From Facebook Messages to record-breaking online ad revenues, this week was full of buzz-worthy internet marketing news headlines. This is Brafton's look at some of the top stories for the week of November 19.
Headlines broke on Sunday about AOL's new email product, Project Phoenix. The new inbox necessitates email marketing content relevancy thanks to its search refinement features.
Marketers quickly shifted their attention from this email development to Facebook's decidedly "not email" product – Facebook Messages. The social inbox makes it possible for users to easily share news and content across platforms.
Facebook also now facilitates content sharing on Myspace. The struggling social site announced its Facebook Mashup on Thursday, a feature that lets users import their Facebook data and coordinate their accounts to make more informed entertainment recommendations.
Google also made headlines for social recommendation features this week. On Tuesday, the company announced HotPot, which draws on Google Places to get users talking about local businesses and brings the search giant into the geosocial market. Then, on Wednesday it announced Boutiques.com – an online shopping experience that blends social and ecommerce functions. It also seems to give some brands the opportunity to be seen as thought leaders in the fashion industry, courtesy of promoted blogs.
Speaking of promoted thought leaders, Twitter launched a "Who to Follow" People directory on its site this week. As Search Engine Land reported, the tool can help marketers who offer quality content get noticed among the 95 million daily Tweets. Additionally, the microblogging site unveiled new analytics tools and instant notifications that could help marketers assess the efficacy of their Twitter marketing campaigns.
Yahoo also released new tools that marketers might appreciate. As Brafton reported, the company announced new local search features, and it is testing a Rich Search Assistant that displays the first organic search result to predicted queries while users type. It further boosted its sites' search-savvy features with Yahoo Clues query analytics.
Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz was frequently in headlines this week, thanks to her talks at the Web 2.0 Summit. Tech Crunch offers a nice overview of the conference, with coverage of Bartz and fellow speakers, including Mark Zuckerberg and Eric Schmidt of Google.
Google was big in the news this week, generating additional headlines about Google TV ads that video marketers may like and updates to Google News that content marketers can't ignore. Plus, a study from faculty at Harvard Business School revealed that click-through rates have jumped since Google switched from "Sponsored Link" labels to "Ad" labels.
Search marketers were intrigued by news on Google ad click-through rates, and all internet marketers seemed interested in reports that internet ad revenue hit a record-breaking $6.4 billion during Q3 2010. Plus, news broke this week that online holiday shopping is expected to skyrocket this year.
With Black Friday and Cyber Monday around the corner, marketers will want to follow reports about marketing strategies for these epic ecommerce days. Plus, next week will likely bring headlines about Facebook Messages as users – and email marketers – acclimate to the new tool. Stay tuned.
