No breaking news here. What’s interesting is to see that they won’t take their peers’ reviews into account if there are only few. Less than 4 opinions and 68% of your consumers probably won’t buy your product. So if you’re managing an ecommerce website, make sure that you make the commenting/reviewing process as smooth as possible. I can’t wait to share with you the way we’re currently developing it for the new Kiehl’s site, that we’re gonna launch this fall. More info very soon.
Sprint, the US cellphone network, launched today a pretty hilarious campaign that gives you the opportunity to ruin your precious video on YouTube to advertise Samsung’s new Instinct phone. Twenty bucks to make for the first 1,000 participants and $10,000 for the winner. A brilliant and shameless exploitation of user-generated content.
via Creativity’s blog.
So, we finally know what you guys want from a site. Give your opinion and read the ones posted by your peers, you want good deals, you want to make sure that you don’t get screwed, you want some video demos, you still love those cute newsletter in your inbox (some of you made the switch to RSS though), and you want to entertain and be entertained.
No rocket-science here but it’s always good to be backed-up by some good stats when you present a new project that includes one of the above mentioned.
I love charts. And I know that you love your PPTs filled with them. Here are the latest ones I like to show off in my keynotes, for you to use and share.
More details at eMarketer.
Collaboration, participation, peer production… are these terms exclusively tailored for you and me? Should they be?
I mean, I own 2 computers which I bought with my own savings, have 2 different ISP’s (both broadband), I pay the electricity bill every month - why should internet users as individuals carry the weight of leading this revolution in the way we do things and cooperate with each other?
Shouldn’t companies set the example by giving something back to this Society2.0, instead of focusing on finding ways to exploit it?
Don’t get me wrong. This is not a manifest, nor an accusation. It is an invitation for companies to join us common users in pushing progress in so many different areas like fighting AIDS, climate prediction and trying to find extraterrestrial life forms.
Both private and public companies own a very significant share of the overall computers in existence. Many of them have access to the Internet. So it is just a matter of will.
There could even be a form of promotion for companies who join distributed computer projects. They could be allowed to use badges on their websites and advertising campaigns. It could be kind of like a regular sponsorship. Only less expensive.
That’s right, corporations. We’re not asking for your money - we just need your bandwidth and your processors during idle time. No need to increase your carbon footprint - no need to leave every computer on and online all night long. Just lunch hours would be great… this could save us all decades of research for finding an effective cure for cancer. While your employees relax during their break.
There are hundreds of distributed computer projects out there, choose the ones you like best. Volunteer and your company will be doing the right thing.
The image above was made possible through a BURP (Big and Ugly Rendering Project), a publicly distributed system for rendering 3D animations.
A couple of hours ago I was at my friend’s house testing Mosh on his N95, and we just wanted to keep going, installing all sorts of themes and applications like the inclinometer for your car or a divx player. It was a downloading frenzy and it was fun.
Mosh really surprised me, I visited it months ago but I just didn’t find the time or the “drive” to give it a run (I don’t own a Nokia). So, the opportunity came naturally.
This is Nokia’s fans and developers community (Beta) open for all who wish to register. All content available for download is free.
Contributors really participate in this network; I counted 15.608 themes, ring tones, wallpapers and widgets. Users also experiment, with a grand total of 30.261.665 downloads - and counting. They also give ratings and other feedback on all sorts of issues.
Nokia is truly listening to its consumers and has now this huge virtual-commune-lab at its disposal, with a tremendous amount of valuable marketing intelligence that needs to be processed in order to build better applications and cell phones most consumers want.
And now for something completely different: have you seen Adobe’s wonderful playing cards animation? If not, you should. I guess more than anyone, the toolmakers know their tools.
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.
This is bank-holiday weekend in many European countries, the week is almost over over here in NY, you’ve finally realized that no one wants to play Vampire/Zombie with you, you already know that you’re a cauliflower thanks to the “What vegetable are you” quiz on Facebook, there is nothing but slutty reality TV shows on the cable networks, and you forgot the location of the nearest news kiosk. Worry not, here are few sites that should keep up your procrastination trend, while conveniently allowing you to pretend that you’re doing some marketing research.
1/ Technorati: Yes, the young dinosaur that we all love to hate, just launched an animated version of their blog posts tracking tool, and it is fascinating. Less misspellings than the ticker at the bottom of MTV’s TRL, less geeky than a RSS feed and unlike Bloomberg TV, you don’t need Advil after a 5 minute session. Grab a drink, select your topic (Entertainment, Technology, Politics, Sports, Business, Life) and wait for the next post about Britney’s Classy Cat Halloween costume.
2/ Rentometer: Is the $2,400 rent for that 2-bedroom you saw in Greenpoint a rip-off? How much is your boss paying every month for his loft in Kensington? Well, the great Rentometer will tell you if you give them your address and the type of apartment you’re enquiring about. Mine is a bargain apparently, I guess that gives me an excuse to do some shopping this weekend. (If you’re a home-owner, check zillow, created by 2 exes from Microsoft and Expedia, that became the reference site for real estate for its accuracy, or lack of)
3/ TasteBook: My favorite. Somewhere between as-fascinating-as-Shopping-TV-at-3-in-the-morning and useless. The idea? You pick up your favorite recipes from cooking websites and create printed cookbooks for you and/or your friends. The best is that you can fill the book at your rhythm, i.e. order your first customized book with 30 recipes and insert more recipes whenever you want. A bit like those animal fact-cards that you collected every month when you were a kid, except that you only get the cards you want, not a 5th kind of mountain goat you don’t care about. It costs $35 for 100 recipes, I’m so getting this to my gourmet friends for Christmas, thanks Condé Nast!
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