It looks like Facebook will soon begin trying harder to bend the ears of our nation’s leaders.
Tags: advance-policy, answering questions, congressional, from-the-aclu, individual, office, personnel, policy associate, policy goals, politics, public policy experts, public-policy, Review and Story, simple matter
Facebook and Twitter access via mobile browsers has grown by triple-digits in the past year, according to the latest research from comScore. More than a quarter (30.8%) of smartphone users accessed social networking sites via their mobile browser in January, up 8.3 points from 22.5 percent one year ago.
Tags: browser-climbed, Internet, mark donovan, mobile browser, mobile devices, mobile phone users, mobile users, mobile-browsers, MySpace, past, Review and Story, senior vice president, Twitter
Every now and then, there is a discussion about where email stands as social network use becomes the “it” thing. We’ve all heard mutterings like, “email is dead” and “social media is killing email,” but it’s just not the case, and there are plenty of reasons why (even if Google thinks it’s time to start over ). Last year, we ran a piece titled 10 Reasons Social Media isnt’ Replacing Email that got a pretty good response from readers. In a nutshell (read the article for elaboration), these ten reasons were: 1. People still send hand-written letters 2. Nearly all sites on the web that require registration require an email address 3. Email notifies you of updates from all social networks 4. We haven’t seen any evidence yet that Google Wave really is the next big thing 5. Email is universal, and social networks are not 6. There are plenty of people who have no interest in joining social networks, but already use email 7. Email is still improving 8. Even social networks themselves recognize the importance of email 9. More social media use means more email use 10. As far as marketing is concerned, email is doing pretty well At the Online Marketing Summit last week, there was an interesting session about email marketing, led by Joel Book, Director of eMarketing Education for email marketing firm ExactTarget. In that session among other points of discussion , he provided the following concept equations: Email + CRM = lead nurturing Email + CRM = Reseller education Email + CRM = trade show follow up Email + CRM = sales support for dealers Email + analytics = Personalized recommendations Email + analytics = live offers Email + retail = product education Email + retail = scannable coupons Email + retail = subscriber acquisition Email + social = driving demand Email + social = using social forward to expand customer database Email + sms = mobile immediacy Email + SMS = lead generation Email + sms = subscriber acquisition Some things to think about. Also at the Online Marketing Summit, WebProNews discussed the integration of social media with email, with Kara Trivunovic, Sr. Director of Strategic Services at StrongMail, who makes some great points. Businesses are plugging in social aspects into email programs to not only expand the reach of their existing offers, but to turn customers into evangelists, and ultimately grow their databases, as she says. Keep in mind that about half of all content is shared through email, and social media can make for a great way to gain subscribers. According to Trivunovic, there are 3 major ways that people integrate social into their email programs: 1. Share with your network 2. Leverage as a medium to incentivize current customer base to evangelize on their behalf, and drive additional subscribers or awareness 3. Business model: acquiring customers through referrals This article could go on for a long time, but let me just conclude with a few more points. Mobile apps will continue to keep email relevant in the mobile world (Google just acquired a popular one ). Google recently released its own social media product, Buzz , which the company decided would fit best right in Gmail. Microsoft Outlook only recently started integrating social networks into the inbox (Mozilla has Raindrop to serve a similar purpose). The social networks themselves are creating email services (it didn’t take MySpace long to get a lot of users for theirs, and Facebook is said to be working on its own …and we know how popular Facebook is [it recently surpassed Yahoo as the number 2 site on the web]).
Tags: article, education, Facebook, marketing firm, mobile, mutterings, reasons-social, reseller education, retail product, Social Media
TiVo said today it will begin offering two new set-top boxes starting in April. TiVo Premiere will sell for $300 and will have the ability to hold up to 45 hours of HD content or up to 400 hours of standard definition content.
Tags: adobe-flash, Amazon, amazon-video, Blockbuster, built-on-adobe, ceo tom rogers, demand content, netflix, on-screen-disk, screen menu, search functionality, taken-millions, video window, which allows users, youtube
Last year, Google quietly got rid of PageRank in Webmaster Tools . Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Susan Moskwa had said , “We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it.” A lot of people wondered why Google would keep PageRank in the Google Toolbar, where it still sits to this day. Search enthusiast Barry Schwartz of Rusty Brick speculated that Google would not want to remove it because PageRank is “too much of their branding.” After some words from Google’s Director of Research, Peter Norvig today, however, I’m not so sure that’s the case. Note: Watch Norvig’s keynote address here (or view our liveblog of the event), and our exclusive interviw with him here: Norvig said at SMX today that PageRank is still one thing that is “overhyped,” and that Google never felt that it was such a big factor. They have always looked at all available data, combining every available signal and tiring to figure out the best way to combine them. Norvig also said that it may be time for some re-branding with regard to PageRank. There may be a different term in the pipeline. “There’s a technical formula that’s PageRank, which is the way of judging the links between pages, and that’s just one component of how we rank the pages and you get your final search results. There’s all these other things that come in, but they don’t have a catchy name. So some people apply PageRank to mean all the components that give you the final ranking, and that’s where we get confused. So probably we need some other term for that…We’ll get some marketing guys on it.” I don’t know how seriously the company is considering this, as Norvig seems to simply be speaking off the cuff, but given the company’s repeated emphasis on a lack of emphasis on PageRank, it would not be surprising to see them change the name. However, the problem with that could be, that these same PR-obsessed webmasters would just become obsessed with the re-branded term.
Tags: Barry Schwartz, components, google toolbar, Peter Norvig, Research, smx, Susan Moskwa