Marketing Pilgrim

Now that Facebook has taken the obligatory ‘walk of shame’ following “The Great Privacy Train Wreck of ‘10” it has to actually do something. Talk is cheap and Facebook has been doing an awful lot of talking as of late. Thankfully at TechCrunch Disrupt they are starting the rumor that their action is just a day away.

TechCrunch tells us

On stage today at TechCrunch Disrupt in New York City, Facebook’s vice president of product Chris Cox announced that starting tomorrow, Facebook will be rolling out “drastically simplified” and improved privacy controls. He didn’t give any details, but did suggest that they should alleviate some of the recent privacy problems Facebook has faced.

While giving no details gives little satisfaction to those who are curious at least there is something to look forward to right?

For years Google has kept the splits it gives its AdSense publishers those using Google search services on their sites. It has successfully avoided this revelation but some recent pressure from Italy has created the environment where Google pretty much has to give the info in order to help its cause.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Google Inc. revealed how it splits advertising revenue with search and content publishers, a move made in response to calls from publishers and regulators for greater transparency.

The Internet company said in a blog post Monday that it pays publishers 68% of the revenue Google collects from advertisers for content ads that appear on the publishers’ sites. Google said it pays publishers 51% of revenue for search ads.

The nerve! How dare those guys at Twitter even consider first booting all third party ad networks to the curb. Now they think they can charge publishers who are making money from the Twitter stream too! At least that’s what their new terms and conditions state in a truly less than clear manner, which is the Twitter way. I say more power to them.

All Things Digital’s Peter Kafka took the initial reaction from yesterday a step further by seeing just where Twitter may be heading with this whole generating revenue distraction.

Twitter isn’t just booting other ad networks out of its stream. It now plans to tax some start-ups and publishers that are making money from the service.

Twitter took a big step toward claiming their territory (which, after all, they created) regarding what advertising will or will not appear in the Twitter stream. The short answer is that no third party ads will appear there so the Promoted Tweets program introduced by Twitter will be the sole provider of advertising.

This is potentially bad news for several companies including Ad.ly and Twad.ly whose models were built , at least in part, around the ability to advertise in the Twitter stream. TweetUp has responded that they never intended to advertise in stream anyway.

Here is information via the Twitter blog and TechCrunch regarding Twitter’s decision.

In what was deemed a ‘difficult decision’ the FTC has let Google clear the regulatory hurdle needed to OK the purchase of AdMob. One of the unlikely thank you notes that Google can send out in getting this decision is to Apple since the FTC their acquisition of Quattro Wireless and the introduction of iAd as two factors that exhibited sufficient competition to Google in this space.

MediaPost reports

While the commission said in its closing letter that the deal required “close scrutiny,” the FTC ultimately found that Apple’s entry into the market offers “reason to believe that Apple quickly will become a strong mobile advertising network competitor.”

The letter states: “AdMob’s success to date on the iPhone platform is unlikely to be an accurate predictor of AdMob’s competitive significance going forward, whether AdMob is owned by Google or not.”

It looks like everyone is discovering just how far Facebook will allow itself to be pushed before it admits either it was wrong about something or it feels it’s backed far enough into a corner to talk. This time it was Mark Zuckerberg who wrote a response in The Washington Post that tells the world just where he and the company stand with regard to the great privacy gaffe of ’10.

It appears as if it takes a full court press from the press to overcome Facebook’s own standards by which 7,000 responses to a policy change must be heard before anything can be changed by Facebook in a more democratic fashion (do you remember that?). While I may have missed it I have not heard anything that talks about that rule but I think that the term “Facebook rules” is an oxymoron anyway unless Zuckerberg has a T-shirt that says it along with his pleasant “I’m CEO, Bitch!” business card offering.