Marketing Pilgrim Published: “AOL & Yahoo Plan Merger? Building an “Exclusive” on…Well, Nothing Actually” plus 3 more

AOL & Yahoo Plan Merger? Building an “Exclusive” on…Well, Nothing Actually
Was Groupon’s Rejection of Google the Right Move?
Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than News?
4 Great Tips to Build More Links to Your Blog Posts…Based on Scientific Analysis

AOL & Yahoo Plan Merger? Building an “Exclusive” on…Well, Nothing Actually

Posted: 06 Dec 2010 07:09 AM PST

Sometimes, merger and acquisition rumors are juicy, thrilling, with a sense of mystery.

Other times, they’re a lame duck and you wonder why anyone–let alone Reuters–would waste the time writing the story.

Exhibit A:

Exclusive: AOL mulls breakup, then merger with Yahoo

Ooh, that’s a BIG story, right? AOL, trying to reinvent itself and Yahoo, looking at a boatload of options to survive.

This is a huge story for a Monday in December. Let’s examine the “smoke” to this “fire” shall we?

…The plans are still in the exploratory stage…

Oh, OK. But I am sure the two sides are deep in talks, right?

…and Yahoo has not been contacted, the sources said…

Oh well, I’m sure Reuters has someone reliable that can be quoted here.

…The sources declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the media…

OK, well perhaps AOL offered some kind of confirmation that it’s considering buying Yahoo.

…AOL declined to comment…

What about Yahoo?

…A spokesperson for Yahoo also declined to comment…

Yeah, but surely Yahoo would love to be acquired by AOL–if this were all true, right?

…a source close to the company reiterated that it is not seeking proposals or in any buy-out discussions with AOL…

You can’t make this stuff up! Oh, wait! Apparently you can!

There’s actually a page “2″ to this article, but really, why would you bother to read it? C’mon Reuters, we know it’s a slow news season, but if I wanted speculation, tenuous connections, and lack of citation, I’d write it myself!

Was Groupon’s Rejection of Google the Right Move?

Posted: 06 Dec 2010 05:44 AM PST

Groupon knock –offs breathed a huge sigh of relief as they category maker in online deals rejected the lavish offer of around $6 billion in total that Google put on the table last week.

According to a Bloomberg article

Groupon Chief Executive Officer Andrew Mason, who started the company in 2008, had concerns about the strategic direction it would take under new management and what could happen to his employees if he sold to Google, according to a person familiar with the matter, who declined to be identified because the discussions were private.

If there was ever a chance to 'take the money and run' this one was it. Why? In my opinion, it's because although Groupon has the lead in the online deal space right now, it is more about being first rather than being better or, more importantly, hard to replicate.

Let's face it, everyone and their brother is going to put together their own version of a deal 'section' for their brand or family of brands. Why would they do it on their own rather than through Groupon? Money. Groupon takes a lot of money from its customers and brands are not likely to give up cash that easily if they can do it themselves.

Of course, you may be thinking that the Groupon mentality is for the SMB. That's true but there are many questions about the kind of 'customer' a Groupon deal attracts AND whether many Groupon offers are from companies who are just desperate to bring anyone through the door. I have had plenty of experiences without Groupon where I have tried out a businesss due to a deal that was offered and quickly found out why they were willing to give away their services: it was because they were not good at their job and they were looking for some quick traffic and cash. Do I really need Groupon to facilitate bringing me more bad businesses to try out?

If Groupon had suddenly received a mountain of cash from Google and they would have access to even more, who knows what might have happened. Right now, though, they are vulnerable despite their success. This whole deal side of the Internet is so new that there is plenty of room for the category's version of Friendster (the original social media / networking high flyer) to happen as a 'first to market' casualty. (Friendster still exists today mostly in Asia but not like everyone including Time magazine thought it would way back when)

You probably already know of several Groupon knock-offs that are designed to be run by the merchant on their site for a flat monthly fee that doesn't require the merchant to give up half of its revenue for the business it generates through the service. As Groupon works to get away from the "Deal of the Day" mentality with its Store and Feeds features it could get more cluttered and could start to look like any other coupon engine especially if each store is running as many deals as they want. That's not very original and not an idea that will get $6 billion at any other point in the future.

Of course, I am no venture capitalist and this is just my own opinion as to how this might play out. I am also reminded thought that VC's make many more bad calls than they do good ones so maybe my guess is as good as theirs?

Do you think that Groupon's model will survive in the face of so many deal sites coming on board due to a relatively low barrier to entry technologically? Of course, Groupon's current scale and its sales force can be hard to replicate but these could also be their Achilles' heel. Many a company has used a hard driving sales force to sell something before the competition gets in but then was spurned by its 'customers' because of those very same hard selling tactics.

Jut thinking out loud here but I have to believe that passing on the money from Google at this point in time (just two short years into the business) has a better than 50/50 chance to be a big regret by the Groupon management in the rear view mirror.

As for Google, maybe they need to set up their own deal mechanism and tie their Place Pages together in a neat recommendation and deal offering machine that will give all businesses a low barrier to entry (SMB's can already offer deals for free on their Place Page listing). Google has something already that few, if any, could replicate: a huge data repository of Place Pages (around 50 million). The trouble with Google is that they are an engineering company and not a marketing company. This could be interesting if they try to go it alone without buying another player but their recent track record doesn’t bode well for this tactic.

What do you think? Did Groupon make the right move by rejecting Google's offer? Will they dominate the space? Did they miss the gravy train? Would love to get your thoughts in the comments section.

Thanks.

Facebook Profile Changes: More Media Play Than News?

Posted: 06 Dec 2010 04:48 AM PST

Facebook sure has arrived when it comes to the traditional media set as it used 60 Minutes (in more ways than one) to roll out the new Profile Page design. I say used 60 Minutes because I personally came away from the watching the interview with nothing new. In other words, it looks like Mark Zuckerberg has mastered the 'no event' interview and he is getting a bigger stage for an audience he usually doesn’t get to address.

How he came across depends on who you are and how you see things, of course. If you are Jay Yarrow of the Business Insider you just put a headline that 'he rocked' and give no reason why 'he rocked' and just show the video. While Andrew Wallenstein of econsultancy took the other side of the ledger and explained why (Which is the better way to go. Don't just say something and not explain it no matter what your point of view is.).

For me it was pretty standard fare. Mark Zuckerberg is certainly getting more comfortable doing these things but, as Wallenstein points out, he is always on his home turf (the office) and no one asks him the hard questions. One I would love for him to give an actual answer to (aside from the pat "Well, we made a lot of mistakes…….) is about those IM's from college that called Zuckerberg’s fellow classmates "dumb f*^ks" for giving up their personal data and trusting him. Therein lies the true motive of all of this in my opinion.

As for the Profile changes? Well, they are outlined in the Facebook blog and there is a video for you to be given a 'tour' that just has music as the backdrop and no explanations. Facebook could stand to take a lesson from Google on these because this video is not very helpful at all.

The biggest change in the profiles seems to be the layout. Oh and the inability to easily go back to the old profile once you're into the new one (oh well, silly me for thinking I could experiment with Facebook). Zuckerberg made it a point in his 60 minutes interview (in which he got 2 full segments while Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, got one in the leadoff position) to stress that photos are a key component for people so they are now prominently displayed in the Profile section for users. It doesn't work for me personally but that's fine. I have never claimed to be the 'classic' Facebook user and never will be.

As always it's interesting to read the comments from the Facebook blog post as the haters come out hard and strong regarding all things Facebook. I did find one comment pretty insightful though and it is something I have thought applies to the Internet industry for quite some time and not just Facebook. It comes from Richard Chisnall and he said

someone who comes up with a market-driven model (read: not driven by people in your business who need constantly to prove why they’re employed) that responds to what users actually want, rather than what *you* think they want, will win. join the rest of us in the user-driven 21st century…and someone please offer an alternative to facebook, i’m getting sick to death of these changes-for-the-sake-of-changes

While offering an alternative to Facebook is unlikely at the moment, I do echo his sentiment that the idea of making changes which are more superficial than game changing overall is getting a bit old. Of course, most would recommend that Richard do it better himself but Zuckerberg and company have created a pretty large barrier to entry just because on the basis of scale so seeing real competition is getting less likely each passing day.

Oh and the changes themselves? It looks like they have just shuffled the deck and moved things around a bit. The ability to add projects you are working on at your job is interesting and has some asking if this makes Facebook a LinkedIn competitor now. I don't think so but that's just me.

One thing that is not on the front page of the Profile anymore is ones religious views. Could that be that Zuckerberg's own views (he's an atheist according to his profile at one point in time) are influencing just how prominently displayed this will be? In fact, this piece of someone's person, which is very much a defining aspect of people which they will tell folks about and want to display, is put under the Philosophy section of Profile data. Interesting placement and completely wrong but I have to remember that Facebook knows all, right?

So overall, this is another press event for the most part that heralds some changes that are really there to make it look like Facebook is being proactive rather than much else.

Are the profile changes an improvement to you?

4 Great Tips to Build More Links to Your Blog Posts…Based on Scientific Analysis

Posted: 06 Dec 2010 04:00 AM PST

This is a guest post by HubSpot's social media scientist, Dan Zarrella. It contains data from his upcoming webinar "The Science of Blogging" taking place on December 9th.

Many marketers and small business owners see blogging, rightly, as an important aspect of their SEO efforts because of their ability to attract inbound links. And even beyond SEO, getting lots of links for your blog posts is key to establishing yourself as an expert and building traffic.

I've spent the past few months analyzing data on over 150,000 blog posts and I've identified several ways you can optimize your blogging efforts to drive more incoming links.

Day of Week

I found that blog post published in the early and mid business week tended to attract more links than articles published on other days. This is likely because the "linkerati" (people who control and create links, like bloggers) tend to spend the most time working on their sites during the week, as opposed to on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Time of Day

When I turned my analysis towards the hour of publishing, I found that blog posts published very early in the morning (like, 7AM early) attracted many more links than articles posted at other times during the day. This is because most linkerati are looking at their inboxes and feedreaders in the morning to find interesting content to write about and link to.

Most Linked-To Words

When I studied the words that occured in blog post and how they correlated with incoming links, I found words like "recent" and "soon" that indicated linkers were interested in writing about timely content. I also found many words like "insights," "analysis," and "review" that told me people were interested in linking to content that expressed a blogger's personal and unique point-of-view.

Least Linked-To Words

When I looked at the other side of the coin, I found that complex and technical industry terms like "settlements," "franchise," "derivatives," and "futures" often occurred in posts that got fewer links than the average. I also noticed that the word "episode" correlated with lower linking rates, possibly indicating that people aren't excited about linking to one piece of content in an ongoing series of content.