R&R Partners: Build the Brand, Protect the Brand

Editor’s note: Social Marketing News will now be posted each week on Mondays. Be sure to check our R&R’s Friday Inspiration posts every Friday.

Social Marketing News from 11/14/09 covered Rupert Murdoch’s statement about preventing Google from indexing News Corporation publications. This week, Google announced an update to its “First Click Free” program, partly in response to Murdoch’s threats I’m sure. First Click Free allows web users to access paid content, like news from newspaper websites, for free if they found that content through Google search. Now Google is giving more control to publishers, allowing them to lock out unregistered users after a defined number of page views. Google allows paid content providers to limit up to five free page views, per day- after that, users would be redirected to a registration page. Google search plays a huge role in helping users discover paid content, providing a significant amount of site traffic to many of these large publishers. So it makes sense for publishers to allow their content to be indexed by Google. However, publishers of premium content are also interested in making a profit. It will be interesting to watch what happens now, if News Corp. really does decide to completely block Google indexing, and if they decide to make an exclusive deal with Bing. If you’re still confused about First Click Free, check out this great 5-Click FAQ from Wired.

Google also announced a deal with Twitter this week to integrate the microblogging site with its own social media service, Google Friend Connect. That’s really interesting, because Google and Twitter are both in the race for real time search, so in a way Google and Twitter are competitors. It’s also interesting in light that Yahoo! and Bing have recently made deals with Facebook, and Google has yet to follow suit. Check out the Bing announcement here, and the Yahoo announcement here.

Speaking of Facebook, there’s a lot of talk about Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement of privacy changes. If you’re worried, don’t be. The announcement, which was posted in a Facebook note to users, doesn’t reveal sweeping new privacy changes. It does say that Facebook is doing away with regional networks, which is a good thing. This only relates to privacy in that you won’t be able to share your photos and posts to all of your selected regional network, which would be the town you live in or the college you attended. If you’re anything like me, you didn’t do that anyway. Users have always had the option to select who sees what, and I generally limit my content to Friends, or Friends of Friends (if you need help understanding how to manage your Facebook privacy settings, leave a comment).

A more significant bit of Facebook news came from Mashable in a reveal of screenshots for the next redesign. This interface update is more extensive than the simpler News Feed/Live Feed update. I’m looking forward to the launch, these new layout changes should improve Facebook’s engagement and usability.

The best tablet computer interface that I’ve seen to date is this demo from Sports Illustrated. SI appears to be moving in the right direction transitioning from print to digital media.

If you’re considering a new mobile site, or looking to improve, check out this article from WSJ: Squeezing Web Sites Onto Cellphones.

Wrapping up, I wanted to point out two important articles from Brandweek. Be sure to read Why Social Sites Are Less Friendly to Video Ads, and A Marketer’s New Worry: Are My Ads Retweetable?

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