3 Metrics to Prove Social Media Marketing is Working

Ultimately, all marketing channels must prove their worth. Right now, social media are in their infancy, and so are being widely nurtured despite clear evidence of return, simply because some investments initially are strategic, and only later are tactically justifiable.

At some point, though, social media will have to demonstrate return on investment in the somewhat imprecise way all other channels must: on lead generation and customer acquisition, even though those metrics are hard to attribute to any specific channel when multiple channels are used.

In the near term, people can use proxy measures, such as traffic growth, but that ultimately is a just a proxy for the other measurable outcomes any business has to rely on. 

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Market Power and Markets: Comcast and Level 3 Communications

"If it is left to the market entirely, then there shouldn't be any one player with significant market power," says financial analyst Tim Poulus, writing about the peering dispute between Level 3 Communications and Comcast. " And if so, regulation must be put in place."

"Hence, there is a reason for regulators to look at the Internet on a global level," he argues.

With all due respect, almost nothing could be further from the truth: perfect competition or imperfect competition or even regulated competition will always lead to market power, especially in highly capital-intensive industries.

That isn't to say regulation based strictly on market power isn't necessary at some point. Sometimes a virtual monopoly has to be broken up or limited to restore competition to a market once more.

But there always will be market power, so long as consumers are free to choose products they prefer, and so long as the ability to switch providers is there. The reason is about as simple as it could be. People will buy the better products.

Over time, that leads to highly-unequal market power. Look at the market share for just about any product or industry that has matured and you will always find an unequal distribution of revenue, customers or profit margin. Some of us would expect the market share of provider one to be roughly twice that of provider two, as a rule.

The market share of provider two would be twice that of provider three. And as you can imagine, when you are dealing with "doubling," it doesn't take very long to reach the "long tail," in terms of market share.

Apple might well achieve market power with the iPad the way it dominates both music distribution and iPods. That's the way markets are supposed to work: better products, offering higher value, drive out products with lesser value.

At some point, antitrust concerns will be raised of course, and then decisions to cap share growth can happen. Comcast already is subject to such caps. Level 3 has no significant market power. Furthermore, there are other issues than assessments of market power, such as contract law. Just because a firm might be deemed to have market power does not mean its lawful contracts can be voided.

What if Netflix Switched From Pigeons to Postage? - Seeking Alpha:

"Net Neutrality" Might Happen Tomorrow...We Still Can't Agree On What it Is

The Federal Communications Commission is supposed to introduce and possibly vote on new "network neutrality" rules on Dec. 21, 2010, and whether one is in favor or not, we still cannot agree on what it is.

For some, it is a freedom of speech issue; for others a simple matter of network management, with many views in between. One can argue that the FCC already has addressed the "freedom of speech" issue, that Internet service providers already agree, and that there is in fact no need for new rules. The FCC's "Internet Freedom" principles are widely accepted, and one might argue that if anything needs to be done, it is a simple matter of enforcing infractions, as the FCC already has done, twice.

There is, in short, widespread agreement that users have the right to use all lawful applications.

Of course, even with recognized "freedom of speech" rights, there are permissible "time, place and manner" restrictions. Among the issues for network service providers is that all networks will, under extraordinary load, have to "block access to the network." Though some will disagree, such blocking is a network resource fact of life. When a server gets taxed, what does that server do? It blocks additional requests for access until it can clear the existing load.

Back in the old days, when telephone networks got overloaded, what happened? New callers were blocked from access. "All circuits are busy, please try your call again later." All servers work the same way.

But this is complicated. All networks get congested, some times. Outright access blocking is one way to deal with the load. Shaping the traffic and prioritizing traffic are other ways to deal with the overload problem.

Some net neutrality advocates believe such shaping and priorities should never be allowed. Some opponents say such blunt force rules will foreclose creation of new services that users might actually want to have access to. Some might want first priority for any active voice, video or conferencing session, with other classes of traffic, such as bulk software downloads, email or web surfing traffic given lower priority.

We might see, soon, what new rules the FCC wants to implement, and then we will see what is likely years of litigation about whether those rules can be enforced.

But no matter what form any new rules might take, they will not dispense with the need to allocate resources under conditions of congestion. One hopes any such rules will not reduce the amount of innovation. Ironically, one of the stated reasons in favor of strong net neutrality provisions is the preservation of an innovative climate. The problem with such rules is that they preserve freedom for some by taking it away from others in the ecosystem.

Four takes on why net neutrality matters

Best Buy bundling free Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T MiFis with iPads

Best Buy is now offering an iPad bundle which includes a choice of an AT&T, Verizon, or Sprint MiFi, when purchased with a two-year data subscription. The bundle deal is good until Jan. 2, 2011.

This sort of bundle illustrates the upside for mobile service providers for sales of mobile-connected iPads and tablets, and also allows people to use their tablets on several networks, not just AT&T, in the case of the iPad.

Best Buy bundling free Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T MiFis with iPads, contract required | 9 to 5 Mac Best Buy bundling free Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T MiFis with iPads, contract required | Apple Intelligence

AdMob and Coca Cola Launch Campaign

The AdMob team at Google recently worked with the Coca-Cola Company to produce a live wallpaper celebrating the holiday season based on their annual holiday commercial. Live wallpapers are animated homescreen backgrounds that respond to both touch and phone movement, and can also react to the time of day and a device’s geographic location.

This is the first time the AdMob team has worked with an advertiser on creating this type of mobile experience.

AdMob and Coca Cola bring the holidays to your mobile phone - Google Mobile Ads Blog

Facebook and Twitter are Big

Facebook and Twitter both are big. Here's a look at how big the two firms are. You can click on the image for a larger view.

The most reliable blogging services on the Web

Google’s Blogger platform is the most-reliable of several tested by Pingdom. The Blogger blogs didn’t have any downtime whatsoever during the two months we monitored them, followed by WordPress.com which had very little downtime.

Typepad performed about as well as WordPress. Posterous had somewhat mixed results, but overall performance was close to tht of WordPress and Typepad. Tumblr was the only service in the test that truly failed.

The most reliable (and unreliable) blogging services on the Web