Toluu

Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim - Internet Marketing Blog & Consultant

Internet marketing consultant and expert Andy Beal, and contributing experts, keep their finger on the pulse of the interactive marketing industry and gets the scoops and interviews to keep you informed.

Google Reader Gets a FaceliftYesterday

Less than a month after Google released Gmail themes, the Google Reader team released a new design for Google Reader. Why the change? According to Jenna Bilotta from the Google Reader team, it is an attempt to speed up Google Reader.

Google is all about speed, both under the hood as well as in the user experience. So, in order to make Reader act and feel more speedy and responsive, we’ve removed some visual clutter, simplified some features and given everything a bit more breathing room.

A bit more breathing room is right. Reader has lost some of the clutter that was found at the top of the old reader design, creating a larger viewing area to read your feeds.

Other new features include:

• Collapsible navigation
• Shared items from your friends have their own section
• The ability to hide unread counts (now I won’t cringe everytime I open Reader!)
• More feed bundles (feeds related to a topic that you can subscribe to all at once)

TechCrunch Among First to Adopt Facebook ConnectYesterday

As we’ve already reported, it looks like Facebook Connect will be taking off after all. Facebook Connect gives you the ability to log into other websites via your Facebook account, track what your friends are doing on those sites, and also broadcast the comments you make on those sites in your stalker friend feed.

Although Facebook Connect is still in its infancy (it launched on November 30, 2008), TechCrunch has decided to become an early adopter and roll it into their comments platform. Now when you want to post a comment on a TechCrunch blog post, all you’ll need to do is login to your Facebook account and it will populate the rest of the data for you (name, email, website, etc). The next time you come back to comment, you’ll just have to press the “Connect” button and you’ll be logged in and ready to comment.

The one problem I have with Facebook Connect is that “your name conveniently links to your Facebook profile as well, making it easier for other commenters to get in touch with you and perhaps become your virtual friends.”

Personally, the last thing I want to do is open up my personal Facebook account to the hundreds of commenters on TechCrunch (or any blog for that matter). This s

An Interview with SMM Guru: Brian ChappellYesterday

By Joe Hall

Brian will tell you that he doesn’t call himself a guru, but in my opinion, others should. Last week, I came by a video on IM Broadcast that caught my attention. In this video social media marketer, Brian Chappell, responded to people that claim they are Social Media Marketing Gurus, but in reality they lack any real experience. Brian’s video reminded me about the constant discussion in the SEO community about fake SEO’s. I wanted to get a better understanding of what exactly successful social media marketing looks like, so I asked Brian if he would be willing to answer a few questions for the Marketing Pilgrim community.

Here is my interview with Brian Chappell (an active member of the SEO community, runs a side business called Adapt Marketing and blogs at BrianChappell.com):

Joe: As you know, the inspiration to do this interview comes from a video that you recently posted at IM Broadcast. In this video you make a distinction between someone who is heavily involved in Social Media on a personal level, and those who work as Professional Social

Online Commerce Struggles While Online Communities ThriveYesterday

With the economic struggles this year, it shouldn’t come to a surprise to anyone that e-commerce site traffic is down this year. What was surprising to me was how much. According to a recent ClickZ article, the Online Publishers Association (OPA) reports that e-commerce is suffering from a 20.4% dip this year. It is important to note that the data is only updated through October, so Black Friday and Cyber Monday were not included.

While e-commerce sites suffer this year, community, search and content oriented sites have seen increases in users time spent online.

Community sites saw the biggest increase. While the OPA credits this mostly to Facebook, I think their are more sites that deserve credit for this. Twitter, in particular. Now that Twitter has grown to 6 million users, it deserves credit for the impact it is having in the online world.

Here is the complete breakdown of time on site increases/decreases:

• Content: 6.1%
• Communications: -2.4%
• Commerce: -20.4%
• Community: 16%
• Search: 4%

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

Why Google is Just One Deal Away from Being Labeled a MonopolyYesterday

Back in July I suggested that, despite Google’s attempts to prove a Yahoo deal would not create a monopoly, the perception of a monopoly would likely scuttle the deal.

Today, we learn that the Department of Justice was just 3 hours away from filing antitrust charges against Google:

“We were going to file the complaint at a certain time during the day,” says Litvack, who rejoins Hogan & Hartson today. “We told them we were going to file the complaint at that time of day. Three hours before, they told us they were abandoning the agreement.”

“It would have ended up also alleging that Google had a monopoly and that [the advertising pact] would have furthered their monopoly,” Litvack says.

Interesting, huh? The DoJ really did believe that a mere ad partnership was enough to tip Google into the realm of being a monopoly.

Going forward, we may well hear Google cite economic conditions or a “focus on core” products as a reason for