Healthy Blog Reviews

Google Buzz has had one heck of a first week. After not fully testing the product , Google launched Buzz and forced all Gmail users into it without a way to opt out. Then we realized they were automatically sharing the list of people we chatted with and emailed most frequently. Finally, Google backed off many of these “features,” and made it possible to disable Buzz (and not just hide it). And the angry masses aren’t the only ones—now the Canadian government is scrutinizing the service . Valerie Lawton, a spokeswoman for the [Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada], said the office is looking into concerns about Buzz. “We understand the public concern about privacy issues related to Google Buzz,” she said. “Our office is looking at the issue.” They may make further comment today. However, many of Buzz’s initial problems—specifically autosharing and autofollowing the people you chat with and email, making your friend lists public and no way to opt out—have been addressed through promised (and delivered) changes. So complaints filed with the commission last week may be moot by now—or not. Last summer, Canada took a hard look at Facebook’s privacy policies , and Facebook blinked . Will Google do the same? Possibly more importantly, has Google (and everyone else) learned its lesson, privacy inquiry or no? Unfortunately, I doubt it. Lately the mode seems to be “roll it out first and worry about privacy, usability and . . . everything! later,” and not just for Google. Opting in to new features is becoming increasingly rare—and opting out is becoming harder. I know people are resistant to change and hesitant to try new things—but please, Google et al. , don’t do this. As I said last week: Stop. Test new features with real users. Ask for feedback. Don’t force crap on us—let us opt in, and if we like it, we’ll encourage others to opt in, too. And think about the implications before you get the negative ink and/or lawsuits, for once. And remember, if you want out of Buzz, go to the Buzz tab in your Gmail Settings to turn it off completely . The tab hasn’t rolled out fully—I only have it in half of my accounts—but should be live for all users pretty soon. What do you think? Will Canada find further privacy changes they want? Will Google and its ilk ever stop pushing us into “features” we don’t want? Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community

Tags: facebook, google-buzz, google-opting, implications, lately-the-mode, legal, marketing, office, people, said-the-office, Social, Valerie Lawton
Posted February 17, 2010 by admin under Social Media

TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld talked to sharing-widget producer Gigya recently to find out what site people tended to share content on the most. Gigya’s widget power social sharing from sites such as ABC.com, Reuters and Answers.com (and 5000 more). When people shared content, where did they tend to post it? Facebook was the #1 choice for 44% of content sharing . (Sub-lesson of this article: lying with statistics. Can you guess what share the other three got from the chart?) Gigya also looked at sign-in data for these sites—for example, whether users signed in via Gmail/Google, Yahoo or Facebook Connect to interact with or share content. For some types of sites, they were nearly equal—but not others. News sites saw 31% Facebook sign ins, 30% Google/Gmail sign ins and 25% Yahoo sign ins (Twitter saw 11% and AOL 3%). But for entertainment sites, Facebook was the far more popular choice at 52%, with Google (17%), Yahoo (12%) and Twitter (11%) trailing far behind. (MySpace, 7%, and AOL, 1%, fared even worse.) Facebook chat is also popular—more than half (56%) of all live chat events Gigya monitors were hosted on Facebook. Twitter was second with 28%, and Yahoo (9%) and MySpace (7%) eked in there. So what were the overall share numbers for Facebook’s competitors in overall sharing? Twitter had 29%, Yahoo 18% and MySpace 9%. If you really study the tilted 3D graph, you can approximate it pretty well—but it looks a little more proportional even at a glance in the 2D graph, doesn’t it? Upon seeing the data from Gigya, another sharing widget company volunteered its data. AddThis, used in 600,000 (smaller than Gigya’s, for the most part, since AddThis’s clients include Blogger users), shared the top ten services their users choose to share with. While Facebook was still tops, their lead wasn’t quite as decisive as in Gigya’s data. Facebook: 33% Email: 13% Print:9% Twitter: 9% Favorites: 8% Google: 6% MySpace: 6% Digg: 3% Live: 3% Delicious: 3% What do you think? Is Facebook the way you prefer to share things online?

Tags: aol, article, data, delicious, Erick Schonfeld, facebook, facebook-social, Gigya, Research, Social, top-ten, users
Posted February 17, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Yup, this measurement from comScore of 75 million people visiting Twitter in January of this year does not take into account those accessing the service through third party apps. Isn’t it nice to get that out of the way right from the start? Fresh off the news that in January Twitter served over 1.2 billion tweets there is little surprise in a growth chart that looks like this courtesy of TechCrunch and comScore When you cut to the chase on this though, the question about Twitter has to be less about quantity and more about quality. As more and more of the mainstream begin to discover and possibly embrace Twitter (have you had any “I don’t get that Twitter thing at all” comments from people who are not like you?) the pure volume of visitors, users and tweets will continue to rise. What might not rise is the legitimate information that is in the cacophony of tweets. If it becomes harder and harder to mine and make sense of Twitter’s stream then it won’t matter how many people visit. Twitter has done it’s part though by moving forward and making the overall experience more useful Large sites like Twitter and Facebook before it tend to grow in step-like patterns, with bursts of growth followed by periods of flatness during which the site absorbs its new users and adapts to their needs. Twitter has certainly been improving the functionality of its own site, with the rollout of new features such as local trends, a better suggested user list, Twitter Lists, and the Retweet button. Maybe all that work is starting to pay off. So how do you feel about Twitter today? I ask about today because the tide turns so rapidly in this space that even attempting to predict the future of anything is an exercise in futility. Obviously, no one has a crystal ball (except of course that broker who keeps calling you with “hot tips”) but to call how the social media landscape will play out over any extended period of time is a crap shoot at best. Your take? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

Tags: before-it-tend, cacophony, facebook, from-the-start, mainstream, measurement, news, retweet, Social Media, Twitter, twitter-lists
Posted February 17, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Many folks like to talk about how anything labeled a Microsoft web strategy is an oxymoron considering the company’s less than stellar track record in the online world. That doesn’t mean that they will stop trying though. In an apparent attempt to ensure that they are seen as relevant in the social space the software giant is bringing some new friends into its ubiquitous Outlook product. Those friends are Facebook, MySpace and Linkedin. While it appears that Facebook is virtually everywhere it is quite interesting to see MySpace making some positive news these days. From a pure business play LinkedIn makes sense. Yahoo tells us a little more: Microsoft Corp. is taking another step toward turning Outlook, its desktop e-mail program, into a hub for information from popular social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. On Wednesday, Microsoft is releasing a “beta” test version of the Outlook Social Connector. The add-on software, which was first discussed last November, adds a new pane to the main e-mail reading screen on Outlook. When a user clicks to read an e-mail message, the new pane fills up with the sender’s most recent social-networking activities. Those could include the addition of a professional contact on LinkedIn or a “what I’m doing now” status update from Facebook. I don’t know about you but the pace of social networking / media / marketing announcements can be dizzying . What’s even harder to consider is just how many of these options one person can actually use. Not to mention just how excited employers must be to see their employee’s inbox at work become another place to be distracted from doing that pesky work thing. Will Kennedy, a corporate vice president for the Office group, said some of Microsoft’s business customers have expressed concern that employees will become less productive if they have all this extra information at their fingertips. “We don’t want this to sort of be the next great time waster in the workplace,” he said. That’s awful thoughtful of Microsoft to worry about workplace productivity but it’s hard not to imagine this won’t happen. Microsoft is spinning it by saying that the social part of it will increase productivity and that there are business related networking features that will increase productivity as well. Microsoft’s new software also treats Outlook itself as a social network. If the e-mail sender and recipient are jointly working on a document stored on a company’s Sharepoint server, both will see updates if one logs on to make edits One thing that may actually take the social out of this social networking tool is that there will not be capability to push updates back out to Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn. So, I suppose it’s social in a “one way conversation” kinda way. People using Office 2003, 2007 and beta versions of Office 2010 can download the updated Outlook Social Connector beta Wednesday. LinkedIn, which is primarily used for business networking online, is the first company to make its add-in software available. It can be downloaded from LinkedIn.com. All I can say is good luck getting anything done while you are keeping tabs on everyone else who is not getting anything done.

Tags: employee, facebook, linked, linkedin-while, Microsoft, office, online, Outlook, outlook-social, Social, social-networking, take-the-social
Posted February 17, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Apparently Fortune 500 companies have money to burn on search marketing. According to a new study from Conductor, only 25% of the Fortune 500’s combined targeted paid keywords–97,555 keywords, totaling a daily spend of $3.4M–ranked in the top 50 natural search results. Think about that. These companies are collective spending $1.2 billion a year on paid search placement, yet 75% of these important keywords are not ranking organically inside the top 50 search results! Even more staggering, only 2% of Fortune 500 domains analyzed had any significant number of search terms in the top results–which we presume means first page visibility. When you break it down by company, only 0.6%, are achieving top 50 keyword placement. Which means that less than 1% of companies control the lion share of the  25% of keywords ranking inside the top 50! Talk about outliers! Of course, this is one study, one snapshot of data, but it goes to show that in 2010, Fortune 500 companies still don’t have a handle on their SEO campaigns. They’d rather pay for their ignorance in search ads instead. You can grab a copy of the report here . Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community

Tags: 500-companies, break-it-down, inside-the-top, marketing, more-staggering, presume-means, Research, year-on-paid
Posted February 17, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media