Marketing Pilgrim

I will warn you on this one. I have tried to be a location based services user but I lose interest real quickly. My erratic check-ins at restaurants or sporting events are more a result of me saying “I guess I could check in” or my wife checking in thus making me get competitive and making sure I am not one-upped by her. Not exactly the stuff of location based legend, I know.

That’s why when Foursquare announced that their business pages were becoming self-serve I had to actually educate myself as to what this meant. Since January of 2010 these pages have existed but the foursquare blog tells of the new option:

We told you about the beta of this search feature way back in June but that’s like a few years ago in Internet time.

So that you will always know when something is real or if it’s beta, here is a reminder about this search feature called Instant Pages which speeds certain search result pages downloads to literally nothing (because they are pre downloaded before you click on the search result) in the latest stable version of Chrome. Although Google has not bothered to update the video, here it is again for you.

What’s your take on this feature? Is it useful? Personally, I get a little leery of just how often something like this actually impacts results since Google uses the vague language in the post on the Chrome blog announcing the more permanent addition of the feature.

They say that all publicity is good publicity so making friends with a journalist who covers your industry is worth the time and effort. (So says this journalist.) Where can you find such an individual? If you have a good social media presence, they’ll find you.

According to the 2011 Arketi Web Watch Survey, 64% of B2B journalists said they spent more than 20 hours a week online and 21% spent over 40. The overwhelming majority of that time was spent reading news and searching for story ideas. (I’m here to tell you it’s so very true.) Where do they get those ideas? Check this out:

Congratulations, you’re pregnant! Step one: tell the father. Step two: update your Facebook profile. Come to think of it, for some people, it might just be the other way around. . .

Facebook has added a new option to the family drop-down. It’s called Expected: Child and that colon makes me wonder if they’re planning on adding other options. Expected: Dog, Expected: Ex-Husband?

On the surface, it’s a charming addition. A fun and surprising way to tell everyone the good news. But as one SFGate blogger points out, what happens when the employer you didn’t tell sees the change? What if the pregnancy ends badly? Do you really want baby daddy number two to know that you’re about to do it again with baby daddy number three?

I know, I know. I just asked yesterday whether anyone gave a rip about the deals space. Surprisingly more people than I thought actually did which is good to know.

Today this article from the Wall Street Journal caught my eye not just because of the deals aspect but more from a pure business marketing aspect. Amazon is a monster in the same way that Google is. It has a ton of weight to throw around and it doesn’t mind doing so. It offers local deals in a few markets (Boise, LA and others) just like Groupon does. Amazon invested in Groupon’s biggest competitor. So what better way to pee in Groupon’s corn flakes than to go after their home market of Chicago?

I had never heard of Airbnb until yesterday. Chances are you’d never heard of the “rent a room in my house” service either.

However, sitting in Chicago’s airport–returning from an extended vacation–I couldn’t help but learn all about Airbnb. At least, the part about the vandalism and theft suffered by one of its members.

Now, it’s unlikely that I would ever have cared about Airbnb–or that one of its members”EJ” had suffered such a horrible event. After all, who in their right mind rents out their house to a complete stranger and expects never to face theft or vandalism? Apparently 60,000+ people do exactly that and, up until this point, have never had any major issues. As far as Airbnb was concerned, it had cornered a small, but growing market that relied on the honesty and decency of those looking for a bed for the night.