Small Businesses Consider Facebook, Other Online Marketing Channels "Highly Effective"

The sixth "Merchant Confidence Index" survey of 4,942 small business owners and managers shows that small business managers use a wide variety of online marketing channels, lead by Facebook, but also including Google, LinkedIn, Google Places, Twitter and other applications.

Profiles on social network sites are deemed the "most effective" channel, but email, local review sites and online Yellow Pages are considered among the most-effective channels used by small businesses.

MerchantCircle.com

Being Too Early is as Dangerous as Being Too Late

Former Time Warner CEO Gerald Levin thinks the AOL-Huffington Post deal ironically fulfills the vision Time Warner originally had for merging AOL with Time Warner.

"Time Warner was basically a content distribution company and AOL was a digital service company and putting the two together was intended to put an Internet injection into Time Warner," he says. "It didn’t exactly work out that way, but the intention was really significant."

But he thinks, a decade later, that the strategy will work, or at least has a reasonable chance of working, where the Time Warner merger with AOL is widely viewed to have been a failure. Being too early is as dangerous as being too late.

Former Time Warner CEO on “delicious ironies” of AOL-HuffPo Merger

Time Warner Cable Sees Opportunity in 'Single Play' Broadband Business - WSJ.com

"'We've become less of a TV company than we were previously,"said Glenn Britt, Time Warner Cable CEO recently said, adding that the company's focus has shifted more toward its role as a provider of infrastructure for the delivery of media. That might have been an odd statement 10 years ago, when both cable companies and telcos began to find that the competitive market was forcing a rethinking of product bundling.

In a monopoly environment, with high end user penetration, it is rational to build networks that have only a single service to sell. That used to be the case for cable operators selling video entertainment, or telcos selling voice. In a competitive environment, with multiple providers, any provider can expect penetration ranging from 20 percent for any major new service, and a declining share of the original legacy business, if there was one.

For a cable company or telco, that has meant selling multiple products to a smaller base of customers. That's why triple play or double play packages have become so important in recent years. Now, though, even that strategy requires revision. Once a network has been built, and a company has gotten about as many triple play or dual play customers as it can, it makes sense to avoid stranding assets by selling single services, if one can, to customers that have chosen to buy a key service from another provider.

In cable's case, that means acknowledging that, for many customers, a satellite service simply makes more sense, and that some customers will not give up their satellite TV services for a terrestrial alternative. So Time Warner Cable now wants to "take what the market will give it" by focusing new market attention on "broadband only" sales to customers unlikely to abandon their video or voice services providers.

That is not to say the fundamental economics of a broadband fixed-line network do not require healthy triple play or dual play sales. That still is necessary, under conditions where other contestants are going to get significant market share. But neither does it make sense to strand assets when some percentage of customers can be enticed to buy a single product, in cable's case broadband access.

There is another interesting nuggest in Britt's remarks, though. Note the statement about Time Warner Cable's overall "role as a provider of infrastructure for the delivery of media." That's a flat out acknowledgement that the growing part of Time Warner Cable's business is the "dumb pipe" part, broadband access, not entertainment video or voice.

Protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, Britt is correct. Time Warner Cable is close to the point where its "dumb pipe" customers will equal the number of legacy video customers. The company has about two million customers who buy broadband access, but not video. It has 12.5 million video customers.

There is something else to be gleaned here. Britt noted that about half its "broadband only" customers were business accounts. So although Time Warner Cable expects to sell more "broadband only" accounts to residences, it likely also will find it is selling more business access accounts as well.

So not only is Time Warner Cable shifting from "video first" to possibly "video or broadband first," it also is shifting towards sales to business customers, where its legacy business has been consumer focused. That is not to say either cable or telco service providers will not strive mightily to create other new revenue streams. It is to say that "dumb pipe" remains foundational to the overall business.

Time Warner Cable Sees Opportunity in 'Single Play' Broadband Business - WSJ.com

SMS Growth Slows, Some Worry

Text messaging has been one of the most profitable services for carriers for years with profit margins reaching 80 percent, but growth is slowing.

The most-recent data from the CTIA suggests growth of about nine percent. That shouldn't surprise. Text messaging is a universal feature of all phones, and texting has grown quite popular. But no market grows indefinitely.

Apple's recent announcement of its own iOS messaging capability obviously has people wondering whether that capability will eat into carrier text messaging revenue. It's hard to say. Captive services are useful within the iOS community, but few captive communications media achieve widespread use until there is full interoperability.

At least in the U.S. market, many users have text messaging plans that are functionally or actually "unlimited," eliminating the economic driver to substitute iOS messaging for text messaging.

As SMS growth is slowing down, is a new era of free messaging coming up?

How Do Consumers Gain Power Over Sellers?

A study fielded in May 2011 with 502 small business, mid-market and enterprise respondents worldwide has some interesting implications for content marketers and the role of content in the sales process.

As you might expect, the top concern overall was "changes in costs to deliver current products or services," such as competitors with lower cost structures that are able to deliver competitive products at lower retail prices. Some 29 percent of respondents suggested they were "fully or very exposed" to such dangers.

But the second most important source of potential revenue disruption was "increased customer bargaining power, gained directly by their access to better information about product offerings and alternatives." Some 28 percent of respondents reported they were "fully or very exposed" to such dangers.

In other words, competitors selling at lower prices and greater buyer knowledge were nearly equal in terms of dangers to revenue models. That should reinforce the notion that potential buyers have to be reached, indirectly, through web channels, as those prospects conduct buying research, since these actions occur before a brand is aware a prospect is in the market.

Read the full study here

Sprint to Introduce 10 New Motorola Devices using Android

Sprint and its prepaid brands of Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile USA will launch more than 10 new Motorola wireless devices in 2011, all using Android, and including smartphones, tablets and best-in-class Push-to-Talk devices.

Two new devices were announced June 9, 2011, including the iconic Motorola PHOTON 4G, Motorola’s first Sprint 4G device with a dual-core 1GHz processor, Android 2.3, Sprint ID and worldphone capabilities, and Motorola TRIUMPH, the first Virgin Mobile USA device from Motorola.

Sprint and Motorola Forge Renewed Business Relationship That Extends Device Innovation

Google's Enterprise Vision: Mobile First, In the Cloud

The meeting is the staple of corporate life. But lots of people would argue most of the meetings are counter productive.

Google's enterprise vision is to leverage mobility and the cloud to change the fundamental way people work. Workforce productivity used to be about how you can optimize individual output. Google thinks that by putting all that functionality into a cloud environment, workers can use whatever device they want and always be working as a group towards on the mission.

A faster, more secure, more cost efficient workplace will be the result, the thinking goes.

Google's Enterprise Vision: Mobile First, In the Cloud

Sprint Confirms 4G Upload Speed Boost

In an email to Phone Scoop, Sprint spokesperson Stephanie Vinge confirmed that the company plans to increase the upload speeds available on its 4G network. "Soon the uplink speed cap on all existing Sprint dual mode and single mode 4G mobile devices will be increased from 1.0 to 1.5 Mbps. Customers may notice uplink speeds as much as 50 percent faster after the speed cap is raised."

Sprint Confirms WiMax Upload Speed Boost

Visa Makes Big Move into Developing Market Mobile Banking

Visa Inc. is acquiring Fundamo, a leading platform provider of mobile financial services for mobile network operators and financial institutions in developing economies. It also announced a new, long-term commercial agreement with Monitise plc, a leading provider of mobile money solutions for financial institutions in more developed geographies.

The investments illustrate Visa’s conviction that mobile financial services of many types, not just mobile retail payments, are part of its future.

Fundamo's platform enables the delivery of mobile financial services to un-banked and under-banked consumers around the world--including person-to-person payment, airtime top-up, bill payment and branch-less banking services, Visa says.

The combined Visa Fundamo platform will add enhanced functionality and new services to existing mobile financial services subscribers across Africa, Asia and Latin America for safe, reliable and globally accepted payments solutions.

Privately held, Cape Town, South Africa-based Fundamo has more than 50 active mobile financial services deployments across more than 40 countries, including 27 countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

Fundamo's deployments currently have a base of more than five million registered subscribers and the potential to reach more than 180 million consumers with mobile financial services. Mobile prepaid payments provide affordable, convenient and secure transaction capabilities that are transformational to the lives of merchants and consumers in those regions.

Visa will pay approximately $110 million in cash. The acquisition is expected to close today, and is slightly dilutive to Visa's earnings per share in its fiscal year 2011 ending September 30, 2011.

Visa says the expanding relationship with Monitise will enable the company to deliver mobile financial services and payments capabilities to consumers across the full spectrum of uses, geographies and mobile environments from basic services on simple handsets to more advanced services for smart phone owners.

The Monitise deal is aimed at consumers in developed economies, and will include features such as mobile top-up, utility payments, and transit ticketing.

In addition, the two companies will launch a full suite of mobile banking services - including P2P payments, SMS alerts and loyalty offers for clients of Visa's debit and prepaid processing platform.

Visa acquired a 14.4 percent stake in Monitise in 2009 and the pair struck a strategic development deal in February.

http://corporate.visa.com/media-center/press-releases/press1128.jsp

How Can Cloud Services Best be Sold?

If we are indeed moving towards an era of computing where "cloud" is the dominant architecture, you have to ask how such services will be sold to enterprises, small business and consumers. You might logically conclude that cloud-based services will be sold in much the same way current products are sold to each of those market segments.

That is to say, enterprise sales often are sold by direct sales forces; small businesses are served by channel partners and consumers mostly are reached using online and mass media channels. The new wrinkles are that cloud services have a logical relationship to mobile devices, mobile apps and online provisioning, compared to older services and business applications.

"So far, no one that I am aware of has found a way of selling cloud services around the channel in any volume to SMBs without an army of out-bound telesales or field sales people of their own," argues Dale Vile, CEO of Freeform Dynamics. It’s hard to achieve serious scale that way, and without scale, the cloud model doesn’t work well economically."

'Backward' resellers impede cloud progress. Yeah, right • Channel Register

Sprint Reduces Clearwire Voting Stake

On June 1, 2011, Sprint Nextel Corporation notified Clearwire Corporation of its decision to voluntarily surrender Class B voting shares in Clearwire, to reduce its voting interest in Clearwire from approximately 54 percent to approximately 49.8 percent.

Sprint retains its 54 percent ownership of Clearwire, but the voluntarily reduction of voting shares protects Sprint in case Clearwire declares bankruptcy.

The latest move by Sprint illustrates the odd nature of the relationship an strategy, the ultimate wisdom of which is something it will take some years to assess with any certainty. One can argue in retrospect that pooling Sprint's spectrum with Clearwire's assets to create the expanded company was a rational effort to achieve a several year lead in fourth generation services. One also can argue that the move, which ceded managerial control even as Sprint gained 54 percent of the ownership rights, was a mistake.

One can argue it was a reasonable effort to steal a lead in the 4G market, which now looks to be less significant only because the strategy provided only about a two-year lead, and less than that in strategic terms, given the early choice of WiMAX as the air interface, given the rest of the industry's selection of Long Term Evolution as the 4G air interface.

Hindsight is perfect, of course.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1442505/000095012311057433/v59385e8vk.htm

"'Pretty Good" Year forBroadband Plan

Blair Levin, former executive director of the FCC's National Broadband Plan, says that it has been a "pretty good year" for the plan. Spectrum allocations, Universal Service Fund reform and rights-of-way reform are the key areas where work remains to be done.

Levin said he thought the debate had gone "off track" on the spectrum reform issue. He said the issue to resolve is not whether to reallocate spectrum, but how to reallocate it on an ongoing basis to serve evolving needs.

Asked whether broadcasters are sitting on underutilized capital, he said some are and some aren't, but that the market should determine whether, post cable and Internet, there was still a need for 25 or 30 TV stations in New York. For the 25th broadcaster in New York, it may be more valuable to sell the spectrum, he suggested.

The thing about big policy proposals and plans is that any changes are going to help some industry segments and firms, and hurt some segments and firms. The National Broadband Plan isn't different in that regard. Firms and industries that reckon they will be harmed will fight, vociferously against the changes.

Levin: 'Pretty Good' Year forBroadband Plan

Cloud Computing Creeps into Enterprise

As has been the trend recently, end users are bringing new technology to their workplaces, and cloud services seem to be the most-recent new developments. About 20 percent of 573 C-level executives in 18 countries say they have personally purchased a cloud service without the IT department’s knowledge.

While 60 percent of companies report they have policies in place that prohibit such actions,
respondents say there are no real deterrents for purchasing cloud services by stealth. In fact, 29 percent report there are no ramifications whatsoever while another 48 percent say it is little more than a warning.

The survey also shows private cloud deployments are growing, especially where critical, differentiating internal operations and customer services are at stake. Today, 43 percent of companies report they use private cloud services, while an additional 34 percent say they will begin to do so in the next six to 12 months.

The survey, conducted by Kelton Research on behalf of Avenade, also shows that 74 percent of companies are using some form of cloud services today, a 25 percent growth in adoption since Avanade’s September 2009 survey.

Facebook is Big, Statistically

Content Is Currency

In explaining why content marketing is important, I have in the past argued that all buyers these days, both in their roles as consumers and buyers of business products, routinely search online for information when they've decided they need to buy something to solve a problem they have.

The issue for suppliers is that such buying processes start before any supplier's selling process can begin. If that is the case, suppliers need to be visible and credible during the research process, when buyers are making decisions that will eliminate most solutions and suppliers.

But there is another angle: people are very busy, and must contend with a very-chaotic and rich media environment. In other words, people now are bombarded incessantly with messages, making it harder to get attention.

Content becomes the conduit to earn consumer attention, the currency, if you will, that creates the marketer's side of the value exchange, argues Jason Heller at MediaPost.

MediaPost Publications Content Is Currency - How Wealthy Is Your Brand?