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• Glancee: A Nice-Guy Ambient Social Location App For Normal People

  TechCrunch

  Eric Eldon

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:44 am

  Some of us can’t be bothered to check in, but still want to find interesting people nearby. The challenge for developers is how to do this in a way that is both useful and not creepy. Glancee, available for both iOS and Android, gets closer to solving these problems than most I’ve seen. The app lets you sign in with Facebook, then it shows you people within 100 yards, or one, two, or ten miles who have things in common. In some ways this sounds similar another app I recently covered, Highlight — but there are key differences, that will make each app appeal to different sets…

• U.S. Wants You to Test Terrorist Tracking With Social Media Game [VIDEO]

  Mashable!

  Alissa Skelton

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:26 am

  The U.S. government wants to more aggressively track terrorists on social media — and it’s asking for your help. The U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Embassy in Prague are sponsoring a social media gaming contest to test ways social media and open source data can be used to track terrorists and locate missing children. The FBI announced last month it plans to develop an app to monitor public social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter, and this game shows the government is still looking for ways to expand its social media tracking abilities. Tag Challenge, the social media…

• App Smart : Apps to Help Singles Flirt Their Way to Romance

  NYT > Technology

  By BOB TEDESCHI

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:20 am

  Many matchmaking apps exist, and now more apps to help singles flirt their way to romantic attachment are also popping up.

• Inaccurate labels and why we need them (and need to improve them)

  Seth's Blog

  Seth Godin

  9 Feb 2012 | 2:46 am

  If I tell you, "I'm going to the baseball game," it seems as though you're likely to understand what I mean. Of course, you won't. When George Will goes to a baseball game, it's a religious experience. Me, I don't even like baseball. Or maybe it's my nephew's ball game (the playoffs), or maybe going to the game causes me to miss an important event, and on and on. We label the experience with just two words, and two words can't possibly capture the emotions and circumstance surrounding an event. The same thing is true with brands. If I tell you that a new business was funded by USV, that might…

• Raising Money: What Not to Say and What Not to Believe #OfficeandGuyK

  How to Change the World

  GuyKawasaki

  20 Jan 2012 | 10:46 am

  Over the past two weeks via my partnership with Microsoft and Office Web Apps, I’ve provided templates of models for you to create enchanting PowerPoint pitches, Word business plans, and Excel financial models. They are all available for you to download from my SkyDrive account. I hope these documents and blog posts help you save a boatload of time and increase the quality of your efforts.I leave you with two sets of top ten lies: one of entrepreneurs and one of investors so that you know what not to say and what not to believe. Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs “Our projections are…

• 

  TechCrunch

• Glancee: A Nice-Guy Ambient Social Location App For Normal People

  Eric Eldon

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:44 am

  Some of us can’t be bothered to check in, but still want to find interesting people nearby. The challenge for developers is how to do this in a way that is both useful and not creepy. Glancee, available for both iOS and Android, gets closer to solving these problems than most I’ve seen. The app lets you sign in with Facebook, then it shows you people within 100 yards, or one, two, or ten miles who have things in common. In some ways this sounds similar another app I recently covered, Highlight — but there are key differences, that will make each app appeal to different sets…

• Pixloo Helps You Sell Your Home With Free Virtual Tours, Exports To Zillow, Trulia & More

  Sarah Perez

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:28 am

  In December, Eric covered Open Home Pro, a startup that lets realtors sell homes via their iPads. Today, there comes a similar effort from Pixloo, except this service is designed for use by anyone – realtors and homeowners alike. With Pixloo, you can upload information about your home, including text, photos and even videos and then immediately export that data to major real estate sites including Trulia, Zillow, Realtor.com and others, all for free. OK, technically, Pixloo is freemium. The pricing tiers depend on whether you need one virtual tour, the number of exports per tour and…

• Avast, Me Hearties: How The Pirate Bay Changed The Way We Steal

  John Biggs

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:41 am

  The Pirate Bay, in many ways, is disappearing. It is one of the most popular torrent sites on the web and its database of millions of torrent files – essentially pointers to pieces of files hosted elsewhere – has long been the go-to spot for budding pirates around the world. While it still exists in spirit, the admins are now moving all of the torrent files off the site and are instead offering magnet links. This is an important distinction that will move the locus of general piracy from a single site to any number of sites, reducing the Pirate Bays importance as a source. First,…

• Cinemagram Turns iPhone Photos Into Animated Gifs In Seconds

  Sarah Perez

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:07 am

  Remember when the iPhone app GLMPS launched last summer, seemingly heralding the start of a new image format that blended static photos and video? No? That’s OK. Today, there’s a new twist on the idea of reinventing the mobile photo, this time by turning static photos into animated ones. With the newly launched app called Cinemagram, you can turn your iPhone pics into animated gifs in a matter of seconds. Cinemagram isn’t quite the same as GLMPS, to be clear. “The GLMPS app embedded an entire video as a picture-in-picture onto the image,” explains…

• Google, Microsoft Search Queries Grow In January While Yahoo Continues To Slide

  Leena Rao

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:56 am

  comScore has released its ‘explicit’ U.S. search data for January of this year and while Google and Microsoft Bring’s search share continues to grow, Yahoo’s share dropped both year over year and month over month. This comes after Bing overtook Yahoo in terms of search queries for the first time in December. While Bing grew slightly from December 2011 to January, Google reached its highest share since December 2010 this past month. Google search queries increased 6% year over year in January, to 66.2%, compared with 65.9% in December 2011 and 65.6% in January 2011.

• 

  Mashable!

• U.S. Wants You to Test Terrorist Tracking With Social Media Game [VIDEO]

  Alissa Skelton

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:26 am

  The U.S. government wants to more aggressively track terrorists on social media — and it’s asking for your help. The U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Embassy in Prague are sponsoring a social media gaming contest to test ways social media and open source data can be used to track terrorists and locate missing children. The FBI announced last month it plans to develop an app to monitor public social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter, and this game shows the government is still looking for ways to expand its social media tracking abilities. Tag Challenge, the social media…

• Obama Campaign Releases Official Spotify Playlist

  Christina Warren

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:14 am

  President Barack Obama, or rather the Obama 2012 campaign, is using Spotify to share tunes with voters and constituents. The campaign tweeted a link to its official 2012 playlist created using Spotify. It includes tunes picked by members of the campaign staff, as well as a few of President Obama’s favorites. Spotify is just the latest service to get the Obama 2012 seal of approval. In addition to the requisite Facebook and Twitter accounts, the campaign is also active on Instagram, Google+ and Tumblr. A little Wilco, a bit of No Doubt—check out what else made it onto the new official…

• Instagram Co-Founder’s Girlfriend Launches Lovestagram for Valentine’s Day

  Zoe Fox

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:52 am

  Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger is about to receive one of the Internet’s most thoughtful Valentine’s Day ecards from his girlfriend Kaitlyn Trigger. Trigger, who has been dating Krieger since before he launched the hugely popular iOS app, is launching Lovestagram, an interactive Valentine’s card maker that uses the Instagram API, as a Valentine’s Day gift. Lovestagram creates a slideshow of all Instagram photos shared between you and your special someone, through mutual username tags, photos shot in the same location within an hour or comments exchanged. All you do…

• An Olympic-Style Torch Relay … With Lightsabers [VIDEO]

  Christina Warren

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:33 am

  Each day, Mashable highlights one noteworthy YouTube video. Check out all our viral video picks. The fine folks at Nerdist are teaming up with Lucasfilm, Octagon and Machinima to do the first ever “Lightsaber Run” in the days leading up to San Diego Comic Con. That might be the geekiest thing we’ve ever written. Considering our penchant for robots, that’s saying a lot! Dubbed “Course of the Force,” the Olympic-style lightsaber relay will take place on July 7 to 11 and cover the trek from Santa Monica to San Diego. At each quarter-mile marker, participants…

• Kickstarter Project for Adventure Game Raises $600,000 in One Day

  Chelsea Stark

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:18 am

  A video game developer’s Kickstarter project has raised more than $600,000 in just 24 hours. When game veteran Tim Schafer put up a Kickstarter Wednesday night, he wanted to answer the question: are adventure games still viable and popular? Adventure games, mostly seen on PCs and some consoles in the late ’80s and ’90s, were known for their creative stories, immersive worlds and difficult puzzles. Schafer was responsible for designing and writing of the most popular ones, including Full Throttle, Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle and The Secret of Monkey Island. He has…

• 

  NYT > Technology

• App Smart : Apps to Help Singles Flirt Their Way to Romance

  By BOB TEDESCHI

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:20 am

  Many matchmaking apps exist, and now more apps to help singles flirt their way to romantic attachment are also popping up.

• Is This Living Room Big Enough for My TV?

  By SAM GROBART

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:10 am

  Huge televisions, once an expensive oddity, are now the affordable norm.

• California Housing Market Braces for Facebook Millionaires

  By MICHAEL COOPER

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:59 am

  The Bay Area and Silicon Valley expect the windfall from the Facebook stock offering to make their in-demand region even hotter.

• Currents | Q&A: Architects’ Works Find a Niche in the Digital Age — Q&A

  By STEVEN KURUTZ

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:30 am

  Timothy Sakamoto and Jochen Repolust are part of the small but growing niche making mobile apps focused on specific works of architecture.

• Nokia to Cut 4,000 Jobs at 3 Factories

  By KEVIN J. O'BRIEN

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:00 am

  The reductions are the second wave of job cuts at Nokia under Steven Elop, a former Microsoft executive.

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  Seth's Blog

• Inaccurate labels and why we need them (and need to improve them)

  Seth Godin

  9 Feb 2012 | 2:46 am

  If I tell you, "I'm going to the baseball game," it seems as though you're likely to understand what I mean. Of course, you won't. When George Will goes to a baseball game, it's a religious experience. Me, I don't even like baseball. Or maybe it's my nephew's ball game (the playoffs), or maybe going to the game causes me to miss an important event, and on and on. We label the experience with just two words, and two words can't possibly capture the emotions and circumstance surrounding an event. The same thing is true with brands. If I tell you that a new business was funded by USV, that might…

• How do they know you're not a flake?

  Seth Godin

  8 Feb 2012 | 2:43 am

  Before your link gets clicked or your proposal gets read, a busy person is going to triage it to find out if it's even worth glancing at. Since everyone is now connected, the new permeability has created a deluge of noise, and just about everyone worth contacting is taking defensive measures. Do I know this person? Did someone I trust send them over? Where does she work? (Ideo? the FDA? The New York Times?) Has she won an award? Is she famous? Are there typos and is the design sloppy? Are they pestering me? Do I already follow this person online? Does music play when I visit the website? Will…

• Horizontal marketing isn't a new idea

  Seth Godin

  7 Feb 2012 | 2:09 am

  But it is the new reality for just about every organization. Vertical marketing means the marketer (the one with money) is in charge. Vertical marketing starts at the top and involves running ads, sending out direct mail and pushing hype through the media. Your money, your plans, your control. It might not work, but generally the worst outcome is that you will be ignored and need to spend more money. Horizonal marketing, on the other hand, means creating a remarkable product and story and setting it up to spread from person to person. It's out of your control, because all the interactions are…

• Who is your customer?

  Seth Godin

  6 Feb 2012 | 2:26 am

  Rule one: You can build a business on the foundation of great customer service. Rule two: The only way to do great customer service is to treat different customers differently. The question: Who is your customer? It's not obvious. Zappos is a classic customer service company, and their customer is the person who buys the shoes. Nike, on the other hand, doesn't care very much at all about the people who buy the shoes, or even the retailers. They care about the athletes (often famous) that wear the shoes, sometimes for money. They name buildings after these athletes, court them, erect…

• In search of a timid trapeze artist

  Seth Godin

  5 Feb 2012 | 2:01 am

  Good luck with that, there aren't any. If you hesitate when leaping from rope to another, you're not going to last very long. And this is at the heart of what makes innovation work in organizations, why industries die, and how painful it is to try to maintain the status quo while also participating in a revolution. Gather up as much speed as you can, find a path and let go. You can't get to the next rope if you're still holding on to this one.

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  How to Change the World

• Raising Money: What Not to Say and What Not to Believe #OfficeandGuyK

  GuyKawasaki

  20 Jan 2012 | 10:46 am

  Over the past two weeks via my partnership with Microsoft and Office Web Apps, I’ve provided templates of models for you to create enchanting PowerPoint pitches, Word business plans, and Excel financial models. They are all available for you to download from my SkyDrive account. I hope these documents and blog posts help you save a boatload of time and increase the quality of your efforts.I leave you with two sets of top ten lies: one of entrepreneurs and one of investors so that you know what not to say and what not to believe. Top Ten Lies of Entrepreneurs “Our projections are…

• Design a Sam Adams beer

  GuyKawasaki

  20 Jan 2012 | 8:24 am

  Now this is a fun project. I’m helping Sam Adams “tap” the knowledge of beer drinkers and crowd source its next brew. Join the party by getting the app and designing your beer: The final brew will be released in Austin in the first week of March. #sponsored

• How to Create an Enchanting Financial Forecast #OfficeandGuyK

  GuyKawasaki

  17 Jan 2012 | 1:52 pm

  This is the third post in my Microsoft partnership, and it’s all about numbers. The topic is crafting your financial forecast to include in your pitch. Bill Reichert, my partner at Garage Technology Ventures, created an Excel model and wrote this blog post. There’s a lesson in this too: Get the best person for the job. His grasp of financial models and how to present them exceeds mine by two orders of magnitude. The Purpose of Financial Projections When it comes to financial projections, there are two types of entrepreneurs: first, the “visionary entrepreneur” who…

• How to Create an Enchanting Business Plan #OfficeandGuyK

  GuyKawasaki

  12 Jan 2012 | 8:16 am

  Here is the second post in my series about planning, pitching, and launching a new business venture. In partnership with Microsoft and Office Web Apps, I’ve created a Word document that outlines a good business plan. It’s saved to my SkyDrive folder here. Feel free to download it and use it as inspiration. And if you’re working with a partner, you can use the free Word Web App to stay in sync. I provided the PowerPoint document before the Word document because a good business plan is an elaboration of a good pitch as opposed to a good pitch being a distillation of good business plan.

• How to Create an Enchanting Pitch #OfficeandGuyK

  GuyKawasaki

  9 Jan 2012 | 8:01 am

  Welcome to the first in a series of blog posts I’ll be doing as part of a partnership with Microsoft and Office Web Apps. Over the next two weeks, I’ll cover everything a budding entrepreneur needs to turn an idea into an enchanting investment opportunity—from the perfect pitch to a killer business plan to financial forecasts. I’m going to start with a little dissertation on creating effective PowerPoint pitches for your company. I embedded the sample deck for you to click through by using the PowerPoint Web App. When you’re ready to get started, you can download the…

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  Scobleizer

• Hacker News vs. Google+

  Robert Scoble

  5 Feb 2012 | 10:20 am

  I might as well have titled this “Hacker News vs Marketers.” Or “Hacker News vs Bloggers.” Or “jerks vs nice people.” But I never participate in Hacker News for a few reasons and I just was faced with these reasons again when I read the responses there to my blog post yesterday. 1. Programmers often have an attitude of “I can code, you can’t, so I am defacto better than you.” This often comes out in Hacker News comments. 2. Programmers love to bash people anonymously and then, in real life, they will come begging for PR for their companies…

• It’s too late for Dave Winer and John Battelle to save the common web

  Robert Scoble

  4 Feb 2012 | 5:02 pm

  The date was January 3, 2008. Facebook had kicked me off for running a script to try to save the common web. See, I worked with Plaxo to run a simple script. One that would have taken my contacts out of Facebook and put them back into the common web. The script did some very simple things: 1. It grabbed all my friends names. 2. It grabbed all their phone numbers. 3. It grabbed all their email addresses. 4. It gave me a simple CSV file with all that data so I could bring them back to Google, or Microsoft, or anywhere else I wanted to put them. Facebook’s answer was predictable. They shut…

• HTML 5 pushback in San Francisco? Best mobile app designers say yes

  Robert Scoble

  1 Feb 2012 | 3:39 pm

  The new Path? The one that won a Crunchie last night for great design? It’s not done in HTML 5. This morning I saw something new coming soon from Storify. Not done in HTML 5. This morning I visited Foodspotting, which just shipped hot new apps on iOS, Android, and Blackberry. Not done in HTML 5. More and more I’m hearing that designers and developers are ignoring HTML 5, especially for the high end of apps. Why? Well, Path’s founders told me it just isn’t possible to build a great user interface, the way they did it in HTML 5. Storify’s founder told me it…

• Why Facebook will be worth a half trillion by 2015: the mobile and open graph revenue it’s leaving on the table

  Robert Scoble

  1 Feb 2012 | 2:48 pm

  Lots of people think Facebook is overvalued, at about $100 billion (it just released their S1, announcing its IPO). But in talking with developers, like I did with Foodspotting’s founder, Alexa Andrzejewski, and in reading the S1 I see that Facebook has left most of the potential revenue on the table. That makes me think that the folks crying “overvalued” are nuts. Check that interview out, Foodspotting is one of the hottest San Francisco startups, aimed at people who are looking for better places to eat. Here it is from just this morning: See, Mark Zuckerberg is sandbagging…

• 2012 brings a pause in the disruption

  Robert Scoble

  31 Jan 2012 | 4:58 pm

  OK, I’ve been talking with hundreds of geeks from around the world this year at three conferences, CES, DLD, and World Economic Forum. I’m seeing a trend that is worth talking about. What is it? We’re seeing the end of one of the most disruptive ages in human history. I believe that we’re seeing a pause in the disruption. More on that a little later. Just think about all the changes humans have been asked to adopt in the past eight years. Most of us, back then, didn’t carry mobile computers in our pockets. If we did use tablets, like I did, they were expensive,…

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  Social Business Blog RSS | ZDNet

• Cillit Bang and Facebook clean up with All in 1 social commerce offering

  Eileen Brown

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:46 am

  Reckitt Benckiser has taken social commerce one step further than its competition by launching and offering its new Cillit Bang cleaning product exclusively on Facebook.

• Barbour buys search ads to fight counterfeit goods

  Eileen Brown

  7 Feb 2012 | 7:01 am

  Barbour the British clothing manufacturer selling luxury goods including the iconic waxed jacket has taken steps to fight the flow of fake goods appearing at the top of search results.

• Maplin launches Social Store for geeks on Facebook

  Eileen Brown

  6 Feb 2012 | 8:20 am

  Maplin has launched its social store and gives geeks a great ‘in page’ experience.Now you can purchase whatever electronic components you like — without leaving Facebook.

• RIM's BeBold campaign -- hashtag fail or genius marketing?

  Eileen Brown

  6 Feb 2012 | 7:32 am

  Yet another company has fallen foul of the Twitter hashtag. This time it’s RIM with its BeBold campaign. But were the marketing team naive — or preparing our focus for the BlackBerry 10?

• Sainsbury's rebrands Tiger bread after request from 3 year old

  Eileen Brown

  31 Jan 2012 | 9:02 am

  Sainsbury’s has rebranded its Tiger bread to Giraffe bread after receiving a letter from 3 and a half year old Lily. Listening to the customer is good for your reputation - no matter how old the customer happens to be.

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  Charlene Li

• New Report: “Make An App For That: Mobile Strategies For Retailers”

  Charlene Li

  7 Feb 2012 | 10:16 am

  When it comes to shopping, I have a love/hate relationship with my iPhone. Some apps are actually helpful, letting me explore products or buy something immediate. But the vast majority of the retailer apps litter my screens, sitting unused after an initial, disappointing whirl. My frustration is reflected in the findings of my colleague Chris Silva‘s new report, entitled “Make An App For That: Mobile Strategies For Retailers“. Of particular value is that Chris pivots the report around two major strategies retails can use when it comes to mobile: Enrich: These strategies are…

• Jerry Yang’s departure signals a New Day for Yahoo!, the passing of an era for Tech

  Charlene Li

  17 Jan 2012 | 4:30 pm

  My first reaction to the news that Jerry Yang is leaving Yahoo! was that this was the passing of an era. I first met Jerry in 1994 when he was still a PhD student at Stanford, before he and David Filo left to run Yahoo! full time. Through bubbles and two economic downturns, Jerry has always been omnipresent in Silicon Valley. But all good things come to pass. With the arrival of Scott Thompson as the new CEO of Yahoo!, it makes sense that Scott be given a clean slate upon which to write the future of Yahoo!. This is very much the norm for incoming CEOs, where founders are asked to take a…

• Predictions Social Business in 2012, Part III: Transforming Your Organization

  Charlene Li

  9 Jan 2012 | 10:26 am

  This is the last of three posts I’m writing on predictions and priorities for Social Business in 2012. You can read the first and second prediction posts for more context. Prediction #3: Connected leaders and employees will create sustained competitive advantages through a culture of sharing. This year will see some companies pull ahead of others because they are able to collaborate, innovate and execute better and faster thanks to an ingrained culture of sharing. This is the year that companies get serious about investing in their internal social business capabilities, simply because it…

• Predictions for Social Business in 2012, Part II: Knowing Your Customer

  Charlene Li

  3 Jan 2012 | 4:26 pm

  Rather than simply make prognostications, I wanted to give actionable advice based on these trends. This is the second of my three predictions and priorities for Social Business in 2012 (read the first prediction). Prediction #2: Your customers want to be known. Your customers don’t merely want you to understand their needs or pain points. They want you to know them as individuals anywhere and anytime they engage with you. Companies sure know a lot about us, without knowing much. For example, I’m classified for marketing purposes as a Gen X, 35-45 years old, graduate degree holding, Real…

• Predictions and Priorities for Social Business in 2012 – Part I

  Charlene Li

  2 Jan 2012 | 9:57 am

  My pet peeve about the annual predictions ritual is that they lack context for action. It’s nice to know that tablets and big data are important — but what should you do about it? So here’s my attempt at not only forecasting but also to provide actions that companies should be prioritizing in 2012. The Process: I went through my speaking and client engagements in 2011 and looked at which topics and themes I kept referring to over and over again, especially toward the end of the year. I also analyzed which of the tweets from these events were most retweeted to verify where the heat…

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  Market Insights

• If Only We Had Done X (Lessons In Project Management)

  Richard Evensen

  8 Feb 2012 | 11:26 am

  How many of you have managed consulting projects that didn't turn out as planned and left you saying, "If only we had done . . ." ? Have you ever wondered how many steps and criteria are involved in successful consulting projects? And do you know how to avoid project failures? In an upcoming research report, "Five Stages To Optimize The Research Process," Forrester will lay out the five key stages, 30-plus key steps, and 130-plus key criteria identified in successful consulting projects. Not all criteria are equal and required for every project, but miss some key criteria and project steps…

• The Data Digest: Profiling Digital Natives

  Reineke Reitsma

  3 Feb 2012 | 2:05 am

  As part of our Demographic Overview series, we just published Digital Natives: A Demographic Overview; previously, we published research on digital dads and digital moms. For readers who haven't heard the term before, Digital Natives are the individuals currently ages 12 to 17, and they will soon become the most sophisticated consumers in the digital world. Forrester defines Digital Natives as "individuals who have grown up in the age of technology and cannot imagine a life without computers, cell phones, and social networking." With the increasing numbers of these Digital Natives, it is…

• Bringing Qualitative Research Expertise To Forrester’s Market Insights Team

  Lindsey Colella

  31 Jan 2012 | 10:19 am

  As the newest addition to the Market Insights team, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Lindsey Colella, and I recently joined Forrester as a Senior Community Manager. It is a pleasure to "meet" all of you, and I look forward to many future interactions and discussions regarding market research. My background is in qualitative research and, in particular, cultivating insights through online community management. I take great pleasure in showing clients the value of qualitative and online community research and bringing them to a new level in understanding consumer behavior. As some of…

• The Data Digest: Consumers' Attitude Towards Online Privacy And Security

  Reineke Reitsma

  20 Jan 2012 | 3:04 am

  Over the weekend, one of the most reputable online retailers in the US, Zappos, broke the news that its database was hacked and that the information for about 24 million user accounts was breached. How do stories like this affect consumers' attitude toward online privacy? In our August 2011 Community Speaks Qualitative Insights report, "Consumer And Online Privacy: How Much Information Is Too Much?" (available for Community Speaks subscribers only), we found that online privacy is one of the most concerning topics in online users' minds. Two-thirds of US online consumers report being very…

• Hello Mobile Market Research. Where Have You Been? What Took You So Long?

  Roxana Strohmenger

  10 Jan 2012 | 9:17 am

  My colleague Reineke Reitsma and I have been championing mobile market research for quite some time. In fact, we published the first Forrester report on this emerging and innovative methodology back in 2009. In the report, Reineke wrote about the value of its mobility and flexibility to gather insights into consumers' behavior anytime and anywhere. And for mainstream adoption to occur, hurdles such as cost, technology, privacy, and representation must be addressed. At that time, I thought the growth of mobile market research was soon upon us. I was off by about 2 years. But 2011 was a turning…

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  SmartBrief on Social Media

• Understanding the role of micro-copy in a brand's content strategy

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:28 am

  When it comes to planning your brand's content strategy, pay special attention to the micro-copy -- wording on a website's in -More- 

• Pinterest is found to be secretly cashing in on user links

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:28 am

  Pinterest is quietly adding affiliate tracking codes to the links shared by its users, allowing the social network to generat -More- 

• Foursquare is getting more rewarding, CEO says

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:28 am

  Foursquare is more than just a check-in service, says co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley.  -More- 

• Facebook's IPO? There goes the neighborhood

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:28 am

  Facebook's planned public offering is good news for Silicon Valley Realtors, who say they're expecting a surge in house sales -More- Executive Vice President Media Works Ltd.

• Facebook seeks to attract investors from social media startups

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:28 am

  Facebook is cozying up to social media startup investors with a program called fbStart.  -More- 

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  Logic+Emotion

• Permission To Fail

  David Armano

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:15 am

  I love my job. Seriously. The skeptical among you may read this as shameless corporate cheer-leading, or a PR ploy (given I work at a PR firm). It's not. You have to understand that I work for a very unique company—in fact, it's been the most unique career experience in my life. A sixty year old company—technically family owned (not public) with over four thousand employees globally and the CEO of the company wears the last name of the founder, his father. Which brings me to the video above. I had the opportunity to interview our CEO, Richard Edelman on the topic of trust as it relates to…

• Will The Real Social Business Experts Please Stand Up?

  David Armano

  7 Feb 2012 | 10:23 am

  Stop what you're doing and check out this thread (on Google Plus of all places) started by Francine Hardaway. She started it off with a simple question. "Who are the best experts in social business?"What followed was a robust discussion on what social business is, isn't and who's driving the agenda forward in the space both in thought and action. If you're interested in the emerging definition of social business (aka the convergence of enterprise 2.0 and social media) I highly recommend you taking a look. Some of my favorite thoughts:"the thread that social business is not the same as social…

• People, Places & Events

  David Armano

  3 Feb 2012 | 11:01 am

  A few significant events happening over the next few months—here's where I'll be: Chicago: February 6th, Social Media Club, An Interview With Richard EdelmanOur I'll be interviewing Richard Edelman our CEO in our new office space as we host the Chicago Social Media Club. We will be discussing this Year's Trust Barometer findings. If you can't make it to Chicago, we will be live streaming video the interview at 5:00 CST. London & New York: February 13-16, Social Media Week Our London office is hosting a panel titled "Social Business In Action". A topic I'm very passionate about—then…

• How To Be A Social Media Self-Righteous Jerk

  David Armano

  1 Feb 2012 | 4:28 pm

  The scale above shows the many stages one has to go through in order to become a bona fide self-righteous jerk in social media. Still, there are many people who aspire to reach this peak, but fall short in executing against it. Given this observation, I thought it would be worthwhile to piece together a few best practices which will ensure your status as a social media self-righteous jerk (or SMSRJ). In no particular order: 1. Join The Klout GestapoAll social media SMSRJ's know that Klout is simply evil incarnate and requires a organized force to take on this evil axis of influence wherever…

• Launching a Social Command Center (Without The Center)

  David Armano

  27 Jan 2012 | 8:05 am

  "Social command centers" are all the rage today and it's not without some merit. Many organizations now find themselves in a real-time business environment where news travels faster than sound, and information is set free. As a result, some forward thinking companies have put "monitoring" in place either in-house or in combination with partners. This isn't enough. And to make matters worse, I've seen companies make the classic mistake of buying a tool BEFORE putting any thought into the design that goes into effective monitoring and response, forgetting the 3P's (People, Process, Platforms).

• 

  chrisbrogan.com

• Throw Away the Maps

  ceb

  6 Feb 2012 | 1:30 am

  People judge us by the path they’ve seen us walk before. They can’t anticipate our future steps. We, ourselves, look to how things have been, what seems to be the lay of the land, without realizing that the maps are not the territory. Want to succeed at work? Then don’t try to do your job. Instead, work towards something larger, more meaningful, and something that blends your convictions internally with your best ability to help others externally. Want to create something new? Then throw away the old, or maybe join two disparate old things together into something new. The…

• The Next Social Networks

  ceb

  5 Feb 2012 | 1:30 am

  The rage in social networks right now is Pinterest, partly because it’s probably the first social network that has a much higher adoption rate by females than males, and partly because it’s an interesting concept: somewhere between visual social bookmarking and scrapbooking. What also might not be immediately obvious is that it’s just “easier” to interact there. In that way, Pinterest has something in common with Instagram, which is community around photos. What I’m interested in, though, is Gentlemint, which I keep calling “Pinterest for…

• Learn From Adele – Build Your Platform

  ceb

  3 Feb 2012 | 1:30 am

  Jacq and I just watched Adele Live At The Royal Albert Hall (amazon affiliate link), and though every song was just wonderfully done, I found myself fascinated by what Adele was doing in between each song. Because even though most people would be interested in hearing her belt out her amazing repertoire of hits, what I took away from the performance was Adele’s real magical ability: the ability to resonate with her audience. What Adele Could Teach You About Impact I’m writing something about this right now for my upcoming book with Julien Smith, but I had to share some of the…

• Rob Gokee is a Musical Wizard

  ceb

  2 Feb 2012 | 8:05 am

  I had such a great experience working with award winning musical composer Rob Gokee. We did some musical work together, and the process was so amazing. Rob helped me create my theme song for Shhh! The Secret Show. So anyhow, he and I sat down to do an interview, and it’s a bit long, but it’s totally worth it. We talk about what collaboration feels like at a distance, what it takes to get music like this made for your own show, and a lot more. Rob’s a hero to me, and has been part of the community for a while. I was so fortunate to have worked with him. Can’t see the…

• Build Your Platform – Start

  ceb

  30 Jan 2012 | 1:30 am

  The following is part ONE of a series called Build Your Platform. If you find it interesting, please consider subscribing for free to get the rest of the series. This post is long. You might want to bookmark it for later. The age of social media oversaturation is upon us. People are declaring Twitter bankruptcy to go along with their email bankruptcy. They cite not wanting to start on yet another social network as their reason for not getting more involved with Google+. And just as soon as you start getting into Pinterest, you hear about Path, but wait: there’s Gentlemint, which is…

• 

  News from SMP

• Technology and antivirus company AVG prices IPO

  1 Feb 2012 | 4:00 pm

  Technology and antivirus company AVG prices IPOWith the world focused on Facebook’s IPO, technology company AVG Technologies N.V., more widely known as an antivirus software maker couldn’t of picked a more volatile time to press release details of...

• Can The X Factor muster another number one?

  8 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pm

  Can The X Factor muster another number one?UK X Factor 2011 winners Little Mix (covering Damian Rice’s Cannonball) were beaten to the Christmas number one by the Military Wives Choir (Wherever You Are composed by Paul Melor).  The girl band (...

• Integrated Social Media Marketing Event touches down in Asia February 2012

  4 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pm

  Integrated Social Media Marketing Event touches down in Asia February 2012Integrated approach leverages social media for enhanced engagement and brandingPacific Conferences’ Integrated Social Media Marketing Conference offers actionable insights i...

• Weight Watchers kicks off 2012 TV ad and social media campaign

  2 Jan 2012 | 4:00 pm

  Weight Watchers kicks off 2012 TV ad and social media campaignWeight Watchers UK kicks off its first TV and social media campaign of 2012, and the timing couldn't have been better as we see in the New Year.   Marketing magazine reported ...

• Social media analysis for the UK X Factor finale

  23 Dec 2011 | 4:00 pm

  Social media analysis for the UK X Factor finaleThe X Factor social media infographic week 10 from the live shows finale 2011 for series 8Elemental's UK X Factor social media analysis and infographic for the Week 10 finale. The grap...

• 

  Ogilvy Blog Aggregator

• Digital Paris, c’est avec Reed Expositions et Ogilvy PR Paris

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:23 am

  Digital Paris, sans doute en avez-vous entendu parler ? Les 11 et 12 avril prochains, à l’Espace Pierre Cardin se tiendra le nouveau congrès dédié au e-commerce, marketing, e-crm organisé par... Lire l'article en détails

• Don’t let go!

  9 Feb 2012 | 6:04 am

• The Wolseley .

  9 Feb 2012 | 2:21 am

  Had lunch at the Wolseley last week, a real place not a place you follow or follows you or a place I have thank the good Lord ever seen someone become Sherrif of or been ousted.Nope its a place with real people with real lives and real stories. I’d just ordered when on his way out the handsome and chiselled Brett Gosper dropped by to gloat on England’s performance in Dubai adding on parting that he and Jeremy King once considered swopping roles for a week, I’ll conclude with the probable results later but the exchange did prompt me to think further and try and analyse the…

• Pinterest Hits 11 Million UMVs (and 8 Tips for Brands)

  8 Feb 2012 | 9:02 am

  In case you haven’t heard, last night TechCrunch announced that Pinterest hit 11.7 million UMVs, becoming the fastest standalone site ever to surpass 10 million monthly uniques. This presents a huge opportunity for brands, as you might have already read about here. The #1 driver of consumer purchases is word of mouth recommendations from friends, and Pinterest holds the power to drive authentic “word of eye” recommendations in a way that is changing the landscape of social commerce. How? The landing page for Pinterest is an endless visual stream of subtle product…

• Just another typical creative / strategic review…

  8 Feb 2012 | 8:24 am

  Just another typical creative / strategic review…

• 

  ClickZ News

• Thousands Flock to Google's New Nielsen-Like Panel

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:10 am

  Latest offering from Google could prove privacy perception is reality.

• Groupon Relies Less On Ads to Boost Subscribers

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:32 am

  Deals player reduces marketing spend, plans new seasonal promotions.

• Privacy Group Sues FTC to Stop New Google Privacy Policy

  9 Feb 2012 | 6:37 am

  EPIC argues consolidated policy violates a consent order Google signed with the FTC last year.

• Pharma Dives Deeper Into Social Marketing

  9 Feb 2012 | 3:00 am

  YouTube videos to counteract fake Viagra, and a pharma Facebook game.

• YouTube Unveils 2 Auto Channels With Premium Partners

  8 Feb 2012 | 2:22 pm

  Another step forward in premium content strategy.

• 

  Social Media Explorer

• Boosting the Content Quality on Your Blog or Website

  Jason Falls

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:00 am

  Editor’s Note: This is a guest post written by Samantha Peters, an avid blogger who writes about social media, digital marketing, and online communications. When we talk about blogs and websites these days we often use phrases like “SEO,” “page rank,” and “web statistics.” We pay close attention to our click-throughs, our inbound links, and the way we incorporate advertisers. In short, we approach our sites from a marketing angle and take every opportunity we can to increase and maximize our exposure. Amidst all this positioning, many bloggers and site managers overlook the…

• In Social Media, The Fine Line Between Nimble And Fickle

  Ilana Rabinowitz

  9 Feb 2012 | 6:00 am

  A study by The Center For Marketing Research declared, “blogging declines as new media rules.” Based on results of a survey sent to the Inc 500, the article states, “there is clearly a shift in how these nimble companies are communicating.” If it is true that blogging is on the decline, then I’d say these companies are more fickle than nimble. Throwing over — or not starting a blog because it’s easier to use Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest is short-sighted and risky. A blog may be an “old” form of social media but it has five benefits that the newer platforms can’t touch.

• What Happened To Saying Something Nice?

  Jason Falls

  8 Feb 2012 | 6:00 am

  Social media has certainly given the power back to the consumer. But sometimes the consumer doesn’t do nice things with that power. While it could be a matter of perception (the overwhelming sentiment of most brands in online conversational analysis is positive), it certainly seems like the only time we take note of brand mentions online is when someone is whining or bitching about them. AT&T is one brand that gets unnecessarily beaten about its head and face a lot online. I’ve never quite understood this, perhaps because I’m A) Practical in nature and understand…

• Get Out of Your Own Way: 5 Excuses Marketers Use to Avoid Social Media ROI

  Nichole Kelly

  7 Feb 2012 | 6:00 am

  You see it everywhere. Management teams and marketers desperately want to understand how social media is delivering to the bottom line. Marketers are getting tons of pressure from their management teams and are desperate for a way to prove their strategies are working. With so many chomping at the bit to get at true return on investment (ROI), how has it remained so elusive? Has social media become the marketing channel that we know we need to have, but can’t demonstrate why? What if Social Media ROI was really simple, but we let a bunch of excuses get in our way of measuring it?

• Empowering Your Employees With Social Media

  Jason Falls

  6 Feb 2012 | 10:00 am

  Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Emily Eldridge, Senior Vice President of Pure. It’s tempting to think that employees’ online discussions about your company should be curbed.  Most company policies in the modern workplace exist to protect us from lawsuits – and to ostensibly protect employees from themselves.  While it’s understandable to want control over our corporate image, this fear dimishes our employees’ ability to communicate.  A stronger approach is to empower our staff to be brand advocates. Advocate for Your Employees Companies should decide whether their…

• 

  ManagingCommunities.com

• What Can You Do When Information Leaks from a Private Forum?

  Patrick

  6 Feb 2012 | 6:58 pm

  photo credit: Vivian Chen [陳培雯] Private forums are meant to be private – the information contained within is supposed to only be for the people who have access to that forum. But, people don’t always respect this fact and eventually, you may have someone leaking private information to people who shouldn’t have it. The question [...]

• Social Media and Online Community Platform Usage by Inc. 500 Companies Detailed in Study

  Patrick

  2 Feb 2012 | 7:10 pm

  Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes, a Chancellor Professor of Marketing and the Director of the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, has released the results of the center’s fifth annual study into the usage of social media by Inc. 500 companies. The survey asked participants about thirteen particular types of social media: [...]

• Good Online Community Management is Censorship

  Patrick

  30 Jan 2012 | 3:00 am

  One of the reasons that words matter so much is that different words prompt different emotional reactions from people. If you call someone a spammer, they are more likely to react defensively than if you said that they were advertising. Even though, when it comes to the action, these are the same thing. Let’s take [...]

• ManagingCommunities.com is 4 Years Old!

  Patrick

  26 Jan 2012 | 4:00 am

  photo credit: barbourians Friday will mark 4 years since the launch of ManagingCommunities.com. In honor of this occasion, I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who has been supportive of this site and me. Thank you to those that read this blog, subscribe to it and spread the word by passing along my [...]

• When Your Members Criticize a Company or Person, Invite Them to Your Community

  Patrick

  23 Jan 2012 | 4:10 pm

  photo credit: SmithGreg I recently had a member on one of my communities start a thread to review a book, which he criticized. Most of his review was fair, but there were some parts that I felt were a little harsh. Still, it was appropriate for our community. As an author, I do sympathize with [...]

• 

  Penelope Trunk Blog

• What Facebook's IPO means for women

  Penelope Trunk

  7 Feb 2012 | 7:15 pm

  After the Facebook IPO, Sheryl Sandberg will become number two on the list of richest self-made women. She is the COO of Facebook.  For those of you not familiar with her career, there’s a nice summary in the New York Times. But the bottom line is that she is really smart (Harvard), a really hard worker (startups, Google, Facebook), a great speaker (here’s a commencement speech) ,and she’s married to a guy who is also making tons of money in startups. There is nothing, really, that is bad to say about Sandberg. And she works very hard to encourage other women to go as far as she has…

• How to have faith in yourself

  Penelope Trunk

  30 Jan 2012 | 8:37 am

  Sunday nights at our house are dinner with me, the kids, the Farmer and the Ex. They are always fun dinners, and I always feel very lucky for that. My six-year-old talked about his new baby cousin, Eva (who is pictured, in utero, above). "She has a terrible name," he said, "for Pig Latin. Its Vaeay. It doesn't work." We all do the vowel arranging in our heads and agree, Eva is not a good Pig Latin name. "Mom has a great name! It's Enelopepay." The Farmer says, "It sounds like it could be the name of her next company." The Ex says, "Yeah,…

• Key to productivity: Choose phone calls carefully

  Penelope Trunk

  22 Jan 2012 | 12:00 pm

  One of the keys to my ability to work 40 hours a week and homeschool two kids is that I have great time management. Which is to say, I say no to just about everything. But learning when to say no is still a work in progress. Here's what I know about saying no to phone calls: 1. It's more efficient to read the book than talk to the author. I get about ten emails a day asking me if I want to talk to someone about their book so I’ll recommend it on the blog. My answer is always no. I said yes once because it was Gloria Steinem. And it turned out to be a really disappointing phone…

• Things I wish I had written

  Penelope Trunk

  20 Jan 2012 | 10:34 am

  In therapy lately I am learning to identify my feelings. Maybe you’re thinking this is elementary, but did you know that envy is about wanting something you don’t have, but jealousy is the fear of losing something you already have? I am thinking about those two things. I am almost never envious, but I am often jealous. Most of my emotions, in fact, are rooted in fear. I am thinking a lot lately about where my joy comes from, and one thing I love is writing well. When I have a blog post that people love I am happy for weeks. And the excitement of doing good creative work gives me energy to…

• How to manage a career in 2012

  Penelope Trunk

  16 Jan 2012 | 12:57 pm

  I have never been great at picking my own clothes. I’m great at interior design, but I have a blind spot for clothes. So I email Melissa photos of my outfits, and she uses her photographic memory of my closet to edit my outfits. When I sent her this photo, she said: “What is this?” I only wanted her opinion about the color of the shirt, so I thought it was okay that it was blurry. But the more I look at the picture, the more I think that it’s how I feel about myself right now. I am not quite sure who I am, right now. And given the current career climate, this is actually how most…

• 

  A VC

• The Black Hole Of Email

  Fred

  9 Feb 2012 | 3:40 am

  I have never ever been so behind on email as I am right now. I believe I am seeing about one third of all email that is sent to me. If you have sent me an email that I haven't replied to, don't be offended. You are not alone. You are in the majority. I write these posts occasionally to let people know. The result is hundreds of comments about how I can make email work better for me. Please don't leave those comments. I don't want to make email work better for me. I don't want to hire an assistant to do email for me. I don't want to try some new magical app that will make email better for me.

• Payments Day

  Fred

  8 Feb 2012 | 3:27 am

  Yesterday was payments day at USV. Two pretty big things that our firm has been involved in for a while now were coincidentally announced on the same day. First, our newest portfolio company Dwolla announced the closing of a round we led on their blog. Dwolla is building a large network of engaged users via a radically lower cost payment system. How much lower? Zero for transactions below $10 and a $0.25 flat fee for transactions over $10. If you move $10,000 over the Dwolla network, you or the recipient (your choice) will be charged $0.25. That's it. Dwolla does this by avoiding credit…

• Building The Ecosystem

  Fred

  7 Feb 2012 | 7:35 am

  I've always seen the work that my colleauges and I do as more than venture capital investing. That is our main job and we need to do it very well. But we also need to work to make sure the macro environment for our investing activities remains attractive. There are two primary activities that Union Square Ventures focuses on in addition to our core venture capital activities of backing and then working closely with entrepreneurs and their teams. They are policy advocacy around protecting the freedom to innovate and efforts to build the ecosystem for startups and entrepreneurship. Longtime…

• The Management Team - Guest Post From Phil Sugar

  Fred

  6 Feb 2012 | 2:44 am

  Continuing our MBA Mondays series on The Managemet Team, we are deep into the guest post phase. This guest post comes from AVC regular Phil Sugar. I've never met Phil, but his comments here at AVC tell me that he's a very experienced entrepreneurial manager. And so I reached out to him to ask for a guest post. And he responded with this post below. There are so mant great lines in here, I'm tempted to reblog a bunch of them. Best Friends, Buddies, and Co-WorkersSince there is no way I am going to be more insightful than Matt or JLM about management process, I am going to go through three…

• Women Entrepreneurs

  Fred

  5 Feb 2012 | 6:05 am

  A few weeks ago, I spent the day at NYU ITP at the Womens Entrepreneurs Festival. This is a one day event put on by The Gotham Gal and her friend Nancy Hechinger who is on the faculty at NYU ITP. In its second year, the WE Festival features a day of panels and talks featuring women entrepreneurs. Men can attend and do, but the stage is filled with women all day long. It's a very different experience from the typical startup/tech event and I highly recommend it to anyone who is eager to see more women doing startups. My favorite panel was called Makers and featured five women who love to…

• 

  Signal vs. Noise

• All or something

  David

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:37 am

  One of the most pervasive myths of startup life is that it has to be all consuming. That unless you can give your business all your thoughts and hours, you don’t deserve success. You are unworthy of the startup call. This myth neatly identifies those fit for mission: Young, without obligations, and few if any extra-curricular interests. The perfect cannon fodder for 10:1 VC long shots. They’re also easier to rile up with tales of milk and honey at the end of the rainbow, or the modern equivalents, “compressing your working life into a few years” and “billon…

• Behind the scenes: Reinventing our Default Profile Pictures

  Jamie

  8 Feb 2012 | 9:34 am

  Mister Default Here he is: our default profile picture. You may know him as “Generic Avatar”. He’s the picture you get when you create a new account and profile on Basecamp, Highrise, Backpack, and Campfire. Mr. Default is a standard guy. He’s found everywhere on the web (in variations): message boards, comments, activity streams. He forces everyone to look like him regardless of gender, race, and physicality. He’s also very boring. Time for a change People don’t usually have a picture on hand to change the default avatar. What happens is none of the…

• What's your answer?

  Jason F.

  8 Feb 2012 | 9:00 am

  “If a customer asked you why, how would you answer?” This is a question I’ve been asking a lot lately. Why could be “why does it work this way?” or “why can’t I do that?” or some variation on that theme. I think your answer to those questions is a great way to measure your product. Are you happy with your answers? Are they fair answers? Are they clear answers? Would you be happy with the answer if you were the one asking the question? The goal isn’t to get to “Yes” on every answer. The goal is to listen to your answer and ask…

• No framework needed

  Noah

  8 Feb 2012 | 7:42 am

  It goes without saying that we use Rails a lot here at 37signals. Often times, when we look at a problem, we turn to Rails or something similar, because when you have a high-performance precision screwdriver, everything starts to look like a finely engineered screw. Sometimes, what you really need is a big hammer, because what you’re looking at is a nail. Our public sites – sites like 37signals.com and basecamphq.com – are a perfect example of this. Let me tell you about our journey with these sites over the years, and how we’ve landed on a simple solution that boosted…

• SaaS: Change starts easy and then gets really hard

  Jason F.

  7 Feb 2012 | 12:58 pm

  Basecamp just turned 8 years old. Here’s the launch announcement right here on this blog back on February 5, 2004. That’s a long time ago. We’ve learned a ton since then. One of the most interesting lessons has been the increasing degree to which time influences change. When we first launched Basecamp, we could iterate rapidly. We were incredibly prolific those first few months. We launched a bunch of new stuff and made rapid improvement every few weeks. Eventually it plateaued and slowed down. Why is that? Part of it is because many of the improvements we wanted to make…

• 

  Lifehacker

• How Can I Talk to My Phone in Public Without Looking Like a Jerk/Creep/Weirdo? [Video]

  Melanie Pinola

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:00 am

• Upgrade a Wall Outlet to Charge USB Devices [DIY]

  Melanie Pinola

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:30 am

  More »

• The Best Times to Buy Infographic Shows You All the Savings by Month and Day [Infographics]

  Melanie Pinola

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:00 am

  More »

• Maximize Kitchen Drawer Space by Storing Utensils Diagonally [Storage]

  Melanie Pinola

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:30 am

  More »

• How to Be an Audiophile on the Cheap [Stereo]

  Thorin Klosowski

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:00 am

  More »

• 

  blog maverick

• Would Shareholders Give a Higher P/E to Keep Jobs in the USA ?

  markcuban

  29 Jan 2012 | 3:21 pm

  It used to be that if you owned shares of a public company, you actually felt like you owned shares of that company.  The concept of actual ownership by individuals is long gone.  Shareholders as owners are nothing but a concept , and echo from days gone by. That shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s just as rare for individuals with less than 10 figures in their networth to even consider actually buying shares as a path to ownership. But what if this were not the case any longer  ? For those of you that own shares of stocks in companies,either directly or indirectly, would you be…

• The TV Business Keeps Getting Stronger !

  markcuban

  14 Jan 2012 | 4:53 pm

  Back in my broadcast.com days we had a saying that “bits are bits”.  That once content becomes digital, it is naturally going to become available on any and all digital devices. Based on this, we always made the point to be platform and device agnostic. We didn’t care where or how people saw our content, as long as they saw it and we had the chance to monetize it. We also knew that our core value proposition to consumers was that on broadcast.com they were able to get content that they couldn’t get on TV. We had Yoga channels, we had cricket live and on demand, we had…

• Why Startups Shouldn’t Hire PR Firms

  markcuban

  13 Jan 2012 | 3:31 pm

  A quote from my book, How to Win at the Sport of  Business got picked up in multiple stories. In the book I stated effectively that “Startups should never hire a PR firm”.   As you would expect, the PR Industry was not over-joyed at the comment.  Articles were written about how incredibly valuable a good PR person can be to a startup. Actually, I have no doubt that  a smart PR person can add value to a startup.  The problem is that all things considered, it’s not enough value. The first problem with hiring a PR firm is cost.  Cash is always in short supply in startups.

• You Don’t Live in the World You Were Born Into

  markcuban

  31 Dec 2011 | 9:54 am

  I thought this was appropriate to start the new year. We all have the tendency to believe that we are living in a very advanced technological period.  We get all excited about the new tech we got at Xmas and what we read about that will soon be available to us. In reality, everything we are excited about today is going to be incredibly old and boring much faster than we ever expect. No matter what year you were born, by the time you finish(ed) high school, its (was) a completely different world. Today’s high school seniors were born prior to the World Wide Web, wireless internet,…

• The Fan Experience at Sporting Events – We dont need no stinking smartphones !

  markcuban

  24 Dec 2011 | 9:17 am

  With the season starting tomorrow, I wanted to update a blog post I did in 2010. In just the past 18 months the number of proposals for in-game entertainment have skyrocketed. It seems like every day I get a new proposal to invest in a company that is going to revolutionize the experience of going to a sporting event. Without fail the proposal starts out with some form of “with the explosion in sales of smartphones…” Then I get the meat of the pitch which is some derivative of stats, pictures, fantasy games, social sharing via FB/Twitter or some new network to replace…

• 

  Matt Mullenweg

• LIFE.com

  Matt

  1 Feb 2012 | 5:48 am

  LIFE magazine has relaunched, powered by WordPress.com VIP. I’m a huge fan of the magazine’s history and the work of photographers like John Dominis.

• On the Evolution of Investing

  Matt

  24 Jan 2012 | 11:59 am

  Today Y Combinator announced they are adding two new partners, Garry Tan and Aaron Iba. This announcement is unique because it does not list their academic credentials, their previous investments, the boards of companies or non-profits they have sat on, how many years of experience they have, or any of the usual badges of honor investors parade in their biographies and Crunchbase profiles. Instead we get accolades of “rare individuals who can both design and program” and “best hackers among the YC alumni.” Take note of this moment. I was part of a dinner conversation…

• MPAA Threatens Politicians

  Matt

  22 Jan 2012 | 12:43 pm

  MPAA Directly & Publicly Threatens Politicians Who Arent Corrupt Enough To Stay Bought on Techdirt.

• Hollywood and the Justice System

  Matt

  21 Jan 2012 | 6:44 am

  Two excellent essays on how Hollywood has completely put our legal system out of whack through years of twisting our legislative process to their ends, or as Shirky put it “imagine the possibility of a longer jail term for streaming a Michael Jackson video than Jackson’s own doctor got for killing actual Michael Jackson?” Andrew Bridges on PandoDaily: Forget SOPA, Hollywood Already Had a Field Day with the Justice System. Clay Shirky on his blog: Pick up the pitchforks: David Pogue underestimates Hollywood.

• #Reinventing: Chamber of Commerce

  Matt

  18 Jan 2012 | 9:23 am

  Really great article from my friend Hunter Walk on #Reinventing the Chamber of Commerce, which is especially relevant given how the US Chamber of Commerce has been tending to side with the MPAA and RIAA rather than actual small businesses, startups, and tech communities.

• 

  The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss

• Housecleaning: Be Featured in The 4-Hour Chef, Random Links, and Contest Updates

  Tim Ferriss

  29 Jan 2012 | 1:42 pm

  Hanoi toddler and b-boy, from a trip Ma.tt and I took in 2009. (Photo: Matt Mullenweg) The next post will be an interview on writing process with the inimitable Paulo Coelho, author of The Alchemist and Aleph, among many others. His work been translated into 71 languages. In the meantime, I’d like make a few offers and provide a few updates, as well as a few reading links: 1) Would you like to be in The 4-Hour Chef? I’d love for you to be. Amazingly, it hit both #1 and #2 (for Kindle version) in cookbooks on Amazon when it was announced, and I think it could be bigger than the…

• How to Become an Effective CEO: Chief Emotions Officer

  Tim Ferriss

  19 Jan 2012 | 4:39 am

  Chip Conley, founder of Joie de Vivre Hotels Chip Conley is the founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality, which he began at age 26 and built to more than 30 properties in California alone. In 2010, Joie de Vivre was awarded the #1 customer service award in the U.S. by Market Metrix (Upper Upscale hotel category). Conley has also been named the “Most Innovative CEO” in the Bay Area by the San Francisco Business Times, and I’m proud to call him a friend. We’ve shared many glasses of wine together. He doesn’t know what I’m about to tell you, but it’s true (Hi,…

• Tim Ferriss Getting His Ass Kicked + How to Survive a Physical Attack (Video Series)

  Tim Ferriss

  8 Jan 2012 | 4:11 pm

  This post might seem odd, as it starts with a random sequence from a random skill. There are three reasons for this: 1) I like to expose readers to things they’ve never explored. 2) The best long-term policy for keeping a blog fun to read (and write) is to cover things that subsets of your readers love, not things that everyone merely likes. 3) I think all of you should know how to respond to a real physical attack. Keeping these in mind, I hope you enjoy a lil’ taste of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, often nicknamed “human chess.” If it’s not your thing, I still suggest…

• No Brown M&M’s! David Lee Roth and the Power of Checklists

  Tim Ferriss

  1 Jan 2012 | 9:17 pm

  Article 126: No brown M&M’s! (Photo: Mr. T in DC) Happy New Year, all! I’ll be putting up a “Lessons learned in 2011″ post soon. In the meantime, here is a taste of things to come. I can come across as anal retentive, even severely Monk-ish. One reason for the madness: with rare exceptions, I’ve come to believe that how we do anything is how we do everything. I’m not alone. The following is a short excerpt from The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande, also reprinted by Tehelka magazine in India. In it, we learn the logic of David Lee Roth’s…

• Christmas Deals from Start-ups

  Tim Ferriss

  21 Dec 2011 | 10:24 pm

  (Photo: Kevin Dooley) Just for fun, I asked my start-ups (and a few friends) if they’d like to offer y’all a little something special from the holidays. Here’s an incomplete list. Many are working on top-secret stuff and couldn’t jump in, but a few were game on last-minute notice, so here you go! They are listed in alphabetical order by company/name: Stop being a Wantrepreneur; start taking action. Free vids! Get here: http://appsumo.com/wantrepreneurs-videos/ via @AppSumo Everything you need to transform. Free trainers, complete nutrition plans, & top-selling…

• 

  Social Business Advisor: Social CRM and Enterprise 2.0

• Do Organizations Need a Chief Collaboration Officer?

  Jacob Morgan

  8 Feb 2012 | 4:06 pm

  More organizations are starting to deploy new collaborative tools and strategies as a core part of their business evolution to connect and engage employees.  It’s becoming increasingly difficult (especially at large companies) to oversee these initiatives as typically there isn’t a role devoted to collaboration.  Usually collaboration falls on the shoulders of employees with an existing full plate of things that need to get done (such as the CIO). So is it about time for organizations to create the role of the CCO (chief collaboration officer)? In 2010 Morten Hansen and Scott…

• Implementing Enterprise 2.0 at the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation Pt 4: Financial Impact, Future Changes, and Lessons Learned

  Jacob Morgan

  6 Feb 2012 | 12:08 am

  This is the fourth and final post in a series of posts on how the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (The Foundation), is implementing emergent collaboration strategies and technologies within its organization. You can read part 1 on Business Drivers, part 2 on Organizational and Culture shifts, and part 3 on Technology Adoption and Operational Impact. The Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing pediatric HIV infection and eliminating pediatric AIDS through research, advocacy, and prevention, care, and treatment programs. The Foundation, currently working in 17…

• Implementing Enterprise 2.0 at the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation Pt 3: Technology Adoption and Operational Impact

  Jacob Morgan

  3 Feb 2012 | 12:08 am

  This is the third in a series of posts on how the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (The Foundation), is implementing emergent collaboration strategies and technologies within its organization.  You can read part 1 on Business Drivers and part 2 on organizational and culture shifts. The Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing pediatric HIV infection and eliminating pediatric AIDS through research, advocacy, and prevention, care, and treatment programs. The Foundation, currently working in 17 countries, was founded in 1988 and experienced significant growth…

• Implementing Enterprise 2.0 at the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation Pt 2: Culture and Organizational Structure Shifts

  Jacob Morgan

  1 Feb 2012 | 12:08 am

  The first part of this case study on the Glaser Foundation discussing business can be found here. The Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing pediatric HIV infection and eliminating pediatric AIDS through research, advocacy, and prevention, care, and treatment programs. The Foundation, currently working in 17 countries, was founded in 1988 and experienced significant growth in the last five years, with its employee base increasing from 200 employees in 2006 to over 1,500 in 2011. This was due in part to increased funding from new global health initiatives, such as the…

• Implementing Enterprise 2.0 at the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation Pt 1: Business Drivers

  Jacob Morgan

  30 Jan 2012 | 12:08 am

  This is the first in a series of posts on how the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation (The Foundation), is implementing emergent collaboration strategies and technologies within its organization. The Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to preventing pediatric HIV infection and eliminating pediatric AIDS through research, advocacy, and prevention, care, and treatment programs. The Foundation, currently working in 17 countries, was founded in 1988 and experienced significant growth in the last five years, with its employee base increasing from 200 employees in 2006 to over…

• 

  Dan Zarrella

• [Infographic] How to Get More Clicks on Twitter

  Dan Zarrella

  24 Jan 2012 | 9:18 pm

  I’ve often said that the best use of Twitter is as a broadcast medium. You should be creating a ton of interesting content and sharing it with your followers. To that end I’ve done a bunch of research on how to optimize the clickthrough rate (CTR) of the links you’re tweeting. For the purposes of this data, I’ve calculated CTR as the number of clicks on a tweeted link divided by the number of followers the account had when it tweeted that link. Below is an infographic presenting some of my past findings as well as some entirely new data I’ve found about…

• [Infographic] What are the Best Times to Blog?

  Dan Zarrella

  22 Jan 2012 | 10:54 pm

  One of the most popular webinars I’ve ever worked on, The Science of Timing was also one of my favorite. If you haven’t seen it, go check out the on-demand recording now. In it, I present data I’ve collected over three years about the effect timing has on a variety of online marketing activities, including blogging. Below is an infographic that represents a collection of the three most important stats I have about when to publish blog posts. In the webinar, I also make the point that my results are based on huge aggregates of thousands, millions, or even in some cases,…

• [Infographic] The 2012 Republican Candidates by the Twitter Numbers

  Dan Zarrella

  17 Jan 2012 | 9:59 pm

  I’ve studied the relationship between Twitter success and politics before, and since this year is a big year in elections, I figured I’d do it again. This time I looked at how the 4 front-running republican presidential candidates are doing on Twitter. I analyzed the obvious numbers, followers, retweets and mentions, but I also looked at a few of my favorite, deeper metrics: retweets-per-follower, link-percentage and reply-percentage. I also looked at Twitter “penetration” in two upcoming primary states: South Carolina and Florida. Notice anything that surprises you in…

• [Infographic] How To Use Contra-Competitive Timing for More ReTweets, Likes, Comments and Clicks

  Dan Zarrella

  16 Jan 2012 | 11:44 pm

  One of the most interesting patterns I’ve found while studying social media and marketing data is what I call in my book “contra-competitive timing.” I’ve found in numerous cases that the most successful times and days to publish new content are off-peak times. It’s like when you’re at a noisy party and it’s hard to hear the person talking to you 2 feet away, but suddenly you say something awkward and the room quiets down. Now everyone can hear you. The same is true with the internet. When there is less other noise to compete with (ie fewer Tweets,…

• [New Data] What Percentage of your Tweets Should be Links or Replies

  Dan Zarrella

  10 Jan 2012 | 9:25 pm

  If you like myth busting social media data like this, be sure to buy my newest book, Zarrella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness. One of the social media questions I’m most interested in is about whether Twitter is best suited for conversation or broadcasting. To many people’s surprise, I generally find myself on the broadcast side, and most of the data I’ve analyzed seems to back me up. Just yesterday, I started a little informal Twitter poll and found that respondents were pretty evenly split between broadcasting and conversation. This time, I looked at more than 100k…

• 

  Calacanis.com

• This Week In Startups–Neal Sales-Griffin of Code Academy

  Jason Calacanis

  8 Feb 2012 | 1:45 pm

  Awesome guest on This Week in Startups from codeacademy ———- Forwarded message ———- On This Week in Startups, we were joined by Neal Sales-Griffin (http://twitter.com/nealsales) of Code Academy (http://codeacademy.org), the Chicago startup that teaches people how to build web apps in just 11 weeks. Neal and Jason are both deeply interested and invested in the education space, so the discussion included the future of education, why it's never too late to start coding and how startups will save our economy. If you missed the live show, get your fix here:…

• This Week In Startups–Neal Sales-Griffin of Code Academy

  Jason Calacanis

  8 Feb 2012 | 1:45 pm

  Awesome guest on This Week in Startups from codeacademy ———- Forwarded message ———- On This Week in Startups, we were joined by Neal Sales-Griffin (http://twitter.com/nealsales) of Code Academy (http://codeacademy.org), the Chicago startup that teaches people how to build web apps in just 11 weeks. Neal and Jason are both deeply interested and invested in the education space, so the discussion included the future of education, why it's never too late to start coding and how startups will save our economy. If you missed the live show, get your fix here:…

• LAUNCH Festival hits $269k in prizes!

  Jason Calacanis

  8 Feb 2012 | 12:37 pm

  I'm so blessed to be part of–and have the support of–an amazing industry! http://www.launch.is/blog/boom-launch-hits-269k-in-prizes-thanks-to-charles-river-vent.html  Please come to the LAUNCH Festival… and if you're broke sneak in or ask me for a free ticket!!!  

• LAUNCH Festival hits $269k in prizes!

  Jason Calacanis

  8 Feb 2012 | 12:37 pm

  I'm so blessed to be part of–and have the support of–an amazing industry! http://www.launch.is/blog/boom-launch-hits-269k-in-prizes-thanks-to-charles-river-vent.html  Please come to the LAUNCH Festival… and if you're broke sneak in or ask me for a free ticket!!!  

• Thank you @zappos for making my life so much easier… Which two people?

  Jason Calacanis

  12 Jan 2012 | 10:33 am

• 

  McBuzz Communications | Mark McLaren

• Even More Free WordPress Help

  Mark McLaren

  8 Feb 2012 | 10:07 am

  Looking for Free WordPress Help? This is the place! You can ask a question about WordPress in the comments on this page, and we will answer as soon as we can. For FREE! Remember, this service is free. If we can’t get to your question right away, please be patient, or try the WordPress support forums. Mark McLaren and McBuzz Communications have been offering Free WordPress Help and Free and Easy WordPress Tutorials for many years. (Please note that McBuzz Communications, McBuzz.com and Mark McLaren are not affiliated with Automattic, WordPress.com or the WordPress.org website.)…

• Online Marketing & Gamification by Design

  Mark McLaren

  21 Dec 2011 | 3:02 pm

  How Important is Marketing Gamification to a Robust Online Marketing Plan? The following is an interview with Gabe Zichermann, author of the new book Gamification by Design. Every marketer needs to stay on top of trends. Gamification is a trend in web and mobile design that is big and getting bigger. My sincere thanks to Gabe for the opportunity to conduct this interview. Mark McLaren: When I first read the title of your book, Gamification by Design, my reaction was, “Won’t be reading that!” I associated it with online games, “gamers”, massively multiplayer…

• Is a Listing in Yahoo Directory a Valuable Link? Yes. Worth the Cost? It Depends

  Mark McLaren

  7 Nov 2011 | 9:53 pm

  Yahoo Directory - Should you pay to list your site here? One way to improve your site’s search engine optimization is to submit it to online directories. Some directories are more respected than others. One of the most widely respected online directories is Yahoo. Should you pay $300 – $450 a year to list your website in the Yahoo Directory? Probably not. Just as there is debate about the value of being listed in another well-established, old-school directory called dmoz.org, there is debate among veteran search engine optimization pros about the value of a listing in the Yahoo…

• Using Footer Links for Search Engine Optimization

  Mark McLaren

  27 Oct 2011 | 11:30 pm

  Example of Footer Links on McBuzz.com: an easy way to boost Search Engine Opimization Can you use links in the footer of your website to improve search engine rankings? If those footer links go to internal pages on your own website, the answer is absolutely yes. I have read on some SEO sites that footer links are not as helpful to SEO as they once were. This is probably true, given that Google has become more adept at determining when links are being used as navigation on every page as opposed to an “editorial” link that appears in the body of a page and is being used by the…

• Farewell Steve Jobs

  Mark McLaren

  5 Oct 2011 | 10:41 pm

  Today one of the world’s greatest technologists and innovators passed away at the age of 56. Our sincere condolences go out to his friends and family. Farewell, Steve Jobs. You changed the world of design – for good.

• 

  Social Media Marketing

• Foursquare in Context

  Scott Monty

  29 Jan 2012 | 8:11 pm

  If you're a regular user of services like Twitter or Foursquare, you've undoubtedly been met with skeptics and naysayers who wonder aloud, "Why would I want to tell anyone what I'm having for lunch?" or "Why would I care if someone is having a ham sandwich?"Fair enough, but the inquisitors fail to take into account the all-important factor in any conversation, whether it's in person or online: context.Context is what allows us to make sense of much of the world around us. "He's so bad!" could have two very different meanings, depending on the the rest of the conversation surrounding it. With…

• Social Media and Travel

  Scott Monty

  26 Jan 2012 | 9:37 pm

  If you're like me, you spend a good deal of time on the road. Whether it's at an airport, on a train or in a car, you're mobile and your digital life is mobile too.The pervasiveness of tablets and smartphones (in addition to the already ubiquitous laptop) is growing daily. Just this week, Apple announced that it sold 37 million iPhones and 15.4 million iPads in the fourth quarter of 2011 alone. It means that more of us are doing things on the web (or mobile web, as the case may be) while we're on the go, and there are certain things those of us in the digital world look for when we travel -…

• Revealing a New Ford in a New Way

  Scott Monty

  13 Dec 2011 | 6:00 pm

  Ford Motor Company has been at the forefront of social media for some time. The Fiesta Movement, the Explorer reveal on Facebook, Doug the Spokespuppet, Ford Social (formerly known as The Ford Story) and being the first brand on Google+ all stand as examples of Ford's success that spans from clever campaigns to a daily commitment to engage.Ford played a significant part in how the automotive industry thinks about social media (and in some cases how large companies think about social media) and now, as we near the 2012 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS), at Ford we have an…

• Infographic: 5 Companies That Are Rocking Social Media

  Scott Monty

  29 Nov 2011 | 8:47 am

  This infographic was created by Voltier Digital, a content marketing agency based in Florida, specializing on the creation and promotion of impactful content marketing campaigns for businesses of all sizes.We all know the usual names of companies that are doing well in social media. I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some of the lesser-knowns and why they've had success, either on an ongoing basis or with some one-off efforts that stood out.And since infographics are all the rage, what better way to look at them? Of course, for SEO purposes, I've listed them here as…

• Twitter Business Guide

  Scott Monty

  7 Oct 2011 | 8:53 pm

  I was recently introduced to a compact guidebook for businesses trying to get a sense of Twitter. The microblogging site that allows you to update in no more than 140 characters at at time is deceptively complex and nuanced - especially for a newcomer.This short guide, entitled Twitter Business Guide: Communication and Marketing was written by Jean-Christophe Barré and Dr. Andreas Schroeter and in just 32 pages covers some of the things that may be keeping you and your business away from this platform. For someone who is new to Twitter, this e-book will prove a helpful compass as you…

• 

  SocialButterfly

• What’s In A Campaign? That Which We Call Change

  Alex

  8 Feb 2012 | 7:08 pm

  As the science behind social change evolves, how we approach our work must too. And sometimes, it is just symantics. But sometimes, it’s not. It’s a difference in mentality. Take the idea of a “campaign” for example. The word campaign itself brings with it assumed processes, methods and associations. It also ranks up there with “awareness” as one of the most overused and over-relied upon words in public health. We can do better. The word-of-mouth company, Brains on Fire, wrote a brilliant manifesto on the inherent differences between a campaign and a…

• Is Talking About Spirituality and Social Change Taboo?

  Alex

  23 Jan 2012 | 8:44 pm

  What shapes your world view? How does your world view influence your work to change the world for the better? Growing up, we’re told we shouldn’t talk about two things: politics and religion. Yet these two things often help set the foundation of one’s world view. How do we go about changing the world for the better if we can’t talk about either? It’s not realistic--Is it? www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXfD5SJgPqo “If I hear one more politician croak out the words that his or her faith is a private matter, I may just have to go smack them. That is so not reality.

• Passion Meets Purpose – Let’s #Rock2012

  Alex

  13 Jan 2012 | 8:24 pm

  How are you applying purpose to your passion? Between blogging with Razoo and working at IQ Solutions on fun projects such as launching Healthy People 2020 and our Nation’s Leading Health Indicators, it’s been awhile.  There are two announcements I want to share: Evolving Beyond the Free Agent Fundraiser Jo Rampy crossing the finish line at the inaugural TRI 2 Encourage with her family. My family and I (pictured above) have launched a nonprofit foundation to help advance multiple sclerosis research called the Rampy MS Research Foundation. Our vision? Find a cure for MS within our…

• Social Media Is Not a Marketing Strategy

  Alex

  20 Nov 2011 | 6:40 pm

  There, I said it. Social media in and of itself is not a strategy (gasp). It does not replace a solid marketing approach or even a communications plan. To be successful, it must be integrated into a larger strategic framework. This applies to organizations as well as programs, initiatives and (my dreaded word) campaigns. Harvard Business Review recently published an article titled “Separate Social Media From Marketing:” …we need to break out social media and talk about more than marketing and technology. Instead, we need to talk about what social media enables: the ability…

• Reading Up On Social Determinants of Health

  Alex

  10 Oct 2011 | 7:29 pm

  October may be Breast Cancer Awareness Month, but a number of articles came out last week focusing on social determinants of health. The phrase “social determinants of health” refers to health where we live, learn, work, play (and pray). In short, Health with a capital H. U.S. Life Expectancy Rises, Health Disparities Increase Last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) shared its review of Healthy People 2010. The report shared that as a Nation, we had met or were moving toward meeting, 71% of the disease prevention and health promotion objectives we set in…

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  EveryJoe » Work

• Newt Gingrich Doesn’t Have Eye of the Tiger

  Stephen Kersey

  30 Jan 2012 | 3:51 pm

  Newt Gingrich is in trouble. And this time, it doesn’t involve an ex-wife or the polls. Gingrich is in trouble for allegedly using the song “Eye of the Tiger” without permission. He’s being sued for unspecified damages in an Illinois federal court. “Eye of the Tiger” is owned by Rude Music Inc. and was made famous in Rocky III. Rude Music Inc. says that Gingrich has used the song ever since 2009. They reportedly have evidence that he used the song in 2009, 2010 and 2011. In addition to unspecified damages, Rude Music Inc. also wants the judge to order Newt…

• Fox Morning Show Co-Anchor Greg Kelly Accused of Rape

  Kori Ellis

  26 Jan 2012 | 2:46 pm

  Greg Kelly, the co-host of FOX’s “Good Day New York” and the son of Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, has been accused of rape. Not only does the 30-year-old paralegal claim the sexual assault occurred, she also says that she got pregnant and subsequently had an abortion as a result of the attack. The Manhattan district attorney’s office is investigating the allegation, and Kelly has not been charged with any crime as of yet. However, he has “strenuously” denied the charge through his lawyer. The alleged rape occurred back on Oct 8 when the two allegedly met on…

• Could Facebook Shut Down Over SOPA & PIPA?

  Kori Ellis

  17 Jan 2012 | 11:30 am

  If you are like many people, you are reading a lot about SOPA and PIPA right now. To get the lowdown, check out this post about how SOPA/PIPA can affect you. Also, watch this video about understanding SOPA and PIPA, and find out if Facebook could actually shut down. Though Wikipedia is going dark over SOPA/PIPA tomorrow. Many companies actually support SOPA, from ABC to Visa. Allison Boyer of BlogWorld has a good piece about Why SOPA Scares the You-Know-What Out of Me that talks about a lot of worrisome loopholes. You should also read this article from Daily Kos about the repeated blows SOPA…

• Wikipedia to Go Dark on Wednesday to Protest SOPA & PIPA

  Kori Ellis

  17 Jan 2012 | 8:13 am

  The U.S. government is currently considering to bills that are causing quite a stir — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). According to TechCrunch, “Websites found to offer pirated content, along with the services that they use, could be hidden from US internet users by being delisted on search engines and potentially on DNS servers themselves.” Many people believe with these bills, we’d be heading down a slippery slope and the legislation could threaten free speech. Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales has decided to send a message by going dark for…

• How Twitter Can Backfire

  Stephen Kersey

  17 Jan 2012 | 7:08 am

  If you own a business, you might rush out and put your business on Twitter. While this is a good idea most of the time, you should also be aware of how Twitter can backfire and hurt your business. Check out our list below to see if your company is in danger. Lack of Updates If you have a Twitter page for your business that isn’t updated regularly, people may think your business is unreliable. Or they may think your business is out of business. Sounding Like Spam If all you use Twitter for is to talk about your products without any other sort of interaction, your company may get a…

• 

  Marketing Roadmaps

• Is Facebook the new website?

  Susan Getgood

  31 Jan 2012 | 7:00 pm

  This weekend is the Super Bowl, and while I will be paying slightly more attention to the game because the Patriots are playing, my main interest is in the advertising. This year, I will be watching closely to see how many commercials drive to Facebook pages, in addition to or instead of, a website. Because Facebook is clearly where so many brands are going these days. It reminds me a little of the “web rush” in the mid/late 90s when mainstream brands realized what many tech companies had grokked since the first browser in 1993, that the browser had changed the marketing equation…

• Facebook just wants “to be a real boy”

  Susan Getgood

  10 Jan 2012 | 8:03 pm

  This is the time of year when some folks trot out the tarot cards and crystal balls, and attempt to predict the coming year. And others wax eloquent (mostly)  on what transpired in the year just past. Over the 7 years I have been writing this blog, I have generally tried to stay away from this sort of post. This year, however, that is pretty much what you are going to get. There are a few trends that I have been watching for a while now, always intending to post about them but never quite having  the time. Here’s the first. Facebook  just wants “to be a real boy” and…

• Should you work for free?

  Susan Getgood

  21 Oct 2011 | 1:15 pm

  The social media “industry” is built on the back of people doing “stuff” for free. The business models of most social networks — Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Flickr, YouTube etc. etc. — depend on consumers using the free/”freemium” services and thereby creating both the free content that attracts and retains users, and more importantly, a mine-able database. People. Topics. Linkages (who are your friends, what do you like, where do you go). Marketing gold. And the companies are reaping the benefits of our “work” in potentially…

• BlogHer Visionaries

  Susan Getgood

  1 Oct 2011 | 12:44 pm

  For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on the launch of BlogHer’s new consumer panel, Visionaries. I’m very excited about the possibilities we have with the panel to connect the BlogHer audience with brands. Once or twice a month, we’ll be sending panel members a survey or perhaps even an offer to try a free product. The first trial offer is in the field — sign up for Visionaries now and get a full 12-ounce bottle of Dove® Body Wash with NutriumMoisture™. Click  here to join.

• Lessons to be learned from ConAgra/Ketchum’s Sotto Terra blogger event

  Susan Getgood

  7 Sep 2011 | 8:25 pm

  I’m back! You had to know I would not be able to resist commenting on the ConAgra/Ketchum “Sotto Terra” blogger events in New York last month that went so horribly, tragically wrong. So wrong that the fallout made it to the pages of the New York Times. Ouch. I’m not going to rehash the details here, because this post is not about piling it on. The company, brand and agency have been thoroughly schooled in the blogosphere already. Instead, I am going to focus on a few lessons that have nothing to do with the specific brand, that anyone involved in blogger outreach can…

• 

  The Social Customer Manifesto

• Good Attention vs. Bad Attention

  Christopher Carfi

  5 Feb 2012 | 2:44 pm

  The confluence of the Super Bowl and its focus on immense ad spend, coupled with speaking at last week’s NetPromoter conference triggered a thought. Are there two kinds of attention (let’s call them “Good Attention” and “Bad Attention”), in the same way that there are two kinds of profits? We know that there are two kinds of profits. Good profits are profits that fuel growth, and come from serving customers in such a way that they are willing to recommend your organization to others. Bad profits, conversely, are the types of profits where the customer feels…

• Social Engagement Journey Video

  Christopher Carfi

  15 Jan 2012 | 11:39 am

  Check out this fun little video on the Social Engagement Journey that our team in Seattle just put together.

• Social Business 2012 Presentation

  Christopher Carfi

  29 Nov 2011 | 2:08 pm

  I’ll be speaking about social business strategy at the ASAE Technology Conference and Expo CIO Summit next week in Washington, DC. There are three key components to the conversation. 1) The Social Engagement Journey The Journey is the recognizable progression of social engagement capabilities that a large enterprise goes through on its way to becoming a social businesses.   2) The Relationship Progression While the “purchase funnel” has been well understood for years, there is a comparative dearth of conversation around how business relationships progress over time. A…

• This Week’s Social Business Jam

  Christopher Carfi

  11 Nov 2011 | 10:48 am

  A number of luminaries participated on this week’s W3C Social Business Jam, including Doc Searls (pictured), Alex “Sandy” Pentland and the inventor of the web itself, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. A jam is “an online conversation among leaders in business, government and technology about the current state of social business, the future role that social technologies can play in improving the bottom line, and how social technology should evolve in order to support business objectives.” There were a number of deep conversations, which generated over 1,100 posts on the…

• Google+ Launches Brand Pages

  Christopher Carfi

  7 Nov 2011 | 3:58 am

  The big news today is that Google+ has finally announced their long-awaited brand pages with a blog post here. The top line, from Google: For businesses and brands, Google+ pages help you connect with the customers and fans who love you. Not only can they recommend you with a +1, or add you to a circle to listen long-term. They can actually spend time with your team, face-to-face-to-face. All you need to do is start sharing, and you'll soon find the super fans and loyal customers that want to say hello. A number of pages are already available (see below), but any organization…

• 

  Digital Trends

• Kodak quits the camera business

  Geoff Duncan

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:19 am

  It's the end of an era: Kodak will stop making digital cameras, camcorders, and digital picture frames and be out of the photography business by the middle of the year.

• Sigma slashes new SD1 DSLR price by $6,700

  Natt Garun

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:15 am

  The SD1 is getting a new name and price after Sigma Corporation announced a rebranding of its SD and DP series camera, with the SD1 retail price cut down by at least $6,700.

• You can own a life-sized Portal gun by spring

  Natt Garun

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:48 am

  Fans can soon own a piece of the cult classic video game Portal by purchasing a life-sized model of the Portal gun, slated for an April release.

• Google Drive cloud storage service expected soon

  Andrew Couts

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:51 am

  Sorry, DropBox: Google will reportedly debut its own dedicated cloud storage service in the near future.

• Groupon earnings disappoint in first public quarter

  Jeff Saginor

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:29 am

  Groupon offers disappointing earnings in its first quarter as a public company, but where is Groupon Now?

• 

  SocialTimes.com

• Blip Raises $12M For Indie Online Video

  Megan O'Neill

  9 Feb 2012 | 4:55 am

  Original web series destination site Blip has just closed a $12 million financing round, raising $6 million from existing partners including Canaan Partners and Bain Capital Ventures, along with $6 million of debt from Silicon Valley Bank.  According to MediaPost, “Blip now plans to develop new tools and services for independent online producers; invest further in advertising and distribution platforms; and foster more syndication relationships.” continued… New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

• “OMG I Have To Tweet This” & Other Sh** A Social Media Manager Says

  Megan O'Neill

  9 Feb 2012 | 2:51 am

  Over the past couple months a brand new meme has taken over YouTube (and the world!)—the hilarious ‘Sh** Girls Say’ web series has spawned a deluge of copycats, from ‘Sh** Gay Guys Say’ to ‘Sh** White Girls Say…To Black Girls’, ‘Shit Single Girls Say’ and more.  And in recent weeks the tech savvy have gotten in on the fun with ‘Sh** VCs Say’, ‘Sh** Silicon Valley Says’ and now, ‘Sh** a Social Media Community Manager Says.’ continued… New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

• Video: Making 6-Figures From YouTube…In Your Spare Time?

  Megan O'Neill

  9 Feb 2012 | 2:03 am

  Earlier this month the Wall Street Journal reported that YouTuber Ray William Johnson is making an estimated $1 million a year thanks to the video site, and for the past few days the web has been abuzz with chatter about making money from YouTube.  A report from Nadia Han of ABC News in Philadelphia looks into the potential of ‘Cashing in on YouTube.’ Some of the details in the report are surprising, to say the least. continued… New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

• The Facebook Platform Roadmap in 2012

  Devon Glenn

  9 Feb 2012 | 1:17 am

  For Facebook, 2012 will be the year of the third party app. News, videos, and songs streaming down your newsfeed are just a “small taste of overall vision,” said Carl Sjogreen, director of product management for Facebook at the Inside Social Apps Conference.  The focus for the coming year will be on enhancements to Open Graph, mobile and games. continued… New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

• ISA 2012: Facebook, Apple, Google – Which Platforms Hold the Most Opportunity in 2012?

  Devon Glenn

  8 Feb 2012 | 8:06 am

    Today at the Inside Social Apps Conference 2012 in San Francisco, game developers discussed which platforms hold the most promise in 2012. continued… New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

• 

  Social Media Clubhouse

• When Objects Go Social

  evidencesx

  9 Feb 2012 | 4:00 am

  Objects now become kind of chatterbox and the world shifts as an huge connected information system” Yes we must now consider objects as a real part of social movement, even if social genuinely means « interaction between two human beings », they can enter the game of socialization…How far, when, for which uses/features? Future will tell… 2020: 20 Billions of connected objets; which ones, which services behind and for which uses? What might we face in organizations, skills, value chains and industries?  read more

• Deep Lessons About Shallow Conclusions

  hardaway

  8 Feb 2012 | 5:00 am

  To my great chagrin, I find I am as guilty as anyone of drawing shallow conclusions about the role and value or social media in a marketing plan. I read this article in Ad Age about an Australian study whose research proved that no more than 1% of fans actually engage with brands on Facebook. In other words, fans may "like" your page, but it's pretty meaningless, because they don't talk about you.  So, I concluded, why spend a lot of time on Facebook, especially if you are a small business with limited resources. And I wrote that on Google+, home of the serious conversation.  read more

• The Evolution of Super Bowl Advertising

  kbailey

  7 Feb 2012 | 5:00 am

  Everyone loves the Super Bowl.  Even if you’re not crazy about watching football, you can stick around the watch clever advertising at its best.  But you probably noticed that Super Bowl XLVI was a little different from its predecessors.  Social media helped brands change the rules of Super Bowl ads.     On average, a 30 second spot during the game of the year put a company back about $3.5 million so it makes sense that they would want to get as much value as possible from this enormous expense.  This year, brands came up with creative tactics to get plenty of bang for their buck(s).

• Three Creative Ways of Using Google+ Hangouts

  pamsahota

  6 Feb 2012 | 5:00 am

  There are so many shiny new toys in the social media sphere…sometimes we can’t keep up. Google has a tendency to test out new ideas (remember Google Buzz?) and this time around they have spun out Google Plus Hangouts. It’s an opportunity for individuals or businesses to utilize this virtual “hangout” to communicate with others in their community or business via video. The only disadvantage that appears right away is the restriction of 10 people per hangout. However, when it comes to meetings and having the chance to build a deeper relationship among community members sometimes fewer…

• Social Media Clubhouse Newsletter (01/3/12)

  SMCReporter

  3 Feb 2012 | 11:01 am

  FEBRUARY BOOK CLUB: THE SOCIAL MEDIA STRATEGIST      We're proud to feature great titles in 2012 with monthly reviews and complimentary webinars hosting some of the social media industry's most innovative authors. We received a lot of great feedback last year and want to thank you for supporting the Book Club, our publishing partners and the authors.  read more

• 

  Socialmedia.biz

• Taste everything well before serving up your social media offerings

  Chris Abraham

  8 Feb 2012 | 5:09 am

  If you want to succeed in running a kitchen for the homeless in Washington, DC, or have wildly successful social media marketing campaigns, it all comes down to one thing: do you respect and appreciate your guests? Do you cut-corners and just serve slop or do you prepare organic, healthy, and delicious meals with an obsession for presentation and taste? I volunteer as sous chef at a Washington, DC, homeless kitchen. They serve fresh, organic dinners to folks who really need a healthy meal. Miriam's Kitchen treats everyone who dines there as respected and honored guests. I have learned a lot…

• TaskRabbit: Crowdsourcing comes to your neighborhood

  JD Lasica

  6 Feb 2012 | 5:11 am

  A mobile marketplace for getting stuff done from JD Lasica on Vimeo.   Start-up offers location-aware marketplace for getting stuff done One of my favorite new iPhone apps and online services is TaskRabbit, a platform that allows people to hire other people to complete tasks in their own towns or neighborhoods. The concept is drop-dead simple but difficult to pull off. Founder Leah Busque says TaskRabbit lets folks "outsource small jobs and tasks to other people in their neighborhood" — say, if you need dry cleaning or groceries picked up, house cleaning or yard work done, Ikea…

• Why you should care about the mobile Web

  deltinahay

  3 Feb 2012 | 5:22 am

  Image by BigStock Photo   Ready or not, the mobile revolution is upon us! There is a lot of hype out there about how many people own mobile devices and how much time people spend on them. Over the past two years, I've been charting and chronicling the rise of the mobile Web and the changes that it is unleashing on American society. Let's look at some overall numbers: Today there are 5.3 billion mobile device subscribers in the world. There will be nearly as many mobile devices as there are people in the world by 2015. There are 48 million people in the world who have mobile phones, even…

• Social media, tech & marketing events: February

  JD Lasica

  1 Feb 2012 | 6:02 am

  The Social Enterprise Conference will be held Feb. 25-26 at Harvard.   Guide to events & conferences for the coming month Who would have guessed that February has become one of the busiest months of the year for social media, technology and marketing conferences? Look at the list of conferences below, which run the gamut from Women 2.0 Pitch to Vator Splash to Lift, Strata, TED, SMX West, Wisdom 2.0, the first SOBCon Europe and the year's first Social Media Strategies Summit. And don't forget Social Media Week, the multi-city global conference running Feb. 13-17. For the full year,…

• Can PR leave behind magical thinking for science?

  Chris Abraham

  1 Feb 2012 | 5:00 am

  Don’t let your social media hypothesis dictate your conclusion While neither marketing nor social media are sciences, one needs to use scientific principles to be most effective when it comes to both branding and prospecting online. It doesn’t take an Einstein to succeed in social media marketing, but to does take a scientist. Are you rigorously collecting metrics and data  to see if what you’re doing is resulting in sales conversions or extending your brand or are you relying on things you’ve learned from The Secret? Is your social media marketing campaign relying too much on…

• 

  MediaPost | Research Brief

• 4.6 Billion Dollars Saved By Consumers With Coupons

  9 Feb 2012 | 3:15 am

  According to the 2012 NCH Coupon Facts for the U.S. CPG coupon industry, $470 billion of coupon value was offered by consumer package goods (CPG) marketers to U.S. consumers last year, a 26% increase over the pre-recession period of 2007. Value-conscious shoppers responded by redeeming $4.6 billion in savings, an increase of 12.2% over the year prior, and 58.6% higher than five years ago. During 2011, 3.5 billion coupons were redeemed, up 6.1% from 2010, and 34.6% since 2007.

• Brand Websites Create Retail Store Buyers

  8 Feb 2012 | 3:15 am

  According to a new Accenture/comScore/dunnhumbyUSA research study, highlighting the potential for brand websites to become key drivers in building customer loyalty and preference for CPG brands, visitors to CPG brand websites spend 37% more than non-visitors on the brand in retail stores. And, brand website visitors are heavier buyers within a brand's product category, spending 53% more than non-visitors on the category in retail stores.

• Mobile & Social Media Revenue Accelerating At 30%

  7 Feb 2012 | 3:15 am

  According to new data from PQ Media, total U.S. mobile & social media revenue, including consumer and business access, content, advertising and marketing, increased 30.2% to $45.38 billion in 2011. Mobile & social media revenue rose at a compound annual growth rate of 28.7% from 2006-2011, and is expected to grow at an accelerating 30.8% annual rate in 2012.

• Tablets Attract Magazine Readers

  6 Feb 2012 | 3:15 am

  New research from GfK MRI's iPanel, composed exclusively of Tablet and eReader owners, reveals that male Tablet owners are particularly interested in reading digital magazines and that Tablets are generating readership of back issues of publications.

• Ask, And You Shall Receive

  3 Feb 2012 | 3:15 am

  A new survey from Cint shows that 62% of those surveyed said they were more likely to purchase a brand's product if their opinion has been sought by brand in a study. The survey highlights the importance of customer insight, says the report, as over half of the 1,200 consumers polled felt more loyal to a brand if it takes the time to find out their opinion.

• 

  Online Market Research

• Revisited: The 6 Steps of the Market Research Process

  Sherrie Mersdorf

  2 Feb 2012 | 12:22 pm

  A few years ago, I wrote a post titled, Market Research Process: 6 Steps to Project Success. It's one of those posts that is constantly one of the most viewed posts on the blog. Because it's one of the most popular posts of all time, I think it's time to give it a refresh. So for our first Throwback Thursday, let's look at the six steps again.   Market Research Process: 6 Steps to Project Success Identify and define the problem ...or set your goals and objectives Before you start any web survey project, you should identify the key issues you hope to be able to solve. This step should…

• Analytics and BI are top priorities for CIOs in 2012

  Greg Timpany

  27 Jan 2012 | 10:06 am

  According to recent research by Gartner, the top priorities for CIOs in 2012 include analytics and business intelligence. This makes perfect sense as companies realize they need to leverage their internal and external data sources to better compete in rapidly changing markets. Analytics, including the analysis of web data, have become a mainstay in both the consumer and B2B marketing environments. Most analytics operations include a forward looking component, whereas business intelligence (BI) tends to focus on a backward view be reviewing historical trends. Where does marketing research fit…

• Data Types: Interval and Ratio Data

  Greg Timpany

  25 Jan 2012 | 7:58 am

  In marketing research, as well as other forms of social, economic and business research, interval and ratio data are king. Yet as we have seen in other posts there is much that can be done with nominal and ordinal data. What makes interval and ratio data exciting is that they support a full-range of statistical tests and transformations. The difference between interval and ratio data is simple. Ratio data has a defined zero point. Income, height, weight, annual sales, market share, product defect rates, time to repurchase, unemployment rate, and crime rate are examples of ratio data. As an…

• Why Measuring Employee Sentiment is Important

  Greg Timpany

  24 Jan 2012 | 11:14 am

  January is an excellent time to step back and review your talent pool for the coming year. Each year employees leave their current position for a new one. There are many reasons for this, with salary being amongst them. A recent projection by Phil Reeves, who conducts salary studies on behalf of the marketing research industry, reported that job changers can expect to see bumps of 15–20% compared to 0–3% for those who stay put.My current salary study for the IT industry shows similar findings. There is an increasing trend in the percentage of respondents who believe themselves to…

• The Power of Place

  Greg Timpany

  20 Jan 2012 | 12:30 pm

  When I began thinking about a post on geo-demographics, it felt somewhat off topic for a survey-related blog. Then my senses cleared. In the research business, this goes for both consumer and B2B marketing research, the elements of demographics and geography are powerful predictors of behavior. If this weren’t true then we would see far fewer fast-food restaurants and convenience stores. The demographic data collected by the Census is overwhelming when viewed in tabular format, but when viewed on a map can be incredibly insightful. Combine this with location data for your company and…

• 

  MarketingExperiments Blog: Research-driven optimization, testing, and marketing ideas

• Email Summit 2012: Meeting email marketing challenges

  David Kirkpatrick

  8 Feb 2012 | 9:54 am

  Tweet MarketingSherpa Email Summit 2012 kicked off Wednesday, February 8 with Sergio Balegno, Director of Research, MECLABS, and Dr. Flint McGlaughlin, CEO and Managing Director, MECLABS, the parent company of MarketingExperiments. Sergio emphasized this is a research-based event driven by the 2012 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, featuring W. Jeffrey Rice, Senior Research Analyst, as the lead author. This book is our ninth annual benchmark study. The benchmark report includes research and insights from 2,735 marketers, and identifies barriers to email marketing success and what marketers…

• Social Media Marketing: Going viral is so easy it’s hard

  Daniel Burstein

  6 Feb 2012 | 12:01 am

  Tweet What makes a message go viral? More importantly, how can you position your marketing messages to go viral? Here at MECLABS, we recently had a front-row seat to just how easy it can be for a message to go viral. Senior Marketing Manager Justin Bridegan attended a rally at one of Mitt Romney’s events here in Jacksonville. During a break in Mitt’s stump speech, in which the former governor was attacking Newt, Justin yelled out, “Send him to the moon.” With that comment, Justin changed the course of history. Or at least had a big impact on the latest message to go viral in…

• Channel Optimization: 6 quick lessons from shifting to a video-centric format

  Daniel Burstein

  3 Feb 2012 | 12:01 am

  Tweet Long-time MarketingExperiments readers will notice that we have shifted to a video-centric format for our Web clinic replays, which aim to deliver actionable marketing advice based on our optimization discoveries …     And we realize we still have a long way to go to fully optimize this new channel to ensure it provides the most value and most compelling experience to the audience of marketing managers and advertising creatives we seek to help. But we also realize we’ve come a long way from our previous format as well. Since many marketers are increasingly looking to add…

• Test Your Marketing Intuition: Which PPC ad produced more conversions?

  Paul Cheney

  1 Feb 2012 | 12:01 am

  Tweet If you’ve been running PPC campaigns for longer than a month or so, there have probably been at least a few times when you’ve hit a wall. You know what I mean … those points when it seems that no matter how much effort you put into testing and optimizing your ads with the right keywords or copy, the incremental returns are minimal and you just cannot seem to beat your star performers. It may be you are hitting one of those walls right now … and unlike Jim Morrison would have you believe, you can’t just break on through to the other side. So what do you do in that situation? At…

• Online Advertising: How your peers optimize PPC ads

  Daniel Burstein

  30 Jan 2012 | 12:01 am

  Tweet The thing about pay-per-click ads is … well, you’re paying for every click. So how do you maximize the value you get out of this online advertising? In this Wednesday’s Web clinic – Online Advertising Forensics: We investigate how and why a text-based PPC ad produced 47% more conversions – MECLABS Managing Director Flint McGlaughlin will share our top discoveries on increasing the ROI of your PPC ads. First, let’s look at some top advice we received from your peers … Always run two ads Whenever I create a new campaign or a single group, I always run with two ads. I…

• 

  ReadWriteWeb

• [STUDY] 61% of Social Media Users Feel So Close To You

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:30 am

  Sometimes little things like a sweet comment on Facebook or a Twitter friend calling your tweet a "favorite" can really make a social networker bee's day. A new study from Pew finds that for the most part, adults are kind to each other on social media sites. In fact, 85% of adults say that most of the people they come across on social media are rather kind; only 5% say that people are "mostly unkind," which would imply rude or mean. An additional 5% say that it's all situational. On the whole, adults have positive experiences on social networking sites. A total 68% of SNS users had an…

• [Infographic] Mapping the Tools in the Mobile Development Ecosystem

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:00 am

  The mobile development ecosystem is a large, complicated space. There are innovative startups making tools for native and mobile Web apps along with large enterprise-grade companies that offer solutions from cloud support to frameworks and developer environments. For a mobile developer, it can be confusing to know where to turn and what to use to make the best app possible. Mobile "backend-as-a-service" startup Kinvey created a map for ReadWriteMobile to help developers understand the ecosystem. Kinvey brackets the mobile ecosystem between two primary pillars: the service providers and the…

• Harry Reid Wants a Bigger, Badder Version of SOPA/PIPA

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:30 am

  Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., still licking wounds from last week's defeat of the Protect IP Act and its House counterpart the Stop Online Piracy Act, is reportedly working on an even more sinister, Internet-regulating bill. Few details have been publicly disclosed about the latest push by legislative Democrats to expand executive-branch authority over the Internet, but the Daily Caller has pieced together publicly-available clues suggesting that Reid's newest bill is even broader than President Barack Obama's cybersecurity proposal. Sponsor Released last May, Obama's proposal…

• Keep Track of your AWS Expenses With Cloudyn

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:02 am

  With the number of individual Amazon Web Services now seemingly approaching infinity, it makes sense for third parties to get into the act of trying to keep track of what you are actually spending and whether you have over-provisioned your services. Enter Cloudyn.com, an Israeli based company that announced its services this week. Sponsor The idea is to have a dashboard similar to what you see below (mine isn't very interesting, sorry, I have taken down all of my machines at the moment) where you can track your projected annual costs, which accounts you have on AWS and what your running…

• A Look at Steve Jobs' FBI File

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:16 am

  Yes, it's true. The FBI had a file on Steve Jobs. It's not what you might think, though. The FBI performed a "level III" background investigation on Jobs as a potential presidential appointee in 1991. He was described by most witnesses as an "individual of good character and integrity" that would be suitable for a "position of trust and confidence with the Government." Jobs also had a brush with the FBI when Apple received a bomb threat in 1985. Sponsor According to one of the filings, Jobs was being considered for an appointment to the President's Export Council in early 1991. This was while…

• 

  comScore Voices

• How the Next Generation Consumes Online Health

  9 Feb 2012 | 3:19 am

  Today’s generation of teenagers and young adults represents a unique class of Internet users, born with the web at their fingertips and an innate ability to navigate it with agility. For this generation, the Internet was not a new technology upending other modes of communication – it was the norm. Most grew up learning to seek out information primarily through search engines instead of card catalogs, engaging with social networks to interact with peers, and watching online video for entertainment.

• Extreme Couponing: Searching for the Deals

  8 Feb 2012 | 6:22 am

  Growing up I will always remember our family’s Sunday paper routine: Dad would immediately open up the bundle and take out the Sports section, I would jockey with my brother for the Comics, and Mom would furiously attack the coupons with her scissors.

• For Whom Does Gold Glitter?

  7 Feb 2012 | 12:30 pm

  As the best performing asset classes of the past decade, silver and gold have been hot topics on the financial news scene. But how widespread is the interest in this investment choice, and what do we know about the investors who do show interest in these precious metals? To answer these questions we applied to investments the same behavioral research techniques pioneered by comScore for understanding consumer brands.

• The Chicago FireStarter Venture Capital Fund

  3 Feb 2012 | 10:03 am

  The digital revolution has touched us all, bringing extraordinary services to our finger tips and improving our lives in ways that would have been inconceivable just a short time ago. In recent years, Chicago has seen a variety of new technology companies explode onto the digital scene. While Groupon has understandably garnered a huge amount of attention on its own, there have been many other successful Chicago startups, some since acquired but many others still growing rapidly and independently in a variety of fascinating digital sectors. Every week, it seems, a new digital company is born…

• What does the Louis CK Experiment Mean for the Future of Digital Content Distribution?

  3 Feb 2012 | 8:00 am

  Ever since leading comedian Louis CK announced the release of his new stand-up comedy special for $5 over his website louisck.net, the media has been abuzz about the potential for this sort of digital distribution model to be successful and shift the paradigm for the way content is marketed and distributed. The results appear to show that CK’s effort was a fairly unmitigated success, generating more than $1 million in revenue against $250,000 in production costs. After covering his costs, CK generously donated a significant portion of the proceeds to several charities, paid his staff…

• 

  eMarketer Articles and Blog Posts

• Article: Game Consoles as Connected-TV Platforms Continue to Rise

  8 Feb 2012 | 8:01 pm

  Consoles are the top way of viewing online content via traditional TV sets

• Article: Half of Internet Users in Brazil Go Online Daily

  8 Feb 2012 | 8:01 pm

  Daily access up 13% percent from 2009

• Article: App or Browser? Depends What Consumers Are Doing

  8 Feb 2012 | 8:01 pm

  Apps preferred for navigating and information gathering; mobile web for entertainment, searches

• Article: UK Ecommerce to Defy Tough Economy in 2012

  7 Feb 2012 | 8:01 pm

  Business will be driven by tighter budgets, social elements and mobile devices

• Article: Does ‘Liking’ a Brand Drive User Loyalty?

  7 Feb 2012 | 8:01 pm

  59% of consumers have ‘liked’ a Facebook brand page in the past 6 months

• 

  MarketingVox News & Trends

• It is Easy to Fudge Social Media Numbers

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:42 am

  Google has been taken to task for being obtuse with its engagement metrics for Google+. After parsing the definition Google provided, All Things Digital described it as anyone who "registered for Google+ any time since it launched this summer, and you used any other Google product–say, search!–in the past day or week, [...]<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/marketingvox/rss/~4/r4bk-7Jjvr0" height="1" width="1"/>

• 10 Words You Can't Say in an Email Heading

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:06 am

  There are ten words most likely to trigger a spam filter, All Spammed Up reports.  These are: 1. Meet Singles. 2. Work From Home. 3. Business Opportunity. 4. Buy Direct. 5. Clearance. 6. Pre-approved. 7. Hello. 8. You Have Been Selected. 9. Weight Loss. 10. Limited Time. Some of these terms, obviously, are tempting to legitimate marketers–"clearance" and "limited time" are often used as call [...]<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/marketingvox/rss/~4/Ga8dS0TK30s" height="1" width="1"/>

• Top News: Google's cloud storage service | GigaOm buys PaidContent | Groupon's earnings

  9 Feb 2012 | 5:28 am

  Cloud Services: Google near launch of cloud storage service. Social Media: Google Social is exploding online. Skimlinks is the real story behind Pinterest’s success. Publishing: GigaOm buys PaidContent.org. Ecommerce: Groupon shares decline after Q4 loss. Retail: Google may open retail store at European headquarters in Dublin. Mobile Computing: Protesters target Apple stores in 'ethical iPhone' campaign. Google: We want 2.25% of the iPhone sticker price. Privacy: Privacy warriors sue FTC [...]<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/marketingvox/rss/~4/fdiduvxIEWI"…

• 

  Influential Marketing

• The Best And Worst Of Super Bowl Marketing Strategy 2012

  Rohit

  6 Feb 2012 | 1:40 am

  I couldn't help but feel sorry this year for anyone who only watches the Super Bowl ads for entertainment. Perhaps the most defining feature of all the ads this year was how uniformly uncreative and dated they were. Marketers turned to old and obvious gags like girls in bikinis and dogs (lots of dogs) to try and carry their ads. The result was a very disappointing collection of ads for anyone who loves marketing and the hype of Super Bowl advertising. Still, there is plenty of marketing to learn from all the efforts this year, so let's get started in breaking down the strategy behind the ads…

• What The Amish Paradox Can Teach You About Marketing

  Rohit

  3 Feb 2012 | 4:01 am

  Last year on a trip back to the US from South Africa, I picked up a magazine about a topic I knew very little about. It is of the common tricks I use to learn about different industries outside of the ones I work directly with – and in this case, the magazine I ended up with was called Farmer’s Weekly. The content was as you would expect, advice for farmers on techniques, information about regulations that will affect their industry and ads for tractors and things like that. In the middle of the issue I picked up was a feature article about what the author called the “Amish Paradox”…

• The 4 Principles Of Delusional Economics

  Rohit

  27 Jan 2012 | 4:59 am

  When it comes to economic theories, there is plenty of fascination in the business world around how to explain what drives business and purchasing activities. Behavioural economics, the field of economics concerned with examining why people behave the way they do when it comes to their purchasing behaviour, is hot right now.  Bestselling books like Freakonomics and Predictably Irrational dig deep into the psyche of people to try and explain seemingly illogical actions. My own upcoming book called Likeonomics, to some degree, looks at a similar theme of why we do business with people and…

• FinnAir, Republic Day & Why Celebration Is The Best Marketing Strategy

  Rohit

  26 Jan 2012 | 8:28 am

  A few weeks ago it was my birthday. The day before on a Saturday morning, my two boys came leaping into our room very excited to wake me up. It wasn't so much about my birthday, unfortunately, as it was about getting ready to do their favourite thing on a Saturday morning: going to IHOP for pancakes. And when there is a birthday involved, it is an even bigger deal. Your birthday is a celebration there. They bring over at least 6 of the wait staff to sing their own version of the birthday song to you. You get ice cream for breakfast (what kid wouldn't love that?). People love celebrations -…

• Honda Masters The Art of Marketing Timing

  Rohit

  23 Jan 2012 | 6:44 pm

  Every year at the start of the new year there is something that most of us do without realizing it. It is related to making new year's resolutions, but it is more about sequencing your long term goals into the order in which you want to achieve them. One example might be saying to yourself, "I want to be married and then have a kid before I turn 35." Life is full of these little promises. So full, in fact, that often we make them to ourselves without even thinking. It raises an interesting marketing question as well. What would it take to get a customer to reevaluate the life sequence they…

• 

  Neuromarketing

• Super Bowl Ads: “Second Payoff” Pays Off

  Roger Dooley

  8 Feb 2012 | 11:11 am

  The Super Bowl is the biggest day of the year for football fans, and just about as important for neuromarketing companies. The first results of neuromarketing studies from the big game are trickling out, and Innerscope Research observed a strategy employed by multiple advertisers: a “second payoff” at the end of the ad, after the [...]

• Neuromarketing Fun: Add Your Caption

  Roger Dooley

  7 Feb 2012 | 5:32 am

  Want to win a signed copy of my new book, Brainfluence: 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing? I thought we could have a little fun while we’re waiting for the results of the Super Bowl neuromarketing studies to roll in. Read on… Neuromarketing scares some people, even though the techniques used by [...]

• NeuroBowl: Neuromarketing and Super Bowl 2012

  Roger Dooley

  3 Feb 2012 | 5:51 am

  The Super Bowl may be the biggest sports event of the year and the biggest advertising event of the year, but it’s also the biggest event of the year for neuromarketing companies. With $3 million being spent on every 30 second spot, you can be sure that lots of advertisers rang up their favorite neuromarketing [...]

• Social Personalization and the Doppelganger Effect

  Roger Dooley

  1 Feb 2012 | 5:18 am

  Are you overlooking a way to personalize your ads that goes far beyond the usual “Dear Roger” salutation? In my recent article, Put Your Customer in the Ad, I mentioned that LinkedIn was using profile pictures for targeted ads. Since then, I’ve been able to capture a couple of examples. The first one surprised me [...]

• Time Warner Opens NYC Neuromarketing Lab

  Roger Dooley

  26 Jan 2012 | 5:42 am

  Time Warner Inc. is opening their new “Medialab” at its New York City headquarters. The media giant expects to “generate valuable insights into consumer behavior, evolving media habits and industry trends across all of Time Warner’s businesses, brands and advertising partners.” The lab sounds like one of the more diverse facilities dedicated to this kind [...]

• 

  NYT > Media & Advertising

• Media Decoder Blog: Huckabee's Latest Campaign Is Aimed at Radio Stations

  By BRIAN STELTER

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:41 am

  The former Arkansas governor is starting a talk-radio show that will compete with Rush Limbaugh, and his focus is getting radio stations to carry it.

• Media Decoder Blog: The Occupy Movement May Be in Retreat, but Its Ideas Are Advancing

  By DAVID CARR

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:50 am

  Is the Occupy Wall Street movement petering out, or has it already won a big victory by shaping the political campaign of 2012?

• New Settlements in Britain’s Hacking Scandal

  By RAVI SOMAIYA and ALAN COWELL

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:50 am

  Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper subsidiary was reported to have reached a new batch of settlements on Wednesday in the hacking scandal.

• Media Decoder Blog: The Breakfast Meeting: Young People Drift From TV Sets (Which Are Getting Huge!)

  By NOAM COHEN

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:28 am

  Also, Mike Huckabee takes on Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santorum gets a big lifeline, and the rise of Pinterest.

• Advertising: Marketing Financial Risk Management to Clients and Providers

  By STUART ELLIOTT

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:13 am

  A campaign encouraging professionals to become certified as financial risk managers is centered on photographs of men in business garb recoiling as if they had been punched.

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  I Believe in Advertising | ONLY SELECTED ADVERTISING | Advertising Blog & Community

• National Ballet of Canada: Lost In Motion

  Filippo

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:43 am

  Opening on a lone male figure, Ben Shirinian’s two-minute film pulls its viewer into the world of dancer Guillaume Côté as he loses himself to his movement in an undefined, mysterious space. Combining live action with subtle visual effects, Lost in Motion encapsulates the precision and technique of the dance to beautiful effect, exposing the strength and athleticism behind it. Dancer / Choreographer: Guillaume Côté Director: Ben Shirinian Producer: Leslie Aimée Gottlieb Production Company: Krystal Levy Pictures Executive Producer: David Miller Director of Photography: Jeremy Benning…

• Boost Mobile: Bill From Hell

  Filippo

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:12 am

  Advertising Agency: 180LA, USA Executive Creative Director: William Gelner Creative Directors: Matt Elhardt, Gavin Lester Copywriter: Dave Horton Art Director: Matthew Woodhams-Roberts Executive Producer / Managing Partner: Peter Cline Senior Producer: Natasha Wellesley Assistant Producer: Tina Diep Group Account Director: Chad Bettor Account Director: Jerico Cabaysa Account Manager: Cassie Jackson Planning Director: Martin Ramos Production Co.: Imperial Woodpecker Director: Simon McQuoid DP: Dion Beebe Sr. Executive Producer: Doug Halbert Producer: Adam Cramer Production Designer: Robb Buono…

• McDonald’s McCafé: Rainy Day, Lots of Questions, Good Ideas, Confession, Shy Girl

  Filippo

  9 Feb 2012 | 2:35 am

  “Everything good begins with a good cup of coffee.” Advertising Agency: TBWA, Berlin, Germany Chief Creative Officer: Stefan Schmidt, Kurt Georg Dieckert Creative Director: Vesna Koselj, Lucio Regner Art Director: Andrew Morgan Account Supervisor: Christoph Erdmann Designer: Andrew Morgan

• Ed Hardy Tattoo Stickers: Legs, Belly, Waist

  Filippo

  8 Feb 2012 | 10:35 pm

  “Ed Hardy. Tattoos without needles.” Advertising Agency: Y&R, Beijing, China Chief Creative Officer: Nils Andersson, Marcus Rebeschini Executive Creative Director: Gunny Park Creative Director: Ronnie Wu, Donghai Liu Copywriter: Donghai Liu, Nils Andersson, Gao Han Art Director: Ronnie Wu, Roy Luo, Rex Rui, Shi Jian Photographer: Shi Zhong

• Rialto Channel: The Kings Speech

  Filippo

  8 Feb 2012 | 4:43 pm

  “Independent film for independent ideas.” Advertising Agency: DDB, Auckland, New Zealand Executive Creative Director: Toby Talbot, Andy Fackrell Creative Director: Regan Grafton Art Director: Damian Galvin Copywriter: Rory Mckechnie Head of Art: Dave Brady Planner: David McIndoe Account Director: Danielle Richards Agency Producer: Andy Robilliard Photographer: Lewis Mulatero Retoucher: Gordon Moir Designer: Renee Lam Account Manager: Brad Armstrong, Victoria Meo

• 

  advertising/design goodness - advertising and design blog

• Ed Hardy Tattoo Stickers

  Freddy

  9 Feb 2012 | 2:04 am

  “Ed Hardy. Tattoos without needles.” Agency: Y&R, Beijing, China Chief Creative Officer: Nils Andersson, Marcus Rebeschini Executive Creative Director: Gunny Park Creative Director: Ronnie Wu, Donghai Liu Copywriter: Donghai Liu, Nils Andersson, Gao Han Art Director: Ronnie Wu, Roy Luo, Rex Rui, Shi Jian Photographer: Shi Zhong

• Medicus Health Insurance

  Freddy

  8 Feb 2012 | 2:04 am

  “Medical assistance for travellers.” Agency: TBWA, Buenos Aires, Argentina Chief Creative Officers: Juan Cruz Bazterrica, Guillermo Castañeda Copywriter: Emilio Pastore Art Director: Cecilia Astengo Photographer: Blumencweig-Benitez Fotografia

• Beijing Sports Radio

  Freddy

  7 Feb 2012 | 2:08 am

  Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, Hong Kong Executive Creative Directors: Simon Handford, Sandy Chan Creative Director: Alvin Lim Art Directors: Alvin Lim, Sonny Tjahjadi, Jason Pan, Hubert Yeung Associate CD / Copywriter: Richard Sorensen Retoucher: A Thousand Eyes

• Amnesty International

  Freddy

  6 Feb 2012 | 2:36 am

  “We’re celebrating 50 years of fighting against violence, torture and executions.” Agency: TBWA, Berlin, Germany Chief Creative Officer: Kurt Georg Dieckert, Stefan Schmidt Copywriter: Bahador Pakravesh Art Director: Behnaz Pakravesh Illustrator: Dinoso.de, Dino So, Axel Mewes

• Axe Anarchy

  Freddy

  3 Feb 2012 | 3:25 am

  “New Axe Anarchy for him + for her. Unleash the chaos.” Agency: BBH, London, UK Creative Director: Dominic Goldman, David Kolbusz Creatives: Daniel Schaefer, Szymon Rose

• 

  Conversation Agent

• Being in Control of the Interaction

  Valeria Maltoni

  9 Feb 2012 | 3:00 am

  I don't know about you. I wasn't terribly impressed by the Super Bowl ads this year. With the exception of the seducing commercial of the FIAT Abarth, where they are clearly in control of the interaction, most ads seemed to have sacrificed newer creative executions for safer ones. At the per second dollar spend, it was an understandable move. Disappointing because of the high expectations created through social media ahead of the big day. I got many ad preview offeres from the PR Agencies working with brands this year. A few days ahead of the game I saw that FIAT was making the rounds on…

• Collaboration? You Must be Joking!

  Valeria Maltoni

  8 Feb 2012 | 3:00 am

  I read this post by Chris Saad the other morning in response to Robert Scoble 's mention in a recent post and I keep thinking about the applicability of its concepts not just for Silicon Valley and the tech community. It applies to marketers and communicators as well. [Posted originally on Google+]<rant>1. lead not just cheerlead - how many times do we copy the same concept over and over, or look at short term payoffs when the opportunities are on the making better promises side of the conversation?2. add to the business DNA - nothing dies, not media companies, not blogging, not…

• What a Difference Five Years Make

  Valeria Maltoni

  7 Feb 2012 | 3:00 am

  Here I am. Writing from my heart more than my head where all the good ideas are and I get the zinger -- yeah, a personality would be great. Seriously? Kidding. I'm sure it would. And I have one. I can go from Zero to Italian in no time. When appropriate. Why do you care? Because that's just it -- online content should have a style and point of view, to get more personality it needs to have guts, and it needs to have time. Guts don't come from charts and stats, they come from people. Time as in face time, as in skin in the game, as in relationships. Or you're just making the seagull move --…

• How Would You Redesign the Sears Customer Experience?

  Valeria Maltoni

  6 Feb 2012 | 3:00 am

  As a regular at Brand Autopsy, I remember the "would you miss" series of posts about brands John Moore wrote a couple of years back. The brands discussed ranged from Denny's, Costco, Ace Hardware, Dairy Queen, Crate & Barrell, BusinessWeek, UPS, Pizza Hut, to Walgreens, Polaroid Instant Film, Advertising Age, The Cheesecake Factory, Chili's, Wells Fargo, and more. One of the brands was Sears -- if Sears went out of business tomorrow, would any of us care? Does Sears provide such a unique product and customer experience that we would be saddened if it didn’t exist? How did Sears do on…

• ... then I Discovered I am Actually Funny

  Valeria Maltoni

  5 Feb 2012 | 4:00 am

  So, I've been thinking. What I'm doing here with this blog is not working. It's not you, it's me. Somehow I manage to scare you off to some site with LOL cats whenever you open your feed. I'm not inspiring you. Or maybe I am, and you're not telling me. I've tried a couple of things to justify keeping up with producing researched and useful content. That only makes the scraping and copying and rewriting gremlins happy and me poor. They don't link anymore in the sphere, those bastards. This is a departure from my usual writing style, I know. I've been slaving on figuring out an angle for the…

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  MarketingProfs How-To Articles

• Never Waste an Opportunity: The Value of Lead Nurturing

  7 Feb 2012 | 7:00 am

  When new visitors arrive at your website, you have two ways to seize the opportunity and guide them toward becoming customers. Both opportunities can evaporate in the blink of an eye--if you don't have the proper systems in place. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

• Four Keyword Research Mistakes to Avoid at All Costs

  6 Feb 2012 | 7:00 am

  If you are serious about the words "sales," "profit," and "conversions," you must master keyword research. Learn four common pitfalls marketers make when selecting keywords--and how to avoid them. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

• The Inside Scoop on Using Twitter Lists for Profit and Sanity

  3 Feb 2012 | 7:00 am

  The dirty secret of Twitter is that as helpful as it can be, it's also a time sink. Learn how properly using and cleaning up your Twitter lists can help you save time--and generate leads for your business. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

• 10 Hot Tips (and a Promo Campaign Planner) for Seasonal Sale Success

  2 Feb 2012 | 7:00 am

  Customers today expect more deals and offers during holiday seasons, so it's important to create seasonal campaigns to increase revenues. Here are 10 tips--and a campaign planner--to help you achieve seasonal sale success. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

• Five Tips for Implementing a Successful QR Code Campaign

  1 Feb 2012 | 7:00 am

  QR codes can be inexpensive to implement and can provide you a measureable return on investment--if you use them correctly. Learn five invaluable tips for implementing an effective QR code campaign. Read the full article at MarketingProfs

• 

  HubSpot's Inbound Internet Marketing Blog

• The History of Marketing: An Exhaustive Timeline [INFOGRAPHIC]

  Corey Eridon

  9 Feb 2012 | 6:00 am

  Ever since people have had something to sell, we’ve been marketing. But the effectiveness of those marketing methods have waxed and waned over thousands of years, and as consumers and their technologies advanced at a more and more rapid pace, marketers have had to change their game. At one time, cutting edge technology was limited to just a small segment of the population – and these advancements were slowly rolled out to the masses over decades (and even centuries!). Now, adoption rates are faster than the speed of light and more widespread than ever – and it’s…

• How to Score Your Leads So Sales Works the Hottest Prospects

  Pamela Vaughan

  8 Feb 2012 | 1:47 pm

  The good news about inbound marketing is that it can help you attract high volumes of leads. The challenge then becomes, how do you separate the good, quality leads from the people who are just starting to look around? That’s where lead management, and specifically, lead scoring comes in. With lead scoring, you can attach values to each of your leads based on their professional information and the behavior they’ve exhibited on your website. For example, you would likely rank a vice president-level lead who has spent time on both your products and pricing page higher than an…

• A Marketer's Complete Guide to Launching Mobile Apps

  Corey Eridon

  8 Feb 2012 | 10:02 am

  According to former CEO of AppVee and AndroidApps Alex Ahlund, the average cost to develop a mobile app is $6,453 -- and the cost can skyrocket to as much as $150,000 depending on the complexity of the app. Wherever you fall on that spectrum, the money and resources you dedicate to conceptualizing and developing a truly great mobile app can all be put to waste if you don't orchestrate a proper mobile app launch. In fact, in December 2011, the 1 millionth mobile app was pushed to market. To give you an idea of just how quickly these mobile apps are being released, at the end of 2010, there…

• How to Attract the RIGHT Social Media Followers for Your Business

  Meghan Keaney Anderson

  8 Feb 2012 | 6:00 am

  The benefits of an extensive social reach are clear, but how do you attract the right followers for your company? As with most inbound marketing, relevancy can make or break the effectiveness of your strategy. So to ensure you have a social media following that helps you advance your marketing objectives, start by identifying a set of core topics that reflect the interests of people who typically become your customers. If you're a HubSpot customer, you can use the Keywords App and the Social Media Prospects App to help with this. For example, we at HubSpot would choose the…

• Why User-Generated Content Is More Important Than You Think

  Corey Eridon

  7 Feb 2012 | 11:33 am

  A certain group of consumers has been gaining attention from marketers recently, because of the strong role they play in the purchasing decision; these power purchasers are known as Generation Y. Whether they're part of the target audience to which you sell or not, this group is worth considering as part of your inbound marketing strategy because there's a strong likelihood they either will become part of your target audience in the future, or because they already influence your target audience now. Let's break down who these power purchasers are, some of the interesting demographics and…

• 

  Branding Strategy Insider

• Time For Brand Marketers To Lead A Comeback

  Derrick Daye, The Blake Project

  7 Feb 2012 | 9:10 pm

  It’s a good thing the game between the NFL's New England Patriots and the New York Giants was exciting because this year’s Super Bowl commercials were dull, and what a weird thing to say about the Super Bowl. Generally, it’s the very opposite of that. Perhaps it’s best not to read too much into Super Bowl ads vying for viral buzz (many of which adopted a new pre-game, social media preview approach to generate buzz, albeit some have argued it was poorly done). But there was one thing that stood out. In a noticeable departure from the tradition of Super Bowl Sunday, this year’s crop…

• When To Reposition Your Brand

  Derrick Daye, The Blake Project

  6 Feb 2012 | 9:10 pm

  Brand repositioning is necessary when one or more of the following conditions exist: Your brand has a bad, confusing or nonexistent image. The primary benefit your brand "owns" has evolved from a differentiating benefit to a cost-of-entry benefit. Your organization is significantly altering its strategic direction. Your organization is entering new businesses and the current positioning is no longer appropriate. A new competitor with a superior value proposition enters your industry. Competition has usurped your brand's position or rendered it ineffectual. Your organization has acquired a…

• How To Transform An Under-Performing Brand

  Thomson Dawson

  5 Feb 2012 | 9:10 pm

  Once the decision has been made to continue to invest in an under-performing brand, brand owners will be faced with a new set of challenges completely foreign to them. The temptation is always to do more of what got you there. That rarely works when brands face reinvention.  By that I mean brand relevance. The main reason brands begin to under perform is that people no longer care. When that happens, like it or not, you’ll be starting over from scratch. This is a hard pill for brand owners to swallow, particularly if the brand was once an iconic leader in its category.  For brand owners…

• Logo Design Requirements

  Brad VanAuken, The Blake Project

  4 Feb 2012 | 9:10 pm

  A brand’s identity is a combination of visual, auditory, and other sensory components that create recognition, aid in memory encoding and decoding, represent the brand promise, provide differentiation, create communications synergy, and are proprietary. The logo is one key component. Here is what we look for when we evaluate logo design: Memorable – highest recognition and recall (both of which can be tested for) Including recognition at maximum distances (can be tested for) Aesthetically pleasing Timeless quality - the logo will not become dated Appropriate for the product/service…

• Brand Tagline Requirements

  Brad VanAuken, The Blake Project

  3 Feb 2012 | 9:10 pm

  In definitive global research, The Conference Board has found the development and consistent use of a tagline to be a key factor in brand strategy success. A tagline that succinctly and powerfully communicates the brand’s promise is one of the quickest, easiest and least expensive ways to communicate the brand’s new position to internal and external audiences. It should consistently accompany the brand’s logo in situations outlined by the brand architecture. I believe that developing brand taglines (and elevator speeches) are the most important next steps one can take once a brand has…

• 

  Marketing + Branding + Design by Chris Moody

• Five Ways to Harness The Power of Community

  Chris Moody

  8 Feb 2012 | 6:15 am

  At Social Fresh East, I was tasked with helping folks harness the power of community – even if they may not have clearly defined communities. My slides can be found [...]

• When Larry Met Sergey – an interactive graphic

  Chris Moody

  24 Jan 2012 | 7:18 am

  Ever wanted a really cool graphic of the history of Google? Get started below. :) Created By Online PhD

• Control your social media with if / then statements

  Chris Moody

  17 Jan 2012 | 7:25 am

  Ever wished that one action or event triggered another to help you more easily manage social media (or your life)? Well, you are in luck. ifttt is coming to the [...]

• Are the Millennials the best generation ever? INFOGRAPHIC

  Chris Moody

  20 Dec 2011 | 10:46 am

  What do you think? Are the Millennials the best generation ever? If not, what is your choice? Spare me the Woodstock argument. :) Created by: Online Graduate Programs

• How to transition to a new job in 5 easy steps

  Chris Moody

  19 Dec 2011 | 11:23 am

  Transition is difficult. Most of the time, you go from being a subject matter expert with detailed knowledge of the inner-workings of your company to being a complete newbie learning [...]

• 

  Digital Influence Mapping Project

• Are Social Media Ethics About Actions or Intentions?

  John Bell

  30 Jan 2012 | 12:29 am

  What is your social strategy? Are you trying to increase the amount of positive consumer generated media (CGM) for your brand or are you trying to inspire and manage brand advocacy? The media mindset thinks in terms of CGM. How can they make more of that and put it in all the places where customers will find it. How they “make” that media happen is a means to a simple end.  The social mindset thinks in terms of genuine brand advocacy. How can we give customers, employees, stakeholders a reason and a means to share a sincerely positive point of view about a brand with their friends,…

• Actionable 2012 Social Business Predictions: #4 Social Selling as a Service

  John Bell

  16 Jan 2012 | 1:38 am

  Sales force-driven organizations are wising up to using social media to build relationships with customers. Businesses are investing in sales enablement software like Salesforce.com, iCentera and Jive that have social-related functions internally to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing and some even have ways to manage social contacts. Sales as Content  Sales organizations are all a-twitter about content marketing, certain the answer to closing sales is in a steady flow of just the right white papers or video talking heads. All that is right-minded in my book. The sales process,…

• Actionable 2012 Social Business Predictions: #3 Gamification Endures

  John Bell

  9 Jan 2012 | 12:08 am

  No, it’s really not about gaming. It’s about good old behavioral economics using game mechanics. PFSK recently ran a series profiling how different organizations were using points, leaderboards and social proof to drive behavior change. They have sunk a fair amount of energy into reviewing the use of game mechanics in groups like RecycleBank, LetGive, Stickk and SuMo . They have also produced a report that is worth previewing and grabbing called The Future of Gaming. The world of ‘gamification’ is certainly buzzy if not frothy. Loads of marketers are talking about it. Many startups…

• Actionable Social Business Predictions: #2 Social Insights over Social Data

  John Bell

  5 Jan 2012 | 12:35 am

  We have long been fascinated by the wealth of data we could collect, analyze and put to use via digital media.  It’s taken us years to get beyond the intention and excitement of doing that to actually using data in constructive ways. Now along comes all this social data spread between platforms like Facebook and Twitter and conversation search tools like Radian6 and Sysomos. The promise of knowing what your fans and detractors are saying about your brand is irresistible. The chance to put these social "signals" to use cannot be passed up.   Well, as more brands finally…

• Actionable 2012 Social Business Predictions: #1 Comprehensive Content Strategy

  John Bell

  2 Jan 2012 | 12:30 am

  Timing is everything in business. Business leaders want to embrace innovations the moment before they become profitable business strategy or execution. That goes for most social media-based business solutions. Most annual social media predictions are loose stabs at what may happen and often range from the obvious, “20-whatever is the year of mobile,” to the interesting, “2012 will/won’t be the year of Google+.”   With hard-to-read economic indicators, business leaders don’t need broad meditations on what might happen but rather ways of more precisely anticipating change and…

• 

  Why Advertising Sucks

• We should do this more often: Say Something Nice!

  Me

  8 Feb 2012 | 9:10 am

• High Five Escalator RULES

  Me

  8 Feb 2012 | 8:31 am

• How to advertise diet things correctly. Basically, LIE.

  Me

  7 Feb 2012 | 1:48 pm

• Five Type of Women that Annoy: Me.

  Me

  6 Feb 2012 | 5:02 pm

  That's it. Ladies, I'm about to betray you. Nah, nah. It's not my fault. It's other bitches out there, real low life scum ovary-carrying humans who give the rest of us normal chicks a real bad name. Today, I'm going to commit the sin of writing a good tell all to the few good men out there. Why? 'Cause I'm tired of seeing great, amazing dudes get fucked over - and not in a wham bam thank you Mam way. I can't see another sad guy who doesn't deserve some shit from a fucked up chick! So listen up, guys out there. I'm going to give you a list of women that YOU NEED TO AVOID. I'll give you as much…

• Shit New Yorkers Say.

  Me

  6 Feb 2012 | 12:09 pm

• 

  Adrants

• A Threesome is a Good Way to Promote Lingerie, Right?

  9 Feb 2012 | 6:39 am

  Agent Provocateur is at it again with its provocative promotions.

• Man and Duck Rap For Phone Freedom

  9 Feb 2012 | 6:26 am

  Old white guys rapping. It's always good for a laugh.

• Mitsubishi Rides the Storm

  9 Feb 2012 | 6:17 am

  Following up on its Live Drive and helping Mitsubushi set new Guinness world Records, 180LA is out with another project for the car maker called Ride the Storm.

• Brands: Sponsor Adrants Coverage of SXSW

  9 Feb 2012 | 6:06 am

  If you are a brand that wants to be a part of what's become the biggest marketing event of the year, SXSW, then we can help you do just that.

• James Franco Films Hot Hipsters For Jeans Campaign

  8 Feb 2012 | 11:28 am

  In what seems mildly akin to a bunch of 60's hipsters frolicking in LSD-infused splendor while hippy dippy music with shades of The Good, The Bad and the Ugly plays in the background, James Franco films his first ad campaign.

• 

  Search Engine Watch - Latest

• New Signals to Search Engines Revisited

  Mike Grehan

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:30 am

  Search engines have evolved from primitive crawling technology and now have a very powerful combination of signals. This downloadable PDF “thought paper” shows how end user data, social, mobile, and personalization are shaping the future of search.

• Online Newsrooms: A Necessity for Search and Social Content Strategy

  Lisa Buyer

  9 Feb 2012 | 6:00 am

  Think content. Think fresh content. Think Google loves content. Think social shares of content. Now when news breaks in a tweet and via mobile device, the online newsroom can hold the keys to dominating online visibility in a three-screen world.

• Don’t Be A Wallflower! 3 Fundamentals Of Data Driven Community Outreach

  Marty Weintraub

  9 Feb 2012 | 5:00 am

  Many (even most) corporate community managers are relatively passive, waiting for users to come to them. However there is a real power to assertively identifying themed conversations surrounding your corporate objectives, and diving right in.

• How to Use Government Data for Link Development

  Justilien Gaspard

  9 Feb 2012 | 4:00 am

  You can use data found on government websites to create compelling linkable material. This freely available material, in conjunction with your own research and insight, should help you make content that gets linked to by all the right places.

• RIAA President: Google ‘Misused Its Power’ by Protesting SOPA

  Danny Goodwin

  8 Feb 2012 | 2:00 pm

  Google abused its trust and misused its power when it blacked out its logo and encouraged its millions of users base to “Tell Congress: Please don’t censor the web!” At least according to the Recording Industry Association of America’s CEO.

• 

  Marketing Interactions

• Expectations and Experience are the New Competition

  ArdathAlbee

  6 Feb 2012 | 11:51 am

  For years, B2B marketers have been worried about competitors' products and solutions. They spent a considerable amount of effort trying to differentiate their features and prove their offering is better than another company's version of something similar. As technology continues to shorten product time-to-market and allow for rapid updates and improvements, it's also enabled marketers to become publishers, applying even more pressure to move faster to produce more information than competing vendors. Online publishing is the new version of one-upping. (Competitor A just…

• Marketing Cloud Computing to Non-Believer CIOs

  ArdathAlbee

  2 Feb 2012 | 4:16 pm

  Cloud computing is a pretty big deal. It's one of the top priorities for many CIOs. So, it should be a pretty easy process to build a B2B content strategy that helps CIOs make a purchasing decision. Or is it? I subscribe to a lot of newsletters and have a ton of Google Alerts to help me mine for information I use to learn more about the buyers my clients sell to. In my Inbox today was a bonanza of a resource. SearchCIO sent me a link to: Quick take: Why iRobot's CIO doesn't like enterprise cloud computing This resource is a quick interview with Jay Leader, CIO of iRobot, in…

• Why B2B Marketers Must Address Status Quo

  ArdathAlbee

  31 Jan 2012 | 4:15 pm

  When I do stategic planning workshops with my clients, we get into a lot of discussions about buying stages. Anyone who's followed me for a while or read my book knows that I always start very early in the process with the stage of Status Quo. My definition of status quo is the buyer's current situation. We get to that by answering questions such as: How are they doing what your product enables today? What workarounds may be in place that could be escalating pain? Why should they care about what you're talking about? What would get their attention? What would they need to learn…

• The Content Marketing Continuum: Part 1

  ArdathAlbee

  29 Jan 2012 | 12:25 pm

  Online publishing has changed the game. Yes, the Internet changed everything. You've heard it before. But, what many B2B marketers haven't yet grasped is the shift from start and stop marketing campaigns to approaching online publishing as a Content Marketing Continuum. To make this shift, marketers need a framework, not just the ability to publish content. Marketers are under pressure to create a sustainable buyer experience that results in a profitable outcome. Pushing out stand-alone events or campaigns that stop and start and continuously change in focus is not going to…

• Are Shorter Sales Cycles a Wake-up Call for Marketers?

  ArdathAlbee

  24 Jan 2012 | 4:47 pm

  Marketing Sherpa's chart of the week shows the answer to this question. Q. Please select the time period closest to the length of your organization's entire sales cycle, from first lead inquiry to purchase. In the commentary, Jen Doyle states that these results showing shorter sales cycles correlate to the lower deal prices Marketing Sherpa's annual benchmark survey also discovered. But I think there's more at stake here than lower prices. Everyone has been talking about how much time buyers spend self-educating and researching prior to identifying themselves to vendors.

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  Marketing Articles | Business Articles

• 5 Easy Steps to Promote Your Events Using Mobile Phones

  Business:Marketing Articles from EzineArticles.com

  9 Feb 2012 | 10:00 am

  Environment-friendly mobile phones have gained immense popularity among both individuals and organizations because of their simple, user-friendly features and functionalities. Every year, there has been a significant rise in the number of mobile phone subscribers around the world. These gadgets ensure that you can send text messages or share any website links with others in no time. It is because of such user-friendly interface that companies are now increasingly shifting toward using mobile phones to promote and publicize their events, classes, and training programs.

• How to Make Your Pop Up Displays Work for You

  Business:Marketing Articles from EzineArticles.com

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:42 am

  This article explores the ways you should organise and prepare yourself at trade show, focusing on the use of pop up displays and the benefits they can bring. This will include drawing in more clients and ensuring the colour scheme is perfect to ensure maximum appeal to those passing by.

• Driven Marketing With Customized Laptop Bags

  Business:Marketing Articles from EzineArticles.com

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:42 am

  Customized laptops can be used very effectively to drive the marketing campaign of a business with more companies looking for innovative and unique methods to leverage promotional products for marketing campaigns. There are many ways in which laptop bags can be customized for such campaigns to promote a business in ways that have never been thought possible.

• Internet Makes Job Searches Much More Complicated

  Business:Job-Search-Techniques Articles from EzineArticles.com

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:53 am

  Is your online reputation as squeaky clean as you think it is? It's a good idea for all job-seekers to make sure that there are no online blunders that just might embarrass them and make a hiring manager raise an eyebrow! Learn how to be proactive and monitor your on-line image.

• Lawn Care Business Pricing Tips – Ideas for Estimating Lawn Mowing Jobs

  Business:Marketing Articles from EzineArticles.com

  9 Feb 2012 | 8:51 am

  Pricing a lawn fairly and winning bids is one of the most important aspects of running a successful lawn care business. Newcomers to the industry should put some time into developing and refining their approach. Below I have set out a number of general lawn care pricing tips that may help you to set fair and profitable prices for your services.

• 

  Business is Personal

• Starting a New Business: Part 2 – Are you ready?

  Mark

  30 Jan 2012 | 4:25 am

  photo credit: elbfoto Last time we talked briefly about things to consider in the early going of the business you just started. We talked a little about the product/service, but focused mostly on some basics about licenses/permits and getting supplies with a little taste of business model talk. The reality is that we shouldn’t have talked about most of that stuff, but we had to start with that conversation because it’s the type of thing new business owners expect to hear. You might be thinking “I’ve already got a product, I’ve already got a business (even if…

• What does a new business owner do first?

  Mark

  26 Jan 2012 | 7:11 pm

  photo credit: Sebastian Mary Recently I received an email from a reader who said my blog made them feel like they had come in during the middle of a movie. Why? Because they’re at the startup stage in their business, while many of my posts focus on existing businesses. Fair enough. Let’s talk about startups. The overwhelming load at startup can freeze you in your tracks. You’re just starting to learn how to market (usually). You may need to know where to find less-expensive supplies, how to introduce your product to customers and how to price what you make/do. Best of all,…

• Out of Stock

  Mark

  20 Jan 2012 | 4:47 am

  photo credit: Zigar When your store is out of stock on an item…what does your staff do and say? When I was out of state not long ago, I looked around for a pair of light hikers for everyday wear. I knew exactly what I wanted right down to the model name. I visited a locally owned store, but they didn’t have my size in stock. A few days later, I visited a box store. They had the shoe on the wall (which is never my size), but they didn’t have any others. They didn’t even have the match to the one on the wall. As I got into the car in the box store parking lot, I called…

• Your customers are already trained to share. Help them.

  Mark

  19 Jan 2012 | 4:30 am

  Have you noticed what happens when you add an item to your Amazon wish list? Three tabs appear on the right side of the “We just added this to your wish list page”. This tab is ready-made for a Facebook post with just one click. There’s a link to the book, a brief summary of the book and a 1 click button to share your wish. This tab is ready-made for a tweet with one click. It even makes note that a link to your wish list item will be part of the tweet and because 140 characters is always on the mind of Twitter users, it notes that the link’s characters are part…

• SOPA / PIPA: Business on a Rope

  Mark

  17 Jan 2012 | 10:00 pm

  You may not have heard much about SOPA and its counterpart in the U.S. Senate, PIPA. SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) have a noble and necessary cause behind them: To protect the intellectual property created by U.S. citizens and businesses. What is “Intellectual Property”?  Movies, music, photos, books, stories, blog posts, computer software, patented processes, engineered work, designs and so on. No doubt you are aware that there are people and businesses, both inside and outside the U.S., who copy other people’s creations and…

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  Ads of the World™

• Ed Hardy: Tattoo Stickers, 3

  ivan

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:50 am

  Ed Hardy. Tattoos without needles. Advertising Agency: Y&R, Beijing, China Chief Creative Officers: Nils Andersson, Marcus Rebeschini Executive Creative Director: Gunny Park Creative Directors: Ronnie Wu, Donghai Liu Copywriters: Donghai Liu, Nils Andersson, Gao Han Art Directors: Ronnie Wu, Roy Luo, Rex Rui, Shi Jian Photographer: Shi Zhong Via: adgoodness Watch all the best Super Bowl 2012 Commercials

• Ed Hardy: Tattoo Stickers, 2

  ivan

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:50 am

  Ed Hardy. Tattoos without needles. Advertising Agency: Y&R, Beijing, China Chief Creative Officers: Nils Andersson, Marcus Rebeschini Executive Creative Director: Gunny Park Creative Directors: Ronnie Wu, Donghai Liu Copywriters: Donghai Liu, Nils Andersson, Gao Han Art Directors: Ronnie Wu, Roy Luo, Rex Rui, Shi Jian Photographer: Shi Zhong Via: adgoodness Watch all the best Super Bowl 2012 Commercials

• Ed Hardy: Tattoo Stickers, 1

  ivan

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:50 am

  Ed Hardy. Tattoos without needles. Advertising Agency: Y&R, Beijing, China Chief Creative Officers: Nils Andersson, Marcus Rebeschini Executive Creative Director: Gunny Park Creative Directors: Ronnie Wu, Donghai Liu Copywriters: Donghai Liu, Nils Andersson, Gao Han Art Directors: Ronnie Wu, Roy Luo, Rex Rui, Shi Jian Photographer: Shi Zhong Via: adgoodness Watch all the best Super Bowl 2012 Commercials

• Británico English courses: Beach

  ivan

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:41 am

  Hey, kid, in five minutes the tide will have covered everything around here. In real life, English doesn't come with subtitles. Advertising Agency: Y&R, Lima, Peru Executive Creative Director: Flavio Pantigoso Copywriter: Daniel De León Art Director: Alejandro Bottas Head of Art: Christian Sánchez Agency Producer: Michel Motte Photographer: César Guerrero Published: February 2012 Watch all the best Super Bowl 2012 Commercials

• Británico English courses: Park

  ivan

  9 Feb 2012 | 9:41 am

  No, wait! He just drank toilet water! In real life, English doesn't come with subtitles. Advertising Agency: Y&R, Lima, Peru Executive Creative Director: Flavio Pantigoso Copywriter: Daniel De León Art Director: Alejandro Bottas Head of Art: Christian Sánchez Agency Producer: Michel Motte Photographer: César Guerrero Published: February 2012 Watch all the best Super Bowl 2012 Commercials

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  5 Blogs Before Lunch

• Starbucks is selling more beer, wine and savory snacks as they expand their afternoon menu.

  daveibsen

  24 Jan 2012 | 9:10 am

  Starbucks wants people come back for more, and more--all throughout the day. Over the last couple of years, they've been market testing an afternoon menu of alcohol (beer and wine) and savory snacks. "As our customers transition from work to home, many are looking for a warm and inviting place to unwind and connect with the people they care about," Clarice Turner, Starbucks' senior vice president of U.S. operations, said in a news release. Way back in July 2009, we posted a report that Starbucks was about to beging testing a new retail concept in Seattle that included the…

• Macy's goes on the attack, suing Martha Stewart for its J.C. Penney deal

  daveibsen

  24 Jan 2012 | 8:20 am

  A month ago we posted the news that Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia had inked a deal to sell housewares at J.C. Penney. It sounded like a great deal for Penney's and MSLO, but it seems to have made Macy's feel like a jilted bride. And there is nothing like a mega conclomerate's scorn. Macy's is now suing MSLO in New York State Supreme Court claiming the deal with J.C. Penney violates the terms of an exclusive deal to sell MSLO products at its stores. The J.C. Penney deal involves opening store-in-store Martha Stewart shops inside most of its stores beginning next year.

• Saab owners stay true to their loyal friend until its last breath

  daveibsen

  22 Jan 2012 | 3:55 pm

  For decades, Saab owners have dealt with endless electrical problems, hose leaks and other mechanical defects that were just part of the Saab experience. Still, through all of the mechanical troubles Saab owners suffered through, they have always been some of the most loyalfanatically loyal fans. Even now, with Saab in bankruptcy after being tossed to the curb by General Motors, and effectively no longer in operation, Saab enthusiasts are gathering this weekend across this counrty and around the world in rallies, caravans and other meet-ups designed to show their affection for the Swedish…

• As baby boomers become seniors, they get their own television network--RLTV (Redefine Life TV)

  daveibsen

  22 Jan 2012 | 2:57 pm

  As the number of baby boomers who offically become  "seniors" grows exponentially over the next years, we will see more and more companies targeting this still highly active group. They are currently the fastest-growing and wealthiest segment of the population, and were least hurt by the recession. According to data from the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey, adults over the age of 50 spent $2.7 trillion on consumer goods in 2010. Everyone from pharmecetucal companies to insurance carriers to retirement communities see the opportunity with the senior class. Television is also a…

• 1-800-GET-THIN Lap-band ads getting congressional scrutiny for "aggressive marketing"

  daveibsen

  22 Jan 2012 | 10:02 am

  The controversy around a surgically implanted device to help people lose weight has been festeringin the Los Angeles area for months. Opponents of the "Lap-Band" a ring that is surgically implanted around the stomach to discourage overeating have questioned the effectiveness and safety of the device, as well as its marketing claims. The 1-800-GET-THIN weight-loss surgery billboard campaign is ubiquitous along Southern California freeways--in a town known for its obsession with physical appearance. Local opponents have questioned the "aggressive marketing" of the device…