2 Minute Internet Marketing Round Up

'Tis the season for marketing – both online and offline. Changes in the world of online marketing are constantly happening, some major and a few minor.

Social media continues to dominate the world of Internet marketing, so let's take a look at some of the latest news which occurred just this past week:

Twitter - This past Thursday, Twitter decided to finally acknowledge the difference between a user and a business on its website. Twitter is now offering what it calls “brand pages” that allow businesses to use large logos and banners. The advantage of these logos and banners is companies can now prominently display their slogans and particularly important tweets.

In addition, the micro-blogging behometh also unleashed new Home, Connect, and Discovery buttons for both business and user accounts that enhance the ability of users to search for relevant content.

Google - The number one search engine, Google, announced on one of its blogs an invitation to social media sites to integrate with its website traffic tracking service, Google Analytics.

Google has long known Internet marketers are hungry for data regarding absolutely every interaction a user has with their site. The offer would allow social networks to integrate any of their streams, such as Likes, votes, and comments into Google Analytics.

A few websites such as such as Delicious, Digg, TypePade and Reddit are already participating in this offer. And of course, Google+, Blogger and Google Groups has generously decided to take its own company up on the offer and have since joined!

Edmodo - While you may not have heard of Edmodo, many other people already have. Since its founding in 2008, the service has attracted 5 million users in 60,000 schools around the world.

So what is Edmodo? It's a social network that was founded in 2008 by two Chicago IT professionals, specifically for students and teachers. Teachers use the service to communicate with students and other teachers, while students use it to work together on projects.

The potential growth of a service to bring people together has opened the eyes of a few notables, including Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn's cofounder) and Matt Cohler (former Facebook executive). The two have invested a combined $15 million into the company and will serve on Edmodo's board of directors.

Although there are questions on how the service will generate revenue, as it is currently free to all users, the key company stakeholders have announced Edmodo will continue with this model.

Facebook - The site that gave "media" the new first name of "social," continues to make its moves toward the land of IPO. Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, has been appearing on basically every prime time TV news outlet, which is perceived by many as a move help bolster Facebook's valuation, currently estimated between $78 billion to $100 billion.

Should Facebook announce intentions of going public, it will enter into a "quiet period," which limits information the company can release before becoming publically traded. Zuckerberg's PR campaign is a de facto tactic a company will use before its initially filing with the SEC.

Assuming Facebook does reveal it will be going public, one can only hope it can keep internal memos, internal - unlike Groupon.

KFC - What would a weekly round up of Internet marketing news be without a good story about KFC?

Kentucky Fried Chicken publicly responded to a Reddit post by user “richardsim7,” which included a graphic image of KFC’s chicken with parts not usually eaten by customers (view the image here).

Reddit user “Northumberlo” responded to the post, claiming he worked at KFC for 4 years and that the incident was fairly common in his experience. Lungs, kidneys, livers, and hearts would be removed by staff. He also noted occasionally staff would find “mutant” chickens with body parts not attached and chickens not fully cut.

KFC spokesman, Rick Maynard, predictably asserted that KFC maintained dedication to product quality. He went on further to deny any existence of “mutant” chickens and threatened legal action for these “false” accusations.

The realm of Internet marketing is never short on news and certainly this past week was filled with its own share of serious and frivolous stories. Hopefully these stories helped to keep you a little more current on the world of Internet marketing. Or at minimal, made you think, "Did I ever read a story before that included Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and chicken parts?"