Healthy Blog Reviews

Now here’s a great way to gather totally, completely unbiased information about a potential merger: ask the companies’ competitors. Okay, so the FTC isn’t completely crazy—of course other companies in the market would have a pretty good idea what the industry looks like and what a big merger might do. But still, we can only hope the FTC will remember to take their opinions with a grain of competitive salt. AdMob, the popular mobile advertising company, and Google, the wanna-be-popular mobile advertising company, announced the deal in November . Google gave AdMob $750M in stock in the deal. The next month, consumer groups began lobbying against the deal . Now the FTC wants both advertisers and rivals to make sworn statements about the pending merger. The probe isn’t public, but sources say the commission is “investigating whether Google’s proposed purchase of AdMob would reduce competition in the market for Internet advertising on mobile phones.” (Kind of a duh.) Google says it’s continuing to talk with the FTC and cooperate with requests for information. Bloomberg consulted Thomas Ensign, an antitrust lawyer, on the matter. He said, “It’s difficult to envision a scenario where this development, if true, is positive for Google-AdMob, but it doesn’t necessarily mean the agency is going to challenge the deal.” Just over a year ago, the US Department of Justice was hours from filing anti-trust charges against the search giant over another major advertising deal (with Yahoo) . Is Google pushing their luck with this merger? Will GoogleMob hurt the mobile ad industry? Will the FTC stop the deal?

Tags: companies, consumer-groups, industry, internet, legal, market, mean-the-agency, mobile, stop-the-deal, Thomas Ensign
Posted March 11, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

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?

Tags: above-the-items, cloud-computing, cloud-hosting, feeds, from-the-folder, google-reader, images, letting-it-load, Reader, Social, taking-the-time, thumbnail, time, White
Posted March 11, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

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!

Tags: free-version, hands, hottest-gadget, Pilgrim News, popular, reputation, Social Media, the-popular, Trackur, trackur-free, weeks-ago
Posted March 11, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

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? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

Tags: cool, kind, location, point, Robin Feldman, Social, tells-the-story, thoughts, Twitter
Posted March 11, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

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.

Tags: clients, customers, data, direct, know-at-least, known-interests, Research, ROI, Search, shot-2010-03-11, Social Media, target audience, their-customers, using-different
Posted March 11, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media