Marketing Pilgrim

“You would have to be stupid. You would have to trip to not succeed at this at some point.”

Those words may come back to haunt the former Bebo chief Joanna Shields, now that rumors are circulating that the social network is about to be dropped like a hot potato.

Back when AOL bought Bebo for $850 million, I was already speculating that the social network had slipped from its valuation high of $1.5 billion. Now it appears that the social network has lost users–down from 22 million a month to 14.6 million–and with it, it’s value to AOL.

What’s interesting is the predicament facing AOL. Due to some complex tax laws, it may actually make better financial sense for AOL to just shut Bebo down.

Lots of cool Twitter statistics coming out of Barracuda Networks new study (pdf).

Where do I start?

• 21% of Twitter users are actually using the service–meaning that have at least 10 followers, follow at least 10 people, and have tweeted at least 10 times.
• 74% of Twitter users have less than 10 followers! However, that number is improving with a 30% increase in the number of users with 10+ followers (since June 2009)
• 60% of Twitter users follow less than 10 people
• 34% of Twitter users have more followers than others they are following, showing an 70% increase from 20% in June 2009
• 73% of users have less than 10 tweets, as compared to 79% in June 2009.
• 49% of Twitter users joined between November 2008 and April 2009–the period when many celebrities jumped on the Twitter bandwagon

Social media or networking or whatever it is you want to call it continues to grow at exponential rates of speed. With the “announcement” of Facebook getting its own location based service in place the concerns over privacy and safety of information continue to grow as well. Twitter realizes this concern and is working to make Twitter free from malicious users especially in light of recent phishing attacks that have created some concern in the Twitter world.

In a Twitter blog post entitled “Trust and Safety” the company says that it is concerned and is working to make the world safer for tweeters of shapes and sizes.

Today, we’re launching a new service to protect users that strikes a major blow against phishing and other deceitful attacks. By routing all links submitted to Twitter through this new service, we can detect, intercept, and prevent the spread of bad links across all of Twitter. Even if a bad link is already sent out in an email notification and somebody clicks on it, we’ll be able keep that user safe.

Facebook is going to be joining the frenzy to help everyone not only know what people are thinking but also where they are thinking it. As we move more toward a world of this total view of another’s life you can be sure that Facebook wants to be involved. With the rising popularity of Foursquare, Gowalla and other location based “services” it makes sense that Facebook be here. In the bigger picture, however, this is likely to be more about taking on Google for local advertising dollars. After all, money has to be made correct?

The New York Times Bits section reports

Starting next month, the more than 400 million Facebook users could begin seeing a new kind of status update flow through their news feed: the current locations of their friends.

Facebook and Eventbrite already have a relationship—Facebook tapped the event site to sell tickets to its f8 developer conference, as confirmed by TechCrunch last week. A TechCrunch reader then noticed that facebook.eventbrite.com was up and working:

So, TechCrunch speculates, might Eventbrite and Facebook be partnering to make Facebook (and Eventbrite, of course) money on the 3.5M events posted on the social site? When Facebook added the Events feature, plenty thought this would spell the death of dedicated event or invitation sites. However, most of these events (that I’ve seen, anyway) are personal-level things—with free admission. But I’m Eventbrite would be happy to help Facebook expand into event ticket sales for everything from fundraisers to concerts. (Eventbrite also coordinates free tickets, for free.)

Says TechCrunch:

Like the F8 event, this is set up on Eventbrite’s site, and it seems likely that Facebook will send users there that want to monetize events, have them log in via Facebook Connect, and finish the process.

According to a new study being published this week by Unica, European marketers trail their American cousins, when it comes to the adoption of social media marketing.

While, 58% of marketers in North America are already engaged in social media marketing, only 34% of Europeans can say the same.

That’s likely to change in the next 12 months:

Some quick math suggests that this time next year, 76% of American marketers will be knee deep in social media marketing, with an impressive game of "catch-up" played by European counterparts–hitting 64% adoption.

So what’s keeping Europe from making this a photo-finish? Well, the biggest set-back is the 20% of European marketers that don’t want anything to do with social media. Not, "we’re more than 12 months out" or "we not sure yet" but flat out "we have no plans for social media marketing."

If you can believe it, we are rapidly approaching the 1 ½ year “anniversary” of the election of Barack Obama as the President of the United States. This event was historic and monumental on many different levels and not the least of which is how candidate Obama utilized social media to get into office.

Now, before I get started here please relax and understand that this is not a political post. It is more about a lesson about how social media can be a real double-edged sword. Why? Well, I have heard more than one social media “expert” express disappointment in the President’s relative abandonment of the medium after he was elected. I have postulated elsewhere that he may have actually set back the usage of social media for political advantage. Why? It’s a matter of trust and many feel it was violated to some degree. If you feel the urge to argue this please leave me out. I am just parroting what I have heard more than once. So you know where I stand personally, I am not a trusting sort of any politician at any time of any party.

A year ago, we first covered the extortion rumblings against local review site Yelp. Business owners claimed that Yelp offered to remove negative reviews—for a price. Yelp disputed the allegations, but did add a feature for business owners to respond to negative reviews last April.

But apparently the other practices haven’t ceased, according to two suits recently filed against Yelp. Last week, a class action suit was filed in a Los Angeles federal court, and this week another suit alleging extortion by the site was filed in California as well.

The first suit,Cats and Dogs Animal Hospital Inc. v. Yelp Inc., alleges “the company’s employees call businesses demanding monthly payments in the guise of advertising contracts, in exchange for removing or modifying negative reviews.” The second suit, D’Ames Day Spa v. Yelp, makes a similar accusation, stating that Yelp removed 13 of 14 positive reviews because the spa wouldn’t buy advertising on the site.