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Google Reader Asks Us to Play

Written on March 11, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

Google Reader Labs is adding a new way to view your feeds—Play. According to the blog announcement, this was conceived as a way to help introduce people to Google Reader—people who “aren’t interested in taking the time to get Reader set up” but are interested in using it. I hope both of you are happy .

But really this layout is primarily designed for people who want to view graphics or video—on autoplay, oh joy—and only a couple lines of any accompanying text. The white-on-black layout works well for showing off images, but not so well for that text.

Plus, to read a full article, you have to click on a “read more” link, which opens the full post within Google Reader Play—so still in the white-on-black layout that’s always so popular among people who read things online:

The layout includes many of the social features of Google Reader—the star, the Like button and the share button (the RSS button on its point). It also has a few settings: hide the thumbnail viewer, use magic layout (I only pushed that button when I had an all-text post up, though, so it didn’t do anything), view settings (All items, New items, Starred items, Liked items or Categories (to view top items in select categories)), or view the images in a post in a slideshow.

While it looks slick, I’m not sure this is going to make it any easier for people to overcome their initial aversions to the setup process—and if they want to, I don’t know, read blogs with Google Reader, they may not be a big fan of Play.

If you want to experiment with Play, you can log in to your Google Reader. View a folder and select View in Reader Play from the folder settings (above the items) or from the drop down:

I’ve tried just going to Google Reader Play, but after letting it load for ten minutes, somehow I doubt I’m going to get anything.

What do you think? Would you like to Play?

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Google Reader Asks Us to Play

Would You Like a Free Apple iPad With Your Trackur Account?

Written on March 11, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

As you know, a couple of weeks ago (my company) Trackur launched Trackur Free–a competely free version of the popular social media monitoring tool.

To celebrate Trackur Free’s success–and to get as many people protecting their reputation as possible–Trackur is now giving all users a chance to win a free Apple iPad!

Yep, you can get your hands on a free online reputation monitoring tool AND enter to win the hottest gadget around!

Want to enter? Head over to the Trackur site pronto!

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Would You Like a Free Apple iPad With Your Trackur Account?

Twitter’s Site Joins Location Craze and Burglars Celebrate!

Written on March 11, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

I know that what I am about to say is not original but it really struck me that as Twitter announces that it is offering location based information on its site there is so little reported about the potential issues this may create.

I think it struck me because the Twitter site is usually the last place where the cool ideas are implemented. Location based mobile apps for Twitter are nothing new and with the increasing popularity of foursquare and others this craze seems to have some serious legs. This is all the more evident if the Twitter site is climbing on board.

Mashable reports on Twitter’s efforts with the following picture and quote which pretty much tells the story.

It’s a simple integration: with any tweet that has a location attached to it (mostly via apps that support it, such as Foursquare and Tweetie), a small location icon will appear at the end of the byline of that tweet. Clicking on it will bring up a Google Map showing the location where that tweet was sent.

I am admittedly not a fan of this kind of service but that means nothing because a lot of people are. The people who I think may be most enamored with this trend are those people who want to know where someone IS NOT rather than where they are. You know those folks that like to come by your place when it’s empty or less protected because of your absence.? Those nice people who like to take your belongings? You know them as burglars, thieves, robbers, home invaders etc etc.

As I started to look into this a little more and back in February KTVU.com ran a story (video here and it’s pretty interesting) about a web site developed to make the point that maybe a little restraint may be a good thing in this quest to tell everyone when you are not at your home. The site is called Please Rob Me

As more people reveal their whereabouts on social networks, a new site has sprung up to remind you that letting everyone know where you are — and, by extension, where you’re not — could leave you vulnerable to those with less-than-friendly intentions. The site’s name says it all: Please Rob Me.

Launched last week, Please Rob Me is exceptionally straightforward. Pretty much all it does is show posts that appear on Twitter from a location-sharing service, Foursquare. Please Rob Me puts these posts into a long, chronological list it refers to as “Recent Empty Homes.”

Please Rob Me assembles its list by taking information that Twitter makes freely available so that many Web sites can show tweets. But the point of Please Rob Me could be made with data that flows on dozens of other sites as well.

I’m not trying to rain on anyone’s “Hey, look where I am now!” parade. If someone wants to do this kind of thing, that’s fine. As of today, we live in a free country. But when a law professor from UC Hastings, Robin Feldman, finishes her explanation as to why a site like Please Rob me will not likely be considered an accessory to any crimes by saying

The victims to an extent are fools. They are publishing their information and they should be thinking about it.

I just had to wonder. What are your thoughts on this one? Is telling everyone where you are at all times always a good thing?

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Twitter’s Site Joins Location Craze and Burglars Celebrate!

Companies Spend More on Email Than PPC; 39% Have No Clue of ROI

Written on March 11, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

Wouldn’t it make sense that if you spent more money on email marketing than pay-per-click marketing, you’d have a reasonable explanation for that choice?

Well, according to the data discovered in Econsultancy’s 2010 Email Marketing Census, companies are spending more on email marketing (17% of online budgets) than PPC (16%) despite not fully understanding the return on investment (ROI) achieved or taking advantage of one of the most important benefits of email marketing: segmentation.

When you run PPC campaign, you attempt to segment your target audience by using different ad creative and targeted landing pages. You wouldn’t bring a “window shopper” to a landing page that displayed only one product, would you? So it’s a shock that many companies are still not using segmentation to target their email campaigns and deliver messages, or offers, that are tailored to their customers’ known interests and buying habits. Think about that. When you email your existing customers, you already know at least a little about their buying preferences, so why would you not segment them so that they receive tailored email messages?

With this lack of fine-tuning of their email marketing efforts, it is no wonder that 39% of companies quizzed have no idea what their ROI is from email marketing. Almost forty per cent of those that are spending more on email marketing than search, have no idea why they do so! That is astounding – but even more astounding is that 33% of agencies who manage their clients email marketing campaigns have no clue either!

Companies have become complacent with their email marketing campaigns. They’ve put them on “auto-pilot” and have focused too much on fine-tuning their search and social media efforts that they’ve neglected a channel that can create new sales and keep existing customers happy.

Let 2010 be the year that we realise there’s so much more we can do to improve our ROI from email marketing.

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Companies Spend More on Email Than PPC; 39% Have No Clue of ROI

Google Hangs Out a Shingle for Its Apps Marketplace

Written on March 11, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Advertising, book, marketing

Google does what Google does and it has now opened the doors on an apps marketplace that is designed for Google Apps customers. Don’t think the overlap in terminology with the other app guys is coincidence either. The difference with this form of app though is the fundamental difference that separates Google from Apple. Google provides apps that are fundamental business needs and this strategy is where the search giant appears to be hanging its hat moving forward relating to search, advertising and more.

Yesterday the Official Google blog reported:

Every day, thousands of businesses choose the cloud. More than 2 million businesses have adopted Google Apps over the last three years, eliminating the hassles associated with purchasing, installing and maintaining hardware and software themselves.

We’ve found that when businesses begin to experience the benefits of cloud computing, they want more. We’re often asked when we’ll offer a wider variety of business applications — from accounting and project management to travel planning and human resources management. But we certainly can’t and won’t do it all, and there are hundreds of business applications for which we have no particular expertise.

First of all, having 2 million businesses using Google Apps is pretty impressive. While most are the SMB’s of the world, Google has shown the world the ability to penetrate enterprise accounts as well. Of course, this hits at another of the biggest competitors against the Goog: Microsoft.

Some apps that are part of the roll out are Intuit Online payroll, Manymoon project management, PS Connect and JIRA Studio for development to manage flow between various apps.

Watching this strategy unfold is pretty interesting. There is an awful lot riding on it and it would appear that Google has more of the pieces under their roof than any other competitor does. How this plays out should be fascinating. One of the final paragraphs of the post tells the real story:

For more information on the benefits of the Google Apps Marketplace to businesses, check out our Enterprise Blog post. Developers interested in learning how to integrate with Google Apps can check out our post on the Google Code Blog. Or, you can explore the Google Apps Marketplace directly at http://google.com/appsmarketplace.

Notice the order of how these are written. What it seems to be saying is that Google wants the enterprise and is daring everyone else to find a way to stop them.

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Google Hangs Out a Shingle for Its Apps Marketplace

AOL Has a Boo-Boo on Its Bebo

Written on March 11, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

“You would have to be stupid. You would have to trip to not succeed at this at some point.”

Those words may come back to haunt the former Bebo chief Joanna Shields, now that rumors are circulating that the social network is about to be dropped like a hot potato.

Back when AOL bought Bebo for $850 million, I was already speculating that the social network had slipped from its valuation high of $1.5 billion. Now it appears that the social network has lost users–down from 22 million a month to 14.6 million–and with it, it’s value to AOL.

What’s interesting is the predicament facing AOL. Due to some complex tax laws, it may actually make better financial sense for AOL to just shut Bebo down.

[Rules] let Aol write off the full purchase price of Bebo if they declare it worthless and abandon the asset. With Aol’s effective tax rate of around 45%, that’s $380 million and change in their pocket in taxes that they’d be able to avoid.

Selling Bebo would only help AOL if it had long-term capital gains it could apply any loss against–which it doesn’t appear to have.

Crazy huh? You buy something for $850 million, but can’t even hold a fire sale. It’s actually better to just set it on fire and let it burn!

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AOL Has a Boo-Boo on Its Bebo

Business Searchers Are Looking For….

Written on March 10, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: Object, book, marketing

Business buyers use search engines throughout the entire research and buying process. For this reason, most B2B marketers utilize search marketing as a cost-effective
way to build brand awareness, engage prospects, and generate leads. In terms of lead gen, a potential buyer is typically required to complete an online
registration form in exchange for… what?
The value vs. [...]



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Business Searchers Are Looking For….

Eye-tracking Proves Real-Time Search Not Useful

Written on March 10, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: book, marketing

OneUpWeb recently released the results of an eye-tracking study on Google’s new real-time results integrated into SERPs—and it looks like the search giant might have just wasted $15M (the estimated cost of Google’s deal with Twitter).

The study segmented web users into two groups: consumers and information foragers. It took consumers 7.09 seconds to look at the real-time results, even though they’re listed just below the news results and before the organic results. In fact, they scrolled below the fold to view the image results before they fixated on the real-time area, the eleventh area they focused on.

Information foragers took slightly longer to turn to the real-time results: 7.39 seconds. It was the thirteen area their eyes focused on—but the first 12 areas were all just above the real-time results in the news results. (The search task here was to research a selected current news item using the search engine of choice—for 89% of all participants, that was Google.) (Side note: I’m not sure why the times in the above graph are so much higher than the numbers OneUpWeb also provided that I used in these paragraphs.)

The second search task was segmented by group—the consumers were to look for a product they were considering to buy for themselves or for someone else as a gift. Information foragers were to again look for information on a current news topic. Interestingly, in this second set, consumers were five seconds faster than information foragers to focus on real-time results.

Meanwhile, 20% of consumers and 30% of information foragers actually clicked on real-time results, as opposed to 69% of consumers and 60% of information foragers that clicked on the top 5 results excluding real-time.

I’ve long argued that real-time results will only be helpful for a very small, select set of data—and for that set, most people would know to go to Twitter or Facebook in the first place anyway. I’m not the only one. The Guardian’s Charles Arthur points to several others who feel the same way, most notably Nick Carr, who sardonically chronicles the efforts to organize the web’s information around 140-character ephemera.

And yet Google insists that this information is useful and must be foisted upon the user. Aruther quotes Marissa Mayer last summer:

We think the real-time search is incredibly important, and the real-time data that’s coming online can be super-useful in terms of finding out whether – something like, is this conference today any good? Is it warmer in San Francisco than it is in Silicon Valley? You can actually look at tweets and see those types of patterns emerge, so there’s a lot of useful information about real-time interactions that we think ultimately will really affect search.

Apparently users don’t quite agree yet.

What do you think? Are real-time results useful?

Originally posted here:
Eye-tracking Proves Real-Time Search Not Useful

Google: Developments in China Coming “Soon”

Written on March 10, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

Last week, Chinese officials reported that Google was in talks about their threats to leave the country (or only partially) if they’re forced to continue censoring search results. Also, Chinese officials reported that Google was not in talks with the government.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt declined to comment on the state of negotiations a conference in the United Arab Emirates today. However, he did say that “we’re in active negotiations with the Chinese government, and there is no specific timetable,” although he promised “Something will happen soon.”

Google announced a hacking attempt targeted at the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists in January. They suspected that the attack may have originated in the Chinese government on some level, and announced they would no longer agree to censor search results. However, nothing has changed—yet.

Soon after Google’s statement, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton commented on the matter, urging China to review the breach as well. This prompted suspicion that Google’s withdrawal threats were directed by the US government. Schmidt denied that today:

“The Google action was not in any way advanced or coordinated with the U.S. government except post-facto,” he said in response to questions. “Google’s discussions are with the Chinese government, and they do not involve the U.S. government. The U.S. government’s doing its thing unrelated to Google.”

Schmidt’s statement is pretty open-ended: “something” and “soon.” What kind of timeline do you think we’re looking at—and what do you think the end result will be?

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Google: Developments in China Coming “Soon”

Bing Takes Baby Steps Towards Catching Google

Written on March 10, 2010 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

A journey of a thousand miles, begins with a single step.

If you’re going through hell, keep going.

It’s always the darkest before the dawn.

Whatever the cliché being thrown around in Redmond, it must be working, because Bing’s US search share continues to nudge ever upwards.

According to comScore’s data, Bing climbed from 11.3% to 11.5%, likely stealing that share from the “we’ve given up on search” Yahoo, which dropped from 17% to 16.8%.

The only kink in Microsoft’s plan to catch Google? Google’s share increased too–up from 65.4% to 65.5%.

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Bing Takes Baby Steps Towards Catching Google