Cocktail Hour: April 27, 2012

How many of you were up late Tuesday night installing Google Drive, only to find out that, yes, Google now can publish and “publicly display” any content that resides in Drive? Don’t be too upset. Most other cloud services, including Dropbox and SkyDrive have similar policies, and so I’d shy away from uploading any rants on your plan to take down the Google empire (that means you MC Hammer with your Wiredoo).

In other news, Apple earned enough money in Q1 to buy its own cell phone carrier, LinkedIn launched a slick iPad app and I’ve been wondering how we’ve survived this long without pizza crusts made of cheeseburgers.

We Can All Learn from Retail? I’ll Buy That (Contents Magazine): As consumers bring their online habits into the offline space, retailers are at the forefront of this new in-store shopping while online browsing experience. The ways in which consumers are interacting with brands online have become mainstream culture, calling for omni-channel marketing that requires marketers to consider how these new habits, expectations and concerns are affecting offline brand interactions.

Whether the Digital Era Improves Society is Up to Its Users — That’s Us (The Guardian): Two of society’s greatest fears — technology and the unknown — have merged together in an era of information overload, social media and the current “attention economy.” The author shows how the increasing need for attention in a cluttered online space (think TweetDeck and the unread count in your feed reader) and the rate of sharing are spreading fear in surprising ways.

You Are What You Measure, So Choose Your KPIs (Incentives) Wisely! (Occam’s Razor): Defining goals, measuring, analyzing and reporting are some of the basic concepts in marketing and advertising. But what if the goals you set and the ways in which you measure those successes (or even failures) is flawed? Avinash shows some of the flaws in current website benchmark measurements and what metrics we should be concerned with.

What Your Klout Score Really Means (Wired): As companies begin researching Klout scores of job applicants and valued perks are being given to high scoring social media addicts, users continue to have a love/hate relationship with the service. What does a Klout score actually signify, other than you may be less popular than the Aflac Duck or the Biebs? At least all this social service can now get you a date with an influencer in notebooks.

Did Penguin Make Google’s Search Results Better or Worse (Search Engine Land): Google made a significant update to its algorithm this week, known as the Penguin update, to combat webspam. Sites practicing keyword stuffing, “over-optimization” techniques and linking anchor text to unrelated sites may have been penalized. While many people are saying Google search results are worse and are comparing the search giant to Bing, Google may just be reiterating that chasing the company’s algorithm is a fruitless pursuit.

What have you been reading this week?