Getting into the holiday spirit, I decided to use Google Universal Search in order to find any indication if Los Angeles – the town I live – has the slightest chance against infamous christmas-y New York.

Like many others who love L.A. I get shocked when December approaches and I become aware that this city doesn’t have a official Christmas tree. But one can still hope…

Google’s universal search (meaning the inclusion of any keyword-related results, such as pictures, books, news stories etc.) for “New York Christmas” not only lists nice pictures of Christmas trees in the “Big Apple”, but also news stories about Billy Joel’s anti-war Christmas single.

And some New York residents actually OBJECTING a public Christmas tree!

What about the “Los Angeles Christmas”? Oh my, the search results paint a sad, sad picture. No L.A. related Christmas photos, no YouTube videos, no relevant books. Nothing. Zilch.

The only Lala Land relevant Christmas ‘universal’ search result is a news article about “24″ TV star Kiefer Sutherland who will spend Xmas in prison for his second arrest for drunk-driving!

Depressing – but so L.A.!!

Tags: google, Search, seo

Very interesting story from Information Week:

U.S. companies are expected to spend an estimated $1.8 billion at MySpace.com and competing social networking sites by 2010, up from $280 million this year, research firm eMarketer said Tuesday. Companies with businesses built on creating buzz need to tap into social networking destinations such as MySpace to effectively market their wares. Still, social network ad spending will account for only 1.7 percent of the $16.7 billion spent on U.S. online advertising in 2006, rising to 6.3 percent in 2010.Warner Independent Pictures launched in April a site on MySpace.com to promote the movie “A Scanner Darkly” in an effort to connect with moviegoers. When Sony Pictures Entertainment recently released the movie “Monster House,” the studio posted character profiles on MySpace.com to attract consumers of all ages to a movie they otherwise might not have seen. Character pages appear to tend to work best, especially on MySpace.com, where users can become “friends” with character. For example, Sony created a profile page in the voice of Jill before launching the movie “When a Stranger Calls.” “Jill had 89,000 friends when we opened the movie, and nearly 110,000 friends by the time the movie went into the home entertainment window.

Tags: internet marketing, social networks