Marketing Pilgrim

Social site Tagged.com is facing the second big lawsuit over its registration process in as many months. First NY AG Andrew Cuomo (always a popular figure with social networks!) threatened to bring a lawsuit against Tagged for stealing emails and spamming “millions of Americans,” and now two women from California are suing Tagged for stealing their email contacts.

Okay, so maybe that’s not “big,” but it does stand to set a precedent.

In response to the NY AG’s similar accusations, Tagged founder Greg Tseng explained that Tagged’s registration process is abundantly clear, including several screenshots of the registration process (PDF), such as this:

Which could easily support either of these lawsuits, especially since the California case states

I just got back from the SES San Jose show. Good show. It was interesting to see the search world’s “Murderer’s Row” (relax …. it’s a reference to the 1927 New York Yankees batting lineup and not something offensive …. relax) consisting of Google, bing and Yahoo all lined up in the front row of the exhibit hall. Interesting, of course, because you have to wonder what the messages will sound like once the Microhoo co-joining finalizes sometime in the distant future. For now it’s a lot of talk of business as usual etc. etc.

Remember Netscape? Come on, you know you do. If you were online before 2000, you probably remember the erstwhile most-popular web browser, the predecessor of Internet Explorer, and ancestor of Firefox. The original Internet success story, Netscape went public before making a profit, then doubled its revenues every quarter in 1995. In the mid-90s, they had 90% of the browser market—but by the end of 2006, less than 1% of Internet users were still on Netscape. The following year, Netscape released its final version.

Now that we’ve had our history lesson for the day, let’s get up to speed. Netscape founder Marc Andreessen has finally anointed a successor to Netscape—and it ain’t Firefox. Although FF is the child of Netscape’s open-source Mozilla initiative, it’s another, as-yet-unreleased browser that has Andreessen’s attention these days: RockMelt.

In a change of pace regarding the EC (European Commission) and their view of competition the early returns are that the partnership between Yahoo and Microsoft will not be given a difficult time gaining approval. While the EC has been a stumbling block to other deals including both companies in the past (Yahoo’s previous issue was when there was the propsect of a Google / Yahoo partnership – having Google attached to any competitive issue makes it more interesting for sure). This particular situation doesn’t seem to pose problems although that position has not been officially stated by the EC itself. ClickZ reports

Woohoo! Today’s Google logo celebrates one of my favorite authors of all time: Hans Christian Andersen!

The danish author is best known for his children’s stories including Thumbelina, The Little Match Girl, and, my favorite, The Ugly Duckling. Born April 2, 1805, Andersen…..

…excuse me a minute. Someone’s IMing while I’m trying to crank this post out.

…….

…….

……well, apparently Google’s not celebrating Hans Christian Andersen, but Hans Christian Ørsted!

Well, that sucks!

So, what did Ørsted do to warrant a Google doodle? He what? Discovered electromagnetism? So, he didn’t have anything to do with an ugly duckling becoming a beautiful swan?

Did Danny Kaye ever play him in a movie? No? Meh!

This is almost the Google announcement that never was, but Google has finally announced an update to its Display Ad Builder.

The new do-it-yourself ads are designed to ensure they looks less like, well, do-it-yourself ads. The new line of "Elegant" ads include…

…ready-made buttons and backgrounds that give each ad a cohesive look and feel. More specifically, the backgrounds use subtle gradients and the new buttons have unique shapes, icons and color treatments.

Here’s an example of how the new ads look:

Not bad, huh? You ads will look more bespoke and not so much "off the rack."

The question is, do these ads convert? Has anyone had success using Google’s Display Ad Builder?