Pay No Attention to the WordPress Hacking Threats; Look at the Shiny rssCloud!

What would you rather have? A safe, secure WordPress platform that doesn’t require a half-dozen plugins in order to run effectively, or, faster distribution of your RSS feed? If, like me, your vote went to option A, then you’re probably not going to be too thrilled about the latest update from the WordPress mothership. If you [...]

5 SEO Pitfalls to Avoid

Are you engaged in a Search Engine Optimization program and wondering how to get more out of it? Look no further, I’m going to share with you 5 Pitfalls to Avoid as part of an SEO program. Having worked with many, many clients I’ve seen just about everything. However, there are 5 pitfalls that consistently pop up and [...]

Philly Papers in Peril

With a slow start to the week regarding Internet news one can unfortunately almost always find a story about more newspapers having more difficulty. In Philadelphia, one of the largest markets in the country that no one seems to talk about not just one but both local papers are facing Sept. 15 deadlines that could [...]

AOL Still Lurking About and Hiring Big Names

AOL has made some waves this year that have mostly centered on the people that are coming on board rather than services that will turn the companies fortunes to the plus side. Tim Armstrong has come over from Google and injected a sense of purpose and urgency (one would guess) as the unit of Time [...]

Have an Otterly Awesome Labor Day!

You work too hard! You otter just kick back and relax today!

Measuring Real Value from SEO

I know you’re thinking, “What does a castle have to do with measuring value from search engine optimization?”. Nothing really, but I’m in England for the next week or two and didn’t need much of an excuse to post a photo of Hever Castle, which I visited recently. Actually, I do have a metaphor, so [...]

Cup of Joe: Please Keep Your Armpits Out Of My Spaghetti

Last weekend I visited my father at his home in Hartsville, South Carolina. Hartsville is a typical southern small town that the likes of Andy Griffith would be proud of. So you can imagine the buzz around town when a new Italian restaurant opened up. There wouldn’t be much debate, this is where we would [...]

Gmail is Down! (With the Latest Themes, That Is)

Gmail had a rough week with its downtime. We talked about that already and here at Marketing Pilgrim, at least, have decided to forgive them â€" just this once! Maybe as a make good to all of you still steamed about the failure of Google to be perfect you can take comfort in the new [...]

Will Facebook Get Us Ready for M-Commerce?

Don’t you just love how every year, someone predicts that “the mobile” will “arrive”? (Me too! I love these crazy forecasts! Must be my penchant for fiction.) Well, today, Read Write Web takes a hard look at mobile eCommerce and the challenges that stand between us and buy-anytime-anywhere. A couple years ago, about 6 months after [...]

Size Matters: Shorter is Better

In a world of 140 characters, URLs are a thing of the past. As Twitter has grown and gained in hype popularity, the URL shorteners have seen a similar rise—but the sprint for shortest URL may actually be over. Back in May, Twitter abandoned its default support of TinyURL, a URL shortener that reduced URLs to [...]

Verdict is In……Twitter and Fox Went Past the Fringe

Earlier this week we told you of Fox and Twitter teaming up to create some buzz about repeats of the shows Fringe and Glee. Well, hopefully there is no such thing as bad press because the comments we received about the experiment were unanimous: FAIL! Check out our impassioned reader feedback. Ginger Says: September 3rd, 2009 at [...]

Google’s Schmidt Gives Search Insight

Over at TechCrunch Michael Arrington has been doling out portions of his interview with Google’s Grand High Pubah (that’s code for CEO) Eric Schmidt. It’s interesting to see what one of the more influential people in the space (and in business overall) sees for the future of the industry / service. There is even some [...]

5 Tips for Gaining Subscribers to Your Blog

Are you ready to celebrate the successful launch of your new company blog? Technically speaking, the launch went off without a hitch. Your content is fresh, informative and even entertaining. And your blog’s design is well-branded and intriguing. But before you pop open the bottle of champagne, consider one more piece of the puzzle: blog subscribers. [...]

Kai-Fu Lee Leaves Google; Soft Snickering Heard in Redmond

The man that gave Google one of its biggest legal headaches, is leaving the company. According to the WSJ, Kai-Fu Lee, president of Google’s China operations is leaving Google to work on his own start-up. You may remember that Lee, was smack in the middle of a legal battle between Microsoft and Google over allegations that [...]

Will YouTube be the Next Netflix?

As impossible as it sounds, Netflix, the popular rental-by-mail-and-instant-download service, may be facing some stiff competition in the future—from YouTube. The Wall Street Journal reports that major studios are discussing YouTube rentals. Yep, you read that right: YouTube movie rentals. If this comes true, this will be the biggest test to see if users of the [...]

7 Reasons Social Media Is A No-Brainer For Passionate B2C Brands

Social media is fast becoming a standard element in the marketing mix of major consumer brands.  And with good reason: never before has such a creative landscape existed for people and the brands they love to interact, share stories and build relationships – in all directions. With social media marketing spends predicted to grow at an [...]

Google Patents Simple Search

One of the secrets to Google’s massive success is not the immense size of its search index, but the sparse design of it’s homepage. A design that is now officially patented! From now on, if you launch a search engine, it had better not use a homepage design that contains the bolded elements below: It might have [...]

Twitter Hires More Exec Firepower

Twitter is really trying to become the company that everyone has it pegged to be, or at least it seems that way by their hiring tactics as of late. While the media daily predicts the emergence / unfettered growth / imminent doom of the micro-blogging service daily (are you sick of it yet?) Twitter goes [...]

NBC Goes Mobile With Investment

NBC understands that the future of television may have less to do with TV’s. As a result, the company has made a move into the mobile ad space by investing in the mobile ad network Greystripe. The funding is said to have been made to assist the sales team headquartered in New York in selling [...]

Google To Get Hardware to Take on eBooks?

This year, Google has made no bones about the fact that they’re looking to take on Amazon in the eBook arena. First, they made a deal with Sony (maker of the Sony eReader, top competitor to Amazon’s Kindle reader) to provide more than half a million public domain titles. Then in June, Google “signaled its [...]

Facebook: An Internet unto Itself

Facebook has a lot going for it lately. They’ve got more than 250M users worldwide, they’re the most popular social network in almost every country in the world, they’re hiring in a down economy, and according to a new comScore report, 8.2% of all Internet ads are served on their site. But, then, maybe this all [...]

Why the US Government Might Take Control of Twitter

You know how I love a good conspiracy theory, so try this one on for size. Millions of people decide they don’t like the way the US government is handling a major issue–healthcare for example–they start protesting. They use social networks to voice their concerns, Twitter almost buckles under the strain of the conversations. A group of very [...]

NFL (No Fun League) Policies Around Social Media Expand

While it’s probably not fair to attach the “No Fun League” tag to the NFL in this instance it certainly makes for a better headline, so there. The league, which earlier this year linked itself to the US Marine Corps and others by limiting social media use by its ‘employees’ has expanded those terms before [...]

Google Calls Gmail Outage a “Big Deal”

Many of the readers of Marketing Pilgrim likely had a rough 100 or so minutes yesterday when Google’s popular Gmail application crashed and went dark via the web. Watching the Twitter stream of panic and rage caught in 140 character snapshots was amusing for a while but when everyone tries to ‘out Tweet’ the next [...]

Icahn Sells Off (Some) Yahoo

Remember all the drama between Carl Icahn and Yahoo last year? As a major shareholder, he lobbied for Yahoo to take Microsoft’s buyout offer (any offer!). And then there were some I’ll-replace-your-whole-board-of-directors threats, and some nuh uhs. And some I’ll-get-you-yet,-Yang!s and some “what-ever”s and some pbbbts and “You’re nuts”s. . . . Yeah, for a [...]

Global Search Numbers: That’s A Lot of Zeros

According to comScore the number of global searches in July of 2009 topped 100,000,000,000 (that’s 100 billion for the calculator crowd). The actual number is around 113,000,000,000 (ok, that’s 113 billion), which represents a hefty 415 increase over July searches from 2008. Considering that the US was in the middle of a pretty serious political [...]

MySpace Lags Behind Twitter in UK

Twitter, media sweetheart and microblogging service extraordinaire, has another coup to add to its list: they’ve now beat out MySpace in terms of most visits in the UK. Remember MySpace? The overhyped media sweetheart before Twitter and Facebook? Hitwise UK reports that Twitter is now the 27th most visited website in the UK. This is a [...]

PubCon Las Vegas 2009 – You Know You Want to Go!

If you’re debating which of the remaining 2009 internet marketing conferences you should attend, I have a suggestion for ya: PubCon! PubCon is returning to Las Vegas November 10th thru 13th and it promises to be better than ever! The four day event is packed with great sessions, great speakers, and great networking. In fact, the [...]

Sony Defaults to Google’s Chrome Browser; Chrome OS Next?

Sony and Google would like to confirm that, "it’s not what you know, but who you know" is alive and well. At least, that’s the official basis for Sony agreeing to make Google’s Chrome the default browser in all Vaio notebooks sold in the US. "Our decision to carry Chrome is based not only on the [...]

Skype Being Sold by eBay

The New York Times is reporting that eBay has a deal to sell Skype thus ending a rather tragic acquisition saga that began in 2005 when eBay ‘won’ in their fight with Google and Yahoo to buy the Internet phone service. Since that time the original deal which was for $3.1 billion has resulted in [...]