There are now many programs designed to track your click’s and recording what website’s you have visited just so advertisers can use this information to sell you and other’s more products and services.  The Wall Street Journal did an analysis on the Safari iPhone browser and discovered that Google circumvented the cookie setting for all users. That means Google was allowing additional web tracking cookies to be installed on all iPhone devices without the users’ knowledge.

       Source: Wall Street Journal

Apps Aren’t Safe Either

You think your smartphone apps are safe from privacy concerns?  One recent app was accessing the address book content from iPhones.  An app on Facebook was collecting personal information on “friends” that did not grant permission to collect such information.

When more social media companies go public and investors demanding year-over-year earnings growth, toeing or stepping over the privacy line will become the norm.

If your Android device is running Ice Cream sandwich, you can get Google Chrome for your device.  Google says Chrome allows you to navigate and browse fast, offers simplified tabs, and a personalized Chrome experience after signing in.  Below is the Google Chrome video.

Chrome is now available in Beta from Android Market for phones and tablets with Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich.

why is a seven year old service company worth more than a company that produces physical assets?

If I were to break down the Facebook IPO announcement to the lowest denominator, it doesn’t make any sense that the Facebook valuation is between $75 billion to $100 billion. It doesn’t produce anything nor does it own many tangible assets. On the other hand, General Motors has lots of physical assets and it produces a tangible product that can be sold worldwide. Yet financial analysts are estimating Facebook to be worth almost 100 billion dollars.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote, “If nothing else, the IPO will certainly provide more money for Facebook to create better services.”  That may be true but services is a commodity than can be in favor today and public disdain next tomorrow.

It appears today’s marketers are spending display advertising dollars in Facebook without realizing any ROI yet. Marketers feel compelled to be in Facebook because it has hundreds of supposed millions users. Facebook revenue was pegged at $3.1 billion which was derived from display advertising. Facebook also earned over $500 million from Zynga games played on Facebook.  Question I have, will Zynga gaming revenue be sustainable over the long-term?  I wouldn’t bet the “FarmVille” on it.

Once Facebook becomes a publicly held company, its quarterly earnings calls will come under deep scrutiny, mainly the privacy controls it claims to have protecting the users information and how this information is used to sell display advertising.

When the United States economy is driven by the social network websites products and services it offers the public and not by companies that produce real worth (such as the manufacturing sector,) something is askew with the IPO valuations and the impact it will have on the market.

Photo Credit: Thinkstock/iStockphoto

In memorium, (Your Name), loving Facebook user and social media afficionado died suddenly yesterday while adding another close friend into his/her Google Circle of acquaintances. A devoted and loving Facebook Friend and fellow Twitter tweeter, he/she spent thousands of hours cultivating and nurturing 5,000 Facebook Friends and Likes, grew over 100 Google + Circles, made over 1,200 tweets, had over 250 LinkedIn business acquaintances, uploaded over 75 YouTube videos and even had a Flicker photo account with over 1,500 photos.  (Name of deceased) was well-Liked… on Facebook that is.

(Name of deceased) last words were: ” If I had to do it all over again, I wish I didn’t spend 60 minutes a day, 7 hours a week, 364 hours a year, 152 days of my life over the last 10 years posting social media drivel when I could have dedicated those wasted hours to some other endeavor that truly would have made a difference in someone else’s life.”

This coming weekend, a social media virtual wake and funeral will be held at www.facebook.com/my-virtual-funeral. In lieu of sending virtual flowers and making PayPal or Google Wallet donations, please send more “Friend”, “Followers”, “Tweets” and invites to “Google Circles” so that (name of deceased) name will rank higher in the Google personalized search return rankings using social media ranking signals. He/she would have wanted it that way.

A real wake and funeral was planned but it was determined that nobody would show up because Facebook couldn’t figure out a way to monetize it yet.

HubSpot did some Twitter research by analyzing 200,000 tweets and arrived at some conclusions on how best to use Twitter and how to social media optimize your Tweets in order to maximize the number of clicks.  Here’s a recap of the the “How to: Get More Clicks on Twitter.

• Write tweets between 120 and 130 characters
• Place links about 25% way through within the tweet message
• Tweet your links at slower pace
• Choose the right words and phrases
• Tweet later in the day

It was rumored last November that Google will have a ranking factor that assesses how well or how poor the user experience is when content is displayed above-the-fold.

Google has now made it official that the page layout algorithm will be added to the many other ranking signals on how websites are ranked. If the content above-the-fold is poorly displayed, offers hard to find menu links and frustrates the user, the Google spider is programmed to try and arrive at the same conclusion.

Websites that are going through a redesign process should take a step back and review the sites new navigation architecture and the overall website user experience (UX.). If not, the website owner will go live with the site and be scrutinized by the Google Bot page layout algorithm and be exposed to some Google organic search engine referral declines.

Here are Acperion’s 2012 predictions for internet marketing, social media, seo and mobile:
1. Social media begins to get more and more integrated into business-to-business (b2b) marketing plans
2. Google Implements AuthorRank as a search signal
3. Google will enter new verticals to dominate search – 2011 was travel, 2012 could be real estate
4. QR bar codes will be adopted by more marketers
5. Demand generation will evolve from lead capturing to lead scoring and lead nurturing
6. Smartphone mobile penetration will increase and marketers will develop campaigns to reach this
segment
7. SEO importance on citations and trust will continue to grow
8. Google will use Google+ meta data as a search signal to rank websites
9. Voice recognition search will grow and befuddle online marketers on how to SEO a website using Siri
and Google voice recognition
10. More consumers will ditch cable/satellite programming and Internet TV consumption will increase -
challenge for marketers is how to capitalize on this

It’s taken awhile but Business-to-Business (B2B) online marketing is starting to become part the b2b marketers online arsenal of tactics.

A recent eMarketer survey shows that 89% of the survey respondents use some sort of B2B social media marketing tactic.

Another eMarketer chart shows which social media sites are the most popular for B2B targeting.

B2B social media marketing is an opportunity to listen and have a dialogue with your prospects and customers and shouldn’t be dismissed in 2012.

While this list below doesn’t mean to capture every subtle nuance of the perfect search marketing client, it’s just to illustrate what are the ideal online demand generation solutions that would be exhibited by future and current clients. 

• Has a website that had some user experience (UX) analysis performed
• When doing either a new or relaunch website design, SEO (search engine optimization) and other technical tactics becomes part of the web development process
• Uses website analytics for benchmarking, competitive landscape analysis and for future tactical decisions on online marketing campaigns
• Has a business plan that can referenced for online marketing tactical guidance
• Does local search marketing
• Embraces social media and wants to have a strong social media presence in Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Google + and other relevant social media sites
• Has a content creation and distribution strategy to support the corporate site goals and social media goals
• Does business blogging
• Does digital asset optimization for photos and videos
• Has a mobile website and/or mobile app presence along with mobile marketing for demand generation
• Does mobile SEO
• Uses PPC (pay-per-click) advertising to target hard-to-rank for keywords that can’t be gained in the organic rankings. PPC and Organic SEO compliment each other and not compete against each other. 

More information on what clients can be doing more of to increase their lead stream and sales can be found at the Internet Marketing Social Media Checklist page