Thursday, June 2, 2011

Twitter is a Mobile App

Though only 13 percent of online adults use Twitter, more than half of Twitter users access the service on a mobile phone, researchers at the Pew Internet & American Life Project report.

As of May 2011, 13 percent of online adults use the status update service Twitter. That represents a significant increase from the eight percent of online adults who identified themselves as Twitter users in November 2010.1

The study also found that 54 percent of Twitter users access the service from their mobiles.

Tech Bubble?

Some continue to insist there is no tech bubble. But some who used to think there was no bubble are starting to worry. Though most companies on public markets remain fairly valued, there is pent up demand for growth stories. Oddly enough, the sluggishness of the rest of the economy, and the lack of growth, is going to heighten interest in the coming wave of application-driven initial public offerings. See Let’s Not Get Too Cocky About The Blubble.

Still, it is worth noting that even bubbles are spurred by genuine change in the computing business. Bill Gates famuosly acknowledged that he "didn't get the Internet." Now former Google CEO Eric Schmidt candidly says he missed the social revolution, aside from writing memos that were not followed by vigorous action. See http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/01/eric-schmidt-is-a-surprisingly-worried-man/.

That's the sort of big miss by an industry leader that fuels a new wave of computing innovation, and typically is lead by new firms. But we tend to overshoot. Always. So expectations for most of the coming application IPOs will be excessive.


Wednesday, June 1, 2011

Google +1 Makes Web Pages More Social

Twitter CEO says 80 percent of advertisers renew | Reuters

More than 80 percent of the companies that advertise on Twitter renew their marketing efforts on the microblogging service, CEO Dick Costolo says.

The Twitter chief also says the company does not face immediate pressure to boost revenue as it seeks to grow its business.

"Move Up the Value Chain," Twitter Developers Told

LightSquared Considers AT&T Capacity Deal

LightSquared is considering a deal with AT&T to buy network capacity from the carrier, Bloomberg reports.
LightSquared would pay to use AT&T’s fourth generation network when it needs additional capacity. The move would be a little puzzling to the extent that LightSquared, which owns its own spectrum and is leasing tower and radio capacity from Sprint Nextel, would buy additional capacity wholesale, to sell wholesale, when it presumably has plenty of actual spectrum available.

Hard to Measure Mobile Marketing ROI, Users Say

ROI of Advertising on Mobile Platforms According to Companies in North America, April 2011 (% of respondents)Mobile still doesn’t measure up as “important” to most marketers, according to an April 2011 survey by King Fish Media sponsored by HubSpot, Junta42 and Maxymiser.

But that could change as more marketers get on board with a mobile strategy. More than six in 10 North American marketers plan to have one within the next year, compared with just a third who already do.

When asked specifically about the ROI of their mobile advertising programs, a plurality of North American companies said they were doing about as well as expected.

A quarter of respondents said mobile advertising wasn’t meeting expectations, however, compared to just 13 percent who said results were better than they had hoped.

Directv-Dish Merger Fails

Directv’’s termination of its deal to merge with EchoStar, apparently because EchoStar bondholders did not approve, means EchoStar continue...