Privacy vs Efficiency?

The Amazon Kindle Fire Tablet has been revealed recently, and in addition to a host of other well implemented features, there is one special differentiating ability of Amazon's tablet compared to its competitors. That is, its use of the Amazon cloud system. The cloud is used in many aspects of the tablet, but it is also used in order to expedite results in its web browser.

To summarize the browser function succinctly, Malik from Gigaom states that the hybrid browser "essentially pre-fetches the web, caches it and then serves it up to Fire owners." However, of course there are some privacy implications in this rather bold move. It might come down to whether or not consumers trust Amazon as a company to handle all their web browsing data or if the increased speed in browsing is notable enough to permit such a sacrifice in privacy. Of course Amazon says all customer data will be anonymous and stored in aggregate but I don't think that answer will satisfy everyone.

As a side note however, if you are in the market for a tablet you should definitely check out Amazon's Kindle Fire, I personally think it is easily the best of the android based tablets and the company has a lot to offer because of their already existing services. Oh and also worth mentioning is its listed price of $199 which I'm assuming is being subsidized in order to entice early adopters.

source: http://gigaom.com/2011/09/28/amazon-silk-or-a-spider-web/

extra reading: http://gigaom.com/cloud/amazon-silk/

Facebook Changes!

Everyone already knows about the changes coming to Facebook. Whether you're excited or hesitant, there's no question that we're all going to have to adapt. Change to the popular social network is inevitable and every time Facebook comes out with some new feature, there is always an uproar surrounding it. Social Media Examiner posted an article which features five new changes that Facebook will incorporate when it launches the new format. Check them out to get a head start. What do you think? Are you ready for change or do you want Facebook to stay the same? Will these have an effect on your Facebook use?

Interview with Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz

This is an older article from 2010 about the CEO of Starbucks Howard Schultz and how he had to be brought back in 2008, eight years after retiring in 2000 as the CEO of the company, in order to help the company recover from their own mistakes as well as from the economic downturn. I am posting it because there are some interesting bits on page 2-3 about how damaging social media can be to a company and its image. The article also discusses on pages 5-6 how Starbucks is now employing social media as a new marketing tool. The article then discusses how the company’s use of social media has really helped it to connect to their customers, and Schultz states that the company’s popularity on Facebook has resulted in Starbucks switching to social media as their “go-to-market strategy”.

If you have any trouble with the URL below the article title “We Had to Own the Mistakes” by Adi Ignatius

Here is the URL:

http://www.shu.edu/catholic-mission/upload/We_Had_to_Own_the_Mistakes_-_Harvard_Business_Review_Interview__04-18-2011_.pdf

by mvizzini

Get the New Facebook Profile

Facebook announced the new timeline which completely revamps your profile. Currently, it's open to developers. Mashable has a relatively simple guide to get the update even if you don't know how to navigate Facebook's complicated developer section.

I highly suggest checking it out. Some of their Open Graph ideas such as sharing Spotify and Hulu activity seem really cool. (Although, obviously, this is optional.) But for me, the timeline takes the cake for most interesting improvement. Suddenly, Facebook isn't just the latest news in your social circle. It's a convenient and (not quite) complete social history.

Facebook- Reborn

According to a Mashable article posted two hours ago, tomorrow will be a Facebook milestone comparable to that of the launch its platform. The change will take place tomorrow at its f8 conference in San Francisco. Facebook has recently changed a few features, including revamped friend lists, a real-time news ticker, and the addition of the subscribe button. And although these changes may have caused some mild discontent among its avid users, what they plan on releasing tomorrow will be a monumental change to Facebook forever. The changes are being made in order to increase the amount of emotional connection its users have with one another through the site. Facebook's changes will enhance everything in your life based on your social graph. The article claims that whatever Facebook is planning to do tomorrow will make you know your friends better than you ever thought was possible. I am truly excited, yet a little frightened, but all I know is that I cannot wait to wake up tomorrow and see what Facebook has in store for the social media world.

http://mashable.com/2011/09/21/prepare-for-the-new-facebook/

Groupon Subscription

Not 100% sure how this relates, but I do know that videos in social media are huge and widely used as responses to different things, such as Yelp and negative comments. Videos are a good, easy tool for customer relationship management. Anyway, I keep getting emails from Groupon from the Chicagoland area, and since I'm not there right now, it's really annoying. I clicked "manage subscriptions" at the bottom of one of the emails, and it ends up taking me to a page with a video of a guy that works for Groupon getting "beat up" by this other guy in their office. Anyway, at the end of the video, this is what it says (refer to uploaded picture) I just thought it was a clever marketing tool using humor or maybe guilt to get you to continue to subscribe. (it's hard to see but if you click the picture, it becomes bigger. Also, the button you can click on the actual video on the website says re-subscribe)

Apple to Announce iPhone 5 on October 4

The moment that everyone has been waiting for is finally here! Apple's new CEO, Tim Cook, will be holding a big media event on October 4th and is going to announce the release date along with details regarding the new iPhone 5. If all the rumors are true, the next generation iPhone will be released sometime in October. This is a huge deal for the Cook, as it is now his time to prove to Apple fans all over the world that he can take over the CEO role and do a good job at it. The world has extremely high expectations for Cook...will he be able to handle it?

 

Jobbook

So I got an invitation from someone I know to join this event on Facebook. It's a new site called Jobbook. I guess it's a lot like monster.com but it is free for students looking for jobs, internships, etc. You can upload your resume and stuff. I thought it interesting because it seems a lot of people are taking networking sites and narrowing them down to a niche market and creating a site based off of that. I would consider this a niche because it's specifically for college students. The link to the facebook group is below:

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=184233784940509¬if_t=event_invite

Also, if you're in strategic management right now with Galvin or maybe another professor, this instantly reminded me of the LinkedIn case we are doing and the questions we had to answer about is it possible for there to be a winner-take-all in social media or social networking sites. As more companies are being started, it seems the answer may be no as they slowly take some of the market share.

Qwikster: Netflix Partner or Weed Smoking Elmo?

According to a recent post from Mashable, Netflix is running into some unforeseen social media trouble with its new rental DVD distributing company, Qwikster. Unfortunately for the company, a Twitter account of @qwikster is already in existence. Touting a weed smoking Elmo as his profile picture, Jason Castillo's @qwikster account has nothing to do with the DVD company. In fact, his "tweets mainly revolve around smoking weed and girls." This may be a major roadblock for Qwikster's early development as more people who are curious about the company look to Twitter for more information.

Netflix Blog

Netflix has been using its blog to explain and launch new products since 2007. Recently Netflix has lost market share due to a change in pricing structure. Since the announcement in July the company has lost almost 50% of its value. Yesterday's blog was written by Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings and was used to comment on the reasons the company decided to change its pricing figure and apologize for lack of explanation regarding the changes. The entry also announced the creation of a new company called Qwikster. Interestingly Reed Hastings not only wrote the post but has replied to several comments on the blog throughout the day in hopes to appease angry customers. Here is the link to the Netflix Blog: http://blog.netflix.com/2011_09_01_archive.html

Savored.com's Better Business Model

In essence, Savored is a newly relaunched website (formerly VillageVines.com) that offers 30% off at participating restaurants, in exchange for a $10 reservation fee from patrons. Savored partners with highly-rated restaurants in 10 different cities, and each day, these restaurants contact Savored to report their availability. Then, in a style similar to OpenTable, patrons choose when they would like to dine. The best part? Drinks are included in the 30% discount.

Savored.com offers a win-win situation both for patrons and restaurant owners. Patrons enjoy not only a discount, but also the discreet system--there are no print-out coupons involved. Restaurants, on the other hand, benefit from filling empty tables and keeping 100% of the profits.

Whereas a website like Groupon can potentially harm a business by flooding them with unprofitable customers, Savored has altered this business model and created a profitable opportunity for each restaurant involved.

This article describes the successful model more in depth:

http://allthingsd.com/20110621/savored-is-a-groupon-competitor-that-feeds-off-merchants-fears-about-groupon/

Savored.com

Dormify.com

I work for a company called Dormify. It is a website and online store dedicated to helping make the college move in process easier for parents and incoming freshman students. Dormify has an amazing grasp on how to utilize social media to its fullest and reach its target market.

First of all, Dormify has a blog on the website that is written by college students (referred to as Style Advisors) from all around the country. This encourages students who may know a style advisor to check out the website and blog. I am a style advisor for this site and I know a lot of my friends have looked at the site and some have even purchased stuff from the online store as a result! The blog focuses on information that college students may find useful like move in tips, how to stay clean in college, how to eat healthy on a budget, etc.

Second of all, Dormify has a very inviting and easy to use website. The online store is organized into different categories of items a student may need, like bedding and decorations. The website is also very colorful and has a rotating reel of different things that potential customers would be interested in seeing. This reel allows the viewers to sit back and be told what they would like to do next on the site.

Finally, Dormify is very involved on twitter and facebook. The head of the company emails all style advisors when there is a sale or news on the company (which is often) and tells us to tweet about it and place a link on our facebook pages. Dormify also has a twitter and facebook page and will post about the news. Having so many people post about the information allows a large variety of people to hear about it! The people who are hearing about it tend to be friends or acquaintances of the style advisors who are in college and could use the products. Dormify also has an employee dedicated to answering tweets when they include the hash tag "#getdormified." Any follower can ask a question about college life or moving in and their question will be answered.

Overall, Dormify is a company that focuses on social and online marketing and knows how to use it to its advantage!

Missoni for Target

Yesterday, Target released its Missoni for Target line which offers the Italian designer fashion at lower prices, so more price-concerned customers can afford a piece of Missoni. Of course with the Missoni for Target line, customers sacrifice natural fiber fabrics for cheaper materials, like nylon, but they still get to enjoy the designer fashion for a smaller price.

Last week was the first I heard that Target and Missoni were launching the line, and then a few days later it was launched. Yesterday morning most Target stores sold out of their Missoni products and the website even went down a few times, which is incredible since they ordered almost double of what they normally order for the launch of a new line. I was shocked by this because I don't remember seeing many advertisements for the line prior to the launch. Anyway, I found an article about it that mentions the marketing strategy they used. It does not say how much they spent on advertising, but it does point out that social media played a big role. For not much advertising and that large of a turnout, they did something right.

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/beauty/designers-line-creates-black-friday-like-buzz-crashes-target-website-2551882

Google + vs. Facebook

It's interesting to watch the ongoing "battle" between Facebook and Google +, as Google + continues to grow. I was invited to Google + a few weeks ago and initially noticed the many similarities between the two. Clearly, Google + had taken many concepts from Facebook - the news stream on the main page, suggestions for new friends, photo albums, etc. The list could go on and on.

But an article struck my interest today when I read that Facebook was going to begin organizing friends in "smart lists." If you haven't used Google +, one of their main selling points is your freedom to be able to sort friends into circles and then choose which circles you share information with. Facebook's "smart lists" appear to be a direct spin off of Google +'s circles. This definitely defends the idea that social media networks such as Facebook, Google +, and Twitter take new features of each and try to improve upon them and make them their own.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hWUBob4DXsrlWF6ociAmmD3xu7vg?docId=73d8967119474aa8aa37401fbb0d1d02

On another note, does anyone know anything about the government potentially choosing to support Google +?

Visual presentations are powerful

This video shows huge information about the countries evolution in just 4 minutes. Visual impact like this, is what marketers should produce to attract consumers into their industries whether they are trying to tap into inbound marketing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo

Big Brother's Watching...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/mobiledia/2011/09/08/employees-cant-be-fired-for-facebook-complaints-judge-says/ - "Employees Can't Be Fired for Facebook Complaints, Judge Says"

The blurred line between real and online worlds is especially prevalent when employees are penalized for pictures or opinions on their personal social media sites (especially when it has to do with their place of work).

We've all heard about employees being fired for bad-mouthing bosses, or facing repercussions for pictures online that may damage their reputation as a professional. This is one of the first articles I've read where the opposite is true. Five employees were fired for making comments that the boss referred to as "cyber harassment" on their Facebook page on a non-working Saturday. According to the National Labor Relations Act, "employees have the right to talk to each other about improving work conditions, and the board viewed the Facebook conversation as an example of just that". Because of that judgement, the employees were all given their respective jobs back.

This article discusses the fine line between what is okay to say online, and what can have serious consequences. Per our discussion in class today about 6 degrees of separation, social media sites have made our world seem even smaller. Be careful about what you say on the internet, because you never know who's reading!

The future of books, ebooks, and publishing?

So I ran across an article recently from FastCompany about the sectioning off of books into "quick reads." (http://www.fastcompany.com/1778934/with-apples-new-quick-reads-if-a-book-doesn-t-sell-chapter-two-could-be-a-hit)

I find this idea to be fascinating. It feels almost like the book industry is replicating the changes in the music industry. Ex: Music Albums --> the advent of Mp3's --> iTunes --> Widespread adoption of listening to single songs as opposed to entire CD albums

Whereas in the book industry it goes from paperback books to ebooks and now to the demarcation of popular segments of a book. I wonder if this will lead to people exchanging these "quick reads" with others like how people talk about favorite songs. What do you guys think?

The personalization of ads

Its not news that social network sites like facebook enables marketers to advertise specifically to the people that are interested. I found an ad campaign this afternoon that really impressed me and was a great example of how ads can be personalized to you. I was not able to get a link for the ad and the video is not working on here, so I will just describe it. EA sports advertised the new Madden 2012 on the right panel under the events/birthdays section as seen below. I have written in my bio that the Minnesota Vikings are my favorite football team, and they are playing the Chargers the first game of the season. They made a 30 second clip of the Vikings scoring touchdowns and sacking the Chargers quarterback. It is safe to assume that they made 32 different clips for all of the 32 teams in the NFL, and they put the video that suits you best on your facebook page. I thought it was a great ad, and it definitely got my attention which is obviously what they are trying to do.

EA SPORTS Madden NFL

Watch the Vikings beat up on the Chargers in Madden NFL 12 and Like the page!

Genius.

Talk about using social media to its fullest potential.

In my neverending quest to learn Spanish, I came across Livemocha, a language learning site that combines guided lessons and quizzes with real, and sometimes live, interaction with native speakers.

The site gets users to create profiles based on their native language, and when you finish lessons, Livemocha links you with other users who are native to the language you are trying to learn. You complete assignments and send them to native speakers who can then correct them and give you feedback. You are also able to record yourself speaking passages and native speakers will listen and correct everything from your grammer to your pronunciation. Other users become your tutors, and you become a tutor to others who are trying to learn English. A point system makes it worthwhile to take the time tutoring others, and based on user reviews, the system works incredibly well.

This use of social media allows Livemocha to give users an authentic learning experience at an extremely low cost. The cost savings from users being each other's tutors allows Livemocha to offer many of its courses for free, or a 12 month program for only $149. Definitely something worth checking out if you are interested in learning a new language! Link is below:

http://www.livemocha.com/

Nike Back 4 The Future

On September 7th, rumors started spreading across the internet that Nike was going to be releasing a limited edition shoe based on the shoe worn by Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future: Part II. Sure enough last night Michael J. Fox was on the David Letterman Show endorsing the new shoe explaining that all proceeds will go toward Parkinson's research. 1500 pairs of the shoes will be auctioned on EBay over the next 10 days. In less than 12 hours all shoes on the site had a minimum bid of $4,000 and one pair already had a high bid of $65,000. The video of the commercial which is making its rounds on the internet and can be seen here http://www.nicekicks.com/2011/09/nike-mag-back-for-the-future/ has already gotten 8,000 views in four days. I think this is a great example of a successful viral marketing campaign.

In less than four days Nike took the self-proclaimed "Greatest Shoe Never Made" and made it the greatest shoe everyone needs to have.

Social Media Across The Big Pond

I thought most of you would find it interesting how social media are developing over in Europe. In addition to a general lag, meaning that while Twitter is already a big player in the US in continental Europe it's basically unknown to most of the people, large companies have formed to use social media as a marketing tool before the new media completely reach the masses. One such company is Ebuzzing:

http://venturebeat.com/2011/08/31/europes-ebuzzing-raises-25m-for-social-media-ad-platform/

To give you an idea of magnitudes, Austria - a country that rapidly implements new media technologies - has a population of roughly 8 million. In Austria there are now 2,589,640 Facebook accounts compared to 55,736 Twitter accounts. The number of Facebook accounts is shrinking, while Twitter accounts seem to explode. For more datailed information see this link (I know it's German but I guess you can figure out the graphs):


http://socialmediaradar.at/

The Glee Project

Not sure how many of you are "Glee" fans, but the producers held online auditions last year through MySpace (strange choice) and then eventually chose 12 people from these auditions to compete on a reality TV show called "The Glee Project". The winners of the reality competition won 7-episode arcs on the show, which is a big deal given the popularity of "Glee". I just thought this was a great move on the part of the Ryan Murphy and the other producers. Not only did it open up casting to regular teenage kids instead of trained actors, but now the two new characters already have a built-in fan base from the reality show. Pretty brilliant.

Here is a link from last year about how it all worked: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/gossip/2010/03/glee-auditions-how-to-submit-myspace-song-list-rules.html

"Why Niche Social Networks Encourage More Meaningful Interaction"

http://mashable.com/2011/09/06/social-network-niche-interaction/


Here's an interesting article from Mashable.com about niche social networks. It talks about the lesser-known social networks that allow users to actually relax and mingle with a smaller, more personal group of people with similar interests, rather than be bombarded by the fast pace and broad audiences of Facebook, Twitter, and Google+. 


For example, athlinks.com is a focused social network just for athletes. If you scroll down to the comments, some readers recommended other focused social networks that I'm having a lot of fun checking out. There's even one all about health and beauty and another for people who want to talk about politics! 

SEO & Inbound Marketing Examples

This blog post relates more to the HubSpot case we have to read for Wednesday instead of social media. This summer I worked a lot with WordPress on an authority website called womensfitness.org (check it out if you want and/or become a fan on Facebook). The website pretty much uses the concept of SEO, search engine optimization, to try to become Google's authority on the topics of women's health and fitness, weight loss, nutrition, etc. Eventually, the goal is to make money via advertisers, fitness DVD sales, magazine sales,etc (wherever the site can take itself). However, I just wanted to share a website that we used to generate keywords. If you type in a keyword topic, like the HubSpot case talked about, it will give you a whole list of keywords and how many hits each word gets per month. This website differs because we wrote fitness and health articles SPECIFICALLY using the keywords versus a business' website that is about real estate (for example) and utilizing different keywords within the website to generate a higher ranking on search engines... But it's the same concept, nonetheless. The website is www.semrush.com. We are still working on the site, adding articles as quickly as possible and creating a Twitter account, posting the site on blogs, forums, etc. but we are hoping it will continue getting hits daily. We use www.google.com/analytics to check how many people are looking at the site, which pages they are looking at the most, average time for each page, etc.

Also, one more website that is new is called www.rankpop.com. It was created by the three head guys that own ProspectMX, an internet marketing company, offers link building, pay per click management, search engine optimization, consulting and workshops nationwide. Anyway, the website does a lot that HubSpot does: give companies the tools to rank higher and get more hits to their websites at an affordable price. Rankpop.com even guarantees to their customers that if they don't get the results, they won't have to pay. They use the inbound marketing principles to attract customers and businesses that know they need to get out of traditional marketing but are not quite sure how.

Pinterest

In light of discovering new social media websites, I was recently clued into Pinterest (http://pinterest.com) by a friend. The general idea is a bookmarking site that allows you to "pin" websites onto your own personal boards by way of "pinning" pictures from the website you wish to bookmark. You can also follow other people's profiles and view their boards, and share your own with your friends. The site was also recently discussed in TIME's "50 Best Websites of 2011" (http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2087815_2088159_2088155,00.html)

Zappos... Tweeting on the Job

I don't know how many of y'all use Zappos, but it is a great online retailer with excellent customer service. The company was recently bought out by Amazon, but still has functioning independence. Zappos, in my opinion, uses social media very effectively. This article was written three years ago, but it just shows that Zappos was way ahead of the curve.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/zappos_twitter.php

Of course the numbers are outdated but it is amazing to see how much they have grown. In 2008 CEO Tony Hseih had 2,800 followers. Today he is closing in on 2 million. You can follow Hseih on Twiter @zappos. Zappos also lets employees tweet throughout the day about what they are doing at work. If you want social interaction with a company that you do business with Zappos is the place to shop.

Hacking becomes a Business

Not too long ago I read an article in The Economist about the business of hacking. It dealt with hacking as a form of business, explaining that there are websites on which hackers offer their services for various purposes. The most common service is the hack of Facebook accounts. But all major social networks seem to share the same fate. Prices vary, ranging from 40 $ for a simple Facebook hack up to thousands of dollars for more sophisticated services. I really don't know if this works, but if it did, it would be a major concern for all companies involved in social media and a reason to strengthen their IT-security. Unfortunately I couldn't find the article on the Internet, but I found the following links:

http://www.gohacking.net/
http://rajahackers.com/
http://www.hackerscatalog.com/

All these websites offer hacking services or know-how and I found them on Google within 10 minutes, so I guess one could find even more professional services within a few hours of search. Also I think that this form of "business" is just on the rise and we must expect to see such services offered even more often in the future.

Swaggerwagon-2011 Toyota Sienna SE

When I turned 16, my mom got a new car and I got the keys to her mini van...not exactly what I was hoping for. My friends dubbed it the "Loser Cruiser" and a boy on the Homecoming dance committee with me said it was so big, it could be the venue for the dance...ha ha. Then last year, Toyota came out with this amazing video marketing their mini van, almost making mini vans look really cool... http://www.youtube.com/toyotaUSA/?x=1sienna

I am not sure if this video really went viral, but it was my favorite commercial. A lot of my friends posted it on Facebook just because they thought it was funny, not because they were in the market for a mini van. Even though the TV commercial was a lot shorter than the YouTube video, Toyota hoped that people would YouTube the full swagger wagon video. I thought this video was a good example of how large corporations, like Toyota, can use social media in combination with traditional marketing for successful promotions.

Did You Know? We are living in exponential times"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HybVOMJI0_E&feature=related

I don´t know if you have already seen this video, but I think it is a great summarize of our first class.

Is amazing how the world is growing exponentially thought internet, isn´t it?