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Pilgrim’s Picks – My “Apple Hell” Edition

posted on July 31, 2008

The lack of posts today probably had you guessing that I was either on the road or with clients all day–if only!

At around 7pm last night, my Apple MacBook Pro decided it did not want to boot-up–no matter what troubleshooting I tried. Calls to Apple tech support this morning were equally useless. Fearing the loss of all my data, I headed to my local Apple store and was put on standby to see an Apple “Genius” technician. An hour later, and Scott was able to recover my files and give me a plan for using Time Machine to fill in the blanks.

So, after 24 hours of Apple Hell, I’m back in the loop. So, here’s the news that I would have blogged about today:

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Is Cartier ”Slumming It” on MySpace?

posted on July 31, 2008

Just to prove that I read other publications than the Wall Street Journal I turned my eye to a stalwart of the new media age, the New York Times. Ok, so it’s just as “old school” as the WSJ but someone has to read these things, right?

So I ran across a pretty interesting application of MySpace by Cartier of all companies. Now, I can never shop with Cartier and in fact I have a hard enough time pronouncing it but this caught my eye. Most recently, it seems that Facebook has been touted as a good option for business applications while MySpace has been relegated to the teeny-bopper space, spammers and well, let’s face facts here, social misfits. (If Andy said it was OK to write that then direct all hostile comments to him directly, thanks). As far as a networking tool I am a LinkedIn fan but that is just for networking and it isn’t really a place to sell products, especially vanity products like jewelry and accessories (I know a little about this stuff because I am married and I have an 11 year old daughter so stop snickering).

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Google Acquires Omnisio, YouTube to Get New Features

posted on July 30, 2008

Google has wasted no time in acquiring Omnisio an online video tools company that only launched publicly in March of this year.

TechCrunch explains what might soon come to YouTube via this acquisition:

The service lets users annotate videos, mash various clips up, and synchronize Slideshare presentations to videos (great for conference presentations). Omnisio users can extract sections of clips they find on the web (currently only those on YouTube, Google Video, or Blip.tv). They can then take those clips and stitch them together to form new, embeddable compilations.

Want to see Ominisio in action? Check out the embeded video below.

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Google Gets Radically Transparent with Search Customization

posted on July 30, 2008

Google today announced that it will start providing more “transparency” (its wording, not mine) in its customized search results.

Nothing’s actually changing with the way Google customizes search results, it’s just going to start making it clear what’s at work.

Starting today, you’ll start seeing little messages at the top right corner of your results. They’ll look like this:

When you click on “More Details” you’ll get this message:

Which basically describes the three areas that might receive customization, namely: location, recent searches, and web history. For the full explanation, head to the Official Google Blog.

Now at least, when your SEO clients see their web site listed at #1–when the rest of the world doesn’t–you’ll be able to point them to an official explanation! Or not, depending on your level of evilness. ;-)

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Microsoft’s New Live Search “Hotspots”

posted on July 30, 2008

It’s probably not going to give Microsoft any percentage points in the search engine wars, but the new interactive backgrounds for Live Search sure do look purty.

The new backgrounds feature interactive "hotspots" and are first rolling out to U.S. audiences. More details at the Live Search blog.

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Marketing to Tweens Online

posted on July 30, 2008

Tweens, the age group between 8-12 years old are unique in that they are the first group to have grown up with computer and internet access. They are also getting mobile phones and more grow up using them.

My son who is almost 8 has grown up watching me blog and is now obsessed with Club Penguin. I admit it’s a little disconcerting of thinking to marketing to him or the kids his age. But where there is a market…there are marketers…

My son is a child, but as the article by Marketing Vox suggests, soon he may begin to explore what it means to be a teenager (which I’m far from being ready for). Being a teenager for Tweens means freedom – including freedom to make purchases. And this age group has money to spend (and they can be relentless in their requests to spend it!).

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69 Year Olds Overrepresented on Social Networks

posted on July 30, 2008

For Marketing Pilgrim readers who love data – here is a follow-up to Rapleaf’s social media study. The link has a spreadsheet that you can apply formulas to. The study looked at 49.3 million people on social networks and breaks them down by age and gender. This is good to study to look at if you want a general idea where to focus your marketing on a specific social network to a target customer.

The first group post about this talked about how men often have more “friends” on social networks and tend to be on LinkedIn and Flickr. Facebook and MySpace has more women. Men and women on average have 2-25 friends. So if you have more, you’re above average :)

Other Highlights on the Social Media Network Study: