Marketing Pilgrim

Mark Zuckerberg and I aren’t Facebook friends. That’s cool; I don’t know him. Until recently, all I could see of his profile was his picture, networks and friend list. But this morning, either the Facebook CEO had decided that’s what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, or even he didn’t know what the new privacy settings changed.

I’m going to guess that it was B, because since the articles on True Slant and ValleyWag have run, Zuckerberg’s profile is a lot more private.

On his Page (where you can be his fan, not to be confused with his profile), Zuckerberg defends the change:

Ow, brain freeze! Brain freeze!

You know that sensation. It usually accompanies the consumption of too much of a good thing, such as ice cream, milkshakes, or…Google updates?!?

Yeah, apparently we’re at that time of the year when Google initiates its own “brain” freeze–effectively shutting down innovation until the New Year. Writes TechCrunch…

…people at Google are still working, but apparently Google has a “code freeze” policy that goes in place sometime in December. If you don’t get your product/service out the door by then, it gets pushed til when the freeze is lifted, likely sometime in the new year. A few Googlers confirmed this policy off-the-record, but all seemed concerned about publicly acknowledging it.

When we shared Google’s first TV ad for its Chrome browser, Marketing Pilgrim’s had mixed opinions about it: some hate it, some loved it.

OK, so now we have a new series of TV ads out of Google’s UK office. What do you think of these?

My take? I grew up in England–and our UK readers can will relate to this–but the ads look like they were directed by the creator of Bagpuss!

(via Mashable)

Google Voice‘s transcribe feature pretty much sucks.

How inaccurate is it? Well, see for yourself. Here’s a portion of a voicemail left for me recently:

Play Google Voicemail

Now, here’s the transcription according to Google Voice:

“..I’m trying to a 98 so that cool voice can proper with trans with transcribe this message…”

I’m not quite sure what’s more embarrassing for Google Voice:

a) It couldn’t transcribe “enunciate” or,

b) It didn’t even recognize “Google Voice”!!!

Anyway, the feature is still useful to have–especially when you’re busy and not sure if you should listen to the voicemail or not. And, to be fair, Google does recognize that its automated transcription service needs a lot of work. In fact, it’s asking for your help.

Leave it to Eric Schmidt to stir up a hornet’s nest more often than not. Of course, he is a favorite target of everyone since he is the CEO of the most recognizable brand on the planet. Whether by design or not though, he is often saying something or other that is getting people in a tizzy. Admittedly, it takes A LOT less these days to get people into this state and that is one of the downsides of this new digital age. Despite the sensitivity threshold being much lower when Schmidt appears to downplay the notion of online privacy, there will be blood.

As cnet reports

Google CEO Eric Schmidt is the latest Silicon Valley CEO to draw ire after suggesting that folks seeking privacy might not want to look to the Internet to find it.

Rev up the rumor mill engines! We’re not sure what the expiration date is on this one either so we better get on it fast. It appears that the fresh, French air at the LeWeb conference in Paris has created an awkward moment for Twitter co-founder and chairman, Jack Dorsey. Let this be a lesson for all you kids out there that words are powerful things and they are also very malleable. In other words, people like to twist them.

So what did Jack say? According to the Telegraph

During a panel session entitled: ‘European Gang Live’ at LeWeb 09 in Paris, Mr Dorsey was asked if Google was planning on acquiring Twitter. Instead of denying the possibility as expected, he replied: “There have been no announcements.”