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Even though I am home, I will continue to write about the Internet Retailer conference over the next few days. Today, here are some thoughts about social marketing trends. It is clear that internet retail is currently in love with the concept of marketing socially. If I heard one presentation about social marketing, I heard thirty. Of course, most of them were almost useless because here is a little secret.

Today's Picks have a healthy balance between rumor and fact. Rumor: Yahoo's Jeff Weiner has submitted his resignation, according to TechCrunch . Real: Yahoo's Jeremy Zawodny confirms he has submitted his resignation. Rumor: Yahoo )again( has plans to combine its Right Media and AMP ad platforms. Real: WidgetBucks has raised another $10M in funding. Not Sure: It seems Firefox 3 is planned for general release on June 17th. Yet,

Google CEO Eric Schmidt discussed so many topics at an event sponsored by Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications yesterday, I'm pulling quotes together from four different articles ! So, as usual, Marketing Pilgrim does the hard work, so you don't have to. Please let us forget "don't be evil" Schmidt said "Don't be evil" is meant to provoke internal debate over what constitutes ethical corporate behavior,

Check 'em out, y'all! Lunar shuttle tickets. I got smokin', non-smokin', first class, coach, by the window, by the aisle. Lunar shuttte tickets. Anticipating its pursuit of world domination will be complete sometime during the second quarter of 2010, Google co-founder Sergey Brin has booked a round trip ticket to outer space, with a launch date set for  2011.

When it comes to Linky Goodness, sometimes I even amaze myself. )And a cookie goes to the first person who can give the "correct" comeback to that!( The French are doing away with e-mail. And email. And even electronic mail. Instead, it'll be called courriel . Which is actually pretty cool, since it's from "courrier electronique" )'electronic mail'(. )If you're wondering "Can they do that?" the answer is yes . The French language has an academy,

Some couples just never seem to tire of bickering . Their constant squabbles make small children look mature . Because I know you haven't had enough of this drama lately, this is another one of those stories. So, to get us all up to speed: prominent Yahoo shareholder Carl Icahn proposed a proxy board, probably to oust Jerry Yang and take a Microsoft deal. He says Yahoo's employee severance plan )which would be triggered by a takeover or merger( is a poison pill.

Real estate is on my mind - I could easily do a linky goodness edition on the theme today. Overstock.com Inc. is getting into real estate search ) realestate.overstock.com ( for bargain hunters who are already on their site to get overstock items. So now you can not only find the house, but you can buy the sheets, silverware, and curtains for it. You can also get a car for the driveway! Overstock has more than 3 million classified, foreclosure, and auction listings.

Just what we want to hear - bad news about the housing market, but this time online. Turns out online searches didn't have as significant impact on homebuying or renting decisions as we may have hoped. That doesn't necessarily mean real estate sites should pull back their budgets though. The Pew Internet & American Life Project Survey,

Today, Internet Retailer released their annual Top 500 Guide that chronicles the online retail industry in general and the top 500 online retailers in particular. As I am listening to their presentation of the report, I am typing these highlights. Total E-Retail revenue hit $166 billion in the US in 2007, representing 6.3% of total revenue. The top 500 online retailers accounted for 61% of the total E-Retail revenue. Total retail growth was at 3.

Here's a shocker-the majority of shows on TV are boring and cable is expensive. It's no wonder then that consumption of online video has gone up significantly as less and less people watch TV.  Ipsos MediaCT conducted a study involving 1,102 early adopters who currently stream and download video online. From February 2007 to February 2008, video consumption from television went down 7 percent in just one year among this group.

After threatening to do it for years, today my wife and I head to the beach for a day trip. It's a 2-hour drive, hence such early posting today. Don't worry, you won't be left out. No, you can't come with me, but our fantastic team of writers will ensure you get your fill of internet marketing news for the day. Starting with these Picks: Google won't voluntarily toughen-up its privacy policy, but it has told lawmakers that it would support any new privacy laws.

When Google first launched Google Trends-a tool for view the popularity of search terms-it was greeted as a fun gimmick, but hardly a serious research tool. Yesterday, Google Trends took a baby-step towards being something of value. Here's what was added: You now get a relative scale for each trend . You still don't get the number of searches per day, but you at least get a scale to measure different keywords against. You can now export the data to a CSV file.

There's long been a debate about the value of Flash, when it comes to search engine optimization. Personally, I have no problem using a small amount of Flash in any web site, it's those pointless Flash intro screens that bug me. There's nothing more satisfying than clicking "skip intro." Apparently Google agrees. Philipp Lenssen reports on a sighting of a "Skip intro" link appearing alongside certain Google search results . At first glance,

If this is not the complete guide to optimizing a WordPress blog then I have not seen it yet. I am not saying there is not a better free guide out there and I challenge anyone who knows of one to link it in the comments of this blog post and share with us what we all have been missing. In my mind however Joost de Valk has come thru with an extremely useful and detailed guide showing how to effectively optimize a WordPress blog .

I am at the Internet Retailer conference in Chicago this week. You do not hear much about this conference in the blog world for some reason. That is strange considering that there are 5,000 attendees and practically every major company in internet retail is represented here. There is always a lot to learn from this conference, though you have to look for the nuggets. The keynote and major presentations are from leaders of major retailers. In my opinion,

I still say we need a linky goodness theme song. Yes? Cue Alice Cooper: Summer break is starting here in the US and Hitwise reports that Social networks are on the rise . So much for the impending death of Facebook ? Flash site intros: I hate them, you hate them. Now Google is offering a "Skip Intro" link right in search results . Pretty. Will Google come out with a WebKit-based GBrowser?

You could probably name at least one prank that you've seen on YouTube that was filmed specifically to get attention on the video sharing site. In the last year or so, it seems that some of these pranks have gone from mostly harmless hijinks to blatant violence and criminal activity. Who hasn't seen clips from the beating of a cheerleader by eight of her classmates on the evening news?

I honestly tried to figure out how to take each of today's Picks and fluff them up, so they could stand as their own blog post. Unfortunately, you'd have noticed. Instead, in the true spirit of Pilgrim's Picks, these stories are news, just not newsy enough. It seems Viacom has finally found an online video home for Comedy Central shows The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report . Hulu is safe from the Viacom's IP attorneys. Kudos to Verizon, Sprint,

Over the last 3 years, UK internet traffic to blogs and personal websites has grown by 208%, according to new data from Hitwise . The web intelligence company has just released new data on blog readership in the United Kingdom which shows 1.19% of all UK web traffic flowed to a blog . )Not a single blog-that would be a great site to own-but to blogs in general( This chart shows just how much blog readership in the UK has grown' How does this compare with US readership?