I don't know if "shocking" is the right word. Improbable. Unexpected. Sad. Indescribable. Last Thursday Digg announced it had been sold to Betaworks for a reported measly $500,000. The social news site that was one of the early darlings of the online social media movement will now be folded into a revamped Betaworks offering, News.me. Digg's rise, and subsequent fall, offers a sobering look into the fickleness of the modern Web consumer. Through the constant stream of innovation, the status quo is always being challenged. Search marketers should take notice of the lessons Digg's demise offers.

This past Sunday, I spent the day riding a bike 100 miles through searing 95-degree heat in Canada's only desert. Bet you didn't even realize Canada has a desert, did you? Well, we do. Trust me. And it's freaking hot. After about 60 miles, I was ready to pack it in and grab a beer. But I gutted it out for another 40 miles, because that's what cycling is about: gutting it out. I give you this preamble because last week, the world of search marketing lost a very gutsy guy who also happened to be a cyclist.

Pop quiz hot shot: What do Steve Jobs, Israel, Billy Beane, Don Draper, and Bonnaroo have in common ? All of the above have been sources of inspiration for my columns -- and, today, I'll add one more to the list. After spending last week in Hawaii with my time-zone challenged kiddos,I hope you can understand why my mind wandered to SEM every now and then. Here's where I landed:

My good friend Jason Falls posted on LinkedIn last week, in response to recently released Facebook Ads engagement data: "More statistics emerging on Facebook advertising statistics. I still am baffled that marketers are so lathered up about them. POINT-ZERO-SEVEN percent CTRs?"I took some time to think this one over. Jason is extremely well regarded in the social marketing space, and his opinion is one I value. I wanted to better understand his perspective, primarily because Facebook serves ~25% of the world's display ad impressions month-over-month and because I'm personally very bullish on Facebook Ads. My initial reaction to this body …

We all know the local-search dream: You stand on a street corner and your phone tells you the best restaurants nearby. After digesting some delicious aioli-drizzled fish tacos, your phone tells you where the best shopping and sales are. Then, while waiting to be rung up at possibly the coolest shoe store on the planet, you write reviews for both the shoe store and the fish tacos. You even have enough time to look up tonight's local events and decide you are going to check out a well-rated jazz club nearby. Such a tasty dream, and so compelling. So why …

Today, I want to talk about the last of the three posts by Harvard Business Review bloggers, Karen Freeman, Patrick Spenner and Anna Bird I have been surveying: "Three Myths about What Customers Want." Specifically, I want to look at this post's implications for online marketing.

The mobile Web is currently a "Wild West," with plenty of undiscovered territory, and a different set of user behaviors to be decoded. In preparing to position themselves properly, marketers looking to leverage mobile need to understand that the search of the future, both in engines and ads, needs to be more anticipatory, better integrated, and deliver compelling, useful results to drive the user to click over to your page or download your app.

Microsoft got into hot water with the FTC and ad industry self-regulators recently over its decision to ship its next version of Internet Explorer, version 10, with the "Do Not Track" option turned on by default. How could anyone be against Microsoft - which is about to ship millions of copies of Windows 8 with IE 10 aboard - making the reasonable assumption that users would like to start their online computing experience in some level of anonymity, a state that they can of course modify should they positively elect to be tracked at a Web site of their own …

In last week's column, I looked at how Harvard Business Review bloggers Karen Freeman, Patrick Spenner and Anna Bird spelled the end of the purchase funnel. Today, I'd like to look at the topic they tackled in the second of the three-part series, "If Customers Ask for More Choice, Don't Listen."

In my last column, I shared SEM lessons learned from my ten-year Bonnaroo reunion. One of the more heady revelations I had at the festival was that "a lot can happen in 10 years." As I think about the 20-year reunion in 2022, many questions come to mind: Will my kids think I'm cool or lame for going? How much will a gallon of gas cost? Will Phish still be doing their thing? How will the world of search marketing look? For the sake of this column, let's put that last one in our pipe and smoke it.