Hi, everyone. My name is Imelda and over the next few days, I’m going to be live blogging from SES San Francisco for my friends here at Search Engine Watch. If you see a short, young(ish), Asian-looking chick, that speaks with a British accent, scoping out power outlets and typing away furiously — that’s me. Come say hi.
It’s going to be an action-packed first day here at SES, with a bunch of souped-up sessions going on.
A poll by Harris Interactive for Buddy Media showed that brands are hampered by finding the right ROI metrics in their adoption of social media campaigns to reach locally, on a global scale. Highlights from the poll results are as follow.
According to Glenn Blain of The New York Daily News, Governor David Paterson of New York has signed into law a measure giving New York City greater power to crack down on so-called “illegal hotels.” However, Dennis Schaal of Tnooz reports that Paterson issued a statement saying that he, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and the bill’s sponsor support an amendment to the bill which would mean the law would not go into effect until May 1, 2011, giving property owners time to adjust to its provisions.
Remember the First Law of Wing Walking: “Never let hold of what you’ve got until you’ve got hold of something else.” Well, a new report on consumer online shopping behavior from Econsultancy says that marketers still need to focus on targeted and relevant email marketing if they want to enjoy e-commerce success even if consumers are increasingly using social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.
According to Econsultancy’s US Research Director, Stefan Tornquist, “Despite the current hype surrounding social media, social network adoption and its influence on e-commerce is far from maturity. More than a third of consumers (37%) do not use a social networking site, while those who have recently become a ‘fan’ or ‘friend’ of a company or brand online are still in the minority.”
I’ve written a couple of social media case studies over the past year, but I was tipped off to a new one late last night. A brand new group of bed and breakfast hosts, vacation rentals owners, property managers, brokers, and inn keepers called Protect Vacation Rentals is using social media to get Governor David Paterson of New York to veto Bill S6873.
Okay, so what is Bill S6873?
It’s the so‐called “Illegal Hotels” bill that recently passed the New York State Senate. The title sounds ominous, but it is really about the big hotels making rentals of apartments for less than 30 days illegal in New York City in most instances.
While social networking gained the most penetration in U.S. mobile market use in April, searches also recorded hefty increases, both via apps and browsers, according to freshly released comScore data.
Strong Growth Segments
Searches registered a 90% boost, both via app and browser access in April.
Just like last month, social networking led the pack, soaring 240% from a year ago via app access and 90% via browser access.
News access via apps grew 124% and edged 45% higher via browser.
Mobile banking gained 113% via app access and 69% via browser.
FourSquare and Singapore’s Refinery Media have entered a partnership deal under which the geo location service will be meshed into Refinery’s Supermodelme Season 2 show.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed but the agreement should bring increased brand visibility for Refinery Media’s advertisers as alerts from sponsors will be displayed whenever users check into certain locations.
The companies will also lauch a game, enabling Foursquare users to check into listed listed locations to unlock “Superstyle” and “Superconnected” badges, earning them exclusive deals on the spot as well as a better chance to win to a ticket to the Supermodelme finale.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg told the world on Monday that Facebook’s “drastically simplified” privacy settings would roll out in the weeks to come and here they are. Zuckerberg presented them at a press conference, just two days after his op-ed in the Washington Post and some of the changes are already in place.
“Today we’re starting to roll out some changes that will make all of these controls a lot simpler. We’ve focused on three things: a single control for your content, more powerful controls for your basic information and an easy control to turn off all applications,” he said on the official company blog.
It’s a Saturday and it’s probably a sunny spring day outside. Unless you are in Australia… oh no, wait, scratch that… no change there 
Either way, Saturdays mean we have another offbeat contribution from someone outside of ‘the industry’ to share their thoughts on our industry.
And.. if you find yourself bored at a bus stop, stuck inside doing laundry, or just “gotta knuckle down” and earn some cash today because you are one of the wicked ones who gets no rest…
…then you might wanna checkout or recap on some of the hottest search marketing strategies in the industry this week:
Facebook goes a step further in the global open web by enabling users in poorer countries to access its platform through a mobile application called 0.Facebook – free of charge.
The new platform is easily manageable as it is optimized for speed.
How it works is that 0.facebook users will be able to use Facebook as on the web, except that pictures will not be viewable but rather one click away. The option for direct viewability is available but “regular data fees will apply”.
This is what it will look like:
