Marketing Pilgrim

Local. Checkins. Deals. These are the top three buzzwords of mobile marketing. Though mobile’s been around awhile, this holiday season is poised to be the biggest when it comes to the use of mobile phones to facilitate shopping. But for every Old Navy, there are a hundred small business owners who would like to get in on the game but are overwhelmed by the process. PlacePop.com can do something about that.

PlacePop isn’t one of the biggest players in the checkin game (not yet) but they have something Foursquare doesn’t have and that’s simplicity. The site, which was created by Kent Lindstrom, the former CEO of Friendster, was originally designed as an application that would allow people to share their favorite restaurants and shops with friends. Now, they’ve converted the app into a loyalty program for small businesses.

Facebook is on its way to trademarking the word “Face,” but don’t worry, you won’t have to change your lingo to “Get out of my countenance” any time soon. According to Inside Facebook, the trademark application only applies when the word “face” is used in specific circumstances. Here’s the language of the application:

Telecommunication services, namely, providing online chat rooms and electronic bulletin boards for transmission of messages among computer users in the field of general interest and concerning social and entertainment subject matter, none primarily featuring or relating to motoring or to cars.

The first part I get, but cars? Is Facebook going into the automobile dealer business? (Facemobiles?)

I can’t begrudge a company trying to protect its turf but are they really worried that someone will confuse Joe’s Faceforum with the one and only Facebook?

Since people are pre-occupied right before Thanksgiving with purchasing their last minute Turduckens, I thought it would be the right time to drop a chart on you to think about between courses. What better way to fight off a tryptophan induced food coma than think about paid search!

According to Covario, a paid search management firm (shocking that they would do something promoting, err, researching paid search!) that social paid search (is it really paid search or do we not have another way to describe it?) is going to be what all the cool kids are doing in 2011. In fact, they predict that up to 20% of paid search spend will be in the social realm. Not to worry though because that funding won’t come out of existing paid budgets but rather from display etc (gee, who woulda thunk?). Here’s a picture for you to consider from eMarketer.

You really know it’s the day before Thanksgiving when the following can be passed off as news.

Apparently Google has some fans in Deutschland as evidenced by how these supporters have shown their ‘love’. As you may or may not know, Germany has been a bit of a flashpoint for Google’s continuing Street View battles regarding privacy etc etc. As a result of this battle, Google provided Germans the opportunity to opt out of the program by allowing households to say “Nein” to the service and have their home blurred out of their street view.

As Search Engine Land reports, German Google supporters have shown an odd way to exhibit their Google-lust.

Some people who chose to blur their houses on Google Street View in Germany received an unexpected real life blurring: Google fans who threw eggs at their homes.

So how does a website capturing 25% of all US based traffic grow? They take over your home page of course!

Recently, many Facebook users (myself included) have been presented with a gray bar at the top of the Facebook website inviting them to make Facebook their home page.

Facebook is using a subtle trick that isn’t much a trick at all; however, Facebook’s approach at bookmarketing is no-doubt convincing tens of thousands of people to change their home page to Facebook today.

The instructions in the gray bar are easy enough to follow and low-and-behold it works, but what is the magical technology behind this? Is it some Facebook JavaScript or Ajax wizardry?

ComScore has released their October 2010 Media Metrix report which counts down the Top 50 US Web Properties for the month.

Halloween helped PartyCity.com double their monthly visitor count making them the number one growth site, followed closely by AVG Technologies and McDonalds.

Google held the top spot for most visitors with Yahoo close on its heels. LinkedIn broke into the top 50 and Facebook broke the 150 million mark for the first time putting it in fourth place.

The numbers of most use to marketers are the growth categories. Online gambling jumped up 114% which comScore says is likely due to interest in the World Series of Poker. Humor sites had the next highest growth at a mere 25% jump over September but it’s still a trend. Comedy Central, FunnyorDie and CollegeHumor all helped that category succeed.