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Can Social Media Breathe New Life Into Baseball?

posted on April 5, 2012

You’re probably thinking “What’s up with the baseball and social media” theme of the last two days? That’s cool. While I am a HUGE baseball fan there are some bigger ideas wrapped around the idea of social media and its ability to add a new and dynamic dimension to a game that many have put behind football as the most important sport in America. That and the fact that there are very big marketing dollars involved.

The infographic you will see when you click through to the full post, which comes from social agency Banyan Branch, is taking a look at some of the social media numbers around players and teams in Major League Baseball. Take a look for yourself.

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App and Mobile Browsing Up Nearly 5% Over Last Year

posted on April 4, 2012

Depending on your half full / half empty point of view, a 5% increase in mobile activity is good / not that great.

comScore’s latest report shows that 49.5% of mobile subscribers downloaded apps in the past ninety days. That’s an increase of 4.6% over the three month average from late last year. (Check out the chart for specifics.)

But considering the constant barrage of new apps in the market, and Google’s new push with Google Play, I would have thought the number would be higher.

Then again, given that we’re looking at only about half a year’s time, a near 5% jump isn’t that bad. And, as you can see, there was an increase in all types of mobile activity including playing games and social networking.

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Google’s Project Glass: Creepy, Cool or Both?

posted on April 4, 2012

Thanks to Louis Gray I was introduced to this video about Google’s Project Glass concept. How much is real and how much is “what if” is “to be determined”. I watched the video and had a million different thoughts. The one main one though is just what Marketing Pilgrim’s founding pilgrim, Andy Beal, would think of the featured instrument.

Enjoy the video and share your thoughts with us. I’m sure you will have a few.

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Google Continues Search for Other Revenue With Movie Rental Deal

posted on April 4, 2012

Google is very busy trying to make sure that they can make money in more ways than just search. They have struggled in many areas such as the Android market etc and the result has been Google Play where they sell or rent just about anything and everything from books to music to movies and more.

To show just how willing they are to go to any length to make this thing work, their latest deal for movie rentals was reached with Paramount which is owned by Viacom who is locked in a court battle with Google. Peter Kafka of All Things D reports

Viacom and Google are locked in a copyright lawsuit that is nearly five years old. But that doesn’t mean the companies can’t do business together.

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Google Publishes Search Transparency Review for March

posted on April 4, 2012

Google has posted a laundry list of items that they attended to regarding search in March of this year. In fact the total list comes to 50 changes. You can read them all here at the Inside Search blog for Google.

Google calls these monthly posts started in December of last year “Search quality highlights” and they are indeed that. They are also one of the many ways that Google is trying to do a CYA with so many vultures hovering to try to get the search leader to be more transparent or else they will be seeing them in court. With the EU breathing down their neck because of the Microsoft led charge of the FairSearch efforts, Google is in need of looking as un-mysterious as possible.

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Talking Baseball and the Younger Generation

posted on April 4, 2012

Baseball season is upon us and though I am strictly an NHL gal, I understand the marketing potential of what many consider is America’s pastime.

Scarborough Sports Marketing just released a new study and infographic which shows that 49% of all American adults are Major League Baseball fans and 15% consider themselves “avid fans.”

What’s surprising is that 44% of Generation Y respondents said they were fans and 13% said they were an “avid fan.” Surprising, because we generally think of the 18-29 group as technology buffs who prefer Wii games to “we” games. But these numbers from Scarborough show that even though baseball card collecting isn’t as popular as it used to be, watching the games live and on TV still rules.

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Expedia and TripAdvisor Bring Claims Against Google to EU

posted on April 3, 2012

onclick=Add TripAdvisor and Expedia to the growing list of companies raising a collective voice against Google to the the European Union.

Reuters reports

Online travel agency Expedia on Friday accused Google of breaching EU rules with a formal complaint to EU antitrust regulators as it joined a dozen other firms that have taken their case to the European Commission in the last two years.

As for TripAdvisor? Bloomberg reports

TripAdvisor Inc. filed an antitrust complaint against Google Inc. with European Union regulators, adding a second set of allegations from an online travel company against the world’s largest search-engine operator.

TripAdvisor’s complaint addresses “anti-competitive and unfair practices by Google that harm the marketplace and consumer welfare,” the Newton, Massachusetts-based company said today in a statement, which didn’t give details of the claims. Streetmap, a British mapping service, also filed a complaint with regulators, the European Commission said.