Marketing Pilgrim

According to sources close to the company, for example, Microsoft’s bankers had been putting out subtle signals to Facebook to see if it would be open to a full buyout.

Wow! What do you say about a rumor of that magnitude?

"On the rebound" comes to mind.

Remember when you were 13 years old–some of us need to think hard–and you had a crush on someone? It felt like a love that would never, ever go away. Then two days later, you had a new obsession.

Yeah, Microsoft’s that 13 year old looking for love.

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UPDATE: It looks like it’s the work of a third party app. See Anne’s comment.

Now here’s something strange spotted by the eagle-eyed Anne Hennegar.

Is Google really getting ready to start a new level of sponsored search ads in its results?

The NYT has early details of Yahoo’s new online advertising platform designed to allow publishers to sell demographically targeted ads on their own sites and Yahoo’s content network. The new system is being dubbed AMP.

With AMP, a newspaper ad sales representative working with an advertiser, like a car dealer, would be able to easily see the ad space available on not only the newspaper’s site but also Yahoo and other Web publishers’ sites. The sales person could slice that inventory by demographic profile to, for instance, aim ads for a new hybrid S.U.V. to females of a specific income and age group. The system will help streamline a manual and time-consuming effort, Ms. Schneider said.

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I guess it’s not enough to have a rumor that Google might want to take Skype off of eBay’s hands. Now comes a rumor that Google might have an interest in buying travel company Expedia.

Why in the world would Google want to buy Expedia?

I’m serious. An online travel site is probably the furthest thing from Google’s core business, and doesn’t even get close to some of the more experimental Google products. At least the Skype rumor has some merit–Google could combine with Google Talk and Grand Central.

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I take one weekend off the Internet, and everything goes crazy. Can’t you people get on without me?

TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington reported on Friday that Facebook would be developing an IM service, to premiere as early as this week. Naturally, as Arrington pointed out, this would not bode well for the existing third-party chat apps already in use on Facebook. Arrington’s sources say that Facebook’s IM would eventually be Jabber-compliant (ie open source and compatible with existing chat clients like Trillium).

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UPDATE: As we said, TechCrunch is hit and miss with these types of rumors. Digg is denying them.

I know that most of the grumbling about Digg comes from marketers–who, for the most part, are annoyed because we can no longer expect traffic from the social voting site. But, surely there are enough other Digg users who feel that Digg is not quite the voting democracy they thought they were signing up for, and are abandoning the service.

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Rumors have been circulating about Facebook working on a music platform similar to MySpace’s for months. Today they’re being revived with news that Facebook’s “music division” has been in talks with record labels.

Apparently launched last month, the Music on Facebook page is suddenly drawing a lot more attention. The page appears to be a “meta page” for all Facebook Pages devoted to bands and music. In the sidebar BTF, they list their featured launch partners: more than 80 musicians and bands ranging from Wyclef to Keith Urban to Coldplay (all of which have their own Facebook Pages, of course).

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UPDATE: Looking for Google’s official April Fools joke for 2008? It’s here.

If I hadn’t read it in the Wall Street Journal I’d be as skeptical as Techdirt, but it appears Google might be interested in a company that deploys wifi-equipped balloons.

OK, let that sink in.

Yes, a company that attaches $1500 of wireless technology to $50 balloons, uses farmers to release them, watches them burst after 24 hours then, get this, little parachutes bring the transmitters safely back to earth!

Say it with me…”Are You Kidding Me?”

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News Corp & Yahoo? Soooo last week. The pairing du jour, according to Silicon Alley Insider, is Yahoo & AOL.

While clearly not a strategic move to overtake Google, the merger could be a good thing according to the Insider:

Yahoo and AOL should merge: AOL has some valuable assets–AIM, ICQ, mail, premium properties, MapQuest–but it has no place in the current portal wars. To stay relevant, AOL needs to combine these assets with one of the other players, and the Yahoo combination makes the most sense.

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Yahoo spurned one offer in the last week—but are they already courting another? It’s Valentine’s Day, and the timing is perfect for a love triangle. Although Rupert Murdoch states last week that News Corp was not interested in Yahoo, we all know that was junior high code and secretly Murdoch was doodling NWS + YHOO all over his algebra notebook.

I mean, that could be the only conceivable reason why rumors abound this week that the two are in acquisition talks, right? As Reuters reports, speculation is flying thick and fast about a potential deal.

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TechCrunch is reporting rumors–for the umpteenth time–that social network Bebo has been acquired for $1 billion. While TC’s betting on Google, it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest to see Yahoo as the buyer.

Yahoo desperately needs to reinvent itself–which likely means ditching its search aspirations and focusing on its huge network of users. At this time, nothing would be a better shot in the arm than to emerge as a huge social network–something it can do with an acquisition of Bebo.

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TechCrunch speculates that there’s a 51% chance that Google might buy Bebo—or maybe MySpace will snap up the smaller social networking company. Last year, it was Yahoo that was supposed to be making a $1B offer on Bebo. This year’s guesses are similar—$1B to $1.5B.

TechCrunch explains that the move would almost double Google’s social networking audience, with Orkut’s millions of members worldwide plus Bebo’s non-US English-speaking market. Erick Schonfeld also notes that MySpace could assure its worldwide dominance by buying the #1 social network in several English-speaking countries.

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