In addition to today's Internet Marketing Monitor coverage, we felt these stories were worth pulling out of the multitude of news items for March 15, 2007:

  Calling it Linkbait Doesn't Make You Less of a Jerk  [Bruce Clay Blog]

Lisa Barone hits the linkbaiting nail on the head with this one.  Her basic message is simple:  call it whatever you want… but linkbait published at the expense of another person is still wrong and degrades your integrity (and that of the company/clients you represent).  She echoes a sentiment that IMM readers should be familiar with.  We've said on numerous occasions that linkbait eventually reaches the point where it goes too far.

  Even Your Target Market Has Off Days  [Cre8pc]

The post is pretty humorous.  But the message behind it is pretty valid.  Different situations in your customers' lives can change the way they interact with your website.  While there's no way to accommodate everything that could potentially affect a customer, you can do little things to make your website accessible and usable to people regardless of their current physical or mental state.  Bottom line:  the more user-friendly your site, the more "off day" customers you can still make happy.

  Personalized Paid Search And…(title truncated)  [SEO by the SEA]

A Yahoo patent filing hints at behaviorally targeted advertising based on short and long tail interaction on the web.  Browsing habits, searching habits, information provided in user accounts, and service usage all factor into the system Yahoo has outlined.  The post even contains a flowchart from the patent application that illustrates how the system would refine the advertisements displayed by Yahoo based on all collected data.

  Microsoft Deal For Large Customers  [John Battelle's Searchblog]

It's pretty simple:  use Windows Live and earn credit toward free Microsoft stuff.  Didn't we just talk about Microsoft's efforts to get more traffic to Live.com yesterday?  Yes… we did.  But see, I don't think traffic is Microsoft's biggest problem.  They're trying everything they can think of to get eyeballs on Live.com.  To quote a very funny movie:  "Hello?  Was I the only one searching on Live.com?  I thought it reeked."  It doesn't matter how many people you get to look at it.  The technology driving Live Search is just plain rotten.  Hopefully Microsoft is putting as much effort into improving their search results as they're putting into getting traffic to the site.

  Google Talk Gadget  [Google Talkabout]

The Google Talk team has released a version of the online chat program that works as a gadget (or embeddable content) on Google's Personalized Homepage.  I'm not a Google Talk user.  But honestly… after seeing this bad boy in action I kind of wish I was.  Overall, it's very cool.  But the uber-cool part about it is the fact that you can drop a YouTube video link into the chat window and preview it with your chat buddies.  Sweet stuff.  The Official Google Blog also announced the new gadget.

  Microsoft Unveils 'MySpace for Finance Pros'  [MarketingVOX]

Social networking isn't being lost on corporate customer.  Microsoft plans to roll out a group of social networking sites for its Dynamics application users.  The first site to be created is geared toward "financial pros" and Microsoft referred to it as "MySpace" for those professionals.  It'll be interesting to see how well these sites do.

  Google Reader Update  [Search Engine Roundtable]

I was in the middle of reading some feeds last night and noticed a hiccup in my Google Reader.  It took a couple of minutes but eventually I saw some new buttons and thought to myself… "ooo… Reader just got updated."  It was the first time I can recall using a product while it was being updated.  It wasn't until I ran across this post at SERoundtable that I discovered everything else that had been updated.  Nothing huge… but still a nice update.