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Skype Gets into Group Texting

posted on August 22, 2011

Skype, who is in the processing of being bought by Microsoft, just did a little buying of their own. They plunked down a rumored $85 million for group texting company GroupMe.

The GroupMe app was designed to solve a very basic problem — group decision making. If you’ve ever tried to plan a night out with four different you understand the issue. Fred calls Joe and suggests sushi, Joe calls Mary who says she doesn’t like sushi, so Joe texts Fred to say pick somewhere else, but in the meantime Fred is on the phone trying to talk Louise into coming out for sushi with him, while Mary texts Louise telling her Fred’s a loser and they’re all going for pizza. Next thing you know it’s 10:00 at night and no one has left the house yet.

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Facebook Falters While StumbleUpon Races By

posted on August 22, 2011

StumbleUpon CEO Garrett Camp, was all a Twitter on Friday when he got the news that StumbleUpon now drives 50% of all social media referral traffic in the US. The added bonus, they crawled up over Facebook to do it.

Here’s a chart that proves it:

Hmmm. . . interesting. It may be true that numbers (and social media CEO’s) don’t lie, but they have been known to bend the truth. In this case, I think we’re comparing apples and tomatoes, so the numbers aren’t really what they seem.

People go to Facebook to do a lot of things. They catch up with friends, post photos, play games, join groups and share links.

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Science, Not Guesswork, Will Bring Social Media Out of the Dark Ages

posted on August 22, 2011

For a full hour of ground-breaking social media science, data and myth busting, be sure to register for HubSpot’s Science of Social Media webinar. HubSpot is the sponsor of Marketing Pilgrim’s Inbound Marketing channel.

It’s easy to get sucked into soft-focus, touchy-feely social media advice. Stuff like “engage in the conversation,” “hug your followers,” and “have a personality.” And it’s often not easy to disagree with myths like these, since they “seem right” and nobody wants to be the guy that says “punch your customers in the face.”

The same thing was happening with medical advice centuries ago. “Common sense” approaches to health care led to things like magical tonics and bleeding. Not only did these things often not work, but much of the time they actually did more harm than good.

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How Folks Are Using Twitter [Infographic]

posted on August 22, 2011

We are always interested in opposing views. Last week we posted about how some have found that Twitter may have more bark than bite.

Now a survey conducted by Lab42 and shared over at Mashable paints a a more interactive picture of Twitter users. Granted it’s just 500 users but hey, in this day and age who needs more than a few responses to draw conclusions about what works and what doesn’t? Take a look.

Voltier Creative

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If Unique Visitors Count for Anything Then Yahoo, Aol and Microsoft Can Celebrate!

posted on August 22, 2011

Name three of the most maligned companies when it comes to their Internet efforts or their overall Internet image. Many would say that Yahoo, Aol and Microsoft are fair responses.

With Yahoo it just seems that they can’t keep out of their own way. Aol it’s just one bit of bad news after another interspersed with big purchases (which likely account for most of the traffic!) and with Microsoft there is more of a snicker in the industry whenever Microsoft and Internet are used in the same sentence.

So all that negativity may be warranted but according to comScore, if you think visitors equal success then these companies are more than OK.

Of course the gotcha in these numbers is that the four of the first 5 places go to companies that traffic includes all of their many sites.

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MP’s Sunday Interview: OpticsPlanet.com

posted on August 21, 2011

Here at Marketing Pilgrim we cover the news of the Internet and social media marketing industry every by sifting through the news and giving our opinions about some of the more important things. We like that.

What we also like is talking to real world marketing professionals who not only like to stay up to date on the news of the industry but who are knee deep in actually applying what we discuss here on a daily basis.

Our new feature will be called our Sunday Interview and our hope is to give our readers an insight into different applications of the many techniques that are available to online marketing practitioners these days.

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New Study Shows Twitter Buzz is Mostly a Bust

posted on August 19, 2011

Twitter needs a new mascot. Instead of cheery bird, they should use a happy bee, because a new study shows that Twitter has more buzz than Tweets.

Polaris Marketing Research Inc. surveyed 1,000 American consumers this past July and asked them about their Twitter usage.

Only 18% said they had sent a Tweet in the last sixty days, which is not surprising. We know that the majority of the Tweets come from a small number of users. What is surprising is that only 22% said they read a Tweet in the past 60 days.

Polaris President Jan Carlson says,

“In spite of all of the buzz about Twitter, our results show that individuals who are active on Twitter are in the minority of the general U.S. population.”