Marketing Pilgrim

A new Twitter application has been launched called StrawPoll, which offers Twitter users the ability to poll and monitor their followers.

The application can be found at www.StrawPollNow.com and is now available to all Twitter users.

StrawPoll works with the Twitter API to offer your followers not only the poll question you would like answered, but also a shortened URL to a StrawPollNow.com page where users can answer the poll more in-depth.

Followers can simply vote by replying to the person they follow with the number that represents the answer:

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The New York Times reported today that in an interview, Yahoo’s CEO and co-founder, Jerry Yang, claimed that Microsoft pulled it’s bid for his company after Yahoo counter offered the software giants previous bid.

This is in direct contrast to claims by Steve Ballmer and Microsoft’s advisers, that stated that the bid was pulled due to Yahoo’s unwillingness to counter, and Mr. Yang and his board’s decision to settle on a price of $37 a share their ultimate refusal to budge.

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Techcrunch.com has released an email sent by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to Microsoft employees:

This afternoon I sent the attached letter to Jerry Yang announcing that Microsoft has withdrawn its proposal to acquire Yahoo. We proposed the deal in the belief that a Microsoft-Yahoo merger would create a combined company with the resources and assets to win in the fast-growing market for advertising and online services.

Ballmer spends most the email bolstering the company’s initiatives in terms of Internet advertising, and explains that the Yahoo merger was more of an accelerated means to obtain the company’s vision on the Web rather than an end all be all.

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Microsoft announced its plan to withdraw its proposal to acquire Yahoo! today.

This is a strange, and somewhat unexpected turn of events in the ongoing Microhoo saga.

In a letter, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stated:

“We continue to believe that our proposed acquisition made sense for
Microsoft, Yahoo! and the market as a whole. Our goal in pursuing a
combination with Yahoo! was to provide greater choice and innovation in the
marketplace and create real value for our respective stockholders and
employees.”

The reason that Ballmer gave for the withdraw was:

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And so the Microhoo saga continues.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Microsoft plans to allocate $1.5 billion dollars to employee retention if the merger goes through. This is according to court documents in a shareholder lawsuit cited by the WSJ. According to CNET:

The documents include transcripts of a March 24 conference call hearing between attorneys for Yahoo and two Detroit-based pension funds. During the call, a Yahoo attorney noted Microsoft had informed the company that it “earmarked $1.5 billion for employee retention at Yahoo,” cites the Journal.

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In a move that would only shock SEOs working in 1998, a US court has deemed Meta keywords as “immaterial” as it relates to their effect on search rankings.

The decision was reached during the Standard Process, Inc. v. Banks case. Standard Process had filed suit against Dr. Scott J. Banks for trademark infringement, the alleged infringement coming at least partly by way of one of Standard Process’s trademarks being found in Bank’s Meta keywords tag .

As Barry Schawrtz commented on Search Engine Land:

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According to a federal class action lawsuit filed Tuesday April 22nd by Kabateck Brown Kellner, LLP in U.S. District Court, Google is deceiving its customers into paying for ads they do not want.

Brian Kabateck is the lead counsel on the case. He recently won a multi-million dollar settlement from Yahoo! and earlier a $90 million settlement from Google on behalf of advertisers victimized by click fraud.

According to a release from the firm, Kabateck stated:

“This debunks Google’s carefully cultivated image. Google is hurting its customers on two fronts. Google is not only taking money out of customers’ pockets, it’s derailing their advertising strategies as well.”

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The Google video team, via the Google Video blog, announced changes to the way you can search and view videos on the search engine.

According to the Google video blog:

“Now you can choose any of three ways to view your video search-results: a traditional list view, a grid view and, for those of you who like to maximize your video-watching efficiency, a TV view, where you can watch an embedded video while continuing to view your search results next to the video for a more seamless browse and search experience.”

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It was announced on Friday via the Google Webmaster Central Blog that the search engine has been experimenting with crawling through html forms in order to more fully index sites.

The search engine is filling out forms on a “small number of particularly useful sites” in order to bring forth the content that is populated by these forms and index these results.

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The Article 29 Working Party, an EU commission formed around the concept of defining the data protection rights of individuals, published a report last Friday stating that search services have no need to keep personal data beyond a six month period.

Google, whose company policy is an 18 month retention of such data, defended this practice as a necessity for constant improvement of search results.

The group of data protection commissioners that comprise the Article 29 Working found that computer Web addresses and cookie monitoring are personal information that search services should do more to protect.

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By David Snyder.

Much has been made around the Web about the “Truth and Myth” post by Software Engineer Andy Golding on the Google News blog. There have been quite a few posts written about how the ideas discussed by Golding relate to publishers, SEOs, and PR professionals.

What about the social media marketer and corporate reputation manager?

Many people, who have not found the value of great reputation management tools such as Trackur, utilize Google News Alerts to find out what is being said about their company on the web. The question is, how does this recent post effect how these professionals obtain and utilize information?

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By David Snyder.

Li Ka-shing, Hong Kong billionaire and CEO of telecommunications conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa, has increased his investment in Facebook in excess of $100 million.

Li announced the investment in Facebook during Hutchison’s earnings call on Thursday.

Li shared his opinions on Facebook on during an earnings press conference for Hutchinson:

“Facebook is doing very well, and we could have some synergy between the 3G services of Hutchison and Facebook, so the customers could use Facebook on mobile phones.”

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