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The Newest Shopping Holiday: Green Monday

posted on December 18, 2007

Dear Everyone Who Shopped Online Last Monday,

Thank you. Thank you for hearing my plea. Thank you for vindicating me.

Thank you for making Monday, December 10, the biggest shopping day on record (y’know, so far). With spending of $881 million, it far outclasses this year’s “Cyber Monday” ($733M) and the record-breaking-random-Thursday boom ($803M), with an almost $80 million edge. That’s not to mention a 33% increase over the same Monday last year, which only saw $661 million.

I’ve mentioned before (and even last year) that the biggest online shopping day has long been the second Monday in December. But finally this year, it was so big that it has been declared it the newest shopping holiday: “Green Monday.”

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How to Create Buzz with Word of Mouth Marketing

posted on December 18, 2007

“There is only one thing worse than being talked about, that is not being talked about”
-Oscar Wilde

Yesterday I heard Andy Sernovitz speak about word of mouth marketing – one of the most imaginative ways to attract customers. Just like we want to be friends with and around people we like, we buy from companies we like.

How do you practice Word of Mouth Marketing? Give people a reason to talk about you and make it easy for them to talk about you. After all, good marketing is starting and continuing a conversation.

How many blogs does Google maintain about their products? Over 90! They keep pinging us with messages about updates, features, innovative ways to use their products, new products, and partnerships. The media and bloggers keep writing about them, even small things that would otherwise be boring – like that one more city has been added to Street View.

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Pilgrim’s Picks for December 18

posted on December 18, 2007

If you’ve not seen Fred Claus yet, I definitely recommend you head out to watch this great family movie. If you’re not able to do that, these marketing news links are your next best bet. ;-)

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Digg Selling for $300 Million?

posted on December 18, 2007

Rumors have surfaced again that Digg is looking to find a buyer. This time credibility to the reports is added in the form of news that Digg has retained the services of a private investment bank.

As VentureBeat reports…

A reliable source just confirmed the company8217s plans, noting the company has hired Allen & Company, a tiny but influential private investment firm, to help broker a deal. The asking price is still $300 million, the source said.

This will come as no surprise. Rumors of a sale have been rampant for months, although until now we hear co-founder Jay Adelson has been trying to muster up interest in a sale. This is the first time Digg has hired a bank to shop the deal, we8217re told.

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Bloglines Unveils New Features

posted on December 18, 2007

Before we had Google Reader, the biggest kid on the RSS reader block was Bloglines. While Google has taken that title, away from the Ask.com owned service, Bloglines has been back to the gym recently and added some bulk.

Bloglines has rolled out a slew of new features today, including:

  1. Save: Allows you to save posts including text and graphics (if made available by the publisher) to the Saved folder, so you have quick access for reference later.
  2. Photo Widget: Provides large thumbnails of images from your Flickr feeds. Previously, only the text description was available, so viewing Flickr feeds is better and faster.
  3. Blog View: A new option with the 3-Pane View that lets you see the full blog site versus just the feed article. You’ll see not only the article, but also other site features like Comments and left and right rail page elements, including ads.

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WordPress Grows 310% this Year

posted on December 18, 2007

Second place isn’t so bad with numbers like these. Here are some numbers about blogging and social networking sites according to Nielsen Online. They just released November’s numbers on the top 10 social networking sites. The biggest gainers are Flixster (where you share movie reviews) and LinkedIn, a social network for professionals.


Quick Facts

  • MySpace.com is #1 social networking site in the US, with nearly 57.4 million unique visitors last month.
  • Google’s Blogger rests is #1 for blog site rankings with 33.6 million visitors and 49% more than last year with 33.6 visitors in November.
  • #2 social networking site, Facebook is keeping double digit growth rates compared to last year. The number of visitors is nearly 22.0 million – 89 percent higher compared to MySpace visitors which rose just 7 percent year over year.

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Linky Goodness, December 17

posted on December 17, 2007

I’m feeling quite linky today, aren’t you? Oh good.