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Bing Launches Daily Deal Aggregator

posted on September 23, 2011

Daily deal sites are out of control. They’re like. . . well, you know. . . everybody’s got one. Now Bing has one, but instead of running their own deals, they’re aggregating the ones that are already out there.

In theory, it’s a good concept. In practice, I’d say they have a little work to do.

First off, the PR on the site says it’s all about daily deals, a phrase that has come to take on a certain meaning. A daily deal is one of those short-term, limited quantity, discounts usually for some kind of food or service. But the top line on Bing’s very graphically-oriented deal site is dedicated to retail items with a “find the best price” engine attached to each. That’s not a daily deal. That’s not even necessarily a deal!

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Spotify and Facebook: How Free Can Turn into Big Dollars

posted on September 23, 2011

One of the most well-thought out new features on Facebook is the sharing of music between you and your friends. Much of this comes from their partner Spotify, whose CEO Daniel Ek spoke at yesterday’s F8 Conference.

He brought up two points that really stuck with me.

First is the concept of the record collection. In the days before the internet, we used to go to our friend’s home and browse through their albums. They were often proudly displayed in the living room (if you were a grown-up) or in an orange crate in the bedroom (if you were a teen). We were defined by our collection. A collection of current artists said you were cool. If you had Johnny Mathis mixed with Johnny Rotten, you were an individualist. The biggest collection of Broadway soundtracks this side of the Great White Way? You’re probably a little flashier than most.

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Bing Action Buttons for Search

posted on September 23, 2011

Poor Bing.

All of the search and social media world is in a tizzy over changes at Facebook and Google’s response to those changes. It’s as if these two are the only players in the online space.

The sad fact is that, in the eyes of most, they are (but let’s let Twitter join the club as well).

So whenever Bing does something pretty cool like their new Action Buttons in search results, the news gets buried. Well, you have been told. If you go and do certain searches over at Bing the search engine allows you to take actions based on that search from inside the engine itself. From the Bing blog

Helping you get things done faster is a big focus for us at Bing.

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Why Do We “Hate” Facebook So Much?

posted on September 23, 2011

Facebook has a very unique place in the psyche of the Internet consumer. There is this oddly intense love / hate relationship that almost always ends in submission by the user, acceptance of whatever changes have come down the pike and even the eventual forgetting what the complaining was about in the first place.

Honestly, it’s a bit annoying. Facebook users are starting to sound very much like Google haters. They recognize the importance of the platform and services as they relate to what they do in their lives but seem to want to see the mighty fall in process. I often wonder what would happen if so many Facebook haters got their wish and the service just got up and went away. That would be an interesting day because I suspect not too many of them would be genuinely happy.

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The Trouble With Marketing Automation

posted on September 23, 2011

In its purest sense the idea of marketing automation is a good thing. The more you can automate a process to help achieve a desired result the better. Boiling marketing and sales down to repeatable and scalable events is the dream of all marketers because we all know the pressure to get more from less these days. Automation is supposed to help people do more with less so marketers are flocking to it.

As with most theories, however, the reality of the situation soon comes to life and the chinks in the marketing automation armor can be exposed as quickly as they can be celebrated. The trouble is that while it’s easy to sit back and say “if person X does Y then we give them Z to complete the sales process” those pesky people aren’t as similar as is required for a process to be repeatable AND successful over and over again.

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New Study Says the More Personalized, the Better

posted on September 22, 2011

When you travel around the internet, you come across ads that are somewhat personalized. You’ll see banners for sites you’ve previously visited and ads for stores in your neighborhood because advertisers know where you live. But how about an ad that responses to the weather at your location or your age?

Enter Eyeview. They’re a provider that specializes in highly-targeted video ads. Here’s a panel from a Target ad customized by gender and weather.

The ads begin the same but change to show the location of the nearest Target store and then an appropriate item. In this case, a short-sleeve Glee t-shirt for the sunny, Southern California girl, and a cozy, long-sleeve shirt for the guy in rainy Chicago.

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Facebook Puts on a New Face with Timeline and Ticker

posted on September 22, 2011

Facebook is about to change and this time it’s not about a shake-up of your sidebar or a reshuffling of how things show up on your wall. This time, the change is big. It’s a whole new way to connect with the world and share the things that are important to you.

It’s about the timeline, the ticker and a whole new series of open graph apps. I spent the morning listening to Mark Zuckerberg present the new Facebook on a LiveStream from the f8 conference and here’s what I came away with.

TIMELINE

Timeline is one of two big, structural changes to Facebook. It’s meant to tell the story of your life by presenting everything you’ve done (and mentioned on Facebook) in chronological order. It really is a timeline – just like the ones they made you use in history class when you were in school.