Social Media:
Facebook numbers feed IPO outlook.
Privacy:
Google calls location data 'valuable'.
iPhone and Android users face many companies who want to know where they are.
eBooks:
Al Gore joins ex-Apple engineers to reinvent the e-book.
Mobile Computing:
Top 5 Android tablets according to the experts.
Android smartphones...
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April's Top Viral Videos
A salute to royalty was infused into the normal mix of cute kids, sports and humor that dominated the list of 10 most-shared online videos compiled by Unruly Media for April 2011, writes MarketingCharts. There...
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Apple and magazine publishers have yet to come to an agreement over how subscriptions should be sold on the iPad. However a possible détente may be forming with Apple showing signs of caving on its unwillingness to share customer data...
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What: The bugged-eye cartoon paper clip that Microsoft used at one time to brand its Microsoft Office suite has been resurrected as part of a game called "Ribbon Hero 2: Clippy's Second Chance."
Why: Microsoft developed it [video] to help users...
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DailyGobble.com, yet another Groupon clone, is taking aim at a niche that Groupon itself only recently uncovered: restaurants that are primarily interested in filling seats during off-peak hours. The site is debuting Monday with 330 New York area...
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We entered the weekend fearful that online viewers of the Royal Wedding on Friday morning would bring the internet grinding to a halt. It didn’t and then, just to prove its mettle, it stayed online for another huge traffic event:...
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Social Media:
Twitter to buy TweetDeck for $40-$50 million.
Bin Laden announcement has highest sustained Tweet rate ever, at 3440 Tweets per second.
On the web, Bin Laden news is big, but not as big as soccer.
Mobile Computing:
Amazon tablet shipping later this year...
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Google Analytics' Changes to Its Custom Report Tab
Google continues to tease Analytics users with the upcoming changes to its popular app. A sneak preview of its Custom Reports tab shows its usability has been enhanced with new filters. For instance,...
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Apple iOS Users Have Most Apps, Use Most Frequently
Mobile app downloaders who use the Apple iOS platform have the highest average number of apps and are most likely to use them multiple times per day, according to data released in...
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Bing is going to be the default search engine on RIM BlackBerry devices, according to comments Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made at BlackBerry World 2011 and a Bing blog post.
Blackberry devices will use Bing as the preferred search provider in...
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The Nielsen Company says that the number of American households that own television sets has dropped 2.2 percentage points from 98.9% to 96.7%. Half of that drop can be attributed to poverty: low-income Americans can no longer afford the ever-increasing...
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Fashion retailer Forever 21 is using holograms in the place of live models in a series of fashion shows being held this summer and fall. The retailer conceived of the promotion with digital agency space150 and the first...
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Wal-Mart Acquires Kosmix
It’s done, writes CEO Anand Rajaraman. Good-bye Kosmix, hello @WalmartLabs. "Our mission is to invent the next generation of ecommerce: integrated experiences that leverage the store, the web, and mobile, with social identity being the glue."
Electronic Arts Buys...
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Ad Formats:
AOL's big idea: Larger ads all over.
Hearst adopts AOL 'large format' ads.
Online Ad Market:
Facebook ads may approach $8.34 billion by 2015.
Search:
"Osama Bin Laden" gets no love on Google AdWords.
Privacy:
Sony, Apple must repair user trust in privacy standards, EU’s Reding...
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44% of Marketers Truly Happy w/Primary Agency
Only 44% of US marketers are truly happy (giving a rating of 8 or higher on a 10-point scale) with their primary marketing agency, according to a report by agency/client relationship advisers RSW/US. It...
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Silverpop has announced new product features that will help marketers better integrate their social, email, mobile and local marketing strategies. As it does so it dubs the four-pronged channels mocial - a buzzword that is gaining traction in the industry...
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Isis, the AT&T, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile's mobile payment venture launched at the end of last year, is still largely a concept, but it has already been scaled back from its initial grandiose vision of competing with Visa and MasterCard...
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Keeping up its campaign to illustrate the advantages of direct mail, the U.S. Postal Service has singled out Ohio-based branding agency Mlicki for a direct mail campaign that garnered a 10% response rate. Of greater interest to online marketers is...
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Hearst has announced plans to move forward with AOL's Project Devil ad format - that is, its interactive ads that are four times the size of regular online ads, created by its display unit Pictela. The publisher will be running...
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Social Media:
Facebook, Google eye Skype deal.Skype mulls going online with offline Facebook, Google contacts.
Danny Sullivan wonders: Has Facebook become the master key to unlocking the web?
Mobile Computing:
New Nook coming soon: most likely e-ink model.
RIM rumored to be working on a...
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Poor Strategy Prompts Advertisers to Look for New Agency
Unhappiness with an existing agency’s strategy or thinking is the leading reason US marketers bring in competing agencies for review, according to a report by agency/client relationship advisers RSW/US. It found that...
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What: AT&T is yet another company targeting the multibillion-dollar daily deal industry.
How: It will introduce its own discount site in about a month in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Dallas-Fort Worth, Bloomberg reports.
Where: It will be on AT&T's yellowpages.com subsidiary. Consumers...
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Google is adding a new feature to its Places and Street View offering - Google Business Photos. The point is to give would-be customers a view of the interior of that restaurant or local shop for which they are searching....
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Mobile advertiser 4INFO and Nielsen Catalina are partnering to provide advertisers with a product that shows the number of sales that have resulted from their mobile advertising efforts. It will be a significant advancement in the mobile marketing space,...
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Efficient Frontier has acquired Context Optional, a provider of enterprise social marketing solutions. The point of the acquisition, though, was specifically for Context Optional’s page management platform, in order to allow Efficient Frontier to offer a unified Facebook fan...
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Ad Technologies:
How real-time bidding will affect media companies.
Security:
Third attack against Sony planned.
Global Business:
Long queues for iPad 2 in China.
Mobile Computing:
Google Earth for Android tailored for Honeycomb tablets.
Nokia creating Win 8 tablet, 3D phone?
Gaming:
Electronic Arts bullish on 'Battlefield 3' and digital...
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What: A program that offers consumers a financial incentive to watch ads on the site.
How: Facebook rewards users with Facebook Credits, currency that can be redeemed to buy goods from Facebook Deals.
How Much? Not much at all, Mashable says. Initially...
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How We Use Our Mobile Tablets
Now that the iPad has become an established fixture in the mobile computing space, with competitors such as Samsung Galaxy and the Motorola Xoom making headway, user patterns are becoming more clear, according to the...
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Demand Media is shutting down the user-generated content portion of its eHow website. Instead it plans to run longer feature-length articles written by journalists with five to ten years of experience, according to a job notice it has up on...
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Location-based shopping app provider shopkick has scored another big retail win: all Crate and Barrel locations in the U.S. will begin offering walk-in rewards and special deals based on its platform. This follows another major client coup, albeit a name...
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Lincoln Electric, a provider of welding equipment and technology, has borrowed a page from its glitzier and sexier consumer electronics corporate cousins and is using QR tags for marketing outreach [video]. It is adding 2D Microsoft Tag...
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Convergence:
Digital ad firms crash TV's upfront.
Mobile Marketing:
Mobile consumers are moving target in Canada.
Mobile Computing:
Nuance deal could be game changer for Apple's iOS 5 with new voice recognition capabilities.
Apple moving to close gap with Android on speech, navigation.
Can BlackBerry stop the...
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Facebook is not just threatening to encroach on Google’s search domain with its social functionality. It is also, according to a new Pew study, poised to compete with it in news search using the same lure. "Google and...
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Mobile Social Networking Shows Strong Growth in '11
Mobile social networking, along with banking and navigation, are poised for strong year-over-year global growth in 2011, according to TNS Mobile Life, which found that the percentage of global mobile subscribers performing social...
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Google has been tinkering with its search layout, based on tests that it ran over the weekend to a surprisingly wide audience this weekend.
The pages were cleaner, the colors more crisp and there was with more of Google's trademark white...
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Condé Nast will begin offering iPad subscriptions beginning with its New Yorker magazine. Vanity Fair, Golf Digest, Allure, Self and GQ magazines will follow. In-app subscriptions will cost $5.99 per month, according to Wired, which is also owned by...
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A change in Quora's rules hint at possible advertising offerings down the road. Specifically, the site is eliminating Quora's policy against self-promoting questions and answers. The old policy prohibited content that was "primarily self-promotional" which turned out to be problematic...
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Business Strategies:
Microsoft agrees to buy Skype for $8.5B.
Google launching its cloud service tomorrow, without big music’s approval.
YouTube announces Hollywood movie rental program.
Google puts its chips on developers.
Mobile Marketing:
Now to sell advertisers on tablets.
Mobile Computing:
Google launches discovery service for its APIs.
Countdown...
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Possibly. Christine Borgia senior director of Return Path's Email Intelligence Group reports in a blog post that senders and ESPs have noticed an increase in bulking at Gmail and bulking and deferrals at Hotmail. "We have confirmed with both Gmail...
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Google Adds Ecommerce Tracking to Google Analytics SDK for Android
Google has added ecommerce tracking functionality to the Google Analytics SDK for Android. This lets users capture transaction and product information, send the data to Google Analytics, and then analyze which...
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Socializing, News Products Get Advocates Chatting
About eight in 10 (83%) brand advocates, or consumers who habitually share information about products they use, strongly agree they communicate with others online to "meet nice people" and "receive free products," according to a...
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The Microsoft-Skype deal is being reported and dissected by a number of sources. For email marketers, one of the key questions is how, if at all, will the acquisition impact Hotmail?
Microsoft has been sprucing up this email staple over...
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YouTube is launching captions for its live video feeds at Google I/O, Gigaom reports. Thus far, YouTube has provided automatic captioning - a technology that isn't necessarily accurate all of the time. The new YouTube Live captions, Gigaom...
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Privacy:
Facebook security flaw exposed user accounts.
Google deflects PR firm's attack of Gmail privacy.
A lively Senate hearing on mobile privacy.
Consumer Reports takes notice of mobile privacy.
Facebook users lax on privacy, protecting their children online.
Online Ad Market:
Google's stealth multi-billion-dollar business.
Ecommerce:
Groupon Now is...
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6 in 10 Advocates Want Brand Recognition
People who advocate for a brand expect recognition from the company for their efforts, according to a new study from marketing network BzzAgent. Almost six in 10 (58%) brand advocates say it is very...
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What: Zico Coconut Water is running a campaign on Facebook starring Boston Celtics player Kevin Garnett. Garnett made headlines earlier this year when he turned down a multi-million dollar endorsement deal with Gatorade to opt for Zico Coconut Water.
Who: The...
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Social game-maker Zynga is giving musical artist Lady Gaga her own game to release tracks from her upcoming album 'Born This Way.'
Called GagaVille, the game will lead players through various challenges that, once they complete, will reward them with exclusive...
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Google is rolling out a new prediction analytics API, which at least one large multinational - Ford - has said it will use.
The company quietly revealed plans to add the API to its cloud developer suite of products, Forbes reports....
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Under Microsoft's acquisition of Skype, the video conference call provider said it would "support Microsoft devices 'Xbox and Kinect, Windows Phone and a wide array of Windows devices, and Microsoft will connect Skype users with Lync, Outlook, Xbox Live and...
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Social Media:
Facebook busted in clumsy smear on Google.
Latest treasure is location data.
Mobile Computing:
Twitter rolls out mobile app.
Google 'Chromebook' focuses on enterprise push.
Android market getting a major refresh: better discovery, a redesign, and 99 new countries.
Research & Stats:
NPD: Don't blame iPad...
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