Alliance Blog Reviews

Google sure knows how to make an announcement. In the past 48 hours or so there have been updates to how personalization of search occurs, the unveiling of several new real-time / social / mobile features but that isn’t all the Google has decided to unleash on the market. Yesterday’s event at the Computer History Museum was the site of the real-time search announcement that pretty much took the wind out of the sails (and sales?) of other competitors’ efforts to beat Google to the real-time punch. Honestly that would have been enough to have everyone reminded of who the big dog is in the search marketing house but Google didn’t stop there. ReadWriteWeb covered the event and tells us of 5 more areas that Google announced innovations including some Android specific apps that are pretty cool. Looks like everyone including Apple has been put on warning. Near Instant Voice Recognition – Need a quick translation from English to Spanish? A new product prototype offers the ability through your mobile phone via the cloud. Look for most major language translations by the end of 2010. Customized Suggest Based on Location – When you start typing a search on your mobile application would be helpful if your location would be used to make the right suggestions? Of course. A demo of this service during the event yesterday demonstrated on one phone that believed it was in Boston and one that believed it was in San Francisco. Upon typing the letters “RE” the Boston phone suggested searches for Red Sox, the local baseball team. The San Francisco phone suggested a search for REI, the outdoor gear outfitter. Google Product Search Tied to Local Inventory – Just like it reads. Mobile product search will tell you location of a product and its availability. Near Me Now – Google.com on mobile, starting today on Android phones, will offer top-level search categories like restaurants or stores on the front page. Click that button and you’ll see the closest-by search results ranked by user rating. Google Goggles – This is pretty spectacular and I suggest you go check out the quick video here. Essentially, you may use an Android phone to conduct a search based on a picture you have taken. You can even point your phone’s camera at a store and get the name etc etc. Really cool. Of course, this is one of the more experimental products right now so there are limitations but the talk is to be able to one day take a picture of a leave and be told what tree it comes from. Neat. So what else does Google have up its sleeve? Who knows but anyone who thought that they have been sitting back watching the world go by and waiting for the search wars to begin has been mistaken.

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Even More Google Updates

I admit, I am coming at this one a little uneducated. You see I never used the Twitter mobile site until today when I even considered that it existed. With the third party apps available I just don’t think about Twitter as the place to ‘micro-blog’ but rather the act of ‘micro-blogging’. I suspect that will make sense to some and for those who get it maybe you should be just a little worried. Back to the important news at hand. The new Twitter mobile site preview was touted today on the Twitter blog . Leland of Twitter tells us Our new mobile web site is previewing today, just point your phone’s browser to http://mobile.twitter.com. Its got a great new look, and has some great new touches that will make your mobile experience on Twitter a bit more fun and a lot more helpful. Let us know if you agree and especially tell us how we can make it better. Here’s a look see. For someone like myself who is pretty committed to Tweet Deck as my third party Twittercation of choice this redesign will have little impact. I suppose it would be good to ask how many readers use the mobile Twitter site regularly. Is there anybody out there? Leland talks about the soon to be replaced version of the mobile Twitter experience as ‘m’ and seems to be trying to break the news to ‘it’ as nicely as possible. What may be a less known fact is: Lots of people access Twitter on their phones via our good ol’ mobile website, and trusty ‘m’ has been delivering tweets faithfully. However, ‘m’ doesn’t fully feel like Twitter, and could probably do a bit more things for you. ‘M’ should also be fantastically innovative — naturally the best way to do that is use our own APIs. So, the mobile team here built a brand new mobile web client from scratch, using only Twitter APIs, and we’d like to share the results with you. So it looks like ‘m’ is going to be kicked to the curb. Tossed away like so much rubbish despite the loyal and faithful work it has done in the past. So ‘m’. when your days are over I shall remember you fondly which mean much more if I had ever used you before writing this post. Anyway, good luck ol’ boy. You’re not the only one being put out of work these days.

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Twitter Mobile Gets a New Look

It appears that it is finally safe to say that if mobile hasn’t completely arrived it is certainly in the room and recognized for its potential. Should we declare 2010 as the ‘Year of Mobile’? Sure, why not. There will be others and honestly it means nothing to hype it. Let’s look at what’s actually going on at street level. Over at the ZDNet’s  Between the Lines blog , Larry Dignan tells us about a survey from the Bernstein Research’s Jeffrey Lindsay did some research among 360 smartphone users that follows up some initial research he did in the mobile advertising space. Here is some of the information that you may find interesting 67 percent of respondents said that smartphones increased their Internet usage for personal use and 45 percent said work related usage rose. 95 percent of users use the same search engine for the PC and mobile. 37 percent of respondents say they are clicking on more paid search links and seeing more display adds. Users 18 to 34 found mobile ads to be more relevant than their PC counterparts. Older users panned mobile ads across the board. As Dignan points out, I agree the major piece of data to be gleaned from this is the fact the younger the mobile user is the more likely they will be responsive to mobile ads. The older users referred to breaks out in this chart below. I’m not surprised by this and I hope the rest of the industry will take heed. When it comes to mobile there may not be an audience unless your product or service skews young. This is likely to change over time but for now it’s the younger set that will allow mobile and advertising to be used as a phrase while others think that the separation of the two is the better way to go.

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Ahhhhh To Be Young and Mobile

All of the talk of how things were on ‘Black Friday’ is now followed by the yearly quest for the Cyber Monday data. We in the online world love to see just how much the shift to online commerce continues to overtake the traditional way that goods and services are sold. Whether these numbers are inflated or given too much credit is always a concern but this year’s trends, at least from a few sources, points to the continued rise of online growing while brick and mortar struggles. To what degree this year’s trending points to a larger economic trend is a huge TBD (to be determined). Honestly, more people may have experimented with online purchasing to save time and money including gas and food that is part of the in-store shopping experience of a venture out on Black Friday. That’s just my thought and there is NO scientific backing on that one. As for more ‘official’ statistics, Retailer Daily sums it up this way Both annual consumer spending and traffic levels went up on “Cyber Monday”, according to third-party research results. Consumers’ interest in shopping online appeared to carry over from “Black Friday” last week, when e-commerce sales increased at a significantly higher rate than brick-and-mortar sales. Here are a few highlights from the Coremetrics Cyber Monday 2009 report (PDF) : E-commerce sales were 13.7% higher on Cyber Monday this year than they were last year Average dollar amount spent by consumers per online order rose 38.2%, from $130.24 to $180.03 Apparel retailers and jewelry retailers drove this increase with 26.4% and 14.3% jumps in average dollar amount spent per online order, respectively. Sporting goods segment, retailers reported a nearly 55% increase in new site visitors, but a 3.1% decline in average dollar amount spent per online order. Department store retailers reported a 33% increase in new site visitors, but a nearly 10% decrease in the average value of each online order. Per order, consumers purchased 30% more items this year than they did last year. November 2009 American Express Spending and Saving Tracker reports that this e-commerce surge may trend though the holiday season 79% of overall respondents plan to use the internet as a tool for holiday shopping 45% plan to purchase items online 28% will use the internet to buy hard-to-find items 27% will use the internet for product research 25% will go online for gift ideas One particularly interesting piece of data is around the projected use of mobile in the holiday shopping experience is on the rise. According to the Deloitte 24th Annual Holiday Survey, 19% of consumers plan to access the internet via their mobile phones while shopping to find store locations, obtain coupons and sales information, as well as research products and prices. This percentage rose to 39% in the 18 to 29 age group. So do we dare take this information and say that the economy is truly on the rebound and rosier days are ahead for all? Probably not a good idea. I guess the solace that can be taken is that if there is one industry in the marketing world that is at least going to stay afloat during these rough times it’s the Internet marketing segment. Maybe we should just count those blessings and move on. Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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The Cyber Monday Data Is Here!

Did you know that Marketing Pilgrim is more awesome than Google? Seriously! I can prove it! Google has just announced that Google News is now more mobile friendly –meaning it will recognize that you’re viewing the site from your iPhone, Droid, etc, and serve you a page optimized for your phone. This new version provides the same richness and personalization on your phone as Google News provides on desktop. Our new homepage displays more stories, sources, and images while keeping a familiar look and feel. Also, you can now reach your favorite sections, discover new ones, find articles and play videos in fewer clicks. If you are an existing Google News reader on desktop, you will find that all of your personalizations are honored in this mobile version too. Here’s how it looks: So, how are we better? We had a mobile-friendly version of Marketing Pilgrim up WAY before Google did. Point your iPhone to www.MarketingPilgrim.com and you’ll find a streamlined version of the site: See? We.Are.Better!

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Where Marketing Pilgrim Leads, Google News Follows!

We talk and think a lot about mobile marketing. But frankly, only a small proportion of cell phone users have devices that are equipped for any substantial web interfacing. But that may soon change—Nielsen predicts that smartphones will make up the majority of the cell phone market in two years. MediaPost reports that by mid-2011, half of cell phone subscribers, about 150M people, will be using smart devices. Smartphones are already showing a marked increase— Nielsen predicts that Q4 of this year will show that 40% of new phones sold are smart devices (as opposed to the Q309, slowest quarter in recent memory with smart devices accounting for only 25% of new phones). I think that smartphone adoption will be crucial to mobile marketing finally taking off in the US. The fact that most phones today are still incapable of real web browsing has contributed to the slow start to mobile marketing. I’ve been saying for years that a better web browsing experience, like that of a smartphone, is crucial to the success of mobile marketing. And Nielsen agrees: Nielsen also anticipates more users paying for video and premium content on their phones. What do you think? Will smartphones reach this much of the market in another 18 months? Will 2011 be the year of the mobile?

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Smartphones: Taking Over the World in 2011

by Chris Allison ( @neboweb ) Social Media Strategist at NeboWeb . I’ll cut to the chase. Twitter isn’t a fad. It’s not going away. Let me tell you why: They Have Industry Recognition Industry giants can be intimidating for any new business, especially on the web. Since Twitter’s inception, we’ve seen multiple companies make offers to acquire the young service, and we’ve seen multiple companies get turned down. A lot of people were thinking, “Hey, why didn’t they take the money and run?” I know I was. But, it seems the folks at Twitter had bigger and better things on their mind. Besides fighting off the temptation to give into lucrative acquisition offers, Twitter has had to face the looming threat that all startups face: what happens when Google decides to do what you’re doing? Yikes. This question has gotten even scarier for social startups – what happens when Facebook decides to do what you’re doing? Double yikes. But, Twitter has stood the test of time and managed to fight off the major industry players. Facebook users can update their Twitter accounts with a simple application, fan pages have a built in utility to update Twitter accounts, and Google and Bing are now showing Tweets in their search results . Win. Win. Win. Win. There Is No Replacement Besides fighting off internet giants like Facebook and Google, you would suspect that Twitter would also be facing heavy competition from copy cat services. After all, making a micro blogging platform isn’t that difficult, but, then again, the platform itself isn’t Twitter’s main advantage over competitors. Those trying to duplicate Twitter’s service would be faced with overcoming Twitter’s first mover advantage, their piles of funding, and their existing relationships (see paragraph above). With all of these advantages, it’s no surprise there hasn’t been much real competition from similar services. Simply put, if Twitter were Myspace, there is no Facebook. The Mobile Web Is Here So, maybe Twitter isn’t falling to competition any time soon. That doesn’t mean people won’t just quit using it. What’s to keep Twitter from becoming just another Second Life? The answer is mobile. There are three reasons why mobile is important to Twitter’s success: Mobile is easy. Instead of using an isolated desktop application or piece of software that limits use to specific times and places, mobile presents an easier, less cumbersome way for people to use Twitter: on the go, anywhere, anytime. Mobile is real. Because Twitter can be used and viewed on the go, its content is more than just tech talk floating in cyberspace. It’s real updates about things beyond the monitor: Mobile brings the value of conferences, speeches, concerts, accidents, crimes, parades, inaugurations and more to the folks who weren’t there. Mobile is the direction the internet is headed. E-marketer estimates US penetration will near 100% by 2013. And, it’s not just talking and texting anymore. The mobile web is here . Unlike Second Life, Twitter doesn’t propose an alternate reality. It proposes a simple way to better understand our current reality. Tweets ranging from “what I had for breakfast” to “Michael Jackson died” give followers world-wide a better grasp on the activities and thoughts of real people. Twitter isn’t for everyone. Some people just aren’t interested in real-time news, objects of local interest, or the status updates of friends and family, but an increasing number of people are. With their sealed market position and a platform that makes mobile usage easy and compelling, Twitter isn’t going anywhere soon. If you’ve been waiting for the fad to fade, get ready for a long wait. Image via xotoko on Flickr © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . 3 Reasons Twitter Is Not A Fad

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3 Reasons Twitter Is Not A Fad