StatCounter: Google Chr...

Well, it’s official. Or at least it’s official if you believe in StatCounter’s data . Google’s Chrome web browser has overtaken Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. For real this time. Maybe. The stat-counting firm compiled data for the week of May 14th through May 20th, showing that Chrome had a market share of 32.76%, compared with IE’s 31.94%. This isn’t the first time that Chrome has gotten ahead, however. And the race itself is close – perhaps too close to call. At the start of this week, Chrome dipped back down to 31.88%, which was only a bit ahead of 31.47%. There’s also the big concern regarding StatCounter’s data. As Microsoft (of course) has pointed out before , these aren’t necessarily numbers you can take to the bank. Last month, when Chrome briefly won the weekend battle, Microsoft downright ranted about the quality of StatCounter’s data on its official blog. (It appeared, at the time, that Chrome usage surged on weekends, proving that users liked Chrome better when they had a choice – outside of I.T. control at work, that is). Microsoft pointed out that StatCounter doesn’t adjust for pre-rendering (loading pages in the background which the user never sees and may never even click on), nor does it “geoweight” the data to paint a more accurate picture of worldwide usage. Instead, with StatCounter, it’s just raw data. Microsoft also said that if browser share had been weighted appropriately, it wouldn’t have been such a close race. While those discrepancies are notable, it’s still worth pointing out that IE’s share has been steadily dropping for some time now. StatCounter may just be the canary in the coal mine indicting the bigger shift ahead. via GlobalNerdy

Going Offline to Unders...

In light of Facebook's impending IPO, it seemed only logical to spend two weeks completely offline. Just as GM's pulling ad spend of less than 0.1% of Facebook's revenue this week was not timed to the IPO but makes for great...

Did Facebook Cause the ...

Making the top ten list is a good thing except when when it’s the top ten list of losers. The Washington Post and The Guardian social reader apps both took a big hit this week and many are wondering if it’s a sign of things to come. The numbers come from AppData , a website that monitors the health of Facebook and iOS apps. They caused a stir this week when they reported a 46% drop in monthly usage for The Washington Post and a 43% drop for The Guardian . Immediately, tech outlets jumped in with explanations for this horrendous turn around.  BuzzFeed suggested that the collapse was due to the haters finally getting their way. “My brain already associates those little blocks of auto-fed stories with second-class content. I mean, I know my friends didn’t really mean to show to it to me. Why would I click? And god, why would I sign up for the thing that seems to have tricked its way into my timeline? It’s an app that broadcasts internet illiteracy for everyone to see.” Points for style on that one. The Atlantic Wire counters with a story titled: Facebook Social Reader Stinks Less Than Previously Thought . Mashable counters with reader usage is down but engagement is up! And Chicken Little chimed in to say, “the sky is falling.” What is it about Facebook that inspires such passion in reporters? You know I’m not a huge fan but I’ll still give out FB credits where they’re due and in this, I think Facebook is getting the short shrift. When they added the social reader apps, it seemed like a great way to help failing newspapers get more exposure. And hey, adding world news to your Facebook page is a nice way to class up the joint, you know what I mean? Unfortunately, as with all things Facebook, there were permission issues and space issues and who wants what on top issues and so they began to tweak. I swear that’s 90% of what they do over there is tweak things. It was on top, now it’s on the bottom. Left to right, most important before less important as decided by a complex algorithm based on the position of the stars and your blood type. The hard truth is, no company can live by Facebook alone (unless you’re Zynga). Traffic from Facebook has to be a bonus on top of what you bring in on your own. Some days it will be great and other days it won’t be. Social Readers aren’t newspaper subscriptions, they’re advertisements. The hope is that a reader will like the content enough to become a regular reader of the publication. That’s where the money is, not in Facebook shares. Here’s another truth. If you really want to know what’s going on in the world, shut Facebook down for an hour. You’ll be surprised by what else is out there. Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community

Tumblr Looks Beyond the...

When Pinterest rose to power a few months ago, I counted Tumblr out. Not that they totally occupy the same space, but they’re both graphically-based posting boards with a fondness for grid structures. Pinterest takes that idea a step further, while Tumblr remains a mix of old school blogging with new school graphics. What neither network has figured out is a way to make the site profitable – yet. Tumblr CEO David Karp talked to AdAge this week about his monetization strategies and I have to admit I’m impressed. I’m not sure that it will turn Tumblr into a profitable social network, but I applaud his creativity and verve. Yes, verve. Karp wants to bypass traditional adsense / banner marketing in favor of a self-promotion system. They started the trend this past February with the Highlighted Post option. Throw $1 into the pot and your post gets a special sticker to make your post standout from the rest in the dashboard. There is a fairly long list of sticker options including ones made for marketers. You can mark you post with words such as “On sale now,” “Limited run,” “Buy this,” “Watch this,” “Today only,” and more. They have stickers for event promotion, celebrations, questions, fandoms and a plenty of random exclamations. Karp says that they’re looking a variety of features that will help people promote their work and puts money in the bank. Adwords isn’t a particularly useful or creative platform for a band debuting their first album or a photographer trying to get that gig. There’s a novel opportunity there, and we want to explore that as much as we want to make it easy for partners to participate in our network. Tumblr is making participation really easy with a collection of new access points. They have a newly updated Android app to go with the iPhone and Blackberry apps. They also added a Facebook widget so you can get one social network to talk to the other. They even offer a call-in number , so you can create audio posts by phone. Tumblr also just made a deal with Spotify to bring music to the pages. Tumblr gets my kudos of the week for out-of-the-box thinking. The site is extremely popular with creative people — artists, musicians, photographers, writers — so it only makes sense to get creative with monetization. Finally, I leave you with a screencap of the About screen on today’s Tumblr. Like the network itself, the graphic tells the story.

Apple Releases Mac Flas...

Apple has now released a tool that removes the Flashback Trojan from infected Mac computers, according to a security update posted to Apple.com on Thursday. The malicious software, which some have casually referred to as the “Mac virus,” (even though, yes, we know, a Trojan is not a virus), had previously infected some 650,000 Mac laptops, making it one of the largest infections the Mac install base has ever seen. The company had announced earlier in the week that it would deploy software to detect and remove the Flashback malware from users’ computers, which first began appearing on Mac computers back in September. It wasn’t until recently that the Trojan, which created a botnet consisting of infected Macs, returned with a vengeance. By early April, security firms were reporting that as many as half a million Macs could be infected and the number was growing still. To address the malware, which was exploiting a security flaw in Java in order to install itself on Macs, Apple had been releasing Java updates through its Software Update  feature. Apple had also been advising users to disable Java in their browser to better protect themselves from attack. With the new removal tool, Apple is now able to disable Java applets by default (on some versions of OS X) and can now remove the Flashback Trojan from infected Macs. Explains Apple on its website : This Java security update removes the most common variants of the Flashback malware. This update also configures the Java web plug-in to disable the automatic execution of Java applets. Users may re-enable automatic execution of Java applets using the Java Preferences application. If the Java web plug-in detects that no applets have been run for an extended period of time it will again disable Java applets. Java for OS X Lion 2012-003 delivers Java SE 6 version 1.6.0_31 and supersedes all previous versions of Java for OS X Lion. This update is recommended for all Mac users with Java installed. As you may notice, the above tool is only available for OS X Lion. Snow Leopard users are pointed to another removal tool here , but this one is unable to automatically disable Java in the browser. That will still need to be done manually. Both updates, however, ship with the patched version of Java which was released via the Java security updates that went out earlier in the week.