That cute name is for the first Monday after Thanksgiving, when consumers go back to the office and start shopping online for the holidays, after a long family weekend sharing some weird roasted birds (yes Mel, I’m talking about you and your Turducken!). According to ComScore,
According to a study by JWT and as reported by The Economist, 80% of young Chinese people believe that digital technology is an essential part their life. Compared with 68% of Americans.
Just 30% of Americans said that the internet helps their social life; 77% of the Chinese respondents agreed that “the internet helps me make friends.” And not just friends: 32% of the Chinese said that the internet broadens their sex life, compared with 11% of Americans. According to JWT’s chief trendspotter, Marian Salzman, “our study confirms that the Chinese internet is buzzing with virtual pheromones—‘cybermones,’ if you will.”
Mr Diller has another term for a unit of emotion flying about in cyberspace: the emobyte. In general, he regards America’s emobyte deficit as a problem: yet another sign that the balance of power is shifting to China. “More activity online means a more connected and a more evolved workforce—just what China needs as it makes its move from being the workshop of the world to a developed economy in its own right,” he says.
Stefan, do you have an office space available for me in Fullsix Shanghai?
Read the full article here.
iPhone is already out in four countries. For those still waiting, there should be high hopes for iPhone has not only changed what we expect from our phones, but also what we expect from carriers.
Only a few months ago, unlimited data plans were a sweet dream for the early adopters among us.
On June 25th morning, only four days before iPhone launched in the US, the word spread out that AT&T would be launching a special data plans (”iplan”) including unlimited data over EDGE. A major revolution.
On the other side of the atlantic, hopes were building up … and went down when it appeared that european data plans would be limited.
Did they hear users moaning? Pretty unlikely. Did Steve call them and explain that his big plans for web applications would fail short without unlimited data plans? Plausible.
A few days later, the news came out in UK, Germany and France: unlimited plans (yes, really – no limit).
Cellphone companies are huge and slow companies that usually take years to prepare and lauch a new offer. Having four of them change business rules (iPhone costs a lot to carriers), get their network ready (visual voicemail and iphone browser both require specific developments) and jump in the big and risky world of unlimited data is an awesome achievement.
But the story does not end here. In France, SFR (Vodafone) and Bouygues Telecom both have announced unlimited data plan just a few weeks before the iPhone goes on sale. Apple is changing the rules …
Hello everybody!
I decided to dedicate an entire “Say It With Links” post to (in my opinion) one of the most interesting, forgotten, underestimated and ancient forms of web – real world interaction: Telerobotics or remote control over the Internet.
Back in the 80’s and 90’s, there where so many projects of this nature… most of them conducted by universities from all over. I don’t know why, but nowadays there are only a few left. How come?? Just try it, this stuff is really fun!
I definitely sense an opportunity to be explored here by brands. And universities again could use some fundings and become partners with online agencies on a win-win relationship.
So, I’d just like make you think about the possibilities here and consider bringing this thing back to life.
For example, how about playing a game trying to grab a client’s prize/product (did anyone say cell phone? Mp3 player?) while manipulating a real robot arm over the Internet (like those insert coin crane games)?
What about streaming video from special sponsored cameras on football games?
The possibilities are endless.
After reading an article making an interesting paralism between a movie and a web 2.0 symbol, I couldn’t help but to sit and think about it. Web hits are becoming more and more a way for Brands to evaluate a site’s performance. Although true to a certain extent, aren’t the Social Media websites acting towards these results in the same way that the TVs’ effect of creating a public opinion did on their audiences?
Yes and no. In my opinion, Social Media has given birth to a new form of Marketing, specific to each of the Webstartups it’s related to – Digg-Marketing, Reddit-Marketing, etc… – as each has its own specificities. This Marketing, while attractive as a way to add visibility to a Brand, promotes false results as the results that are on top of a page in one day vary, which originates a huge influx of visitors at one moment and a big pitfall in the next. So, in one way, the Social Media websites are shaping the apprehension of the online public opinion to a certain extent. But, there are two variables that differ from the original effect that the TV had – time and interactivity. People might be curious to check a link that is on top in Digg, but the truth is that in the next hour, he’ll be back to check the new number one link, almost forgetting about the original one – information overload syndrome. And there are instant comments – people refute and approve the information in real time, thus shaping and steering information towards a common ground with online audiences.
The bottom line is that Social Media is indeed acting as a opinion shaper, but only towards a certain extent. Yes, it is important for Marketers to acknowledge these tools and their effects, but it isn’t a good strategic pillar to focus on them for pure brand awareness – it will only originate the desired brand awareness if more people actually create links related to the same topic. If it’s a single interesting link, it will definitely create a lot of traffic, but only in a 1 hour maximum time slot.
Today is the Blog Nothing Day, in support of the WGA Writer’s Strike. No blog articles posted, no comments left on the blogosphere, no content uploaded on Facebook (that’s a hard one).
If you don’t really know what’s happening on the sidewalks of Hollywood and New York, check out the Wikipedia entry for the writer’s strike that started at the beginning of the month (especially the New Media sub-section).
Otherwise, the above video created by one of Stephen Colbert’s writers is a pretty good summary of the situation. I see you on Tuesday!
The next time your friend sends you a video that has gained “viral” status, keep your sanitizing wipes handy. In a guest post on TechCrunch, Dan Greenberg details how his company, The Comotion Group, takes promotional videos and makes them viral. I had suspected this for some time now, but I wasn’t really sure how successful it was. Apparently, pretty successful.
Their strategy includes spamming friends with new videos for their clients, as well as planting arguments in the comments section of youTube to create controversy. The article gives pretty decent insight into how not all successful videos are organically popular. However, should I care? If the video is entertaining it shouldn’t matter whether someone paid for its popularity right? Perhaps, but something makes me feel uneasy.
FYI: I am not affiliated with or related to Matt Monahan of The Comotion Group.
We all have different navigation routines, our own bookmarks and favorites (although these are to disappear and be replaced by tagging of URLs, as in the new Firefox 3 release). These are mostly specialized websites, sources of information we believe that are reliable, on very specific subjects. About our jobs, our favorite sports, our hobbies. Stuff we like. Because we all know it’s not easy to please everybody.
So, it seems clear that the shortest way to online success is not through trying to be a reference to a majority, but instead to a global minority who is short on content and eager to be targeted. Those are the best online business opportunities out there.
I chose Stardoll because it’s such a great example: an online community for “tweens” (girls aged 7-17) that is thriving against all odds on a mostly male-oriented, male-designed World Wide Web.
Who could have guessed that so many girls all over the world liked spending time online, playing games, chatting, creating avatar dolls, dress them up and spend millions of dollars while doing it?
Well, Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures did… they helped to finance this Scandinavian project with 10 million dollars.
Today Stardoll has more than 12 million users all over the world, including the Vatican! It has real-world designer boutiques like DKNY, with replicas of real designer clothes users can buy for their dolls… they even have a virtual flea market where girls sell their avatar-used clothes to other community members. The community newsletter is designed to resemble a fashion magazine, and girls dream with the day when they (their avatar, I mean) will make the cover.
Celebrities like Avril Lavigne are signing contracts with Stardoll for branding of virtual wardrobe and decoration of the avatars’ virtual bedrooms.
Eventually, they had to impose a monthly purchase limit of Stardoll’s virtual currency, because the girls where just spending too much money with their parent’s credit cards…
So this is how an idea that probably would be considered a total failure by most conservative minds has proved to be a highly profitable business.
I guess this proves that the secret of online success is simply to try to serve well the neglected global online minorities.
Bullying of people has entered a new phase. In fact, campaigns around the world remind us that digital tools are being used by teens to molest, shame, and intimidate others.
Today running away from bullies is not enough for an individual to be safe, because digital sociability widens personal availability, also considered that ridicule and stigma can spread fast by way of social networking media.
This unconventional banner, from the campaign for COI (The Central Office of Information) on Cyber Bullying, is a fast way to make teachers and parents able to understand what cyberbullying is about in the age of 21st century social networks.
This small post shows an interesting mashup on the use of 2.0 tools for individual brands or free-lance professionals. By using YouTube, not only are these professionals displaying their skills, they are also joining the transparency tyranny tsunami, sharing their professional secrets in a very community like feeling, and even building up their natural reference in Google by displaying themselves in a naturally viral mechanism – aka, YouTube.
This is a definite example of how not only there is a growth in the mashups of functionalities of various services – there’s also a subliminal mashup of digital philosophy concepts occuring. The terms we’ve grown familiar with, like community, virality, transparency, massclusivity, Youniverse, are not just individual concepts anymore – they are all creating natural synergies via the 2.0 tools, thus evolving their functionalities without the necessity to enhance the tool itself.
Instead of constantly creating new tools and mechanisms, some people are just still discovering new ways of using the “old” ones – lateral marketing at its best. It is something to think about…
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