Here’s a nice round up of “what were you thinking?” moments brought to by the good people at AdWeek.com:
http://www.adweek.com/news-gallery/advertising-branding/20-biggest-brand-fails-2012-146137
Category: Everything Else
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YouTube is rolling out new features for their partners enabling them to use a new form of annotations. Previously, I felt that the annotations feature was a bit limited. It was designed to keep viewers on YouTube.com by only allowing video owners to link to other YouTube videos and no external sites. With this enhanced annotations feature, you can now link to sites outside of YouTube.com. This is great for promoting products or content. This joins other features for partners such as enhanced page layouts, custom thumbnails, unlimited length videos and more. Google is really starting to roll out some great features for YouTube which has really lacked the bells and whistles of many other platforms. These features are being rolled out in typically Google fashion, so partners will need to be patient.
Here’s a great article on ClickZ.com about the new features.
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I’ve long opined on how virile the internet has become – giving a platform for anyone to anonymously spread hate, lies and misconceptions about anyone and anything.
I believe in order to post on the internet, you must reveal your identity – from a verifiable source. I realize that this may limit free speech in the “Arab Spring” sense of the term, and I’m sure were the concept of verification introduced to the web, there would be a happy medium.
Perhaps we are seeing a small turn towards ending anonymous hate based upon some recent events.
Take the game-winning goal scored by Washington Capitals hockey player, Joel Ward, a black man. His heroics lead to a barrage of racist comments on Twitter. Deadspin collected these posts into an article to “out” the racists. The result was that these racist people receive a significant amount of negative publicity and many deleted their accounts after being shamed publicly.
When the supreme court upheld the constitutionality of the healthcare reform act, many people tweeted they “couldn’t deal with the USA’s socialist agenda” and were therefore “moving to Canada to escape the socialists in the USA”. Of course anyone with half a brain knows that Canada provides free health care to all – far more “socialist” than the USA’s health care act.
Perhaps these events and other acts of internet Darwinism will lower the volume of hate on the ‘net.
I recently came across a POWERFUL post on the topic by Erin Kissane which I am compelled to share. It’s a long read but worth every moment of your time. Erin discusses the issue of hate on the internet, specifically pertaining to women. However, her points are applicable to the internet as a whole and I encourage you to share this article with EVERYONE YOU KNOW. Erin addresses the issue head on with suggestions on how to combat hate on the net. Her post inspired me to share my thoughts in this post today. Thanks Erin!
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Sometimes the “best” TV commercials don’t require million-dollar budgets. Just great stories.
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Being able to apologize in business, and to do it well, is paramount to the success of a leader. The art of apologizing, when executed properly, demonstrates intelligence, empathy and compassion. It also oozes humility, making leaders more approachable and I would say more successful. Here’s a great article by Forbes that explores this profound leadership quality.
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Today I will be speaking at the user summit on two very different topics…
API usage for moving data to and from Marketo
And Social media tactics you can start doing today
Heres some more info… http://summit.marketo.com/2012/agenda/
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Mark Twain famously quipped, “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
And in this vein,Eric Jackson for Forbes.com writes, “Here’s Why Google and Facebook Might Completely Disappear in the Next 5 Years.”
Jackson’s article is more than compelling – its nearly dead-on accurate with regards to how technologies evolve faster than companies. So, its difficult for companies that have devoted their resources heading down one path to get up, back track and head down a new path. This is especially difficult in the face of competitors who get a fresh start down a new branch.
Think of a tree. Start with the trunk. That’s the start of technology… And as companies create products based upon this technology they head down a branch, say “ecommerce”. However, as they are heading down that branch, a new one sprouts – “mobile commerce”. The problem is, that branch is very different and has its own barriers to entry and competitive forces. Companies on one branch don’t necessarily have the know-how to hop branches and change courses.
Jackson’s article discusses this by breaking down technology into three phases and grouping the big tech companies into those three phases to articulate his point. It’s very compelling.
However, I do believe that many of these newer companies have the cash to acquire technology through M&A so that they can more easily hop branches. Also, I believe some of them have management that will endeavor as best they can to pivot their giant organizations and adapt to change. But this doesn’t always work, as Jackson points out, like in the case of the once almighty MySpace.
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Rosetta Stone (makers of the language software) have been given the go ahead by the appeals courts to move their lawsuit against Google to the next stage of the litigation process – a trial.
Rosetta Stone is asserting that Google is serving up Ads triggered by Rosetta Stone’s trademarks. So, when a user types in “Rosetta Stone”, they are seeing ads for other products, thus confusing the consumer.
I have long advocated to not bid directly on the keyword marks of your competitors. It typically does not generate good conversion results in the B2B area in particularly. It’s also a poor business practice that usually results in the other business countering by bidding on your terms. The end result is a bidding war (and the only entity that wins is Google).
However, this case has further implications on broad match and session match. It’s quite possible that Google will have to block session matching whereby it would normally use your search behavior to serve you ads regardless of what your query is… For instance, if I make three searches about cell phones, and then refine my search to smartphones, I still may see ads triggered by the original “cell phone” key phrase. And broad match may kick in if I type “Nokia smart phone” whereby AdWords matches me to a “Samsung smart phone” ad triggered by the “smart phone” portion of my phrase.
If Google will be required to block all marks except to their owner, there’s a lot of work that will be required. Google will need to build a system to verify ownership of marks to enable advertisers to bid on their own marks; and also build a system that blocks ads from appearing on registered marks in any form (broad, session or otherwise).
One thing is for sure, this case will continue to take its time moving through the legal system. Here are some more details reported by MediaPost.
Dan Soschin 