Marketing Pilgrim

A study was released today, conducted by inbound marketing company HubSpot, which looked at 4.5 million Twitter users over a nine month period. The data was gathered by their proprietary Twitter Grader tool and provides more confirmation of what we reported last week following a study conducted by a Harvard MBA candidate and assistant professor: As the tool as grown its usage has not in the same proportion.

What in the world does that mean, right? Of course if there are a gazillion people signing up for Twitter accounts and lawsuits being filed over impersonation accounts then it must be that all the world is atwitter with Twitter-itis, correct? HubSpot’s study shows that despite the top line growth in number of accounts the actual usage of Twitter may still rest with the technology crowd that claimed it as their own oh those many years ago (well actually around 3 years ago but in the Internet age that’s like a generation or two).

Maybe we are truly approaching the year of mobile. Maybe we’re not. Maybe we should just stop trying to label these things and stick to the facts. According to comScore you can add a piece of data to the mix that shows growth in the access of local information using mobile devices which will warm the hearts of app developers everywhere.

The 51% spike in users seeking to gather local information is broken out across the following platforms

comScore’s senior VP Serge Matta comments

“Given the explosion in application stores and associated marketing efforts, along with the growth in mobile phones using faster data networks, it would not be surprising within the next six months to see the number of people using downloadable applications surpass SMS for the accessing of local information via mobile devices.”

What do smart companies do when they know they can’t compete with the #1 company in market? They create a new market!

After years of making claims of being the "next Google killer" it appears that today’s crop of start-ups are keen to distance themselves from the search engine giant–and any "search engine" tag–WolframAlpha and Bing are just two recent examples.

Now the LA Times reports that Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake’s new start-up Hunch.com, will take the exact same "unsearch" route–and piggyback off the millions being spent by Microsoft!

"We’re nothing like a search engine," Fake said in an interview from New York. "We’re more related to the answers sites."

"Bing is kind of doing us a big favor by popularizing the idea that people go online to make decisions. But I don’t think we’re competitive with them."

It’s been almost two weeks since Microsoft thankfully retired the Windows Live Search brand and instead started asking us if we Bing.

Well, aside from the initial reports that Bing is seeing an increase in market share, there could be an even more important benefit of the new design. Bing might just make more money per search query than Google.

As you may have noticed, Bing uses a three column design for its search results page. Having just returned from Microsoft’s Search Summit, I can confirm that this wasn’t just done on a whim, but very carefully thought out. One of the driving factors for the design, was the ability to give Bing users a vast array of data and refinement options. In essence, Bing gave that left hand navigational column a prime time spot.

Speak to most Mac geeks and soon into the conversation you’ll likely learn of their love affair for the Quicksilver tool that allows them to launch apps in just a few key strokes.

Google wants a piece of that action! The launch of Google Quick Search Box–QSB for short–sees the search giant going head-to-head not only with Quicksilver, but Apple’s baked-in Spotlight search tool.

So, why might you switch to QSB. Well, if you’re not tempted by the artificial intelligence behind it:

As you use the Google Quick Search Box more, it will learn which results you are likely to want. The goal here is that we get you to what you’re looking for as quickly as possible. In the above example, if you chose Google Calendar, the next time you search for "cal", Google QSB will reorder the results so that you don’t have to arrow down to your desired choice. Instead, you can just type "cal" and press enter.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the Fox Business Network that Google is in the market to buy smaller technology players. For most this comes as no surprise. In fact, with all the cash that Google has it may be a surprise that there is not more buzz concerning acquisitions especially considering the favorable valuation environment that exists currently.

Reuters reports that the company has particular targets

Schmidt said, Google plans to focus on the cloud, mobile, and open source distribution of software in the next year.

Schmidt further clarified the philosophy

“We primarily look for technology. It’s a typical build versus buy. How long does it take us to build it with our engineers, versus there are already engineers in this other company that have built this thing.”