Bing As iPhone Default Search Engine Part Deux

I expressed skepticism yesterday that Bing would become the default search engine on the iPhone. Rather, I speculated, it would be added as an option (as it should be) on the device. But CNBC has some additional information that asserts default search status on the iPhone is a real possibility for Bing. But take the [...]

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FTC Unsure How to Enforce Blogging Guidelines; May Target Twitter

In case you’ve forgotten, 2009 was the year the FTC decided to go after mom bloggers (and other bloggers) with $11,000 fines for not disclosing reviewed freebies, sponsored posts or other relationships with companies—or not.

Despite the fervor over the FTC’s new guidelines, the fact is that they were designed to target a specific group of bloggers—ones making a living (or just a killing) off free products which they automatically gave glowing reviews. (And let’s face it, who’s going to be sorry to see them go?) But the guidelines were written widely enough to apply to mom bloggers who use coupons to book reviewers who receive advance review copies, even though neither of those situations guarantees a good review or even coverage.

And now, the FTC is finally realizing how hard these guidelines will be to enforce—and not just for the targeted bloggers, and not even just for bloggers (as we’ve pointed out all along).

The FTC’s northeast regional director, Leonard Gordon, spoke to the Wall Street Journal about the guidelines, clarifying that the FTC has no intention of “storm troopers taking down suburban houses and seizing the computers of mommy bloggers.” (Whew.) Instead (emphasis added),

the agency wants to focus on people who are being paid to make plugs for products in “non-traditional contexts” such as tweeting. In particular, they’ll go after companies that make claims that aren’t true or can’t be substantiated, essentially the same mission of the FTC in holding companies accountable offline.

While the FTC is still deciding how the new blogger guidelines will be enforced, it’s concerned that consumers may not have sharpened the same sense of skepticism for online claims that they’ve developed for sources offline.

But the line for whether or not disclosure is necessary will likely be drawn in cases where consumers have a “reasonable expectation” that the author was not being paid to plug a product. “If the consumer knew that the person who was making that endorsement was being paid, would the consumer view that endorsement differently? I think that’s the bottom that we’re trying to get at,” said Mr. Gordon.

In light of the recent Kim Kardashian kerfluffle (a little piece of me died just typing that), it may be wise to consider other social media sites. On the other hand, it may also just open a whole new can of worms, since the FTC hasn’t figured out how it will enforce the guidelines it already has.

However, I wonder about that middle paragraph, where Gordon says that consumers aren’t as skeptical for online claims as offline claims. It’s hard for me to say whether I’m more skeptical about stuff I read online and stuff I hear offline, but I feel I’ve developed a ridiculously oversensitive healthy skepticism about reports and reviews from all sources.

But maybe everyone hasn’t—and there’s still an area where the FTC’s “reasonable expectation” would apply.

What do you think? Is it just that consumers aren’t savvy enough online, or should disclosure be mandatory? Will the FTC ever figure out how to enforce it?

Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

Bing Holding Steady in September – Maybe, Kinda, Sorta

Bing is going to be a monthly issue apparently when it comes to reporting just how good, bad or indifferent their performance has been in the previous month. What does that mean? Well, it simply means that the reporting of results of what the market share is for the Microsoft search offering is going to be all over the map and one wonders what the real performance is after all is said and done.

Very early this month StatCounter got some press reported that bing had slipped considerably in September of ’09 (12 percent to be exact). This ‘report’ was met with some valid skepticism since the StatCounter folks seem to be setting themselves up as the ‘early reporters’ of search engine share. While they certainly are first to line with information it’s the whole accuracy thing that has many folks a little suspect of what is going on there. Even Hitwise reported a 5% drop in bing’s numbers in September.

In stark contrast to the StatCounter and Hitwise numbers is the report from comScore yesterday which paints a different picture. TechCrunch tells us

Tonight it released its qSearch market share numbers, which are widely followed on Wall Street, and they show no decline for Bing in September. According to comScore, Bing’s U.S. search market share remained steady at 9.4 percent in September, up from 9.3 percent in August. That is not blowing the doors off of anything, but it is at least holding its own.

Meanwhile, Google’s share went up 0.3 point from August, to 64.9 percent share. The biggest loser was Yahoo, which was down 0.5 percent in absolute terms to 18.8 percent share. Since the beginning of the year, Yahoo is down 2.2 percentage points in share, while Google is up 1.9 percent and Bing/Microsoft is up 0.9 percentage point.

We do this dance every month and quite honestly it’s starting to border on lame. It becomes even worse when there is a competition developing for first to market information rather than accurate information. The only number that would even make me blink is if Google’s numbers went in the crapper.

Now that I said that will there be a report on November 1st saying that Google dips in October? While I am not that influential, nothing would surprise me. What weight do you place on this data as an Internet marketer? Does it influence you in any way? Tell us whether this stuff is important or becoming a bit of a joke.

How Quickly the Rumors Fall

Seems like just yesterday that the Telegraph was reporting that Twitter was considering the introduction of video tweets into its playbook (actually it was just yesterday). Interesting and scary thought all at once (honestly, do you need to actually see some of the folks who pass along their nuggets of 140 character wisdom?). So while it makes for a nice article and creates the some speculation, what was actually given to the folks at Mashable was even more important. High atop Mt. Twitter the story was given ‘the biz’ by The Biz as an official thumbs down was offered to the rumor. Biz speaks, Mashable reports.

We commented a few hours ago on a claim in the Telegraph newspaper that Twitter is considering the addition of video to the service, and expressed skepticism about the report. That skepticism seems well-founded, as Twitter co-founder Biz Stone replied to our inquiries today by email, essentially debunking the article’s premise:

Haven’t read the piece but no video hosting. 140 characters of text including spaces. You know the drill!

Personally, I breathed a sigh of relief on this one. Twitter and the rest of the world hasn’t yet figured out the 140 text piece of it with search, revenue and any other business considerations you can come up with. At this point in time introducing something like a video offering might serve as more of a distraction than a value add.

Now having said that we should let you know that Mashable’s Pete Cashmore (great Internet marketing name btw) did offer his thoughts on the “what ifs?” and “woulda, shoulda, coulda’s” of video and Twitter with the following.

That said, Twitter does lose out when it comes to multimedia: adding in-line thumbnails for images and videos (even if that content is hosted on 3rd party sites) would make for a much richer experience that could match Facebook’s news feed for image and video sharing.

Aw, Pete, you had to bring up that pesky Facebook thing didn’t you ? There will always be the opportunity for each service to be more like the other and it will keep us all busy in between the time we are logged in to Facebook and Twitter.

So would you like to see video and Twitter as one without the third party assist?

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Some Social Media Stats for Your Weekend

It looks like September of 2009 was a pretty good month or Facebook according to Experian’s Hitwise report about social media usage. If you are a regular reader of Marketing Pilgrim you know that we report on statistics all the time and we approach them with same amount of reverence as we do skepticism. What is seen in this report though would likely be of little shock to anyone and that is that Facebook is kicking some serious social media butt.

The press release for the report states

Experian® Hitwise® announced today that Facebook accounted for 58.59 percent of all U.S. visits among a custom category of 155 social networking Web sites in September 2009. The 58 percent was the highest among all social networking sites sites, as U.S. visits to Facebook increased 194 percent in September 2009 compared with September 2008. MySpace received the second-highest market share of U.S. visits for the month, with 30 percent.

Some pretty lofty numbers indeed but not a surprise. I shouldn’t be any more but I still get surprised when I see MySpace coming in second. I am guilty of paying greater attention to and giving greater weight to only the social media outlets I use. Shame on me since in marketing of any kind you need to be where the market is and not where you think it should be.

Now I am really going to step out here and admit that the third place finisher ahead of Twitter is Tagged.com. As a result of this report I visited Tagged for the first time and they report 80 million users. I guess I am simply not part of the Tagged set or it’s just another indication of not playing with the cool kids on my part.

Now on to the demographics. While the use of Facebook has increased significantly with the 55 plus crowd there is an audible thud when looking at the 35-54 group.

So while any numbers around social media are interesting I think we are all waiting, as marketers that is, for the conversion rates of the sites. Is the less than 2 % of traffic that Twitter garners more convertible than all the Facebookers you can round up? As we move forward with the great social media experiment it’s the ones who can answer those questions that will be given the keys to the city.

Bing’s Got Some Zing

Just last week the earliest of the early reports claimed that Bing had made some impact in the search engine arms race. Those numbers were met with a fair amount of skepticism due to the timing etc. Now Mashable reports that Compete.com has released US traffic stats that shows Bing is making some progress in more than just search.

So after a month, where are we? We knew that Bing was growing, but the numbers being released tonight tell a tale of success, as Bing is now the 13th most visited site on the web.

It doesn’t matter who you are or how down on Microsoft you can get that is not a bad start. Sure, much of the early success can be attributed to the $100 million in advertising etc but that’s why companies do those kinds of things, right? Microsoft must feel at least a little joy from seeing this kind of reaction out of the gate. After all, there were more than a handful of folks who felt that the whole Bing thing would be a ginormous fail but that appears to be just some of the usual Microsoft ‘nay saying’ at this point in time.

So early on, and with the obvious benefit of a ton of Bing buzz, Bing had more US visitors in June than Digg, Twitter and CNN. We all need to take a deep breath though before we anoint Bing a true success.

Where will the search decision engine be in the 4th quarter as the online holiday shopping season progresses (or doesn’t since this year already looks like it might be a dud)? Will the professed strengths of Bing really make an impact thus influencing search behavior which then turns into market share gain against Google and Yahoo? Those are the better questions but for now we’ll let Microsoft have a restrained celebration for this good start.

OPA Study Reaffirms Display Ads Drive Search

Search and display. One often hears how they work together, but there’s still plenty of skepticism out there, especially in the SEM community, about the value of display advertising. Indeed, during the recession search has prospered (relatively speaking) while display has suffered. But a new study from the Online Publishers Association (OPA) and comScore argues [...]

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Top CEO’s Appear to be Anti Social (Media, that is)

With all the talk of social media this and social media that, it’s hard not to feel some pressure to be involved in some way or another. That is unless, of course, you are one of the CEO of some of the biggest companies in the world, as TechCrunch reports on a survey conducted by UBERCEO. Apparently the Top 100 companies of the Fortune 500 have CEO’s that are not getting in the game. Considering some of the press these guys and gals get these days that may be a good idea.

The highlights

• Only two CEOs have Twitter accounts.
• 13 CEOs have LinkedIn profiles, and of those only three have more than 10 connections.
• 81% of CEOs don’t have a personal Facebook page.
• Three quarters of the CEOs have some kind of Wikipedia entry, but nearly a third of those have limited or outdated information.
• Not one Fortune 100 CEO has a blog.

So is this a problem? Of course, that is a question that is open to opinion so let me chime in with mine. CEOs who run companies of any real influence should tread extremely lightly in the social media space. If the company is publically traded the risks involved, at least on the surface, seem to far outweigh the potential upside.

Let’s be realistic as well. Does anyone really think that they are going to become a “bff” of a CEO just through social media? Is this the new way to get from the mail room to the boardroom in today’s corporate world? Not likely.

Also, there is a better than fair chance that when a CEO is actually involved in this kind of medium, many would suspect that it wouldn’t really be the CEO doing the work. You can’t turn around without hearing the cries of “There are not enough hours in the day to keep up with social media!” so the likelihood of a busy CEO carving out some time to tweet or post or update anything is not real high. One side effect of the ridiculous amount of information that is available to everyone today is the increasingly high level of skepticism that comes along with it. Why have to try to prove that you (if you are that CEO actually making the social media effort) are really the one sending tweets and updating their Facebook page?

Social media efforts have to be careful to not run too far ahead of themselves. There needs to be a lot of crawling before a full sprint social media effort by anyone is undertaken. Based on that, it might be wise to keep the CEO’s to their regular jobs. A lot of good work can be undone real quickly by one bad moment from the C-suite that is broadcast to the world via social media channels. Why risk that?