von Roland Hachmann | Nov 5, 2007 | Blog, Digital Culture, Digital Marketing, Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Online Advertising, Social Media Marketing
Clever, very clever indeed. Google announces the Open Hand Set Alliance and liberates the 33 participating mobile phone operators from the claws of proprietary systems. From the Google Blog:
Android is the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices. It includes an operating system, user-interface and applications — all of the software to run a mobile phone, but without the proprietary obstacles that have hindered mobile innovation. We have developed Android in cooperation with the Open Handset Alliance, which consists of more than 30 technology and mobile leaders including Motorola, Qualcomm, HTC and T-Mobile.
It appears to carry very similar objectives as OpenSocial which was announced only last week. Google seems to favour open standards, so that the web as a plattform and mobile phones as the future personal device for everything will stay open and free. This should enable innovation to the benefit of the user, no doubt about that! But it might also serve Google quite well.
Why? I can only guess: Googles revenue models are still mostly built on advertising. So Google needs scalability in customer reach, which they can only keep increasing with ready access to information and users. As social networks are obviously becoming the dominating platforms for users to interact with, and mobile devices probably being the first choice for going „online“, then Google needs to be able to freely play on these grounds.
In the future, I think the key to revenue will most likely not reside in just delivering content, i.e. producing or transporting it, since there will be soooo much of it. And it is very labour intensive to produce it. Instead, it is much more efficient to
- intelligently aggregate and sort content (which Google already does)
- adequately aligning this content to the needs, preferences – and most importantly: intentions of the users.
Regarding the second point, I think it is fairly obvious that Google should be way ahead of the competition in gathering the necessary user data. Think about Google Toolbar, Google Analytics and Google AdSense, nevermind the main site, the search engine itself. They should have better tracking data than anybody else, which they can put to work for solving the second point above.
One thing that can stop the (nearly) endless scaling of Google’s model into the long tail of every single social media profile and mobile device is „artificial“ restrictions such as walled gardens and operating systems. So: very clever to launch initiatives to at least partially open up social networks and mobile phone operating systems.
von Roland Hachmann | Nov 4, 2007 | Ad News, Blog, Digital Marketing, Marketing, Online Advertising, Social Media Marketing
There is Information about Facebooks new ad plattform. Especially interesting: the „beacon project“. If you purchase anything on third party sites (e.g. Amazon), it could be listed on your newsfeed. Of course you’re asked in advance, whether you want this data transferred across to Facebook. Nevertheless, I wonder how this will be taken up by users. Particularly in Germany, where users are rather careful with their data privacy, I think this feature will not be successful. Techcrunch has some more information on this.
Users will have several options to choose from:
… opt in to always including this data in their news feed, opt out to never include it, or opt in to include it with a secondary confirmation via the toast above. Users can also opt in/out for specific third parties.
That sounds OK, however I would never choose the first option, the danger of forgetting about it is too big. Not that I buy stuff on the web, but still it’s none of other people’s business..
On Tuesday, Facebook will announce the new ad systems, so that will be worth checking out.
von Roland Hachmann | Okt 26, 2007 | Ad News, Blog, Digital Marketing, Marketing, Online Advertising, Social Media Marketing
von Roland Hachmann | Okt 24, 2007 | Blog, Digital Culture, Social Media Marketing
Some interesting facts for my German readers: There is a new research published by TNS Infratest about about the users of web 2.0 offers. According to this research the senders or creators of content are still amongst the younger audience, while the recipients and content consumers are amongst all age groups:
Während etwa ein Drittel (33 Prozent) der Verfasser von Beiträgen [von Wikipedia] unter 20 Jahren sind, liegt der Anteil der Leser, die 30 Jahre und älter sind, bei 65 Prozent.
Also with blogs we need to differentiate:
Hier sind 41 Prozent der Personen mit einem eigenen Blog unter 20 Jahre alt. Die Blog-Leser hingegen sind deutlich älter, bereits 35 Prozent sind über 40 Jahre alt, nur 20 Prozent sind unter 20 Jahren. „Das heißt, Blogs werden zwar auch von Gleichaltrigen gelesen aber gleichzeitig scheinen sie auch für Personen interessant zu sein, die nicht direkt in der Altersgruppe des Blog-Besitzers zu finden sind. Dennoch sind aber auch Erwachsene unter den Blog-Schreibern: Immerhin ein Viertel aller Blog-Besitzer sind über 40 Jahren“
Notable is also the difference of topics chosen by men and women:
Am häufigsten werden Weblogs als persönliches Tagebuch genutzt (61 Prozent), aber auch konkrete Inhalte wie Reise & Urlaub (30 Prozent) und Wissen & Lernen (24 Prozent) werden von den Bloggern thematisiert. Frauen nutzen ihren Blog häufiger als persönliches Tagebuch (76 Prozent der Blog-Besitzerinnen). Männer behandeln eher konkrete Themen, wie Computer & Software und Nachrichten & Politik. Die Themengebiete Wissen & Lernen und Reise & Urlaub sind bei beiden Geschlechtern in gleichem Maße beliebt (jeweils ca. 30 Prozent der Blog-Besitzer).
Here you can find a PDF with some (very few) Charts.
von Roland Hachmann | Okt 23, 2007 | Ad News, Blog, Digital Culture, Digital Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Trends, Social Media Marketing
Joe Jaffe, who just released his new book „join the conversation“ (and very successfully bumrushed the charts on amazon) also conducted a study (together with the Society for New Communications Research and TWI Surveys) on how marketers might shift their budgets to conversational findings.
Here is an excerpt from his blog (the whole study is here):
- Nearly 57% of respondents report that in 5 years time, what they spend on conversational marketing will be greater than that of traditional marketing. Another roughly 24% believed it would be the same as traditional marketing
- 70% are currently spending 2.5% or less of their communications budgets on conversational marketing, but two-thirds plan to increase their investment in conversation within the next twelve months
- Respondents noted that the primary obstacles currently preventing them from investing more in conversational marketing include: “Manpower restraints†– 51.1% “Fear of loss of control†– 46.9% “Inadequate metrics†– 45.4% “Culture of their organizations†– 43.5% “Difficulty with internal sell-through†– 35.8%
The rest you can find in his new book. I should get mine soon, amazon already notified me, that it shipped yesterday. (I helped Joe bumrush the charts on Sunday … )
Wo ich sonst so bin...