I wanted to start off this blog post talking about “noise” on friendfeed. What is noise you ask? The noise level is all relevant to the amount of people you subscribe to. A good example is Robert Scoble. While at first I did not subscribe to him (nothing personal), I do now. Scoble probably has the biggest follower base on Friendfeed. Fear of noise is why i did not subscribe. After following him for 2 weeks on Friendfeed, my opinion is just the opposite. His stream is full of valuable nuggets of information. Most of his followers are smart...
There's been a lot of talk recently that search and other forms of "performance" or "direct" online marketing will continue to grow in the downturn while display and other forms of "brand" marketing will struggle. I think that's likely to be true at some level but it doesn't mean that display advertising doesn't work. In fact, a recent comScore white paper that was presented last week at the Empirical Generalizations In Advertising Conference at the Wharton School is very enlightening. You can get a copy of the white paper by asking for it here. comScore operates a panel of over...
Brands seeking to engage their consumers via social media seem to be misunderstanding the whole concept of social media itself. It's for the people, by the people and business needs to recognise this. The consumer now has the power, and consumers in numbers can carry a lot of influence. The main article covers five misconceptions that brands appear to have around the area, such as ROI expectations and the risks associated with getting involved. I've also offered ten tips for those businesses wishing to engage with their target market through social media, which I hope are useful. If you're an organisation that is chosing to ignore the...
Retailer Coby is gearing up to release a sorta, kinda, Netbook, that they don’t want to call a Netbook, but will be called the PoqetMate. Not only is the 7 incher (there’s also a 9 inch model in the works) a small device with a full QWERTY keyboard, but Coby is looking at a sub $100 price for the tiny device that they want to call a Midget PC. Saying the Midget PC will be smaller than Netbooks but not that much, Coby is also supposedly working on handhelds that will fold up like a hankerchief and fit in your...
If anyone needed more evidence of consumers' weary state and the nation's deteriorating job market, they got it Thursday with the latest batch of bleak economic data.Stocks Face Rough Month Where the Layoffs Are...
AT&T announced Wednesday that it has formed a strategic partnership with ChaCha, a mobile service that allows users to submit questions via text message or phone and receive their answer in a text message. The deal calls for a co-branded greeting and AT&T promotion when consumers call ChaCha's answer hotline or text message the company a question. More important from a business standpoint, the two companies will also work together to improve ChaCha's mobile-answers service and develop both text and voice ad-based services. The partnership between AT&T and ChaCha is interesting, to say the least. At first glance, the...
Any notion that Christmas will be cancelled this year has been greatly exaggerated, according to the 14th Annual Christmas Retail Survey from Deloitte. The global auditor and advisory firm reports that for most of the UK population, the economic downturn will not be getting in the way of Christmas, with 57% of consumers saying that they plan to spend the same amounts as they did last year....