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We’re not even at the end of Q1, and 2011 has already been a rough year for the book retailers. But while retailers struggle and fold, there might be new opportunities on the horizon for publishers and authors alike, and a publishing phoenix just might still rise from the ashes of yet.

In February, Borders filed for bankruptcy, saying that it would close about a third of its stores. And despite its major competitor on the rocks, Barnes & Noble stock continues to drop.

But the thing about these trends is that they’re affecting retailers more than anyone. In fact, both publishers and authors seem to be adapting to the new landscape of book publishing.

The New Publishers

The emergence of ereaders, tablets, and smart phones has fueled the growth of ebooks, and publishing is re-inventing itself. The line between books and the internet is vanishing, and while publishing houses are adopting new business models, new digital publishing houses are even emerging to challenge these incumbents.

In July 2010, ebooks started outselling hardcovers on Amazon (but not paperbacks). So it’s not surprising, then, that publishing houses are moving to embrace the ebook more wholeheartedly.

Amazon eBook Sale, July 2010

Perhaps publishing houses learned from the example of the recording industry, which clung to CDs too long. But they’re actively embracing digital formats, and many publishers have changed their pricing model to accommodate the new retailers — i.e. ereader, tablet, and smart phone vendors.

And it doesn’t look like publishing houses are moving too soon. The economics of ebook publishing has already attracted some new market entrants: publishers that specialize in ebooks for ereaders, tablets, and smart phones.

But these economics have not only inspired publishing houses to rethink their business model and new competition to take them on. It’s also created a new, independent breed of author.

The New Author

In January, 2010, the Huffington Post drew attention to Amanda Hocking, a 26 year-old self-publishing fiction author who has written 17 novels, published 8, and sold over 185,000 copies since April 2010 along. Hocking also topped the list of Kindle indie authors in December 2010, selling 100,000 copies in just one month.

Click to Enlarge

What’s most interesting about this list is that only six of these authors had previous print deals with major publishers. This means that it’s very realistic to not only make a living from self-publishing, but become a veritable commercial success. As Novelr pointed out

it’s no stretch to say – at $3 per book¹/70% per sale for the Kindle store – that she makes a lot of money from her monthly book sales. (Perhaps more importantly: a publisher on the private Reading2.0 mailing list has said, to effect: there is no traditional publisher in the world right now that can offer Amanda Hocking terms that are better than what she’s currently getting, right now on the Kindle store, all on her own.) [emphasis not my own]

Indeed, these new writers can not only succeed without a traditional publishing house backing them, but can be even more of a success. They’ve jumped the gate the publishing houses have erected around distribution and retail, and in the process, successfully cut-out the middleman.

Back to Market Reality

Of course, the success of these new indie authors are constrained by two market realities. First, these authors are early adopters. That is, just as TechCrunch was able to grow into the tech reporting powerhouse that it is because it started out before blogging was mainstream, these authors are pioneers who will get to claim a disproportionate stake of the frontier.

This brings us to the second reality: the publishing houses are moving in. Just as big industry moved West and brought law and order with it, so will the big publishing houses muscle in on the ebook racket. And as they do, they will flood the marketing with more titles, meaning that any aspiring author will again rely on a big backer for one thing they can’t do on their own: the marketing.

Essentially, as the ebook market gets crowded, standing out in the crowd will be that much harder, and the value proposition that publishing houses will offer authors will be less about distribution and more about marketing & promotion. Now, this doesn’t mean that publishinig hasn’t change permanently to favor the struggling author a bit more than before.

Indie authors will still be able to sell directly and that’s important for two reasons: there will always be some writers that are lucky and/or talented enough to side-step big publishers altogether, and other authors now have a shot at attracting the attention and support of big publishers by starting out as a self-publishers of moderate commercial success that publishers subsequently see an opportunity to tap into and exploit.

Either way you look at it, these are the twilight years for brick & mortar book retailers. Physical, print books will probably always exist as novelty items. But for the great majority of their sales will be probably be driven by online orders. Neither book publishers or authors need them to get their titles into the hands of readers.

According to Google, last week’s Google’s algorithm update was supposed to help people find “more high-quality sites in search.” But when you look at the top 25 losers, you can’t help but notice Google seems to have devalued user-generated-content (UGC), and some of the losers can be construed as competing with Google’s modus operandi (MO).

Google is more than just a search engine. After all, their goal is to index the world’s information. Search provides a platform (and revenue model) for indexing everything on the world wide interwebs, but really, Google wants to be the go-to cloud-based app for the entirety of human knowledge — i.e. the how-to and what-is guide for everything.

Google Stifling UGC

Traditionally, Google seemed partial to UGC, and the logic seemed sound. After all, UGC doesn’t have the same commercial interests as so-called “commercial” sites.

Commercial sites produce content (and link to other sites) to make money. UGC, however, is more about normal people/users creating and sharing content because they find it useful — and that element of utility is at the heart of Google’s MO.

But if you look at the list of the top 25 losers from Google’s latest algorithm update, you can’t help but notice how many of those sites are UGC-driven. From article submission sites to shopping site powered by user-reviews, these losers were overwhelming.

Source: Search Metrics

Of course, these sites had found a chink in Google’s UGC armor and built a revenue model off of that exploit. In other words, they’ve built a revenue stream off of Google’s back. In the best case, they’ve exploited Google’s preference for UGC and how-to content.

In the more extreme cases, they actually incentivized users to generate this content. And in doing so, they’ve essentially eroded the value that content is supposed have because it’s user-generated. Basically, if there’s something in it for the user to produce the content in the first place, suddenly the user has a vested interested in being a content producer, and it’s that much less likely that content is actually useful and share-worthy.

So what does this Google update mean for the future value of UGC writ large? Well, probably not much. Most UGC these days is happening on social networks, beyond the reach of Google’s crawlers. But that doesn’t mean that users aren’t necessarily losing out in some ways from this update.

Google Swatting At Its Competitors

Another interesting thing about the top 25 sites losers is that two of them are pseudo-competitors: TheFind.com and Mahalo.

For starters, TheFind (a super-social-affiliate site ) currently competes directly with Google. First, in June 2010, TheFind became the #2 shopping search engine right behind Google Product Search.

Then, in November 2010, Google launched Boutique.com, furthering its interests in shopping search. Either way you look at, Google has a vested interested in TheFind not ranking the way it used to.

Then there’s Mahalo, which started out in 2007 as a human-moderated search engine that was founded on the principle that actual human beings could do a better job of moderating the web than any half-assed-artificial-intelligence-search-algorithm.

Since then, Mahalo gave up on search and became another question and answer service, but it kind of stepped on the tail of a sleeping dragon at every step along the way. First, as a search engine, it implied that Google was imperfect and had left some room in the marketplace — taking a swipe at Google’s ego. Second, the human-edited element implied that a bunch of simian keyboard jockeys could out-do the algorithmic brainchild of two mathematical prodigies (Sergey Brin and Larry Page). Finally, when the search vision dissolved, it tried to exploit Google’s preference for how-to content content and build a revenue model around incentivizing users to create link-bait (so much for the mighty plans of Jason Calacanis).

Searching for Answers

Even if Google is lashing out at UGC and its competitors, you can’t really blame them. The meaning of UGC is changing, and with it, the value and relevance it has for search.

Whereas most UGC once happened on the open-web, through MySpace and Blogspot, most of it now happens on social networks — and much of it, behind the closed walls of Facebook where Google’s crawlers can’t reach it.

As search evolves, the kinds of UGC that’s really going to matter is going to be the stuff that social graphs are made up of. It’s going to be about the content that you have produced, and how that can be used to personalize your search results.

As for Google picking on its (much smaller) competitors, it’s sucks, makes their search results a bit less objective, and goes against that whole “don’t be evil” thing, but can you really blame them? For starters, those guys could have only competed for so much longer.

Besides, if you sat on the board of a company that was advertising the competition, wouldn’t you fire someone? I mean, it’s also unethical to not protect the investment of your shareholders, right?

Last week, Facebook put-out a 26-page retort to the FTC’s preliminary report on privacy regulation. Unsurprisingly, the document wreaks of economic interests, but it also raises some questions about who should foot the bill for social media.

Through its retorts, Facebook seemed to be appealing to precisely to the kind of concerns that policy makers wrestle with daily. As Fast Company put it, Facebook reminded “the FTC how much social media has done for the government itself, the advancement of democracy, and the growing cottage industry of social software.”

In a nutshell, Facebook pretty much said “Look, we know you have privacy concerns. But social media is a really valuable a tool to (1) you, (2) the principles you stand for, and (3) the economy as a whole. And the easiest way to foot the bill is by selling user data.”

The Rebuttals

Facebook’s most compelling rebuttals addressed the areas of politics, the economy, and technological innovations.

In the political arena, Facebook pointed out how social media media has equipped both government and citizens to enhance democracy. On the governmental side, Facebook noted how social media promotes transparency, “as evidenced by [...] White House Press Secretary’s Twitter feed and the fact that more than 70 federal agencies have Facebook pages.” And on the citizen side, Facebook drew on examples such as Iran, Colombia, Tunisia and Egypt to illustrate how social media is furthering the cause of democracy.

As for economic interests, Facebook argued that social media is a “crucial engine for economic growth and job creation.” Specifically, Facebook pointed to the “Hundreds of thousands of application developers have built businesses on Facebook Platform.” The point being that any significant setback for social media as a whole would have serious economic implications.

Finally, Facebook also pointed to so many unpredictable innovations that could come from social media. As an example, Facebook cited how Caller ID has become a standard feature of calling, but would have never been possible had telephone companies been prevented from sharing callers’ data with the receiving part. Facebook also pointed to how Google Flu Trends out-performs many other outbreak detection tools, and wouldn’t be possible if users had perfect privacy.

Value: Estimated, Perceived, and Gained

Despite the fact that Facebook stand to lose or gain a lot depending on how the FTC decides to regulate the industry, the company does raise some strong points about the value of social media. Specifically, social media can enhance democratic processes, contribute to economic recovery and prosperity, and lead to so many other innovations that may increase our quality of life.

We know that social media is something that we, as a society, should keep exploring.  The question remains: Who should foot the bill for these social tools?

If social media is as valuable to the well-being of democracy as Facebook would have us believe, then perhaps it counts as a democratic right or fundamental infrastructure. Just like freedom of information or the emergency broadcast system, social media might just be valuable enough that it deserves the same protection of any other legal right.

If social media (and the information access it provides) could be counted as a democratic right or entitlement, however, we can’t really leave the private sector to look after it. Rather, it would better fall under the responsibilities of an elected government.

Similarly, if social media is, indeed, a linchpin for economic prosperity, it might again be better addressed by economic policy than by the private sector. After all, if Facebook sank tomorrow, the economic fall-out would be considerable.

In addition to the “hundreds of thousands of developers” who earn a living from Facebook, there would be all the marketers and agencies that would feel the hit in their client portfolios. The economic ripple from those two sectors alone might just enough to cause a social crash big enough to resemble the dot com bubble bursting.

The Inefficiencies of Government Regulation

Of course, handing social media over to the government would backfire for a number of reasons. First, technological innovation tends to be driven by the incentive of private enterprise — not the noblesse oblige of the public sector. Simply put, when an organization is motivated by profit, it’s more likely to attract the right talent and devise strategies that account for scarcity and other real-world, market factors.

Second, bureaucracy and innovation aren’t really compatible. Checks and balances might help keep governments honest. But in a social networking environment, they’d only serve as so much red-tape, making it impossible to respond to sudden changes in technology or the market.

Finally, it seems unlikely that users would have any interest in a government operated social network, or be comfortable giving that much data to Big Brother. After all, the government already has so much other data on us that giving them access to our social data would create too complete of a picture.

An Imperfect Opportunity

Social media is a natural step in the evolution of communication technology. We thrive as a species because we’re social creatures that share information with one another.

Now that social media has shown too much promise and potential as a communication medium, we can’t just put it back in the bag while we figure out the answers to all the questions that social media has raised:

• What are the reasonable limits of personal privacy?
• What social tools should be considered essential?
• How can we afford to pay for the research and development of social tools?

What is clear is that the private sector is much better equipped fulfill the potential of social media.` What isn’t clear is how much leeway it should have with our data as it endeavors to fund the process. As Facebook’s own rebuttals noted, “For Facebook–like most other online service providers–getting this balance right is a matter of survival.”

Social media is growing up real quick, and it looks like it’s time for it to put down the beer-bong, move out of the frat house and move into the cubicle. Basically, the party is over, and a lot of marketers will find that conversions are the only cure to their social media hangover.

Last week, eMarketer reported that in 2011, twice as many marketers will be concerned about the actual return on their social media spend. Basically, business are putting their foot down and forcing marketers to care less about how many fans/followers they garner, and more about how those fans/followers impacted their bottom line:

Site traffic, which was the top metric for social marketing success in 2010, will still be on top this year. But the No. 2 spot will change hands, as twice as many companies plan to pay attention to conversions. [...] Revenues will see a similar surge in interest. [Emphasis my own.]

So it looks like the days of evangelizing the conversation simply for the sake of conversation are done (or at least numbered). As the saying goes, “money talks.” So while it might be nice to have x-hundreds or x-thousands of consumers talking about or engaging with a brand, the final word is going to go to the bottom line — i.e. how many of those “mentions” converted into sales.

So how is this going to affect how social media is sold, measured, and evaluated? Well, it’s hard to say for sure, but social will probably end up tied a lot closer to SEO.

Search, Social, and the Bottom Line

While Americans spend more than 6 times as much time with social than they do with search, search still has one clear advantage: intention.

Basically, search is better at leveraging purchasing intent because it is a keyword driven medium — i.e. results are served based on keyword queries that are typed into a search bar. What this means is that when a user searches for something, they are actively interested and already in a mindset where they might want to buy.

This makes search users much more qualified than social users.

Granted, social networks like Facebook do use keywords to serve up ads, but those keyword occurrences tell marketers nothing about user intent — such as the mood they are in at any given moment. Just because a keyword appears in my interests and throughout my social graph, that doesn’t mean that I’m interested in buying.

Indeed, social ads are so disruptive because people log onto social networks to socialize, not to buy. This is probably why Facebook’s 2010 ad revenues are estimated at a mere $1.86 billion, while Google posted $6.77 billion in revenue in Q1 2010 alone.

Social & SEO

So we can probably expect to see marketers evaluate their social campaigns in light of how search has set the pace in intentional targeting. But how exactly is that going to manifest at the tactical level?

Well, it’s unlikely that eyes will be on focused ads. Basically, paid search and social ads are (for reasons outlined above) too different to compare. Indeed, despite Facebook generating nearly 25 percent of all pageViews in the US, those ads get half the clicks of network banners, and an eighth of what Adwords ads get.

So that leave us with SEO: namely, how can marketers use social media to reach the same kind of intentional users they would with organic search?

As eMarketer reported just a couple months ago, many marketers already see social media as “an excellent driver of content visibility, [that helps] to keep content fresh and abundant, and also [increases] the number of inbound links a site receives.”

So if marketers are to focus more on the bottom line of social media, they may very well look at how social traffic and trends can boost their organic rankings. After all, why keep that “engagement” and “conversations” within the walls of a social network when you can push them back to your site where they can help raise your profile with users who already have the intent to buy?

Just the Beginning

While this might be the end of social media evangelism, it is by no means the end of social media. Indeed, social media’s youth might be over, but that means its career is just beginning.

In the short term, social is becoming a much more important factor in search rankings — a place where users are actively interested in products/services. In the longer term, social networks (like Facebook) will probably devise their own version of intentional targeting.

So as marketers look more and more at the bottom line of their social media efforts, these channels will become more mature and more refined. After all, such a change in focus in how its evaluated only means that its starting a new, more responsible era in its life where its able to deliver on the promise of its full potential.

It’s easy to hate advertising. It’s mostly unsolicited and it’s everywhere we go. So it’s no surprise that people really hate ads in social media and on mobile devices.

This week, eMarketer reported on a survey commissioned by AdAge and conducted by Ipsos Observer, and findings did not bode well for digital advertisers. Overall, users dislike website ads almost as much as they dislike ads on social networks, and they really dislike.

So why is it that some ads are more acceptable than others? Why are we more okay with ads in print and on television than in digital form. Well, the answer is probably part nature, part nurture, and part context.

Why We Hate Advertising

Our aversion to advertising has to do with free will. Essentially, unsolicited sales messages vie for a piece of our mind share. They intrude on our thought processes and try to govern what we think about, and to that extent, try to subvert our free will.

It’s the difference between sales clerk and a door-to-door peddler. I’m more likely to find an in-store salesman helpful than offensive because I chose to walk into the store, so I’m probably interested in making a purchase, and the sales clerk’s knowledge about in-stock products can help me make a better purchasing decision. The door-to-door salesman, however, is unwelcome because s/he was uninvited — they are intruding on my space and interrupting my day to peddle something I’m not actively interested in.

Why, When, and Where We Tolerate Ads

This, of course, begs the question: why were survey respondents so much more likely to tolerate print, television, and outdoor advertising than they were radio or various forms digital forms. Well, this is where nurture and context come into play.

For starters, in some cases, we grew up with advertising being bundled with the media. Most people cannot remember a time before print and television advertising. Advertising is an inherent part of each of these media experiences.

With digital channels, however, we can actually remember a time before ads. Not only do some of us remember a mostly ad-free net, but most of us remember when our favorite services were free of advertising — such as Facebook a few years ago and Twitter until recently. As a result, the expectations we have about of our web, email, and social media experiences are relatively altruistic compared to other media.

More importantly, each media has particular peculiarities that make it more or less compatible with advertising. And the less compatible it is, the more that ads disrupt the end user’s media experience.

Mobile: The problem with mobile advertising is the very reason why marketers get so excited about it: mobile phones are a very personal thing that we take with us everywhere we go and interact with us constantly. As much as mobile allows us to geo-target users with nearby offers every time they search or check-in somewhere, they go beyond mind share and intrude on users’ actual physical space. This means mobile ads are worse than an unsolicited door-to-door sales call. They’re like having that salesmen follow you around all day.

Social Media: As much social graph info is valuable for profiling a user and targeting them only with offers they might be interested in, social advertisers often overlook one critical aspect: we log onto social networks to socialize, not to buy. With social media, anything that disrupts the socializing experience only creates friction. For instance, Facebook ads perform only half as well as regular banner ads.

Email: Here we have a very personal, private space. Our inboxes are things that we guard very carefully. They’re where we have personal, one-on-one interactions with other people, and they are places where we store valuable secrets — like usernames and passwords to other online services. Of course, we don’t want to feel like there’s a salesman lurking in our inbox.

Websites: There are two space limitations to a web page. First, like print, there is the overall real estate on the page — i.e. what’s taken up by content, sidebars, navigation menus, and ads. Then, unlike print, there are the limitations imposed by our screen. We can only see so much of that limited real estate at a time, so ads intrude on our field of vision in a much more salient way. As much as we might be banner blind and not notice what the ad is for, we do notice that an ad was there, getting in the way of our content consumption.

Radio: What’s interesting about radio is that it’s a medium that, like print and TV, grew up with advertising, but we still find radio ads more unbearable than tolerable. This is because radio is a one-dimensional medium. There are no pictures or colors. There is only sound. So most radio advertising is a lot like some stranger on the street leaning in to your ear to tell you why you should buy something from them. Beside, most listeners tune in for music, and the ads are probably the biggest annoyance.

Credit: Pink Ponk

Print: There are two aspects of print advertising that make it more tolerable: First, it doesn’t disrupt the consumption of actual print content; you can always skip over ads, turn to the next page, or ignore them altogether. Second, in many lifestyle publications, they actually complement the content — e.g. I have friends who read fashion magazines more for the ads than anything else.

Television: Here we have a medium that’s been completely packaged around advertising, so the viewer’s overall experience is barely disrupted. First, original programming is written and edited around commercial breaks. Story lines tend to arc in a way so that we stay tuned to see what happens after the commercial break. This makes the commercials part and parcel of the excitement we experience through a show’s plot. Besides, even if we leave the room during the breaks, commercials are sufficiently louder than the programming that they might still manage to capture some of our mind share.

Out of Home: Outdoor advertising is bearable very much in the same way that print advertising there. It’s there, in our face, polluting the landscape, but it’s easy to ignore.

Marketing Beyond Advertising

Let’s face it, if every user/viewer/listener/reader had a choice, we’d live in an ad-free world. But ads exist because publishers and broadcasters need to pay their bills.

Besides, many of the media where ads are less than welcome are still their nascent stages. We can still remember when these channels were ad-free, but it won’t be long before those days are going to seem like a lifetime ago.

Mobile and social are still the media that they are, and ads are never really going to deliver the return that marketers need to justify their investment. Rather, mobile and social marketing are going to be driven by other tactics, such as content and opt-in notifications. Indeed, it’s the targeting options available through mobile and social that make these other marketing channels so promising.

There’s no shortage of speculation about Facebook ultimately displacing Google and taking over search. For starters, Americans spend more than 6 times as much time on social networks as they do searching. More importantly, search engines such as Bing and Blekko have already integrated Facebook’s Open Graph into their SERPs.

But while Google has only touched 1% of social search, Facebook has some way to go before it can fully take Google’s place on the world wide interwebs. You see, search engines are about discovery — i.e. finding new things — and Facebook isn’t quote ready to help users find something entirely new.

Search in a Popularity Contest

Facebook’s weakness as a search tool is rooted in its very potential as a social tool: namely, that it creates a completely subjective user-experience.

Facebook filters content in my feed based on the activity of my social network. The content I see is based on what the people in my personal network have liked or shared. So what I see is based very much on what’s popular with the people I know.

And search engines that have integrated Facebook data to order their SERPs similarly leverage that subjectivity. While Bing takes into account how popular a piece of content is on Facebook, Blekko offers users the option of using Facebook Connect to personalize search results according to what’s popular in their own, personal network.

A page’s popularity, however, is not a reliable indication of its relevancy. Just because a piece of content is popular (with my friends), that doesn’t mean that it’s a quality piece of content or is objectively valuable.

Google’s SERP Quality Control

Google has become the search behemoth it is because it’s been able to provide quality, relevant search results that are free of spam. Sure, Google has leaned more and more toward a subjective experience recent years by personalizing search results. But the foundation of its SERPs are based on a web that’s curated by independent, third-party sites.

There are many things, onsite and off, that Google uses to gauge the relevancy of a web page. But the linchpin of Google’s algorithm hinges on backlinks (hence it’s original name BackRub).

Basically, the more links there are to a page (and it’s top level domain), the better chance that that page has at ranking in the SERPs. And the more relevant a page is to a keyword, the more weight that a link from that page will carry on a related keyword.

Of course, Google’s algorithm is a lot more intricate than that, but the point is that Google’s backlink-based algorithm is nuanced — i.e. it’s a complex formula with a multitude of variables.

Over-Simplified Relevancy

Facebook’s Like, however, is simplistic and straight-forward. It either “is” or “is not”. And while it offers Facebook the ability to track users across the web, there is little depth or relevance to any given “Like”.

Facebook (and the search engines leveraging its Open Graph) can determine that x-amount of people liked something, but it can’t determine anything about how relevant that something is. It has no understand of nuance or intention, something Google has become quite good at. Yes, Facebook can say that something is of interest (or not) to the people in my personal network, but that’s no indication that it’s relevant, per se.

Facebook can only see that someone likes another site/page. But It has no way of judging whether that person’s opinion is relevant.

Google, however, places more weight on a link from a site that already ranks well on the term its using to link to another page. And that first site’s rankings is determined by how many other relevant sites (with relevant content) link back to it.

With Google, rankings are moderated by third-party sites with a trusted history of producing keyword dense content on a consistent basis. All Facebook can offer, for the meantime, is a popularity contest. In other word, Facebook can determine that I’m interested in something, but it has no way of determining that I have idea what I’m talking about (liking). And, I know what you are about to say, but both systems can be equally gamed.

Socializing Search

Google’s ranking factors offer users considerably higher quality SERPs than anything Facebook can currently offer. And a big part of that has to do with how Google has spent year indexing the web and how it all ties together.

Of course, other search engines such as Bing and Blekko crawl and index the web, and they’re tapping into Facebook’s Open Graph. But Google might not have to worry just yet.

For starters, no one has ever posed a viable threat to Google’s share of the search market. Second, Google’s Android operating system is allowing it to corner the next frontier of search — mobile.

Basically, it seems that the next big thing in search will probably be a single entity that masters both search and social technology. While that could mean Facebook figuring our search and how to index the web, it could also mean Google mastering social.

Granted, Google still hasn’t managed to succeed in the social space yet. But Android might give the kind of social data they need to socialize their search algorithm. After all, as mobile integrates further into everyday life through systems like Android, Google could access both location data and data from the social apps that users install on their devices. This could be the social relevance Google has been searching for.

So another Affiliate Summit West has come and gone. This year’s event was another exemplar brouhaha of networking, learning, and partying

On the learning side, Affiliate Summit probably has the highest quality sessions of every conference I attend regularly. And this year, what really lent to that quality, for me, was the number and depths of revelations that presenters shared about the mobile space.

1. The Mobile Market is Bigger than the Desktop

In his session titled Mobile Marketing – The 97 % Response Rate Channel, Bryan Williams had a number of stats to share. And the overall message: mobile is bigger than the desktop.

And it’s not just bigger in the sense of being a newer, untapped opportunity. It’s just outright bigger:

• While there are 2 billion desktops and laptops worldwide, there are 6 billion mobile phone users.
• Furthermore, SMS has a 96 percent open-rate.

2. Mobile SEO is a Priority

In the session Mobile Affiliate Site Strategies, panelist Michael Martin underscored the important of SEO’ing your site for mobile today:

• While there were 150,000 mobile sites in 2008, there are are 3.1 million today
• Also, mobile search has grown 500 percent in the last two years

The marketer can draw two conclusions from this: First, the mobile space has grown 5 times more competitive, meaning marketers have to ramp up their game. Secondly, with there also being 5 times more searchers, marketers also have a reasonable incentive (i.e. market opportunity) to do so.

As Martin also pointed out, marketers don’t have to create a .mobi site. Rather, creating a mobile site within a subdomain or subdirectory is not only cheaper, but better for SEO purposes, as it will benefit from the pre-established authority of the top-level-domain (TLD).

Also, just as with desktop sites, if your mobile site loads quickly, it’ll rank better. So make sure your mobile site has appropriate CSS.

Other things to consider are having an XML site map and making certain your site is touch friendly. These are also factors that will affect your mobile SEO.

3. Dumb it Down

In that same session, Scott Bain dispelled a common (and almost intuitive) myth about mobile users. Namely, that the majority of mobile users are on smart phones.

In fact, 75 percent of US mobile traffic comes from “dumb phones”. So if you only target iPhone and Blackberry users, for example, you’ll miss out on a lot of traffic.

This further underscores the importance of mobile SEO. After all, if 75 percent of users aren’t coming in through apps, then having a findable WAP site is all that much more important.

4. Contextual Increases Conversions

Another panelist in the Mobile Affiliate Site Strategies session was Keith Posehn, and he brought in his experience as a mobile affiliate. Posehn had some good advice on increasing mobile conversions by focusing on the user’s context.

For starters, you shouldn’t just cram a web app/site onto a small screen. Rather, you should only do what’s natural for a mobile device, and avoid forcing the user to do anything. So again, having a mobile site that’s been optimized for usability is important.

Similarly, when developing mobile sites with HTML5, you should make them tap-only, try to use icons over text, and use only essential javascript. This will make for a more intuitively usable site, and prevent unnecessarily high load times. [Update: Keith emailed me and pointed out an error. I originally wrote "stick with javascript" rather than "use only essential javascript].

Mobile on the Move

We’ve all been hearing for sometime now, how mobile is the next big frontier. Well, all indicators seem to be pointing at 2011 to be the year that mobile marketing starts to really go mainstream.

For affiliates then, the time to getting their sites up off of the desktop and primed for mobile devices couldn’t be better. Doing so now will probably put them just enough ahead of the curve to be cutting-edge, and just in time to ride the wave of critical mass.

What do you get the search giant that has over 50 percent of the market? Well, having over half of the search market cornered doesn’t mean that you have everything. And even though most of us can’t afford anything that Google would appreciate, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a few things that Google really wants (or needs).

A Social Strategy

2010 hasn’t been easy on Google’s social life, and the search giant is still in need of a viable social strategy. Specifically, Google had high hopes for two products, and while one fizzled into some terrible embarrassment, the other still hasn’t made it out the gate.

Holiday Buzz

First off, 2010 was the year that Google launched Buzz – its take on a Twitter-like/status update product. Right off the bat, Google was accused of Facebook envy. But things got hairier when they were hit with a lawsuit for violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). It would end up costing them $8.5 million to settle that suit.

Also, throughout the year, rumor mills buzzed with hearsay of a social product called Google Me. Finally, in September, Eric Schmidt confirmed that Google Me was real, would consist of a “social layer” that will be applied to existing Google services, and would launch in Fall 2010. But in November, it leaked that Google Me wouldn’t be ready until 2011.

So if you’re looking for a thoughtful, much needed gift to get Google, and you happen to have a blend of genius, foresight, and billions, you might consider handing them a viable social product with a pretty red bow on it.

Peace On Campus

Credit: Callie Roberts

It seems that Google is having trouble at home, and that those troubles are affecting its performance online. Specifically, its internal squabbling may be a significant variable of what’s holding it back from the social space.

Just this month, reports surface that it’s been political infighting that’s held back the development and launch of Google Me. Rumors ranged from unhappy developers to internal confusion.

At a company renowned for inspiring creativity and innovation in its employees, this kind of internal discord can hinder more than a single product launch. It can change the company’s culture and condemn it to mediocrity. So if you want to get Google something really personal, you might consider bringing them a little peace on campus and goodwill toward geeks.

A Daily Deal Site

Daily deal sites are another cash cow that Google missed out on. But this time, Google had the good sense to not try and launch one of their own.

On November 29, rumors surfaced that Google was trying to acquire Groupon for $2.5 billion. Only four days later, confirmation leaked that Groupon rejected Google’s offer, and that rather than $2.5 billion, the search giant had offered a whopping $6 billion.

Daily coupon sites might very well end up being the PPC of the future, and Google has noticed. After all, their cash cows that are incentive driven and based on location and social networks.

But since Google doesn’t have a good track record outside of search and has already been embarrassed by Groupon’s refusal to sell, they can’t actually launch their own. So a daily deal site would be the perfect gift form a rich uncle with a few billion kicking around.

More Page Views

When you’re part ad network, getting page views for Christmas is liking getting a wad of cash in your stocking. It’s not all that personal and thoughtful, but it sure is appreciated. But in Google’s case, it would also regain the search giant a bit of status.

In early November, Hitwise reported that in the week ending November 13, Facebook received more than double the page views (in the US) of both Google and YouTube combined.

As embarrassing as this is for Google, the company remains stable, earning more in Q1 than Facebook is expected to earn all year. But with the way things are going, that can’t last forever. So if you really want to give Google something to help them ring in the new year on an optimistic note, get them a way to attract more eye-balls and earn more cash.

Access To Facebook Data

Finally, there’s one thing on Google’s Christmas wish list that stand above all others. It would help them immediately boost their page views and revenues, and negate or (at least) stall the need for all the others — and that’s access to Facebook data.

Credit: Paul Butler

With access to Facebook’s data and content, Google could establish our dependency on search for years to come. As one SF Gate commentator put it:

What scares Google about Twitter and Facebook is that people are using them to share links, “like” web pages, and favorite tweets. People are using Twitter and Facebook to say what they think are the most important things on the Internet.

Because Twitter and Facebook are black boxes Google can’t crawl, it no longer has access to anything close to 100% of the best meta-data available for sorting and organizing the Internet.

If Google had that data – and if it its users felt they needed to set up Google accounts – it would be able to offer better, more personalized search. It would be able to recommend content and Web pages to its users without asking them to search.

Google doesn’t have that data and at from it’s very highest levels on down, the company is worried that its search will slowly become a less important tool for navigating the Internet.

So with access to Facebook’s data, Google could access the content its being denied, cross-reference Facebook user-data with Google accounts, and offer a search experience so personalized that we would rarely stray in our search for something.