What is Valuable to a Brand "Fan" on Facebook?

Product news and information, contests, prizes, sales, coupons and other offers are among the top reasons consumers become "fans" of brands on Facebook, according to a study sponsored by the World Federation of Advertisers.

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Why Marketers Shouldn't Waste Their Time With QR Codes

Overuse of a new technique or technology in the marketing business is nothing new. New technology tends to follow a predictable path from discovery, to overuse and disillusionment, and eventually, a proper or right level of use. But not every innovation proves to be highly valuable, on an extended basis. Some think the QR code is one of those questionable long-term innovations.

Quick response code, those two-dimensional bar codes you see on magazine pages relatively frequently, are one way an offline media can incorporate online content and interaction. That's a good thing.

But some would argue that the problem is that consumers don't much care, while marketers do care. The issue isn't whether tools to introduce more online interaction are a good thing--it is a good thing--but whether this is the right, or "best" approach.

"QR codes can actually impede the conversation," some would argue. First, you have to assume not everyone knows what they are, so you have to explain how they work. Then, you just hope people are willing to download the app and go through the hassle of getting it to work.

Then and only then will they be exposed to whatever brilliant website you have put together. And the majority of the time, this process neglects the critical issue of why someone would want to do any of this in the first place. Right now the answer to that seems to be, "Because marketers thinks it's cool."

Why Marketers Shouldn't Waste Their Time With QR Codes

SMBs Boosting Wireless Data Spend

In-Stat expects small and medium businesses will ncrease their spending on wireless data services by 42 percent from 2010 to 2015. U.S. businesses with one to four employees will lead the category, increasing spending by over 45 percent on wireless data from 2010 to 2015. That has to be one of the least-surprising trends one could imagine.

“Voice has become a commodity, with growth in voice services essentially being stagnant across all sizes of business,” says Greg Potter, In-Stat Data Analyst. “Messaging has been wonderful to the carriers, but the revenue picture here is stagnant as well, with marginal increases or decreases."

"Future growth is all about providing data access to smart phones, tablets, and notebooks, period; end of story," he says.

SMB businesses in total consume about half of all wireless services on a revenue basis.

In-Stat - Press Releases

Google Nexus 4G Specs?

Google's Nexus S device is interesting in that it is supposed to represent Google's thinking about what a smart phone should be like, as Apple's iPhone is that firm's embodiment of what it believes a smart phone should be like.

Boy Genius reports that the Google Nexus 4G will feature a next-generation dual-core 1.2GHz or 1.5GHz CPU, a 720p HD screen, and it won’t feature physical Android menu buttons below the screen anymore — everything will be software-based.

Additionally, we can expect a 4G LTE radio, 1GB of RAM, 1080p HD video capture and playback, a 1-megapixel front-facing camera, and a 5-megapixel rear camera.

Exclusive: Google Nexus 4G detailed - 720p display, 4G LTE, Android 4.0

Average U.S. Smartphone Data Usage Up 89% as Cost per MB Goes Down 46%

According to Nielsen’s monthly analysis of cellphone bills for 65,000 lines, smart phone owners, especially those with iPhones and Android devices, are consuming more data than ever before on a per-user basis, but since prices are flat, the price-per-consumed-megabyte has dropped.

In the last 12 months, the amount of data the average smartphone user consumes per month has grown by 89 percent from 230 Megabytes in the first quarter of 2010 to 435 MBytes in the first quarter of 2011.

Data usage for the top 10 percent of smartphone users is up 109 percent, as you would expect. Heavy users are heavy users. The top one percent of users have grown their usage by 155 percent from 1.8 GBytes in the first quarter of 2010 to over 4.6 GBytes in the first quarter of 2011.

Still, though growth is occurring across the board, at the 80th percentile and below, users consume 500 Mbytes or less each month. In the 60th percentile, users consume 250 Mbytes or less each month.

The amount the average smartphone user pays per unit of data has dropped by nearly 50 percent in the last year, from 14 cents per megabyte to eight cents.

Average U.S. Smartphone Data Usage Up 89% as Cost per MB Goes Down 46%

Why Marketing Best Practices Aren't Always Best

As helpful as best practices can be, sadly they’d don’t always work. In fact, sometimes they can hurt.

Take the case of Dropbox, a software start-up that originally followed industry-standard best practices, such as investing in advertising, conferences and in a PR firm. But it didn't work. The cost of customer acquisition was just too high. Essentially, the traditional way to launch and market a company wasn’t allowing Dropbox to scale or grow fast enough.

Why did industry-proven techniques not work for Dropbox? After all, they worked great for other companies? Perhaps because best practices merely present a standardized, cookie-cutter solution, and no business is the same.

“Best practices are an attempt to take a solution to a problem out of the context and apply them across the entire spectrum, and that essentially invalidates the entire thing. A solution is only useful when considered in context.”

Why Marketing Best Practices Aren't Always Best:

UK Mobile Operators Form NFC Joint Venture

The three major U.K. mobile operators, working together in the "Everything Everywhere" alliance, Telefónica O2 UK and Vodafone UK, are forming a joint venture to provide a single point of contact for advertisers, retailers, banks and other service providers wanting to introduce mobile-commerce services using near field communications mobile wallets.
See UK Mobile Operators Form Joint Venture to Smooth NFC Rollouts

The joint venture also specifys that secure applications be loaded on NFC-enabled SIM cards the telcos will issue. Google thinks the credentials should be loaded onto the phone using the device memory, of course. See http://www.google.com/wallet/how-it-works-security.html. At stake is control of the credentials loading process, which provides an element of control or relevance in the payment ecosystem.