Alert Blog Reviews

Google has long complied with the government-mandated censorship required to operate in China, despite criticism from human rights and freedom of speech advocates. However, Google may be changing their tune, based on a blog post yesterday. Google’s new approach to China is far more open—and at least partially because a Chinese cyber attack compromised some intellectual property of the search giant. Naturally, Google is frequently the subject of cyber attacks, but this incident became more than just a security concern for Google. In addition to discovering dozens of other victims, Google has also determined the object of the breach—the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Google’s investigation has shown, so far, that the attackers did not compromise the accounts, though they might have been able to access basic information (creation date, subject lines) on two of them. They also found that other third parties (likely phishers and malware on users’ computers) had accessed other activists’ accounts. But Google’s doing more than advising users to scan their computers and beefing up https access to Gmail (emphasis added): These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn , and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China. Hm . . . I almost wonder if what they found in those activists’ accounts was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Google says that since their first foray into the country four years ago, they’ve believed that making some information available was a worthy objective—but, as they say above, they now believe that they must push for a more open Internet in China. What do you think? Will Google get to stay in China, or is this the end of Google.cn? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

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Google Bucking Chinese Censorship After Cyber Attack

Two weeks ago, it looked like Google might have been . . . well, fibbing. Back in June, the search engine announced that they would no longer redistribute “link juice” around nofollowed links , effectively deprecating the practice of PageRank sculpting. But late last month, it looked like the technique was still effective when SEOmoz published some research to that effect. Not so much, it turns out. Today, Mozzer Danny Dover revisits the tests he used in the original post and shows that the results were, in fact, inconclusive . The short reason is that the test didn’t include enough data to be statistically significant. He’d have to repeat the test with 168 domains (instead of the 20 he used) to assure that the results were meaningful and not merely a fluke. Apparently, there’s been some backlash against Danny and SEOmoz for their innaccurate information. Danny didn’t realize his error until Darren Slatten corrected him in the comments two days after the post had gone live. Naturally, it was too late to unring the bell—and a number of people were very upset that SEOmoz would post something misleading or outright wrong. In his correction post, Danny points out that this is just another example of the power of the Internet. I think it’s good that Danny did more than just update the old post, also publishing a new post to correct the misinformation (and apologize). Two weeks after the correction is fairly quick to reanalyze the data, though it’s possible he could have acted even faster. This is also a microstudy on reputation management and transparency, something we’re a little passionate about around here. As a reminder, back in August, Matt Cutts told SEOmoz that it’d be okay to keep nofollow links in place, though when building new sites or redesignin old ones, PageRank sculpting shouldn’t be a consideration. What do you think? Did everyone handle this situation well?

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Google Didn’t Lie After All

Maybe you can have too much of a good thing. As the Internet allows advertisers to slice and dice large segments of desirable markets into thinner, more defined slices it also creates something that is much less desirable: smaller profits. How is that you say? How is it possible to make less on my advertising spend when I am advertising directly to the group that most needs or wants my products? Well, it’s simple supply and demand. While you are targeting a much more defined market you are not going to be alone in that quest to advertiser to just the people that will buy. Remember those pesky competitors? They want those people too because their claim is that they are better than you. Now you are going to find a price war that drives up costs for advertising and makes customer acquisition costs rise which in turn hurt the bottom line. So maybe there is too much of a good thing after all. MediaPost tells about a study performed by the MIT School of Management that has looked at this in detail Professor Alessandro Bonatti, working with Yale University economics professor Dirk Bergemann on this research, says “… newspapers have a very limited ability to target audiences… specialized magazines can do better… Google has a very good ability to target who’s browsing each page… (though) online advertising has the potential to drive out traditional advertising, it does not necessarily follow that online advertisers will make more money… ” Bonatti continues, “…as technology keeps improving, more and more web sites can sell very narrow products to very specialized audiences… with lots of people targeting the same audience the profits to be made through specialized advertising become more and more spread out… instead of competing for one large pool… you will have price war in each targeted segment as the slice gets more and more narrow.” Bonatti concludes that, “… the better the technology, the lower the profits for advertisers… “ Not the news that advertisers want to hear but it sure is music to the ears of the niche ad networks that attract these more narrowly defined groups. Advertising price war? We’re in! Woo-hoo! Different verticals are responding more rapidly and it also is dependent on just how far CPM’s fell during this downturn / recession / economic morass. Real estate is seeing an increase in CPM’s jumping 17% from Q2 to Q3 of last year while foodies are driving that category up almost 91% in the same period. Here is a chart from Adify Vertical Gauge for you to gloss over and wonder what it really means. So be careful what you wish for advertisers. Sure it’s great to advertise as close to the buyer as you can but you’re not the only one with that strategy. Let’s hope you are the one with the deeper pockets at least.

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For Ads the More Targeted May Mean Less Profitable

As marketing professionals, we usually have to justify ourselves to our bosses, our clients and everyone in between—especially in the less-tested, sometimes-hit-or-miss arena of social media. But now Ad Age wants accountability, too, as they ask “if you’re getting enough out of all the volunteer work you do for Biz & Ev and Mark,” or, more specifically, “Are we all just toiling mightily to make a bunch of rich nerds (Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and his employees and investors, Twitter’s Biz Stone and Evan Williams and their employees and investors) richer, while we impoverish ourselves?” That’s both a literal and a figurative question, since using those social networks is exactly what makes their founders and investors money (well, sort of), and, as the argument goes, we’re essentially a volunteer labor force creating content for these sites—an interesting point. Meanwhile, using social networks (at all, as the argument here seems to go) means sacrificing time (true), actual interactions (possibly true but not always)—and our very souls and identities. They mean this to be a discussion on a personal level, since a central thrust of the argument is that these social networks have sacrificed so much of our privacy that we’re allowing them to steal (don’t we call that “giving” in English?) “the sole ownership of our own thoughts, emotions, personal expressions, etc.” from us (yes, if I post “I’m sad” on a social network, that means that they also own my emotion…. right….). Of course, if you’re using Twitter and Facebook as a marketer, you’re there looking for business ROI from publicity—being public. Ad Age (you know, “Advertising” Age? About . . . could it be . . . advertising ?) does acknowledge that social networks might work for these purposes, if they’re worth the sacrifice: If you’re a brand marketer, chances are good that you’re extracting real value from investing time and energy in social media (and you’re happy to have consumers volunteering their time to be your “brand ambassadors” or whatever you want to call them); good for you. (And if you’re a consumer who gets off on connecting with big brands — or just wants to interface with customer service in a forum, like Twitter, where certain marketers seem to be hyper-responsive — well, good for you too.) In general, if you’re soft-selling something — like content or an idea — that can benefit from free publicity, Facebook and Twitter are your friends. Even if, well, they’re the two-faced sort who think nothing of riffling through your handbag or backpack when you get up to go the bathroom — you know, glad-handing “friends” (those are air quotes) who are obviously using you for something, only it’s not always entirely clear what. Um . . . I hate to bring this up, but aren’t we as marketers just using our social networks as those same kind of “friends” (and possibly even the friends and fans we acquire on those social networks)—we’re just using them as the means to an end? I do agree, of course, that on a personal level, excessive use of social media can rob us of time and valuable interaction with the people we care about most. It’s good to examine our relationship with the Internet and social media on a personal level and decide whether it’s really worth the time and effort we put into it, or if we might put that time to better use. While that’s the brief summary of the argument at the conclusion of the article, the main thrust is that using social networks is such a great sacrifice of ourselves (even without a time investment) that it’s not worth it. What do you think? Do you demand ROI from personal social network use? Or are you glad that most people don’t ?

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Are You Getting Enough out of Twitter & Facebook?

It’s hard to believe that it’s already been almost one year that Carol Bartz has taken the top position at Yahoo! She officially celebrates the one-year mark next week but is taking a look back at what was probably a whirlwind event no matter how much experience she brought to the table. Bloomberg reports that Bartz recently gave herself an interesting grade for her performance for the year: a B-. Why is that interesting? It’s interesting to me because it seems to be pretty honest. It’s saying “Hey, I did OK and everything is OK but there is room for improvement.” I appreciate the honesty because she places herself precariously close to a C grade, which is just average. So what were Ms. Bartz’s own words? Carol Bartz gives herself a B-minus in her first year as chief executive officer of Yahoo! Inc., saying she could have moved faster to reorganize the company and strike a Web-search agreement with Microsoft Corp. “It was a little tougher internally than I think I had anticipated,” Bartz, 61, said in an interview at Yahoo’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. “I did move fast, but this is a big job.” The Bloomberg article paints the picture of Bartz being dealt a ‘tough hand’ (does this writer also cover politics for them?) which can be perceived as the truth, an excuse or a combination of the two. You’ll have to make the call on that one. Her year though started with a lot of work to clean up that ‘tough hand’ which did include dismal economic conditions overall. After becoming CEO, Bartz cut her staff by 5 percent, shuttered underperforming businesses such as the GeoCities Web- hosting site and installed her own management team. Then she broke out the big pen for “boat loads” of fun in the Microsoft, bingahoo, Ya-bingaroo or (insert favorite name here) deal in July, which began the end of the era of Yahoo as a search engine. A partnership with Facebook was thrown in for good measure as well. Now the company is concentrating on its strengths and trying to reclaim its identity in a manner of speaking. The company also has been hiring people for sales and engineering, tapping into the savings generated by its cost- cutting efforts. “A very good company kind of got buried,” Bartz said. “It is coming out.” Last year also saw some pretty dismal financial performance but Bartz is unapologetic which comes as no surprise. Despite these numbers the stock was up 38% for the year. Go figure. Yahoo’s sales have fallen for four straight quarters, and its stock trailed the Nasdaq Composite Index in the past year. “We came out of one of the worst climates ever,” Bartz said. “And if you look at growth of Fortune 500 companies, only being down 12 or 15 percent is damn good. I’m not going to apologize for our growth.” Funny how being down 12-15 percent can be spun into a sentence that implies growth where there was none. Anyway, now that the strains of “Auld Lang Syne” are fading fast, what does Bartz say is ahead for Yahoo? Bartz said she plans to do more acquisitions this year, probably of less than $1 billion apiece. Potential targets include overseas companies and data-analytics businesses that help advertisers assess their results, she said. Bartz said the company continues to improve its products, such as its home page and e-mail service, though she didn’t give specifics. Last year, Yahoo unveiled a new version of the home page, the site’s first major upgrade since 2006. Yahoo is likely going to need to make some serious noise in the upcoming months to be heard above the din that is being made by Google and all the others in the Internet space. What do you think the upcoming year(s) have in store for them?

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Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz Gives Herself A Grade for Her First Year

Google declined to go for the fake out as they unveiled the expected Nexus One today at their Android event . First spotted after employees received free phones last month , the Nexus has already created a media frenzy as the “real” Google phone—one that will be sold by Google through their web store (though manufactured, like so many other Android headsets, by HTC). So today is the formal announcement of the phone, along with the full rundown of the technical specs (available below). Search Engine Land , Read Write Web and many others are liveblogging the event, which features Google, Android and HTC engineers presenting not only the phone but an update on the progress and history of the OS. But we’ve been following Android for over two years now , so we’ll just stick to the Nexus news. Google has decided that their phone is so smart, it can’t even qualify as a “smartphone”—they call it a “superphone.” (Buzzwords FTW!) And for the low, low price of $529, one can be yours today. (Free engraving!) As per the rumor, the phone is available unlocked with no data plan included; T-mobile is the premiere partner for $80/month, but they’re not available just yet. Verizon and Vodafone are slated to join in spring. In the store you can have two lines of custom engraving added to the back of the phone (for free), and naturally checkout is through Google Checkout. The phone itself is pretty slick—with a fast enough processor and enough memory to run the “live wallpaper” and other apps in the background, multiple apps simultaneously and get some pretty good-looking graphics (if you’ve seen the Engadget video ). However, it’s not the game changer that the iPhone was. Processor: 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor 3.7″ AMOLED display Trackball at bottom which pulses and uses multicolor lights to notify of new calls and messages Light and proximity sensors (automatically dim backlight, etc.) 11.5mm (

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Google Premieres Nexus (Big Surprise)

It appears that not just the Year of Mobile is being christened this January but new competitive lines are being drawn as well between Internet giants Google and Apple. Yes, it’s time to officially deem Apple an Internet company in my opinion but you are always free to disagree. According to All Things Digital Apple is preparing to announce a purchase that virtually mirrors the acquisition made of AdMob by Google. Apple is ready to buy Quattro Wireless for $275 million. Apple had been in the mix for the AdMob deal but Google won that one. So as a result Apple and Quattro’s ad platform will be getting geared up to fight out the looming iPhone v. Droid device conflagration (great ‘over-the-top’ word, huh?) that could shape the future of how many people acquire information from the Internet. Quattro was already ID’d as a potential win as evidenced by investment and there are more players out there says All Things D: Waltham, Mass.-based Quattro has raised close to $30 million from two main venture investors–Highland Capital Partners and Globespan Capital Partners. Founded several years ago, its clients include Ford (F), Disney (DIS) and the National Football League. Competitors in the space are many still, despite these big acquisitions, including Millenial Media and Jumptap, both of which are now clearly in play to other players from telcoms to other device makers to big Internet companies. So get ready for the battle that lies ahead. Who are you putting your money on?

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2010: The Year of Google v. Apple?