Marketing Pilgrim

Tumblr is categorized as a social blogging site. That’s a nice title until you realize that there are 42 million Tumblr sites that are generating content (I hope they are not counting my account that I have done nothing with). One would hope that there is something of worth is going on in a community that big.

Combine this with the fact that Tumblr is a free service that needs to turn all of those accounts into revenue and your thoughts probably go to advertising. But how and where? Well Tumblr thinks it may have a solution. Of course, in the name of journalistic integrity the “a” word is not mentioned but we are smart enough to read between the lines.

The New York Times reports

One of the perks of being a blogger is you often get free items in return for a review. DVDs, food, gadgets, new tech — a good review is an excellent marketing tool, so most companies see these freebies as part of the cost of doing business.

Book publisher, William Morrow, however, is looking to reduce that cost and they want to see a bigger return on their investment.

Earlier this week, the LA Times published the text of a letter that was sent out to book bloggers. It outlines a new system where, instead of getting random books in the mail, bloggers will be asked to choose their review titles from a list.

Nothing wrong with that. It’s more work on the publisher’s part, but it’s targeted so it should make for more and better reviews.

The Blogger platform for blogs is still one of the most widely used platforms on the web but it certainly is not one that gets a lot of press for innovation.

Google is trying to change that by offering new Dynamic Views which make presentation of blog materials a lot more modern and is Blogger’s attempt at staying competitive in the blog platform space. Hey with Tumblr just closing an $85 million dollar round of investment this is not a space to be sitting idle. Well, on the Internet, is there any space where you can do that?

Take a look at Google video presentation of these new Dynamic Views. This comes from the Blogger Buzz blog which is using one of the new designs as is the Lat Long blog.

Marketers have long had a love / hate relationship with StumbleUpon. The site is known for sending large quantities of traffic to your webpages and if you become a SU favorite, the numbers will go through the roof. The downside is that StumbleUpon traffic rarely stays more than a few seconds and doesn’t usually convert.

So, for those of you who like to keep your bounce rate in check, stop reading. For the rest of you, onward we go to StumbleUpon’s new iPad upgrade. The new interface makes it easy to swipe through page after page, leave your thumbs up or down vote and even comment. It’s also more social with easy share buttons and connections to your SU friends. They also upgraded the smartphone app with a friends bar that shows which of your friends also liked the site.

Freelancers have been turning out copy for magazines, TV and online sites for many, many years. Some of the copy isn’t the best, but there are plenty of great freelancers out there who know how to craft a great story and can do it from inside the walls of their own home (or the local Starbucks.)

Arianna Huffington doesn’t agree. That’s the rumor, anyway. According to Business Insider, AOL, under the leadership of Huffington, is doing away with freelancers. Not only are they looking to work with only full-time employees, but one source says, those employees are expected to be at their desks at 9:00 am.

Business Insider posted an email that was sent to them from a former freelancer and I found this paragraph particularly interesting.

Suppose you ask me to write something nice about your company. I do it and you give me a $10 bill. If I work for you, then it’s a paycheck. If I don’t work for you, then it’s Pay Per Post and that’s a whole different bowl of noodles. . . or is it?

If I disclose the fact that you paid me the money to write the post as required by the FTC, then I’m in good shape, right? But if I disclose the fact that you paid me, maybe the value of the post decreases because now people aren’t sure that I told the truth.

If you feel that the New York Times has the pulse of the Internet then the answer to our headline would be yes. In fact, the Times article which ran on Sunday is titled “Blogs Wane As Young Drift to Sites Like Twitter”. That’s a pretty heavy statement especially when you are saying even the shortest blog post idea can be just as effectively conveyed in 140 characters or less. Maybe TweetDeck will end up being the “Anti-Twitter” by allowing over 140 characters?

The article is provocative for sure and focuses on younger Internet users (at least initially).

Like any aspiring filmmaker, Michael McDonald, a high school senior, used a blog to show off his videos. But discouraged by how few people bothered to visit, he instead started posting his clips on Facebook, where his friends were sure to see and comment on his editing skills.