If you’ve paid attention to my advice about selecting your social networking profile name, you’ve likely carefully made your choice.

Well be warned; Bebo will change your profile name without notice and without any input from you.

Take a look at this email I recently received from Bebo:

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Andy Beal,

Your username has been changed by a Bebo administrator for security purposes. Sorry for the inconvenience.

New Username: AndyBeal_*******

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Please do not reply directly to this email.

If you have a question about the Bebo service:

1) Read our Help page by clicking - http://www.bebo.com/Help. This will probably answer your question about Bebo.

2) If you still have a question, then please contact us with your question by clicking - http://www.bebo.com/ContactUs

Bebo, Inc., 795 Folsom St, 6th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94107, USA.

===========

Outrageous? You tell me.

It’s been a couple of days since I requested an explanation from Bebo folks, but apparently they don’t even care to respond. The only saving grace is that I wasn’t using Bebo for Google reputation management, so the change inflicts little damage for me.

Let this be a warning. Don’t ever rely 100% on your social networking profile for brand building. Bebo–and perhaps others–can and will change your profile without warning.

PS. Did this happen to you? It’s happened to others.

Read the original:
Warning: Bebo Will Change Your Profile Without Warning or Input

As noted by Andy Beal earlier today there appears to be some unnecessary alarmism regarding the current state on online ad spends. I say unnecessary because as we have noted on another occasion the media really has a twisted sense of when the sky is falling. According to the Wall Street Journal today there is actually cause for celebration from the 2nd quarter numbers for Internet advertising rose 20%. So what’s your take? Should we panic and go back to smoke signals or just struggle through a sluggish 20% growth cycle?

I can’t take this anymore! What I liked most about the WSJ take on this news was where advertisers were focusing their spend. This was actually valuable because it appears that while we fly ahead towards Web x.0 (insert your favorite version) people who like to advertise to other people who like to buy their products are spending more on – GASP! – text ads in search engines. It’s on track for $10.4 billion this year. This is double what will be spent on display ads and the gap is widening.

As an example take Creditcards.com which is referred to as typical. They spent $30 million on online marketing last year. By the way, since I usually work with the SMB (small medium business) market a $30 million spend is not typical at all but I digress. Some of that budget last year was used to experiment with buying display ads and now this year that experiment will be halted and those dollars redirected to – you guessed it – search ads. Apparently the ROI on the display ads didn’t cut it.

With more than 70% of the US search-ad market, Google is smiling bigger than ever. This news comes on the tail of their Chrome browser beta this week. World domination is just around the corner apparently. The article continues with a lot of spin from the likes of Yahoo!, AOL and Microsoft to say that display advertising is not suffering like it seems because (insert lame PR excuse here).

The part that was distressing to me going back to point earlier about the small business search marketer is that there is an apparent cutting back in this segment around number of keywords being purchased. I personally just see that as small business folks not wanting to waste money on poorly converting terms while letting the big boys spend as freely as ever. One man’s opinion. John Aiken of Majestic Research notes that more ads are showing up for some keywords and suggests that Google is “potentially stretching for dollars”. Google’s response was that in many cases it just has more ads to show because of the volume.

It’s up to us as internet marketers to cut through this stuff and do the next right thing. Just continue doing search marketing because it works. What a novel idea, huh?

See more here:
The Real News About Online Advertising

Over at BusinessWeek, I was asked to share my thoughts on the initial launch of Google Chrome. I try to debunk any talk that Google Chrome is an attempt to replace your operating system and also tackle whether Google can steal market share from Internet Explorer or Firefox.

Here’s an extract:

It should come as little surprise that Google is entering the Web browser market. The search heavyweight already has a substantial stake in our online activities. Search, check! E-mail, check! Office documents, check! The list of Web applications offered by Google is both long and varied. With its goal of providing all of our online needs, it makes perfect sense that Google would step up and provide a Web browser built to accommodate its applications. With Chrome, Google is betting that more of us will move more of our computing from desktops to online, relying on the vast data centers known as “the cloud.” But can Google’s Web browser singlehandedly entice us to dump a favorite Web browser and our computer’s operating system?

You can read the entire article at BusinessWeek. While you’re there, be sure to read the comments. It appears that Google’s fanboys are becoming just as blinkered as Apple’s. I’m a big fan of Google’s services, but it appears my attempt to look at Chrome with a balanced view ruffled a few feathers. (Who me, ruffle feathers?)

Read the rest here:
Will Google Chrome Replace Your Browser, or Even Your OS?

I don’t like September. Sure, the weather in Raleigh drops back down to the 80’s but that just reminds me that winter is on the way.

While I get over it, and remind myself that I’m lucky to live the moderate climate of the South, you can enjoy today’s Picks:

• I feel bad for Rachel Beckman. The targeted ads on Facebook keep telling her she’s fat!
• Search Engine Journal has more Firefox SEO plugins than you can shake a stick at.
• Not strictly marketing news–actually it’s not marketing at all–but you might still be interested in all of the upgrades to Google’s Picasa.
• 58% of 18-65-year olds don’t know what “social networking” is. Either they’re just too old to to be hip, or they just don’t know that MySpace, Facebook, et al are known as “social networks.”
• Ever wanted to splice together multiple RSS feeds? You should take a look at RSS Mixer.
• Looking for a guest blogger? Want to be a guest blogger? Why not try Guest Blogger Finder?

Andy needs your help! Please vote for Andy’s panel to be among those selected for next year’s SXSW Interactive Festival. Thanks!

The rest is here:

Stories of Google attempting to steal away big spending clients from advertising agencies have circulated the web for years. It’s no secret that Google is willing to pull out all the stops to try and get a company to deal directly with them. Now, it seems that Google is trying to make peace with ad agencies–or at least bribe them with free stuff.

The most visible part of the new Google strategy is an event called Campus@, which started up in the spring. So far the Campus@ team, which has a core of six employees, has held six events, including one for Leo Burnett, which is part of the Publicis Groupe.

“We essentially take Google — our people, our products, our food, our tchotchkes — roll into the lobbies and give people the chance to interact with Google,” Ms. Clift said. The events are “a fantastic way to ingratiate ourselves,” she said.

Some agencies are eating this stuff up, while others remain cautious. If it were me, I’d be checking the free Google lava lamps for microphones and spy cameras!

Training from Om Malik, Biz Stone, Dave Taylor, Andy Beal and more! Attend October’s Aloha Social Media Summit in Boulder, CO and learn social media marketing secrets from the pros! Hurry, space is limited to just 25 attendees!

More:
Google Sucking-up to Ad Agencies