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.

YES.

In this day an age, where the internet has become extremely transparent, and it is very easy to connect people to their employees through social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even simple search engines, knowing what your employers are doing is important risk management.

Your company’s culture and persona is much the result of your employees and how they act – it’s also how they treat others. If your employees are making derogatory comments on Facebook, using racial slurs on Twitter and bullying individuals in forums, how does that represent your company?

While there may or may not be legal ramifications, most states have at-will employment laws which means employees can typically be fired for any reason (so long as it is not discrimination against a protected class) at any time.

Helping your employees understand the ramifications of their public personae on their career aspects is a great way to coach staff of all ages in a positive manner without being threatening. You have to let employees make mistakes – that is how you separate your leaders from the rest of the bunch.  And your staff will learn quickly.

I was inspired to write this post as I am a die-hard Washington Capitals fan. The recent racial slurs against one of Washington’s players, Joel Ward, resulted in a bunch of raciest Tweets.

You can read more about the incident here:

• http://deadspin.com/5905356/heres-how-racists-on-twitter-reacted-to-joel-wards-series+winning-goal-against-boston
• http://sports.yahoo.com/news/fans-let-loose-racist-comments-194912829–nhl.html;_ylt=Ap3D1I.2cctFHxX2S6WFQ_Z7vLYF

I proceeded to post the following on Facebook:

This probably doesn’t surprise most of us, unfortunately. However, calling attention to the issue is important. It is a double-edged sword though. On one hand, we draw out into the public these bigots for who they are – for the whole world to see. Yet by doing so, and shaming them, we give them the very thing they crave most – attention. I do find it humorous that many of the Twitter accounts were deleted by their owners when the bigots had the self-realization that they are actually first-class a-holes. Live, Love, and Power through the hate my friends.

The obvious issue is whether all clicks of ads result in a “ping” of the analytics code snippet on your site. With the new asynchronous code snippet from Google Analytics and your ability to place the code in the header, fewer visits should result in not being recorded.

The other option is that JavaScript or cookie blocking is in place in the visitor’s browser. However, this is a very limited subset of people who click on advertisements.

However, the gap is substantial – as much as 35% (or even more in some cases) between Facebook’s bill and the analytics program. This begs many customers to ask the question, why is Facebook charging me for clicks that don’t result in a visit to my site?

These clicks provide no value the advertiser. And actually, they don’t provide long term value to Facebook, because it reduces the success of advertising campaigns, turning the advertiser away.

However, Facebook has decided to continue ignoring this issue and raking in huge profits along the way.

Some companies have tried to sue Facebook, with limited success.

At the end of the day, you basically have to bake in this cost (click fraud and invalid clicks) into your campaign as a cost of doing business with Facebook. If, after all is said and billed for, you can still achieve your desired ROI, you’re good to go. Otherwise, I suggest taking your hard earned dollars elsewhere.

I suggest that Facebook up its game in this area and stop billing customers for click-bounces… Clicks that don’t register a hit on the customer’s server. I think a 3-second rule is a good idea – if the visitor isn’t on the advertiser’s site for more than 3 seconds, then they don’t get charged for the ad.

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.

The topic will be, “Social Media Content That Delivers Results” and I will be co-presenting with Adam Metz.

The main focus of our presentation will be leveraging Marketo’s marketing automation platform to create emails, landing pages and marketing campaigns that have an integrated social media component. We’ll discuss the importance of social media integration and highlight some real-world case studies of how to achieve success in this category.

So, forget text messages. Make your emails mobile friendly. This is easy, here are the key ingredients:

1. Start with a good, brief subject. This really hasn’t changed and remains to be hugely important. Your subject should compel the reader to open the email instead of pressing delete. Keep it short… think 60 characters…
2. Pre-headers… many email marketers still don’t do this. Don’t create a fancy email with images, tables, and formatting without first inserting a plain text sentence before everything. This loads first and will display as the preview text on many devices (and in many web browsers, AND in MS Outlook. Keep this to the length of your average tweet… and it should include your purpose or call to action. don’t repeat your subject.
3. Links… your links should go to mobile-friendly pages. If they don’t, stop email marketing and start focusing on designing mobile friendly web pages. It’s the future people, get on board.
4. Images… think back to 1999… small, light weight emails were important then, and they are still important now. They open quickly on mobile devices and people don’t want to wait for your images to load.
5. Be brief. Most people don’t want to read 1,000 word emails on their phones. Say what you need to say in 100 words or less. If you have more to say, include catchy headers and hooks and then link to the text.
6. Phone numbers people can click are a real boon to business. Do it.
7. Let people reply. Stop sending messages from unattended email boxes. Why wouldn’t you want someone to reply to you? Isn’t that why you’re emailing them?

Want some more advice? Here’s a great article from ClickZ on email marketing for the mobile world by Melinda Krueger.

Yes, the video is in German, but you’ll still get it.

The conclusion is that responsibility is shifting from social-media only teams to marketing operations.

I believe this general trend makes sense as social media becomes more integrated into the daily integrated marketing strategy of an organization and simply becomes yet another channel that is “part of a marketing and branding strategy.”

Marketing ops often manages systems such as CRM, and with social media become a mere component of an integrated marketing strategy, it cannot be isolated from other groups. And, one of the better groups to handle it might be ops, since they should be nimble/agile enough to provide quick responses from a customer service perspective. Obviously customer service is just one component of social media, but it can be one of the most volatile and can strongly influence public perception. What better way to handle it then by shifting it to the folks who understand customers best?

It’s some advice on how to be a remarkable employee. The concepts are fairly straightforward and of course are easier said than done. However, the eight principles discussed can be applied to your work ethic over time to produce long term dividends.

These are also great ideas to look for in new employees, and to praise your existing employees.

So, how will you be remarkable today?

Today, Google basically put a bounty on any exploits of its Chrome browser by offering cash rewards if hackers can find a bone fide exploit.

This does two things:

First, it’s a public display of Google’s belief that Chrome is solid. In other words, you wouldn’t spend a million bucks (even if you have tons of cash) if you knew you had exploits. So this is Google saying, “we know we’re good” and we’ll prove it with this contest.

Next, its a relatively good way to take advantage of “free” resources within the hacking community that Google would otherwise have to pay. In essence, it’s crowd-sourcing the browser and it will compensate any results. Of course if you don’t find an exploit, you don’t get compensated. So basically Google gets to test Chrome without having to pay the testers.

I’m glad Google continues to invest in keeping Chrome malware and exploit free. It’s not something new (paying hackers for exploits), but it’s still a innovative approach.