Marketing Pilgrim

It is often pointed out that the disconnect from those in the social media trenches to those in the C-level corner offices is significant and often damaging to the marketing efforts of many companies. While it can be fun to generalize and then make those at the top of the marketing food chain the culprits in the “Great Social Media Under-utilization Caper” it is starting to become much less accurate.

One way to see that CMO’s are taking a real interest in social media and user generated media as part of their overall marketing efforts is to see the results of a recent study done by the CMO Club. That’s right. CMO’s hang out in a club while you slave away at your community building efforts. It’s all cigars and mahogany furniture around the fireplace for the CMO set. Just kidding. In fact, The CMO Club and Bazaarvoice surveyed 133 active CMO’s to get their real world take on social media. Here’s how the respondents were broken out

In an informal survey it would be interesting to know how many of our readers that made it this far into the post use TweetDeck as their third party Twitter app. I for one do on the desktop and as my mobile Twitter app in an iPod Touch. Alas, the old Blackberry disconnect ends my ability to be a full fledged TweetDecker. Are you a TweetDeck user? If not what are your preferred third party Twitter apps. Just let us know for kicks.

So why the interest in TweetDeck? Well, it looks like they are at least finding a way to generate some revenue. In the past the application provider has offered skins for their service for bands like Blink182 but now the film industry is getting on board. Mashable reports

Here’s a fun Christmas game for you to play.

How many different types of lawsuits can you think of that include Google AdWords? Put your party creative hats on and see what you can come up.

OK, Sellify, you go first!

Sue Amazon over defamatory statements posted in Google AdWords by one of its affiliates?

Wow! That is creative!

And, it’s actually true! Writes Techdirt:

The two main complaints are over trademark violations of buying keywords, and then defamation. Defamation? Yes, because apparently when people do searches on Sellify or some of its related trademarked names, like OneQuality, some of the ads that come up say things like:

Beware of the SCAM Artist
Camcorders at the Best Price
From the Trusted Source
amazon.com

Would the last person to leave Yahoo, please turn off all the lights?

You may think I’m mocking the gradual decline of the tech company, but I’m not. Not this time.

Apparently, in a measure of frugality, Yahoo is sending home all but its most essential employees for the Christmas break. According to AP:

It’s the first time that Yahoo has required most of its 13,200 employees to use vacation time or unpaid leave during the holidays. Only employees performing essential duties will be working from Dec. 25 through Jan. 1.

You can expect more spam in your search results, viagra offers in your Yahoo mail, and porn on Flickr during this time. OK, maybe not that last one.

Well, since everybody rolled out the trends of 2009 at the beginning of December, there’s really nothing left to do this year but make predictions for next year, right? Forrester is going to kick us off with predictions for marketing in social media.

Naturally, they see major growth coming in the SMM arena (which they call “social computing,” but I think that’s something different . . . ). In fact, they see 2010 as they year social media marketing reaches maturity, with marketers (and not just SMMs) focusing on measurement and even getting budgets.

The rise of SMM will lead to more transparency and interactivity, Forrester predicts. And that will make SMM even more valuable to companies. Oh, and Twitter will reach profitability—or be acquired.

According to TechCrunch sources, Google is nearing the final stages of an agreement to acquire DocVerse, real-time Microsoft Office collaboration software company founded in 2007. Sources say the purchase price is $25M.

The acquisition seems to make sense as Google and Microsoft square off for battle. The DocVerse website bears the title tag “Make Word, PowerPoint and Excel Work Like Google Docs.” Although Google Docs can already import Word, PowerPoint and Excel files, and already offers the real-time (or pretty close) collaboration, they could certainly improve, especially in the file conversion area.