Google’s realtime search has been promoted from being an additional search option to a standalone service:
With some impressive features including the ability to filter by location and look at results from different times, it’s a great tool for anyone wishing to monitor anything.
I usually understand the motives of apparently baffling spam. Usually.
A recent report issued by Coupons.com indicates impressive growth in the popularity of digital coupons:
“Printed savings from Coupons.com and the Coupons.com digital network for the 12 months ending June 2010 exceeded $1 billion. This includes savings printed or loaded to a store loyalty card and represents a 100 percent increase compared to $529 million the year before.”
Easy to create, easy to publicise, nothing to lose.
Take a quick look at the number of words in the terms of service for each of the following organisations:
Blogger – 2,099.
WordPress – 2,681.
Twitter – 2,969.
Google – 4,219.
Second Life – 10,866.
The three services that allow any individual or organisation to say what they like and reach most of the world have the least.
The search engine that presents other people’s information has far more.
The online game has by far the most.
Ever get the feeling that the world has gone mad?
I just received an email from one of the UK’s main grocery outlets.
The email looked clean, fresh and inviting.
For each of the offers they had a picture of the product, the name, price, saving and original price.
Here’s what I found interesting.
I was more interested in the original price (shown with a line through it) than the saving.
Here’s where it goes wrong.
There are three bottles of wine, with a half price stamp on them. But how much do they cost?
I’d be more interested if a £20 bottle of wine were being sold at half price than a £4 bottle.
Note that this may be deliberate. There’s enough research proving that many people are more interested in the saving than the value of the deal. But it doesn’t work for me.
The other mistake is that I can’t actually read the original prices of the cherries, pizzas or prawns.
Good deals; poor execution.
Amazon are an interesting beast, and in many ways serve as an ideal example of how to do almost everything in just the right way.
Their website’s functionality is excellent, with an obvious leaning towards practicality over beauty.
Their Prime system is sheer genius – and means that I not only spend far more money with them each year, but that they are also my first port of call when looking to buy online.
Yet two of their recent press releases have revealed some interesting trends: That the Kindle format has overtaken the hardcover format, and that the past year has seen an impressive $1 billion of Amazon products ordered through a mobile device. Presumably more than one…
“The leading mobile commerce device today is the smartphone, but we’re excited by the potential of the new category of wireless tablet computers. Over time, tablet computers could become a meaningful additional driver for our business.”
Some believe that we have become slaves to our mobile devices. Personally I consider mine liberating. Yet irrespective of your opinion, the mobile revolution is underway. Isn’t it time your businesses started to tap into it?
“All my bags are packed, and I’m ready to go… “; except they’re not packed yet, and I’m far from ready.
Tomorrow morning I leave for the Software Industry Conference in Dallas, Texas. If you’re planning on attending, I’ll be the red-eyed, jet-lagged English guy trying to remember his name at the reception desk. Please take pity on me – say hi and remind me who I am.
There’ll be no further blog posts this week – they’ll be back by Wednesday the 14th.
The BBC News website are showing edited highlights of a video conference between David Cameron (British Prime Minister) and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), discussing the Governments plans to use Facebook for seeking ideas on spending cuts.
I’m not yet certain whether the whole thing is a clever piece of PR, an act of desperation, or a government who finally understand what the web is and how it can be used.
Irrespective of motives, my favourite line in the dialog comes from our Prime Minister:
“… next time you’re in town, come and look us up…”
How’s that for a one-sided non-commital invitation? Cameron may be getting on board with social networking, but he’s still a politician!
David Cameron chats to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg
Research by Dan Zarrella suggests that certain words have a greater impact in social media than others.
The Most Facebook-Shareable Words vs. The Least Shareable Words on Facebook.
Not exactly a great surprise, but the research also found that “techie and social-media dork favorite topics like Twitter, Google, and the iPhone aren’t very popular with the mainstream Facebook audience“.
So who are the typical Facebook users?
If you’re thinking about advertising on Facebook (and who isn’t?), then you can take advantage of their advanced demographic and psychographic filters, including location, keywords, relationship status, age, education, gender, languages and more.
On a superficial level, this makes Facebook appear far more enticing for advertisers than Google. Google’s demographic tools are almost non-existent by comparison.
Yet the key issue is that people go to Google to find what they’re looking for. People go to Facebook to see what their friends are doing and engage with them.
For now I’ll continue thinking about advertising on Facebook, while spending actual money on Google AdWords.
For those with an interest in Facebook and an obsession with figures:
The Ultimate List: 100+ Facebook Statistics [Infographics]
Very nice!
Google AdWords