How would you like to launch a social network and instantly amass more than 150 million monthly users?

Well, Google just launched Google Buzz and it’s going to be tied into its existing Gmail user base–all 150+ million of them!

How smart is that?

Google has failed to gain traction with any of its previous social networking efforts. How many of you are active Orkut or Google Wave users? So, instead of trying to build a new social network from scratch–and likely failing–it’s tying Google Buzz directly into its email offering.

Genius!

It’s built right into Gmail, so you don’t have to peck out an entirely new set of friends from scratch — it just works. If you think about it, there’s always been a big social network underlying Gmail. Buzz brings this network to the surface by automatically setting you up to follow the people you email and chat with the most. We focused on building an easy-to-use sharing experience that richly integrates photos, videos and links, and makes it easy to share publicly or privately (so you don’t have to use different tools to share with different audiences). Plus, Buzz integrates tightly with your existing Gmail inbox, so you’re sure to see the stuff that matters most as it happens in real time.

I added the bolding for two reasons. One to show you the features Buzz brings to Gmail, but the other is to point out the Jedi mind-trick that Google is pulling on you. You see, you thought your inbox was all about sending emails. Nah ah, apparently you’ve been sitting on a vast social network and–whether you like it or not–Google’s about to tap into that network.

Even more clever on Google’s part, is that it’s not reinventing the wheel. In fact, it wants you to bring all of your existing wheels to Google Buzz.

We’ve relied on other services’ openness in order to build Buzz (you can connect Flickr and Twitter from Buzz in Gmail), and Buzz itself is not designed to be a closed system. Our goal is to make Buzz a fully open and distributed platform for conversations. We’re building on a suite of open protocols to create a complete read/write developer API, and we invite developers to join us on Google Code to see what is available today and to learn more about how to participate.

Does this sound like any popular service you know that was recently acquired? *cough* Friendfeed! *cough*

Of course, like any new Google product, you’re going to have to wait for Buzz to rollout to your Gmail account. Fortunately, unlike the Google Wave invite fiasco, you should see Buzz automatically appear in your Gmail account over the next few days.

Speaking of Google Wave, is that now dead in the water? I mean, did anyone really ever figure out how to use the thing anyway?

It seems to me that Google Buzz is exactly what Google Wave should have been in the first place!

Check out the video below, then share your thoughts in the comments!

Generating buzz—getting people talking about our products or even advertising on their own—is the goal of many ad campaigns today, even television commercials. (Case in point: the Super Bowl.) Online, buzz seems to be the Holy Grail: going viral, getting evangelists, having people talking/Tweeting/friending/following you. But assigning a value to that can be hard. We’re driven to assign an ROI to social media, but we’re having a hard enough time even monitoring success.

General Sentiment, a sentiment analysis company, has come to the rescue. Using media prices, they’re looking to answer the question “How much would it have cost to attract the same media exposure through traditional advertising?” And they’re putting a $ sign in front of it.

Starting with the Top-100 Global Brands from the 2009 Interbrand Report, General Sentiment looked at the buzz those companies were getting on news media, social media and Twitter (why they’re separated from social media, I don’t know, but it’s cool to look at their results on their own). They calculated how much these companies would have had to spend on traditional advertising to attract the same level of attention. General Sentiment published the top 20 in their Q4 Media Value Report

The trends are (I believe) based on the change from the Q3 Media Value Report.

What do you think? Any brands you’re surprised to see in the list? How accurate do you think the values are?

Ask’s parent company IAC posted $1B in losses largely because it wrote down the value of its search business. But, says the AP, this is actually good news for the online ad market (and not because a competitor is about to get out of the market)—because IAC didn’t do as badly as expected.

No, because it beat estimates by 2¢ per share, a nine-figure loss “offered the latest indication that the online advertising market is improving,” as the AP says. IAC investors seemed to agree, since it the stock jumped four percent after the results were posted.

In the most recent quarter IAC took a $991.9 million impairment charge to account for decreased projections for revenue and profit growth at IAC’s search properties, which include such Web sites as Ask.com and Dictionary.com.

However, there was some true good news in the report as well. Their search business (Ask, Citysearch, etc.) saw increased revenue (up 3%)—the first increase all year. And overall revenue was up, too—an increase of 5% to $367.2 million, beating analyst projections by 8%.

What do you think? Is this good news for the industry bad news for IAC, or good/bad news all around?

If fear, scandal, sex, and humor sell newspapers, it stands to reason that those topics would make for the most popular articles on news sites and blogs. Right?

Wrong!

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have intensively studied the New York Times list of most-e-mailed articles and discovered that it was an entirely unexpected emotion that caused the average reader to share an article.

“Emotion in general leads to transmission, and awe is quite a strong emotion,” [Dr. Berger] said. “If I’ve just read this story that changes the way I understand the world and myself, I want to talk to others about what it means. I want to proselytize and share the feeling of awe. If you read the article and feel the same emotion, it will bring us closer together.”

Apparently science-themed articles were among the most popular, with RNA, deer optics, paleontology and cosmology, among those most emailed.

Now, while the study appears to be very well constructed, there’s just one major flaw that I see here:

These were New York Times readers!

While we have many wonderful NYT readers that visit Marketing Pilgrim each day, I’d say that our general demographic is not quite the same. That said, you may want to consider how closely you mimic the NYT’s writing style. Here’s what worked for them:

More emotional stories were more likely to be e-mailed, the researchers found, and positive articles were shared more than negative ones. Longer articles generally did better than shorter articles, although Dr. Berger said that might just be because the longer articles were about more engaging topics.

For me, I think I’ll stick to scaremongering, controversial studies, and wild rumors!

UPDATE: Google Buzz is now live!

The buzz around the Internet marketing and social media circles is humming with the news (or the rumor, call it what you want) that Google is getting set to introduce a new feature to Gmail. No, it has nothing to do with your e-mail but rather your ‘experience’ with Gmail and in particular your social experience. Looks like Google is getting into the social game.  This comes on the heels of the talk of Facebook getting into the e-mail game as well. What’s going on? It’s like opposite day with Google going social and Facebook getting all e-mail on us.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Google Inc. is taking a swipe at Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. with a new feature that makes it easier for users of Gmail to view media and status updates shared online by their friends.

Google could announce the new Gmail feature as soon as this week, said people familiar with the matter. A Google spokeswoman declined to comment.

The change adds a module to the Gmail screen that will display a stream of updates from individuals a user chooses to connect with, said one of these people. It is a format popularized by Facebook and Twitter.

The whole idea is an interesting bit of news but is it something that people will use? I know for me that I really like going to my Gmail because it’s just that and nothing more. I can go to Facebook or Twitter when I feel the urge. Just like I have no interest in a Facebook e-mail account I can’t say that this Gmail as social tool approach is lighting any fires for me.

I am sure the industry will fight and squabble over these matters and forget that they are really yelling and screaming at a small cross-section of the real world. Whenever these announcements are made I immediately think about all of my friends who are using some of these tools but are not nearly as vested in them (yes I do talk to people who aren’t enamored with every little shiny social media object that gets tossed in the ring). Will the bulk of Gmail users welcome this? I don’t know. If they are already using Facebook and are happy what is so compelling to make a switch?

The Journal gives a little more information

The new stream will eventually include content that a user’s connections share through Google’s YouTube video site and Picasa photo service, according to one person familiar with the matter. But whether those features will be announced in the coming days remains unclear.

OK. I get “it” but I also see that “it” is possibly becoming too much. Normal human beings who do not live and breath social media and who find other social interactions just as meaningful may not be impressed. Maybe I am being too simplistic but I see Google as the practical, stable older brother who is a business guy and Facebook and Twitter as the crazy younger siblings who can’t hold a job but are “fun”. That’s fine with me. Google to me is about business and practicality. Facebook and Twitter not so much. I like it that way but that’s just me.

Is it possible that the large numbers of users of all social media that we talk about are actually more casual than we think they are? Do they need to be connected with everyone, everywhere at all times? Your thoughts?

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Everyone in the world of marketing whether you are online or offline (or hopefully the right combination of the two) wants to better define social media and its uses. Different sectors or verticals see how the various social media tools impact their particular type of business and no two seem to act alike. Much of that has to do with having too little real data to draw firm conclusions from and the learning curve that is occurring on the customer side of this equation.

One sector that is well suited for the social media game is the retail industry. If you are a retail outlet of any kind, high end or low end or all stops in between, social media has proven its worth more quickly than say the B to B space. A study released by ForeSee Results helps to show this and it also shows that the social media outlet, or tool, that is showing the greatest promise is Facebook. This study is taken from the customers’ point of view and was performed by the retail arm of ForeSee’s practice.

As part of a study of nearly 10,000 visitors to the biggest e-retail websites in the United States, ForeSee Results wanted to use the methodology of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) to examine these issues, because the ACSI is able to show how different elements of a shopper’s interactions with a company (including on social media) impact their purchase intent, loyalty, and recommendations.

What we found is validation that social media is a viable marketing strategy when we understand what our customers want and know which social media platforms they frequent.

While that last statement in and of itself doesn’t state anything new some of the actual findings are of interest.

• 56% of shoppers to top e-retail websites who interact with social media websites have elected to “friend” or “follow” or “subscribe” to a retailer on a social networking site like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
• Facebook is, by far, the best place to reach shoppers—both because it’s where they already are, and it’s where they want to hear from retailers.
• Customers mainly interact with retailers on social media sites to learn about products and promotions—a marketer’s dream come true.

It’s the last point that needs to be focused on and has been noted here in the past as well. While we like to talk about brands and how people interact with brands and associate themselves with brands let’s face it: people want a deal. The type of brand loyalty that is desired and discussed is a lot more theory than reality. It makes for good blog posts but the main reason why people use social media is because they want something from the brands they follow: discounts. Not very sexy is it but it’s the truth.

What is the main reason you interact with this company through social media sites? (% of respondents)

Learn about sales / special offers 49%

Learn about products 45%

Get customer support 5%

Other reason (please specify): 1%

The study also told us that 81% of shoppers you are users of social media use Facebook regularly while only 16% of that same group said the same for Twitter. For those who are online shoppers but not regular users of social media still 56% of those people use Facebook and only 11% use Twitter. And as you can see, at least as far as retail is concerned Twitter has some work to do and the whole customer support thing hasn’t caught on yet.

So Facebook is the place to be but it appears that full adoption of this practice is not quite there. One quarter of the top online retailers had no Facebook presence while another quarter had less than 10,000 fans. It feels like the same conversation that has occurred for years with the Fortune 500 and blogging. Everyone likes to talk a great game but the execution is often lacking.

So what’s the takeaway here? People who are fans of brands historically are the most likely to be friends or followers in the social media space. What do they want? They want a deal. They want to be treated separately from the rest of the retail customer base of a brand because they are a ‘fan’ of the brand. So while putting together really cool ‘user experience’ type pages and sites might have a WOW factor, the one social media practice that falls to the bottom line is as old as the retail game itself: customers respond to deals.

Let us know if your experience validates or contradicts this study. Let us know if you agree or disagree. Just let us know. Oh and by the way make sure to visit the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook page and be our ‘friend’. Maybe we’ll discount something someday (usually it’s my opinion that is discounted but I’m working on that).

Since its unveiling last month, the iPad has been labeled a Kindle killer. The parallels are obvious—the largest (and newest) Kindle has the same size screen, both have Internet connectivity, and both can be used to read books. But that just about sums up the Kindle’s selling points, and the iPad’s features list continues on out the door. So could a full-color touchscreen tablet computer and a B&W eReader really be considered the competitors the media continue to make them out to be?

Heck yes, if Amazon has anything to say about it. Last week, Amazon acquired touchscreen maker TouchCo. The small startup had developed a new way to add touch screen technology. (Kindle direct competitor the Sony eReader already has a touchscreen version, which outsells its cheaper alternative.)

Meanwhile, the technology for adding color to the E Ink device has long been in the works. The exactly-like-paper interface has long been the biggest selling point of eReaders, but despite the development of a color version by E Ink four years ago, nearly all E Ink displays are in black and white. The acquisition of creator E Ink by PVI last year seemed to pave the way for a color Kindle by the end of this year.

But does Kindle really care? They’ve released an app for the iPhone, enabling the Kindle’s parent company, Amazon, to continue to benefit from other devices. If users are willing to put up with the eyestrain from reading hundreds of thousands of words on an LCD screen, Amazon is willing to take their money on ebooks. (We can debate over how much Amazon makes or loses per ebook right now—their ultimate goal could just be to make us all dependent on them for all our ebook needs.)

Then again, maybe they do. The New York Times takes a look at job listings for Amazon’s Lab 126, developer of the Kindle:

One job opening in particular, for a Hardware Display Manager, tells the applicant that “you will know the LCD business and key players in the market.” The key point here is the word “LCD,” which means the Kindle is possibly exploring color (unless they are hiring an LCD manager to simply gain an understanding of the color-display market).

Other job openings include Wi-Fi specialists (the current Kindle has only a 3G wireless connection), and openings for someone to “lead the software development teams that develop and maintain the applications.” The applications division could signal a move to create more apps for the Kindle, or someone who will manage the latest app store developments after Amazon announced a new software development kit was released last month to independent programmers.

What do you think? Is Amazon gearing up to pit the Kindle against the iPad—and will it be enough?

Edelman’s annual Trust Barometer survey shows that traditional media is trending downward among “informed publics aged 25-64 in 20 countries”—and so is their trust in “a person like yourself” (although much less dramatically).

The executive summary shows traditional media trust is diving, with TV news down 20%, radio news down 17% and print news down 12%. However, digital media isn’t exactly making up the gap—radio and TV news coverage still slightly beat out online search engines (38%, 36% and 35%, respectively), and newspaper articles close behind (34%). Corporate communications (press releases, I guess) were also in the same tier—significantly ahead of social networking sites (19%), which only barely edged out product advertising (17%).

I have to wonder if it’s the signal to noise ratio or the sources of search engines’ information. After all, it seems like search engines will mostly send users to corporate websites—or blogs ranting about how terrible (or great) said company is. And neither of those seem totally credible.

Most trusted for information about a company were stock or industry analyst reports (49%) and articles in business magazines (44%). Conversations with employees also ranked high (41%).

Meanwhile, expert sources are gaining trust year over year, while “average Joes” have slipped slightly. Academics or experts were rated as the most credible again, gaining 2 percentage points to 64%. Financial and industry analysts gained 3 percentage points to 52%.

The rankings changed up from 2009 with the third and fourth most trusted sources: NGO reps gained 4 percentage points to 45%, edging out a “person like yourself,” which lost 3 percentage points and fell to 44%.

Oddly enough, apparently we haven’t learned anything over the last two years. Trust for CEOs gained 9 percentage points and trust for government officials gained six percentage points. (At 40% and 35%, respectively, they’re still not very widely trusted.)

Also strange: while 41% believed conversations with employees were “extremely” or “very” credible, only 32% rated regular employees as “extremely” or “very” credible sources of information about a company.

What do you think? What’s the most credible source for information about a company? What, if anything, can we do to ameliorate digital media’s credibility?

via

Holy language gap, Batman! Google looks to be creating some pretty cool futuristic gadgets for its utility belt. Now, when Eric Schmidt puts out the Goog signal he can feel confident that ex-Google employees in all parts of the world will understand the signal without have to spend time changing out the filter on his light signal. (I had to use this picture again after all the trouble Andy went through to make it). This will all be made possible by Google’s translation tools that are moving toward translating voice on the fly.

Now, this technology is a few years away but The Times of London is bringing the project to our attention.

By building on existing technologies in voice recognition and automatic translation, Google hopes to have a basic system ready within a couple of years. If it works, it could eventually transform communication among speakers of the world’s 6,000-plus languages.

The folks at Google seem to feel that this is very doable. There are many naysayers, however, which are quoted in the article but also let themselves be heard in the comment string. First the confident Google version

“We think speech-to-speech translation should be possible and work reasonably well in a few years’ time,” said Franz Och, Google’s head of translation services.

Now from the other camp.

However, some experts believe the hurdles to live translation remain high. David Crystal, honorary professor of linguistics at Bangor University, said: “The problem with speech recognition is the variability in accents. No system at the moment can handle that properly.

“Maybe Google will be able to get there faster than everyone else, but I think it’s unlikely we’ll have a speech device in the next few years that could handle high-speed Glaswegian slang.

Whether this capability is ready in a few years or in 10 years it could be something that would be very interesting but in the same breath could be disturbing like it apparently was in the movie “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”. In the movie, the Babel Fish device that could translate any language for users ended up creating some serious issues (a war) because everyone knew what everyone else was saying!

I’m not saying that life would imitate art but maybe what we don’t know won’t hurt us after all.

Well, since Google’s Super Bowl ad has signaled that it is in trouble by sending some kind of message that there is fear in the air (c’mon people relax it’s not the big deal you may think it is), what does a company that is obviously reeling on its heels look to do? Find other ways to make money of course.

Now I do not believe that Google is reeling at all. I don’t think that their Super Bowl ad is evidence of anything other than the fact that they could use an already created and packaged message to reach a large audience when their competition wasn’t. Nothing more and nothing less. Do you really think that the cost of that ad is of any consequence to Google’s bottom line? I suspect they figured they could smoke the crappy ads for chips and beer with a simple message and create buzz worth more than $ 3 mil. Mission accomplished.

Google does, however, need to figure out other ways to generate cash and display seems to be the next big thing. Business Week reports

Google CEO Eric Schmidt hinted in July that display advertising would probably be the next of his company’s businesses to generate $1 billion in sales. Analysts say 2010 is the year he’ll deliver on that prediction.

Display ads are likely to contribute a little more than $1 billion, or about 4% of Google’s (GOOG) total sales this year—an increase of as much 40% over last year—say analysts, including Doug Anmuth at Barclays Capital. That marks an important threshold for Mountain View (Calif.)-based Google, which makes most of its sales from ads placed alongside search results and which has been criticized for not getting more revenue from other businesses. Demand for display ads, which include marketing messages in videos and banner ads adorning Web pages, may rise faster this year than for search-related ads, according to eMarketer.

About $700 million of that number should come from YouTube while the remaining will come out of the DoubleClick operations that are gaining momentum. There seems to be a new surge in display ad money that is coming over to the web from TV advertisers. I guess they hadn’t heard about the effectiveness concerns regarding the ads but hey if you have blown a lot on TV ads already it shows you don’t pay real close attention to things . Google has rolled out its Google Insight offering, though, to help understand everything

Google is trying to help advertisers better measure the effectiveness of display ads. “One of the challenges we put to ourselves was: ‘What are the ways a brand advertiser would look to measure [ad impact]?’,” Neal Mohan, the executive in charge of Google’s display business says. The result: Campaign Insights, a tool developed over a year by dozens of Google engineering teams around the world before it was released in December.

Hair-care company Regis was one of the first to test Campaign Insights. It ran banner ads for Hair Club For Men across hundreds of Google’s partner sites while Campaign Insights tracked the number of people who had seen the ads and then performed related Web searches. “Display [advertising] drives searches and Web site visits,” says Luke Hubbard, vice-president of Beverly Hills (Calif.)-based Integrated Media Solutions, the ad agency that coordinated the campaign for Regis. “We knew that effect was there before, but now we are able to quantify it.” Impressed by the results, Regis increased spending on display ads for the brand in 2010, and Integrated Media Solutions has signed up seven other clients eager to tap the analytics.

Ahh, analytics. You mean the ability to actually track whether what you are doing is truly working or not? Those crazy kids over in Mountain View think they should provide something that measures the effectiveness of display ads and now they are going to try to sell more because of their innovation. Wow.

Is Google serious about this? Apparently serious enough to actually have real Google employees venture out and talk to live human beings. In other words they are recognizing that this type of sale requires service and not automation. I had to chuckle a little at this last quote regarding the idea of Google employees venturing out and soiling their good name with the general population.

To succeed in display, Google has also had to hone its ability to market products through a people-friendly sales force. In search, Google has tended to rely more on the technical effectiveness of its products, analysts say. “Advertising is a lot of hand-holding and schmoozing,” says analyst Greg Sterling. “Historically, Google has not been good on managing the people side.”

That’s changing, says Amy Curtis-McIntyre, senior vice-president of brand communications for hotel chain Hyatt. She says Google has begun regularly sending sales reps to her Chicago offices. “When they develop new search tools or new advertising tools, they bring them to us and present them in a usable way,” says Curtis-McIntyre.

Now, when Google understands that people also like to be visited when there isn’t something to sell then we can say that they get it. You know…..the R word. No, not Revenue! They get that one real good! It’s the other R word……Relationship. When they understand relationships then they will have something.

When Google announced that it would no longer play nicely with China, some suggested that this was a just a ploy to pull out of a country that it was struggling to dominate.

Of course, Google’s official stance was that it was just too much of a compromise to operate any business in China:

We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

Except maybe, for one that’s already successful…

A consortium led by Walt Disney Co is in advanced talks to buy into China’s largest in-bus digital media and advertising company…Google was expected to take only a small stake in the Bus Online deal, while Disney aimed to take the greater part, said the sources, adding that no agreement had been signed yet.

Wow, Google! That stance against China lasted all of four weeks!

Here we were thinking that you were putting your foot down so that other US companies might be able to get behind your efforts to stop censorship in China, when all along you were looking for a back door into the country.

Buying a stake in a successful Chinese company kind of gives credibility to the suggestion that you only backed out of China, because you weren’t able to compete. After all, if you were on such moral high-ground, you wouldn’t be buying into a company that already plays nicely with the Chinese government.

Would you?

There were lots of entertaining Super Bowl ads this year, but as an internet marketer, two interested me the most: Google’s first ever TV ad, and the new upstart, KGB.

Forget the fact that Google–the ambassador for new, measurable ads–ran an old-school TV ad, which do you think was the best of the two?

We finally have a Marketing Pilgrim fan page on Facebook!

I know, I know, it’s about time! But hear me out.

You see, I always figured that having a fan page on Facebook wouldn’t be of interest to Marketing Pilgrims. I thought a fan page was just an ugly expression of vanity–did I really feel like people loved this site enough to become a "fan" of it?

Then it struck me.

It’s not about being a fan, it’s about providing you with another way to enjoy Marketing Pilgrim’s posts. Maybe you’re not a big user of RSS, but would prefer to nom on our delicious posts, while throwing sheep or growing carrots.

So, for those of you that wish to connect with us via Facebook, now you can.

Oh, and I might just run a Facebook only contest at some point in the near future–just in case you need an extra incentive to join our community.

So, a few days ago I was on Twitter and a friend of mine asked her followers how much she should pay a designer for a new logo. My response was, “well, pay them what ever they invoice you for.” She then explained that this designer didn’t know how to price his logos and needed help. I remember when I first started my business I had no idea how to price products. I used to spend days analyzing the market, comparing other products and thinking of different marketing options. And then one day I realized how simple pricing really is.

I was talking to a potential client over the phone and they asked me if I could give them a ball bark figure on how much their project would cost. At the time I already had several clients and didn’t see myself getting to their project for awhile. So I figured I would try something different with them. I ended up sending them a quote for about 3 times what I had ever charged a client, thinking that they would look at the quote and I would never hear from them again and that would be history. In a few hours they emailed me back and said that they thought the quote looked reasonable and they wanted to move forward! I thought to myself, wow! All I have to do is ask for it!

Now I realize that the correct price for a product is the highest amount that your market is willing to pay. And, the only way that you can find out what that amount is, is by asking for it. This type of pricing method is called Value Based pricing. With Value Base your price reflects the value that your market places on the product.

Now sure I know what you are thinking. Isn’t it dangerous to price yourself to high? Aren’t you afraid of pricing yourself out of the market? To answer these questions let’s take a look at Wally World. Here is a corporation that’s motto is “Always Low Prices”. When Sam Walton coined that phrase in 1962 he wasn’t just launching a insightful marketing campaign, he was in fact laying the groundwork for their future pricing structure. Walmart’s dominance is dependent on selling at low prices at high volume. As a result their stores across the world are always packed.

But do you really want to be like Walmart? I mean, sure they do a lot of business, but it’s all at very low profit margins. Now, let’s take a look at the other side of town and the shops on main street. These are the locally owned mom and pop joints that maybe your neighbor runs. These shops can’t compete with Walmart’s prices and as a result they do less business. Can you guess which business model I would rather have? Well, if you guessed the local mom and pop shop, you win! Running a business that caters to the market’s lowest price point will guarantee a steady flow of consumers. But you really need to ask yourself, do I really want to do business with the cheapest folks in my market? Trust me, you don’t, they are annoying and will eat up all your time and money.

So how can you start getting paid more for your products and services. Just start asking for more. Sure you run the risk of losing potential customers, but in the end the ones that agree to pay premium prices will leave your business truly valuing their time with you, which in turn, turns into referrals and other opportunities down the road! So start asking for more and quite trying to be the “Wally World” of your industry!

Last week, Facebook posted instructions on how to make FB your “personalized news channel” and minimize nonnewsworthy clutter on their blog. Inspired, Hitwise looked at the numbers, and it looks like Facebook is already well on its way as a news starting point.

Hitwise’s stats show that Facebook is well ahead of some other news aggregators in terms of sending downstream traffic to news websites:

After Google (17.32%), Yahoo (7.89%) and msn (4.43%), Facebook was the fourth most popular referrer for news websites. Says Hitwise:

News and Media is the #11 downstream industry after Facebook, receiving 3.69% of the social networking site’s traffic. To offer a comparison, 6% of downstream traffic from Facebook went to Shopping and Classifieds last week [check out their downstream retail traffic] and 6% to Business and Finance and 15% went to Entertainment websites (YouTube in particular).

Clearly, news isn’t the most popular post-Facebook activity, but the chart shows that it’s been growing steadily over the last several months. (Any ideas what the spike in April was about? Conficker?)

What do you think? Will Facebook be the next big destination for news?

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Two years ago, Microsoft purchased a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240M—and with the agreement that Bing would be providing web search on the world’s most popular social network. That deal is now expanding, according to the Bing blog—to not only take in an expanded, enhanced search but also more countries around the world. Most importantly, however, Bing is giving up its claim on selling Facebook advertising.

Their enhanced search is a joint effort between FB and Bing “to provide even more compelling experiences to Facebook users.” Right now, Bing provides the basic ten blue links through Facebook’s web search option, but that will expand to include “richer answers combined with tools that help customers make faster, smarter decisions,” in keeping with Bing’s “decision engine” branding. This partnership is also growing beyond the US to a worldwide agreement.

Before the last deal, Microsoft was selling advertising for Facebook in the US. The original deal expanded that relationship for Microsoft to sell display advertising on Facebook around the world. However, that’s all going away now:

[W]e made the mutual decision that Facebook would take over responsibility for selling display advertisements on its own site. We have been working together on advertising for a long time, creating the best experience for Facebook users and advertisers. Given the kinds of advertisements that make sense within a product as unique as Facebook, it just made more sense for them to take the lead on this part of their advertising strategy. MS will continue to provide search advertisements to Facebook.

At the time of the original deal, Facebook had more than 49M active users. Now, they’re up to well over 300M. While Bing is losing that display advertising market, they may be on their way out of selling advertising anyway with the pending Yahoo/MSFT deal.

What do you think? Is this a move up or down for Facebook and Bing individually?

I can hear it now. We normal folks won’t be able to hear this signal (kind of like a dog whistle) but this is being sounded across the US to Washington, DC from Mountain View, CA as we speak.

“Calling all ex-Google employees in DC! Calling all ex-Google employees in DC! (Especially if you still have stock) I repeat – Calling all ex-Google employees in DC! This is your real leader, Eric Schmidt, and we need you to ‘talk’ to some people about this ‘problem’ that the US government has with our book deal. Remember where your allegiance is and who is more powerful. Go and do your duty for the Goog immediately. Thanks and have a great day!”

OK, so it really is a ridiculous thought but I bet the folks at Google wish that could happen when a road block like this happens to a deal that seems quite important to one of the most powerful companies in the world. Sfgate.com tells us

The Department of Justice said in a filing late Thursday that revisions to the proposed legal settlement allowing Google Inc. to publish millions of books online didn’t do enough to allay antitrust, copyright and other legal concerns.

The landmark deal would allow the Mountain View search titan to move ahead with its ambitious project while establishing a system for identifying and paying appropriate rights holders.

The government acknowledged “substantial progress” on several issues, but said in a statement filed with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that core concerns remain unresolved, including the amount of power granted to Google.

There is quite a bit at stake with this book deal for sure and there are those who are both for and against. Those against include library groups, academics and competitors who have privacy and anti-competitive concerns. Those for the deal include student, minorities and the disabled because the service would provide the ability to access more information than ever.

Google is doing an “act as if” and not really publicly recognizing this decision that could influence whether this gets past the government’s scrutiny or not. This whole drama has been two years in the making and Google has had a similar battle in Europe. Whether this will ever reach the point of an agreement that allows Google to do what is proposed for many out of print volumes is a major TBD (to be determined).

Google keeps running precariously close to the line that reads “If crossed people will yell monopoly!” I suspect they would like just one victory but whether that will happen in this case may be more out of their control than usual.

How do you feel about this book agreement? Have you followed it? Do you care? If Google gets the green light is it truly giving them to much power? If they can’t do it will any of these books ever be seen again by anyone?

Online reputation management isn’t always about big corporate brands. In fact, half of my book Radically Transparent is dedicated to building and managing personal reputations.

Just in case you’re not convinced that you need to worry about your personal reputation online, you might want to check out the interview I did with WCCO Radio:

Listen to the Radio Interview

In it I discuss three important themes:

1. How your social networking profiles can hurt your career and job hunting.
2. How debt collectors are tracking people down via social networks.
3. How scammers and thieves are praying on the naive.

If you’re not an audio person, the same advice was recently published on Yahoo Finance via an interview I did with Bankrate.com.

Drop a comment with any case studies or other risks you can think of. Thanks!

Facebook has begun introducing a new home page redesign to about 20% of the total 400 million ‘users’ of the social media platform. It appears as if the gist of the changes are just moving certain elements to different parts of the page so they can get more attention from users. More usage of the functionality means more stickiness means more opportunities to make cash. It’s that simple. Inside Facebook tells us

First off, a lot more people are engaging with notifications in the new design, Facebook’s Peter Deng tells us, which isn’t surprising since it’s at the top left-hand side of the site instead of the right hand of the bottom toolbar. Notifications for third parties will appear within the new interface for the rest of the month, until Facebook removes them on March 1.

Matthew Sanders put together a good group of photos here. While there are other changes on the way you have to like the way Mark Zuckerberg promises what is coming down the pike by saying:

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg also tells us that the company is planning to roll out “something cool” every month from now on, but no word on what products we’ll see.

Is this the new leadership way? Tell people something that gets them interested but provide no real information about it or no road map? While I trust that Facebook is going to be innovating (they have to in order to figure out ways to get more cash from the service) we’ll sit back and relax until something actually happens rather than get all revved up about ‘the next big thing’.

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch reports on one project that a Facebooker was willing to leak. It’s called Project Titan and it is a full blown webmail application for the service.

Facebook is completely rewriting their messaging product and is preparing to launch a fully featured webmail product in its place, according to a source with knowledge of the product. Internally it’s known as Project Titan. Or, unofficially and perhaps over-enthusiastically, the Gmail killer.

That’s some big talk about being a Gmail killer. The folks at Facebook should relax a bit on the hyperbole but hey you aren’t one of the cool kids these days if you aren’t taking swings at Google or having Google take swings at you, right?

So here’s to innovation at Facebook. So far it’s 20% of their accounts having a homepage redesign and the prospect of a webmail service and the promise of monthly improvements. Part of me is interested and another part of me wants to yawn.

And not in the positive “I now know 999 ways not to make a light bulb” way.

AOL’s Q4—their first earnings report since spinning off from Time Warner—numbers have all kinds of red ink and negative signs in front of them: display advertising revenue down 3% total YOY, international display down 22%, search and contextual down 19%, total ad revenue down 8%, subscription revenue down 28%, Other revenue down 5%. The only gain YOY was in US display advertising: a whopping 1%. And despite total revenues being down 17%, AOL still handily beat Wall Street expectations.

Yes, failure = success when people expect almost nothing of you. Says All Things D:

After factoring out one-time charges, AOL posted earnings of 71 cents per share on revenues of $801 million. Wall Street expected earnings of either 62 cents or 66 cents per share, depending on who you ask, on revenue of around $766 million.

And that earnings per share is way higher than, say, Yahoo (22¢).

Of course, the reason the expectations are so low is that none of this is a surprise. Time Warner ditched AOL for just this reason. (Boggles the mind to think that AOL originally bought TW. Crazy, isn’t it?) AOL has long been on the decline. Although CEO (and former Googler) Tim Armstrong is striving to retool sales in both personnel and strategy, their long slog might just mire them deeper in the red ink.

Meanwhile, the CEO of Time Warner got his expected raise.

What do you think? Can AOL survive?