Ellie Mirman's Startup Marketing Blog

Today was a big day. Just the typical day of work: wake up, work at home in my pajamas for a couple hours, walk into work, grab coffee and handcuff myself to my desk to get some work done between the day's many meetings... But today was a big day. Really, a thought-provoking day.

I'm technically what you'd call a long-time blogger.  I can't quite remember when I started my first blog, but it was quite a while ago, maybe in high school (ok, so that's only like 8 years ago).  And this somewhat surprises/impresses people in the Internet marketing world where we talk about the wonders of blogging, particularly for businesses, quite a bit.

Hello my dear blog readers! I am finally back in this (not so) cold home of mine, complete with a nasty cold and ridiculous jetlag (it's not even 5 am as I write this). I thought now would be a perfect time to post a little report with a few highlights from my trip.

This is the kind of thing that makes me a little giddy on the inside.

Microsoft's new ad for its mp3 player, Zune, has definitely surprised me by how cooky and cool it is.

As follow-up to my previous post on the Fun World of Marketing, here is the second installment of Fun World of Marketing: Link of the Week.  This week's link is dedicated to... well, you know who you are.

Google does it again. I am actually quite impressed (and scared) by how Google can pick up on my interests and suggest links and blog feeds that I may actually be interested in checking out.

For the first time today I noticed a message in my Google Reader with some recommended feeds. I actually immediately clicked on the first link (Church of the Customer Blog)... marketing with a religious studies twist? Yes, please! I'm sure Google has picked up on my interest in marketing (after all most of my feeds are marketing-related) but could it also have picked up on my subtle love of religious studies?

I'm still catching up on some of the old posts to that blog, but so far I'm liking what I'm reading and it actually reminds me a bit (in terms of the overarching topic/theme) of a presentation I did in undergrad about what marketers can learn from organized religion and religious organizations. Interesting stuff for sure.

This is all fun and good, but what freaks me out is when I write an email in gmail and then a number of paid links show up on the side of my browser advertising things directly related to something I wrote in my email... A little freaky and I'm not so keen on Google reading my emails, even if it is a computer doing the reading. BUT I will say that a particular instance of this happening to me did inspire another blog post to be posted in the future... So be on the lookout.