Marketing Pilgrim

So all of the talk of valuations and all of the speculation regarding board seats and on and on and on has come to a close – for now. Facebook yesterday picked up a cool $200 million from a relatively unknown Russian investor, Digital Sky Technologies. All Things Digital reports

The social network is selling $200 million of preferred stock at a $10 billion valuation; DST will also buy up to $100 million of common stock at a lower valuation later this year.

While significantly less than the valuation of $15 billion established when Microsoft jumped into the Facebook frenzy many feel that the number that Microsoft invested on was inflated. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg touched on the issue in a conference call. Peter Kafka covered it ‘live’ and commented

UPDATE: Looks like there won’t be a Twitter TV show.

In an effort to capitalize on its increased attention, Twitter has agreed to a TV deal with Reveille Productions and Brillstein Entertainment Partners. And not just any TV series, friends, a REALITY TV series (cue the hallelujah chorus). I think we’ve all had this void in our life, and in our TV lineups in particular, that was missing something . . . something AMAZING. The Twitter reality TV show is just that.

Who wouldn’t want to see people stalk celebrities via Twitter? What’s that you say? You can already see people stalking celebrities on Twitter by simply visiting twitter.com? Blasphemy! This has number one TV rankings written all over it.

Contravening prevailing wisdom, the results of a new survey from Knowledge Networks show that social media does not, in fact, drive purchases. Fewer than 5% of consumers age 18-34 “regularly turn to these sites for guidance on purchase decisions” on various product categories.

Or, rather, a new survey from Knowledge Networks shows that very, very few people think that social media influences their purchase decisions. And this is a story we’ve heard before—a year ago, Pew Internet Life conducted a similar survey and concluded the same thing, even though their stats really only indicated that the Internet doesn’t influence people who don’t use it. And once again, at first glance, these numbers aren’t very encouraging:

• 16% of the social-media users surveyed said they’re more inclined to buy brands that advertise on social sites

As online marketers most are concerned about click fraud. The endless battle to make sure that when you are buying a click it’s a real click and not something else. Marketers lose sleep over this every night but ht economy may have created a whole other category of fraud called “friendly fraud”.

First, I am not sure where we are headed when we can call fraud “friendly fraud” like we find in an article over at the Wall Street Journal. Sounds too much like “friendly fire” and there is nothing friendly about that. So what exactly is it? According to the article

Online merchants are fighting a surge in so-called friendly fraud, as more consumers try to get out of paying for their Internet purchases in the recession.

It seems that OpenX CEO Tim Cadogan is doing something that he struggled to do at Yahoo–compete with Google.

The ad technology provider and marketplace has just announced a third round of venture capital with $10.4 million being added to the war chest, courtesy of DAG Ventures.

The company is certainly doing well to fend off Google’s own Ad Manager product–claiming an impressive 300 billion ads monthly on more than 150,000 websites across the web. The money will help OpenX further expand both the downloadable and hosted versions of its ad server, while continuing to grow its recently launched OpenX Market.

So, how is this small start-up able to stand head-to-head with the search giant? Simple. OpenX isn’t trying to fight Google on its strengths.

Ok, we have turned a corner. We are on the other side of a holiday weekend. The unofficial start of summer has come and gone. Many people have walked away from their computers for a few days and have actually continued to breathe. Many are coming back refreshed. And, in the case of Gene Marks over at BusinessWeek, coming off the weekend with a contrarian’s view to social media especially as it relates to small business.

What, you say? Someone who doesn’t think that social media will solve our communication issues, global warming and provide world peace? How dare he speak up and say something against the 140 character world makeover that is revolutionizing how we communicate? Here’s his points and, as always, your response, pro or con, is welcome.