Marketing Pilgrim

Our favorite source of information, the Pew Internet & American Life Project, has released its annual findings of what are the most popular activities on the Internet. As a reminder, we like Pew the most because by all appearances it seems that this research isn’t just a veiled PR stunt like most of the “research” that is passed around these days.

First, the simple fact that all marketers should be paying attention to the basics despite the daily temptation to rabbit trail after the latest and great online toys that promise the world but barely deliver a neighborhood at times. Those basics are email and search and they are still the dominant activities online by far.

Social is rising and that shouldn’t be ignored but good marketing is like anything else in that mastery of the basics should come before getting ahead of the game with the current online fad or flavor of the day. In other words, market accordingly!

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Some feel it’s a fake while others not so much. According to the video below the hacktivist group Anonymous is targeting one of the big boys on the Internet, Facebook, and they have set a date of November 5, 2011 for this to happen. With the way things are going in the world right now why not? You make the call. If you would rather read the message you can go to the end of this post to do so.

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The State of California wants to stop prisoners from using Facebook and has asked the social media network to shut down the accounts of anyone who updates while incarcerated.

Is this constitutional? Forget that whole number about “free speech.” I’m thinking more about cruel and unusual punishment!

Department of Corrections officials believe that prisoners are using Facebook for nefarious means. NBC news investigated and found that one prisoner posted, “Listenin 2 sum music tryin 2 unwind.” This madness must stop.

In all seriousness, they also found evidence of harassment and it’s likely that there are worse offenders but that’s not a problem exclusive to the inmate population. There are plenty of free birds who use Facebook to attack others and troll for trouble. Facebook has systems to deal with these kinds of issues no matter who is behind them. Why not deal with offenders as they happen? Why ban every inmate across the board? And is that even possible?

A new Yahoo! study states that there has been a 54% increase in the time spent on the mobile web and a 29% increase in time spent watching video on a mobile device.

Are you tired of hearing it yet? Your customers are going mobile — sort of. The study, called “Mobile Modes: How to Connect with Mobile Consumers,” also found that one third of the total time spent on mobile devices is spent at home. That’s right. Mobile, isn’t always mobile and we often forget that. Mobile is taking the place of the home PC. For many people, it’s become the primary way they connect with the world as you can see in this chart from the report.

This post has been updated. See end of post for details.

The riots in London is the most recent story getting as much attention for its use of social media as is the actual reason for the riots themselves. The unfortunate incident that set this off is a case of a man being killed by police. To be fair, I have not looked into the circumstances surrounding these riots or the true sentiment towards the rioters themselves. Believe me, there is enough trouble here in the States to keep us all worried busy.

What is interesting is the role social media plays in how these events are played out. We all remember how it took a Google employee to organize protesters in Egypt using Facebook. The irony is not lost on that one and you wonder if that happened today would he be fired for not using Google+.

While I sincerely doubt that Google can do anything to eradicate spam it is certainly trying to make it easier for people to report it.

The Google Webmaster Central blog tells of improvements in their spam report form and some other areas of consideration when it comes to the Google search experience as a whole. When you take a look at some of these improvements you can’t help but think that maybe, and I mean JUST maybe, Google is realizing that speaking ‘engineering’ 24/7 isn’t as effective as they once thought.

Here are the improvements as listed on their post: