Marketing Pilgrim Published: “PSA Video: Social Media Will Ruin Your Life…But Please Retweet This Anyway” plus 5 more

PSA Video: Social Media Will Ruin Your Life…But Please Retweet This Anyway
Google Editions E Books Offering By Year End?
Groupon Intros Deal Feeds and Groupon Stores
Facebook Drops Contest Pre-Approval, Hooray Says SMBs
Cyber Monday Sales Resulted in Smart Spending
Wikipedia’s Accidental ORM Issue?

PSA Video: Social Media Will Ruin Your Life…But Please Retweet This Anyway

Posted: 01 Dec 2010 06:45 AM PST

This parody public service announcement is hilarious and at the same time, disturbing. I LOL’d a number of times, and immediately thought “I’ll blog this and get lots of page views, tweets, and Facebook shares.” I don’t know if that means I need to watch it again, or step away from the computer.

One of my favorite lines: “What do you know, you don’t even have any followers!”

Please retweet and like this post, so I can get my next rush.

(via Mashable)

Google Editions E Books Offering By Year End?

Posted: 01 Dec 2010 05:35 AM PST

Google has been threatening to open their e book store for the past 18 months or so and the latest date has it coming to life by the end of this year. Considering the checkered history of having this rumor come to life, we will take a 'we'll believe when we see it' stance for now.

paidContent reports

Google's forthcoming e-books store now has an official launch date: The end of the year. Company executives had initially promised in June 2009 that the store, which will let consumers buy digital versions of current and older titles, would launch by the end of 2009. They later said it would launch in June 2010 but that did not happen either.

Executives now tell the WSJ that the store, which is being called Google Editions, will launch in the U.S. by the end of December and will debut abroad during the first three months of 2011. They say the launch was delayed because they "didn't want to come out with something that wasn't thorough."

What is interesting about this whole process is that Google has either chosen to take its time on this one or has been forced to take its time on this action. Compared to some of the 'rushed to market' efforts of the recent past (Google Buzz) this shows that even Google has constraints.

The store is reportedly going to carry some 500,000 titles with the critical issue being that the books will be 'device agnostic'. Any device running a browser will be able to run a Google Editions ebook. This probably the most compelling piece of the offering since the Kindle, iPad and other reader wars have intensified as of late and will likely continue.

Personally, if the selection is good enough (and considering my reading habits there are plenty of 'older' books I would benefit from reading) I would actually consider joining the ebook set if it was browser based. I say this because I really have no interest in carrying yet another device with me. After a while you can start feeling like a pack mule loaded up with laptops, ereaders, other mobile devices etc.

So if this were to come to fruition for real this time, how interested are in Google Editions? Let us know in the comments so we can give the folks at Google a bit of free (albeit pretty limited) market research.

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Groupon Intros Deal Feeds and Groupon Stores

Posted: 01 Dec 2010 04:35 AM PST

While the rumor mill now has Google trying to buy Groupon for somewhere in the neighborhood of $5.3 billion (nice neighborhood considering Twitter is garnering $4 billion valuation talk for its next round of investment) the deal site continues to add more features.

In Groupon's blog called Groublogpon (you read it right so it goes to show they are not anywhere near perfect) they explain how the new Deals and Stores idea evolved. With expansion like these offerings now it might start making more sense why Google is coming after the site with a huge wad of cash.

We originally designed Groupon to account for the constraints of being a small company. Since we didn't have any merchant relationships, we limited ourselves to one deal per day. Today things are different – our biggest problem is that demand is so high, merchants often wait months to be featured. And while we once only had a few thousand customers per city, now we have hundreds of thousands (Chicago just added its millionth subscriber!) – making it increasingly difficult to find one deal that satisfies everyone.

Now the deal door is swung wide open for businesses as they can, in effect, have deal storefronts which will allow for as many deals a day as anyone would like to offer or find. So if you wonder how Groupon can 'out value' Twitter in a short period of time it's simple: they are making money and stand to make a lot more.

The new Store feature looks like this

It is explained in the blog as follows

With Groupon Stores, businesses can now create and launch their own deals whenever they want. Think of it as the online equivalent of a merchant's physical storefront. Merchants can now:

-Setup a permanent (and free!) e-commerce presence on Groupon for promoting their business.

-Create their own offers to run deals whenever they want.

-Submit deals to be promoted to Groupon subscribers through email and the Deal Feed (explained below).

-Get customers to follow their Groupon Store, and stay in touch by sending messages through the daily email and deal feed.

The Deal feed looks like this

Here is some info from Groupon to explain it

To keep track of these extra deals, we created the Deal Feed. This is a new section of Groupon where a stream of deals – personalized for you – is updated throughout the day. Your deal feed includes your featured daily deal, deals posted by merchants you follow, and deals posted by merchants that we recommend based on what we know about you.

These features will be rolled out in a few cities to start (Chicago, Dallas and Seattle) and more is coming later as social media options will be rolling out with Facebook.

So if you were wondering why Google would like to own this puppy, this kind of opportunity for expansion (hopefully with just Google's money and keeping the Groupon team independent so they can do what they do without it getting that lovely Google engineer's touch which can take the wind out of any creative sail) is good evidence.

So we'll have to wait for this option to come to all cities near you and see just whether Groupon will be Googlepon or whatever. In the meantime, have fun getting your Groupon.

Facebook Drops Contest Pre-Approval, Hooray Says SMBs

Posted: 30 Nov 2010 06:23 PM PST

Contests, giveaways, sweepstakes, promotions — what ever you call them, offering consumers a chance at a prize has always been an excellent way for small business to acquire email addresses and drive traffic to their sites. But not on Facebook. Up until now, Facebook insisted on pre-approving all on-site promos and restricted access to only those spending more than $10,000 on advertising.

Facebook said this was necessary to protect themselves in case of a law suit but apparently they are no longer afraid because the restriction is about to be lifted.

According to Inside Facebook, the social media site is removing the pre-approval and financial commitment, thereby opening up the contest option to anyone running a fan page.

This is huge news. Yes, there are other restrictions, but nothing out of line. Mostly they’re legal issues regarding age, alcohol, tobacco, gambling and gasoline (?) and that you must make it clear that Facebook isn’t involved.

They also don’t allow contests that require people to post status updates, contests where you’re entered just by becoming a fan and oddly, you can’t notify the winner through Facebook. Not sure what’s the point of that, but it’s not a deal breaker by any means.

You can see the current guidelines here. They aren’t expected to change much except for the removal of the pre-approval section but the new guidelines, which appear to already be in effect, should show up shortly.

I love giveaways. I enter several a day and I run several a month to help drive traffic to my sites. I’m excited to see how many people take advantage of this change in terms because more Facebook contests, means more ways for me to win!

Will you be running a contest on your Facebook page?

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Cyber Monday Sales Resulted in Smart Spending

Posted: 30 Nov 2010 01:56 PM PST

Yesterday, while shoppers were clogging the internet with holiday transaction, reporters at CNN were waxing on about how Cyber Monday is a myth. More to the point, they said it was a marketing ploy (gasp!) and is erroneously labeled “the biggest online shopping day of the year.”

It might not turn out to be the biggest day, but retailers aren’t complaining this morning after seeing a 19.4% increase over last year. The numbers come from Coremetrics, an IBM Company’s third annual Cyber Monday Benchmark Report and here’s how it adds up.

Cyber Monday 2010 Compared to Black Friday 2010

Consumer Spending Increases: Online sales were up 31.1 percent, with consumers pushing the average order value (AOV) up from $190.80 to $194.89 for an increase of 2.1 percent.
Luxury Goods Continue Comeback: Jewelry retailers reported a significant jump of 60.3 percent in sales.
Social Shopping: The growing trend of consumers using their networks on social sites for information about deals and inventory levels continued on Cyber Monday. While the percentage of visitors arriving from social network sites is fairly small relative to all online visitors—nearly 1 percent—it is gaining momentum, with Facebook dominating the space.
Mobile Shopping: Consumers continue to use mobile as a shopping tool. On Cyber Monday, 3.9 percent of people visited a retailer's site using a mobile device.

Cyber Monday 2010 Compared to Cyber Monday 2009 (year/year):

Consumer Spending Increases: Online sales were up 19.4 percent, with consumers pushing the average order value (AOV) up from $180.03 to $194.89 for an increase of 8.3 percent.
Luxury Goods Report Big Gains: Affluent shoppers opened their wallets wide, driving sales of luxury goods up 24.3 percent over 2009.
Shopping Peaks at 9:00 am PST/Noon EST: Consumers flocked online, with shopping momentum hitting its peak at 9:00 am PST/noon EST. But consumer shopping maintained stronger momentum throughout the day than on Cyber Monday 2009.

The consumer may have been generous this year, but so were the retailers, offering not only deep discounts but free shipping on all purchases and that added up to big savings.

Not only was spending up, but Google says there was a sharp increase in holiday deal related search terms. Phrases such as “Cyber Monday deals” trended earlier than usual and “Cyber Monday 2010″ was the second fastest moving search term yesterday.

Google also reports a dramatic rise in online meets offline search terms such as “Black Friday store hours” and “printable coupons.”

This year’s Cyber Monday deals truly were exceptional which makes me wonder if, in spite of the 19.4% increase in spending, did the average retailer actually turn much of a profit? Even though I was already done my holiday shopping (yes, really), I couldn’t resist a late deal offered by Warner Archives that cut 50% off the price if I bought five DVDs and they threw in free shipping. Like a good holiday shopper, I bought five even though I only was interested in three. Can’t turn down a deal like that, can I?

How was your Cyber Monday experience?

Wikipedia’s Accidental ORM Issue?

Posted: 30 Nov 2010 08:31 AM PST

It's a pretty slow news day so I started thinking. Already we have crossed into dangerous territory but my interest was captured by the response to the recent Wikileaks mess by Wikipedia's co-founder Larry Sanger.

Over the weekend he went on the offensive on Twitter by posting the following thoughts regarding Wikileaks

I’ll go ahead and say the obvious: Wikileaks is an enemy of the U.S.—and not just the government. Deal with them accordingly.

How does Wikileaks repeatedly get massive troves of classified material?

Did a person or group in the U.S. govt have access to ALL these docs & leak them to Wikileaks? If so, that person or group is traitorous.

@wikileaks Speaking as Wikipedia’s co-founder, I consider you enemies of the U.S.—not just the government, but the people.

@wikileaks What you’ve been doing to us is breathtakingly irresponsible & can’t be excused with pieties of free speech and openness.

His fellow co-founder, Jimmy Wales, launched a similar 'attack' on WikiLeaks back in September. He stated

Jimmy Wales criticized WikiLeaks, which released thousands of classified military documents earlier this year, for using “wiki” in its name even though the site is anything but a “wiki.”

Now, here is where my inner cynic kicks into high gear. I don't know whether the founders of Wikipedia are truly distraught over what Wikileaks has done but I can posit that they would be very upset with close association in names. So much so that Sanger posted the following before he told his side of the story of why Wikileaks is wrong for what it is doing.

First, let me say that my main complaint is against releasing secret diplomatic communiqués, not against Wikileaks’ other work, which is less important for purposes of this discussion. Also, when I said I was “speaking as Wikipedia’s co-founder,” I was distinguishing wikis generally from Wikileaks, which is not a wiki. I was and am not speaking for Wikipedia, but only for myself. To those who said that they’d stop contributing to Wikipedia, you might not know that I left Wikipedia a little over a year after I got it started, and have since founded a competitor. I’m no longer even the editor-in-chief of this competitor; I’m now working on brand new things.

That competitor he references is Citizendium. I don't have the numbers but as far as a brand, the one that Sanger is associated with that allows him to do all of these other ‘brand new things’ is Wikipedia not Citizendium. What do you think he needs to protect?

Now here comes the potential online reputation concern. Many (and I would argue most) people in the world are not going to know that Wikipedia and Wikileaks are not associated in any way except for the use of the common Internet term 'wiki' in their names. Wales even made sure to point out that Wikileaks is not a wiki which can be translated as "Don't confuse Wikipedia with Wikileaks, even unintentionally, please!"

Why is this an issue? It's because the Internet to the masses is still a mystery and as a result perception is more reality than ever before in history. No one at Wikipedia ever imagined that they would need to 'defend' their reputation beyond being a place where anybody can say anything about anyone and get great rankings in the search engines. Now they can be linked, albeit incorrectly, to one of the greatest threats to America's security in a long, long time.

I realize that there are a lot of dotted lines to be drawn here in order to make this observation but that doesn't make it any less valid. This could be a problem for just about anyone who decides to use a common phrase in their own brand name.

It has never been more important than now to monitor and protect your brand even if it is not being directly attacked. Guilt by association is a very real and powerful thing. Our new Internet centric world has made gullible people even more susceptible to being misled. Among the masses there is this "It must be true if it's on the Internet" thinking that is completely boneheaded but it's easy so most people adopt it. I think that the folks at Wikipedia are acutely aware of this potential disaster and are working to separate themselves as best they can.

This whole thing caught my attention because even with being part of the Internet culture like I am, I can't help but think of Wikipedia when I hear Wikileaks. I know there is no connection but I don't think the large majority of people online will be able to discern as easily.

Do I think this going to take Wikipedia down? No, not at all. I do think, though, that on some level they now have to fight to distance themselves from Wikileaks which could bring up a whole new spate of 'Wikipedia accuracy' as oxymoron arguments.

No matter what the connection it has made me even more aware than ever to truly 'read between the lines' when someone has something on the line (especially if they don't directly admit it). PR and spin are as effective as ever for some but more transparent and despicable to many others since it's often hard to tell where the spin ends and the truth begins in the online space.

What's your take on this one? If you were the founders of Wikipedia and had the positions of power they do in the Internet space due to that brand name would you be concerned about the potential damage a "guilt by name association" connection could do? Or would you just ride it out and let the Internet take care of it for you?

Either way it is risky and that's what makes online reputation monitoring more important than ever. The digital world has more landmines than anywhere else and with new ones popping up all the time it's better to be ready for anything than having to react to something.

Your thoughts?