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Samsung Posts Fake Reviews and Enters Reputation Hall of Shame

posted on April 18, 2013

One of Samsung's CEOs Trust MeSamsung has been on a pretty good roll for a bit, haven’t they? Their smartphones have become what many feel is a real competitor to Apple’s iPhone which is a tremendous accomplishment in and of itself. When things are going well you do what you can to keep the momentum going, right?

Well, in Samsung’s case they appear to have gotten their hand caught so far in the cookie jar that they have needed to apologize for violating one of the most basic rules of doing ethical online business: don’t fake reviews. According to Techspot Samsung is simply admitting to screwing up without really even fighting.

Officials in Taiwan are investigating claims that Samsung paid people to post favorable reviews about their products online while at the same time offering up negative feedback on rival HTC’s products. The investigation launched after the Fair Trade Commission received numerous complaints on the matter.

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Twitter Adds #music Service

posted on April 18, 2013

music_PlayerTwitter is branching out as of late.

While the rumors have been around for a while, we decided to wait until a service actually happened before we wrote about it so today is the day for Twitter #music.

The Twitter blog tells us

Today, we’re releasing Twitter #music, a new service that will change the way people find music, based on Twitter. It uses Twitter activity, including Tweets and engagement, to detect and surface the most popular tracks and emerging artists. It also brings artists’ music-related Twitter activity front and center: go to their profiles to see which music artists they follow and listen to songs by those artists. And, of course, you can tweet songs right from the app.

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Facebook Hires Former Apple Maps Executive for Mobile Effort

posted on April 17, 2013

facebook-icon 1Let’s think about this for a second.

Facebook is launching its Home initiative which is an Android platform. As part of the effort to be a mobile company they have now hired Richard Williamson who led the great ill-fated Apple Maps launch of 2012. You remember that one, right? It’s where landmarks were somewhere other than where they should be and fanbois and girls were led down alley ways with directions that were less than direct. Yup, that one.

Well, Facebook must know something other than that record to hire Williamson. Bloomberg reports

Williamson joined Facebook in the past couple of weeks to be a manager within its expanding mobile-software group, said two of the people, who declined to be identified because the information isn’t public.

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Google’s Wildfire Scraps Standalone Programs, Forces Full Subscription

posted on April 17, 2013

Wildfire LogoIf you have been using Google’s Wildfire platform on a ‘one-off’ basis for your social marketing campaigns / promotions or whatever you want to call them, get ready for a big change.

After June 30th Google is removing all tiered pricing programs and going with its full suite option (Social Marketing Suite) only. Let’s just say that many people are not too happy about this.

TechCrunch’s Drew Olanoff reported

When Google wanted to get into the game of selling social ads across all platforms, it decided to acquire Wildfire, a company that had the market on lockdown. Since the acquisition last July, little has changed as far as what Wildfire offered, how it offered it and there was little to no impact for current customers.

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Faster Mobile Experience Should Help Marketers But Will It?

posted on April 16, 2013

According to the Google Analytics blog the speed of mobile sites is increasing and comes close to matching that of the desktop.

This is probably a mixed bag for marketers. Why a mixed bag? Well, as the mobile experience gets faster marketers will need to match marketing performance with these efforts. As we have seen, sometimes the marketing hype far exceeds the marketing reality.

Here is a chart from the Analytics blog post. The information was gathered from Google’s Site Speed results of opted in web sites.

Page Load Times Google Site Speed Reports

So how are your mobile efforts holding up? Are you ready for a truly mobile Internet?

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Google Places for Business Category Tool Update

posted on April 16, 2013

Google Local ResultAs part of our service here at Marketing Pilgrim we like to bring tools to our readers attention that will help them do their online marketing chores. As we all know, SEO is an interesting art / science but it can be a bit tedious and it is certainly a “what you don’t know can REALLY hurt you” proposition, especially in the world of local SEO.

One of the continuing mysteries is the true understanding of Google local search. There are always updates and more than a fair share of confusion as to what is or is not acceptable or considered a ‘best practice’ at any given time.

An area that Google created some confusion in (one of many) is the ability to categorize a local business accurately. Google requires that you use at least some Google categories to put your business in the right class but oftentimes the available categories are not sufficient.

What we have learned over the years is that if you have a problem with local search you can look to Mike Blumenthal and his merry band of followers for some good answers. The latest is the update of his Google Business for Places Category Tool. Simply put it can save you a lot of hassle. Here is a screenshot and a description of the update just released yesterday.

Google Places Category Update

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Google’s Offer to EU Labeled a ‘Non-Starter’ By Rivals Before It Is Even Seen

posted on April 15, 2013

google-logoSo as not to create confusion about what exactly is going on between Google, the European Union and Google’s friends at FairSearch.org here are the highlights of what appears to be going on with Google in its continuing battle with the EU and various ‘competitors’.

  • For three years Google and its treatment of its search results have been under investigation by the EU or the European Commission (EC) (I get confused myself on this one so forgive me).
  • FairSearch.org and its member companies have been after the EU to punish Google for claims of unfair trade practices which include charges of Google being a search monopoly