Marketing Pilgrim Published: “European Union Looks Into Google for Being Mean Again” plus 2 more

European Union Looks Into Google for Being Mean Again
On Facebook: Is Random Relevant?
Celebs Stage a Twitter Walkout for Charity

European Union Looks Into Google for Being Mean Again

Posted: 30 Nov 2010 05:11 AM PST

This will be a bit of a rant so be ready. Here is the problem for me and it once again focuses on the European Union's ridiculous notion that in a free market there is such a thing as too much success.

The EU allows anyone or any entity who wants to whine about Google's 'dominance' the chance to fight against the search giant in the name of fairness. Fairness is just an ideal and a dumb one at that. Unfortunately, it seems that whenever anything is done by the EU or EC or whatever it is called, it is done with this concept as its basis.

News flash everyone. Life isn't fair. I don't say that lightly because I (like the rest of you) could complain about plenty of things that I have been 'wronged' by. I could but I also understand that things don't need to be fair to be right. You may disagree and that is just fine but this notion of all things being equal and that there is a need to bring down the successful ones to the level of those who aren't as successful is just plain stupid.

The latest version of this comes from complaints from Microsoft (Really MS? After all the years of running roughshod over people? Please!). Bloomberg Businessweek reports

Google Inc. is being probed by European Union antitrust regulators for allegedly discriminating against competing services in its search results and for stopping some websites accepting rival ads.

The European Commission will check whether Google "imposes exclusivity obligations on advertising partners, preventing them from placing certain types of competing ads on their websites, as well as on computer and software vendors, with the aim of shutting out competing search tools," it said in an e-mailed statement today.

Microsoft Corp. service Ciao from Bing, U.K. price- comparison site Foundem, and French legal search engine Ejustice.fr filed an antitrust complaint against Google in February. The antitrust probe adds to separate criticism from French, German and British data protection regulators over Google's StreetView service that collects data from private homes.

This whole thing has been going on for quite some time with Foundem being part of from the beginning. They even got time in a New York Times editorial which drew the ire of industry insiders who called Foundem an SEO failure in their search for search neutrality.

Look, I am not saying that Google is perfect. They prove how far they are from that every single day. They have, though, done something really well (organized the world's information to a degree) and actually really important (making sense of all this information to a degree). My question is at what point is it their responsibility to make everyone happy? I suspect that they don't need to manipulate things to protect their business considering their competition is so inferior in most cases that even if people were to leave Google 'on principle' they would come crawling back because it works.

I am not advocating that Google gets free reign and gets to run everyone into the ground. All I am asking for people to stop whining. If you are getting beat then you either need to settle for your part of the market that likes you and uses your service or just get out. Business is for big boys wearing long pants and not whiners looking to hit the lottery through the courts. Until the EU understands that the world will never be fair there will likely be room for this kind of drivel to keep raising its ugly head.

Your take?

Update: Shame on me for not seeing this before but Danny Sullivan’s take on this whole thing is pretty funny.

On Facebook: Is Random Relevant?

Posted: 29 Nov 2010 02:27 PM PST

“Spent the morning making prank bird calls. The sparrows are not amused.”

See the numbers in the graphic? Those are the stats on that random Facebook wall post made by Skittles. And that’s not a fluke. Everyday, there’s an equally random and nonsensical post on the candy’s fan page and every post draws a similar number of “likes” and comments. Most companies would be thrilled to see those kinds of social media stats, but do those high numbers equal marketing success? Depends on who you ask.

AdvertisingAge contents that Facebook is going to redefine the term relevant when it comes to online marketing. In traditional terms, relevant means supplying consumers with copy that discusses the features and benefits of the product or service. Skittles taste fruity. Oreo is a quality cookie. This vacuum sucks better than that one. But those kinds of blurbs don’t spark conversation on Facebook and that’s a problem.

Says Adage;

“We’ve long known that inserting brands into social-media channels requires a conversational touch, but many are surprised by just how conversational. . .As it turns out, many people in social networks don’t want to talk about your product, they just want to talk.”

My own very unscientific studies bear this out. A post about improvements to a fashion game I promote ends in dead silence. A post asking how many times our fans have seen the new Harry Potter movie results in a flurry of comments and “likes.”

So why not just talk nonsense all the time like Skittles? Here’s why not. Because no one knows yet whether 1,200 comments translates into sales. How many of the 17,000 Facebook users who “liked” this post actually went out and bought a bag of Skittles or recommended them to a friend? And can you see convincing your boss that writing nothing but random statements on Facebook was doing your job and doing it well?

On the other hand, we often talk about Facebook and Twitter as brand awareness tools. McDonalds doesn’t always show a burger in their commercials. They don’t have to. They just need to put the name in your ear so it comes to mind when it’s time for lunch. If half the Skittles Facebook fans pass on today’s post because they think it’s funny, that’s worth something.

What do you think? Is it possible that traditional marketing axioms don’t apply to social media? Could random be the most relevant thing you can post on your Facebook wall? We’d like to hear about your experiences one way or the other.

Celebs Stage a Twitter Walkout for Charity

Posted: 29 Nov 2010 11:23 AM PST

Alicia Keys and Lady Gaga are staging a Twitter walkout tomorrow and quite a few of their celebrity friends will be joining them. They’re calling it the Digital Life Sacrifice and it’s being held on behalf of Keys’ charity Keep a Child Alive on the occasion of World AIDS Day. (The press release says this is happening Tuesday, but World AIDS Day is Wednesday.)

Tomorrow, Keys, Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Usher, Jennifer Hudson, Ryan Seacrest, Kim and Khloe Kardashian, Elijah Wood, Serena Williams and others will step away from Twitter and Facebook and they’ll stay gone until the charity collects one million in donations. Knowing Lady Gaga fans, this could be a short boycott.

Says Leigh Blake, the president and co-founder of Keep a Child Alive;

“We’re trying to sort of make the remark: Why do we care so much about the death of one celebrity as opposed to millions and millions of people dying in the place that we’re all from?”

The campaign also includes “Last Tweet and Testament” videos which will run over footage of the stars lying in a coffin.

It will be interesting to see how widespread the social media boycott becomes and if it spreads to their fans. According to Blake, “Lady Gaga has more than 7.2 million followers on Twitter, and nearly 24 million fans on Facebook.” Imagine if everyone of them called in “social media sick” tomorrow, and the next day and the next day. Could this boycott be big enough to cause a drop in ad clicks on Twitter and Facebook? Tune in tomorrow and find out.