Google Places Unveils N...

If you have ever dealt with Google Places in any way you know how it can a maddening experience. As soon as there seems to be a semblance of calm and normality there is a sudden suspension of a listing, or a merge of two listings happens or Google just decides to replace your data with “new” data it dredged up from a data warehouse. Many local marketers and SEO professionals are likely to be cringing right now as they recall a moment from the past of when that all to present. Sorry about that . Well, Google is at least trying to help businesses with at least 10 locations (considered the low end limit) by introducing a new bulk upload tool. It’s best for you to watch the tutorials that Google has prepared and posted on their Small Business blog First, this tutorial are for those who are new users: Now, here is a tutorial for those who already have verified listings If you didn’t watch those videos here is a list of what the tool can do: -Edit one or more of your listings’ data at once -Search through your listings, filtering by specific information or for listings with errors -Upload new listings using a data file or by adding them individually within the interface -Tell us how we can improve this new interface by clicking the “Give Feedback” link Well, all we can say is good luck with managing your Google Places listings. It’s a game that has turned more than one SEO into a quivering mass of protoplasm. Good times. Good times.

Facebook Rolls Out ‘Off...

Facebook is famous for dangling the carrot then pulling it away when you try to grab hold. The newest carrot is the ‘Offers’ program, a self-service option for creating Groupon style deals on your Facebook page. Excellent for the small business owner. In March, Facebook announced the program with much fanfare , then noted that it was only available to clients who had managed advertising accounts (the big dogs). So, the rest of us waited patiently. A few hours ago, Facebook added several new posts to their marketing page promoting Offers! Yes, the same program they promoted months ago, but this time it’s open to all — ish. Offers are available in beta to a limited number of local business Pages. We plan to launch offers more broadly soon. If you’d like to post offers but your Page doesn’t have the option to yet, let the Pages team know . Again, with the limited beta. I checked the Pages I managed and nada. Check yours. Go to a post blank and look for a yellow box next to the Events option. If you see the box on your page, go buy a lottery ticket. Skimming the comments on the post, there’s not a one that says “yeah!” They’re all questions or complaints about the missing tab. So I ask, why does Facebook do this? Why promote a program that few people can access? They have to know that it will cause a storm of angry and confused responses. I think Facebook’s Offers program is a great idea. With careful use, it could be an excellent tool for small businesses to help them increase sales and awareness. But if everyone’s annoyed before it even starts, what’s the point? Facebook, you know the rule. You can’t hand out treats to a chosen few. You have enough to share with the whole class.

Yahoo Can’t Get Out of ...

Poor Yahoo. Just the other day we reported about their new small business marketing dashboard. It looked pretty neat and you got the sense that the company was trying to do something relevant that was pointed at a market segment in need. It seemed as if the company under the direction of their latest CEO, Scott Thompson, was heading in the right direction. Not only were new products being brought to market but the company was in the process of streamlining its offerings. All positive things. That was until it was discovered that Thompson has a little discrepancy on his resume. Apparently the computer science degree he claims to hold from Stonehill College is, well, not real. According to All Things Digital’s Kara Swisher both Yahoo and Stonehill have confirmed that despite Thompson’s claims to having a degree in accounting and computer science only the first half is true. Yahoo said it’s just an inadvertent error. I guess that’s what all the kids are calling a lie these days, huh? If there was ever a company that could use less egg on its face when it comes to the CEO position its Yahoo. Thompson follows Carol Bartz who while entertaining the tech world with her mastery of foul language had a difficult time even defining what Yahoo was a company. Enter Thompson, the CTO from PayPal. He had no experience as a CEO but that didn’t matter. Maybe since he seems to feel that lying on his resume is OK (he used the same story apparently for PayPal) he might have embellished a bit in the interviews to get the CEO job of Silicon Valley’s favorite whipping boy, Yahoo? In some cases, this might be seen as a “So what?”. Unfortunately, resumes these days are things that should be considered with a grain of salt anyway. Consider the source of the resume. It comes from a person trying to get a job. That means that many will allow their “It’s only a little lie and they’ll never know” instinct (I call it an instinct because of my worldview which you could inquire about if you feel the urge) to kick in and “Poof!”, like magic the resume has a little more oomph. Well, Thompson picked the wrong company to lie to because there is a little issue in the background about board seats and such that may not let this go away. All Things Digital tells us more Without providing further explanation of how it got there, Yahoo today called the mistake an “inadvertent error” and said it had no bearing on his ability to lead the Silicon Valley Internet giant. But the long troubled company might be speaking too soon, given that the revelation was uncovered this morning by activist shareholder Dan Loeb of Third Point. Loeb has called into question the vetting process that Yahoo’s directors did to hire Thompson, as part of a proxy fight he is waging to gain several board seats. In the end, this “inadvertent mistake” may have no bearing on the way that Thompson could run the company but resume issues in the past have lost others some nice opportunities. In 2001 a football coach named George O’Leary was on the precipice of getting one of the top jobs in all of college football, the head coaching gig at Notre Dame. Then there was some concern about his resume. O’Leary is still working in football but he landed at the slightly less prestigious University of Central Florida. In other words, his resume lie would not be tolerated by a school that some might argue has a higher profile than Yahoo. He was moved along as a result. Will Yahoo do anything about Thompson’s job because of this? Who knows but with an activist shareholder who has a bee in his bonnet about Thompson already, this issue might not go quietly into that dark night. Should we care? If this kind of thing is allowed to happen are we saying that lying is OK just as long as it’s a small one? Quite a slippery slope indeed. Your thoughts? Update: cnet reported. During inquiries on the matter, Third Point learned that Stonehill College did not even offer computer science degrees when Thompson graduated. Ouch.

SMB’s Who Embrace Mobil...

Did you know that May was Small Business Month? Neither did I. In honor of the group of businesses that make up the majority of jobs in the US (some reports say as high as 95%) Web.com has taken a look at one increasingly important aspect of these businesses: mobile. The social / local / mobile mantra is most important to the SMB’s in many cases (if they are retail or have a walk-in type business) simply because people are using their mobile devices for discovery and simply to decide which option they might take in a situation. Restaurants (especially in urban areas where there is ease of movement between different areas and a higher density of competitors) are looking for an edge to catch people who are on the go. How do these people stay in touch with mobile devices. Check out the infographic Web.com put together explaining this trend.

Facebook Releases IPO P...

Watch Zuck, Sheryl Sandberg and the rest of the gang go to bat for Facebook in the promo video for its pre-IPO roadshow . For your reading pleasure, I’ve written a sportscaster-style play-by-play followed by some highlights. Check out to learn about Facebook’s mission, products and platform, advertising, finance, and future without having to click past all the SEC disclaimers and sit through the 30-minute video. The roadshow site also hosts the prospectus for investors (embedded below). The prospectus include essentially the same information as Facebook’s S-1 filing to IPO , but with more polished formatting. Facebook IPO Roadshow Play-By-Play [Be warned, I'm going to mix a bunch of sports metaphors, and even anthropomorphize several Facebook products.] First we’ve got a brief intro from Facebook’s CFO, and already the video begins to lose the favor of this commentator, as it frustratingly does not allow fast-forwarding or rewinding:. Then Mark Zuckerberg, looking fit, slides in(to) second. “I grew up with the internet. You know in middle school I used search engines like Google and Yahoo and I just thought they were the most amazing thing. This complete symbol of the age we live in, where now you have access to all of this information. The thing that seemed like it was missing was always just people, right. So, the most interesting stuff that you care about the most is actually whats going on in the lives of your friends, or the people around you. And, um, there wasn’t really any way for that to be on the web. People had to share that themselves. That wasn’t just out there ready to be indexed. Even from very early on when we were just building this thing for one school, there was this concept of what it could turn into. We just weren’t sure then we were the ones to do it.” VP of Product Chris Cox is next up to bat, discussing how when Facebook started, you only had one photo. Your profile photo. But people were changing it a lot. Facebook realized it should let users upload whole albums — the feature that would cause Facebook’s popularity to boom. After a few words about the social graph and The Hacker Way, Zuckerberg and Cox tag-team the Products segment. First they take a swing at Timeline, which Zuckerberg calls “the story of your life on a single page”. Next is your personal, always-up-to-date news feed. Looking to keep morale high as they enter the second quarter of the video, Cox announces “We’re now changing within a generation the fabric of how humanity communicates with itself.” Then he follows it up with a flurry of stats, though the video shows its age as some are already outdated. Hoping to gain favor with the roaring crowds of developers, Zuckerberg claims that as much traffic as Facebook gets, the company thinks what other people can build on top of it will be even more important. Long-time teammate The New York Times and new draft pick Spotify are commended for their contributions to the platform. Cox then brings in Facebook’s new bruiser, the powerful but controversial frictionless sharing. This commentator applauds him for his traffic driving abilities and sees his style as the future, but others say auto-publishing in-app activities is fighting dirty. Just before half-time, COO Sheryl Sandberg takes the field defend Facebook’s business model. Name-checking Nike and J.Crew, Sandberg says people connect to businesses just like they do to people. Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream handles the half-time show, singing that it makes $3 in sales for every $1 it spends on Facebook. Sandberg kicks off the second half with heavy hitting stats about how Facebook ads are 90% accurate compared to an industry average of 30%. For the 7th inning stretch entertainment, American Express performs a presentation about Small Business Saturday. Facebook subs in its CFO David Ebersman to power through its financial info give its starters a rest. He scores with a previously unseen graph of average revenue per user broken out by geography, and by confirming Facebook may charge non-game app developers less than 30% in taxes on payments. In the final minutes, Zuckerberg predicts his team’s success next season. “5 years out..almsot every app you use is going to be integrated with Facebook in some way.” And for the buzzer beater, Facebook’s star player announces. “We make decisions not optimizing for what’s gonna happen in the next year, but what’s gonna set us up to really be in this world where every product experience you have is social and that’s all powered by Facebook.” …but wait. Extra innings! After the video’s listed stop time, liquor brand Diageo makes one last play to convince investors that advertisers are loyal to Facebook. Highlights Overall, the Facebook team performed well but dazzle us with many new moves. Cox and Zuckberg had solid ball control, with the CEO looking more nimble and confident than in past season. Ebersman’s late score with geographic ARPU graph was critical, and pinch hitting by Ben & Jerry’s and American Express also deserves a mention. The judges are now making their decisions, and we’ll have to wait until the actual IPO later this month to see if Facebook brought home the win. View this document on Scribd