Another thought to ponder is what does local, on-the-go mobile advertising mean for the likes of Yelp, Foursquare and Gowalla? Will one of these location-based social networking portals discover a new revenue model in location-based advertising? Maybe, maybe not. Leave a comment and tell me what you think. Each day, we’re moving closer to having our digital content on any screen, at any time, at any place. Marketers need to keep that in mind.
Many bloggers and industry analysts have pointed to how our society uses social media in a time of crisis. Haiti, of course, has seen a huge reaction in social media- the devastating loss and suffering has touched people from around the world. Like most people, I’m sure, I first heard of the news through my social media channels. And through social media, the Red Cross has raised an astounding $5 Million towards their rescue effort in Haiti. Below is a special section about the reaction to Haiti in social media.
Take a look at the computer you’re using. Imagine what it would look like if you took away all the peripherals- the monitor, the keyboard, the mouse if you’re using one. The computer doesn’t need those things to run, that stuff is just for the humans. Also take away the CD/DVD drive, the USB toys you have plugged in and all the cables. What you have left is the CPU, the Central Processing Unit. Now imagine squeezing that CPU with your hands to make it as tiny as possible. Mold it into a neat little box. Behold, this is the Plug Computer.
Marvell Technology Group Ltd. is a company in the business of digital storage, communications, and consumer silicon solutions. They’ve come up with something so revolutionary, they’re not even sure just how much it might change the world. Marvell debuted the new Plug Computer 3.0 this week at the International Consumer Electronic Show. I almost can’t wrap my head around this device:
It’s tiny. The picture above is pretty close to actual size.
It’s energy efficient. Most computers consume between 95-650 watts. The Plug Computer is only 3 watts.
It’s powerful. 2.0 GHz of processing power. Yowza.
It’s roomy. 2GB of flash memory for storage and 1GB of system memory.
And it’s cheap. The Plug Computer 3.0 isn’t ready for the consumer market just yet, but it should retail for around $49 per unit. (You can buy a SheevaPlug right now for $99.)
Ok, so what. It’s a computer processor that I can plug into my wall like a night light. There’s no screen, and no buttons. Why would anyone want this thing?
This is the kind of product at CES that I might have completely missed. If it wasn’t for Guy Kawasaki sitting on the panel at the Plug Computing Pavilion, I probably wouldn’t even make it over to the Marvell booth. It’s easy to be seduced by the likes of the Intel booth, or the cool helicopter Drone controlled by an iPhone. The Plug Computer isn’t much to look at, but I now realize its potential is quite astounding.
From left to right: Guy Kawasaki, Rob Enderle, Jon Van Bronkhorst, Marek Mokryn, and moderator Paul O’Donovan
Why the Plug Computer matters
Panelist Jon Van Bronkhorst said at the conference, “Storage is the root of everything we do.” Yes, of course the Executive Director of Product Marketing for Seagatewould say that, but he’s right. Over the years, the majority of us have come to rely on computers to store everything from family photos to banking statements. Computers have become the most important medium for keeping record of our lives.
But for a lot of people, our most important computer files are stored away on a home computer. This makes it really difficult, if not impossible for some, to access those files while being away from home. And even when you are home, those files are susceptible to damage or permanent loss if anything were to happen to the hard drive.
There’s no reason the average consumer would buy a Plug Computer right now. What Marvell has created is essentially a blank slate. It’s a platform that other developers and programmers can build from. Software is really going to be the driving force for the Plug Computer’s wide-scale adoption. Can you imagine what the iPhone would be without Apps? “Paperweight” comes to mind.
At the panel discussion, Guy Kawasaki reflected on what it means to be an Apple Evangelist, and how the Plug Computer is designed with the same spirit of innovation and commitment to developers. “If you give engineers a really rich platform, the tools, and the marketing promise… you’ll be amazed at what they create,” he said.
An alternative to the Cloud
“We like to call it your personal cloud,” said Bronkhorst. The Plug Computer can be used as a simple and cheap personal home server, giving you secure access to any of your files 24/7. All it takes it just plugging it into the wall.
The Plug Computer will appear as a mountable drive from your laptop, just like a USB flash drive or a camera does. It’s an “always on” device, and it can be password protected. It uses Ethernet and Bluetooth to connect to other computing devices, serving both data and applications, and its accessible from the internet. The Plug Computer runs on Linux, the most popular open source operating system.
With this device, a personal server environment can be a reality for common computer users. Marek Mokryn, a marketing director for Marvell, was also part of the panel, “Imagine what if most servers are not in the web, but in the home?” Mokryn explained that the Plug Computer can be the means for a content delivery network to your home, a center for all multimedia and connect to many common devices like the iPhone and Sony PS3.
And impressively, a network of Plug Computers is completely scalable. You can have one, ten, even hundreds of Plug Computers working in unison. The processing power and storage capacity increases incrementally with each additional unit. It is completely feasible to build a supercomputer right your own home, if you really wanted that.
More than just storage & web accessibility
“This is the tip of the iceberg,” said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at The Enderle Group. Enderle pointed out that before the Plug Computer, processors and memory had been expensive. Now that cost isn’t a limiting factor, there’s really no telling what developers can create with this platform. Enderle believes that the Plug Computer can manifest very practical solutions for home automation, automobiles, health, safety, entertainment and beyond.
Imagine that the computer in your refrigerator communicates with your plug network and sends you an alert on your mobile phone that you’re out of milk when you’re near a grocery store. Or perhaps a small computer on your mountain bike detects that you’ve had a serious fall, and it connects to the plug network to alert your doctor and calls 911.
The capabilities of the Plug Computer are only limited to the developers’ imagination. Marvell had produced a website,PlugComputer.org, which houses the Plug Wiki and Plug Forum and serve as informational resources for developers.
Nerdy fact, today’s date is a palindrome. Ok, moving on.
The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is the yearly international tradeshow of the Consumer Electronics Associationheld every January right here in Las Vegas. It’s a pantheon of gadgets, computers, cameras, phones, TV’s, network technology and everything in between. At this year’s event more than 2,500 technology companies introduced over 20,000 new products, drawing 120,000 industry professionals from around the world. With more than 5,000 reporters, analysts and bloggers in attendence, the web is flooded with news coverage. If you have some time, explore social.cesweb.org, CES’s own social media aggregator.
Gotta love freebies. Thursday, I started off my first day at the Consumer Electronics Show by attending a free session called “The Twitter Revolution: How The Real-Time Web is Changing the CE Landscape.” Steve Broback, founder of a social media agency called the Parnassus Group, was one of the speakers and shared some of his favorite freebie Twitter tools during the session. Here’s a recap of his recommendations:
This is square one. If you’ve never tried any listening tools, start with Twitter Search. Twitter Search can help reveal the current topics around your product, brand, industry, competitors, etc. It can also give you an initial look into consumer sentiment. Dave Taylor, who was another speaker on the panel, suggested combinations of queries that included, “I hate” or “I love”. There’s wealth of consumer research just at your finger tips with the humble Twitter Search.
This is the Google Alerts of Twitter. TweetBeep allows you to get email alerts of keyword mentions on Twitter, every hour. TweetBeep also offers a premium version which allows you to get alerts every 15 minutes.
Trending Topics on Twitter.com are the top ten most mentioned words/phrases on Twitter in real-time. Trendistic is cool because it provides more information on the current Trending Topics, and it also allows you to search terms and view trend graphs for those terms, up to 180 days if you register.
This is a new one to me. It appears to be a Twitter management tool, like Hootsuite and Seesmic and Tweetdeck, but on a whole new level. I’ll have to play with this for a bit before I can really say much about it- but on the surface is looks very robust. If you’re a PeopleBrowsr user, leave a comment and tell me what you think.
Broback called this “the cool Twitter tool that nobody knows about.” It’s a simple website that will create Twitter word clouds around your search terms, and will allow you to click on those terms to dive deeper. This is a good site for discovery.
All of the tools mentioned so far, Broback explained, have something in common. They are based on keywords. This last Twitter tool is different. BackTweets will allow you to enter in a web address and find Tweets that link to that address. This is really cool. It will show you the most recent tweets that have tweeted a given URL, and it even counts the short links like bit.ly and tinyurl.
Hope some of these can be useful to you. There’s so much you can learn about your customers by just spending a little time online and digging through Twitter. Happy hunting, I’m off to another great day at CES!
Welcome to the year “twenty ten!” Make sure you start the year off right by reading this article about the grammatically correct way of saying “2010.” Or, check out www.TwentyNot2000.com
In this first edition of Social Marketing News, I want to talk about a growing fad called FourSquare. The user base of FourSquare pales in comparison to say Twitter, but I’ve touched on the geo-location social networking service in a few blog posts (the first one in my 9/11/09 post), and I believe it’s definitely worth taking notice. FourSquare allows registered uses to “check-in” at restaurants and retail establishments, or any place that has a physical address, and the service will allow users to keep track of their history and the whereabouts of their friends. Currently, apps are available for iPhone, Android, and now PalmPre. The user with the most check-ins will become the “Mayor” of that establishment, a designation that holds little value other than bragging rights.
Restaurants hip to social marketing are now exploring FourSquare promotions, such as giving discounts to their Mayors. Today, yours truly has been crowned the Mayor of Dunkin’ Donuts, and here’s hoping I can get a free coffee out of it! FourSquare promos can be used as a free distribution channel for coupons and discounts, and also spur competition between potential Mayors- who are probably your biggest local brand advocates.
Remember when I mentioned Google Caffeine way back in an August blog post? Probably not, so here’s a refresher. Google has been working on “secret project” called Google Caffeine to update how Google finds content on the web by improving the search algorithms. Though the average user won’t notice a huge difference, it’s important to note because it does change how Google indexes news and social media. Read more at TechCrunch here.
I’m an AT&T customer, and I hate AT&T. So I’m very pleased to share this snippet of AT&T’s folly in social media during the brief hours iPhones were unavailable on the AT&T website:
Something worth noting is AT&T has a responsive, stellar public relations team that uses a Twitter account, a YouTube channel and a Facebook page to interact with the media and consumers. The story could’ve been defused in a matter of minutes with a clear, believable explanation. Instead, AT&T used its PR to respond with an empty statement, leaving the world guessing the reasons for the suspension of iPhone sales in New York.
Welcome to the end-of-the-year edition of Social Marketing News! Below you’ll find lots of links for reviews of 2009 and predictions for 2010. These are just some of the ones that I believe are important- you can find many more at just about any news site that covers social media. Some bloggers say 2009 was the year of Social, others say 2010 will claim that title. Either way, this is an exciting time for social media, and the new year promises to bring a lot of innovation and change.
With all of the new technologies and innovations that have been crafted for analyzing social media to date, this Ad Age article points out a simple but often over-looked metric: the shared link. Link tracking can reveal what is the most desired content of your website, who are your biggest brand advocates in social media, and what informational channels are the most influential. Here’s an eye-opener from the article:
While verticals and brands vary, upward of 20% of traffic to many websites now arrives via shared link, and this traffic is growing and valuable. Indeed, the shared link is emerging as the essential unit of measure, the increasingly relevant currency.
I wish I came up with this term. Guest blogger Judy Shapiro wrote about social media and building awareness at Ad Age, and describes creating “Content Campaigns” to help focus social efforts across multiple channels. What a ingenious concept. She writes, “This approach puts the value on content as an audience builder but in a very strategic way.” Be sure to check out the rest of the article.
How would you like to rent movies from YouTube? The world’s largest video sharing site is in talks with major movie studios and is exploring a new paid subscription model. The service would be a new way of generating revenue, as YouTube currently makes its money through advertising. Get the details from this article at Reuters.
To many, online forums and bulletin websites are so 1990’s. However, three ex-MySpace executives are currently working on a project called Gravity, which TechCrunch describes as an evolved form of forums and groups. Check out the article which includes a video of the founders as well as some screen shots. Gravity will be an important startup to watch. It’s not a direct rival to Google Wave, but it might have more utility than Wave to more users; and it’s not the answer to real-time search, but it may prove to be the closest solution yet, as Gravity is interest-centric and will provide detailed analytics on interests and conversations. Plus, the group has raised $10 million in funding. Read more here.
After months of rumors and speculation, it’s official: the Google phone is real. It’s called the Nexus One, and several Googlers (Google employees) have been issued beta devices and are using them now. Google has been working on a partnership with T-mobile to offer the phone at a discount, after Verizon turned down the deal. However, the Nexus One will not be exclusively sold through T-mobile, it will be an unlocked device (unlike how the iPhone is tethered to AT&T). News about the Nexus One is all over the web, but a good place to start is with this Mashable article.
More changes to how Facebook handles privacy settings. With an update last week, users can now set privacy settings for each wall posting separately, and now Facebook profile information can be indexed by search engines (which has implications for real-time search). Be sure to read up on the changes from cnet News and PC World.
Holiday shopping is in full swing, and analysts have reported an up tick in online shopping this season. New research comScore has shown just how much social media is effecting holiday shopping. Check out this TechCrunch article for details, stats and charts.
A great article from ChannelWeb discusses Google and Apple’s dance with acquisitions. Earlier, Social Media News reported Google’s acquisition of AdMob. Recently, Apple just purchased online music streaming service LaLa, which may revolutionize the way Apple sells music.
Editor’s note: Social Marketing News will now be posted each week on Mondays. Be sure to check our R&R’s Friday Inspiration posts every Friday.
Social Marketing News from 11/14/09 covered Rupert Murdoch’s statement about preventing Google from indexing News Corporation publications. This week, Google announced an update to its “First Click Free” program, partly in response to Murdoch’s threats I’m sure. First Click Free allows web users to access paid content, like news from newspaper websites, for free if they found that content through Google search. Now Google is giving more control to publishers, allowing them to lock out unregistered users after a defined number of page views. Google allows paid content providers to limit up to five free page views, per day- after that, users would be redirected to a registration page. Google search plays a huge role in helping users discover paid content, providing a significant amount of site traffic to many of these large publishers. So it makes sense for publishers to allow their content to be indexed by Google. However, publishers of premium content are also interested in making a profit. It will be interesting to watch what happens now, if News Corp. really does decide to completely block Google indexing, and if they decide to make an exclusive deal with Bing. If you’re still confused about First Click Free, check out this great 5-Click FAQ from Wired.
Google also announced a deal with Twitter this week to integrate the microblogging site with its own social media service, Google Friend Connect. That’s really interesting, because Google and Twitter are both in the race for real time search, so in a way Google and Twitter are competitors. It’s also interesting in light that Yahoo! and Bing have recently made deals with Facebook, and Google has yet to follow suit. Check out the Bing announcement here, and the Yahoo announcement here.
Speaking of Facebook, there’s a lot of talk about Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement of privacy changes. If you’re worried, don’t be. The announcement, which was posted in a Facebook note to users, doesn’t reveal sweeping new privacy changes. It does say that Facebook is doing away with regional networks, which is a good thing. This only relates to privacy in that you won’t be able to share your photos and posts to all of your selected regional network, which would be the town you live in or the college you attended. If you’re anything like me, you didn’t do that anyway. Users have always had the option to select who sees what, and I generally limit my content to Friends, or Friends of Friends (if you need help understanding how to manage your Facebook privacy settings, leave a comment).
A more significant bit of Facebook news came from Mashable in a reveal of screenshots for the next redesign. This interface update is more extensive than the simpler News Feed/Live Feed update. I’m looking forward to the launch, these new layout changes should improve Facebook’s engagement and usability.
The best tablet computer interface that I’ve seen to date is this demo from Sports Illustrated. SI appears to be moving in the right direction transitioning from print to digital media.
(Covering the social news from 11/14 through 11/24)
With 2010 just on the horizon, we’re beginning to hear social media predictions and the new strategies that advertisers will be rolling out next year. Here’s a quote I liked from Chris Bruzzo, VP of brand, content and online at Starbucks: ”People are saying this is going to be a big year for social media and we’re a microcosm of that. Whereas last year it was a curiosity, this year it’s a core part of the program.” Starbucks is planning to cut back on its TV spend and invest quite a bit more in social media. Read about their strategy in this story from Ag Age.
LinkedIn has been busy working on sweeping changes to its features and services. Earlier in the month Social Marketing News reported LinkedIn’s plans for a homepage redesign and the new ability to link Twitter with LinkedIn updates. On Monday, LinkedIn announced that it will open its API to third party developers, a strategy that has been critical to the rapid success of other social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. Last week, LinkedIn announced a new program for advanced group pages, called Custom Groups. Currently, LinkedIn group pages are little more than discussion forums. With Custom Groups, organizations can transform their group page to a central, multimedia social hub that will allow groups to post videos, white papers and feeds. The program costs $50,000 a month, however LinkedIn will include advertising support to drive traffic to the custom groups. Lastly, LinkedIn and Microsoft are joining forces to sync Outlook contacts with LinkedIn information. In the 2010 release, Outlook users will be able to quickly view LinkedIn user activity and information of their contacts as a subpane of the email window. These are very smart updates to the LinkedIn product offering, and will ensure that LinkedIn becomes an even more powerful business social networking tool for individuals as well as businesses and organizations.
A couple small updates on the Twitter front:
The Twitter Geolocation API has been officially released, however we won’t see anything new on Twitter.com just yet. For now, the release is significant for several third party developers that have built applications that will utilize the Geolocation feature, like Foursquare and Seesmic.
Twitter has also made a small improvement to its new Twitter Lists feature, allowing users to add descriptions to their Lists. It’s a nice-to-have, but personally I can’t wait to see Twitter roll out the ability to search Lists. I believe the lack of a search feature is the single most crippling disadvantage for Twitter Lists.
HootSuite is a Twitter publishing and management tool preferred by many, including myself. New updates launched this week allows HootSuite users to connect their Facebook and LinkedIn accounts for the first time. In addition, HootSuite users can create new columns to pull in their Twitter Lists feeds.
YouTube also released new updates this week:
YouTube Direct is a new platform for professional news organizations to solicit and utilize video content from citizen journalists. It’s an API that news media can incorporate on their existing websites to allow individuals to submit video coverage around current events. The news organization’s moderate can preview submitted material on a backend interface, then choose whether to approve the material to be linked from their site. Get the details from MediaPost.
Google has matched its speech recognition technology with YouTube’s caption feature to unveil a new automated video captioning service. Laurie Sullivan from MediaPost explains how the new service will have a big impact on SEO.
