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What’s Next? Marketing to Match Your Mood

posted on April 18, 2011

It’s just another manic Monday, which means I’m in the mood for chocolate, Ramen noodles and movies that don’t make me think. The last thing I want to do is cook, so this would be a great time to show me an ad for a pizza delivery service that includes fresh-baked, chocolate chip cookies with every order.

Imagine if you could match marketing to mood. Actually, you may not have to imagine for long, because the experts say it’s coming soon.

Moodagent is one step in that direction, it’s a mobile phone app that delivers a playlist of music based on your chosen mood. The program uses a variety of criteria to slot songs into emotional compartments such as happy, angry and sensual. For some odd reason my husband thinks “wistful” should be one of the choices, but what would it play? “Rainbow Connection” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s?”

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Disruptive Demand Media Fights Disruptive Third Party Claims

posted on April 18, 2011

If you ever read any corporately generated content from content farm poster child, Demand Media, it won’t take long before you see the word disruptive. Here is the first sentence from content.demandmedia.com

Demand Media is a disruptive online media company. We’re doing things differently. And while we respect media’s heritage deeply, we respect its evolutionary potential even more.

Well, it looks like Demand’s world is being disrupted as well from the recent Google Panda update. In a post from this past weekend, Larry Fitzgibbon, Demand’s EVP of Media and Operations, was more or less forced to respond to some third party ‘data’ (from the company Sistrix who is making a name for its relatively unknown self by producing these Demand Media ‘insights’) that claimed that the recent Panda update in its many iterations really hurt the content farm machine and was rather disruptive to Demand’s bread and butter which is Google traffic.

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Yahoo’s Digg Clone Never Lived Up To the Buzz, Shuts Down

posted on April 18, 2011

Yahoo BuzzI recall the hype surrounding Yahoo Buzz, when it first launched.

Those publishers that were lucky enough to get in on the beta, told stories of massive traffic surges, unicorns, and puppies. Those on the outside, were left wondering when they would get a piece of the traffic pie.

By the time Yahoo Buzz launched to the masses, the traffic spikes had evaporated–an expected dilution when you open the flood gates to all blogs. A fact, I noted at the time…

Now, before you get dizzy with excitement, you might want to temper your expectations. Marketing Pilgrim joined Yahoo Buzz, late in the beta–actually about 3 weeks ago. Despite adding big buttons to the bottom of each post, we’ve not seen any significant traffic from Yahoo Buzz.

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Google Tags Tagged for Extinction

posted on April 18, 2011

No matter what kind or how large of company you are there is the reality that you are still a local company in many circumstances. Even large business-to-business companies have local offices that have a presence in Google, whether it is asked for or not (If you need proof just do a search for IBM and a major city qualifier (like ‘IBM San Francisco’) and you’ll see what I mean).

It’s this focus on all things local that makes anything that Google does around their local efforts quite important. In just the last week or so the whole local play has been placed on the newly minted SVP, Jeff Huber, and already there is a change in one offering that Google was having some success in: the Google Tags product. Below is a picture of what you may see in the Google SERPs until the service is axed on April 29.

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Cup of Joe: Apple’s Army Wants To Dance, Will Apple Let Them?

posted on April 16, 2011

The video above is YouTube user, iTr3vor. iTr3vor has as an odd obsession with filming himself dancing like a maniac in various Apple stores. Quite honestly I don’t get it. But, let’s face it, when the last time you had as much fun as iTr3vor apparently has in each video? It appears that many viewers and other YouTube users agree. Trevor has amassed a subscriber count close to 20,000 and a Twitter following over 3000. That is pretty good for a kid that probably doesn’t even have a driver’s license. What I’d like to know is what is Apple going to do about it? If anything at all?

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March Mobile Mix: Connected Devices Up 21 Percent

posted on April 15, 2011

It’s time for the March Mobile Mix by Millennial Media. Try saying that three times fast.

The big news is that connected devices are up 21% month-over-month. This is mostly due to the rise in tablet usage and is expected to jump up again thanks to the release of the iPad2 and Blackberry Playbook.

Looking strictly at Smartphones, Android has the biggest chunk of the pie with 48%, but the release of the Verizon iPhone pushed iOS up 11%.

And here’s an interesting fact from the report:

63% of customers surveyed said they would be less likely to buy from a company via other purchase channels if they experienced a problem conducting a mobile transaction.

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Tomorrow is Officially Foursquare Day?

posted on April 15, 2011

Tomorrow, April 16, is Foursquare Day and it’s not just the workers at the busiest location-based check-in service who say so. Mayor Bloomberg of New York City says so, as does the Mayor of Indianapolis and apparently dozens of other cities across the US.

Here’s the skinny from the Foursquare Day home page.

Foursquare Day is April 16th – because it is the 4th month, and the 4-squared day! (4/16) It’s also the first “Social Media holiday” and was officially endorsed by Foursquare.com.

Foursquare Day is all about celebrating social media, but personally, I think they may be giving people the wrong impression. If it’s a “social media holiday,” doesn’t that mean you should take a break (aka a “holiday”) from social media. This whole thing could backfire on them. Imagine if everyone stopped Tweeting, updating their Facebook and checking-in for 24 hours! What a lonely planet this would be.