Thursday, October 14, 2010

Death of Forward-to-a-Friend | ClickZ

Marketers have for some years relied on email campaigns that arguably are shifting to social campaigns with a "share with your network" angle than a "forward this email" angle.

Privacy issues now make "sharing" in a social context" less risky than "forwarding email." Social networks also are more "viral," as shared items have the ability to propagate exponentially faster.

The ROI of Social Media Is Zero

Some would say the return on investment from social media essentially is "zero," in the sense that social media is not "media" in the traditional sense, so social marketing is not really marketing.

Social media is not media - people's conversations cannot be purchased, nor should they be purchased. The volume and influence on these conversations are not known ahead of time.

Social marketing is not marketing - instead it is listening and learning from customers' genuine conversation among peers and earning the right to be part of the conversation by providing value and earning customers' trust.

Social amplification will enhance the value of your existing content and extend its reach; as more and more conversations happen online, their reach and influence will remain far after marketing campaigns end.

Does this mean spending on social media has no measurable value? To the contrary, many would say social media investments do have value, but need to be measured differently than traditional advertising and marketing have been measured.

There are a few good examples where marketing activities in social networks can drive quantifiable value. For example, Dell has built up a following on Twitter over time so it can now tweet last minute deals and clear out unsold outlet inventory very efficiently.

Netflix has built up a large fan base on Facebook and uses it to interact with fans, get feedback, and announce new features or content.

JetBlue and Best Buy use Twitter for customer service and have thus built up a large enough following to use Twitter as a launch or awareness channel which is free, compared to other channels like e-mail or direct marketing.

The value derived from the above examples is replacement value - in other words, it can sufficiently and efficiently replace traditional, costly tactics such as market research, direct marketing or email marketing.

Digital Natives are Different

In an intensive, three-month study of the media and social habits of 100 consumers between the ages of 18 and 24, French marketing firm BVA found that “Digital Natives,” don’t trust authority, doesn’t want anyone telling them what to think and don’t like to pay full retail prices.

Digital Natives don’t trust politicians, social institutions, the media or corporations. Rather, they rely largely on themselves and their peers to decide what to think, what to do and what to buy.

Is it any wonder social media and social networking have gotten traction?

Digital Natives view life as a game of outsmarting authority to beat a system they disdain. Whether catching up on the news or shopping for a car, Digital Natives enjoy the challenge of acquiring and manipulating information as much as the outcome to which it leads.

“The Digital Native enjoys using all tools available in his arsenal to outsmart the merchant system and to find the best deal,” research director Edouard Le Marechal says. “He doesn’t trust the brand. Like in a game, the brand is the enemy to defeat.”

Those are challenging ideas for most sellers of products and services, advertising, marketing and media, and would suggest marketing and media will be different in the future, more socially constructed, at the very least.

http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2010/10/digital-natives-more-different-than-you.html

Gartner Says Android to Become No. 2 Worldwide Mobile Operating System in 2010

The worldwide mobile operating system (OS) market will be dominated by Symbian and Android, as the two OSs will account for 59.8 percent of mobile OS sales by 2014, according to Gartner.

Symbian will remain at the top of Gartner's worldwide OS ranking due to Nokia's volume and the push into more mass market price points. However, by the end of the forecast period, the No. 1 spot will be contested with Android, which will be at a very similar share level.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Facebook Data to Enhance Bing Search



Microsoft Corp. and Facebook now have an agreement that will allow Bing to pull information from Facebook Inc. users into its Internet search results.

Under the terms of the partnership, Bing users signed into Facebook will be able to see search results instantly populated with information from their contacts on the social-networking service, including opinions and advice on restaurants, books and films.

In turn, Bing search results are to become available on Facebook users’ pages.

Microsoft has been partnering in different ways with Facebook since 2006, and purchased a small ownership stake in the Palo Alto, Calif.-based company in 2007.

Search gets used in many ways, but one usage mode is finding information to help people make decisions about what to buy, where to go or what to do. To the extent that Bing gets used that way, the new integration with Facebook will be helpful.

The new deal will allow Bing users to benefit from Facebook recommendations. When a user searches for something on Bing or in web results on Facebook (powered by Bing), users will be able to see your friends' faces next to web pages they've liked.

For some people, doing some things, some of the time, that probably will be quite useful.

Telecom New Zealand Tries Again for National Broadband Contracts

Telecom New Zealand has re-priced its bid for involvement in the national Ultra-Fast Broadband (UFB) initiative, after being largely shut out of the next round of contract negotiations, reports the New Zealand Herald.

The national telecom operator's plan to offer a nationwide rollout across all 33 regions was dismissed in favor of a region-by-region approach in September, significantly favoring other providers whose bids were deemed less expensive.

TNZ lost out to three regional bidders, led by electricity network companies in Timaru, Whangarei, and the Central North Islands, and apparently has decided to submit a lower bid in hopes of being reconsidered.

Twitter Really is a "Real Time" Media

Sysomos recently found that 29 percent of all tweets produced a reaction, in the form of a reply or a retweet. Of this group of tweets, 19.3 percent were retweets and the rest replies. This means that of the 1.2 billion tweets Sysomos examined, six percent, (or 72 million) were re-tweets.

Sysomos also discovered that 92.4 percent of all retweets happen within the first hour of the original tweet being published, while an additional 1.63 percent of retweets happen in the second hour, and 0.94 percent take place in the third hour.

The obvious take-aways are that Twitter really is a "real time" medium and that most people read, but don't write.

Will Generative AI Follow Development Path of the Internet?

In many ways, the development of the internet provides a model for understanding how artificial intelligence will develop and create value. ...