Marketing Pilgrim

Before I head out to the finest (and authentic) french restaurant in Raleigh - Saint Jacques - for a New Year’s celebration dinner, I wanted to let you know about a new item you’ll find in the Marketing Pilgrim sidebar.

Pilgrim’s Picks is tied directly to my “shared” items in Google Reader. I read scan hundreds of blog posts a day and not all of them make it as a post on Marketing Pilgrim. Instead of letting all that great content go down the “mark as read” crapper, I’m going to start sharing the posts that I find interesting but didn’t quite get around to blogging.

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Ok, I’m only doing this because..

a. It’s a Saturday

b. It’s the end of the year

c. Everyone else is doing it.

I took the superhero test and it appears I’m Superman wannabe (with a concerning dash of Supergirl, Catwoman and Wonder woman)…

You are Superman

Superman 70% Iron Man 55% Hulk 50% Green Lantern 45% The Flash 45% Robin 40% Spider-Man 40% Supergirl 35% Batman 30% Catwoman 25% Wonder Woman 20%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

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The FCC has approved the $86 billion mega-merger of AT&T and Bell South, after AT&T agreed to a number of concessions, including an important one on the issue of net neutrality.

One of the most important concessions is AT&T’s commitment to a basic set of principles that establish a practical implementation of Net neutrality. Specifically, it agreed “not to provide or to sell to Internet content, application, or service providers, including those affiliated with AT&T/BellSouth, any service that privileges, degrades or prioritizes any packet transmitted over AT&T/BellSouth’s wireline broadband Internet access service based on its source, ownership or destination.”

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Mashable has “tagged” me to share my predictions for 2007. Here’s some brief thoughts…

1. Digg will get acquired or die (maybe even both). I think Digg is very close to jumping the shark and is close to its maximum level of exposure. It will either realize this and sell or wait too long and decline.
2. Yahoo’s new search interface and algo will be key in the revival of the company’s fortunes. Once they switch to a platform that includes a performance metric, they’ll see better average CPCs.

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Just over a year ago, I pieced together a whole bunch of rumor and speculation to show reasons why Google could set-up office in North Carolina.

Thirteen months on and we learn that N.C. has offered Google $4.7m in incentives if it builds a server farm in struggling Caldwell County.

A company spokesman told The News & Observer via e-mail that the company is evaluating a number of sites, including the one in Lenoir, for an expansion that could bring $600 million in new investment and 210 jobs to a region socked by job and industry losses.

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It was all the news when Microsoft took over as the worlds most visited web property this year and it looks like Google has set the stage to play leapfrog in 2007. USA Today is running a story indicating YouTube’s visitor count will be added to Google’s overall ranking by the major traffic measurement services.

Google’s revenue hit $7.2 billion for the first three quarters of 2006. Its stock topped the $500-a-share mark (now at $468). Most significant, Google in October acquired highflying video site YouTube for $1.7 billion. Measurement services ComScore Media Metrix and Nielsen/NetRatings plan to add YouTube to Google’s overall rankings next year.

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comScore Networks reports that online retail spending reached $100 billion for the year as of Saturday, December 23. It looks like procrastinators placed their faith in expedited shipping, as the last business week before Christmas saw $2.25 billion in eCommerce.

2006 year-to-date spending was up by 26% over 2005, but the last week before Christmas increased 38% over the same period in 2005.

Gian Fulgoni, chairman of comScore Networks, stated in a press release:

Retail e-commerce now accounts for approximately 7 percent of consumers’ U.S. retail spending (excluding gas, autos and food), making it an important component of the total U.S. economy.

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I’ve been giving some thought to why Microsoft’s attempt to reach out to bloggers, by sending them free Vista-loaded laptops, went horribly wrong.

I know that hindsight is 20/20, but as a business blogging consultant, here’s the five mistakes that I believe led to such a negative response from the blogosphere.

1. Microsoft (and Edelman) was not clear in its message to bloggers. They sent out these fully-loaded, top of the line laptops to bloggers without being clear what exactly they expected from them. Did they want bloggers to review Vista? Were they expecting bloggers to disclose the gift? Would there be a follow-up from MSFT to learn flaws about Vista on laptops? The message was clearly too ambiguous as some bloggers shared news of the ”gift” with their readers, while others didn’t.

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TechCrunch has details of a developing story involving the Gmail accounts of 60 users who found all emails deleted due to a suspected breach in FireFox.

Now here’s the catch-22 for Google. Supposedly, once an email is deleted in Gmail, it is gone forever. That keeps the privacy conspiracy theorists happy.

If you’re not able to locate a message in your Inbox, Sent Mail, All Mail, or Trash, it’s been permanently removed from your Gmail account. Unfortunately, we’re unable to recover messages or Contact entries that have been deleted from your account.

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Want to know the best way to push any website to the #1 popularity spot for its industry? It’s quite simple, you leverage the traffic from one of Google’s existing properties.

Need proof?

Google’s Blog Search has taken over the #1 spot from Technorati, thanks to a link placed on the homepage of Google News. Hitwise explains how that helped the Google service leapfrog Technorati in just a few weeks.

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The Washington Post says that Google is set to further expand its print ad program soon, after a rocky start in March and one expansion in November. Google’s director of print ads, Tom Phillips, is naturally quite optimistic about the future of the program. Newspaper execs are less enthused, as the Post says it remains unclear how much the program will truly benefit newspapers.

The Post states:

Todd Haskell, vice president of business development at the New York Times Co., which is participating, said that the product has the potential to drum up new business from small advertisers but that the Times does not foresee letting go of its direct relationships with its largest advertisers.

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Today eMarketer Daily compiled conflicting reports on the future of mobile marketing. According to “Mobile Entertainment’s Potential Sharply Debated” by John du Pre Gauntt (free & live on a limited basis), the predictions for mobile revenues vary wildly:

In November 2006, Juniper Research forecast that total revenues for wireless providers from mobile entertainment in the mobile music, video, TV, gambling, gaming and adult categories would exceed $77 billion by 2011.

One month later, Informa Telecoms & Media followed with a mobile entertainment forecast that stated the total market in 2011 would be $38.1 billion.

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