Enterprise Execs Would Rather Lose Phone Than Data Services

An admittedly non-scientific survey of 130 attendees of an IP Expo showed that 65 percent agreed an IP outage would cause most damage to their businesses than a phone system outage.

If the local utility company accidently hacked through their phone lines, it would upset 21 percent but would not bring the company to a virtual standstill.

IP Expo: Take My Phone But Leave My Network Alone

EU mobile-only households about same as U.S. levels

About 98 percent of EU households have access to a telephone and an increasing proportion of households (87 percent) have access to a mobile phone. About 25 percent of respondents say they use only a mobile phone and have no fixed phone line. That is roughly in line with reported U.S. households that only use mobile for voice.

read the full study here.

read a summary here

How Safe Is Verizon's Dividend?

Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett questions Verizon’s ability to maintain its current dividend level.

Verizon soon will be forced to start paying dividends to Vodafone which owns 45 percent of their Verizon Wireless joint venture.

That means diverting cash from present uses (Verizon dividends) to alternative uses (paying dividends to Vodafone).

None of that might seem too important to an end user of Verizon's services, but executives always have to balance investment in networks, marketing, dividend payments and lots of other potential uses of cash.

Less cash means harder choices, and some of those choices could reverberate in the network investment area.

How Safe Is Verizon's Dividend?

Social CEOs?

In a new study, global public relations firm Weber Shandwick found that the majority of CEOs from the world’s largest companies—64 percent—are not using social media to engage online with external stakeholders.

“Strong evidence exists that CEOs are not silent in these turbulent times. They are extensively quoted in the business press, frequently deliver keynote speeches at conferences and participate in business school forums. But when it comes to digital engagement externally, CEOs are not yet fully socialized, often with good reason,” said Leslie Gaines-Ross, Weber Shandwick’s chief reputation strategist and online reputation expert.

That probably makes sense. If you are the CEO of one of the world's largest 50 companies, you have lots of people who can handle those sorts of duties, while at the same time avoiding the risk of infringing some regulatory rule or another, or going "off message."

64 Percent of the World’s Largest Company CEOs are Not Social Online

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.

Death of Forward-to-a-Friend

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.

The ROI of Social Media Is Still Zero

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