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Online Spending for the Holiday Up 15.4%

posted on December 27, 2010

Now that Christmas 2010 is behind us it’s time to look at just how well the holiday shopping season was for the online crowd. If we are to believe the numbers reported by the Wall Street Journal and MasterCard Advisors it was very merry indeed.

According to a WSJ article there are more than one source reporting an increase

The current year’s increase is “a very healthy growth rate and one of the positive stories of 2010,” said Michael MacNamara, vice president of research and analysis at SpendingPulse.

Sales over the Internet now account for about 10% of all retail sales, excluding purchases of automobiles and gas, according to SpendingPulse.

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E-mail and Social Media To Get Larger Slice of Budget Pie in 2011

posted on December 27, 2010

It’s the time of the year when the Marketing Optimists’ Club convenes daily and tells how 2011 is the year of (fill in the blank here). There are wonderful predictions that are based on surveys of nameless companies and their so-called executives who break out their crystal balls and give service providers hope that there will be business in 2011.

Today’s version comes from Strongmail via eMarketer. Strongmail (I always think of Homestar Runner’s Strong Bad when I see this name) provides solutions to integrate e-mail and social media so I’ll give you one guess what their survey found. Ding! Ding! Ding! You got it! Both e-mail AND social media will see increased spending in 2011 and will merit more attention than search by a longshot.

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Merry Christmas Pilgrims!

posted on December 25, 2010

What is today really about?

Here’s an explanation–with some help of Google, Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare. :-)

Merry Christmas!

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Google’s SMB Achilles’ Heel: People

posted on December 24, 2010

I wasn’t planning on posting today until I saw an article in the Wall Street Journal about how Google has added sales people to sell to local businesses. The push is to move products like Boost and Tags for the local market.

The article says

Google Inc., which helped popularize the idea of automated ad sales on the Web, has been quietly turning to an old-fashioned tool—phone calls—to compete in the hot market for local business advertising.

The Internet-search giant this year has hired several hundred sales representatives to call U.S. businesses such as spas, restaurants and hotels to promote new advertising initiatives, people familiar with the matter said. The effort includes an office in Tempe, Ariz., with around 100 sales representatives, one of these people said.

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Twitter Says No More to TwitterMoms

posted on December 23, 2010

Two years ago, Megan Calhoun launched a website devoted to connecting mom bloggers through Twitter. Thousands of moms signed up and with that came the brand names, eager to catch the ear of this influential segment of the online population.

She called the site TwitterMoms and I joined up back in August of 2009. Since then, I’ve been involved in a wide variety of marketing programs which were offered exclusively to members. Most of these were pay or gift for post opportunities where I was rewarded for writing about a product on my blog.  According to the website, more than $160,000 was rewarded to community members over the last year. A portion of the money was given to charity, and many members added their voice to stories for NBC/iVillage, the LA and New York Times and other media outlets.

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Need To Change Your Google Place Page Information? Buy the Building!

posted on December 23, 2010

Google has finalized the purchase of the largest building in Manhattan. We talked about the rumor of this purchase back in October.

At the time we also noticed that despite the apparent importance of the building to Google, their own Place Page for the site had it located in Brooklyn. Yikes!

Well, maybe you just need to buy the building to actually get something that even looks like support from Google as it relates to Place Pages. We are happy to pass along that the new Google Manhattan location is indeed in Manhattan and not Brooklyn. Here’s the updated result as of today.

Phew! Is that a relief!

Now, Google, about that support issue ………..

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European Commission Fined By EU Court for Copyright Infringement

posted on December 23, 2010

In the past we have looked at how the European Commission does its business and let’s just say that we don’t always see eye to eye. Well, a recent ruling from an EU court has me taking a step back and asking more than a few questions.

The folks at ZDNet’s Between the Lines blog report

It’s kind of ironic that the European Commission, a proponent of the international trade agreement to enforce intellectual property rights, is being slapped with a fine of 12 million euros for infringing on the copyrights of a software company.

A European Union court has ruled against the European Commission, the EU’s own executive branch, over a years-long case involving the alteration of a language translation software system created by a French company.