Marketing Pilgrim

After many rumors over the past twelve months, Yahoo has officially announced the shutdown of MyBlogLog in an email to users:

Dear MyBlogLog Customer,

You have been identified as a customer of Yahoo! MyBlogLog. We will officially discontinue Yahoo! MyBlogLog effective May 24, 2011. Your agreement with Yahoo!, to the extent that it applies to the Yahoo! MyBlogLog, will terminate on May 24, 2011.

After May 24, 2011 your credit card will no longer be charged for premium services on MyBlogLog. We will refund you the unused portion of your subscription, if any. The refund will appear as a credit via the billing method we have on file for you. To make sure that your billing information is correct and up to date, visit https://billing.yahoo.com.

Google has handed out another penalty to a high profile retail site after it discovered that the site’s techniques to get to the top of the SERP’s was not above board. This is the second high profile public flogging by Google of a rogue site in the past few weeks. Couple this with the strong ‘war on spam’ rhetoric and one might think that Google is starting to pay much closer attention to who gets where in their results and how they get there.

The Wall Street Journal reports

Google Inc. is penalizing Overstock.com Inc. in its search results after the retailer ran afoul of Google policies that prohibit companies from artificially boosting their ranking in the Internet giant’s search engine.

This isn’t a hidden fact; link building is the missing piece of most online marketing plans. Onsite SEO and content are just part of the game, but there is no part of code you can change that will have an impact on ranking like good, strong, focused links to your site’s pages. Naturally, link building is the one thing we all hate doing. Most SEOs, when you mention link building, will either groan and put their headphones back on, or just cry. But it is a necessary part of SEO.

I feel bad for MySpace. They came to us with a plan to socialize the internet. It was an easy way for everyone, from the student to the CEO to get together and share their interests, their thoughts and the ups and downs of their day. With a single click, strangers from across the world could become friends. It’s like that old Coca-Cola commercial where people of every race, creed and color stand hand-in-hand while they learn to sing in perfect harmony.

So what happened? How did MySpace go from harmony to off-key? Is it simply a case of not being the popular kid on the block anymore? Even after the recent upgrades, are they still that far off the mark?

52% of people who stopped using Twitter said they did it because they realized Twitter was pointless. Imagine that. The stat comes from the latest installment of ExactTarget’s Subscribers, Fans and Followers report. This one is called “The Social Breakup” and it’s all about why people stop following a brand on social media.

Yesterday, we talked about Facebook. Today, it’s all about Twitter.

On the upside, people said they liked Twitter because the messages were short, it provided unprecedented accessibility and even more than email or Facebook, Twitter was seen as a two-way street. Though more than half the people who started a Twitter account have stopped using it, the ones that stay are very active and they’re ready to engage in conversation.

“If you can’t get the results from Google that you want you should just go out and start your own darn search engine!”

How many times have we heard that one? Most people just turn tail and hide, resigned to the fact that making a search engine isn’t all that easy. That is unless you are the Chinese government’s press agency! Since Google doesn’t like to play nice the Chinese government has taken search into its own hands.

The Washington Post reports:

China’s main government news agency launched an Internet search site Tuesday, giving its own sanitized view of the Web following Google’s closure of its China-based search engine last year over censorship.

The Xinhua News Agency is operating http://www.panguso.comin partnership with state-owned China Mobile Ltd., the world’s biggest phone carrier by subscribers.