Marketing Pilgrim

First IAC took itself apart, now Ask is slowly dismantling its cool features, too. Chris Pendleton, a Virtual Earth evangelist, has posted that Ask has dropped its own mapping features—Ask Maps, AskCity and map results integrated into their SERPs—in favor of Live Virtual Earth (Microsoft’s maps product).

In some regions, the change is even more drastic. As Barry Schwartz reports, Ask UK’s map site is offline (and their title element is misspelled: “Unavailabe”?):

Dear Ask Maps user,

We are sorry, but our maps service is no longer available. Please re-enter your query in the search box above to use our main web search service.

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Once upon a time, a bunch of Googlers were sitting around during meal time or 20% time or something, just thinking. And you know what happens when Googlers think in groups, right?

“You know,” says one, “I sure wish we could bring Google Maps to the islands of the world.”

“Yeah, that would be awesome. I claim Tahiti!”

“No, I’m serious,” says the first. “But, obviously, travel costs would be prohibitively high.”

“I still get Tahiti,” mutters the second. “If we do Street View, anyway.”

*moments of rumination*

“I know!” exclaims a third. “Let’s have the islanders do it!”

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Yesterday’s news that Nokia acquired location based social network Plazes, was worthy only of making our Pilgrim’s Picks. Today’s news that Nokia has acquired mobile platform Symbian–and plans to make it open source–is definitely worthy of its own post.

Nokia already owned 48% of Symbian, but is willing to pay around $410 million in cash to acquire the remaining 52%.

So, what’s Nokia’s plan for Symbian?

Nokia on Tuesday also said it and other mobile phone makers such as Motorola, Inc , LG, Samsung and Sony Ericsson along with operators AT&T, NTT DoCoMo, Vodafone Group  and chipmakers Texas Instruments and STMicroelectronics have formed the non-profit Symbian foundation to drive innovation in mobile services.

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The WSJ is reporting Google’s Android–aka Gphone–is likely to miss its target launch date and instead will not be ready until the fourth quarter.

It’s tough enough developing an entirely new mobile platform, but when you rely on others to actually build the thing, you have one big headache on your hands.

…some cellular carriers and makers of programs that work with Android are struggling to meet that schedule, people familiar with the situation say.

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Despite the recent bumps in the road, comScore still claims to be the leader in online measurement. In fact, with the announced $44.3 million acquisition of mobile research firm M:Metrics, comScore really thinks it’s the leader.

comScore, Inc. a leader in measuring the digital world, today announced the acquisition of M:Metrics, Inc., the recognized leader in mobile measurement. The acquisition makes comScore the immediate leader in measuring the emerging and strategically important mobile Internet market and adds to comScore’s leading position in measuring PC-based Internet usage.

comScore actually uses "leader" eight times in its press release, so who says you can’t create the perception of your brand by using blunt repetition?

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The local search property, Citysearch.com, is coming under fire for its lack of a click fraud system.

According to a lawsuit filed yesterday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Citysearch.com is defrauding its advertising customers by not only turning a blind eye to click fraud, but the lawsuit states they are actually encouraging it.

“Most click fraud cases involve companies that simply turn a blind eye to it,” said the victims’ attorney, Brian S. Kabateck, Managing Partner of Kabateck Brown Kellner. “Citysearch does this too, since it has no real program to prevent click fraud. But Citysearch goes beyond indifference to actively incentivizing click fraud. Citysearch’s motive is simple: clicks equal cash, whether they’re fraudulent or not.”

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I know you’re used to reading 10, 20, and 101-step articles for online reputation management, but when it comes to hotels and local businesses, just one step could save your reputation.

That one step?

Don’t let the customer leave your premises unhappy.

I know, sounds simple, doesn’t it? Yet, so few companies take the time to ensure that their customers’ have enjoyed a pleasant experience, service, or stay. Simply asking them if they’re happy, is the easiest way to remedy a complaint, before they open up their web browser and head for TripAdvisor or Yelp.

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By Michelle Greer

There is nothing more annoying than trying to browse the web on a tiny mobile phone screen. Viewing one page on the web is hard enough. Conducting searches, updating web content, or watching a YouTube clip on a run-of-the-mill cell phone is nothing more than a painful experience.

It’s no surprise then that social networking is not very popular on mobile phones. According to a a survey conducted by Local Mobile Search, only 6% of the 1,022 respondents to a survey on the topic have actually used their mobile phones for social networking. However, 30% of respondents said they were interested in the idea of using their cell phones this way. 10% showed a “keen interest” in mobile social networking.

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Microsoft announced late yesterday the launch of a new mobile search offering—product search under their Live brand. Microsoft’s browser-based mobile product search, accessible from m.live.com

The Live product search page displays products available in online stores (though the “Near Santa Cruz, CA” in the screen cap below would indicate that brick-and-mortars are also searched), including prices, ratings and reviews. The search results also composite ratings on specific features of the products, including things such as ease of use, and report the results back to you.

A sample generic search results page:

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One of the biggest gripes small businesses have about local review sites is that not all of them provide an opportunity to respond to a customer complaint. Popular review site Yelp is hoping to address that issue with the launch of a new set of tools to help business owners manage their Yelp profile.

Along with new features, such as…

• Allowing business owners to claim their Yelp profile
• Update their Yelp profile and add images
• Send messages to customers
• Receive email alerts of new reviews
• Add free Yelp badges to business web sites

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Google must have a lot more confidence in the growth of mobile marketing than I do because it has just launched some new mobile image ads.

According to the Google Mobile Blog…

For advertisers, mobile image ads serve as a branding tool and have shown to have good clickthrough rates. Advertisers using mobile image ads will also benefit because we only show one image ad per mobile page. For publishers, mobile image ads provide added flexibility. They can now choose to show text ads, image ads, or a mix of both and Google will dynamically return the ad that we expect will perform best at the time the ad is shown. Publishers who are already using AdSense for mobile content just need to update their AdSense code to start displaying mobile ads on their site.

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Until the launch of the iPhone, I’d all but given up that we’d ever really see cell phones become a legitimate replacement for our desktop or laptop computers. Mobile technology just wasn’t satisfying when it came to web browsing or information look-up.

I still don’t own an iPhone, but I do own a BlackBerry and today Microsoft’s Tellme unit launched a new Blackberry application that lets you speak commands and look up all manner of useful information.

Once users download the program, they can push on their phone’s green "talk" button and say either the name of a business, type of business, or the keywords "weather," "movies," "traffic," "map" or "driving directions."

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