Marketing Pilgrim

The other day I was on Twitter and saw a tweet that really summed up social media marketing. OK, so I know that James is talking more about SEO here, but truthfully, giving your audience something to talk about is at the heart of social media marketing. Bonnie Raitt knew this secret in 1991–way before our modern conception of social media existed!

When folks are talking about your content they are talking about your brand. When folks are talking about your content they are sharing your ideas. When folks are talking about your content they are linking to your site. When folks are talking about your content they are strengthening your brand by contributing to the dialog. When folks are talking about your content they are making you money.

Last October, Google Reader added magic, popular items and recommendations. (Seriously on the magic—they’ll sort your items by newest, oldest or “magic.”) Now they’re revamping those choices, losing the popular items in favor of more personalized recommendations.

Google doesn’t even hint at how they’re making these recommendations, though TechCrunch speculates that they’re based on our social graph’s preferences, your Reader Trends and your Web History, if you’re using it. Additionally, they also take into account global popularity: in my popular items, I found tech-type blog posts recommended by >100 people (none of which I’m following or even know), items other blog genres I’m interested in with 3 recommendations, and items I’m not really sure why they’re there with 0-100 recommendations.

Google also adds more related feeds—if you like a feed, they can show you more like it.

It sounds like a cross between Tomorrowland and a college dorm: Google wants on- (or near-) campus housing for their employees. Yes, the free on-campus laundry, free on-campus eateries, on-campus childcare (I’m just assuming that’s not free, but you never know) and free on-campus exercise facilities (making them 75% more free than where I went to college, but anyway) are just not enough to keep their employees at the Googleplex enough hours of the day.

I don’t think the housing will be free, but you never know.

This doesn’t necessarily mean Google has any plans to get into real estate development. Remember their wireless spectrum bluff? Google may be appealing to make the change, hoping if you “rezone it, they will come.” It’s not a terrible theory—potential builders would have a built-in set of potential renters/buyers for the residential properties, which would make office retail space desirable there, too.

Computer security experts and the National Security Agency have been hard at work, trying to figure out where in China recent attacks on Google originated.

It turns out that Google did not suffer at the hands of the Chinese government, but, wait for it, school kids.

Tracing the attacks further back, to an elite Chinese university and a vocational school, is a breakthrough in a difficult task. Evidence acquired by a United States military contractor that faced the same attacks as Google has even led investigators to suspect a link to a specific computer science class, taught by a Ukrainian professor at the vocational school.

Did you get that? A computer science class is responsible for attacking one of the most sophisticated technology companies in the world. School kids!

Well, it’s official. The partnership which will lead to the blending of the “other search engines” Yahoo and bing, has been given the government seal of approval by both the US Department of Justice and the European Commission.

The integration of the two engines will be started immediately and it will take until 2011 before the advertising part of the deal is integrated. According to the Yahoo Search Blog what lies ahead is something they are pretty excited about.

And what you’re seeing today is just the tip of the iceberg. With Microsoft providing us the underlying list of search results, our Yahoo! team can now focus on making the overall experience of finding stuff online and getting things done easier for you – whether you’re searching at yahoo.com or just looking for specific information in the moment while using our many great products and properties on any device. We have lots of ideas for things we can do to help you with three main aspects of searching:

AOL has gotten some heat about their plan to overrun the Internet and in effect, the search engines, with waves of content. Many people are not keen on this plan hatched by Tim Armstrong and company to generate content at break neck speed. While it may not be popular that’s not going to stop it from happening.

Now, AOL has another content that is getting a “no comment” from AOL officially but is being reported by The Business Insider as part of the plan to bring the troubled Internet company up from the ashes. Interestingly it is going to be centered on AOL’s Patch service that Armstrong had a vested interest in at one point. Hmmmm.