Is Social Media Killing Your Business?

Though social media can be an important marketing, operations or customer support tool, it isn't always a good thing. Are you using social media in a way that builds a great reputation and enhances your business, or are you just spending lots of time on it, instead of running your business? In other words, just as social media can be a "time waster" for people, it can be a time waster for brands and businesses that might find they can better focus their time elsewhere.

If you’re spending more time "doing social media" than you are on the important work of your business, you need to reassess whether, in the grand scheme of things, spending so much time on social media is wise. Is Social Media Killing Your Business?

To the extent that a brand's messaging becomes confused because different messages are being communicated on different media, that also can be a warning sign that social media is ineffective. Indeed, it might be worse than ineffective if precious effort and time is diverted from other mission-critical tasks.

If you use "every" channel, instead of concentrating on those you can handle, with the time you have, you might likewise be wasting time better spent on other activities.

More Social Shopping by Men, than Women?

Though some studies suggest women use social networks more than men when shopping, a study by Performics suggests the opposite, namely that men are more likely than women to conduct five of six social shopping activities.

Contradicting commonly held beliefs about gender and social behaviors, the study showed men more frequently research product information, read reviews, compare products, find product availability and get store information via social networks, shopping and deal sites.

But women tend to search for deals, coupons and specials on similar sites more frequently than men. Contradictory data on use of social shopping

Aside from Facebook, men frequent social networks (at least once a month) substantially more than women.

Other studies have suggested that women use social media more when shopping. Gender differences in social shopping. One study suggests that men and women use social media differently. A study by Empathica, for example, found more men citing looking for information as a primary goal (36 percent) than women (28 percent) when interacting with a retail brand through social channels. 


But the gender split among those looking to stretch their budgets was far greater: 47 percent of women say searching for coupons and promotions is their primary use, compared with 33 percent of men.

Verizon API Will "Turbo" Mobile Broadband

Verizon will publish an application programming interface that could allow mobile consumers to "turbocharge" the network bandwidth their smartphone apps use, presumably for a small additional fee.

"I think one of the things that you could do is guaranteed quality of service," said Hugh Fletcher, associate director for technology in Verizon's Product Development and Technology team. 

"One of the things that we are right now is very democratic in terms of allocating spectrum and bandwidth to users. And just because you request a high quality of service doesn't mean you're gonna get it. [The network] will try to give it to you, but if there's a lot of congestion, a lot of people using it, it won't kick people off," said Fletcher. Verizon API To Give Apps 'Turbo'

The network optimization API will likely expose attributes like jitter, latency, bandwidth, and priority to app developers, Fletcher said. 


Despite expected complaints from some network neutrality advocates, there is a reason such an API might provide clear value to end users. Some of you might be using 3G or 4G networks, using different air interfaces, to use interactive cloud applications. If you do that often enough, on many networks, you will have discovered the experience problem caused by latency. 


Where older GPRS or EDGE data networks featured round-trip latencies in the 600 millisecond to 700 msec. range, LTE networks feature round-trip latencies in the 50 msec. range. 


One of the important elements of a cloud-delivered application experience is latency performance, even though we most often think of "bandwidth" as being the key "experience" parameter. 


Some might say the key benefits will be for gaming apps, but many of us can assure you that other interactive apps, even those not intrinsically dependent on "real time" protocols, can suffer from mobile latency. Latency issues

1/2 of New Virgin Media, BT Broadband Connections are for 30 Mbps or Faster

About half of new connections for high-speed broadband service at Virgin Media and BT in the United Kingdom are for service at 30 Mbps or faster. That is a pretty big deal, as up to this point, take rates for "super fast" service have been fairly minimal. 


This level of service, as a stand-alone product, retails for £35 ($56) a month on Virgin Media networks.  That's an important fact. Many have argued that even when "super fast" services are available, price is a barrier. 

Virgin Media is still on target to meet its coverage target of its 100 Mbps service being available to its complete cable network by the middle of 2012, this represents roughly half of U.K. households. 1/3 of UK Virgin Media customers can get 100 Mbps


By way of comparison, in Denver Comcast sells 20-Mbps connections for about $68 a month on a standard basis. CenturyLink sells a 40 Mbps connection for about $80 a month, where it is available, as a stand-along product. The Comcast Xfinity service running at up to 100 Mbps costs about $200 a month. 


The Xfinity 50 Mbps service costs about $150 a month. 50 Mbps Xifinity Most observers would say the 50 Mbps and 100 Mbps services are purchased mostly by business users.


German cable network operator Kabel BW claims that around 40,000 customers are using broadband with speeds of 50 Mbps or 100 Mbps. About three million homes are able to buy service at those rates. So buyers represent about one percent of customers. 100-Mbps demand

Also, the price for the 50-Mbps access service is about $41 a month. Kabel BW has found only about one percent take rates, at prices of $41 a month. 

Satellite, IPTV Video Market Share Growing

"In 2008, cable video made up 59 percent of the global pay-TV market, satellite video brought in 38 percent and IPTV was just a drop in the bucket," says Jeff Heynen, directing analyst for broadband access and video at Infonetics Research. Satellite, IPTV video services gaining ground

Now, Telco TV and satellite TV are closing on 50-percent market share, and will, by 2015, represent a majority of market share. 


That's the key implication of competitive markets that once were legally or virtually monopolies. The incumbent loses market share. In fact, that's a good working definition of whether a pro-competitive policy framework is working. When the incumbent loses significant share, that is the definition of "success."


In fact, cable TV executives now already talk about their future revenue streams being built on broadband and other services other than video. 


Overall, the global pay-TV market, including IPTV, cable and satellite video services, totaled $125 billion in the first half of this year and is projected to grow to $353 billion by 2015. Most of that projected growth will come from satellite and IPTV services.  Infonetics video study

Vonage Net Income Triples

Vonage Holdings Corporation reported that net income tripled to $24 million while its adjusted EBITDA was $40 million, in its most-recent quarter. Revenue was up $3 million from a year ago to $217 million, but this is down from $218 million just one quarter sequentially. Vonage Earnings

The real problem is that Vonage has just found it very difficult to grow. The company ended with 2,388,721 net subscribers lines, down from 2,397,660 at June 30, 2011 and also down from 2,399,035 as of September 30, 2010.


Vonage's 11-percent margin beats most retailers by quite some margin, but consumer VoIP remains a difficult business. 

Mobile Data "Family Plans" are Coming

Service providers have been slow to roll out new “family plans” for broadband access spanning fixed and mobile domains, or including a range of mobile devices. But that doesn’t mean they won’t do so. The issue is timing.


Family plans for mobile devices, for example, will undoubtedly have the same impact on revenue as family plans did for mobile phone accounts: grow accounts and revenue, but with much-lower average revenue per device, or user.


Under those conditions, it is no surprise that service providers haven’t been exceptionally interested in moving too quickly to create family data plans that allow a number of devices to share a common data account, much as plans now allow multiple phones to share a common pool of voice minutes or test messages.


Recently, leading mobile operators including Rogers Wireless and Bell Mobility in Canada, Telefónica Movistar in Spain, and Orange Mobistar and Proximus in Belgium have launched multi-device plans, though. SFR France launched an extra SIM option on one of its mobile data plans during the summer this year. Mobile Data "Family Plans" are Coming - Carrier Evolution