Marketing Pilgrim

I will let you in on my new system for posts. If the post title has a question mark there is good reason to suspect that it will fall in the realm of rumor. In this case, the source of the information, The Wall Street Journal, tends to report on things that are as “real” as they can be. On this one, however, there was enough evidence that while Google may be up to something it’s not ready or prime time.

What gave it away? This line in the WSJ article

A Google spokeswoman said the company doesn’t comment on rumor or speculation.

That was easy. OK, now that we have that out of the way let’s talk about what Google may or may not be doing with TV search. The Business Insider tells us a little more as well

I absolutely love doing my online reputation management workshops. An entire day of me sharing just about everything I know about reputation management. Not only do I enjoy them, but the feedback has been amazing–just about everyone that attends walks away a reputation management expert!

So, I’m going international and bringing my workshop to Australia and New Zealand in May!

Thanks to a collaboration with Bullet PR, I’ll host my Auckland workshop on May 18th, then jump on a plane and host it again in Sydney on May 20th!

This one-day master class is the only way to get hands-on reputation management training from me, without paying my normal consulting day-rate. In fact the Auckland workshop is priced as low as $595+gst, while the Sydney one is just $550 for PRIA members!

Google’s big talk on pulling out of China appears to be in “perpetual beta,” as AllThingsD’s John Paczkowski jokes. According to his report, the Chinese government both confirms and denies that they are currently in talks with Google over Internet control/censorship.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) Vice Minister Miao Wei of told Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, “[Google] never informed the ministry that it was planning to withdraw from China, [nor has it] filed reports over alleged Internet regulation and cyberattacks to the ministry or requests for negotiations.”

And, as AllThingsD points out, that’s especially interesting considering the day before, MIIT Minister Li Yizhong (ie Miao’s boss) told Reuters they are in negotiations with Google. AllThingsD’s sources say that both are right—Google’s in unofficial, informal talks, but hasn’t made a move to file the necessary paperwork.

The verdict on the Italian YouTube court case verdict seemed pretty clear: sentencing Google execs to jail time for an invasion of privacy in a video posted (by someone else) on the UGC site was, well, “absurd,” as we said two weeks ago.

But some new evidence is coming out that may just justify at least the “guilty” verdict from the Italian court—since that’s all the Italian judge released (i.e. he didn’t publish his reasoning). According to TechDirt, there are now reports that Google may have ignored a takedown notice on the video.

…Oooooor not. While Google Translate is woefully inadequate in translating the Italian article intelligibly, it appears that the takedown requests in question (if they exist) might actually be from users—i.e. people without legal standing—via the site’s feedback form. Although that could certainly alert the company that inappropriate content had been submitted by a user, it’s a far cry from an official legal filing.

I don’t remember what Microsoft’s search engine share was, when I left the UK in the summer of 2000, but I’m pretty sure it was a lot better than the current anemic 3%.

According to the Guardian, Microsoft would love for Bing to recapture those glory days and is willing to spend the rest of its natural life next 3 months trying to claw it back.

The three-month campaign, which includes three TV ads created by the agency JWT, starts on Wednesday and uses the strapline "Bing and decide". The ads aim to show that Bing simplifies the "information overload" that accompanies the results of many searches.

The TV campaign will run solidly for a month and then in two-week bursts until mid-June. It will be backed by a digital campaign across Microsoft’s network and on media including social networking websites.

If you can believe it, we are rapidly approaching the 1 ½ year “anniversary” of the election of Barack Obama as the President of the United States. This event was historic and monumental on many different levels and not the least of which is how candidate Obama utilized social media to get into office.

Now, before I get started here please relax and understand that this is not a political post. It is more about a lesson about how social media can be a real double-edged sword. Why? Well, I have heard more than one social media “expert” express disappointment in the President’s relative abandonment of the medium after he was elected. I have postulated elsewhere that he may have actually set back the usage of social media for political advantage. Why? It’s a matter of trust and many feel it was violated to some degree. If you feel the urge to argue this please leave me out. I am just parroting what I have heard more than once. So you know where I stand personally, I am not a trusting sort of any politician at any time of any party.