Category: Business

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Who’s There? Seth Godin’s New Ebook on Blogging

Seth Godin author of famous bestsellers as All Marketers Are Liars : The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World or Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers just gave a hand in promoting blogs and blogging among those unfamiliar with specific terms and notions releasing for download the free ebook: Who’s There? (1.6MB, PDF), Seth Godin’s Incomplete Guide to Blogs and the New Web.

This is part of the Incomplete series of ebooks that tries to identify just a few important (and overlooked) ideas and sell you hard on putting them to work for you. I believe that your problem (if you have a problem) isn’t that you don’t have enough data. You have too much data! You don’t need a longer book or more time with a talented consultant. What you need is the certainty of knowing that you ought to do something (one thing); then you need the will to do it.
 
I’m going to assume that you’ve got one of a few goals. If you don’t want to accomplish any of these things, feel free to ask for a refund (and click here for some entertainment…)
1. Understand how and why the mainstream media is dying.
2. Figure out why your organization needs a fundamentally different approach to the web.
3. Embrace the fact that you can’t just change your tactics… the truth of what you do and who you are has to change as well.
4. Realize that all of this is very inexpensive and very quick. The hardest part is finding the will do it right.

And more than that, if you’re interested on how to make websites that do their job better, then you can download Seth’s Knock Knock ebook released in June (if you haven’t already).

For romanian readers here is the link to Seth’s Permission Marketing… in Romanian.

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Advertising Clichés

An interesting article published by online edition of BBC News on (annoying) clichés in advertising.

“It’s tiresome to see characters in adverts who don’t resemble anyone you know,” says the article.

Here are my favorites ones:

  1. Men are obsessed with sex but will forego sex in order to watch football or drink beer.
  2. Women are locked in a constant battle with their weight/body shape/hairstyle.
  3. Career success is entirely based on your ability to impress your boss.
  4. Mums are often harassed but NEVER depressed/unable to cope.
  5. Any act of male stupidity (e.g. walking across a clean floor in muddy boots, putting the dog in the dishwasher, etc.) will be met with a wry smile, not genuine annoyance/anger.
  6. Married men will flirt with other, younger women but NEVER act upon it.
  7. Scandinavians are, without exception, blonde and beautiful.
  8. Women have jobs they never do in real life, e.g. dockworker (who looks like a model).
  9. Children will not eat fruit or vegetables. Ever.
  10. Both men and women find driving deeply pleasurable, never boring or stressful.
  11. High Street bank staff are (A) friends of the customers, and (B) of slightly above-average attractiveness (only if female).
  12. All women (except stay-at-home housewives) have interesting and enjoyable careers.
  13. Any over-the-counter medical product will work instantly and 100% effectively.
  14. Women never merely hop in and out of the shower, instead preferring to act out some sort of soapy Dance of the Seven Veils.
  15. School is a happy experience for all children.

Via: Adverblog

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Google – Innovation as Strategy

Since bursting onto the public scene one year ago today at an impressive (yet in hindsight conservative) market valuation of $23 billion, and a corresponding stock price of $85, Google has been busy innovating. It’s launched at least a dozen new products since its IPO.

In its first year as a public company, Google managed to capture investor attention by repeatedly topping their earnings expectations, and by constant innovation, a thing expected, given that Google’s corporate culture and organizational principles include dedicating 20% of work time toward musing, exploring, and quite simply — creating.
Google stock history
Exactly one year after their initial IPO Google announced that it has filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a proposed public offering by the company of 14,159,265 (yeah those are the decimals in PI) shares of Class A common stock.

Decided to pick-up the glove Microsoft (with its search.msn.com or new buzz around its new IE7.0) and Yahoo! (with recent launch of AdSense‘s competitor, Yahoo!Publisher Network) is launching a new products campaign.

Google just released Google Desktop Search 2, which includes a new piece of software that could challenge both Microsoft and Yahoo, on various levels. The free program, known as Sidebar, presents consumers with a pane of customized information — such as weather forecasts, stock quotes, news headlines, text feeds from favorite Web sites, photo slideshows and email alerts — that sits alongside whatever else the user is viewing. It provides some functions similar to Yahoo’s popular MyYahoo customized Web-page service.

In other words, as analysts put it:

“I guess the plan is to demote browser to ‘rendering engine,’ and combine all its other functions into “desktop search,” er, that is, ‘Google Desktop.'”

If Google really does turn IE into little more than a rendering engine, Microsoft will only have itself to blame. Wasn’t the whole justification for making the browser part of Windows to make the rendering engine a platform, so that developers could make it part of their applications? Looks like Google is doing exactly that.

Well it seems that Google Sidebar not only put pressure on Microsoft, but Yahoo as well.

If Google gets traction with Sidebar, users will find that it’s a more convenient way of accessing weather info, news, stock quotes and photos, as well as email, than going to Yahoo.com (which is the biggest content provider at the moment) and finding the appropriate links.

What’s missing?

Google needs to add instant messaging and probably personal web publishing to the tool”, Internet Stock blog says.

The New York Times said in an article couple of days ago

Google executives say they plan to unveil on Wednesday a “communications tool” that is potentially a clear step beyond the company’s search-related business focus.

While executives would not disclose what the new software tool might be, Google has long been expected to introduce an instant messaging service to compete with services offered by America Online, Yahoo and MSN from Microsoft.

It’s even more than that.

There’s a host responding at talk.google.com and is actually redirecting to http://www.google.com/talk.

Tom Servo, tried to connect to talk.google.com using his Trillian client. What he got was a secure XMPP (Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol, alternatively known as Jabber) server waiting for connections. And according to this post, Jabber server listening on port 5222 of ‘talk.google.com’.

Well, while waiting for new developments here are some of theGoogle’s new products launched in the year passed frot its IPO:

October 2004

  • Google bought Keyhole, which delivers a multi terabyte database of images and mapping information that let’s users “fly around the world from their home computer.”
  • Google announced Desktop search
  • Launched its SMS product, enabling people to get information instantly on their mobile handsets,
  • introduced Google Print, which lets people read excerpts of book content.

November 2004

  • Google launches Google Scholar a service that search through journal articles, abstracts and other scholarly literature

December 2004

  • the company announced its offer to the world’s premier libraries to digitize their collections and make them searchable on the Web
  • Google suggest is launched

January 2005

  • With Google Video, users can search the content of TV programs, such as PBS, the NBA, Fox News and C-Span.

February 2005

March 2005

  • Google rolled out enhancements to Google News, making it possible for users to customize the service to fit their needs.
  • Google Maps was integrated with Google Local products and then Keyhole, for satellite imagery.
  • Google upped the storage it offered for Gmail users to 2 GB, and it is still growing today

April 2005

  • Google began to offer users the ability to upload video to Google with the aim of allowing them to distribute and monetize that video.
  • Google launched My Search History, a service that let’s people find their past searches.

May 2005

June 2005

  • a free enhanced version of Keyhole was offered, and it became known as Google Earth

You can see all new Google products (including the ones in beta stage) at Google Labs.

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The Future of Advertising – Today

The August issue of Inc Magazine is presenting an comprehensive guide in advertising tools of the future that are already out there on the market.

    • Accenture has designed a 10-foot-wide touchscreen that lets crowds in malls or on the street interact independently with characters, games, and information.
    • Imagine a day when you can text-message a discount coupon to a cell phone user just as she walks past your shop. That day is here.
    • With Reactrix Systems’ interactive images, 10 or more people can kick around a virtual soccerball, splash in a virtual pool, or (below) swirl through a logo.
    • In cities like New York, taxi-top messaging signs are tied to GPS location sensors, so that a cab can pitch nearby stores and restaurants as it roams.
    • In Massachusetts, Stop & Shop is testing a touchscreen that with a swipe of a loyalty card can remind shoppers of past purchases and suggest alternatives.
    • Claria is using behavioral targeting service tracks the online habits of Web surfers and hits them with relevant advertising
    • Pulse, of San Francisco, California, is using online tools turn a photo of any person or animal into a lip-synched talking head for viral ad campaigns.
    • Zebra Imaging produces large promotional holograms that make images of objects or people stand out in 3-D — no glasses needed.
    • Reactrix is using a motion-sensitive projector that turns any surface into a crowd-drawing, brandable interactive display.
    • Massive from NYC inserts ads via an online connection into video games while they’re being played. Coming is technology that will adapt the ads to individual players.

Endless opportunities. See full Inc Magazine article.

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Romanian Investment Environment

BusinessWeek online is running an article analyzing investment environment and opportunities of Romania and Bulgaria.

analysts say the countries are catching up [with the other ex-communist countries], and their economies have been expanding rapidly since 2000. Economic growth is expected to hover at around 6 percent for the next three years in both countries, with Bulgaria seeing lower inflation.

“Romania and Bulgaria are perceived as the new forces,” said Radu Craciun, an analyst at ABN Amro. “They have low labor costs, and due to their geographical positions have better access to the Middle East, Russia and the Balkans.”

Both are scheduled to join the European Union in 2007, but could face one-year delays if they fail to reform their inefficient justice systems and crack down on corruption.

While both countries already have easy access to EU markets, a postponement would delay EU funds for infrastructure improvements and rural development. But it wouldn’t have a major impact on large investors, Craciun said, as they take a long-term view.

This year, however, direct foreign investment reached euro951 million (US$1.16 billion) from January to May, a 12 percent rise compared to the same period last year, according to official figures.

The article sees also another aspect of Romanian’s development and investments trend:

The economic boom is not evenly distributed, however, with a strong concentration of investment in urban areas and around Bulgaria and Romania’s Black Sea coasts, while few foreigners venture in rural, poorer regions of eastern Romania.

This is confirmed by a recent study conducted by the Romanian Centre for Economic Modelling, which is showing increasing differences in terms of entrepreneurial activity among Romania’s eight regions with Bucharest and Western regions of the country heading as regarding to the pace of entreprenurial development.

Also it seems that fears that the introduction of a 16% flat tax in January would depress revenues are not real as corporate tax revenue increased by 21.1% in the first half of the year, while tax receipts rose by 17.3%.

Techorati tag: Romanian Investments

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Entrepreneurship Resources

If you’re looking for an extensive and valuable resource center for entreprenership and managing business than you will really appreciate Stanford Technology Venture Program’s Educators Corner.

The Center is basically a free collection of 779 high-technology entrepreneurship teaching resources, including:

via: Lifehacker

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10 Years Online

1995 is definetly the year that started it all for the online world.

Sharing millions of songs online with friends, googling around, buying and auctioning everything online, being able to set up your own webpage in couple of minutes, dowloading tons of information, watching TV, seeing your friends from the other side of the world and chatting with them online, unlimited online storage…

All these are part of our daily lifes, and some of them seem to be here forever. Well, hardly to believe, they are here for only 10 years or less, and 1995 was the year when all of them actually started.

Before the Netscape browser illuminated the Web, the internet did not exist for most of the people. If it was aknowledged at all, it was mischaracterizedas either corporate email or a clubhouse for adolescent nerds. And it was hard to used too. Who wanted to waste time on something so boring?

Some months later, on August 9th, 1995, Netscape’s public offering took off, and in a blink, a world of do-it-yourself possibilities was born. Suddenly it became clear that people could create material that anyone with a connection could view. The burgeoning online audience no longer needed traditional media for content. Well, not in an instant, it took almost ten years, but with the Netscape’s stock peaking at $75 on its first day of trading, the world gasped in awe. Was this insanity, or the start of something new?

See a year by year, short history of the last decade online.

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“Interactive” billboards

As if CK’s “Live” Billboards were not enough, here is another spin on an old idea. The ad agency TBWA/Vancouver created a billboard with grab-worthy household items like framed paintings, rugs, pillows and cookware, that were easily removed by passersby (the billboard was uniquely low to the street).

By the end of the weekend all the items had been lifted, revealing the campaign’s simple message: “People Steal. Black Tower Home Security.”

“interactive billboardThe client was looking to do some high-impact, low-budget advertising,” explains senior AD Jay Gundzik. “This was relatively inexpensive, and created a lot of PR.” The billboard is located at the high-traffic entrance to Vancouver’s Granville Island.

The ad’s creative team, Michael Milardo and Bart Batchelor, camped out across the street and videotaped the experiment until the wee hours of the launch night. Grainy footage of thieves bagging their loot can be seen here.

Milardo and Batchelor decided to illustrate the need for home security systems by making theft an active part of the campaign. The idea came to them after people stole 3D elements (giant thumbtacks) from a billboard they did at that same location a few months earlier.

Technorati tag: Advertising, Billboards

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Online Advertising Networks

I mentioned the rumors here on this since March this year. Even if Yahoo officials declined to comment, it seems that Yahoo is planning to launch on Wednesday an ad network for small Web publishers intended to strengthen its hand against rival Google, a source familiar with the plan told CNET News.com.

While Yahoo and Google already go head-to-head serving major search-advertising partners such as America Online, Google has largely enjoyed a monopoly delivering its signature text-only ads to smaller content sites, including blogs.

Now Yahoo will play to that constituency and challenge Google’s pricing power in one of the fastest-growing online mediums: blogging. Like Google’s service, Yahoo’s self-serve product will display text ads deemed relevant to the content of specific Web pages. Advertisers pay only when a reader clicks on their ads. Yahoo and publishers will split the fees.

And that’s not all. Google is receiving a punch from Ask.com also. Google accounted for roughly 70% of Ask Jeeves’ revenue of $261 million last year. The Google relationship turned out to be Ask Jeeves’ salvation as it struggled to survive shortly after the dot-com meltdown. With its survival no longer in doubt and its Web sites growing in popularity, Ask Jeeves believes it’s well positioned to develop its own advertising network.

All this fuzz while the latest studies show that a nearly 1/3 PPC click fraud.

The experiment was conducted in conjunction with Los Angeles-based Clicks2Customers.com and focused on three pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns running during a 10-day period in 2005. Duplicate clicks were determined by comparing IP addresses, language, browser settings, referring URL, time of click, operating system, browser plug-ins and country of origin.

“Our random sample of PPC campaigns uncovered as much as 29.5 percent PPC fraud and showed that Google was able to account for and credit only a tiny portion of those fraudulent charges,” McGlaughlin said. “Whether it is click fraud or the lesser known impression fraud, these fraudulent clicks can cause a lot of damage to advertisers because it drains their budgets. Companies should be aware of how big of a problem it really is and be equipped to more aptly detect it.”

UPDATE: News confirmed on Yahoo!blog, beta signup here (US only)

Technorati tags: Online Advertising, PPC, click fraud

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Word-of-Mouth, as a science

Since the beginning of organized marketing programs, marketers viewed word-of-mouth as an incredibly valuable, yet uncontrollable, result of effective marketing practices.

Word-of-Mouth has grown in popularity over the past several years as a marketing and research medium. Marketers seeking to find new methods for reaching customers and communicating with them have wondered if word-of-mouth could provide a potential solution to the dwindling return of traditional marketing platforms. In recent years, a number of companies have formed, seeking to harness the power of authentic word-of-mouth. By organizing real consumers, they train them to share their honest opinions more effectively.

BzzAgent released some findings on the subject in a six-page whitepaper: The Value of Managed Word-of-Mouth Programs (229kb PDF).

Individuals who choose to participate in managed word-of-mouth programs are more active socially and spread more word-of-mouth. They are also more likely to make a recommendation in a word-of-mouth episode. Word-of-mouth volunteers do not talk about program-related products and services so much that this marketing affiliation undermines their social relationships.

Managed word-of-mouth is not manufactured or greatly different from everyday word-of-mouth. Rather, word-of-mouth volunteers naturally interface their involvement in managed programs with their normal communications. Additionally, this study shows that word-of-mouth volunteers generate more word-of-mouth overall, demonstrating that word-of-mouth marketers can harness natural word-of-mouth,accelerating and augmenting it.

via: Church of the Customer 

Techorati tags: Marketing, Word of mouth