The Top 25 "Most Social" U.S. Cities

Some of the cities where social applications are most often used are probably obvious. But lots of communities are not.

http://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-americas-25-most-social-cities-2011-7?op=1

U.S. Debt Downgrade Seems Inevitable at This Point

All three major credit-rating firms have threatened to lower their top triple-A rating on U.S. debt if the White House and Congress don't come to an agreement to raise the debt ceiling. We now have a total of eight days to get legislation written and passed, and in any case, the rating agencies will require both spending cuts that seem unreachable, as well as some reasonable assurance that actual will to get spending under control exists.

At the moment, neither of those requirements seems to exist. Get ready: U.S. debt is about to get a historic downgrade.

Why Tablet Commerce May Soon Trump Mobile Commerce

Mobile commerce and mobile app use now has become a sort of bifurcated phenomenon. Traditionally, "mobile" tended to refer to use of mobile phones to support some category of usage. These days, "mobile" apps and usage refer both to mobile "small screen" devices and "larger screen" tablets, plus notebook and other "large screens" used in an tether-less context.

And there now is some thinking that widespread use of tablet devices could change user behavior in the e-commerce area. Ownership of tablet devices in the U.S. market, for example, is estimated by Forrester Research to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 51 percent from 2010 to 2015. So why might that matter?

Arguably most e-commerce takes place on PC type screens, though more commerce, especially digital content sales, happens on mobile phones and smaller screen devices such as iPods. So the obvious question is how behavior could change as more users have tablet-sized screens with them in a mobile and untethered context. Inside the home or office, it is likely that more e-commerce will start to occur on tablets simply because those are the devices people carry with them.

Outside the home or office, there might be greater e-commerce activity, though one suspects much of that activity will consist of digital goods purchases, ranging from books to music to games to digital products used in the context of gaming.

Forrester expects that as tablet device ownership and usage grows, consumers will also adopt tablet commerce rapidly, as this simple and portable device both expands the opportunities that consumers have to shop and has the potential to make the experience of shopping more engaging.

Furthermore, the most-innovative web retailers will also accelerate the tablet commerce trend by using tablets to supplement existing sales tools (e.g., kiosks, POS devices, even sales associates) in stores.

Why Tablet Commerce May Soon Trump Mobile Commerce

Google+ "Real Names" and Identities is an Issue for Some

Google has come under some criticism by users for not allowing pseudonyms of various types, such as names using odd characters or fake names. Google VP Vic Gundotra acknowledges the issue, but says the issue is not "use of pseudonyms.

He says, instead, it is about having common names and removing people who spell their names in weird ways, like using upside-down characters, or who are using obviously fake names, like 'god' or worse. That might be a design philosophy aligned with Google+ efforts to connect real people in natural ways. That task arguably is harder, or subject to "gaming," if "non-real" or "non-natural" names are used.

Gundotra says Google has made some mistakes, in that regard, while doing the first pass at Google+ and that they are learning. The issue is different from the "anonymous" poster or anonymous identity considerations that in some cases can be important.

Robert Scoble - Google+

Mobile Banking: Tangible Benefits in Africa

"It may seem unlikely, given its track record in technological development, but Africa is at the center of a mobile revolution," says a report published in the Guardian. The most dramatic example of this is mobile banking.

Africa's mobile economic revolution

Google Sites Makes It Easier to Build a Mobile Site

"The Google Sites mobile experience also got an upgrade. We added five new mobile site templates to make it easy to build and launch a site that looks great on the small screen. This video explains how.

Official Google Blog: Google Apps

How Coca-Cola Sees All Media Efforts

Coca-Cola may have far more budget and resources than most companies.  


One of the key parts of the Coca-Cola approach to media is the use of three domains: paid (advertising), earned (social media), owned (brand events, sites) that in many cases overlap.



As Wendy Clark, SVP of Integrated Marketing and Communication for Coca-Cola will tell you, media is viewed as paid, earned, owned, and shared. 


This is not at all unique to Coke, but certainly sets the stage for understanding how the company views and segments its overall marketing. Read more here.



In past decades, earned media would primarily have been seen as “stories in newspapers, magazines, on radio or TV.” Notice the change: all the “earned” exposure is earned on social media.

Coca-Cola’s concept of “liquid” means the company’s content is produced in a framework of dynamic storytelling that has a natural affinity to go to the furthest points possible. They are thinking strictly in terms of how the content they produce will be shareable, how it will relevantly flow across networks, cultures, and personal touch points.



Also, part of the thinking is profoundly social, in the sense that brand advocates are among the desired outcomes. Joe Tripodi, EVP and Chief Marketing Officer of Coca-Cola, says that “awareness is fine, but advocacy will take your business to the next level.”



“I used to think that loyalty was the highest rung on the consumer pyramid until I became the CMO of Allstate Insurance,” he says. “There, I saw clearly that so much business was driven through personal referrals and advocacy by individuals for their agent.”

The Social Media Bubble

Venture capital king Ben Horowitz, who apparently engineered Skype’s $8.5 billion sale to Microsoft, says there is no Internet investing bubble, for a number of reasons. “With costs 100 times lower, programmer productivity 10 times higher, and the market 50 times larger, it stands to reason that many more Internet businesses will work today than the last time around,” he argues.

Moreover, “software is eating the world,” transforming or obliterating industries like print publishing, music distribution, radio, and direct marketing, he notes. With so much new business right around the corner, he argued that the high stock prices attached to social media “have not become completely divorced from any rational thought."

What happens in bubbles is that people come up with all kinds of reasons why valuations that seem out of whack really are not out of whack.

The Social Media Bubble

Why Google is Great for SEO

"Having done some digging with the rest of the team at PR company Punch to find out a bit more about how it works, we found that Google is a great source of links that can be used for SEO benefit," says Alex Smith at Punch Communications. "Google has opted to allow links that pass page rank in contrast to the other major networks such as Facebook and Twitter which only allow links that Google’s spiders can’t follow, and I think it’s likely that this could be part of the Google project strategy to grow as big as the two social media giants."

Why Google is Great for SEO

Bad Tweets Can Cost an Enterprise $4 Million

Symantec's 2011 Social Media Protection Flash Poll shows how expensive leaked information on social media really can be and a bad Tweet can cost a company as much as $4 million.

The typical enterprise experienced nine social media incidents, such as employees posting confidential information publicly over the past year, with 94 percent suffering negative consequences including damage to their reputations, loss of customer trust, data loss and lost revenue. http://www.symantec.com/about/news/release/article.jsp?prid=20110721_01

Social media incidents cost a typical company $4 million over the past 12 months, Symantec estimates. More than 90 percent of respondents who experienced a social media incident also suffered negative consequences as a result, including:
reduced stock price (average cost: $1,038,401 USD), litigation costs (average cost: $650,361 USD), direct financial costs (average cost: $641,993 USD), damaged brand reputation/loss of customer trust (average cost: $638,496 USD) and lost revenue (average cost: $619,360 USD).

The survey found the top three social media incidents:
Employees sharing too much information in public forums (46 percent),
The loss or exposure of confidential information (41%).
Increased exposure to litigation (37%)

Bad Tweet = $4Million Loss

The Top Sites for Social Media Marketing Trends

Where do 230 brand managers, executives, and marketing professionals turn for information on social media?

The Top 10 Marketing Sites for Social Media Marketing Trends

Google+ Isn't Ready for Business Accounts, Google Says, and Means It

Google says its Google+ service still isn't optimized for business accounts, and apparently means it. Google removed pages set up by Sesame Street and Ford Motor Company, Mashable and Search Engine Land. The reason, Google manager Christian Oestlien later explained in a post and a YouTube video, was that the “platform at the moment is not built for the business use case.” He promised that the company would continue to disable such profiles until the network rolled out a business option in the “next few months.”

Spat of the Day: Google Removes Business Profiles (subscription required)

Google "Doesn't Get Social"?

Is Google Finally a "Social" Company?

One Way to Explain What You Do

Accedian probably gets asked quite a lot what a "NID" is.