Social Media Drives Restaurant Spending

A study of restaurant consumers by Ogilvy and ChatThreads shows that individuals exposed to social content are significantly more likely to increase their spending and consumption than those who aren't exposed.

There was a 2-7 times greater likelihood of higher spending or consumption depending on the media encountered by the study group. The sales impact was most pervasive when social content was combined with other types of media such as press releases, out-of-home media and TV advertising.

Additionally, out of over 20 channels studied, social content exposure was associated with the largest shift in brand perception during a seven-day period.



Despite these strong social content impact findings, consumers are seeing relatively little branded social content during their daily routine. Only 24 percent  of the study group reported exposure to social content, compared to a 69 percent exposure rate to TV ads.

The final report is available  here.

Ogilvy ChatThreads Social Media Sales Impact Study 2011

View more documents from 360 Digital Influence, Ogilvy PR Worldwide

Chime.in Will Try to Solve Relevance, Monetization Problems

Marketers might not be too terribly excited to learn that yet one more social network is launching. Chime.in will use a 250-character plus one image format, plus a topical format that organizes information contributed to the social network based on interests. 


A user might follow a particular person, but only some posts, on certain topics. Chime.in also will try to sort posts so that more-relevant or "better" content rises to the top of the feed. 


Existing social networks have two problems: relevance and monetization, founder Bill Gross argues. There’s a signal-to-noise problem, and there’s no way to monetize that attention unless you send them to your website. What we’ve created is a new interest-based network, he argues.


You can see what we call a “chime-line” on your page, which you can sort by time or by the number of “likes” or the number of comments. 


That way, the good stuff rises to the top, Gross argues. One of the problems with Twitter is that there is no way for me to filter my tweetstream by the most thoughtful or the most interesting, so that’s what we are trying to do with Chime. 


You can also follow people — but instead of just following everything, you can do what we call a “selective follow,” and choose just the topics you want to follow in their stream. So with Robert Scoble, I might want to follow his tech posts but not the ones about his day at the beach, so I can choose to do that. 


We allow anyone — individuals, celebrities, brands — to create a rich-media page and monetize that themselves. So if someone wants to sell ads on their page, the real estate adjacent to that content is his, and 100 percent of the revenue from those ad sales goes to him. If he wants us to sell the ads for him, then it’s a 50-percent revenue share. 

Can Chime solve relevance problem?

Verizon Wireless and Motorola Launch Droid RAZR

Motorola Mobility and Verizon Wireless announced Droid RAZR, described as the world’s thinnest 4G LTE smartphone.

Measuring 7.1 mm thin, it is made with Kevlar fiber for strength and Corning "Gorilla Glass" for scratch resistance, and runs on the new Verizon Wireless 4G Long Term Evolution network.

The new RAZR works with the Motorola Lapdock 500 Pro or Lapdock 100, giving you the power to edit documents and browse the Web with a desktop-class Firefox browser.

Or, plug your Motorola RAZR into the HD Dock or HD Station to connect to your HDTV, speakers and other productivity peripherals for large-screen entertainment.

Users also can browse the web and use Android apps using the Smart Controller. The built in touch-pad lets you zoom, pinch and rotate content just like a touchscreen.

You can also connect a navigation dock for GPS and directions, battery pack for extra life, Bluetooth-enabled keyboard and the Motorola Elite Sliver headset.

Verizon Wireless and Motorola Announce Droid RAZR

Mobile Broadband is Ramping Fast

Smart phones now seem to be driving mobile broadband activity, not PC dongles. 


“We’re in the middle of one of those once-in-every 10-20 year shifts,” says Mary Meeker, Kleiner Perkins partner. “Mobile connectivity is at the center of that, and mobile devices just nearly outshipped PCs.”


Mobile broadband growing fast

Against All Odds, U.S. Is Leader In Smart Phone Market

Despite a recession and competition from foreign smartphone manufacturers and developers, the United States has become the leader in the smart phone market, says Mary Meeker, partner at VC firm Kleiner Perkins.

"In what looked like a market the U.S. was not gonna lead in, America is winning in a big way.

Software and applications likely would be credited with some of the reasons for leadership, since most observers would say the U.S. market also leads in Web apps.

  U.S. Is Leader In Smartphone Market

Apple earnings miss

As usual, investors had high expectations for Apple quarterly earnings, especially after smashing iPhone sales records. 


But Apple missed expectations today. Apple reported third-quarter earnings of $7.05 a share, on revenue of $28.3 billion. Analysts, on average, expected Apple to earn $7.22 a share on revenue of $29.5 billion.

Apple has not missed earnings forecasts since the second quarter of 2002, according to FactSet data.


It might be too early to say Apple already has begun its descent from its heights under Steve Jobs. Some say there is no worry. Others say it will be a few years until people notice something is different. 


Skeptics might say things already are different. 

Microsoft Launches Xbox Promotions: New Platform on the Way

Microsoft announced on Tuesday its Xbox 360 Christmas and holiday bundles, one with Kinect, one without.

The first bundle contains an Xbox 360 with a 250GB HDD, Kinect, the games Kinect Adventures and Carnival Games: Monkey See Monkey Do, plus 3-months of Xbox LIVE Gold for a suggested retail price of MRP $399. Microsoft bundles

The second bundle is equipped with a 250GB HDD, Fable III and Halo: Reach, plus 3-months of Xbox LIVE Gold for a suggested retail price of MRP $299. New platform

Steve Jobs Was Like Thomas Edison, Says Ben Horowitz

Was Steve Jobs more like Thomas Edison or more like Walt Disney? So far, most people seem to think Edison is the better metaphor. 


"People have compared him to Thomas Edison and I think that's right." Steve Jobs Was Like Thomas Edison 


Personally, I prefer Disney. Edison was a prodigious inventor. But Disney was all about delighting people with experiences. 


The "Magic Kingdom" somehow feels more like something Steve Jobs was obsessive about. 


And if you know anything about how Disney runs its theme parks, you know they are obsessive about illusion and immersion in an experience.  

Companies Moving Away from Outsourcing?

If there is anything like a pattern to enterprise information technology and communications strategies, it is that strategies oscillate between the "do it yourself" and "outsource it" poles. There are periods when the trend swings one way, and other times when the trend reverses.

Consider the ways enterprises source IT expertise. With all the talk about companies becoming more “agile,” many have taken the tack of outsourcing their IT operations to service providers of various types. But you always can expect a counter move at some point.

So it is that companies in some sectors such as healthcare and retail are moving to build their own IT teams, in some cases reversing course on a strategy of outsourcing.

Best Buy has announced that it will triple the size of the company's in-house IT staff by hiring 200 more tech professionals in 2012. Best Buy had largely outsourced IT operations, but the company's recently-hired CIO Jody Davis has reversed course.

Some attribute the oscillation to the logical value proposition any new CIO might want to bring to the table, which is that "what we have done does not provide enough value." It almost doesn't matter whether the current approach is "outsourcing" or "insourcing." What a new CIO often wants to do is prove his or her own value by changing course. You can argue about the ultimate value for any enterprise where that happens. But it seems to happen often enough that the oscillation pattern remains intact.

companies move away from outsourcing

Google Wallet Users Make First Purchases

Customers make their first purchases with Google Wallet in San Francisco and New York.

Is Apple Working on 7.85-inch iPads?

Apple is currently testing 7.85-inch iPad displays from Taiwanese panel maker AU Optronics, according to The Economic Daily News. That is interesting because it would contradict earlier and emphatic statements from Apple that 10-inch screens were the "minimum" for a tablet device. 


But Amazon's Kindle Fire and Samsung's Galaxy Tab might have Apple "thinking differently" about smaller-screen devices.

The Economic Daily News predicts that Apple will launch a 7.85-inch iPad early in 2012.


Former Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in 2010 that screens smaller than 10 inches were too small to support great tablet apps.


Is Apple testing 7.85-inch iPad displays?

Twitter Is At 250 Million Tweets Per Day

In September 2010 Twitter was seeing 90 million tweets per day. By January 2011 tweets were up to 100 million. at In October 2011 tweets were up to 250 million, says Twitter CEO Dick Costolo.


The company has gone from having 30 percent of its 100 million users active every day in January 2011 to over 50 percent active daily users in October 2011. . The recent Apple iOS 5 Twitter integration has notably increased signups 300 percent. 

Twitter Is At 250 Million Tweets Per Day

Moble Data Traffic Doubles in 12 Months

Mobile data traffic continues to grow, doubling from the second quarter of 2010 to the second quarter of 2011, according to findings of a new measurement from Ericsson.

The second quarter of 2011 saw eight percent growth, Ericsson says. 

Ericsson says an active smart phone user generates more than 1 MBytes worth of traffic each day. In North America, high-end smart phones generate twice the traffic than comparable smartphones at the operators analyzed in Asia and Europe, Ericsson  says.


The findings are based on Ericsson mobile broadband measurements during the second quarter of 2011 at four different operators in mature markets in Europe, Asia and North America. 

What Needs To Happen For Tablets To Replace Laptops?

Tablets, for the most part, are not a very good substitute for the work capabilities of a PC. Sure, you can add an external keyboard, which might or might not work so well, depending on how much you routinely must create text, and how fast you can type.

Slow typers with little volume of input can make it work. But if you look around you at conferences or other venues when people are away from their desktops, you often can see that tablets are one more device to carry around, as people now have their notebooks, their smart phone and now a tablet with them.

There will, over time, be more changes in both tablet and PC spaces, to try and blend the two functions of "content creation" and "content consumption." In some, perhaps many cases, it might even work. If you think about a "dockable tablet" or a one-pound notebook, you get the likely trajectory.


What Needs To Happen For Tablets To Replace Laptops?

Skype Founders Try a Video Startup, Again

Skype cofounders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis appear to be working on another video startup called Vdio. They launched a video site called Joost in 2006 that got no traction. 


Whether the new venture will succeed is an open question. What technologists often forget is that success in the video entertainment markets always hinges on access to the content consumers want to watch, and rarely on huge technology innovation. 


Technology can help, of course. Recommendation engines of the sort Amazon and Netflix have built are quite helpful in terms of the end user experience. But it all comes down to content access, and content owners are doing everything they can to make sure any new delivery channels create at least as much revenue as the legacy channels do. 

Skype Alums Building a Netflix Competitor

Will Google Shatter U.S. Mobile Ad Forecasts for 2012?

Could Google grow its mobile advertising to $6 billion in 2012? Here's the math. If Google's present rate of sales were extrapolated for the next 12 months, it would represent about $2.5 billion. But the growth rate seems to have accelerated sharply of late.

Google CEO Larry Page says mobile revenue has grown 2.5 times in the last 12 months.


If that rate were to continue for the next 12 months, Google would then reach a run rate on the order of $6.25 billion by the end of the period.


Actual revenues would be shy of that figure, since the highest quarterly revenue would be seen only at the end of the year. Such growth would cause analysts to dramatically revise their forecasts By some estimates, all U.S. mobile ad revenues will reach only about 1.6 billion by 2012.

Will Google See $6.25 Billion In Mobile Ad Revenue Next Year?

Google To Launch 25 YouTube Channels

YouTube has said it would start creating some professionally-produced video channels and has invested  more than $100 million in cash advances to get some of the content produced, the Wall Street Journal reports.


YouTube thinks the new channels will allow it to create a better environment for advertisers who have been reluctant to advertise around user-generated videos. Google is expected to share ad revenue with channels at some point. YouTube to launch 25 channels 

The 25 or so new channels that will offer professionally produced news, information and entertainment. Partners expected in the the first round include Warner Bros., ShineReveille, BermanBraun, FremantleMedia and skate boarder Tony Hawk.



Additional potential partners include Everyday Health,  Iconic Entertainment and DECA, which creates online-video content for women.

Verso Entertainment may produce content for YouTube related to sports.  YouTube to Launch 25 Professional Video Channels


It might be premature to start thinking of YouTube as a "cable TV" distributor, anymore than it makes sense to think about Hulu or Netflix currently representing such an alternative. But things are heading that way, some would say. 

Google Fails Fast, Often: That's a Good Thing

It might be going too far to say that Google "celebrates" failure. But Google's "beta" culture can be seen as a good thing. The Next Web took a look at 251 Google products released since 1998 and found that 90, or 36 percent, had been cancelled.

TNW notes that there were among these products eight "major flops" and "14 major successes." It is hard to say that what Google learned from the failures lead to the 14 successes.

Google fails 36% of the time

U.S. Mobile Companies Will Notify Users About Usage Caps

AT&T Inc., Verizon Wireless and other mobile service providers have agreed to begin sending alerts to customers who are approaching monthly voice, text or data limits.

The aim is to help them avoid hefty additional charges that cause what consumer advocates call bill shock.

Under the voluntary industry guidelines, companies also would send alerts when customers exceed their plans' limits and are subject to overage charges. Customers traveling abroad would be warned that they are about to incur often pricey international roaming fees, according to Federal Communications Commission officials.

The alerts will be free to customers, who will automatically receive them unless they choose not to. Service providers to send text alerts

Free texting could kill SMS business

A survey of 1143 Australian smart phone users found 44 per cent had a free instant messaging application on their devices, Telsyte telecommunications analyst Foad Fadaghi says. So far, unlimited text messaging plans have blunted displacement of SMS by over the top messaging alternatives.

Some "53 per cent of mobile instant message users in our survey indicated they have not changed the amount of SMS messages they send and receive due to mobile IM," he said.

Fadaghi said that using services like Skype to replace phone calls had been limited due to 3G network reliability issues, but many were using it to save costs on overseas calls.

In the United States, more than two trillion text messages are sent each year, generating more than $20 billion in revenue for the industry. SMS revenues account for about a third of Verizon's operating income, in fact.

Free texting could spell doom for SMS