Oh, how quickly things change. Blogs have taken over, creating a feedback loop between journalists and readers, businesses and customers, you name it — conversation has officially changed the game.

While this may not represent all of the year’s best marketing bloggery, it’s a start. Are there posts by other bloggers you’d like to see on here? Let us know with a brief comment and (so long as it fits) we’ll add your suggestion to the list. Enjoy!

December

“Best of 2007: Top 7 Tech News Stories” — Mashable (The top tech posts from the Mashable.com team.)

“2007 Brand Autopsy Marketing Book Awards” by John Moore, Brand Autopsy (Find out which books John thought were made to stick, so to say, in ‘07.)

“The Cosmo Headline Technique for Blogging Inspiration” by Brian Clark, Copyblogger (Shows how to spin brilliantly trashy headlines into useful attention-grabbers, e.g., “Headline Help: Crucial Tips That Brian Clark Forgot to Mention” [Hint: It's not just for bloggers.])

November

“The Blogger’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization” by Aaron & Giovanna Wall, SEO Book (It’s quickly becoming the go-to resource for blog SEO.)

“Close Encounter with Facebook Beacon“ by Charlene Li, Groundswell (See what happens when you back peddle into a revenue stream by snooping on your users.)

“Who Owns Your Data on Google, Facebook, Netflix?” by Don Dodge, The Next Big Thing (One of the year’s top debates, nicely distilled in a simple response to Jason Calacanis, Doc Searls, and Dave Winer.)

“Amazon Sets eBook World Alight with Kindle” by Richard MacManus, Read/Write Web (Review of a clunky internet-connected e-book reader. Will it catch fire or burn up?)

“Google’s Android Arrives . . . An Open Source Mobile Phone Platform” by Greg Sterling, Search Engine Land (It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s not a Google Phone, but a mobile operating system.)

October

“Sorry PR people: you’re blocked” by Chris Anderson, The Long Tail (If you’re in PR or have ever considered emailing Wired Magazine’s editor-in-chief, or any other blogger/author/journalist, don’t do a thing until you read this appropriately scathing post.)

“Online Copywriting 101: The Ultimate Cheat Sheet” — GrokDotCom (Resources for anyone who wants to communicate on the Web.)

“Radiohead’s In Rainbows: A Look at Anti-Marketing in the Music Industry” by Maki, DoshDosh (One band schools an entire industry on “the ROI of free,” but stumbles a bit in the process. Read our follow-up case study for more.)

September

“Dear Steve Jobs” by Robert Scoble, Scobleizer (Apple announces iPhone. Zealots and Geeks wait in lines for days. Sales are a bit slow for Jobs, so he drops the price. The blogosphere speaks up. Jobs listens.)

“Forget About Page Rank and Build a Better Blog” by Darren Rowse, ProBlogger (A terrific video post on why it’s important to put content first, then let search engines do their job. Optimization matters, but what you’re optimizing matters more.)

August

“Damn, I am so busted, yo” by Fake Steve, The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs (One of our favorite satirist bloggers, Daniel “if-that-is-his-name” Lyons, gets outed by a New York Times writer whose name happens to be BRAD STONE.)

“Moving Day” by Stephen J. Dubner, Freakonomics (In a freak move, NYTimes.com picks up Dubner & Levitt’s popular blog, breathing new life into old media.)

“See Who’s Editing Wikipedia” by John Borland, Wired (A Cal Tech graduate student makes a program that allows us to see who’s editing wiki entries. You might be surprised. Read our follow-up post for more.)

“Answer These 10 Questions Before You Charge for SEO Services” by Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz (A must-read for all SEO firms and the people who hire them.)

July

“Will The Last Corporation Leaving Second Life Please Turn Off The Light” by Duncan Riley, TechCrunch (The L.A. Times talks about the pink elephant: Are businesses making money or even wooing fans in Second Life?)

“Sphinn: Our Social Site For Search & Internet Marketing Professionals” by Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land (Danny and crew launch a cool, 2.0-ish social news service for SEO’s.)

“FreeBurner for Everyone” by Traci, Burning Questions (Google acquires yet another important company. David Dalka gives six reasons why the deal was a mistake.)

June

“Why I disagree with Privacy International” by Matt Cutts, Gadgets, Google, and SEO (Google gets poor grades on their privacy practices. Matt speaks out.)

“Ask Launches Ask3D” by Eric Enge, Search Engine Watch (The “first” major launch of universal search.)

“Building 43” by Seth Godin, Seth’s Blog (You can’t out-SEO the team behind Google’s algorithm.)

“If Clicks Were Votes” by Andrew Meagher, Compete blog (A fun double-header analysis that tries to infer what could happen to Democrats and Republicans in the ‘08 U.S. presidential election if Web traffic on its own actually mattered.)

May

“Google Maps is spying on my cat…” by Xeni Jardin, BoingBoing (Google Street Views takes some very revealing photos, backlash ensues.)

“New Version of Google Analytics!” by Jeff Gills, The Official Google Analytics Blog (Sparks go off as Google unveils its updated analytics solution. Impressive, but is it an enterprise solution?)

“Thank You for Helping Me Write The New Rules of Marketing & PR!” by David Meerman Scott, Web Ink Now (With one of the year’s best executed and most earnest linkbait posts, David proves why everyone should read his book. Thank YOU, sir!)

“The Movie is Finally Here,” by Geert, Bring Back the Love (Have advertisers lost that lovin’ feelin’? This short film shows why it’s time to bring it on back, now.)

April

“Google beats Microsoft in DoubleClick bidding battle” by David Hunter, Microsoft News Tracker, (GoogleClick? They win another acquisition battle.)

“Google Website Optimizer Launches” by Robert Gorell, GrokDotCom (Now everyone can do A/B and Multivariate testing at zero cost. Want some free resources with that?)

“Video: RSS in Plain English” by Lee Lefever, Common Craft (Finally, someone shows how RSS really is simple.)

March

“Viacom Sues YouTube for $1 Billion…The End of the Tube?” by Pete Cashmore, Mashable (If you can’t beat ‘em, sue ‘em? The great debate rages on.)

“Why Online Advertising Economics Are So Messed Up” by Scott Karp, Publishing 2.0 (Now that “page views” are dead, it’s time to take a look at the real problem. Just beware of those zombie metrics.)

“Taking the Week Off” by Robert Scoble, Scobleizer (After receiving horrible anonymous threats, Kathy Sierra, one of the world’s top bloggers, quits blogging. A regrettable chapter, indeed — but there was a silver lining. Ultimately, greater minds prevailed and the incident fueled a much-needed conversation about balancing professionalism with free speech in blogland.)

“10 Reasons Commenting is Good for Bloggers” by Chris Garrett, ChrisG.com (’Tis better to give than to receive. Here’s why.)

February

“Why People Hate SEO…” by Jason Calicanis, Calicanis.com (SEO is Bull? Although there are likely reasons why Jason would say such a thing, at least he got savvy search marketers to link to him and even challenge him back. Mahalo!)

“National Pork Board Goes After Breastfeeding Search Marketer” by Danny Sullivan, Search Engine Land (The Pork Board shouldn’t whine about spilt milk, especially when it’s not their own.)

“7 Big Questions for Online Marketers” by Jeffrey Eisenberg, GrokDotCom (Everyone loves answers, but are you asking the right questions?)

January

“Steve’s Devices” by Nicholas Carr, Rough Type (The post that put the year of the iPhone in perspective, explaining its limitations and predicting, without saying as much, that 2008 will be the year of the open mobile platform. Oh, and Nick does this six months before the iPhone even launched.)

Did we miss something?

Probably. There were so many eye-opening blog posts this year that we need your help updating this list so that it is definitive — or close to it.

What were your favorite posts this year? Leave a comment and/or link to let us know.

“Whiteboard Friday — Controlling the Flow of PageRank & Link Juice” by Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz
“‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ Button Costs Google $110 Million per Year” by Nicholas Carlson, Vallywag

“Millions in Sales from 3 Simple Words” by Glen Rifkin, The New York Times

“Psychological (’personality’) Types” — Socionics

“Caring for Your Introvert” by Jonathan Rauch, The Atlantic

“The Anatomy of Sarchasm: Researchers Reveal How the Brain Handles this Complex Communication” by S.G. Shamay-Tsoory, PhD, et al., APA Online

“The Lasting Digg Effect” by Ben Cook, Blogging Experiment — Interesting analysis. Doesn’t say much about how to capitalize on Digg traffic, but it looks like Cook’s making a fresh start with this post. We’d like to see a follow-up in six months.

“Stanford Class Facebook Apps Blowing Up All Over (translation: holy cow this stuff really works!)” by Dave McClure, Master of 500 Hats

“The Social Graph & Beyond: Tim Berners-Lee’s Graph is the Next Level” by Richard MacManus, Read/WriteWeb

“Web 2.0 Fat-Off: The 2007 Edition — More Options to Lose the Fat!” by Allen Stern, CenterNetworks

“Google: This isn’t about Android” by Marek Pawlowski, MEX: Mobile Experience blog — For those interested in Google’s mobile ambitions.

“PayPerPost Bloggers Get Slammed by Google” by Duncan Riley, TechCrunch

“Amazon’s Kindle device out of stock” by Michelle Meyers, News.com

“Rumor: News Corp in buyout talks with LinkedIn” by Michelle Meyers, News.com

“Connections” — Internet Archive — An hour-long interview/retrospective on James Burke’s landmark program.

“Visual Illusion Videos” — Mixing Memory — A little optical brain candy.

“James Howard Kunstler: The Tragedy of Suburbia” — TED Talks — 2004 lecture on a thankless part of U.S. culture.

“Thanksgiving Link Karma” by Brian Clark, Copyblogger

…Facebook is now partnering with 3rd party sites and selling your information to them for money. How does this work?

Here’s a scenario: you go to Blockbuster.com and rent a movie. A little interface element pops up and tells you that Blockbuster is sending information to your Facebook account. It gives you ten seconds to say no…and then it sends it anyway. This is called “opt-out”. You only have the option to say no. It sends your personal information by default. “Opt-in” would be where no action is taken by default.

You then log into your Facebook account, and it says that “Blockbuster is sending a story to your account”. You have the option to say no to this, but it is not apparent at all. In fact, Facebook gives you the option “Don’t show me this again”, which seems to suggest that they agree this message is annoying. They have designed this screen for you to focus on the pain of having to read a silly message and dismiss it. But what isn’t very clear is that when you do so you’re also giving implicit instruction that all services can send information to your news feed in the future. This is a HUGE deal to Facebook…this is how they’re going to make money. [Continue reading "Facebook's Brilliant but Evil Design"... ]

It’s an important read for anyone who uses, or advertises with, the popular social networking site.

Barack Obama added another “first” to his already notable list yesterday: he became the first U.S. presidential candidate — and, I’m guessing, the first high-level elected official in any country — to have a ready answer to a standard Google engineering interview question. Asked by Eric Schmidt about “the most efficient way to sort a million 32-bit integers,” Sen. Obama replied that “the bubble sort would be the wrong way to go.” Though some might view this as shameless pandering to the bucket-sorting community, others will see a bold pragmatism.

Obama then reaffirmed his stance on Net Neutrality, and offered the following vision for transparency between the United States government and its electorate:

I’ll put government data online in universally accessible formats. I’ll let citizens track federal grants, contracts, earmarks, and lobbyist contacts. I’ll let you participate in government forums, ask questions in real time, offer suggestions that will be reviewed before decisions are made, and let you comment on legislation before it is signed. And to ensure that every government agency is meeting 21st century standards, I’ll appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer.

Is this just another campaign promise? We’d love to hear your thoughts. You can see video of Schmidt’s “fireside chat”-style job interview with Obama in its entirety at Google Public Policy Blog.

No word yet on whether Senator Obama consumed his weight in free sushi at the company’s all-you-can-eat gourmet cafeteria. But rest assured that the issue has a good chance of coming up during tonight’s televised debate among Democratic Party candidates (yes, there’s another one).

Fast forward to yesterday, when Read/Write Web’s Richard MacManus caught up with the entrepreneur, who’d just hired his first employee. Apparently, the site may now be worth a billion dollars — billions, maybe. (And hey, if Microsoft thinks Facebook’s worth $15 bills, why not?) Says MacManus:

Markus told me that per page view, Plentyoffish has 5-10 times the click through rate of Facebook. So by his calculations, POF’s 1.2 Billion page views per month is the same as 5-10 Billion Facebook page views per month. Facebook “only” generates 40 billion page views a month and yet it has a $15 Billion valuation. But the crux of Markus’ argument is that despite having about 33 times the monthly traffic of POF, Facebook’s poor click-through ads should bring the valuation models closer. Markus said that “over 40% of Facebook’s pageviews are image related, ads in bad positions and users just generally looking to waste time.” He said that “there are only a handful of sections on the site [Facebook] that will generate good click thru rates for advertisers.”

So getting down to nitty gritty metrics, Markus concluded that “Facebook is only able to generate 10 to 15 times as many clicks on ads as my site and it’s valued at 15 billion. Needless to say I’m watching ad supported business model valuations very closely.” What’s more, some of his direct competitors – e.g. Eharmony and match.com – are apparently valued in the billions.

Kind of amazing how a cheap-looking site with virtually no overhead, aside from server costs, can be worth billions.

Whether or not you believe in these fishy valuation schemes, it’s still pretty cool, isn’t it?  Here’s a guy who’s only invested in the things his business requires.  Oh, and he’s clearly more focused on ROI than his competitors.

But all that’s changed. Today, they have a brand-spanking-new fleet of mid-sized jets staffed with would-be friendly people who, bound and gagged with corporate red tape, can’t do much to help the customer even when they want to. Sure, the fares are lower than ever, but even with off-peak flights for as low as $1 (yes, really), it’s still not worth it. Why? Because, according to their current CEO, Ben Baldanza, the customer is always a cheapskate — and wrong.

Maybe it’s time to put a dimmer on those red light specials. They say that “a fish stinks from the head,” and if there’s ever been any proof, its this email Mr. Baldanza sent to a customer by accidentally hitting “reply to all” on his BlackBerry:

“Please respond, Pasquale, but we owe him nothing as far as I’m concerned. Let him tell the world how bad we are. He’s never flown us before anyway and will be back when we save him a penny.”

But, wait! There’s more!! Here’s their Director of Communications, Alison Russell, on a separate incident where blogger Alex Rudloff told readers, “Do Not Fly Spirit Airlines“:

“We wouldn’t respond to a blog post. This goes back to the larger question of the veracity of everything you read on Internet blogs. Our customer service is great.”

Oh, really?? More on my horror story with Spirit 2.0 in a moment. But first, let’s see what Google has to say about the company:

Here’s what Rudloff had to say in his blog post:

“So, instead of losing $5 on a customer who has every right to be angry, I’ll write this blog post and tell all my traveling buddies to add Spirit Airlines to their growing list of airlines to avoid,” Rudloff wrote on Aug. 4. “If Google works their magic like they usually do, at least one of the 4,931 daily searches for “Spirit Airlines” will turn up this result and save someone the headache (and hopefully end up costing Spirit Airlines $6 or more).”

Rudloff later told the Orlando Sentinel that:

“I think ultimately that customers have to speak out and they have to engage in word of mouth . . . That’s what the market responds to.”

Cool! What a great segue…

All Spirit, No Soul

Last May, I was flying from New York (LGA) to Detroit (DTW), as I often do for Memorial Day weekend — my favorite time to vacation in Detroit. I was running late. The car service was half an hour late, and traffic wasn’t moving, thanks to jackknifed truck on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. After paying top dollar to sit in a car for two hours, it was clear that I’d miss the 30-minutes-before-departure check-in deadline. So, I called Spirit Air’s 1-800 number, only to find there was no “customer service” option. So I waited on hold for, say, 20 minutes until I eventually hung up and called back, pressing a random — and incorrect — selection in hopes of reaching a human who could tell me what to do about the situation. When I finally reached a customer service rep, she told me to go to the airport and speak to the agents at the check-in counter — where I waited for (you guessed it) another 30 minutes.

After all of that, I got to the airport just before the 30-minute mark, but there was a line — a long one — and not enough agents to serve it. When I got to the front of the line, the agent told me that nothing could be done. If I wanted to book another flight, there was one leaving in an hour, but it would cost as much as my entire round trip. I kindly informed this person that I’d be willing to pay a charge — as is typical with other cheapskate airlines — to switch the ticket, but that buying a whole new one, just for a one-way leg of a round-trip flight was absurd. Then, when I asked for a number for customer service because I wanted to complain about the event — after all, I’d been a customer for 10 years — the guy hands me a card with the same freaking number I’d used earlier to get someone who couldn’t help me! When I brought that to the agent’s attention, he said, “I’m sorry, sir, there’s nothing I can do about it” — a common refrain at today’s Spirit Air.

So, Northwest Airlines to rescue (for once), and I was on my way to Detroit with a pounding headache and the world’s dumbest $200 missing from my bank account.

On the way back to New York, I was actually looking forward to flying Spirit. “If this isn’t a good trip after that nonsense,” I thought, “I’m so going to blog this.” Checking in with a smile, I handed the agent my ticket. “I’m sorry, Mr. Gorell, but we don’t have a seat with that name on it for this flight,” he said. I told him that was impossible and that I wasn’t imagining the ticket in my hand. Then it hit me: They’d canceled my entire round-trip ticket because they couldn’t serve me in time!

Turning beet-red, I calmly told the agent of my snag in New York. As I retold the story, one-by-one, all four agents at the desk came up to me, visibly upset by what I had to say. I let them know I was a blogger for a company that specializes in planning and optimizing the customer experience, and that I couldn’t believe the airline had tied their hands from doing anything of value for its “passengers.” Then a crazy thing happened. They actually encouraged me to blog about it! As it turned out, everyone at the counter seemed upset with the company’s new policies, too. I could tell they were biting their tongues, until…

“We used to be #1 in customer service,” said one agent. “Now we can’t help people.”

Her co-workers looked me in the eye and nodded. It was such an honest moment that I actually bought a one-way ticket from them… for the flight I’d already, supposedly, booked. (Oh, and since this was a last-minute one-way flight to NYC, you can be sure I got red flagged for security screening.)

For months, I let it slide. After speaking with the good people at Spirit in Detroit, I worried that blogging about the experience might put their jobs at risk. That is, until I saw Mack Collier’s post, which hipped me to the fact that a lot of other bloggers out there are also convinced that Spirit’s CEO — and not its employees — is what’s putting their jobs at risk by causing this fish to stink:

Alex Rudloff

BL Ochman’s WhatsNextBlog

Bold Interactive

CEO Smack

Darwin PR

Gadling

Jaunted

Josh Hallett

Lawrence Salberg

Perpetually Befuddled

Propeller

Reality Bites Back

Sarah and the Goon Squad

Search Engine Guide

Stuck on the Palmetto

The BOOT

Transmission

Upgrade: Travel Better

Sorry, Mr. Baldanza, but you can’t fly faster than word of mouth (or blog).

Their latest soon-to-be-overshadowed endeavor, Yahoo! Search Assist, includes an advanced version of the predictive keyword results the major search engines are using, and improved video and Flickr photo search integration.

Here’s what Yahoo’s Yodel Anecdotal blog had to say:

With this launch, we took some liberties with the search box itself, turning it into an interactive experience that senses when you need a hand. In a dropdown window on our home page and on our results page, Yahoo! Search Assist provides both query suggestions as you type as well as related concepts you can explore to get you to your answer by just pointing and clicking. Try it with searches like “energy savings” to see what we mean. In testing Search Assist, we found that users were 61% more successful in completing their task with this new search feature at their disposal.

For instance, notice the relevant “concepts” that display when I search for our pal, Bryan:

Pretty cool, right? And I’m sure Bryan’s wife and kids will be proud to know Yahoo wuvs him (see third result down, on the left).

But is it a “Google killer”? Really? Search Engine Journal’s Loren Baker thinks so. Or does he? In a post called (*achem*) “Yahoo Search Launches Google Killer,” Baker implies that it is, then gives the most comprehensive analysis we’ve seen of it so far, then says, oh, by the way, it’s not.

Is the new Yahoo Search a Google killer? More than likely not. The new Yahoo Search may win some converts over from Google or help with a bit of marketshare, but ideally the new Yahoo Search Assist will result in assisting the happiness factor of Yahoo users and searchers who are not used to finding what they are looking for via conventional searching methods.

OK, so maybe I’m nitpicking because, honestly, enough already with the tech blogging world’s insistence on calling everything the next “something-or-other killer.” Besides, at this point, Yahoo should be thankful that Yahoo’s not a Yahoo killer.

How ’bout this zinger from the first person to comment on the Yodel Anecdotal announcement:

“Great! Welcome back to the search industry… “

I tell ya… No respect.

Rank is something we bloggers take very seriously. The problem is, nobody seems to be that good at measuring it — not yet, anyway.

For the past couple years, bloggers have loosely relied on Technorati to do the job, with blogs ranked according to their number of incoming links from unique blogs. For some bloggers, though, that may change now that Techmeme has announced a new feature, Techmeme Leaderboard, that ranks blogs according to how often they appear on, well, Techmeme.

Over at TechCrunch (no relation), Michael Arrington has the scoop:

To be exact, top blogs will be ranked on presence – “the percentage of headline space a source occupies over the 30-day period.” Discussion links are not taken into consideration – only full headlines are counted.

I think this is a much better way of ranking the very top blogs than the Technorati approach. Technorati has deep flaws, for reasons stated above. Techmeme, by contrast, has zero spam and tends to mirror what the tech blogosphere is writing about perfectly.

That may be true, but keep in mind that a Techmeme rank will have limited value outside of the tech world. And how about a few other pros and cons for the two sites…

Technorati

Pros: All blogs treated equally, regardless of focus; rank determined by incoming links; current go-to source for comparing blog popularity (i.e., let’s you know where you stand vis-a-vis other blogs).

Cons: All blogs treated equally, regardless of focus; links from spam blogs and pay-to-link services can distort a blog’s true rank; buggy, and often slow to update.

Techmeme

Pros: Niche focus; real-time indicator of tech/business news stories; threads popular stories, linking to blogs that discuss the primary news source.

Cons: Bias toward tech news; encourages copycat/echo chamber-style blogging (e.g., right now I’m blogging about something a lot of other bloggers have covered); tends to reward popularity over analysis.

Back in August, when a glitch caused Technorati to bestow upon us the coveted #1 spot, I suggested to fellow bloggers that, if rank meant everything…

. . . every blogger who’s had even one link documented by Technorati could rejoice more than they already are after being accidentally ranked #1 today — thanks to a glitch.

If rank meant everything, you wouldn’t have to create fresh, original content.

If rank meant everything, blogs wouldn’t be worth reading.

Everyone would be baiting links (like I am).

Like money, when rank means everything, it means nothing.

Do blog readers really care about rank?

Would content by any other number smell as sweet?

Why does a blog’s rank actually matter? Well, there are a few answers. Rank matters to anyone selling ad space on their blog. It’s also directionally interesting since it helps bloggers get a sense of growth. Oh, and there’s that whole “human nature” thing: We’ve been grunting over who’s the biggest and baddest since our days as lesser, knuckle-dragging hominids — which, as geological time goes, wasn’t too long ago.

Any bloggers, tech or otherwise, like to share their thoughts?

Any Techmeme fans ever use Today.GrokDotCom to scoop stories? We do.

[UPDATE: Technorati names Richard Jalichandra as new CEO; Techmeme founder Gabe Rivera explains his new Leaderboard.]

You wouldn’t pick on a 9 year-old, would ya? How ’bout a 9 year-old with glasses??

Microsoft, reeling from Halo 3’s $170 million launch — the biggest release in entertainment history — got serious today with an assault on Google, its 9 year-old nemesis. While battle raged in anti-trust hearings before the U.S. Senate, the search giant came off looking battered, but feeling lucky, as they replaced the second ‘g’ on the Google.com homepage with a cartoon piñata in the shape of a ‘9′ to commemorate its ninth year as a company. Aww… Cute, ain’t it?

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Microsoft, 32, doesn’t think so. In case you missed the live coverage, News.com quotes a prepared statement from Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith, who claims Google’s deal with DoubleClick is bad for advertisers, bad for consumers, bad for publishers, and — ultimately — bad for America. Says Smith:

I will be the first to admit that Microsoft is not disinterested in this issue; competitors never are. But I do think we’re in a good position of identifying important questions. We know this market very well. And it is absolutely clear to us that this merger raises serious questions that deserve serious answers.

[...] Already Google is the dominant company for one of the two main types of online advertising–namely online search ads. Roughly 70 percent of global spending on search-based advertising today flows through Google’s AdWords.

If Google is allowed to proceed with this merger, it will also obtain a dominant gateway position over the other main type of online advertising: non-search ads. Today Google and DoubleClick are the two largest competitors in this area. Combined, Google will account for nearly 80 percent of all spending on non-search ads.

If Google and DoubleClick are allowed to merge, Google will become the overwhelmingly dominant pipeline for all forms of online advertising.

This merger will almost certainly result in higher profits for the operator of the dominant advertising pipeline, but it will be bad for everyone else. It will be bad for publishers, bad for advertisers, and most importantly, bad for consumers.

Bravo, sir… Brah-voh… [Gives steely-eyed, slow hand-clap.]

Mr. Schmidt Goes to Washington, Too

OK, so maybe Google CEO Eric Schmidt wasn’t testifying, but it’s more fun to say “Smith vs. Schmidt” than “Smith vs. Drummond”. David Drummond, that is — Google’s Senior VP for Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer. The Google Public Policy Blog features Drummond’s testimony, including this excerpt:

“The online advertising business is complex, but my message to you today is simple: Online advertising benefits consumers, promotes free speech, and helps small businesses succeed. Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick will help advance these goals while protecting consumer privacy and enabling greater innovation, competition, and growth.”

“In our experience, our users value the advertisements that we deliver along with search results and other web content because the ads help connect them to the information, products, and services they seek. Simply put, advertising is information, and relevant advertising is information that is useful to consumers. The advertising we deliver to our users complements the natural search results that we provide, because our users are often searching for products and services that our advertisers offer. Making this connection is critical. In fact, we strive to deliver the ads that are the most relevant to our users, not just the ones that generate the most revenue for us.”

[...] “Google’s bottom line is this: We believe deeply in protecting online users’ privacy, and we have a strong track record of doing so. We are constantly working to innovate in our privacy practices and policies. Some have asked questions about privacy protections in connection with the DoubleClick acquisition, but for us privacy does not begin or end with our purchase of DoubleClick. Privacy is a user interest that we’ve been protecting since our inception.”

“We make privacy a priority because our business depends on it. If our users are uncomfortable with how we manage the information they provide to us, they are only one click away from switching to a competitor’s services. If you don’t believe me, recall that before Google, users clicked on an earlier generation of search engines like Excite, Altavista, Lycos, and Infoseek – each extremely popular in its time. User interests effectively regulate our behavior, and user trust is a critical component of our business model.”

Although it’s too late to call this case “Smith vs. Schmidt,” perhaps we can at least nickname it “Pot vs. Kettle”? A Frank Capra movie, it ain’t…

Whether the Senate will side with Microsoft or Google remains unclear, but Google Maps satellite images of a U.S. Navy building that, well, happens to look like a swastika won’t likely do much to ease tensions with the U.S. Government.

NaturalSearchBlog’s Chris Silver Smith first spotted this oddity:

Quite some time back, I came across this Swastika-shaped building via Google Maps, and posted the screengrab in my Flickr account. Since then, it became one of my most popular Flickr pictures, since strange stuff like this can become quickly viral. Loads of people (16,000+) have viewed the photo’s page, and then various journalists contacted me and posted the photo on news stories in Europe and elsewhere.

[...] Today, CNN reported on the swastika building, and they added one really interesting new detail: the Navy has received so much flack about having a swastika-shaped building that they’re now planning to change the shape of the building when it’s viewed from the sky to obliterate the swastika shape. They’ll be adding landscaping and structures at a cost of something like $600,000 to just make the shape less offensive to people viewing from airplanes and satellite pics!

You really can’t make this stuff up, folks.

[Tired of reading other blogs? Catch Blog Buzz weekdays on WebmasterRadio.fm — or subscribe via iTunes. Bryan Eisenberg & Robert Gorell host the podcast, featuring a rundown of the day's top stories from The Grok's Buzz Bin.]

They claim to be, “QVC for the MySpace generation.”

Now, before you gag, consider that they might be onto something. This isn’t just another startup. Firebrand is backed by Microsoft, NBC Universal, GE’s Peacock Equity fund, Adweek, Brandweek, Mediaweek, and the ION television network.

Pardon me while I quote the press release at length:

“Firebrand enters the media landscape as the era of the commercial interruption is coming to an end,” says John A. Lack, CEO/Co-Founder. “We curate the best TV commercials and promotions from around the world – connecting consumers directly with their favorite brands in an integrated environment.”

“On Firebrand, you’ll see more car chases, explosions, gags, drama, heroes, Oscar-winning actors, directors and producers in an hour than in a month of HBO,” says [Chief Creative Officer/Co-Founder Román] Viñoly. “To be true to our consumers, you can’t pay us to air a bad spot. ”

Meanwhile, Steve Hall from Adrants sounds off:

We tried really hard not to laugh when . . . Roman Vinoly said, “We program TV spots like a DJ spins music in a club. There is a rhythm and flow to it.” In an attempt to spin Firebrand as something other than a massive database of commercials, Vinoly adds, “On Firebrand, you’ll see more car chases, explosions, gags, drama, heroes, Oscar-winning actors, directors and producers in an hour than in a month of HBO.” Right, dude. They’re still [f@%!^g] commercials. Not The Sopranos.

Hyperbole aside, it sounds like the ad industry’s collective Wet 2.0 dream, does it not?

Experience Curve’s Karl Long reminds us that the first step is a doozy:

If they create original, edgy, hysterical, and brilliant commercials for it then they have a shot. I think it’s more likely they are going to recycle their 30 second spots that less people are watching every year in which case they will go the same way as BudTV. They have some great investors behind them . . . and advertisers like BMW, Coke, Ebay etc. yet the internet is famous for burning through enormous amounts of money on “big bang” efforts like this. If they don’t get it right out of the gate it will be a losing battle.

But that’s where the “so-crazy-it-just-might-work” factor comes into play. Think about it: They’ll suddenly need tons of content. Where will it all come from? With Firebrand claiming editorial integrity, it could be a chance for smaller brands to shine. Big-budget brands will dump money on it regardless, but creativity could be a currency of its own.

Consider Ice.com executive VP of marketing Pinny Gniwisch, who was recently asked about his YouTube campaign:

Gniwisch is measuring the success of his efforts in the number of views Ice.com’s videos have received on YouTube.com – about 50,000 altogether — in the 6,000 YouTubers who signed up for an Ice.com sweepstakes promoted with one video series release, and the 16,000 who have signed up for “Pinny’s World,” asking to be notified whenever Ice.com puts up new video on YouTube.

“If I can get enough people to watch my channel, I can eventually throw a product video that is both entertaining and ROI-driven into the mix,” figures Gniwisch. “As more people register to your channel, your ability to succeed as an ROI-based investment is more likely.”

If a company like Ice.com can submit content to Firebrand, it could be something bigger than the next go-to spot for Super Bowl ads.

Firebrand has offered us a sneak preview in the coming weeks, so we’ll let you know what we think soon enough.

[GrokDotCom interviewed Pinny about his adventures on YouTube. To hear how how he did it, listen to the podcast.]

When Halo 2 was released for Microsoft (MSFT) XBox in 2004, it broke the record for the highest-grossing launch of any type of media product (yes, really), generating $125 million in revenue — 2.4 million copies — in 24 hours.

And you thought Titanic was big? Ha!

“Mr. Softy” Strikes Back

Lest another pundit call them a “sleeping giant”, Read/WriteWeb points to a Last100 piece that sheds some light on how Microsoft is leveraging Halo 3:

Another product that has benefited from the buzz surrounding Halo 3 is Silverlight, Microsoft’s platform for building rich Internet applications. Like Flash, Java, and many other platforms, Silverlight requires users to install a browser plug-in before they can use it. This presents a common problem — you need users to have the plug-in before developers jump on board, and you need developers on board building great apps for the platform before users want to install the plug-in. Microsoft decided to leverage Halo 3 to help solve this problem. Over the last few weeks, lots of Halo 3 related content has been made available such as trailers, promos, and an online manual. The catch? You’ve got to have Silverlight installed before you can view any of the content. It’s a very smart move. I’d be willing to bet that a lot of the early installs of Silverlight can be attributed to fans eager for Halo 3 content.Microsoft’s partners have gotten in on the action too. Mountain Dew launched “Mountain Dew Game Fuel” on August 13th, the first beverage co-branded with a video game. 7-Eleven has been offering three Halo 3-branded Slurpee cups, and has been part of the promotional campaign being run with Mountain Dew and Doritos. Burger King started offering Halo 3-themed packaging yesterday, and will continue to do so right through October 22nd. Other companies that are participating in the Halo 3 campaign include Pontiac and Comcast.

(micro)Soft Money for Facebook?

Meanwhile, Microsoft may be showing its “Mr. Softy” side a bit, now that it’s finally getting serious with Facebook. Let’s hope they cut a deal soon. The constant, boring speculation over exactly how rich Mark Zuckerberg will be is beyond tiresome. Thankfully, BoomTown’s Kara Swisher agrees. Get a load of this critique:

…I believe Silicon Valley can now be considered to be at Delusional Level Red. Or green, given all the cash that is being shoved in Facebook’s direction now.

Facebook is not Google: Although many in the tech sector make the comparison to the search giant, it is simply incorrect.Is Facebook like Yahoo a bit? Certainly. A newfangled version of AOL? Absolutely! A very well done media play with all sorts of interactive bells and whistles hanging off of it? Yes, ma’am.

Indeed, it is growing its media business nicely, with $30 million in profits on $150 million in revenue.

But in comparative terms to the search giant, Facebook is a lemonade stand. Google brought in $3.9 billion in revenue in just the second quarter alone and, um, is increasing its dominance over the search sector in a mighty scary way.

Facebook, on the other hand, gets half its annual revenue right now from a sweetheart guaranteed revenue deal with, drum roll, Microsoft. No matter what either Facebook or Microsoft says, it is a money-losing deal for Microsoft so far.

How do I know this? According to many sources, Google is struggling to make ends meet in its own sweetheart guaranteed ad deal with Facebook rival MySpace, which is much larger, and Google has the best monetization engine out there.

Ouch! Swisher goes on to mention other problems, insisting Facebook’s potential is not actual, that most techies weren’t popular in high school and, therefore, overestimate the importance of stuff that seems important to them, and even breaks out the calculator to show that the company’s pre-money valuation is actually $525 million — a far cry from the $15 billion for which they’re rumored to be holding out.

Reiterating her stance from an earlier post, Swisher advises Zuckerberg to “…take the dumb money and run as fast as your flip-flops will carry you.”

Facebook Subpoenaed

In other Facebook news, CenterNetworks’ Allen Stern reports that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has subpoenaed Facebook, claiming they’re not doing enough to protect kids from sexual predators:

“My office is concerned that Facebook’s promise of a safe website is not consistent with its performance in policing its site and responding to complaints,” Cuomo said. “Parents have a right to know what their children will encounter on a website that is aggressively marketed as safe.”

The office setup several “underage” profiles on Facebook and within days began receiving chat requests of a graphic nature. In subpoenaing the company, Cuomo has asked for complaints received by Facebook regarding inappropriate solicitation of underage users and inappropriate content on the site, as well as any responses by the website. The subpoena also calls for all Facebook policies on user safety and all representations made to consumers about the safety of the site.

What makes Facebook less safe than, say, MySpace — which deleted 29,000 registered sex offenders in July — remains unclear.

[Tired of reading other blogs? Catch Blog Buzz weekdays on WebmasterRadio.fmiTunes. Bryan Eisenberg & Robert Gorell host the podcast, featuring a rundown of the day's top stories from The Grok's Buzz Bin.]

Information World Review reports that the German Wikipedia will have “trusted editors” by year’s end. The move from community editing and after-the-fact fact-checking “…could be applied to the English language version of Wikipedia if feedback from users is positive.”

Resource Shelf’s Gary Price reminds us that this move has been in the works for some time:

Three years ago next month, Jimmy Wales was quoted in Red Herring saying that editors to review content were coming.

Wikipedia’s [Founder] Mr. [Jimmy] Wales has said that next year he will begin using editors to review the web site’s content for accuracy and allow users to rate contributions to the encyclopedia for their quality. ‘It’s complex because it’s a social community, and feelings can be hurt,’ said Mr. Wales, but he added that the change will be critical when Wikipedia content is put on more permanent media, such as CD-ROM disks.”

As those who follow this blog may know, we have mixed feelings about Wikipedia, especially after all of the dirty edits uncovered by Wikiscanner, the edit-tracking software developed by Cal Tech grad student Virgil Griffith. Maybe they’re an easy target, but Wikipedia’s hugely important. History, as well as obscure definitions, can now be written by winners and losers alike — for better and for worse.

But the transition to “trusted editors” dredges up a new batch of questions: Who will these editors be? Where will they come from? Why should we trust them? Who edits the editors?

Perhaps a more interesting question is why Wikipedia has captured so much global mindshare in the first place. For one thing, they do a lot of simple things right. While linking to Wikipedia helps to assure they consistently rank well in search results, Search Engine Journal’s Jon Kelly argues that liking to Wikipedia can be good for you, too:

Short URLs. Yes, it’s as simple as that. The shorter the link, the easier it is to deal with when referencing. I know others have some fancy way of getting links into their posts, but I still do a lot of copy and paste and it’s easier with a shorter URL.

No Parameters / No Numbers. In a recent post, I wanted to link to George Orwell’s Animal Farm, mostly to help make it clear that my story was a shaggy dog (ah, that was an easy link!)

He then shows the URL’s for Amazon and Google Books, both of which are hilariously long. Some other reasons…

Momentum. I need a link to make a point. I Google. I check the top 3-4 listings. Guess who’s always one of the choices? Thus the additional links build on the present ranking.

Laziness. Honestly, I think most bloggers just can’t be bothered to find the perfect reference on a subject. Good enough really is good enough if the link is just serving as a bit of background on something you think might be too esoteric to be familiar to all readers.

How do you feel about linking to Wikipedia? Does the idea of having “trusted editors” turn you off, or is it a good thing?

[Hat tip to Search Engine Land for linking us to the Resource Shelf post, which linked us to Information World Review.]

The Google Operating System blog reports that Google Earth is considering new features, including stuff that evokes a sort of “reality TV”-style version of Second Life. According to the blog:

Arizona State University’s students have the opportunity to test a new product “that will be publicly launched later this year”. The invitation page mentions that the product is developed by “a major Internet company” and there are hints that the application is related to social networking, 3D modeling and video games. To complete the questionnaire and get the opportunity to test the product, you need to be a student at ASU.

So where’s Google in this picture? One of the questions from the form asks you if you have a Gmail account and if you are willing to get one. The product’s name is “My World” and the logo shows a globe – this could be related to Google Earth. Google also owns a 3D modeling software that could be used to create avatars.

Quoting a Business 2.o feature from 2006, Google Operating System reminds us that “speculation about a Google Earth Second Life started last year.” From the article:

“The notion that you can create objects and buildings and place them in a virtual world makes Google Earth sounds less like a mapping tool and more like a metaverse. What’s a metaverse? Science fiction writer Neal Stephenson introduced the term in his seminal 1992 novel, Snow Crash. (…) In Stephenson’s novel, millions of users uploaded customized “avatars,” or virtual personalities, and strolled the street, entering shops and exclusive nightclubs, conversing and trading with the metaverse’s other denizens.”

The blog then reminds us that “…Snow Crash inspired the development of Google Earth.” But didn’t inspire Second Life as well?

Regardless, Mashable’s Kristen Nicole thinks the open source community will handle this one:

It wouldn’t take much to create an open Second Life from Google Earth, and one company, Unype, has already started just a project. Which also makes me think that a direct involvement from Google is highly unlikely.

Facebook Worth Gazillions (in virtual money)

Speaking of companies borrowing ideas from Second Life, Facebook is making news (again) now that The Wall Street Journal reported that Microsoft may invest $10 Billion.

Linking to a Reuters piece, suggesting that Facebook is holding out for a cool $15 Bills, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington says, “What the hell. Why not?”

In related news, unofficial Facebook blog AllFacebook.com reports that virtual currency provider Acebucks has just “…raised $1.5 million from a powerhouse team of investors.”

[...] Aryeh Goldsmith, the developer of Acebucks, was acquired by Michael Lazerow to form Buddy Media. Buddy Media investors include Howard Lindzon, Peter Thiel, Mark Pincus and James Altucher.

The focus of Buddy Media is to expand the AceBucks application and make it the primary virtual currency on Facebook. Acebucks will soon launch an API which enables developers to integrate the virtual currency into their own applications. For example if you are winning points on a poker application, you can convert those points into Acebucks.

Acebucks can be used to purchase both virtual and physical assets through the new Facebucks store which is about to be launched. Acebucks is being modeled after the AMEX rewards system. Buddy Media plans on launching some creative marketing campaigns via the Acebucks application.

Remember the days when anything that resembled this was written-off as “Monopoly money”? Looks like some companies think that phrase has a nice ring to it…

Obama Wins Yahoo! Debate

Even if he doesn’t get his party’s nomination, presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama has won Yahoo’s “mashup” debate. On Yahoo’s Yodel Anecdotal blog, Neeraj Khemlani had this to say:

A little more than a week since we launched the first online Presidential debate (or mashup, as we like to call it), it’s time to announce the winner and share some additional “results.”

In our poll, which asked people who they’d vote for after watching the mashup, Barack Obama was the winner with 35% of the votes. Senator Obama squeaked by Hillary Clinton, who received 31% of the votes. To hear what Obama had to say about winning, check out our “People of the Web” story on the results, which includes an interview we conducted this morning.

Hmm… He’s already got VP experience as head of Programming & Development for Yahoo. Might Mr. Khemlani be trying to woo the candidates for a different type of VP position?

Meanwhile, over at Search Engine Journal, Loren Baker discusses the stats:

• As of this weekend, 1.1 million people had clicked on the debates.
• Of those, 429,000 were between the ages of 18 and 34
• Organizers of the online debate say its audience is more engaged and that the format puts the content in the viewers’ hands.
• On average, each mashup viewer watched 4.4 video streams for a total of seven minutes
• Clips on the YouTube video-sharing site typically run two minutes or less.

Sure, online Presidential debates are in their pre-infancy, but the 1 million number is a bit lower than I had originally imagined. For example, I’m a bit surprised that Yahoo Search has not implemented a Yahoo Shortcut with links to the online debates for searches such as Barack Obama or Bill Richardson.

[Can't keep up with all the blogs? Catch Blog Buzz weekdays on WebmasterRadio.fm — or subscribe via iTunes. Bryan Eisenberg & Robert Gorell host the podcast, featuring a rundown of the day's top stories from The Grok's Interactive Marketing Buzz.]

The most common complaint: The Digg faithful don’t want to see it turn into MySpace.

BusinessWeek first had the scoop:

The changes are just the first in a series of new features slated to debut by yearend. In October, Digg plans to add a section dedicated to images. The plans also call for a new function that will suggest stories, or potential Digg friends, to members based on the articles they have read. “There is going to be a section where you will see these suggestions of news items and pictures and videos based on what you have been looking at,” says [Digg co-founder Kevin] Rose. “It will find connections—people you constantly agree with and just don’t know it.”

Rose and [Digg co-founder Jay] Adelson hope the new social-networking capabilities will encourage users who only read articles on the site to become more engaged with the community. Currently, 15% to 20% of Digg’s audience are registered users. The vast majority of the 20-million-plus users, by Digg’s count, just read the posted stories. Adelson believes the ability to share information with a select group of people and craft a personal identity will encourage more passive users to get involved. “We are creating this in-between world for people who maybe don’t want to share information with the whole planet,” says Adelson. “We all have a short list of probably 5 to 10 people whom we feel compelled to share certain information with.”

Mashable’s Adam Ostro corrals the fan’s comments on “DiggSpace” (not its real name).

First, from the BusinessWeek article:

“so how come businessweek gets this scoop before we do? i have to say, i’m a bit saddened. i am sick and tired of ’social networks’ and i really don’t want messages and friend lists and about me stuff. i like digg because it’s different and i hope that difference doesn’t erode with these new features. i’m going to block any of you sending me ‘digg this article’ messages.” – Canewediggit

“This is disappointing. While I was hoping for *some* of those features to be implemented, I don’t like the overall concept at all … The internet doesn’t need another MySpace, Facebook, Hi5, Orkut, Multiply, etc. social networking site.” – FyreGoddess

“Am I the only person who intentionally does not use the Digg friends feature? I agree with everyone else that I use this site because it does not have the socail networking aspect.” – MajorHertz

“What we need is a revised comment system, a pictures section, and decrease load times so that Firefox doesn’t screech to a halt rendering a page. Two things that have been requested forever but seem to go ignored.” – Dpknc84

“Kevin Rose: ‘Yeah, the users really wanted a pictures section but we didnt like the idea. Instead we’re giving them something totally fresh and exciting that really makes no practical sense.’” – Pbrane101

From the official Digg blog entry:

“I am a 22 year-old College Student seeking a girlfriend! Oh, sorry. I thought Digg was becoming a dating site…” – Wamzlee

“Anyone else think this seems a lot like Digg is trying to emulate Facebook?” – Floguy

“I don’t know man… with all that watching friend’s stuff and portrait pictures I’m getting worried that things will get too social, even girls might start Digging!!!!” – Joach

Guess you can’t please everybody… Still, a lot of the comments seem positive.

What do you think? Is Digg getting more democratic, or going stale?

Attack of the “Clones”

It’s a bit ironic that Digg’s catching heat for copying other platforms — especially since it’s been copied more than any other social media platform (save for Friendster). The most recent so-called “Digg clone” comes from AOL. Read/WriteWeb’s Marshall Kirkpatrick explains:

AOL’s social news site relaunched today under the new name Propeller. No longer “the new Netscape”, Propeller seems on face like a clone of a clone. There may, though, be much more going on underneath the surface. [...] The way the service works is interesting. For those unfamiliar, news on Netscape/Propeller is submitted by users but highlighted and shepherded by a team of paid power-users and editors. That paid team also does some original writing. The whole arrangement has been highly controversial since it launched in June of 2006. Paying power users was a move widely criticized, and not because they were hired away from other sites like Digg. Critics alleged that news discovery was best done for the love of it.

A social news site that hired people to tend the news also attracted users old enough to have jobs. Project head Tom Drapeau confirmed for me today that the user demographics of the site are older than other social news sites, something he says leads to a “better perspective on news.” He also told me that the number of paid Anchors and Scouts (the two job types) has almost tripled since the program was put in place.

Still, TechCrunch insists there are problems with Propeller — not the least of which is brand erosion. According to Duncan Riley:

The new old Netscape/ Propeller looks just like the old new Netscape, but with a new logo and URL. The old Netscape is now the new Netscape with the formerly new Netscape becoming the old new Netscape.

[...] Propeller has already hit some rocks, with news that spammers have found a way to get listed on Propeller: see here. Interesting for a site that is suppose to have human guides, Tramadol links appear in the results. A short guess: the new name came with a big downsizing.

Pesky brand erosion… it’ll get ya every time. Just ask Apple. Still, it’s hard to feel bad for the victims of success.

Will Digg out-Facebook Facebook? Will Propeller out-Digg Digg? Stay tuned…

[Dig reading blogs but short on time? Catch Blog Buzz weekdays on WebmasterRadio.fm — or subscribe via iTunes. Bryan Eisenberg & Robert Gorell host the podcast, featuring a rundown of the day's top stories from Today.GrokDotCom.]

The gadget ads

Spelling it out for us on the Google Operating System blog, Alex Chitu insists that…

Because most of the normal gadgets can be embedded into a web page and many people already use iGoogle, the gadget ad will be a familiar presence. “Google Gadget Ads are nearly identical to Google Gadgets, except that they run as rich media ads on the Google content network. By adding a small bit of code called a click URL to your Google Gadget, the gadget becomes a Google Gadget Ad, capable of running as an ad on thousands of content network sites. Otherwise, the two can be identical in their basic construction and content.” This way, Google also solved the problem of monetizing iGoogle in a clever way: users will voluntary add gadget ads to the homepage and interact with them. The ads won’t be perceived as annoying because you chose to include them in your homepage.

Marketing Pilgrim shows a great example of an Intel ad, with this bit of commentary from Andy Beal:

Is it any surprise that Google is keen to monetize widgets? There’s more than enough widgets being pumped out onto the web, with comScore reporting their popularity growth. And there are also plenty of evidence that advertising in widgets works–companies like LinkShare, PopShops, and ShareASale are already in the space.

So, if you’re already sick of seeing gadgets/widgets all over the web, prepare yourself. Now that advertisers have a solid advertising platform to monetize them, you can expect to see a whole lot more.

The big hire

AdvertisingAge reports that Andy Berndt has joined Google.

[...] Berndt, co-president of Ogilvy & Mather’s New York office, has left his post at the agency to go to Google, where hewill helm a new global unit dedicated to collaborating with marketers, agencies and entertainment companies.

[...] There has been much speculation over the past year whether Google would try to get into the agency business. The new global unit isn’t being called an agency, but any unit offering creative consultation and account services could be considered one. Interestingly, Google had been trying to lure more creative talent to the company over the past year, according to ad industry executives familiar with the search giant.

Microsoft, meanwhile, recently bought its way into the agency business with its $6 billion purchase of aQuantive, parent company to agency Avenue A/Razorfish. When asked whether it would shed the agency after the purchase, Microsoft was adamant that it liked the business.

Commenting on the story, John Battelle insists “Google is setting itself up as a full service advertising company. And that means client services and creative innovation.”

The 411

Not to be outdone by itself for the second day in a row, Google has also begun promoting itself offline. With billboards. Search Engine Land has the scoop, with pictures of the distinctly non-interactive ads for the free 800-GOOG-411 service.

iPhones… for Steve Jobs… and Germany…

BusinessWeek tells us that Germans can now overpay for an iPhone. They’re 399 Euro (that’s $557 for you American refund snobs). They’re available via T-Mobile. If you’re in Berlin, that’s all you really need to know.

[Tired of reading other blogs? Catch Blog Buzz weekdays on WebmasterRadio.fm — or subscribe via iTunes. Bryan Eisenberg & Robert Gorell host the podcast, featuring a rundown of the day's top stories from The Grok's Buzz Bin.]

It’s a great example of how to spice up your PR without making it seem like you’re only after the cash booty. Pirates base their careers on the element of surprise. Likewise, marketers — the lily-livered bilge rats they be — need to make Broca walk the plank.

Have fun with you email campaigns. Talk like a pirate, even. Just don’t get too carried away…

“A great battle in the sea of Ones and Zeros
will present itself unto the Weblings;
the keepers of gates replaced by wanderers of Gooland
and evil itself shall require the correct URL.” –Grokstradamus, Quatrain 2.0

Today, the Internet’s true owners Google announced the release of a presentation feature for Google Docs, its answer to the Microsoft Office suite. In other words, Google now has PowerPoint — only it’s hosted online and, theoretically, more secure.

What might come of Google’s online presentation software? Here are a few predictions:

• Last April, Google bought Marritech, a cross-platform video conferencing company (see also WebEx, GoToMeeting). There’s likely a bigger offering on the way.
• Imagine hosting a live meeting, directly from the document, allowing others on your team to edit the presentation in real time. (Yes, that could be a good thing.)
• Picture, if you will, hosting a free webinar; free to your audience because it’s paid for by Google ads on the side of your screen.
• If it’s a paid event, your Google Docs seminar could give your audience the option to pay via Google Checkout with a single click. No hassle.

Still, not everybody’s excited about this initial release. ZDNet’s Garret Rogers thinks Google shouldn’t have bothered launching it.

Where do I start? Well, first off, there is no support for exporting a document to Powerpoint or as .odp (the open document format for presentations). I guess this isn’t truly a complimentary service to other office suites anymore like they have repeated over and over. Uploading Powerpoint presentations is basically useless too — it butchered the one I tested with.

Most companies have their own Powerpoint template they use to make sure presentations all have the same look and feel. And with that said — don’t bother trying to use it. There is no way to create your own template or upload one that already exists. If you have images that make up your template, you can add them to each slide but they have to be less than 2MB otherwise you will be out of luck. Oh, by the way, your presentation can’t exceed 10MB either.

[...] Oh, and bulleted points are sometimes nice to do one at a time — but you can’t do that either. You have to create a copy of the previous slide and add an extra point to emulate click events — who has time to do that?

Some powerful points, indeed. And that’s not all that’s happening on the office software front. Last night, Yahoo! acquired Zimbra for $350 million in cash. TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington insists:

This was a very, very smart acquisition. In one quick move Yahoo is now in the race with Google for the next generation online/offline office suite. I would not be surprised to see them pick up Zoho next. That is, if they really want to dominate own this space and be a credible threat to Google Docs.

Oh, but there’s more… The New York Times reports that I.B.M. has teamed up with OpenOffice to offer an enhanced version of the the open-source office suite. Between Yahoo, Google, and — yikes — I.B.M., Microsoft must be a bit rattled today.

Google overload…

Meanwhile, Google’s going full-speed ahead. Last night, they even launched AdSense for mobile. According to Google’s Inside AdSense blog, “If you have a website optimized for mobile browsers, or are interested in creating one, you can start monetizing your mobile site by accessing a growing number of our mobile advertisers.”

Is that all? Only two new product launches from Google in a single day? How ’bout three?

Read/WriteWeb’s Marshall Kilpatrick reports that Google Reader has left the lab — it’s no longer in beta — and has added 9 new languages: “French, Italian, German, Spanish, English (UK), Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Japanese, and Korean.”

New York Times sets content free

Making a bit of its own news, NYTimes.com will do away with TimesSelect, the premium subscription service that granted access to its editorial columns and featured content. According to the Times:

…the project had met expectations, drawing 227,000 paying subscribers — out of 787,000 over all — and generating about $10 million a year in revenue.

“But our projections for growth on that paid subscriber base were low, compared to the growth of online advertising,” said Vivian L. Schiller, senior vice president and general manager of the site…

“Hammer Time” 2.0?

Who could possibly forget everyone’s favorite 5-hit-wonder dance-rap phenomenon, MC Hammer? Well, after going bankrupt and becoming a preacher immediately after his career tanked in the 90’s, it seems someone was listening. Hammer’s reinvented himself once again… as a tech entrepreneur?

Don Dodge tells us of his pal Hammer’s epic journey from parachute-pants-to-rags-to-angel-money with his new venture, DanceJam:

DanceJam hasn’t launched yet, but Hammer gave me a demo of the site. DanceJam can best be described as YouTube mashed up with American Idol. Users can contribute their own dance videos to the site for others to see and vote on. The DanceJam people set up “Dance Offs” where they put two dance videos up against each other and have the user community vote for a winner. After several rounds of voting they declare a champion.

[Sick of reading? Catch Blog Buzz weekdays on WebmasterRadio.fm — or subscribe via iTunes. Bryan Eisenberg & Robert Gorell host the podcast, featuring a rundown of the day's top stories from The Grok's Interactive Marketing Buzz.]

According to News.com:

[Iran] has unblocked access to the Google search engine and its Gmail email service after briefly filtering them owing to an “error”, the Fars news agency reported.

So, the question remains; what kind of “error”? Inside Iran blogger, Jadi, insists “…this is not a minor fault. It is a Major fault or an unbelievable reality.”

Says the AFP:

Iran has tough censorship on cultural products and internet access, banning thousands of websites and blogs containing sexual and politically critical material as well as women’s rights and social networking sites.

On a lighter note, USA Today’s Jim Hopkins reports on a new study which asks “Are Male and Female Entrepreneurs Really That Different?” (click to download the PDF). Summarizing the findings, Hopkins insists that…

Many factors do, indeed, drive performance, the researchers found. And many of them sound familiar to me after spending years talking to male and female business owners about this subject. Among the factors highlighted by Kepler and Shane:

* Men had more business experience before opening their business, and higher expectations.
* Women entrepreneurs had a bigger average household size. (This is a point women have mentioned to me often: They’re more likely to shoulder extra responsibility for child care and elder care, which takes away from time spent on their business.)
* Women were more likely to have positive revenues, but men were more likely to own an employer firm. (My take on this: Businesses with employees are more likely to have higher profits because they can take on more customers.)
* Male owners were more likely to start a business to make money, had higher expectations for their business, and did more research to identify business opportunities. [Continue reading "New study tracks male, female entrepreneurs"...]

Also today, ClickZ’s Matthew G. Nelson reports that analytics firm Coremetrics has added a lifestyle behavioral targeting feature. According to Nelson:

Coremetrics has upgraded its digital marketing suite with a new release, Coremetrics 2008, that adds improved tracking of consumer behaviors. Rather than provide historical insight in the form of an isolated purchase or other action, the software will now track an individual over time to provide a more complete picture of his or her intent. The company is calling the approach “contextual marketing.”

The Coremetrics 2008 system is intended to identify and target valuable customers based on both individual traits and lifetime visits and behavior. Instead of tracking and reacting to a single sales event, such as a woman abandoning her online shopping cart with a red dress, the Coremetrics system will also provide the site owner with her previous purchase of jeans and shirts and her shipping preferences, all of which will allow the business to create a highly targeted e-mail offer to bring her back to the store.

PETCO.com will kick off a three-week beta test later in the week. Says John Lazarchic, VP of e-commerce at PETCO:

[...] “We react quite often to single events, when we do interactive marketing, which has been successful, but now we can react to that event with knowledge of prior activity. It will be more impactful because we know more about them.”

Interesting stuff from Coremetrics… We look forward to reading the case study. (In the meantime, we invite the good folks at PETCO to watch this screencast.)

And finally, The New York Times reports that EMusic.com will sell audio books at half the cost of iTunes. According to the Times…

Beginning tomorrow, eMusic, which is second to iTunes in music download sales, will offer more than a thousand books for download, with many of them costing far less than on iTunes. For example, “The Audacity of Hope,” read by author Barack Obama, will cost $9.99 on eMusic compared with $18.95 on iTunes. The retail price for a five-CD version of the same book is $29.95.

The biggest selling point for eMusic is also its biggest point of controversy: the site uses the MP3 format, which works on any digital player but lacks the technology, known as digital rights management, that protects copyrighted material from unlimited duplication.

By contrast, iTunes only works on an iPod, and songs downloaded from the service can be burned onto a CD only once and cannot be transmitted over the Internet.

So, with the iPhone-price-drop controversy behind us, will the competition continue bruising Apple? Stay tuned…

[Catch Blog Buzz weekdays on WebmasterRadio.fm — or subscribe via iTunes. Bryan Eisenberg & Robert Gorell host the podcast, featuring a rundown of the day's top stories from The Grok's Interactive Marketing Buzz.]

Now it seems our neighbo(u)rs to the north aren’t too keen on the idea.

Search Engine Land links to this Canadian Press article which tells of Canada Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart’s campaign against Google Street View in Canada:

“I am concerned that, if the Street View application were deployed in Canada, it might not comply with our federal privacy legislation,” Stoddart says in a letter to David Drummond, Google’s senior vice-president of corporate development and chief legal officer.

“In particular, it does not appear to meet the basic requirements of knowledge, consent, and limited collection and use as set out in the legislation.” [Click for details on Canadian privacy legislation.]

Commenting on the story, Search Engine Land’s Greg Sterling insists that:

More stringent and complex privacy rules in Canada would make it more challenging to roll out street-level photography there. The Canadian act appears to require consent in some circumstances, where individuals are identifiable in photographs, before publication. As a practical matter that would be impossible. Google has a process in place to request removal of images after they appear in Street View.

Here at GrokDotCom, we’re lucky to have quite a few Canadian readers. Would any of you care to share your thoughts on Google Street View?

UPDATE: News.com reminds us that Google Street View has launched in nine major U.S. cities since May.

Yahoo! Backs Bebo

After much thumb-twiddling and countless missed opportunities elsewhere, Yahoo has closed a deal with Bebo.com, the UK’s most popular social networking site:

According to the Associated Press:

The Bebo deal marks the first time that Yahoo has agreed to supply advertising to a social networking site. Yahoo had previously been feeding search results to Bebo. It now plans to begin funneling display ads to Bebo in the fourth quarter.

Two of Yahoo’s biggest rivals, Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp., already have advertising partnerships with MySpace and Facebook, respectively.

While Google has been thriving, Yahoo has been struggling this year.

Yahoo’s earnings fell nearly 7 percent during the first six months of this year, a factor that contributed to the June resignation of Terry Semel as the company’s chief executive officer after six years on the job. Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang is now trying to orchestrate a turnaround.

Working with Bebo will [sic] should broaden Yahoo’s appeal with advertisers looking to connect with a younger audience. Citing data from comScore Media Metrix, Bebo said it reaches a monthly audience of 11.6 million people in England and Ireland.

Together, Yahoo and Bebo expect to reach about 75 percent of the United Kingdom’s online audience. The two companies didn’t reveal how they will divide advertising revenue under their new alliance.

For more discussion, see the comments in Duncan Riley’s TechCrunch piece.

New York Times goes 2-point-OMG with Facebook App

Speaking of late-bloomer social media marketing, here’s a cute one… The New York Times has launched a current events quiz application for Facebook. Now you and your Facebook friends, “friends,” or colleagues (depending on how you use it) can compete to see who has the highest “Times IQ”. For instance:

Q: Did you really think an entire day would go by without another new Facebook application?

A) Yes B) Of course not C) “The Iraq” D) Could you repeat the question?

If you guessed something other than B, you’re either Miss South Carolina or you haven’t seen the full analysis on Read/WriteWeb:

Whether it works will largely depend on Facebook’s appetite for current events. Turning news into a friendly competition with your friends, and making it easily digestible (i.e., just 5 stories per day, with multiple choice answers) were both good choices, in my opinion. And anything that raises the level of consciousness about current events among the world’s youth is a good thing.

While Facebook may help you stay abreast of current events, it seems to have a problem with, well, breasts — breastfeeding, actually. Phil Bradley’s weblog has the scoop:

. . . it now looks as though Facebook is going to have to quell rebellion if the article Facebook ban incurs ‘lactivist’ wrath is anything to go by. Apparently they’re banning photographs of breast feeding mothers, because an exposed breast violates their terms. Although we don’t exactly know what ‘exposed’ really means. Also doesn’t explain why Facebook seems to think it is ok to run an image of a topless model in a banner ad.

With recent uproars over Wal-Mart’s Facebook campaign and Raccoongate, Facebook isn’t making a lot friends-of-friends. A word of advice to Mark Zuckerberg and friends: don’t mess with the lactivists (or this could happen to you).

[Sick of reading blogs? Catch Blog Buzz weekdays on WebmasterRadio.fm — or subscribe via iTunes. Bryan Eisenberg & Robert Gorell host the podcast, featuring a rundown of the day's top stories from The Grok's Interactive Marketing Buzz.]

First up today, AdvertisingAge reports that MTV Networks will merge iFilm.com and SpikeTV.com to form Spike.com.

AdAge’s Andrew Hampp has the story:

“We’re going to concentrate on it being its own men’s destination,” said Jon Slussser, senior VP of newly formed Spike Digital Media Entertainment Group, which is being launched in conjunction with the new site. “It needs to be an entity to exist where guys want to go to the site regardless of the channel.”

[...] Currently, SpikeTV.com and iFilm.com have been coexisting quietly in pseudo-beta form since Aug. 8. The content merger was designed to have a soft launch in the fall, with minimal on-air promotion for now and a larger push to follow by year’s end, Mr. Slusser said. As a result, the potential to sell ads across the properties has already begun. Coors was a sponsor earlier in the year of a “Hottest Bartender” contest, and will return in an even bigger way for the new Spike.com next year.

Having a condensed sales team in the new Spike Digital Media Entertainment group is what Mr. Slusser believes will help the new team make the site an easier sell. Not to mention increased scale — iFilm.com had an average audience of 2.3 million users in August 2007, according to ComScore, down from 2.9 million in the same period in 2006.

As discussed last week, MTV is in the midst of launching individual sites to support each of its shows. Once they’re done restructuring its web strategy, the company will have more than 300 websites in all.

Must be a light news day, what with the latest round of the Facebook valuation guessing game. Over on her Boom Town blog, The Wall Street Journal’s Kara Swisher shares the whisperings amongst Facebook insiders…

Here’s an interesting idea if you don’t want to get bought and you can’t quite IPO yet and you need to have a tidy war chest for expansion or perhaps a choice acquisition or two: Bring in more investors and raise more money at a huge valuation.. . . in a widely read interview with the Deal in July, board member and early investor Peter Thiel of the Founders Fund floated a more massive figure.

“If we got an offer from someone for $10 billion, we probably would listen to them,” Thiel told the Deal’s David Shabelman. “I don’t think we’re going to get that offer, and we’re not going to solicit it.”

. . . In that interview, Thiel also said that Facebook would not go public until its business was stronger and not until at least 2009, following the successful tactics once employed by a pre-IPO Google.

The article goes on to explain how much of Facebook’s expected $150 million revenue comes from an ad deal with Microsoft; a point Silicon Alley Insider’s Peter Kafka puts into perspective:

The money would be used for expansion and/or acquisitions, and potential investors include would-be acquirer Microsoft. Some Facebook brass aren’t eager to link up further with Microsoft . . . But no matter: If the economy doesn’t tank (and probably even if it does), Facebook will have its pick of investment partners. The timing here is smart: the iron-clad rule of financing is to raise cash when you can, not when you have to, and Facebook is riding high. Also, if the economy does crater, having a massive war chest will be a huge competitive advantage.

Meanwhile, Silicon Alley Insider’s Henry Blodget has taken Theil’s statement at — *cough* — face value:

. . . The announcement would not have been any more direct if Facebook had written an open letter to Google saying: “Dear Eric: $10 billion and we’re yours.” . . . Let’s see, at today’s Google stock price of $515, a $10 billion Facebook buy would amount to about 6% -7% dilution. A veritable tuck-in! And none of the copyright headaches that came along with the $1.7 billion YouTube acquisition. Microsoft? Why, you’ll generate $10 billion in cash in the next few months. So, step right up! Yahoo? Um, sorry, missed your chance last year when you could have had it for $2 billion.

Also today, blog search engine Technorati announced “Technorati Topics,” a new feature that helps you find the latest stories from top category searches. Unfortunately, that’s the problem. Experience Curve’s Karl Long explains:

It turns out that topics are just a live feed of blog posts that are under 6 unfeasibly large categories of Entertainment, Technology, Politics, Sports, Business, and Life. Needless to say these topics are updated every second or so, leading to a pretty useless stream of unrelated blog posts, from popular blogs. Read/Write Web where I picked up this story agrees:

“Unfortunately, Technorati’s scroll of news moves so fast it defies usefulness. In the space of a couple of minutes 30 or so stories might fly by — hovering your mouse over a story stops the scroll, but that doesn’t do much to alleviate the information overload. Further, once a post drops off the scroll (which doesn’t take long) it appears to be gone for good.”

. . . I’m afraid the Technorati topics reminds me of that phrase “for every complex problem there is a simple solution which is wrong”.

Also calling the feature “useless,” Mashable says, “It’s a Britney Spears-style comeback that’s unlikely to turn around the fortunes of the troubled search engine.”

That sounds about right. While “Technorati Topics” isn’t the worst thing they could do, it’s a waste of energy and has the added benefit of diluting the brand’s image. It’s a product management issue — a distraction. Why bother to add a feature with questionable value when they’re not addressing other issues like, say, not crediting blogs with the incoming links they receive?

[Catch Blog Buzz weekdays on WebmasterRadio.fm — or subscribe via iTunes. Bryan Eisenberg & Robert Gorell host the podcast, featuring a rundown of the day's top stories from The Grok's Interactive Marketing Buzz.]

Another day, another Google lawsuit… Read/WriteWeb’s Josh Catone has the scoop:

Google is being sued in an Australian court for “potentially misleading consumers,” reports News.com.au. At issue are the sponsored ad spots Google sells at the top of some search results above the first organic result. The Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) alleges that Google has encouraged deceptive practices among businesses by selling the advertising in that top position on its search results pages, while telling consumers that its results are organic.Specifically, the ACCC names online car dealership Trading Post, which purchased sponsored ads on Google in 2005 for search results relating to searches for the names of other New South Wales car dealerships. The ACCC argues that by using the name of those dealerships in their ads, the Trading Post links appeared to point to the official dealership web sites or implied an affiliation that did not exist. The ACCC alleges that this is a breach of Australia’s Trade Practices Law.

The judge in the case was not overly impressed with the ACCC’s arguments, calling their case “opaque and repetitious.” He adjourned the proceedings until October 4th pending clarification of the involvement of Google subsidiaries, Google Australia and Google Ireland, which were also named in the suit.

Commenting on this “frivolous lawsuit,” Traffick’s Andrew Goodman gets philosophical:

The overinflated sense of outrage and weak argumentation reminded me of my penchant for the helpful if opaque works of Jurgen Habermas, particularly his late work Between Facts and Norms. If the ideal for better understanding and progress in any problem-solving exercise is what Habermas might have called a “discursive situation,” Habermas can argue that “communicative power” is merely pushy coercive power based on bluster and sometimes backed by money or illegitimate influence. “Real” power as embodied in the law (as it should be) would emanate from a discursive situation. Winning in a legitimate court case based on a proper weighing of facts and ethics as generally agreed in legal codes would be “legitimate power.”

Luckily, Google wins most of these cases. Apparently, in many jurisdictions, “I was outraged” and blatantly manipulative descriptions of how Google “sells off top spot,” are trumped by the more accurate argument that accurately describes the real workings of Google’s advertising program, and the legitimate right of advertisers to buy space online.

As you may recall, a couple weeks ago, Facebook deleted a 500-member group for Ranger Rick, the National Wildlife Foundation mascot, claiming the fictive raccoon couldn’t represent the group because he was not a real person. (Of course, many Facebook groups don’t have a human figurehead, but no matter.)

Well, today, the social networking site has unintentionally invited a bit more controversy than Ranger Rick could muster. The New York Times has the story of a Facebook brawl in progress (login req):

The latest concern [about Facebook] centers on a group with a crude title denouncing Islam that had more than 750 members at last count. While the group takes pains to say it has nothing against Muslims, who “can be and usually are peaceful and respectful,” it asserts at the start: “The Quran contains many lies and threats. Islam is false, no god exists, and someone should say that loud and clear.”

In the month or so since the group was created, the reaction has been building across Facebook. As of the weekend, more than 58,000 Facebook members had joined a group that said that unless the anti-Islam group was removed, “we r quitting Facebook.”

Facebook declined to comment on Friday on the subject of hate speech or on what steps had been taken.

If you’re really interested, CrunchGear has screenshots regarding the foul-mouthed group in question. Regardless, it seems a bit hypocritical to single out a religion, then attack it in the name of atheism. Isn’t that a bit like screaming at the top of your lungs that you’re a nihilist? Kinda makes you wonder if the guy behind this anti-Islam group ever saw The Big Lebowski, let alone read Nietzsche.

Yikes! If it’s any consolation, one Facebook group that’s going strong is for “Free Hug Day” — which, apparently, is today.

And, finally — on a much lighter note — CrunchGear’s Seth Porges wonders if Apple’s already sick of the cell phone biz:

I haven’t been privy to the private conversations of Steve Jobs, but listening to his keynote the other day, it’s difficult not to pick up on at least some antipathy the man seems to hold towards the entire mobile phone industry.“Steve Jobs’ entire keynote was a series of middle fingers directed at AT&T and their carrier brethren,” says Sascha Segan, lead cell phone and PDA analyst at PC Magazine. “Notice that he dropped the iPhone’s price without mentioning AT&T; that he’s introducing the iPod Touch into Europe before the iPhone, which will depress iPhone sales there; and that he had a long chat with a Starbucks exec without once mentioning T-Mobile, who operate all of the Starbucks hotspots that he’ll be selling his music through. Never mind that the song he decided to demo on the iPod Touch was Beck’s ‘Cellphone’s Dead.’”

Perhaps he is merely sharing the frustrations of millions of Americans fed up with carrier-locked phones, draconian contracts, poor customer service, and ludicrous fees, but it would appear that, a little more than two months after bringing Apple into the cell phone game, he is already sick of it.

[Catch Blog Buzz weekdays on WebmasterRadio.fm — or subscribe via iTunes. Bryan Eisenberg & Robert Gorell host the podcast, featuring a rundown of the day's top stories from The Grok's Interactive Marketing Buzz.]

Over two dozen new websites are coming from MTV Networks, inlcuding stand alone sites for shows like “The Daily Show,” “The Sarah Silverman Program,” MTV’s “Engaged and Underage” and Nickelodeon’s “iCarly.” The Hollywood Reporter says TheDailyShow.com will include video archives of every episode broadcast, and will post the new shows within hours of them airing. With these new websites, MTVN will operate over 300 websites. According to the report, the sites join a growing list of targeted Web sites that the Viacom property has launched in the past year in conjunction with its TV shows. Other sites include Comedy Central’s Indecision2008.com, MTV’s YoMomma.TV and mySuperSweet16.com and VH1’s BestWeekEver.TV

On the spot with other news, Lost Remote’s Steve Safran hips us to a Variety report that…

[...] Apple is looking at cutting the price of iTunes TV show downloads from $1.99 to 99 cents:

But entertainment companies don’t seem to be rushing to embrace the idea. Indeed, the half-price plan may have contributed to NBC’s decision last week not to renew its current deal with Apple (though if NBC had simply let its contract automatically renew, the current price of $1.99 would’ve stayed in place).

“I remain puzzled by Apple’s pricing strategy,” Safran insists. “Why, when it has the ability to let all prices float according to what people are willing to pay, does Apple insist on flat pricing?”

Good question. An especially good one in the wake of what some — well, just us, really — are calling “Applegate”. You know, the news that they dropped the iPhone price from $599 to $399 overnight. Apparently, no good deed goes unpunished. Oh, how quickly people forget the endless pre-launch banter over how long it would take for the iPhone’s price tag to drop.

Beyond Madison Avenue’s Danny has one of the better mixed critiques of “Applegate”. Not only is he upset with the price retraction, but Apple’s deal with Starbucks seems to warrant this double-shot of venom:

[...] Yes, Apple made some noise yesterday. Yes, they released the long-awaited iPod Touch. Yes, they pissed off somewhere near 1 MILLION of their most loyal customers by slapping them with a $200 “early-adopter” fee on the iPhone. But that’s not what I want to talk about.

I want to talk about one of my favorite companies…Starbucks (notice the seething sarcasm here) and the asinine decision that Apple made to partner with them. In case you haven’t heard, when you walk into Starbucks with your shiny new iPod Touch, a new button featuring the Starbucks logo pops up on screen. This nifty little “feature” will show you the last ten songs played at that Starbucks and gives you quick access to purchase those or any other song from the iTunes store without having to pay Starbucks for wifi access.

Let’s examine this…first off, it’s bad enough that Starbucks doesn’t just offer free wifi already. Heck, the NYC Parks Dept. has managed to offer free wifi. Second, and more importantly, what exactly is the end user getting out of this partnership? “Woohoo, I can spend money on iTunes while I sip my over-priced coffee!” That’s not a benefit. Sorry, but giving me the opportunity to spend more money on your products isn’t giving me anything at all. And if you’re not giving me something with a feature, then don’t bother including it. Apple, you of all companies should have this hard-wired into everything you do. In fact, you used to, but this is a pretty good sign that you’re slipping. Talk about a venture aimed to doing nothing other than sucking more money out of your consumers.

OK, the Starbucks WiFi point is pretty spot-on. But, seriously… Isn’t the iPhone price drop just a matter of perceived value? It’s hard to know if iPhone owners are upset that exclusivity has diminished among their ranks, or if they’re just mad at themselves for being wild enough to spend six bills on a phone that can’t even teleport you to far-away planets. Besides, anyone who already owns an iPhone has something better than money: $100 in Apple Store credit.

Kudos to Steve Jobs for owning up to his mistake, and for pulling the old “store credit” play. That’s enough loot to get a free iPod Shuffle. Or perhaps a gold-plated iPhone cozy with a hidden GPS transponder to locate the device if it’s ever stolen or breathed-on wrong.

[Catch Blog Buzz weekdays on WebmasterRadio.fm — or subscribe via iTunes. Bryan Eisenberg & Robert Gorell host the podcast, featuring a rundown of the day's top stories from The Grok's Interactive Marketing Buzz.]

The real story here is a $200 price cut on the 8gb iPhone and the elimination of the 4gb model. The price cut is a slap in the face for early adopters, many of whom stood in line for hours, even days, eagerly awaiting the most hyped piece of tech ever. People who shelled out $599 and a portion of their soul to AT&T for the privilege of owning said tech have been left out in the cold. No new features were introduced for the iPhone. The ability to access iTunes over Wi-Fi and ringtone conversion service do not add any real functionality and are really a way for Apple to make a lil’ more $$$.

Where’s the love for your core supporters, Steve? Where’s the flash support and wireless sync functionality we’ve been begging for? Personally, I would not forgive this transgression for anything less than a $50 iTunes gift certificate.

50 bucks from iTunes? C’mon, Daniel… think big! How ’bout a $100 credit toward anything Apple? ArsTechnica’s Jacqui Cheng has the scoop:

Those who purchased iPhones before yesterday’s “The Beat Goes On” event will be able to get a $100 credit to the Apple Store as compensation for their early-adopting ways, said Apple CEO Steve Jobs today.

In a letter addressed to “all iPhone customers” on Apple’s website, Steve Jobs defended the decision to drop the 8GB iPhone’s price from $599 to $399 less than two months after the device went on sale. The announcement, while met with some excitement, was also greeted with much gnashing of teeth by those who consider themselves the most loyal to the company. “iPhone is a breakthrough product, and we have the chance to ‘go for it’ this holiday season,” Jobs wrote. “iPhone is so far ahead of the competition, and now it will be affordable by even more customers.”

[...] Despite the fact that Apple feels it made the correct decision at the correct time, the company acknowledges that it has heard the complaints of the early-adopting crowd. Jobs said that a $100 store credit toward the purchase of any product in Apple retail stores or the online store would be awarded to anyone who bought an iPhone through Apple or AT&T (provided they paid full price, that is). Details of the offer are not yet available, but will be posted to Apple’s website within the next week, he said.

Well, it seems like just last week — maybe because it was just last week — that Bloglines, the popular RSS reader, was making waves with the release of Bloglines Beta, which is expected to give Google Reader a run for its money.

For a bit of background, let’s refer to Read/Write Web’s Richard McManus’s Bloglines Beta review from August 26th:

Bloglines Beta is the first stage of “a complete redesign of the Bloglines service”. The new features include a new personalizeable Start Page (featuring drag and drop functionality to add feeds); 3 feed reading views (Quick View with headlines only, 3-Pane View for an email-like interface, and Full View for “the classic Bloglines page layout, updated”); Drag-and-drop feed management using Ajax; and a new Unread System to manage what to keep and what to ignore. Also upgraded are the ‘Add Feeds’ process and the ‘Full View’ option.

McManus goes on to give an exhaustive review, with screenshots, but here’s what he had to say about some of the basic pros and cons of Bloglines Beta:

Can Bloglines regain the support of the early adopter crowd and the thousands of other fans it used to have (and perhaps still does)? My first impressions are of a slick new RSS Reader interface – and it actually seems faster than Google Reader, which does have its quirks. The Bloglines Start Page is fantastic and will allow me to keep tabs on the feeds that are most important to me. The drag and drop touches are excellent, and the Ajax is very smooth and relevant.

To the cons — at this point I’m not sure about the way Beta Bloglines shows folders. With Google Reader, it lists out the entire content of the folder (e.g. 15 feeds) as a list of post titles. But with Beta Bloglines, you get the Start Page interface showing each feed separately (see below). I prefer the big list a la Google Reader. Likewise the Beta Bloglines 3-pane view is a little awkward when dealing with folders.

Now, if you were Google CEO Eric Schmidt, would you just allow this to happen? Of course not… TechCrunch’s Duncan Riley reports that Google Reader already has its groove back:

The most popular online RSS reader (depending on what stats you believe) just got better. Google has announced that Google Reader now has search.

The search box is located directly above the reading panel to the right of the Google Reader logo. Users can search all subscribed feeds or search by category/ tag.

Google Readers biggest competitor Bloglines recently released a completely new version that has been getting positive coverage; adding search to Google Reader (a feature Bloglines has had since May 2006) shines the spotlight back in Google’s direction.

It may be completely unrelated, but at the time of writing anyway Google Reader is experiencing difficulties with showing read/ unread items in the reading panel, showing all items as unread since roughly the same time search went live. The sidebar list of tags though is working fine.

[Catch Blog Buzz weekdays at 5pm EST on WebmasterRadio.fm — or subscribe via iTunes. Bryan Eisenberg & Robert Gorell host the podcast, featuring a rundown of the day's top stories from The Grok's Interactive Marketing Buzz.]

Well, it looks like Business 2.0 won’t outlive Web 2.0. The New York Times has the sad news…

The latest dot-com casualty comes from the newsstand, not the Internet. Business 2.0, a monthly magazine about the new economy, will be shut down rather than sold, its owners at Time Inc. have decided. The publication, which has been suffering from a decline in advertising revenue, will cease publication after its October issue, which will have a cover article on where to invest in a real estate downturn.

According to people familiar with Time Inc.’s handling of the matter, Time turned down offers from Mansueto Ventures, owners of the rival magazine Fast Company, and other prospective buyers to acquire the Business 2.0 brand and its circulation list of 600,000 subscribers.

Instead, Time Inc. will reassign the editor of Business 2.0, Joshua Quittner, and nine other editorial staff members to Fortune magazine, where they will help with Fortune’s technology coverage, conference business and Web site.

“I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to being heartbroken,” said Mr. Quittner, who steered the magazine for five and a half years. “That said, we had a terrific team here and learned a lot. A bunch of us are going on to Fortune, where we’ll have an even bigger platform to carry on the good fight.”

In a subtle twist of irony in the wake of the late, great Business2.0, TechCrunch reports that Microsoft has officially launched its Flash rival, Silverlight 1.0.

Says TechCrunch’s Duncan Reily:

Silverlight 1.0 provides cross browser support under both Windows and OS X, and in a partnership with Novell will also be available for Linux.

Silverlight was initially released to rave reviews in late April, with Michael Arrington saying that it would become “the platform of choice for developers who build rich Internet applications.”

Microsoft has rolled out a number of Silverlight powered applications since then, including Live Station, Popfly and Tafiti.

Microsoft has also announced that a number of content providers will be providing Silverlight enabled content online, including Entertainment Tonight, HSN and World Wrestling Entertainment.

In other news, SearchViews has the rundown from Apples “the beat goes on” special event.

Sepideh Saremi has the scoop:

In his trademark dad jeans and black mock turtleneck, Steve Jobs delivered Apple’s “the beat goes on” announcements in San Francisco today. The biggest news was the new iPod Touch, with smatterings of other iTunes- and iPhone-related information. Here’s a roundup of the announcements.

Ringtones
iPhone owners will be able to create custom ringtones with select iTunes songs. A new version of iTunes launches tonight, and a little bell icon will tell you which songs you can turn into ringtones for an additional $0.99.

Shuffles
There’s some change to the colors and the addition of a red Shuffle, as part of the (product) red line. That’s pretty much it.

iPod Nanos
The rumors were true, and “fat Nano” lives. The new Nanos are squatter and thinner, with a bigger screen to enable video-watching and game-playing (three games will come bundled with them) and a better interface.

iPod Touch
This rumor was also true and this thing looks pretty awesome: Apple’s basically taken everything in the iPhone besides the “phone” part to make the iPod Touch: touchpad interface, Wi-Fi, etc.

iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store
Just what it sounds like: a Wi-Fi iTunes store so you can buy music on your iPod Touch or iPhone. Also, iTunes is partnering with Starbucks, so users can buy what’s playing in Starbucks stores while at Starbucks stores, via Starbucks’ wi-fi, for free. As Jason Chen wrote in the live coverage on Gizmodo, “Wow, free access to a STORE? thanks!”

iPhone
The 8 GB iPhone went from $599 to $399, making it slightly more affordable, and the 4 GB iPhone is being dropped entirely.

The Beatles
To my dismay, there was no Beatles announcement, no Sir Paul McCartney appearance, nothing. Just a KT Tunstall show to close things out, apropos of none of the Beatles rumors.

Thanks for tuning in! As always, you’ll find these stories, along with the rest of today’s Blog Buzz, over at today.GrokDotCom…

At the moment, GrokDotCom weighs in at #45 on the list, which uses a point system to tally a blog’s Technorati rank, Google PageRank, Bloglines subscribers, and Todd And’s personal 1-15 score (or “Todd Points”). And’s score, an admittedly subjective one, promises to value “frequent, relevant, creative and high-quality content” and that the “use of audio, video and graphics is also heavily weighted in the Todd Points.”

Currently, we’re scoring about a “C” on Todd Points (read: 12 out of 15), but we’re not sure how often Todd reads Grok, whether he uses Blog Buzz to follow top marketing stories, or if he listens to our daily podcast at WebmasterRadio.fm. Still, if our recent Technorati score is any indication, we’re sure to climb the charts.

Any way you slice it, #45’s not bad for a blog that emerged from a newsletter in February of 2007.

Thanks for reading, everyone. You grok!