Can you believe it's been more than a year since we last gave away an awesome marketing book? Yeah, time to fix that! We've got 3 copies of Brian Carter's The Like Economy: How Businesses Make Money With Facebook to give away to Marketing Pilgrim readers. Barely two months old, Brian's book is already garnishing high praise-and 5 stars-on Amazon. If you know Brian , you know that he's a pro when it comes to Facebook marketing and in The Like Economy ,

High off their success in bringing SOPA to its knees, assorted superficial social extremists-ASSEs for short-have decided their next target should be Google. Not because of privacy issues, click fraud, or something that actually matters. No, the focus is on how Google+ is being intricately tied to search results . Did you know that Google is'gasp'manipulating its search results for its own benefit? No, really. Apparently,

Pubcon has been one of my favorite marketing conferences over the past decade. It has been an honor to speak at the various events held around the country. Now the joy-o-meter just cranked up to 11, with Pubcon Paradise ! Yes, my favorite conference is now heading to my favorite destination in the world'.Hawaii! And Marketing Pilgrim readers can save 20% off registration until Feb 7! February 14-15,

After writing about the FedEx delivery driver that was caught on video , throwing a customer's expensive computer monitor over a fence, many asked if the video was faked, a FedEx publicity stunt )huh?( or the antics of a competitor. Well, it turns out that the FedEx video-which now has over 2.6 million views-is legit. In fact, FedEx has apologized and apparently resolved the issue. Though, unless you went digging around, you wouldn't know that.

If you've not yet seen this YouTube video of the FedEx delivery driver throwing a shopper's new LCD monitor over a fence, then let's get you up to speed. Did your jaw drop? Mine did! You can read the back story here . The question I have for you is, how should FedEx respond to this reputation damaging incident? I've listed a few ideas below, but leave a comment with your thoughts.

Over the past year, companies have: caused homes to be trashed trashed their competition allowed customer information to be hacked threatened non-profits run distasteful Super Bowl ads All of these warranted an apology of EPIC proportions, yet Johnson & Johnson may end up with the best public apology of the year for simply deciding to no longer produce its popular o.b. tampons line.

Just how popular is that video of your aunt's faceplant in the snow? Who's watching your rendition of White Christmas? Those questions and much more will be answered when Google rolls out YouTube Analytics later today-replacing the more limited Insights. Here's what you'll get, so long as you are using a "modern" browser: A Quick Overview : A new overview provides all of the information that you care about quickly,

Earlier this week Google redesigned the user interface of Google Reader. I hated it. Still, no one likes change, so I gave it a few days to see if I would get used to it. I still hate it. Apparently, I am not the only one. Google News is full of reports of user backlash, a Huffington Post poll suggests 66% of users hate it, and even an ex-Google, who worked on the Google Reader team, hates it ! The way I see it, this is not an improved UI for Google Reader.

Chances are you're a pro at using Facebook. You have your Page optimized, ads targeted, and your privacy settings impenatrable. So why is it that I see so many glaring issues that could cause the average person to have their account life hacked? I come across these 5 issues below every day. Any one of them could result in a someone nefarious hacking your account, stealing your identity, or even ransacking your home. If you have these covered, congrats,

Can you believe that I now have to get permission from Frank to tell you about Trackur news. Something about integrity and transparency'. Well, after promising to disclose that I am the CEO of Trackur )as well as the publisher of Marketing Pilgrim(, he agreed to let me tell you about Trackur's big news. Google+ monitoring has now been added to all paid plans. Yeah, you heard that right. All paid plans! That means you can get Google+ monitoring for just $18 a month!

One of the benefits of being the CEO of Trackur is that I get to approve crazy deals. You know, the kind that seem too good to be true? Well, it must be the cooler temperatures, because I have just approved a FREE Gold Pass to PubCon Vegas to anyone that prepays for four months of our Ultimate plan. Here's the math on that: $1508 for 4 months of our butt-kicking, fully white-labeled, unlimited everything, Ultimate monitoring plan.

As you may know, I'm also the CEO of social media monitoring tool Trackur . If you didn't know that, then ta-da, I just sneaked my sponsored disclosure past you. Anyway, I'm excited to announce that Trackur has just added fully managed social media monitoring to its existing self-service plans. Even though Trackur's plans start at just $18, and are dead-easy to use,

According to AllThingsD , AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft unveiled plans to take on Google by joining forces to sell each other's ad inventory. The plan is to try a collective approach to battling Google and others. The strategy is also designed to help them claw back some ad spending that has ended up in the hands of ad networks in recent years.

This time last year, Google was licking its wounds after the dismal failure of its Nexus One phone. You know, the one designed and sold by Google. A complete Android package from the search giant. So what better way to celebrate the one year anniversary of that failed experiment than by coughing up $12.5 billion, in CASH, for Motorola and jumping feet first into the handset manufacturing business? I know, you're checking to make sure it's not April 1st,

If your regular Google routine includes searches that are not in English, you'll now find your results have extra Kung Fu. OK, so maybe not, but they will now have extra Panda, after Google announced the rollout of its controversial update to all languages: Earlier this year, we rolled out our "Panda" change for searches in English around theworld.

It's been almost two years since I warned of a potential scenario that involved the US government taking over Twitter. I portrayed one scenario where things would escalate enough that the POTUS would have to take action'.take over Twitter. Well, it appears the UK government is pondering something similar, in light of the riots in England. According to TNW , UK Prime Minister David Cameron said in a statement: "Mr Speaker,

I had never heard of Airbnb until yesterday. Chances are you'd never heard of the "rent a room in my house" service either. However, sitting in Chicago's airport-returning from an extended vacation- I couldn't help but learn all about Airbnb. At least, the part about the vandalism and theft suffered by one of its members. Now, it's unlikely that I would ever have cared about Airbnb-or that one of its members"EJ" had suffered such a horrible event.

Hopefully it goes without saying that trashing your competitors is simply never a good idea. Still, that didn't stop one of Carbonite's competitors from doing just that. In addition to insulting Carbonite, he managed to insult the intelligence of his prospective client in the same email! "Hey XXX, I just wanted to touch base with you to see what you thought of the Carbonite reviews I sent you and if it makes you feel safe and secure. No one in their right mind would,

A record breaking $9 billion in revenue is all you need to know about the success of Google's most recent financial quarter. Of course, if you'd like to dive deeper into the numbers, you can check out the financial results here , or even read CEO Larry Page's investor call transcript . Then again, you're Pilgrims. You have things to do, people to see, clients to please! So,