Rev2.org

The New Year is almost upon us, and as marketers get ready to see out 2011, it would appear they are already focusing on their goals for 2012.  According to a survey on marketing trends from StrongMail, 55% of respondents stated they were planning to spend more on social media marketing during the upcoming year.

Nearly 1,000 people took part in the survey and more than 90% stated they were intending to spend more (or at least the same amount) on marketing in the coming year.  This includes all marketing and not just social media marketing.  Nevertheless, one interesting fact that might surprise some people is that mobile marketing still appears to be dragging its heels.

Indeed a quarter of the people who took part in the survey did not yet understand what mobile marketing could offer them.  A little over a third of respondents were intending to spend more on mobile marketing next year than they had in 2011, but this is way down on the number intending to increase their spending on social media marketing.

It would appear that mobile marketing still has a long way to go before it becomes as mainstream as social media marketing.  With many companies still trying to get the hang of the various internet marketing channels open to them, it could simply be that mobile marketing is one step too far at the moment.  At least social media marketing is improving in leaps and bounds.

If you know anything at all about Twitter, you will know that many celebrities from Hollywood and beyond have opened up accounts so they can tweet to their followers.

However, the number of celebrities using the site has dropped by one this week.  Alec Baldwin, star of “30 Rock” among other programmes and films, has deactivated his account after getting involved in a row with American Airlines.  According to reports that hit the internet a few days previously, Baldwin was asked to leave the plane because he was still using his mobile phone.

He tweeted about the event on his Twitter account and even though he calmed down after a short period of time, he went on to ask all his followers to “unfollow” him.  This is the term used when you want to stop following someone on Twitter.  He asked people to do it at a specific time, after which his account was deactivated.  It cannot now be accessed if you search for it on Twitter, although some of his older tweets can be found via the Google cache.  Ironically, the airline responded to his comments by using Facebook rather than Twitter.

It remains to be seen whether Mr Baldwin will open up another Twitter account once he has calmed down.  Nevertheless, for now it stands as an example of what can happen when celebrities build up a huge Twitter following.  Sometimes those tweets can go one tweet too far.

Pandora has two major drawbacks: a small music catalog and it’s only available in the U.S.  A catalog of 900,000 songs to choose from is nothing to balk at, but in today’s connected world of on-demand content, it’s a tiny drop in the bucket.  Add to that the inter-connected world we live in now and you see limitations to Pandora that make it.. well, less desirable.

Other music services like Spotify have been gaining ground quickly, but there is a large market segment that it doesn’t appeal to: music listeners who aren’t interested in surfing.  Many popular music platforms require you to actively choose music, surf your friend’s playlists, and otherwise use the service itself.

Many listeners are more interested in a radio-like experience of hands-off listening where you choose a “channel” and just listen.  Pandora has survived in today’s breakneck world of music streaming almost entirely because it’s one of the few services offering this.  Choose “rock” and that’s what you get, for as long as you want to listen.

Senzari does the same thing, offering what CEO Bill Hajjar calls a “lean back” experience.  You choose a genre of music or load in your own music catalog and Senzari finds similar music – and that of your friends, if they’re connected – to create on-the-fly playlists that you listen to without doing anything but listen.

The music app just drew in $2 million in angel funding and has already shown it can beat Pandora at the content and distribution game.  Senzari is licensed as an Internet radio station in three countries (U.S., Brazil, Spain) and has a strategic partnership with RED Viacom.

Plus it’s got a music catalog of over 10 million songs.  More than ten times what Pandora can offer.

Senzari is currently in closed beta in the U.S. and will open in Spain sometime this month.  Brazil will see it early next year.

CNN Money is reporting that, according to sources, Facebook has purchased location sharing service Gowalla.  The deal is officially unconfirmed, but seems likely given the sources.

Further information says that Gowalla will uproot from its Texas offices and move into Facebook’s space in Palo Alto, California.  Gowalla will become integrated with Facebook’s “Timeline” feature, which is gradually rolling out to FB users now.

Gowalla recently re-built iself as a “travel guide” after failing to attract enough users to really compete with Foursquare, current Mayor of Location-Based Apps.  It’s unknown whether Facebook will keep this new direction or push Gowalla back into Timeline – which seems more likely.

In fact, given Facebook’s history with buyouts, it’s questionable whether Gowalla will remain at all.  With Drop.io, Hot Potato, and others, FB killed them off and moved their talent pool into other projects.  It seems likely that they’ll do the same here, putting Gowalla’s talent into Timeline instead.

There will probably be an official announcement on the take over today and more information may be forthcoming from that.

Update 12/5/11, PM: As expected, the announcement was made today and Gowalla and Facebook both say that the Gowalla service itself will cease in January and the entire Gowalla development team will be put on the Facebook Timeline squad.