You read it right. As I noted yesterday, Facebook had become so big and so powerful that they are starting to make Microsoft like moves that make it impossible to not poke fun at them. The efforts to force sites like Teachbook, and possibly others, to stop using book in their names apparently weren’t enough for Facebook. Now it appears as if they are making an effort to trademark the word ‘face’.
In the “you can’t make this crap up category” TechCrunch reports
The biggest problem with social media marketing is that it’s hard to measure your results. You throw everything you have at Twitter and Facebook and mostly you just hope to see an upswing in traffic.
To alleviate this problem, ShareThis, the social media sharing widget, is adding an analytic component that will not only measure sharing but will also monitor the Social Reach. Social Reach looks not only at the outbound sharing but it follows through to see if the person who gets the link clicks on it, thus completing the circle of [blog] life.
According to ShareThis’ website, the new analytics will also deliver numbers related to the type of audience that is sharing your links and it will compare your blog to others in the category to see if you’re doing better or worse than your competition.
The Mall of America has 4.2 million square feet of gross building space, 4.3 miles of storefront footage, 520 stores and 40 million visitors annually. Now try to remember where you parked, let alone find a bathroom when you need one. Sam Feuer, CEO of Mindsmack has the solution. It’s a smartphone app called FastMall which is as helpful to advertisers as it is to consumers.
I spent some time with Sam this week talking about FastMall and the rise in mobile marketing.
Let’s begin with a short description of your product and how it came about.
In the category of “Why should this even surprise anyone?”, Facebook is working hard to shut down any social networking service that is incorporating the word “book” into their name.
Over at Wired magazine’s Threat Level blog it reports on a small start-up called Teachbook that is either delusional or just milking as much publicity as they can out of their moment in the muted spotlight of the Internet.
Social-networking upstart Teachbook said Wednesday it would challenge a trademark infringement lawsuit brought by Facebook, which is demanding the teacher-oriented site remove “book” from its name.
This is a popular pastime of Facebook’s legal team
Facebook, in a lawsuit Threat Level reported on Tuesday, claims the term “book” cannot be used to name social-networking sites. The Palo Alto-based site claims Teachbook might dilute its famous name or cause confusion over which is the real Facebook.
If you were characterize the relationship between Google and Yelp these days it would have to occur on a sliding scale that runs between contentious and bearable. Let’s face it, they don’t get along well and each new event in the relationship adds some more drama.
Yelp has rebuffed a Google attempt to buy the service at the end of last year and they have recently been in a spat over the use of Yelp reviews in Google Place Pages. This little battle was based on both the use of the reviews at all and where they were usually placed (which was at the end of the line behind Zagat’s and others).
Now it appears that Google has taken Yelp results out of their Place Page results entirely. According to TechCrunch
A few minutes ago, I pointed by my browser to the Daily Radar Blips sites with the intention of dropping a link to my last post here on Marketing Pilgrim. This is what I found:
Apparently Future US, the parent company of Daily Radar, has pulled the plug on the entire network including BallHype, ShowHype and my beloved TVBlips. Seriously? Just like that?
I took a turn around the internet and Twitter and was surprised to find that it wasn’t a big topic of conversation. Few people seem to have noticed the closure and maybe that, right there, explains it all.
Customer interaction is the key behind two new marketing campaigns that hit the web this past week, Hyundai “Uncensored” and Halo’s Robotic Arm. Let’s take a closer look and see if we can get inspired for a campaign of our own.
Hyundai’s “Uncensored” campaign has gained the interest of both consumers and the media. The idea behind it was to gather unsolicited and uncensored testimonials by putting hidden cameras in cars. The commercials have been airing on TV and YouTube for the past month and now Hyundai is using Facebook to drive their point home. They used their Facebook page to pick 50 participants for a one-month test drive. The drivers were asked to post their thoughts regularly on their Facebook page. They were also given cameras so they could record and upload videos. The assumption here is that most people will post kind thoughts even if it’s not the full truth. But anytime you ask people for an opinion, you’re bound to get complainers and Hyundai has several on their “Uncensored” Facebook page. One woman talks about a class action suit due to a gas problem and another wails on Hyundai’s customer service.
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