Pricing Trends in the Web Conferencing Business

Prices for Web conferencing services continue to decline as the technology hits early stage mainstream adoption, say researchers at Frost & Sullivan.

Vendors are offering deeper discounts as they get into larger enterprise deals, bringing the average selling prices down by 10 percent to15 percent annually.

Vendors are addressing the market with a wide range of pricing models, but as the market matures, buyers are moving to named-user pricing. Frost & Sullivan estimates that more than 75 percent of revenues for Web conferencing services come from named-user licenses.

No Jitter | blog | Pricing Trends in the Web Conferencing Market

40% of Small Businesses Use Social Networks

Small business owners increasingly are tapping into social media to reach customers and prospects. Four-in-ten now indicate they use at least one social media platform; Facebook is by far the most popular platform, with 27 percent of relevant businesses on board. By comparison, only one-in-ten business owners a year ago were using online social networking to market their businesses.

Business confidence also seems to be improving, if frustratingly slowly. Over the last eighteen months, business owners have been streamlining business operations and cutting costs. Now, as a result of those tough decisions, many business owners appear to be in stronger financial position to jump on growth opportunities that might materialize.

Fewer report having cash flow issues (53 percent, down from 60 percent this spring), and while hiring plans remain stable overall, the number of business owners who plan to hire full time employees in the next six months has doubled to 10 percent versus spring 2010. That's the good news.

The bad news is that roughly half of small business owners still say cash flow issues are a problem. And 90 percent of small businesses continue to say they have no plans to hire full-time workers in the next six months.

While their confidence in the overall economy declined, more business owners said they thought sales over the next six months would be higher compared to last year (39 percent) and employee morale has shown modest improvements.

Of course, the same survey also can be read as suggesting 61 percent of small businesses do not think sales revenue will be higher in the next six months.

Small Business Owners Poised to Capitalize on Growth Opportunities, According to the American Express OPEN Small Business Monitor

4G Revenue Model Still Emerging?

Up to a point, the business model for fourth-generation wireless is "more:" more speed and more bandwidth. Up to a point, the business model also is about "less:" Less cost to deliver end users bits. Beyond those basics, there remains much cloudiness about how additional value--and revenue--can be added.

The wireless industry remains deeply divided on how best to monetize the deployment of next-generation wireless technologies, says Light Reading.

In his opening comments at the event, Heavy Reading senior consultant Berge Ayvazian shared research findings that show how average revenue per user figures flatten out over time unless a mobile data service provider is able to offer value-added services.

It isn't clear whether 4G will be any different than 3G on that score, unless compelling new applications and revenue models can be created.

Light Reading Mobile - 4G/LTE - Revenue Still the 4G Question

Fiber to the Home for Smart Grid Apps

Survey Says: 79 Percent of Consumers Have Experienced Poor Voice Quality with Call Centers

According to a recent survey undertaken by the Customer Experience Foundation on behalf of Empirix Inc., 79 percent of consumers have experienced poor voice quality. The study asked 3,925 consumers about their experiences in dealing with contact centers and identified technology related trends and common problems that are affecting customer service and costing organizations around the world billions of dollars.

The high percentage of global consumers that highlighted poor voice quality as a common problem points to a real issue in the industry.

The study also revealed that poor voice quality drives down sales volumes, increases call lengths and the number of calls that are forced to be redialed. And as a result, churn rates can increase for both customers and staff. The magnitude of the problem is indicative of how much businesses are struggling to come to terms with this issue, while consumers are quickly losing patience."

Survey Says: 79 Percent of Consumers Have Experienced Poor Voice Quality with Call Centers Costing Organizations Billions Globally

http://beconfident.empirix.com/mk/get/ENT-WS-WP-cefpoorvq-092010

Traffic Bait Doesn’t Bring Ad Clicks

A new study by Perfect Market has found that the most profitable online articles at several major newspaper online outlets were the ones readers were most engaged with, and that appears to be topics like unemployment, the egg recall and mortgage rates.

Perfect Market, a company that helps newspapers make their Web sites more profitable, examined the advertising revenue generated from more than 15 million articles from 21 news sites over a three-month period this summer, using data from newspapers including The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Orlando Sentinel,

The reason, Perfect Market says, was that advertising is more effective when it is paired with news content that is relevant to the product, especially when the subject of the news is something in which readers have a personal interest.

Traffic Bait Doesn’t Bring Ad Clicks

Steve Job Anti-Android Rant