Marketing Pilgrim

Personalization of search results has long been a point of great interest and contention in the search world. The battle has raged on, particularly regarding Google’s personalization efforts, about privacy for the Google user and how it will affect the search engine optimization industry.

One of the ways that Google’s personalization efforts have been ‘limited’ is that the only people that have any personalization measures applied to them were those who were logged into their Google account. That was the case at least until last Friday when Google announced that their personalization efforts now apply to everyone regardless of whether you have a Google account or not.

cnet reports

It wasn’t too long ago actually that Eric Schmidt was referring to Twitter in terms that were less than flattering by saying the micro-blogging service was a ‘poor man’s e-mail.” As with anything in the Internet industry space just give it 6 months or so and there will be some sort of about face or make up or whatever.

So where are Google and Twitter nowadays? Well, let’s see. There was the “Google is Going to Buy Twitter” phase. Then there was the Google deal for Twitter’s feed reality. Now, all is well between the two ‘frienemies’ as Eric Schmidt appears to have opened his very own Twitter account at ‘eschmidt0’. Oh happy day.

TechCrunch shared this info from the weekend.

A few days ago my father emailed me the above video. It’s from a project called the The Fun Theory. The Fun Theory is basically a group that is using various crowd sourcing techniques to help brainstorm ideas that make common everyday tasks fun–in an effort to change people’s behavior for the better. It can be for the betterment of the environment, your neighborhood, or yourself. I like the concept because they ask one of the most important questions, that is often times left out of the equation, “is it fun?”

That’s right—Twitter is integrating more with yet another popular search engine. Yeah, it wasn’t enough to promise quasi-real-time results from Twitter in Google results, now Google has convinced Twitter to join Friend Connect. Now your Twitter login will work on any Google Friend Connect site.

It’s been a year since Twitter joined Friend Connect, but that initial membership meant only that site followers could use their Twitter profiles and avatars on GFC sites they joined. Now, however, the integration is more complete, integrating Twitter into websites more fully.

For site owners, the integration works both ways—you can promote your site easily on Twitter and your Twitter profile on your site and among your Friend Connect Followers. You can invite your Twitter followers to visit and join your site, and you can invite your Friend Connect Followers to follow you on Twitter. Friend Connect Followers can also promote your site on Twitter, either posts, pages or comments on the site—and those tweets are broadcast to your followers, too.

Just days after unveiling a streamlined, cleaner homepage (so much for the magic 28 words), Google unveils a stripped-down version of YouTube pages, too.

Called Feather and now in beta, the new layout removes much of the clutter (or features, depending on how you see it) from YouTube’s typical video viewing page.

You’d probably assume that the first thing to go would be the comments—the one part of YouTube 99% of us could probably do without. But you’d be wrong. They still display the ten most recent comments (not to be confused with the “top ten” rated comments, as Download Squad reported). Also missing from the pared-down version:

• Sharing options under the video
• Playlist options under the video
• Statistics and data (and its menu)
• Video responses
• Embed custom options
• More from this user
• More related videos
• More comments
• Comment ratings
• Post comment box

If you’re looking for a way to simply watch videos, Feather may be a great option for you. However, if you want to socialize or explore on YouTube, you’re better off with the current layout.

I admit, I am coming at this one a little uneducated. You see I never used the Twitter mobile site until today when I even considered that it existed. With the third party apps available I just don’t think about Twitter as the place to ‘micro-blog’ but rather the act of ‘micro-blogging’. I suspect that will make sense to some and for those who get it maybe you should be just a little worried.

Back to the important news at hand. The new Twitter mobile site preview was touted today on the Twitter blog . Leland of Twitter tells us