Marketing Pilgrim

Normally, there is not a lot of Bing news around these parts. This isn’t really news either but rather a little more insight into where all the money Microsoft dumps into online might be going (to the tune of losing over $2B last year) as they use a familiar group of characters for a holiday themed ad.

The numbers vary from day to day, and source to source, but best guess is that Apple has around 500,000 apps in the store. Android Market has approximately 300,000 active apps and the Windows Marketplace has 40,000. That’s a lot of apps.

According to the Millennial Media Mobile Mix for October, Music and Entertainment is now the number one category of apps. This is up over last year, when the category came in 4th and 5th. (They used to be counted as two separate categories.)

Last year, Games held the number one spot but have dropped to number 2, kicking Mocial down to 4th place. Holding steady at number 3 is Communications.

Millennial asked developers about their app plans for 2012 and here’s what they had to say:

Every day, LivingSocial offers heavily discounted prices on local restaurants, event tickets and services. On Black Friday, they’re doing away with the zip code, to present a list of national deals that they hope will make the holidays merrier for both their customers and their marketing partners.

Among the LivingSocial Black Friday deals are $25 for $50 worth of accessories at Verizon, $10 for $20 at OfficeMax, and Hearst magazine subscriptions for only $5.

Keeping in the holiday spirit, they’re also offering matching donations for Toys for Tots and Sketchers will donate a pair of shoes to charity for every one of their $20 for $40 vouchers sold.

On Cyber Monday, LivingSocial is sticking with the online theme, offering national deals on top internet sites. $25 for $50 at Bluefly.com, $20 for $40 at Red Envelope, and my favorite $10 for $20 worth of Skype credit.

Google keeps inching its way toward the +1 being a go to social signal as much as a Facebook Like is. There is still a long way to go but as these +1′s get more integrated into existing Google features they get a little more juice.

The latest is the opportunity for things that have been +1′d by a Gmail contact or someone from a Google+ circle to show up in the spotlight section of Google News.

The blog post tells us

Over the past few months, myriad sites across the web (including Google News) have adopted the +1 button to help start conversations. But there hasn’t been an easy way for signed-in users to see what news articles your friends are enjoying — until now.

E-mail marketing service provider Constant Contact has put together some interesting data around the use of social media by the SMB set. As of today it looks as if Facebook rules the roost of the social media choices with regard to perceived effectiveness . This chart comes courtesy of eMarketer.

83% of SMB’s surveyed find Facebook to be either very or moderately effective while the second place finisher, Twitter, had a 46% response in the same category. Google+ is still in its infancy so the number of SMB’s finding success is low but that’s to be expected at this point.

As with most search updates and innovations the easiest way to see just what can be done is to watch the video. Thank you Google Inside Search Blog.

Right now I am searching for a way to quickly navigate safely to Thanksgiving. I’m ready how about you?