Watch Out When Valuations Aren't Based on Earnings

There isn't a social media bubble, a PwC consultant says. But watch out when experts start using metrics other than those based on earnings. That's what happened during the 1999 technology bubble as well. People started inventing metrics not based on earnings, because there were no earnings.

Obviously, some firms do have actual earnings. But many do not. So beware when people start saying "price to earnings" ratios aren't the best way to value firms. That's the same slippery slope that lead to disaster last time. PwC partner Ian Coleman says "value per user" is a reasonable way to value firms. Watch out. That's bubble talk.

PwC: This Is Not A Bubble, Valuations May Be Justified

How Small Businesses Look for Customers

Fully 86 percent of small and mid-sized businesses (500 employees or fewer) rely on their websites to look for new customers, a survey of 300 business managers and owners suggests.

But small business owners and managers use a wide range of channels to look for new customers, a study by Bredin Business Information suggests.

But 74 percent use email and search marketing. Some 57 percent use blogs and LinkedIn.  As you might guess, executives are not as satisfied with the channels as they want to be.

But given typical marketing industry rules of thumb, virtually all of the channels are effective. For example, you might think the fact that 29 percent of respondents think blogs and other forms of social media are effective, a huge drop from the 2010 surveys, as an indication that the channels "don't work."

But compared to a direct response "success" rate of perhaps one percent, 29 percent effectiveness is quite high. Still, the 2011 survey results indicate that an initial burst of enthusiasm in 2010 for various forms of social media now has settled down.

That's normal for any emerging channel: there is too much optimism at first. Then reality sets in and marketers learn to use each tool in the right way, with reasonable expectations.

http://www.bbionline.com/press_05032011.htm

Shopping has Become More Social

A study by Yahoo finds that consumers are less impulsive in their shopping behavior because of the Internet, but also has become much more social, with 49 percent of users sharing their views and opinions about products.

Consumers routinely are checking consumer and expert reviews before committing to purchases, for example, and social networks are a particular enabler of such sharing.

"We found that 49 percent of consumers give advice to others, motivated by a feeling of solidarity with other shoppers," the Yahoo study says.

Long and Winding Road: The Gamesmanship of Shopping

25 ways IT will morph in the next 25 years

With the caveat that futurists often are quite wrong (we were supposed to be flying instead of driving cars by this time), the next 25 years might include dramatic changes in the computing fabric, including smart phones with the processing power of supercomputing and personal fixed terabit and gigabit mobile connections, some predict.

25 ways IT will morph in the next 25 years

But 25 years is a long time in technology. By 2020, the Internet might have evolved in ways that are more linear extrapolations of today's trends. See http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/010410-outlook-vision-predictions.html?page=2.

Will Google Make the "Tablet" a Peripheral?

Motorola's Atrix is a smartphone that docks to a "notebook" peripheral. Will Google try something similar, and make an Android the central processor for a "tablet" that is a display? It is at least possible, given some new intellectual property Google has purchased.

Patents Google seems to have purchased would allow a smartphone to Though the drive any number of "peripherals," ranging from tablets to notebooks to typical PC peripherals or machine to machine devices. Though the notion will be unsettling to many within the consumer electronics and computing ecosystems, such a move would make sense for several reasons, among them more options to deal with the issues of screen size, battery life and input-output choices from the one device everybody carries with them, all the time.

Google buys Modu's patent portfolio for $4.7 million

Such an approach would "solve" a problem many users might have, namely the requirement to carry multiple devices, in a variety of form factors, when traveling or out of the office. As a practical matter, many simply solve the problem by carrying only a smart phone most of the time, then swapping a tablet for a notebook when away from the desk for longer periods, making the smart phone and the tablet the two essential devices.

Traveling then raises the issue of which other devices one chooses to carry, in addition to those two. The ability to dock a powerful smart phone with peripherals could make some of the choices easier, and should, in principle, also reduce the cost of the overall set of solutions.

http://www.intomobile.com/2011/05/22/handson-htc-flyer-tablet-7inch-screen-15-ghz-and-stylus/

What Does 100 Mbps Cost?

Here's an example of what Internet access costs in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. Policy advocates will tend to point to such examples to argue that municipalities should be allowed to compete directly with private Internet service providers. Commercial providers will tend to say government should not compete with private firms when a market for services clearly exists.

Whatever you think of the policy issues, there is something else equally important. It is one thing to argue that, as a matter of policy, everyone should be able to buy access, at affordable rates, it is quite another to get agreement on what "access" or "affordable" means.

"Reasonable cost" is at least in part a simple matter of price transparency. In a triple play, the actual "cost" of a component is an accounting exercise. Still, what is "reasonable" changes over time. At any given point in time, however, there typically is a gap between the pricing of consumer services and business services, at least in part because the business services are offered with quality of service assurances and a higher level of service overall.

But it wouldn't be unusual for price differences between a business class service and a consumer class service to amount to an order of magnitude. Even a municipal provider might have to maintain those sorts of price relationships.

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=21696

AT&T and Verizon: Where is the Growth?

Every now and then it is useful to reflect on actual revenue trends for the two U.S. telecom firms that represent the clear majority of all telecom revenue on an annual basis.

So put yourself into the position of running one of those two companies, take a look at where your revenue is, where the growth is, and then ask yourself how much money you'd be willing to invest in your various lines of business.

At Verizon, over the past two years, fixed line voice revenues have declined from 21 percent of total revenue to 19 percent. At AT&T voice revenues have dropped from 24 percent in 2010 to 21 percent in 2011.

At Verizon, wireless revenue has grown from 58 percent of total revenue in 2009 to 63 percent in early 2011. At AT&T, wireless revenue has grown from 46 percent to 49 percent in a year.

Equally important, mass markets revenue, which includes consumer and small business revenue, has remained flat at Verizon over the past year. So has "small business" revenue. Enterprise revenue likewise was flat, year over year.

At AT&T, though, business services revenue (IP data)  was up 19 percent. U-verse revenue was up , the most significant element being IP revenues, up 26 percent year over year.

A rational manager might well conclude that incremental resources should be plowed into wireless and enterprise services, resources should be decreased in voice and maintained in broadband access, since that is where the revenue growth is. Even within the "IP" services segments, though, video might be the single most significant product, in terms of growth.

Other service providers, with different customer profiles and assets, will have to consider different choices.  

Verizon LTE: Another Outage?

There are reports of another Verizon LTE network on the morning of May 21, 2011, though the outages appear to be regional in scope. HTC Thunderbolt and Samsung Droid Charge users might be stuck using 3G for a while.

The upside is that users will appreciate their 4G connection even more after they've had to live with 3G for a bit. It's amazing how painful it feels.

Verizon LTE on the fritz again

78% of Tablets to Ship with 3G or 4G in 2015?

By 2015, about 78 percent of tablets will ship to retailers with an embedded 3G or 4G modem, according to In-Stat. That doesn't mean consumers will activate the connections, of course, but does suggest the potential for access subscriptions.

In-Stat - Press Releases

Best Buy to Support "Shopkick" Location Based Service

Starting May 22nd, 2011, Best Buy customers using the "Shopkick" mobile app on their Androids or iPhones will be rewarded with "kicks" currency when they walk into any of the almost 1,300 Best Buy stores.

Shopkick is a rewards program and place-based marketing service that automatically rewards users for entering stores such as Target, Best Buy, Macy's, American Eagle, Sports Authority, Crate&Barrel, West Elm and Wet Seal, in 80 major markets, or for eating at restaurants, for example.

Retail partners get a promotion vehicle, as offers and promotions are supplied to each user depending on where they are. Users get extra "kicks" by scanning barcodes of featured products, for example.

The Shopkick app works in combination with a supplementary signal shopkick broadcasts within the store, that is more accurate than either cell phone radio signals or even GPS. The inaudible sound verifys that a user is in the store, and rewards him or her with Shopkicks currency.



https://market.android.com/details?id=com.shopkick.app&feature=search_result

Email Leads to Most Shopping Cart Purchases

At the shopping cart, email represents more than half of the traffic (57 percent), while direct traffic contributes 18 percent and display advertising is a meager 1.7 percent, says SeeWhy. Given those numbers, it is not surprising that 67 percent of conversions came from email and 24 percent direct to the website.

Those findings came from a study of 60,000 completed e-commerce transactions across multiple sites in February 2011. You might wonder why those results are found, given the wide range of existing channels. 

SeeWhy says that customers that are familiar with the brand, having previously purchased or signed up for emails, are the best source of traffic for conversions when you email them. Direct traffic conversions might be explained by the suggestion that customers that enter the site directly already have done all their shopping research, and are about to make a purchase.The other caveat is that attributing a sale to the last channel used can be misleading, as one doesn't know all the preceding contacts a prospect has had with a brand.

Is Your Website a Bucket or a Sieve?

Verizon: No 3G Handoff for 4G Calls

Verizon Wireless does not plan to let voice calls placed over its LTE network roam on to its CDMA network when it introduces voice over LTE (VoLTE) smartphones next year. "VoLTE will not hand down to 1X," Verizon Wireless product development executive Marjorie Hsu said. 1X is Verizon's 3G network air interface.

That limitation will be a negative for some potential LTE users, at least up to about 2013, when Verizon expects to have its LTE footprint identical in coverage to its current 3G footprint by then.

But the decision does point out the issues of making a transition from one air interface to another. Verizon could handle the handoffs, but only at the cost of increased complexity.

Verizon: No 3G Handoff for VoLTE Calls | Wireless Week

3 Tablet Games for Cats

Nestle Purina's pet nutrition brand Friskies launched three HTML5- based web games for cats this week, designed for use on tablets and other touchscreen devices.

According to Friskies, the games, called Cat Fishing, Tasty Treasures Hunt, and Party Mix-Up, have been researched and tested to appeal to cats' presumably discerning taste in mobile entertainment. Accessible at Gameforcats.com, the games involve the player tapping moving objects as they maneuver about the screen, including fish and other animals, as well as Friskies products. Cats that use Facebook are also prompted to join discussion around the brand there. Indeed, there's a Facebook call-to-action on the home screen for all three games.

Though the demos of the games on the Friskies site all appear on iPad devices, the experiences are built entirely in HTML5, making them functional on almost any device or browser that supports the technology, such as Android tablets and smartphones.

http://www.friskies.com/Today-We-Play

Line of Business Execs Frequently Buy SaaS Services in Enterprise

A Forrester Research survey of 1,000 firms in North America and Europe recently found that 23 percent of firms use software as a service, with 11 percent of these respondents indicating that they are expanding usage. An additional eight percent planned to implement SaaS within a year’s time frame.

The greatest SaaS usage is in horizontal business process areas, such as customer relationship management or human relations, says Liz Herbert, Forrester Research analyst. But sales automation, customer support, recruiting and performance management in the cloud also are being used in a SaaS mode.

Lots of Marketing Statistics

100 Awesome Marketing Stats, Charts and Graphs

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