Marketing Pilgrim

Happy leapy goodness!

• I know you were all worried when Facebook’s weekly market share declined. Despite what everyone and their brother said in the comments, a new study shows that Social media is not a passing fad. And yeah, I’m happy as a user, not a marketer.
• I could have sworn this has been done before . . . Wikia Open Sources Social Networking. Oh, wait, it’s Wikia; they don’t care if it’s been done before.
• Oh, so it wasn’t an amicable divorce? IAC Ready To Drop Ask.com Search Technology & Partner With Google?

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Affiliate Summit, a conference for affiliate marketers and affiliate managers, just ended in Las Vegas. I usually attend but I didn’t go this year. Gary Marcoccia at AvantLink told me about a new affiliate tool that debuted at the Summit, that I wish every affiliate network had. AvantLink is a smaller network of affiliate programs.

The tool is called the Affiliate Link Encoder (ALE) and it makes the process of adding affiliate links automatic. Any time you link to a product or service with a merchant in Avant Link’s network, a piece of javascript automatically changes the links redirects it to an affiliate link. As an affiliate this would make my job much easier, because it’s so tedious to change your links one by one.

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Over at the Radically Transparent book site and blog, we’ve uploaded "Your Seven Step Online Reputation Crisis Plan." The book contains an entire chapter on repairing your online reputation, but this article is a good primer–and will tide you over until you get a chance to order the book.

Here are the first two steps:

1. Check the facts

Quite often there are two sides to any story. Before you start responding to accusations made online, take the time–but no more than an hour or so–to assess the situation, gather the facts, and evaluate the appropriate response.

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By David Snyder

Yahoo! unveiled a new project named “search monkey” at the SMX West being held in Santa Clara, California.

The project is a set of open source tools that allow publishers and users alike to enhance search results as they pertain to a particular web site. Basically these tools give publishers a way to refine their search results in Yahoo.

Sound familiar?

If the project does, it is because Google unveiled a similar project in May of 2006 called Google Coop Subscribed Links. Google’s program was not very successful in terms of popularity and use, so the question that begs to be asked is how Yahoo’s project will differ?

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This is a very special "collector’s" edition of Pilgrim’s Picks–why? Today is February 29th which, as you know, comes around as often as a London bus–once every four years.

While single men stay holed-up in their apartments in fear, the rest of us are free to enjoy these picks.

• China’s Baidu search engine has announced plans for an instant messenger service called "Baidu Hi." Wake me up when I Can Has Cheezburger? launches an instant messenger named "O hai"
• Remember MyBlogLog? Yeah, me neither! Anyway, they’ve redesigned and added an activity stream.

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Lenovo’s David Churbuck is on the social media frontline for the computer manufacturer. Every day he engages customer gripes which range from flaming batteries, dead pixels, and even the company’s Chinese government involvement.

Having interviewed Churbuck for Radically Transparent, I already knew that he has a wealth of common-sense advice for Fortune 500 companies who wish to engage bloggers and other citizen journalists. So, I’m excited that he’s shared some of his wisdom with Jeremiah Owyang–who graciously gave Churbuck space on his blog to share his thoughts.

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I’m not quite sure how you give away something for free that’s already free, but that’s what Google’s GrandCentral team is doing with Project CARE.

The initiative is designed to help San Francisco’s homeless get back on their feet–by giving them a free GrandCentral voicemail number employers can reach them on. They’ll also be able to keep in contact with local medical clinics.

TechCrunch claimed the announcement was just a re-hash of one made two years ago, then along came GrandCentral co-founder Craig Walker with a clarification:

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Yahoo is changing the way they set minimum bids on paid search. Over the next few weeks they will set the minimum bid based on quality and value rather than how much you pay. The minimum bids will be set by individual keyword.

Yahoo describes the change like setting minimum bids in an auction. So the more valuable, high quality, or demand there is the higher the starting bidding price is.

Previously the minimum bid never fell below 10¢ but with this change you could pay less per click. On the Content Match (your ad showing on web sites instead of with search results) minimum bids will remain at 10¢.

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Andy’s off speaking at SMX, and we’re here holding down the newsly fort.

• New protocols are making it easier to submit sitemaps according to hosts from robots.txt. I think that’s what it means, anyway.
• If you actually use iGoogle, a handy new feature puts Google Webmaster Tools on Your iGoogle Homepage.
• Yahoo admits that the Microsoft Bid Has Been a Distraction. Gee, someone dangles $45B in my face and I have no problem focusing on other things. . . .

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Google has redesigned and announced several new projects over the last day or two. In addition to the premiere of Google Sites and a redesign of Google Docs, they’ve also formally announced Google Health.

The Google Blog is officially announcing Google Health. Naturally, the very first bullet point in their list of Google Health advantages (over other online personal health record services) is:

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Following Andy’s observation about Google: “You can tell which acquisitions are important to Google’s bottom line and which are more speculative. All you need do is measure how long it takes them to start integrating the service with existing Google offerings.”

By that standard, JotSpot hasn’t been a priority to Google since it was acquired over a year ago - in October 2006. JotSpot provided free, enterprise-level wikis. Google immediately stopped new signups and we haven’t heard much since. Until today when Google announced that JotSpot will be integrated into Google Apps and will be resurrected under the name Google Sites.

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I’m so used to seeing Linky Goodness now that I have a little panic attack when I type it, worried that I’m usurping the Picks for the day. I can’t even remember my own link roundup’s name.

Ahem. Well, that glance into my psyche was . . . fun. On with the links, shall we?

• Pat Sexton, Google Gadget Guru and man of exceptional taste, shows us evidence of Google Gadgets in Google Search Results. Okay, NOW I want one.

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