Marketing Pilgrim

There’s Glam Media, iVillage, DivineCaroline, and now Shine. It’s Yahoo’s new site, newly launched today. They are trying to reach women ages 25 to 54. Yahoo says already 40 million women in that age range visiting Yahoo! each month. Though they pass it off as trying to help women navigate their careers and life, it’s probably more about advertising. This is a group that advertisers are clamoring to reach.

This is Yahoo’s first site for a single demographic. The site focuses on: parenting, sex and love, healthy living, food, career and money, entertainment, fashion, beauty, home life, and astrology. You can get your Yahoo mail or even blog. Though it lacks a lot of advanced features, it’s really easy to blog on the site.

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>>Need help with blog marketing? Hire Andy today! <<

How many times have you visited one of the many “professional” blog advice sites, and left with little more advice than the ubiquitous (and unhelpful) “build great content?”

If building a great blog was as simple as writing quality posts, we’d all be tied for number one on the Technorati Top 100 blog list. I’m not about to start my own ProBloggingPilgrim.com web site, but I did want to start sharing tips that I’ve personally found valuable when building the traffic to Marketing Pilgrim.

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This will give the conspiracy theorists something to sink their teeth into; Google is providing search technology to the nation’s intelligence agencies.

Now, before you pull the plug on your Google Toolbar, there’s no need to panic…yet. Google is simply selling the federal government its Google Search Appliance product.

In addition to the intelligence agencies, Google’s government customers include the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the state of Alabama and Washington, D.C.

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Whenever Google’s services don’t quite work the way they’re supposed to, we typically accept it as the downside of getting so many great services for free, right?

Well, what about the Google services we actually pay for? Shouldn’t we hold Google to a higher standard for such services?

The answer is a resounding "yes" judging by the number of complaints Google has received regarding Google Calendar’s performance issues over the past week or two.

I expressed my dismay on Twitter last week–Google Cal just simply would not load, instead showing a "try again later" message–and, according to Computerworld, I’m not alone in this experience.

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If you’re a blogger you should hopefully already use Google Analytics (or your favorite alternative) to keep track of referral and keyword data to your blog.

Hold on to your hat, Woopra’s going to make you drool!

Woopra is in closed beta, but it’s shaping up to be a web analytics client on steroids with live tracking and real time analysis of visitors. You’ll be impressed with Woopra’s main features:

• Live Tracking (see who’s on your blog right now)
• Rich Interface
• Visitor Tagging
• Instant Messaging (yes, live chat with your readers)
• Real-time Analytics

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By David Snyder.

Li Ka-shing, Hong Kong billionaire and CEO of telecommunications conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa, has increased his investment in Facebook in excess of $100 million.

Li announced the investment in Facebook during Hutchison’s earnings call on Thursday.

Li shared his opinions on Facebook on during an earnings press conference for Hutchinson:

“Facebook is doing very well, and we could have some synergy between the 3G services of Hutchison and Facebook, so the customers could use Facebook on mobile phones.”

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It’s contest time! And this is one of the best we’ve done in a while.

As a thank you to those that have purchased my new book, Radically Transparent, we’re giving away the world’s smallest laptop computer–the ASUS Eee PC.

In addition, we’re giving away weekly prizes of $25 Amazon.com gift certificates–which practically refunds the cost of buying Radically Transparent!

Here’s how to enter the contest.

Over the next four weeks, we’ll provide you with a new way to enter the contest. In order to enter, you’ll need to have a copy of Radically Transparent close to hand–we’re not forcing you to buy it, but you’ll see below that it will help.

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If I were to only use one word to describe Google’s decisions, it would have to be “controversial”. As the industry’s biggest player, it simply comes with the territory and results will, in the end, speak for themselves.

Unfortunately for Google, comScore’s numbers don’t exactly paint an all that optimistic picture this week, with their February click growth being down 3% compared to January and up (only) 3% compared to February 2007. We have to admit this much: webmasters complain about Google all of the time, but having numbers reflect that as well is not exactly something you see every day.

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Let’s send you out on your weekend on a high note: linky goodness. You’re happier already, aren’t you?

• Facebook’s latest threat: Twitter. They’re totally killing Facebook on the freshness factor.
• It’s legal in Australia: Facebook friends aren’t your friends. (Actually, the case was more about whether trying to friend an ex constituted harassment, but then the judge kept talking. Happens all over, I guess.)
• Up till last week, online classifieds site craigslist was only available in English and Spanish. Now they’ve added Brazilian Portuguese, French (Parisian and Quebecoise), Italian and German. Next up: Basque and . . . Klingon. (via)

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More bad news news about the economy and the newspaper industry. This is a particularly disturbing headline, especially if you’re in the newspaper industry. Plus, it’s an industry I’m fond of. Yes, that’s right - newspapers have had the worst drop in advertising revenue in more than 50 years.

The Newspaper Association of America (NAA), shows that total print advertising revenue fell 9.4% in 2007 compared to 2006. It now stands at $42 billion. That’s the most severe percent decline since the association started measuring advertising revenue in 1950. The worst drop before that was in 2001 when revenue dropped 9%.

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You might think Friday is a slow news day, but we’re coming "at you like a spider-monkey!"

• Google has signed a licensing agreement that will ensure Japanese songwriters are paid royalties on any YouTube videos uploaded of people performing their songs. One word for you: Karaoke!
• Comcast is working with BitTorrent to figure out how to manage the companies bandwidth demands without throttling the internet for the rest of us.
• Worried that your Robots.txt file could inadvertently block Google? You can now use the official Google Webmaster Central robots.txt generator and blame them, if you end up blocking Googlebot.

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As we reported yesterday, Google’s paid click growth is down 3% in February compared to January, according to comScore. While a slow down in growth shouldn’t be a trigger for GOOG stockholders to sell the farm, it’s the dramatic decrease that’s causing investors to dump the stock.

After seeing months of 25% to 40% growth (comparing to the same month in the previous year), February’s click-through numbers were up only 3% compared to February 2007. It’s this apparent stalling (who knows if comScore is accurate or not) that has Wall Street doing its Chicken Little dance.

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