Marketing Pilgrim

I think, somewhere in the back of our heads, we all had to know that this was eventually where Facebook would go. Yes, the erstwhile media darling of social networking, so prized because it was so private (unlike that icky old predator-friendly MySpace), has succumbed to the public pull of the Internet—when they prompt you to update your privacy settings now, they’ve already selected a default option to publish your information to “Everyone.”

This change comes as part of the new privacy migration tool, where users get to update their privacy settings as Facebook moves to improved privacy settings. (Or was that improved publicity settings?) It looks like this is the change promised in July to appease the Canadian government’s privacy complaints.

For the first four weeks of November, Google fielded 71.57% of all online searches in the US, according to Hitwise reports today. They’re up a percentage point over their October 2009 numbers—but they’re the only one doing so well.

Yahoo, still #2 in searches served, fell three quarters of a percentage point—and when your share is down to 15.39%, that tiny change represents a drop off of nearly 5%. Bing, meanwhile, also fell in November, but only 2% (a quarter of a percentage point). Ask, that big winner, saw a 1% increase over October—but considering that’s a shift of 0.03 percentage points, maybe it’s not something that should go on their resume. The 52 other search engines Hitwise monitors accounted for 1% of searches.

Don’t look at me like that, who doesn’t like the The Carpenters?

OK, so the news.

Google has, finally, released Google Chrome for the Mac. As Google admits, "it took longer than we expected" but it appears to have been worth the wait. The beta browser is blazingly fast, and packed with all the cool features of Chrome–and a few extra that are Mac-flavored.

The video below provides a quick overview for Mac users:

In addition, Google has launched a gallery of more than 300 Google Chrome extensions (plugins), which despite the above announcement, are not available on the Mac version.

At the LeWeb conference in Paris Twitter is busy making sure that all the developments in the real-time search and social media world aren’t just coming from the Googleplex. Maybe it’s the end of the year rush or it’s the need to create excitement going into 2010 since 2009 was a rough year for many. Whatever the reason the news is fast and furious inthe space in general.

Twitter’s busy letting the world in on the sheer volume of apps that have been developed for the service and how they are going to help foster more growth in the near future. TechCrunch is convering the event and tells us

Twitter’s Director of Platform Ryan Sarver just took the stage at LeWeb a couple of minutes ago, and shared some announcements with the audience about the future of the platform and the effect this will have on the ecosystem.

While it is important to try to see what lies ahead in the advertising industry it is also important to watch exactly who is reading the tea leaves. On Tuesday some of the heavy hitter from the agency world predicted slight increases in spending on advertising in 2010 and did not see returns to 2007 levels until as late as 2012 (an election year, hmmmmm).

The New York Times reports on the meeting that these predictions were unveiled.

The predictions were made during a panel event at the second day of the 37th Global Media and Communications Conference, sponsored by UBS. The conference, in Midtown Manhattan, typically assembles executives from media agencies to offer forecasts for ad spending in the year — and years — ahead.

In the “Finally!” department, Google is taking legal action against advertisers who used Google’s name and logos to promote their get-rich-quick scams. The “Make Money on Google” ads were rampant in both search and display advertising in the first half of this year. Google cracked down on the search ads in July, but naturally, the scams and the sites continued to flourish.

Google, like a good trademark holder, has finally come to its senses and is now suing the scammers for using its name in vain. They’ve filed suit (PDF) against Pacific WebWorks and other unnamed defendants for a number of counts, including trademark infringement, trademark dilution, cyberpiracy and unfair competition.