Here's our daily recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web. From Marketing Land: Infographic: Meet The Chinese Facebook, Twitter & YouTubeWhat’s Chinese for Facebook? Try RenRen. For Twitter? How about Weibo. YouTube? Youku. These aren’t different names for Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Rather, they are completely different, popular and home-grown Chinese social networking and sharing services. Gerson Lehrman Group’s G+ site put together an infographic listing some of what it calls the popular & [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Marketing Day

What's Chinese for Facebook? Try RenRen. For Twitter? How about Weibo. YouTube? Youku. These aren't different names for Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Rather, they are completely different, popular and homegrown Chinese social networking and sharing services. Gerson Lehrman Group's G+ site put together an infographic listing some of what it calls the popular "copycat" social media platforms in China, along with some stats on internet activity in the country, though the activity stats are fairly dated, from 2009: Want the infographic for yourself? You'll find it here: A Social Media Rev [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Infographics | Social Media Marketing | Statistics: Market Share | Statistics: Social Media

That was quick. Google has already replied to several questions from Congress about the new, combined privacy policy that the company announced a week ago today. But in its letter, Google may not be giving Congress a good enough answer on lawmakers' main question about users being able to opt-out. Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee said last week that Google's announcement ...raises concerns about whether consumers can opt-out of this new data sharing system. Pablo Chavez, Google's director of public policy, begins his response to Congress by reframing the question: [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Google: Accounts & Profiles | Google: Legal | Google: Privacy | Legal: Privacy | Top News

Remember how Google ended up penalizing its Chrome browser in its own search results because of a sponsored video campaign that violated Google's own paid link guidelines? The company behind that campaign, Unruly, has now emailed instructions to those in its network to help prevent that type of thing from happening again. How Google Penalized Itself With Unruly's Help Unruly was hired by Essence, which in turn was hired by Google to help promote the Google Chrome browser through video ads. The campaign that emerged had a video about Google Chrome appearing in posts that had little to do wit [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Video | Google: SEO | Link Building | Search Marketing | Top News | Video

A new wrinkle was just added to the ever expanding Apple-Samsung IP litigation drama. The European Commission has opened a formal investigation to determine whether the Korean firm breached EU antitrust rules. Did Samsung break its promise to Europe? At issue is whether "Samsung Electronics has abusively, and in contravention of a commitment it gave to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), used certain of its standard essential patent rights to distort competition in European mobile device markets . . ." In 1998 Samsung made a commitment to European regulators to licens [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Legal | Legal: Antitrust | Legal: Copyright & Trademark | Mobile Marketing

Microsoft is trying to make ads in Hotmail better. The company is replacing conventional display ads in its webmail service with deal ads that it believes will be more relevant and interesting to users. Not all Hotmail users will see the new ads immediately. Microsoft is doing a pilot in which it's testing consumer response to deals ads vs. traditional email display ads in selected cities. However, Dharmesh Mehta, Director for the Windows and Windows Live Business Group, believes users will prefer the new ads to the old. He's interested in delivering a "less distracting ad" to users. He [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Email Marketing | Email Marketing | Features & Analysis | Microsoft | Microsoft: Mobile | Statistics: Email Marketing | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Top News

All hail the vision of truly socialized search -- where results and experience are personalized, drawing on social graphs, browsing history and reams of  input data to deliver on the concept. Our expectations for absolute interconnectivity of environments and extensive personalization have us drooling over this concept of search at a glance. But, taking the official and absolutely imperfect debut of Google’s Search Plus Your World as an illustration, we can safely say the market reality is out of whack with this vision.  We are nowhere near the promise of the real deal on this. Yet, our [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search Marketing | Facebook | Google: Google+ | Search Marketing | Search Marketing Column | Social Media Marketing | Twitter

It has been known for some time that is much as 82 percent of smartphone users (InsightExpress, 2010) consult their iPhones and Android handsets in stores as part of on-site shopping research. Last year Google said that 70 percent of US smartphone owners did price research and looked up product reviews in stores. And this morning the Pew Internet Project released survey data echoing the earlier findings but offering some additional color and insight into mobile shopper behavior. The Pew data, drawn from a survey during Q4 last year, offer numbers that are somewhat more "restrained" than the [...]

Related Topics: Amazon | Channel: Retail | Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Mobile Marketing | Statistics: Online Behavior | Top News

Here's our daily recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web. From Marketing Land: Report: Twitter Planning Analytics Tools For PublishersHot on the heels of last week’s rumors that Twitter will expand its enhanced business profiles soon comes a report that Twitter is also prepping some analytics tools for launch later this year. As ReadWriteWeb first reported, Twitter’s Erica Anderson, the company’s Manager of News and Journalism, said this weekend that Twitter is planning to [...] Anti-Google Graff [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Marketing Day

Hot on the heels of last week's rumors that Twitter will expand its enhanced business profiles soon comes a report that Twitter is also prepping some analytics tools for launch later this year. As ReadWriteWeb first reported, Twitter's Erica Anderson, the company's Manager of News and Journalism, said this weekend that Twitter is planning to launch analytics tools to help publishers monitor activity surrounding their tweets. What's not clear is if the tools would be limited to news/publishers, or made available to all users. (Analytics are high on my Twitter wishlist for 2012.) Twitter c [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Social Media Marketing | Twitter

Is Google, which has largely enjoyed a reputation as a trustworthy, wacky and fun company now gaining a new reputation, as something to be feared? When comedian Steve Martin pokes at your privacy policy, when anti-Google graffiti starts turning up and Google "conspiracies" get mentioned on lovable Zooey Deschanel's "New Girl" sitcom, maybe something's up. To Date, The Public Loves Google No doubt, many in the technosphere or with media companies have long viewed Google as a company to be wary of, if not outright feared. But that fear simply hasn't been reflected among people in general. Con [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Industry | Features & Analysis | Google: Business Issues | Google: Legal | Google: Marketing | Top News

A lot has been written about Google's awkwardly named Search Plus Your World (SPYW) and what it means for SEO. But there's plenty to consider for social media marketers, too. Google's been getting personal in your search for a while, but SPYW brings in a few new elements: personal results, straight from your Google+ network onto your results page; profiles in search, which pulls up Google+ profiles right from the search box; and "People and Pages", which takes up some pretty valuable space suggesting Google+ accounts you might want to circle based on your search. Whether you've full [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social Media | Social Media Marketing | Social Media Marketing Column

I went on the attack against the incorrect use of data in my previous column. Early in my career, a mentor taught me that when you tell people about problems, you should also suggest a potential solution. Oherwise, you’re just a complainer. That's great advice, so let’s talk about how we could potentially fix these issues. The ultimate promise of the billions invested in the ad ecosystem -- and why we’re willing to put up with a value chain that looks like this -- is to get the right message in front of the right person at the right time. I’ve said this mantra myself, and I've hea [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Display Advertising | Display Advertising Column | Yahoo

It's not just Google closing products these days. Yahoo announced today that it's shutting down a full 10 of its mobile apps across both the iOS and Android platforms. The list of Yahoo mobile apps being shut down is as follows: Yahoo Meme (iPad and iPhone) Yahoo Mim (iPad) Yahoo Answers (Android) Yahoo AppSpot (Android and iPhone) Yahoo Deals (iPhone) Yahoo Finance (BlackBerry) Yahoo Movies (Android) Yahoo News (Android) Yahoo Shopping (iPhone) Yahoo Sketch-a-Search (iPad and iPhone) I'm using the phrase "shut down" above; Yahoo says the apps will no longer be supported [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Display Advertising | Mobile Marketing | Top News | Yahoo | Yahoo: Mobile

According to the Wall Street Journal, next week Facebook will file its "S-1" and related documents in preparation for an IPO that could raise a whopping $10 billion and would potentially value the company at $100 billion. As the WSJ reports, the mega-offering would vault Facebook into the top-tier of US public companies: A $10 billion Facebook offering would rank fourth among U.S. companies, behind Visa Inc., General Motors Co. and AT&T Wireless. At a $100 billion valuation, Facebook would be worth about the same as McDonald's Corp. and nearly half of Google Inc. Other than realizing [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook | Facebook: Advertising | Facebook: Mobile | Statistics: Popularity & Usage | Top News

Here's our daily recap of what happened in online marketing today, as reported on Marketing Land and other places across the web. From Marketing Land: Infographic: Most Popular Conversion TestsAre you testing different things on your web site? Changing up your landing page copy, your navigation and other elements can lead to better conversion. The people at Monetate have assembled an infographic looking at the frequency of testing and types of testing that are conducted. The second part was especially interesting to us. Call-to-action buttons [...] Facebook Says Subscribe Button Has B [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Marketing Day

Search Marketing Now will present "Mobile Search: The Agency Opportunity," on Tuesday, January 31 at 1 PM EST. The free webcast features Steven Schuler and Patrick Peters, both from Yahoo!'s mobile division. They'll give an overview of the current mobile landscape, then delve into tactics you can use to maximize the results of your mobile search campaign. Learn how you can capitalize on this rapidly growing opportunity - now. Register now at Search Marketing Now. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SMX & DMD Alerts

Are you testing different things on your web site? Changing up your landing page copy, your navigation and other elements can lead to better conversion. The people at Monetate have assembled an infographic looking at the frequency of testing and types of testing that are conducted. The second part was especially interesting to us. Call-to-action buttons are tested the most, by 72% of online retailers, apparently. Page layout is just behind, at 71%. Near the end of the list, only 43% test images. More in the graphic: Want the infographic for yourself? You'll find it here: Are You Run [...]

Related Topics: Analytics | Channel: Strategy | Infographics | Statistics: General

Earlier this week, Facebook touted some data showing how the media has reaped benefits from the Subscribe button -- but at least one journalist isn't so sure that the numbers mean much. The Subscribe button launched in September and added Twitter-like functionality to Facebook; users could subscribe to anyone else's public posts, whether they were Facebook friends or not. Facebook's Vadim Lavrusik, who manages the company's journalist program, wrote that thousands of journalists are using the Subscribe button, and that the average journalist has seen a 320 percent increase in subscribers [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Strategy | Facebook: Buttons & Plugins | Facebook: Open Graph | Facebook: Statistics

When the book “The World is Flat” first hit the bookstands back in 2005, many who read it came to have a better understanding of what it means to run a business in the global economy. Regardless of your view of the book, it did prompt us marketers to look more carefully and closely at the way we perceived and pursued new markets. Certainly we’ve all heard about the companies that expanded into new markets and successfully increased sales, elevated brand awareness and continued to thrive. While the Internet has been the driving force that allows companies to compete on a more level [...]

Related Topics: Affiliate Marketing | Affiliate Marketing Column | Channel: Content Marketing