Since I mentioned it this morning I wanted to spend a little time today talking about the Internet Marketing Monitor's War Room.  I just got done giving the look and feel a refresh as well as making sure everything was updated.  So now is a good time to have a look.

The War Room is a dynamic snapshot of several "wars" currently being fought within our industry:

•   Search
•   Local Search
•   Mobile
•   Video
•   Print
•   Question & Answer 
•   Wi-Fi

You'll recognize the players in the war as well:  Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, IAC/Ask, Amazon, eBay, Apple Computer, and Wal-Mart (yes… Wal-Mart).  As time goes on we continue to add more players and even more wars.

So what purpose does the War Room serve?

Any time one of our players makes an announcement, launches a product, or otherwise "fires a missile" in one of the wars they're fighting, we update their ranking on the War Board.  The War Board gives each player a numerical score for each war and indicates which direction the player is heading (up or down the list).

Under the War Board we've created recaps for each company and, using a handy icon system, provided dates, summaries, and links to more information about each "missile" fired by that company.  We've only been updating the War Room since mid-January so you won't find much from before that time.  But I think we've done a pretty good job of staying on top of the major announcements since then.

You'll notice a couple of interesting things on the War Board:

• Even though Google is used by more people to conduct mobile searches, we're currently calling Yahoo the leader in that war.  Why?  Because, despite less usage, Yahoo is moving more aggressively in the mobile market for now.  Google is catching up, though.  So keep that in mind:  the "leader" on the War Board might not be the most-used or most-popular service… it's the service that's making the most noise in that war.  Look at the Local war.  Same thing there between Google and Ask.com.
• Some wars don't have a clear leader, even though there may be a dominant service.  For example, several of our players are ranked equally high on Wi-Fi.  But since none of them really control or dominate the industry, there is no current leader indicated.
• Some companies have no "battle recap" tables yet.  Since the start of the War Room those companies haven't really done much beyond what they were initially offering when we launched.  But as soon as they do we'll create a recap table for them!

Give it a look and let me know what you think.  Do you agree with our rankings?  Disagree?  Keep in mind what was just said, too:  the "winner" in each of these wars is the company making the most aggressive moves… not necessarily the #1 service in each.

I'd love to get some feedback.  What works… what doesn't work… and what scores, if any, do you think we should revisit?