Alert Blog Reviews

Ad Age today summarize the state of the search engine marketing industry —and it’s largely good, including the fact that we’ve weathered the recession well so far, we’ve seen tremendous growth over our lifespan and most marketers are convinced of, interested in or doing SEM in some form. Naturally, the report focuses on the elephant in the room—the biggest search engine in the world. Google dominates the search market in almost every country of the world—but there are a few places where competitors might be able to find a chink in Google’s armor. Bingahoo is cited as one possible challenger, although by the measure Ad Age is using, a combined Yahoo/Bing share would be 26% to Google’s 65% of the market. However, Bing has shown notable success, including a report from Nielsen in July: According to Nielsen data from July for the U.S., 27% of Google searchers also used Bing at least once that month, and 39% used Yahoo. Of course, the same holds true for Bing and Yahoo searchers — a majority of them also use Google. We saw similar reports on low search-engine loyalty back in February as well, even before Bing and its marketing blitz. But the fact that people are at least trying Bing bodes well for Microsoft—since CEO Steve Ballmer pledged to spend up to 10% of MSFT’s operating income a year to pushing Bing to the top of the heap (up to $2b/yr). The other major area is mobile search . While lots of people do turn to Google for their mobile search, just like they do with . . . “immobile” search—and Android is helping with that—Ad Age reports that the number of mobile Internet devices outweighs the number of computers—which means that lots of mobile Internet users don’t have a desktop habit of Googling. Instead, they may use whatever default their service provider or phone includes (again with the Android). What do you think? Does it really matter if Google is so dominant in the search industry, or is fine and dandy (as long as they don’t penalize your site)? Can they be beaten?

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Where Can Google Be Beaten?

Sometimes, when you have a really good idea, you have this irrepressible urge to do something crazy with it. Like register it with the government. And then, when other companies independently develop similar ideas, you protect that registration by suing the pants off those other companies . It is, after all, the American way. And it’s what Red Bend Software is doing to Google over an algorithm in Google Chrome. The Courgette algorithm checks the software for updates (using a difference table), then pushes the packed updates to the software. Unfortunately, it violates a 2003 patent owned by Red Bend , which protects a substantially similar idea. This does happen from time to time (probably more often than we’d think). Red Bend informed Google of their error on September 7 and waited for them to update Chrome. But nothing happened. To make the case worse, Google had also published the algorithm as part of the open source code for Chrome, which Red Bend says is even worse. That combined with six weeks without redress, brought Red Bend to sue Google for willful copyright infringement , which carries three times the financial penalties as unintentional copyright infringement. Sometimes, of course, companies use the patent system as a kind of legal trap—they register “obvious” ideas, or those with the potential to be used, and lie in wait for unsuspecting companies. But Red Bend does appear to be a legitimate mobile software company—and, interestingly enough, a member of the Open Mobile Alliance, the organization that promotes open standards development for mobile software. A little ironic, then, that they’re especially upset about the open source code for the algorithm. What do you think? Should Red Bend get their money? Or should they “get with the program”?

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Google Chrome: Copyright Infringer?

By Trevor Dobrygoski of Twit 101 – Follow him @trevord209 Have you seen the Hangover? If not, you may want to grab the eight other people out there who haven’t and go give it a peek. Without ruining it for all eight of you, here is a quick rundown. A group of four friends go to Vegas to celebrate an upcoming wedding. After a long night of bachelor party fun, they lose the groom. The remaining three spend the bulk of the movie trying to remember what happened, find their friend and make it back to the wedding in LA. Had the guys took advantage of their Twitter account and used a few of these simple tips, many pitfalls and shenanigans from the day after could have been avoided. I am not a fan of using cliches, but hindsight is 20/20. (I’ll admit if they did use any or all of these tips, it would have made for a really boring movie.) 1. Mobile Updates Everyone is talking, texting and taking pics and video from their phone when they are out for a night on the town. Using your mobile device to take pictures of your night is commonplace. For smartphone owners posting to Twitter is super easy with apps like Ubertwitter or Tweetie. If you have a standard voice only phone you can MMS (picture message) your mobile photography to a web app such as Twitpic. Twitpic has a dedicated email address for you to send the MMS to. Here are the steps to find out where to send the MMS to: 1. Log into Twitpic using your Twitter credentials 2. Go to settings and you’ll see the email address Twitpic has created for you. 3. Copy that email address and add it to your phone. 2. Use Hashtags Using hashtags is a great way of tracking topics, events or even are sometimes used as part of an application. In the case of this party, the group could have used a hashtag like #dougsvegasparty. This could have brought all of the random tweets, pics and videos posted over the couple day period together. This could have answered some questions early on like “Why is there a Tiger in the bathroom?”. If they glanced through the tweets with that hashtag, they might come across something like this: [Mike Tyson needs better security. Got the tiger in the back of the cop car without wakin' up the champ. Back to the hotel #dougsvegasparty] 3. Timestamp If you haven’t noticed when browsing your timeline, every tweet has a time and date at the bottom. In the case of a bad memory (self-induced or not) this alone could have filled in many of the time gaps when things are a little hazy. 4. GPS Location Many of the new devices and services can put a map tack on Google Maps showing where you were when you sent the tweet; kind of like a digital  bread crumb. If you go with a location based service option (Brightkite, Ubertwitter, etc), it is dually helpful. Your tweets will be time stamped and also give you a location of your tweet. This will come in very handy when mid-way through the night when things are a little fuzzy and your updates aren’t as easy to follow. The problem with the first four solutions is they are very public. Anyone, including Stu’s girlfriend, could have followed the evening via Twitter. While this may be okay for some events, the happenings of these couple of days needed to be a little more discrete. Tips five and six will be a little more incognito yet offer some handy features. 5.  Reminders (@rtm) This one could have been a huge timesaver for the gang. If they sent a DM something like this to @rtm (Remember the Milk): [d rtm tomorrow 9am get Doug from the roof], they would have received an SMS with a reminder at 9am. All four of the guys could have had a horribly hung over drive back to LA together. If you can text your updates and DMs into Twitter, you should also receive incoming DMs. Alternatively, Blackberry and other smartphone users can get them with one of the numerous available applications. 6. Evernote (@myen) With a slogan like “Remember Everything”, following Evernote on Twitter could have helped the guys out tremendously. Evernote can be updated by texting a DM to @myen. All of the DMs can be searched for by typing DM or Twitter into the search box. You can take a quick peek at this post from the Evernote blog for more explanation (and a video). After the Vegas wedding DMs like these could have shed some light on their vehicle debacles: [d myen bought the high roller package. see Eddie before we head back.] or [d myen left the Mercedes parked on Las Vegas Blvd. Hope $4 was enough for parking]. This only scratches the surface of how Twitter can be used to remember things. Share your tips in the comments below. [image: Kevin Lau ] http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevinlau/2188869187/ © 2008 TwiTip Twitter Tips . 6 Ways Twitter Can Help A Bad Memory Related posts: 10 Ways To Create A Community Around Your Tweetup 10 Ways To Avoid Being Sued On Twitter 10 Ways To Use Twitter For Weight Loss

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6 Ways Twitter Can Help A Bad Memory

Google Wave, an instantaneous/asychronous communication app (Okay, it’s IM+email) has been in beta testing for nearly a month . In that time, we’ve seen a couple “apps” developed for it (although they were really just stripped down browsers that helped Wave to run a little faster). But these pseudo apps were so well received, apparently, that Google is ready to talk about an app store for Google Wave at the Google Wave Google Technology User Group in London yesterday. What kind of apps would they add to email+IM? Says TheNextWeb: Already, independent software developers have built and tested Wave applications that handle such tasks as teleconferencing, videoconferencing, and multiplayer gaming, but while the Apple App Store sells software only for the iPhone and Touch, a Wave marketplace could stock in-Wave applications, along with desktop applications, browser extensions and a world of devices, from laptops, phones, tablets and more with built in Wave support. Earlier this month, Wave co-creator Lars Rasmussen told Business Week , “We’ll almost certainly do a store.” That’s been upgraded to “definitely.” The Wave API has long be available, but support for a store would help developers make money off their efforts. (In the same BW article, Rasmussen mentioned revenue sharing with developers.) TheNextWeb is very excited about Google’s prospects with apps in both Wave and Android, going so far as to say, “Despite Apple’s success, it is undoubtedly Android who will win on numbers, with developers swayed by Google’s open source values and the openness of the platform as a whole. With an app store specifically for Google Wave however, the potential for something as great, if not greater then than the iPhone App Store is a distinct possibility.” It’s a possibility, of course, but as things stand now, that’s going to take some time. ComputerWorld says Android devices currently make up 2% of the smartphone market, with Nokia’s Symbian OS running on about half of all smartphones. The iPhone is currently #3 in the market, after Nokia and Blackberry. These issues of scale are currently not enough to entice most of the iPhone developers I know to learn yet another programming language. By 2012, however, they may change their tune—ComputerWorld says the iPhone will slip—oh, wait, no, remain at the #3 OS slot. Symbian will slip to 39% dominance and all of the various Android devices will just edge out Apple for the #2 slot—by 0.8% of the smartphone market share. That’s awfully precise for a 2012 prediction. (Should we pull out our “Year of the Mobile” sign again?) Considering that right now the iPhone has over 100,000 apps and Android . . . well, doesn’t, perhaps it’s a bit soon to be calling the iPhone out of the game. Who knows what Apple will do next? What do you think? Is the iPhone on the way out, and is a Google Wave App store evidence of that? What apps would you like to see for Google Wave?

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Google Wave to Get App Store, Kill the iPhone?

When the Google Analytics team shared today’s new features with me, they wanted to walk me through all of the minor updates–before they revealed the big news. I’m not going to do that to you! You’re getting algorithmically driven, artificially intelligent, email alerts! Andy, in English, please! If Google Analytics detects a change in the data patterns of your site’s metrics it will send you an email alert to let you know . So, for example, let’s say your site gets to the homepage of Digg–and you were honestly unaware of it (yeah, right)–Google Analytics would send you an email alert to let you know “hey, you’re getting WAY more traffic from Digg than you normally get, hoss. You may want to come and investigate it.” OK, maybe not those exact words, but you get the idea. Here’s a screenshot of the new dashboard: Even better, you can set up your own custom alerts. So if you want to know when your conversion rate from visitors from California drops below 2%, you can set that up! Cool huh? Now the not so cool. The data is not yet “real time” but Amy Chang, Group Product Manager for Google Analytics, tells us to “stay tuned” on that. Also not so cool, Google Analytics is not smart enough to realize that you’ve set up a custom alert–so if your custom alert is similar to what Google has intelligently identified, you may end up getting two alerts. Lastly, no SMS alerts–at least “not yet.” Though with Google Voice rolling out to more folks, I suspect SMS alerts are not too far behind. OK, so what other cool eye-candy is the Google Analytics fairy handing out today? Here’s a quick summary: More custom goals! You can now have up to 20 goals per profile–up from the previous limit of 4. Two new goal types: Time on Site and Pages per Visit . Perfect for those that wish to measure engagement and branding success rates! Mobile access measurement. Add a new server side snippet to your mobile website and Google Analytics will make all your mobile metric dreams come true! Lots more tweaks. Personally, I’m just plain giddy to get the analytics alerts. Now I don’t have to worry about checking in on my sites to see if there’s “anything out of the ordinary” going on. Google will let me know if something’s up. Now, if we could just get to real-time alerts, I can sleep at night knowing that, if Marketing Pilgrim is nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, Google Analytics will alert me to the surge in traffic.

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First Look: Google Analytics Adds Intelligent Email Alerts & More!

A company that earns its living by optimizing web sites for mobile browsers just issued a report that suggests most of us need our web sites optimized for mobile browsers! Shocking, huh? OK, if we get over the potential bias in Gomez’s Why the Mobile Web is Disappointing End-Users , we find some interesting stats. Like this one: 82% of mobile phone users would use their phone to access the web more often, if only your site would load faster and provided a reliable experience: Or this one: if a mobile phone user can’t complete a transaction within a minute, they’re going to bail on your web site. And: if your mobile site doesn’t even load within the first 10 seconds, you can forget it! How does your site perform? There’s an (Gomez) app for that! Marketing Pilgrim scored a 4–not bad for a text heavy blog! ( via )

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Report: In 10 Seconds, this Mobile Web Surfer Will Self-Destruct!