If you regularly surf the web, you’ve likely stumbled onto Get Satisfaction by now. Marker by the little ‘Feedback’ tags that show up on the sides of pages across the internet, Get Satisfaction is a customer feedback engine that allows companies to hear concerns directly from their customers.

And let’s be clear: it’s not just limited to internet companies. Anyone can sign up for a page and begin taking suggestions online. You don’t even have to be affiliated with the company to create or manage a Get Satisfaction page (although it obviously helps) – company devotees can easily create pages for their favorite brands and try to build awareness of customer concerns.

In short, for any business that actively focuses on customer service, it’s a great tool that’s worth checking out.

And now Get Satisfaction has taken it to the next level. Got a Facebook fan page? You can now turn it into a fully-featured customer support engine, thanks to the newly-released Get Satisfaction Facebook Social Engagement Hub. This plug-in allows your company Facebook page to seamlessly integrate with Get Satisfaction’s main site.

How does it work? Here’s a key example: if someone posts a question, it will automatically search GetSatisfaction.com and discover whether it already exists, then either display the appropriate response or create a new question on your Get Satisfaction page. (There are other features, too, but adding this functionality to Facebook is obviously the biggest story here).

ReadWriteWeb lists a number of other advantages to the service in their review – most notably, the fact that Facebook users tend to be very active on Fan pages. As a result, this service gives you more ways to interact with and get feedback from your strongest supporters. Not to mention the fact that it allows you to leverage some of your Facebook content from outside of Facebook’s ‘walled garden.’

We think Get Satisfaction is an excellent service – one that’s only enhanced by this new offering. It’s definitely worth a closer look for any small business in search of a more direct link to customer feedback.

Kipp

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Google plans to deliver 1 Gigabit connections to 50,000 homes

Google recently announced their plans to begin building and testing an ultra high-speed broadband network in the US. Google will start by rolling this out in a small number of locations, and then expand on from there to hopefully around 500,000 locations. Google’s goal: offering fiber-to-the home connections that will reach 1 gigabit per second.

Googles states that at this point, this is being considered an experiment; they haven’t even decided where to build the network yet. Want the network to reach your house? You can nominate your neighborhood for consideration here. Be sure to get your nomination in by March 26 deadline.

If this connection takes off, what will that mean for us…and our wallets?

Google plans to offer these connections at comparable, competitive prices. Google firmly believes that this effort will help to make the internet more accessible and more fast for everyone. The US has been lagging behind other parts of the words in regards to broadband speed and adoption. Time will tell if Google  can help us bridge that gap.

For more information on Google’s experimental fiber network, please access the following YouTube video

Stephanie Spino
Marketing Manager, Everon

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It’s official. After months of reports that Google would soon announce a new social status feature, today came the big reveal of Google Buzz.

In essence, Google Buzz is an add-on for Gmail that allows you to update your ’status’ – akin to Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites. Since Google Buzz updates can be location-aware, it appears to be gunning for location-based social networking sites like Foursquare, Gowalla, and Brightkite (a fact not lost on Brady from Brightkite, who posted a ‘Google Buzz & Brightkite – separated at birth?‘ image.)

Mashable has a through discussion of Google Buzz’s roll-out. The most interesting part comes in Google’s leveraging of Gmail as a delivery platform . By rolling it out as a part of Gmail, Google can utilize the contacts of Gmail users as a built-in, pre-configured social network. When I update my Google Buzz, people who have me in their Gmail address book can automatically see my status.

It’s a brilliant move – since people interact with their email regularly, they’re more likely to get involved with the Buzz. At the same time, lots of people are beginning to feel wary of consolidating their online identities under Google – as CNET points out, this mistrust might slow its adoption. And given that Google is tying Buzz to Gmail in order to hasten its growth and better compete with already-established tools like Brightkite and Foursquare, it’s tough not to recall Microsoft’s bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows. We all know how that turned out.

Regardless, what this means for internet marketing remains to be seen. But like most of their product announcements, it’s another big step forward for Google.

(Provided their users decide to agree to it.)

Kipp Chambers
Sr. Internet Marketing Specialist

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At the office we’re bombarded with information overload on the regular. Sometimes it’s hard to sift through the emails, blogs, newspapers and business magazines to find the most pertinent- or even just plain old “good” – reads.  At the end of each year, The BtoB Marketing online newspaper helps you cut to the chase. Click here to catch the top 20 most popular stories from the past year in a jiffy.

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The Google, Inc. owned youtube looks to dive in to the world of online video rental service. Youtube will partner with The Sundance Film Festival releasing 5 films which will be available for rent on January 31st of this year. Doesn’t sound like a big huge deal does it? Well, if you are a fan of independent films, you will love it. They will be releasing additional selections shortly after from several independent film makers and they are on the hunt for more. Would expect anything less of Google?

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