Marketing Pilgrim

So why the quotation marks around the word ads in the title? It’s like that age old question of if a tree falls in the forest but there is no one there to hear it does it make a sound? This version however reads like, “If you place and “ad” on a website and nobody paid for it is it an “ad”?

In a continuation of the ExecTweets post of earlier TechCrunch reports that more and more third party apps are appearing as ads on the Twitter site. The only difference is that they did not need to pay to be there. In fact, Twitter is doing the courting.

Well, Twitter is making more noise by getting Microsoft to spend money with them for a sponsored page called ExecTweets according to Peter Kafka at All Things Digital. Because I personally don’t get why this is even attractive I’ll just give you the verbatim from the post to describe it:

Microsoft (MSFT), via its Federated Media ad network/platform/agency, is sponsoring a page that collects Tweets from various executives. Twitter will get an undisclosed payment for giving the site its stamp of approval and for promoting the site on Twitter itself. Federated says it plans on launching similar programs on Twitter with other clients.

If you’re addicted to Twitter you’ll laugh at this video (and yourself).

If you’re not using Twitter you’ll laugh at how sad us Twitter users are!

Enjoy!

(via)

The most popular social network in the world just can’t get a break. They try to be new and innovative (okay, or they’re trying to rip off Twitter), and users hate it. HATE it. And Facebook basically says, “Tough.”

But anyone who’s been on Facebook for a couple years has seen this all before: almost every redesign and tweak has been met with virulent “I HATE THE NEW FACEBOOK” groups and discussions. They hated the news feed and mini feed years ago, they hated Beacon, they hated last year’s redesign, and they hate this one, too. Let’s face it: people hate change. But so far, Facebook has stuck to its guns about half the time—and even when they’ve made changes, they’ve modified, but never fully rescinded anything (other than the TOS changes)—and FB continues to flourish through all the fracas.

In Advertising Age there is a report of the rumblings of the media giants and their apparent slighting at the hands of Google. The attitude of the article, which comes from one of the standards of the traditional media industry, is certainly protective of its turf since it refers to Google’s “undifferentiated slush of results”.

Wow, way to stay unbiased right out of the gate. The gist of this story is that the big boys of big media are complaining that Google is not giving them their due. Of course, with advertising being in the crapper they now have decided that they need to get traffic somehow and their “Oh look! There’s a search engine over there that people seem to use! Maybe we should get involved!” attitude just further validates that they are way behind the curve with new media.

I think we can all agree that collecting customer feedback is a good thing, right?

What we may not all agree on is whether we should go out and collect that feedback in the places where our customers hang-out, or if we should serve coffee and donuts and entice them to come to us.

There are pros and cons to each approach and if you like the idea of building a customer feedback “mousetrap” then SuggestionBox.com or GetSatisfaction.com are just two of the many providers willing to provide the blueprint.

If you’re more inclined to strap on your boots, grab your flashlight, and go looking for your client’s feedback then CRM provider SalesForce is happy to be your sherpa on the journey. Back in January, the company launched its Service Cloud offering and today it’s announced the addition of Twitter support.