This Financial Mobile App Initiative Is Missing You

Interesting.

Do you all know about the MyMoneyAppUp Challenge? It’s a contest offering cash prizes “intended to motivate American entrepreneurs, software developers, the public, and students to propose the best ideas and designs for next-generation mobile tools to help Americans control and shape their financial futures.”

It's sponsored by the U.S. Treasury Department in partnership with the D2D Fund and Center for Financial Services Innovation. The content submission form asks contestants to specify how their app would promote financial capability and/or financial access but that's not presented as a primary focus.

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How Investors Search For Retirement, Brokerage Accounts Online: Google Data

Google’s new Think Insights, announced last week as a project designed to “help marketers make smarter decisions,” includes two 2010 research presentations that shed light on investors’ search for information online:

• “The Role of Search in Brokerage Account Shopping,” citing Google/Compete 2010 data
• “Inside Look Into The Financially-Minded Digitally-Connected Baby Boomer” with Google/Nielsen Online/Sterling data

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The Rewards Of Being Social

Non-digital marketers tend to leave search engine optimization (SE0) issues to the digital marketers. If you have been maintaining a 20,000-foot view of how search engines drive Website traffic and attention, you may have missed a few recent developments that could influence your understanding of social media and what it could mean to your work.

The notion of optimizing for search engine results is being broadened beyond Web page code and  keyword-conscious content creation. Increasingly, your appearance in search engine results will also be a function of your social participation.

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Will Municipal Concerns Spike Search Interest, Create Opportunity?

Over on AdvisorTweets.com, financial advisors are expressing a lot of interest in the health of the bond market, municipal bonds in particular. Just this week Wall Street analyst Meredith Whitney warned that as many as 100 U.S. cities and other municipal issuers would default on their debt this year (see her CNBC appearance at the bottom of this post).

It’s led us to wonder about the level of search interest, which we’d think of as a proxy for consumer/investor interest and awareness.

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Google's Latest News And 18 Minutes With A 'Data Detective'

Google made some news in the last few weeks that we hope you’re paying attention to. We briefly comment on Google Instant and Priority Inbox below but if you're short on time, go directly to the embedded video on data visualization. (The player shows 21 minutes but the last three minutes are a commercial.)

With summer 2010 ending this week, we expect to be back at it posting more frequent, shorter posts. That's the plan.

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