data there may be questions raised. For instance a common number thrown around about how many Facebook users there are is 175 million but in the US it apparently is 65 million. You don’t see that number quite as often although it is still impressive. The members of the top 5 are quite a bit smaller than even Twitter and 2 of them are not even social media sites. That’s just minor stuff though.

One area I would like to see more detail on is the age ranges that Twitter has their greatest success. I was admittedly surprised at Twitter’s claim that the largest user group of Twitter is aged 34-49. That would appear to be at least an indication that the reason for Twitter’s success is business related. No evidence of that one just an educated guess.

The other element of growth that is making Twitter investors twiddy (that’s giddy in Twitter speak) is the use of mobile phones and devices to access the application. 735,000 unique visitors did so in January of this year. In addition, on just AT&T and Verizon alone there were 812,000 users accessing Twitter via text message. 

While some people have even said that Twitter has jumped the shark it appears that even if they did there are a lot people following them despite that prediction. What will happen over the next year is going to be interesting to watch when you consider that even the mighty Facebook has made recent changes that have tipped a hat to the Twitter model. Since imitation is the greatest form of flattery that should be enough to motivate Twitter to have another year of quadruple digit growth. Tweet that!

Microsoft, Viacom Still Holding Out

Some people just don’t know when to give up. It’s almost sad, really, watching them doggedly pursue something or someone past the point of all reason. And sometimes CEOs are just like that, y’know? Take Steve Ballmer or Philippe Dauman, for example. Months—years—after beginning one of those things that might have “seemed like a good idea at the time,” they’re still pushing that boulder up the hill.

Philippe Dauman, CEO of Viacom, faces such a Sisyphean task in his lawsuit against Google. First filed just over two years ago, the copyright suit against YouTube has continued to drag on—but Dauman isn’t giving up hope! Yes, never mind Google’s copyright detection software, or the fact that 57% of copyright takedown notices are bogus, or that YouTube is by far the most popular destination for professional and original video on the Internet (and thus a good place to own and place your content in the first place)—he wants his datgum content off YouTube.

Dauman reports to Business Week (as covered by All Things D) that the billion-dollar lawsuit is still in its discovery phase. (That’s the pretrial part where you collect evidence, in case you’re not familiar with it.)

Dauman assures us that there will be “a resolution.” In case you were wondering. (I guess he means this isn’t all just going to fade away like a bad dream.) Meanwhile, Dauman’s son really enjoys working for Google.

Steve Ballmer, if you haven’t guessed it already, is still holding out for a hero deal with Yahoo. Yes, looks like it’s time for the monthly update from Steve—can’t you just picture him phoning Bartz at home? She checks the caller ID, sees it’s him, lets it go to voice mail.

Ballmer takes a deep breath when the line connects, but sighs when he hears the now-familiar greeting. “Hi, this is Carol. Tell me why I shouldn’t fire you after the beep!”

“Hi Carol.” He rubs a sweaty palm against his jeans. “It’s me, Steve. Just . . . calling to let you know . . . if you ever wanted to do something . . . you know . . . I’m still up for it. kthxbai.” And Steve returns to execrating himself, this time for reverting into lolspeak on the phone. Think he can call back and erase that last message to try again?

Okay, so that’s not really what he would say. All Thing D (again) reports that he’s totally chill about the sitch (that’s “sitch,” short for “situation,” not a typo where I meant some other word):

Principles first: “Whether or not there’s a partnership to be had with Yahoo, we think our own innovation… it’s not about Yahoo’s technology. It’s really about getting the pooled volume, because you actually can improve your product faster if you have more users.” If you have more advertisers, you can improve the product as well. “There are returns to scale. And putting the scale together is valuable.

“With that as context, we’re largely on the same strategy, with or without a partnership with Yahoo.” I’ve talked with Carol briefly, over the phone. “I’m sure when it’s appropriate, we’ll have a chance to sit down and talk.” I’ve known her for years. She’s straightforward and friendly “and when she’s ready, we’ll have that type of discussion. Whether a deal gets done or not, who knows.” People at our two companies talk all the time. 

Like I said, totally chill. And he didn’t follow that with “So, um, Carol, if you’re out there, in case you lost my number, it’s . . .” (but don’t you think he wanted to?).

So, who’s getting more desperate—Viacom or Microsoft?

Can Facebook Kill Google?

So far this week, we’ve wondered if Google cares about social, after an analyst said that Google is ignoring social search because they’re jealous of social networks. But now they may have something new to fear from Facebook, the most popular social network worldwide: imminent death.

Or at least that’s what Henry Blodget says after a presentation by Ross Sandler of RBC. Although Facebook’s traffic to Google has more than doubled in the last year (19% of Google sessions come from FB, up from 9% last year), Facebook’s worldwide traffic is growing at an alarming rate—one that could surpass Google in another two to three years (in terms of unique visitors).

It’s the end of the world as we search marketers know it! It’s like when the hula hoop came out, everyone immediately stopped drinking Kool-Aid—and just look where the powdered soft drink industry is now!

(What? You can still buy Kool-Aid, Tang and generic products at every grocery store on the planet? Oh…)

I know it’s really easy to forget this sometimes, but Google and Facebook are two different things. For now, as Sandler rightly points out, they even complement one another. And even if Facebook becomes every single person on earth’s start page, somehow I don’t think that’s going to sound a death knell for Google. (Or is it really difficult to remember to type in “Google.com” in the address bar? Oh, wait, nm—I guess it is.)

As I’ve said more than once over the past couple weeks, we have to remember that social and search simply aren’t the same thing. They may have some big overlap: sometimes, yes, it’s better to rely on actual humans whose judgment you trust when you’re searching for something. But by and large, social and search serve two different purposes. I don’t expect Google to tell me what my 200 closest friends are doing right now, and I don’t expect Facebook to find me the time of sunset for March 13, 2010 in Chicago.

What do you think? Even assuming Facebook can sustain its growth, can Facebook “kill” Google?

Does Google Care About Social?

Pali Research analyst Richard Greenfield issued a report yesterday about the MySpace/Google ad deal concluding that “Google doesn’t care about social networking. But perhaps it should, since social-networking platforms are gradually making search less relevant,” according to AdWeek.

Sounds pretty harsh, no? It’s well-established that ads on social networks don’t perform as well as other types ads. We’ve always liked to think that it’s because social network users aren’t there for advertising or product info. Not so, says Greenfield: “Rather, . . . Google’s algorithm isn’t well-suited to social-networking sites — and that’s something Google isn’t necessarily concerned with.”

And there’s a good reason for that. And no, it has nothing to do with clicks from social networks being less valuable than clicks from elsewhere on the net. It’s jealousy:

The reason the company [Google] doesn’t care, said Greenfield, is that the basic functionality of social platforms like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter is “diminishing the importance of search.” He points to users’ growing inclination to search for specific information by tapping into friends’ and colleague’s knowledge through platforms like Twitter’s own search product, as well Facebook’s status update tool. 

Okay, let’s get this straight. So because people are using the Internet to talk to their friends and browse what their friends are doing right at this moment (in 140 characters or less in some cases), they don’t need Google anymore (How did he know I used to spend my free time Googling “What is Kim Habermann doing right now?”). 

Therefore, petulant toddler that it is, Google isn’t doing all it can to work on its one and only algorithm that serves search results and ad results to make it cater to these social networks.



Let’s look at this seriously now. Never mind the fact that Google has been saying for more than a year that they’re not doing social search because it “doesn’t show much promise.” Some searches on social networks aren’t going to win clicks. Some social search involves looking for product reviews from people you trust, finding old friends, making plans.

There are still going to be searches on social networks that do yield paid clicks for Google, but in general, even if you’re already on MySpace, why use their search product to conduct those searches? It’s not that hard to hop over from your social site to Google proper to type in your query.

So do searches on social networks simply not make as much money? Probably. And is it Google’s fault? Probably—if they hadn’t gone and created such a powerful brand, people would probably be content to use search anywhere for anything.

What do you think: does Google care about social? Should it?

Google Will Always Have a Target on It

News alert! According to ZDNet apparently Google has been less than perfect and it has drawn the ire of an online privacy group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). At the heart of this petition is the request to have the Federal Trade Commission open an investigation into Google’s cloud computing services which includes Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar etc etc.

Last month’s incident where some documents of Google Docs clients were made public is the focal point of this request. The most recent cited event prior to this in the request is January 2007. No typo there. 2007.
Some of the concern is directed at the language in the terms of service that Google claims that one can “rest assured that your documents, spreadsheets and presentations will remain private unless you publish them to the Web or invite collaborators and/or viewers.” 

This is really about cloud computing services which are gaining in popularity. Since more consumers and businesses are turning to this type of service I guess they need to be defenders of the users and the potential privacy breaches that can occur. This last Google ’event’ affected one half of one percent of Google Docs users. The company explained the event as occurring when collaborators shared multiple documents and were inadvertently given permission to see docs other than those shared.

OK. I am not a Google apologist by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, I would like to see some more competition in the marketplace. The fact of the matter is though that considering the ridiculous amount of data they handle they do a pretty good job. This petition couldn’t dredge up another issue in between now and January of 2007. Not exactly an epidemic of privacy violations in my opinion.

How many of us actually believe that there is true, infallible security on the Internet anyway? Of course, it is something to aspire to but even hosting companies that have gotten better over the years will only go to 99.999 or 99.9999 % uptime guarantees because stuff happens on the Internet. If you put your information with Google, which I do on many occasions, you want security and to some degree expect it but is it reasonable to expect perfection? If someone wants your stuff there is a decent chance they’ll get it one way or another. It’s a fact of the Internet space.

So my thought is why is there a need to take up a government agency’s time with something that is not even close to a regular occurrence? Why couldn’t the folks at EPIC just do some press releases around this and look to address it with Google directly? I don’t know the answer but I have to believe that there are more egregious issues for the FTC to tackle. Your take?

Nit Twit Juror Fuels Appeal with Tweets

Well you know you’ve hit the big time when your service is used by some crafty lawyer to file an appeal. Ok, so maybe it’s not hitting the big time but it is certainly evidence that not everyone on Twitter is a rocket scientist. Shocking I know but hey welcome to the new world order.

It happened in Arkansas as reported by Techdirt when a building company had a judgment against them for $12.6 million. That’s gonna leave a mark for sure. Unless of course one of your jurors tells his Tweeps the following:

“I just gave away TWELVE MILLION DOLLARS of somebody else’s money”

“oh and nobody buy Stoam. Its bad mojo and they’ll probably cease to Exist, now that their wallet is 12m lighter”

Who knows what this person’s intent was and with the law that is often not even important. How it is being presented by the lawyers that represent the building company is that this juror was predisposed to a verdict that would “impress his audience”. I have to think that the leap from reaching a verdict to a predisposition to a verdict for Twitter recognition is a big one but anything is possible.

Let’s not focus on just one event like this though. In Philadelphia, there are accusations that a juror’s Twitter habit broke rules about disclosing deliberations. In a different twist there have been instances where jurors are accessing information on their phones during a trial that led to a mistrial in Florida. This wasn’t some minor case either; it was a federal drug trial. 

So what’s the takeaway here? There are a million of them depending on your point of view. From where I sit though I have to say that if you can’t curb your desire to tell everyone about everything you are doing when it comes to a lawsuit you should probably have your social media membership card revoked. Even in a world where everyone knows everything about everyone else there are times that it’s not about us. We may think that what we are doing and thinking is important all the time but it’s not required that we tell everything all the time especially if other people are profoundly impacted by our narcissism. Think before you tweet!

Spring Is In the Air and Browsers Are Refreshed

In the past two days both Google and Microsoft have announced either changes or a new releases for their browser. Both are obviously touting improvements with speed being the main focus of Google and features being that of Microsoft.

As reported in PC Advisor, Google Chrome’s blog announces the latest beta of Chrome. Google had dropped the beta tag back in December but it is back as well as the beta channel that is designed for feedback. No indication why that happened but they are Google after all and they can do what they want. The greatest change according to Google is its increase in speed.

“The best thing about this new beta is speed - it’s 25 percent faster on our V8 benchmark and 35 percent faster on the Sunspider benchmark than the current stable channel version (of Chrome) and almost twice as fast compared to our original beta version,” said Brian Rakowski, Google product manager.

Google’s philosophy is to give users the changes as they go rather than save them up for a big release. Other features to look for are autofill, autoscroll and the ability to drag tabs for side by side views.

While Google’s blog gave its point of view, the new IE 8 from Microsoft, which will be available at noon today, was reviewed in the WSJ today by Walter S. Mossberg. From a 30,000 foot fly over point of view, the review was that the new features are fantastic but the trouble is speed. On that note he did not let the new IE 8 unseat Mozilla as his favorite browser for Windows but it appears as if the latest version of the most widely used browser has made strides to be better.

Some of these features can’t be matched out of the box by its main rival browsers. For instance, related tabs are color-coded, the search field can show images along with text, you can get instant fly-out maps of place names in Web pages, and you can easily hide your tracks online from the prying eyes of advertisers.

The review is very detailed and looks at improvements in search functions, privacy features and compatibility, which appears to be pretty strong for the most part which will help ease the nerves of designers and developers who wonder what the impact may be on existing sites.

In a kind of informal survey tell us what browser you currently use and if it isn’t one of these two would you be willing to switch for any reason? Also, which is a bigger event today; the release of IE8 or the start of the NCAA tournament?

Classic Battle for eBook Reader Market

While Amazon makes the big splash with Kindle 2 and fends off potential lawsuit regarding its technology, Sony has cut a deal with Google that is a classic.

As reported at cnet, in a partnership with Sony, Google will provide over 500,000 titles whose copyrights have expired which include literary classics like “Sense and Sensibility” and “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”. This move takes the number of titles to that the Sony offering has to 600,000 vs. the 250,000 for the Amazon offering. These include German, French, Spanish, Italian and other language translations as well.

Of course, if you don’t care about the classics then this is a moot point. In this economy though it’s hard to beat the fact that users will now be able to access the free book downloads through Sony’s eBook Store. I know these are all titles that were written prior to 1923 for the most part but a good book is a good book regardless of when it was written. Maybe studying the classics would be helpful to a nation that has spent more time looking over the past 80 plus years of economic activity more than ever before. Maybe looking back is a good way to move forward. I don’t know but for many it beats trekking to the library to get a beat up copy of these books that has been dog eared and written in over the past 20 years.

Google is taking advantage of all the work it has done with its Google book search project. While the books are free to the Sony Reader users there is little doubt that Sony ponied up a fair amount of cash for the opportunity although the details have not been disclosed.

I have not made the e Book switch yet and I am not sure I will. There are a lot of folks out there that really enjoy this option and apparently the big players are raising the stakes. Should be interesting to track.

Half of Corporate “Risk Managers” Ignore Reputation Risks

I don’t know about you, but if my job function included “risk management” I’d more than likely make sure that risks to the company’s reputation were taken into consideration–wouldn’t you?

Well, according to The Conference Board Reputation Risk Research Working Group and a survey of 148 risk management executives of major corporations, only 49% said that the management of reputation risk was highly integrated with their enterprise risk management (ERM) function.

Maybe the lack of concern is because the role of “reputation risk management” isn’t really something you want your typical risk management guy worrying about–let him worry about the liability insurance and employee identity-cards.

Instead, let the chief PR guy or head of marketing take responsibility for managing and monitoring the company’s reputation management because right now, only 34% of risk managers give a hoot about monitoring social media and a mere 10% actively participate. Can you imagine if your VP of communications informed you that he wasn’t too worried about social media?

The report isn’t all bad news. While risk managers may not quite “get it” they are at least making an effort to better understand reputation management with 81% saying they’ve increased their focus on reputation management over the past 3 years.

Which leads me to a question. Who do you think should be responsible for a company’s reputation management? A risk manager, marketing, PR, or all of the above?

Where You Link Could Cost you $7,000 a Day in Fines!

It’s been a little over 2 years since Australia announced it would move forward with plans to start censoring the internet. Now there’s a mini-uproar down-under because Australian regulators plan to impose AU$11,000-day-fines (about $7,200 US) to anyone that links to banned content.

While most of the banned sites are publishing illegal content new action by the Australian Communications and Media Authority has raised concerns that the regulator could add to the lists sites that it objects to, but are not actually illegal.

For example:

The Australian communications regulator says it will fine people who hyperlink to sites on its blacklist, which has been further expanded to include several pages on the anonymous whistleblower site Wikileaks.

Wikileaks was added to the blacklist for publishing a leaked document containing Denmark’s list of banned websites.

The blacklist includes 1370 sites but the government is pushing to expand that list to more than 10,000 sites.

There’s a lot of really nasty content online, but is imposing $7k-a-day fines really the way a modern western democracy wants to go? What if the US followed suit? Could it even happen in a country that prides itself of a citizen’s freedom of speech?

This kind of government censorship sends shivers down my spine, how about you?

Google Brings Woodside Stateside; Brittin Takes Over Britain

Just days after Tim Armstrong left his head of sales position to become AOL’s new CEO, Google is doing the executive shuffle.

Leaving his 3 year role as Vice President for the UK, Ireland and Benelux, Dennis Woodside will take over Armstrong’s role–though he won’t get the same "Senior VP and President" title.

Woodside will report to Omid Kordestani who gushes about Woodside in an internal memo:

In the five and a half years that Dennis has been at Google (that’s over half our company’s lifetime) he’s brought incredible integrity and entrepreneurialism to everything he’s done. I remember Dennis setting off from Mountain View in 2005, a year and a half after he joined, to start our direct sales operations in Eastern Europe, which he quickly transformed into a substantial part of our business. He also set up our Inside Sales Operations in Dublin - again building it from scratch. In September 2006, he became our Vice President for the UK, Ireland and Benelux where he’s helped to create a first class team as well as establish very positive relationships with our big partners on both the advertiser and agency side, including 02, Marks & Spencer, Amazon and Omnicom.

Why is it these internal memos always read as though the real audience were us media? Anyway, BusinessWeek has the full memo if you care to read it.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond, Matt Brittin will take over Woodside’s head of UK operations role. Which leaves me concerned for the people of Ireland and Benelux–just who will they be their dark overlord fearless leader?

Google Reveals 57% of DMCA Takedown Notices are Bogus

New Zealand could soon have its own version of the DMCA, something Google is trying to block.

In its filing to Kiwi regulators, Google reveals just how widely DMCA takedown notices are abused:

In its submission, Google notes that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one third (37%) of notices were not valid copyright claims.

Wow! I knew there were some crafty SEOs out there, but more than half of all DMCA takedown notices were an attempt to scuttle a rival company? Who knew?

Facebook Adds New Privacy Access Level: Everyone

I know why you joined Facebook: to share everything with everyone. Well, good news—this week, Facebook adds a new level of privacy access: everyone.

The new “Everyone” level is in addition to previous levels of “Only Friends,” “Friends of Friends” and “My Networks and Friends.” You still have the option to customize who can and can’t see your profile information, too, as well as selecting exactly what categories of profile information “Everyone” can see.

Facebook explains the benefits of this feature:

By changing your Profile setting to “Everyone”, anyone who finds you through a search on Facebook or sees a post or comment you make can now click on your content and view the elements of your profile you’ve opted to make open. While some special rules remain in place about who can see your profile if you are a minor, people generally won’t need to be friends with you or share a common network in order to view your content if you choose the new “Everyone” setting.

In the past, searching for friends you haven’t seen in a while or someone who has a common name may have been difficult. You may have only been able to see their search listing and a small thumbnail version of a photo, if that. With this change, people can use the “Everyone” option and make it easier for you to find and connect to all the people you know. 

I’m pretty sure you still have to be logged in to be able to see someone’s profile set to “Everyone,” and the public search results listing setting they already have will remain the same.

Almost a year ago, less than half of Facebook users were willing to share their profile with current or prospective employers, but we all know our bosses (or potential bosses) are checking us out online these days. Perhaps this level of access is a good place to create a “sanitized” version of your FB profile—one without access to your pictures or status updates, perhaps only with stuff you’d put on your résumé. Or is that what LinkedIn is for?

Will you be changing your info to give “Everyone” access? If so, what will you let “Everyone” see—and what will you keep hidden?

Robert Scoble’s New Job? Working for Me!

The news is out about Robert Scoble’s new job: he’s working for me!

Ahem, OK, so not exactly. But, the infamous tech journalist is taking a new job with the hosting company Rackspace and I am a long-time Rackspace client–hence he’s kinda working for me. ;-)

Scoble will head up a new effort called Building 43 which he explains "is not a place. It’s not even a website. It’s a decentralized community for people fanatical about the Internet. You’ll find us on Facebook, on Twitter, on friendfeed, on Ning, and lots of other places too."

At first glance, you wonder why a hosting company would make the foray into social media, but in a way it makes a lot of sense for Rackspace. The company hosts many prominent social media sites, is heavily invested in "cloud computing" and Scoble will likely do for Rackspace what he did for his previous employers Microsoft, PodTech and FastCompany–give them a face/voice in the tech community.

Expect Scoble to start appearing on the doorstep of many of Rackspace’s clients soon. If he turns up at the Marketing Pilgrim HQ, I’ll let you know. ;-)

Forrester Report Suggests Marketers Still Spend Peanuts on Social Media, But Increases Planned

Forrester Research just released a report that suggests the tough economy will be the catalyst for more spending on social media marketing.

The survey of 145 interactive marketing professionals snuggles-up nicely with cScape’s research published in December that suggested companies will focus more on customer engagement in 2009.

Highlights from the report authored by Jeremiah Owyang include:

* 53% of interactive marketers expect their budgets for social media marketing to increase as a response to the recession.
* Social media budgets remain miniscule compared to the rest of interactive marketing. Three-quarters of marketers say their social media spend is $100,000 or less over 12 months.
* Social media is not yet a marketing line item. 45-percent of marketers say their social budgets are determined as needed and 23-percent say they scrape together funds from wherever they can find them.

Only 25% of companies are spending more than $100k a year on social media and it’s not yet a line item? Reminds me a lot of search engine marketing circa 1999. If you spend peanuts on social media, you’ll get…peanut butter–not filet mignon–when it comes to seeing results. Something Owyang agrees with:

“If you continue to fund social applications only as experiments, you’re unlikely to be able to do enough to make an impact, or to have a secure source of funding for the future. One way to put these efforts on a firmer footing is to concentrate on objectives and measure progress… rather than just experimenting to see what happens.”