Mashable, the social media hub for marketers and techies 
has a great article on how Google Wave can be helpful to businesses and project managers:
Google Wave’s Massive Potential for Business
February 12th, 2010
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Follow me on Google Buzz!
February 12th, 2010
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Google just keeps pumping out products faster than most of of can follow. 
Google Buzz is the nwe feature within Gmail (Google’s Email Client) that is similar to Twitter and Facebook in the sense that real time updates from your contacts are available within one click from your inbox.
I’m trying it out now, and you can see my profile here:
Bing Gains US Search Market Share For 8 Months In A Row
February 12th, 2010
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Microsoft’s Bing.com, an attempt to catch up to Google’s search prowess is consistently gaining market share that Google and Yahoo are losing. But they do have a LONG way to go.
Women Now Dominate European Online Retail
February 11th, 2010
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Over 61% of online transactions in Europe were initiated by women in 2009. This is in direct contrast to 44% in 2007. Men still dominated travel and services online, but electronic retail now a majority female sector. Data based on some 8 million transactions, not surveys shows that the demographics of online retailing are not just changing, but are correcting for the vacuum of products for women that were not making it online.
The fact is that technology is unnecessarily dominated by men, and the products they produce are reflective of that imbalance. 2009 proved to start correcting that imbalance because of innovation in delivery technology and analytics research. It was about time that female dominated product categories had their moment online.
The real question from here on is, will that number stay relatively similar? Is this a surge to stay or will women continue to dominate online retail?
You can download the full Press Release from Deutsche Card Services here:
Social Media Dissent & The Push For 2.0 Suicide
January 14th, 2010
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We’ve all done it, or at least considered it. It’s rebellious. The idea is so…. Rogue. It’s like moving hundreds of miles away. It’s liberation for some, and a major loss for others.
Image from suicidemachine.org
The mass defriending, purging or cleansing of your Twitter followers, or Facebook and MySpace friends, and LinkedIn Connections is what I’m talking about. Like a nuclear option, or as some hippies say, ‘Getting off the grid’.
A new site dubbed The Web 2.0 Suicide Machine, has made that process a little more expedient.
I did it once, to my MySpace account. Not because my reputation was sullied, but because I got sick of MySpace’s notoriously long load time. But it felt great anyway.
It was inevitable. Anything that booms, has adjustments and detractors. My former boss told me of stories of secretaries that refused to switch from typewriters to computers. Way to be on the wrong side of history! But you can’t blame them with the online dis-inhibition effect and the ruining of reputations online.
Is it anything to worry about? Not really. Social media and social media suicide campaigns aren’t in direct competition. Like a candidate in an election that boycotts his own race, he/she will not win, but merely make a statement about the election itself.
Don’t tell the Iranian government, but dissent is an important bumper on the rails of ambition. It is never glamorous or popular, but it serves a purpose. See the following:
“Even when dissenters don’t have enough votes to to change The Court’s (referring to the US Supreme Court) opinion, they still affect the process.” – Ori Brafman form Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior
“It makes the other person take account of the point. They have to answer it or they have to take it into account” - Justice Stephen Breyer, US Supreme Court
These guard rails of logic are helpful, but dubbing it suicide might be a bit much. It is possible to be a “Negative Nancy”. I remember a student that would almost ubiquitously start any response with “It’ll never work…” What kind of help does that bring to the table? Well depending on what follows. Answer it, or account for it I say.
And much like a repressive regime, unfortunately Facebook has threatened legal action against the The Web 2.0 Suicide Machine. Especially since the young CEO of Facebook just said that privacy online is not to be expected anymore as a ‘social norm’, you would think he could take a lesson in timing.
Maybe the solution for Facebook is to take a look at Google and apply the motto “Don’t Be Evil” a little more generously.
Go on, let them ‘commit 2.0 suicide’. Why not? They won’t be tweeting, posting or updating about it now will they?
Also see: Social Media Backlash?
Netflix’s Red Envelope Dead. Why? Supplier Competition
January 11th, 2010
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So Netflix has dismantled its distribution division, Red Envelope Entertainment. This is not news. But neither should it have been.
Those of you that have not seen the Red Envelope logo at the beginning sequence of a DVD, this Netflix wing buys the rights to distribution the same way that major movie studios do. They made quite a splash by buying up movies that major studios thought were too quirky or strange to attract a large scale audience.
Red Envelope had a strategic advantage in releasing these films though. Because movie theatres have only a limited number of show times per day and a limited number of seats per theatre they have to show films with the lowest common denominator of appeal. Red Envelope has streaming on demand and a nearly unlimited number of seats at any given show time, which is WHENEVER someone clicks. They were involved in strange projects like one of my favourite movies of all time, Helvetica. A movie about fonts is not going to be the next blockbuster, but it definitely came out bigger than expected thanks to Netflix and REE. They also took part in No End In Sight which was nominated for Best Documentary in 2008. Some of these films were top notch.
Some have suggested that it was strong arming by a major studio, others suggest that there was a reason the major studios pass over the films, they just were not that good, or too small of an audience.
They were right to try, but Netflix also rents those movies from those big studios. One buy of a movie that perhaps a studio had its eye on would technically be supplier competition. And if you’ve ever seen a situation in business like it, it’s nasty.
“You can be my supplier, but you will NOT be my competition.”
This old mantra is forgotten way too often. It may be that some of the movies were not good, but most movies are not good. It seems that it is a question of supplier competition. Netflix supplied major movie studios with a distribution channel, and then competed, sometimes unfairly by streaming movies from their distribution service instead of major studios.
Sometimes it is a good idea to keep your core business as your focus.
The Psychology of Marketing at Conventions and Trade Shows
January 9th, 2010
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As I write this, there are thousands of tweets containing the trending topic of CES or the Consumer Electronics Show. This mecca of gadgets, laptops, and basically anything running on electricity is the focal point of any geek’s life this week, and so it should be. As I read about the interesting news that EVERYBODY is at the Lenovo booth, I realised that I have been to quite a strange range of conventions and that it is rare to see a true win at these rallies of industry. Some memories:
- Home Building & Remodelling Expo (Milwaukee, USA) – I can’t remember one single memorable item from this show that I have been to at least 5 times, except one. A patio deck manufacturer that had a fully built deck as a booth with all his staff wearing cooking aprons. I do not remember the package or the product, but I do remember that aged white bearded man, standing on his deck holding a pair of tongs and handing out hot dogs.
- HH Backer Pet Industry Christmas Show (Chicago, USA) – I was with a retail team that was in the mood for new products. We walked through hundreds of booths and met vendors from all over the world. I still remember one logo better than any other, and it was on a wheeled box: UrineOff. We didn’t carry it, but I remember it better than any other product.
- Defcon (Las Vegas, USA) This congregation of hackers, crackers, script kiddies and wannabes is something you have to see. There are contests to out the FBI agent and lock picking contests. My most vivid memory? Aside from the roaring laughter of news of a US defence contractors plans to make weapon deployment systems web browser based, it was the first time I saw the video to Benny Bennassi’s Satisfaction.
What do these strange cross section of memories, industries and experiences have in common?
All of them made no sense from a traditional marketing perspective, but they worked. I am not saying they were necessarily intentional, but that’s not the issue. The fact is that one man on a deck 16 years ago handing out grilled meat still reminds me of outdoor living and cooking space. One cardboard box (probably the one thing a pet wouldn’t soil) rolling past me burnt the purple and yellow logo of a urine remover in my brain for over 2 years. And the Benassi video, well that caused me to not only realise how starved some of the convention participants were, but led me into a whole new genre of Euro Electro House, later of which I which I bought albums of.
The reason this isn’t easily replicated is because of the psychology at the time. Marketers often search out the best scenarios in which to operate in for the best result. But marketing is not just a simple wave of the flag, or attention grabber, it’s a fully orchestrated symphony of signals that is supposed to achieve the same end. The most successful vendor in a convention or trade show floor is the one who does not understand sales, but who understands the microcosm that trade show floors are. UrineOff provided the most convenient and biggest carrier for all you free stuff (swag). A hacker in Las Vegas, was able to guess my subconscious thought that the male to female ratio was over 4:1. A deck and patio manufacturer may have had enough floor experience to know that interior decorators are a dime a dozen, and that his product represented everything great about the home building experience for men. For any other marketing situation, these would have been out of place, weird and even inappropriate but they nailed it, at least with me.
Marketers, just like business school students, are always trying to one up each other, and tend to be more concerned with image than anything. Marketing also uses people’s natural politeness to their advantage. But when people are bombarded and on the border of ad nauseum (pun intended), there is a vacuum that can be filled with a little generosity by marketers. Trade shows are exhausting, competitive and ironically solitary, so why not be the epitome of helpfulness while also achieving your objectives?
Green Marketing: FAIL
January 9th, 2010
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| I was reading up on Foursquare on the Washington Post, a social networking tool that adds competition amongst users with a point system, when I saw this ad (right) from Ford :
So I did, in fact,”*Roll over for info” and then saw the second screen (below) What? So you want us to buy a vehicle from you because you saved money by reducing water usage like the rest of us and fired at least 3800 employees in 2009 alone? |
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| If you are going to spend money on advertising, come up with something greener than unemployment and common sense savings.
It also doesn’t inspire much confidence when you’re talking about a resource that is not by any means in shortage in your area. Michigan is surrounded by the largest amount of fresh water on Earth. It’s the equivalent of Siberia claiming they melted less snow this year than last. It’s not as bad as some greenwashing, but I think the reason it is so heinous is because of this specific industry, pulling a green campaign from the ABSOLUTELY lowest fruit that their region would have provided anyway. Let’s hope that Ford, the only non-bankrupt auto manufacturer in the USA, can do a little more than make $1 and turn off the taps when done washing… |
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How to SMS Text Your Friends in the USA Free
January 8th, 2010
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| Skype and other providers of VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) charge for SMS messages, which are technologically similar to e-mails, Google Voice (GV) is a great solution for those in the USA to bypass their mobile providers and use their smartphone (Blackberry, Android OS Phone) to send text messages via their data plan. But by default GV forwards the messages to your phone and you text back using GV as an old school phone operator relaying the message to your intended recipient. This is great until you run into international roaming where texts can run up your bill fast, and even get charged to receive them! So in my constant conquest to reduce my mobile bill to pennies I worked this out: | |
You will need the following:
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There you have it, free SMS to and from the USA with only minor changes in the way you text. And of course, you can always text like you used to. Feel free to post questions below. |
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The 10 Technologies That Will Rock 2010… Or Fizzle
January 6th, 2010
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TechCrunch just posted an article about the next 10 technologies that are supposed to rock ’10. The list is:
- The Tablet PC
- Geo
- Realtime Search
- Chrome OS
- HTML5
- Mobile Video
- Augmented Reality
- Mobile Transactions
- Android
- Social CRM
I’ll give Erick Schonfeld credit for coming up with a good list, and a great title too (which I completely stole) but there are a few emerging on this list that won’t rock 2010, in fact they’ll probably flop and be found on eBay shortly.
First, the Tablet PC has been around for a while and hasn’t blown up in a good way yet. They are still too heavy for ease of use and the term tablet doesn’t help any. I’m thinking of the Flintstones… Let’s also remember that thinner tablets are improvements, but that doesn’t always mean much lighter. Think of the weight of the iPhone 3GS at 135 grams, and the new Apple iSlate tablet is reported to have a 10 or 11 inch screen. Assuming similar technology, and let’s hope that it is more than a glorified iPhone, at 16:9 aspect ratio this will make it at least (with generous assumptions) double the weight of the iPhone. With a screen that won’t be very productive due to size and the obvious laptop competition it seems like a good idea in theory, but in practice will suffer the same fate as the Segway. UPDATE: Lenovo may have a hybrid laptop/tablet that might defy my prediction.
Geo is great, useful and the infrastructure is already there, and definitely will ‘Rock 2010′.
Realtime Search – Already underway and if search providers can manage to rank them like normal search results perhaps by scanning the included links to prevent erroneous Twitter keyword stuffing then we will see the true live web come to life.
Chrome OS is slated to be a huge deal, but not everything Google touches turns to gold; remember Google Radio Ads? Chrome Browser has done well and recently surpassed Safari, Apple’s browser that made a splash a few years ago. Some issues with Windows 7 and Adobe Flash have plagued it but they tend not be widespread.
Safari vs Chrome Market Share
HTML5? Look, I am a bona fide computer nerd, but even I find this stuff boring. It may perform well, but no one is going to jump up and down about how great HTML5 is. I doubt it will rock 2010, but will merely go as planned.
Mobile Video – Verizon Wireless (US) has been trying to push this for years and it has done OK, but doubtful it will rock 2010. Mobile screens are too small to enjoy worthwhile content (and ad space) and coupled with poor sound quality it is less likely to engage users/viewers with the intensity of their new 50 inch flat screens.
Augmented Reality will be huge. Couple this with Google Maps and their famous Street View, you have a whole new platform. Much like Second Life was hyped for a while, Augmented Reality will be your first life, digitized and layered with more information that you ever need to know. Add Geo into the mix and it’s barely virtual reality, it’s just better reality.
Mobile Transactions are close, but I’m guessing 2011. It must be remembered that anyone that has worked the phone banks at a successful dot com will tell you over and over again that people use their mobile phones to call to order a product they see on the internet right in front of them. Credit card fraud is an issue and the same psychology will apply to their phones. Just a note to those that do this: Every order that is placed over the phone gets processed online anyway. Do you think they mail in their credit card requests?
Android – I personally LOVE Google’s mobile phone OS, Android. Why will it rock 2010? It has an open platform, great interface and it is light years ahead of Blackberry and Palm. It beats iPhone in most user tests (once the branding aspect is removed), and it is on the same path as Windows to beat Apple again.
Social CRM – Customer Relationship Management is hard enough already, but the disambiguation effect makes it harder to please someone. Helping customers on Twitter is great, but it is the equivalent of yelling across the room to help someone with a private problem. There is a right way and a wrong way to do it. This will be the future of CRM, but 2010 is a bit early to call it rockin‘.
So the 5 Technologies That Will Rock 2010?
- Geo
- Realtime Search
- Chrome OS
- Augmented Reality
- Android
The others? Nah….
