Marketing Pilgrim

Since August Google has been experimenting with and testing its new Caffeine project for improving the indexing ability of the search giant. As Andy reported in August, there is a real shift to moving toward real time (read social media) results in this new environment. Andy’s concern at the time is that Twitter and other social media offerings may hold too much sway in the new result sets. Well, according to Mashable, Google is feeling comfortable enough with the new environment to put it in at least one data center for some road testing.

Since the launch of the developer preview however, we haven’t heard much about it. It’s quietly been undergoing testing and tweaking. That’s all changing though, as now the developer preview of Google Caffeine has been taken down, replaced with an announcement that Google Caffeine will go live in its first datacenter soon.

If you’re into smartphones or mobile advertising, you’ve probably heard of AdMob, a popular mobile display advertising company. And apparently Google’s heard of them, too—Google announced today that they have acquired AdMob for $750M in stock.

Google reports some mobile ad stats:

• iPhone and Android users browse the Internet more often than anyone else [Morgan Stanley], contributing to Google’s 5x mobile search growth over the past two years
• And a quarter of these same iPhone and Android users spend nearly 90 minutes per day using applications on their devices [AdMob]

As noted in the stats, Google is doing well in mobile search (though there’s still plenty of competition). But, Google says, they’re not the only ones who’ll benefit from this acquisition. Publishers will get better products, tools and monetization. Advertisers will get greater reach and “better, more relevant ads” for users engaged with mobile content. Users will get more mobile content and more useful mobile ads.

Ok, let’s get everything out on the table before we really get going here. Social media helps brand build a following of people who believe in the brand. It creates little armies of brand zealots that do all the promotion for you on a grassroots level. It is the next level of the evolution of the online commerce experience because Internet users are so savvy that they will understand that to experience a brand is to live the brand is to make the Earth safe for the rest of us mere mortals! Oooops. Sorry. I got a little caught up in the hype of social media.

Now for the reality check? Social media users like deals. Sure they may ‘engage’ with a brand a little more but they are really just looking for a deal. A coupon. A discount. Not brand nirvana.

About a year ago, Reframe It launched a product that allowed web users to add public (or private) comments on any part of any website, using a side pane in the browser. According to the users’ choice, the comments would be available for later visitors to that website to see and respond to.

Six weeks ago, Google launched SideWiki which . . . does the same thing (without the privacy options). A coincidence? Possibly. But Reframe It co-founder and CEO Bobby Fishkin believes the similarities extend beyond just the ideas for the products. He tells eWEEK that even the layout of the buttons of the two services is strikingly similar.

And the evidence he offers goes deeper:

• A Reframe It board member recommended the service to a Google exec in July 2008

If you were the folks at Twitter and you are talking about offering commercial level services that are going to eventually generate the mythical revenue that everyone is yapping about wouldn’t hate to hear about enterprise unrest among the ranks? The issue of Twitter account squatting is nothing new. There has also been little mention of it in the news as of late. I actually made the mistake to think that maybe Twitter took control and really started to crack down on the practice.

I’ve decided that I really don’t need as many of you coming to Marketing Pilgrim each day.

In fact, I’ve decided to start charging for the content that we publish.

Oh, but I will still keep the advertisers’ money. They’ll just have to get used to the idea that we don’t have as many eyeballs viewing their ads.

And, lastly, I’m kicking out Google. Yeah, I don’t need it bringing any additional readers to the site. They just consume extra bandwidth.

Have I gone insane?

I haven’t–I’m not really doing any of the above–but media mogul Rupert Murdoch quite possibly has!

Speaking in an interview with his own Sky News Australia channel, Murdoch–whom I can never look at without thinking of Spitting Image–bluntly explained how he might ban Google from indexing his newspapers’ content: