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Posted by Stewart @ 9:43 PM
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Facebook has experienced a 18% rise during the last quarter of 2008 in Australia, to now boast 4.3 million Australians - up from 2.3 million from 12 months ago.
This number represents about 25% of the online population !
Source: Frontiering blog (Thanks Ian Farmer)
Labels: social media
Posted by Nick HaC @ 6:41 PM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
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Are business media watchdogs acting in the public interest, or are they merely messengers? To whom does the media owe allegiance when global economic meltdown looms.
A great podcast from ABC Radio National's Background Briefing Program
LISTEN NOWDOWNLOAD AUDIO
Posted by Nick HaC @ 4:37 PM
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The internet loves parallel projects.
Linux development is parallel. Thousands of people can work on it at once, none of them waiting in line.
Wikipedia is parallel, because a large group can go at millions of articles, side by side. The YouTube Orchestra auditions were parallel too, because you didn't have to wait in line to practice or apply.
Parallel is faster and more efficient. The Huffington Post will always outperform a traditional news site because they have 3,000 contributors, not a few dozen.
If you want to make a buffet go faster, all you need to do is move the serving table away from the wall and let people serve themselves from either side. If you want to go faster still, use two tables.
Self-service customer support outperforms the traditional model because people don't have to wait in line.
Your organization probably isn't parallel. There are bottlenecks throughout, and finding them and making them parallel could change everything.
There's one place you don't want to be parallel, at least at first: sales.
When you are linear in your sales process, you learn something. You don't make the same mistake on each and every call. Instead, you make a few mistakes on your first call, then a few less and then, finally, you get it as right as you're going to get it. That is when you go parallel, not before.
Source: Seth Godin - Linear and parallel
Posted by Nick HaC @ 4:31 AM
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Found this great article at HotHouse - Interactive agencies need to stop being advertising agencies - although i dont think the name of this article gives the vision it offers justice.
...For the internet industry... the last 15 years have been extraordinary. The world has changed. Minnows attacked huge existing businesses and won. In some cases those traditional businesses are still around. But in many cases they are not. There are many examples:
-Why did Brittanica not become Wikipedia? They had a start, they had the content.
-Why did LexisNexis not become Google? They had a start, they had the content.
-Why did Trading Post not become eBay?
-Why did Dymocks not become Amazon?
Too lazy, too stupid, not ready to take a risk?
And the examples go on. Small businesses have in a short time overtaken and beaten traditional business by changing the game. To be part of all that has been a privilege.
This a great article... Interactive agencies need to stop being advertising agencies - Have a read
Posted by Nick HaC @ 4:28 AM
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spellr.us - A cool aussie startup company who was featured in the TechCrunch top 50, had just launched its commercial service!
From the website:
spellr.us is a web-based application that reviews a web site and reports back on spelling errors.Give it a go! Its free! Does your website have spelling error's, check here with spellr.us :) Our's does!
spellr.us provides the user with easy to understand reports and screenshots of all relevant errors.
Suggestions of correct words for each spelling mistake are provided.
spellr.us can also be configured to scan a website at pre-determined intervals and notify the user of newly introduced errors.
You can follow @spellrus on twitter also if you like.
Posted by Nick HaC @ 7:47 PM
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Steve Rubel (Micropersuasion Blogger) has released a whitepaper for Edelman Digital, called Five Digital Trends to Watch for 2009. I found it really interested.
There are five trends covered in this white paper...
Satisfaction Guaranteed - Customer care and PR are blending as consumers use social media to demand service
Media Reforestation - The media is in a constant state of reinvention as it transitions from atoms to bits
Less is the New More - Overload takes its toll. Gorging on media is out. Selective ignorance and friends as filters are in
Corporate All-Stars - Workers flock to social media to build their personal brands, yet offer employers an effective and credible way to market in the downturn
The Power of Pull - Where push once ruled, it’s now equally important to create digital content that people discover through search
Edelman Digital's Five Trends to Watch for 2009
Labels: Digital Marketing, Online PR
Posted by Nick HaC @ 11:43 PM
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So recently Amnesia and Happener ran a SEO competition for the phrase velociroflcoptersaurus.
We were lucky enough to win the competition so I thought I would share the process we used.
1. Domain Name Selection
When we started optimizing I had a look at the competition, there were a number of domains like velociroflcoptersaurus.com and velociroflcoptersaurus.org, which had clearly been recently registered and looked like wordpress style sites. They were ranking highly already. So there is clearly some value in having the keyword in the domain name
Despite that - it is well known that Google typically sandbox’s new domain names, or at least values older domains over newer ones - so our initial thoughts in creating a new domain like velociroflcoptersaurus- velociroflcoptersaurus.com were bypassed. We weren't sure a new domain would actually add huge value despite the keyphrase being in the domain name.
As a result I decided to use our existing domain, which is 2-3 years old and has a PR5 on the homepage. Probably a stronger base point than a newly registered domain.
2. Page Creation.
We created a file path and file name that used the phrase velociroflcoptersaurus twice, I'm not sure if this matters but it does seem to be a factor.
shiftedpixels.com.au/velociroflcoptersaurus/velociroflcoptersaurus_home.aspx
In the page itself we ensured the keyword was found 3-4 times in each
We created website copy that was at least 30% unique compared to any other website out there (we actually lifted the content from a number of sources and did some find replaces.) It's our understanding that you want your pages at least 30% unique for google to think your not a copycat. (Of course 100% unique is best)
3. Blog Content
We created a blog post using the velociroflcoptersaurus keyword in both the title and the content. This blog post was syndicated out to 100+ RSS/Blog directories that we had previously registered our RSS/Blog feed with.
In the blog post we had multiple links to our SEO page that used velociroflcoptersaurus as the link text. This meant that we automatically had 300-400 keyword dense backlinks from high PageRank blog aggregators when we first published our blog post.
Our page was picked up and was top 10 in google within 24 hours.
4. Onsite Linking Strategy
We created thousands of internal links from all the Shifted Pages to our velociroflcoptersaurus SEO page. We did this quickly by adding links to our website templates for our Blog Pages, our Content Network as well as homepage and service pages. Most of these pages were already google spidered and already had a reasonable PageRank.
Bascially we leveraged the strength of our existing website content creation efforts with heavy numbers of internal links using the keyphrase as the link text.
5. Offsite Linking Strategy.
I added velociroflcoptersaurus backlinks from the footers in the web design templates on every page of 2 of the websites that I control – iTrainer and BuzzNumbers. Owning a number of websites on different servers and IP ranges definately gives you an unfair advantage.
I emailed a few friends who had websites and asked them to add small links in the footer of their websites to my velociroflcoptersaurus SEO page. www.TechWiredAu.com and www.SynthLords.com were 2 sites that helped me out. I owe them link love for the future now.
I heavily twittered the URL to my velociroflcoptersaurus SEO page which meant the URL was syndicated throughout many blogs and twitter content aggregator. I also noticed that my Twitter Page had a pagerank of 5 so I changed my profile URL to our velociroflcoptersaurus SEO page.
Conclusions for SEO
- Unique content and keyword density is important
- Use keywords in your H1 and Bold tags
- Internal linking strategies can work wonders
- Syndicating content from other websites keeps your site “fresh”
- Joining RSS/Blog Syndication networks is powerful
- Link Text is really really important
- Ask your friends for backlinks
- Shamelessly tweet your URL Content as often as you can.
Note: This process is not a typical corporate SEO process, and was only put in place to rapidly own SERPS for a 2 week period. If you want sustainable long term SEO results, feel free to give us a buzz +61.2.9360.0777
Labels: Velociroflcoptersaurus
Posted by Nick HaC @ 7:08 PM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
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Velociroflcoptersaurus is best explained by our friends at Amnesia
"18 days ago, the word velociroflcoptersaurus never existed. No, not one single result in Google."
Now a raging battle worthy of both ninja and pirate attensions has broken out on the interhoses.
Who will be #1 in in google for the search phrase "velociroflcoptersaurus" on the 13th January!
Velociroflcoptersaurus
Labels: seo, Velociroflcoptersaurus
Posted by Nick HaC @ 9:53 PM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
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BuzzNumbers, Australia’s first social media intelligence company, Announced today it's launch into the global market offering innovative technology and services that enable brands and corporations harness the business value of the internet.
BuzzNumbers provides a full suite of Social Media Intelligence products that help companies track, report and measure the online media value and influence of their brand. By delivering a comprehensive analysis of online audiences, BuzzNumbers enables companies to make informed decisions across all departments of the enterprise from marketing, public relations and advertising through to sales and product development.
With the enormous growth of social media and online advertising, marketers demand tools that improve efficiency and provide monitoring, reporting and insight delivery to their brand, said Nick Holmes a Court, CEO of BuzzNumbers.
“The power shift from media institutions to online consumer communities means marketing and advertising agencies need tools to demonstrate the value of online campaigns to their clients. BuzzNumbers addresses this need by offering clients comprehensive insight into online conversations surrounding their brand. BuzzNumbers’ unique technology enables clients to measure the dollar value of online publicity against advertising rates.”
According to an eMarketer.com report, User Generated Content (UGC) sites earned $1 billion in advertising revenue in 2007 and this figure is expected to grow four-fold to $4.3 billion by 2011.
You can watch a video demo below:
Download the Press Release (1 Page PDF)
Labels: BuzzNumbers, social media monitoring
Posted by Nick HaC @ 5:17 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
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Much of the article describes the report, and takes some of the executive quotes used in the report. Then at the end, taken from a follow-up interview with me, it says:
Chairman of company Future Exploration Network Ross Dawson said there had been a transformation in the corporate attitude towards social networking over the past year.
That's the state of the nation. There absolutely has been a dramatic shift in attitude by senior executives towards social networks and similar tools in the enterprise over just the last year. However within many organizations there is a strong divide in perceptions, often meaning that relatively little happens.
"An initial scepticism and caution from executives has now shifted dramatically where they recognise that these can be extremely valuable for helping organisations perform more effectively," Mr Dawson told AAP.
The pace of change in how executives view social networks certainly suggests that this is not far from becoming truly mainstream in the enterprise.
Source: The Ross Dawson Blog
Labels: enterprise 2.0, social networking
Posted by Nick HaC @ 1:52 PM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
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Here is a copy of a presentation i did recently at the ABIC conference in Sydney, on how web 2.0 and social networks are changing consumer purchasing decisions.
The key point for the travel/adventure/backpacker industry is that their entire customer base are search & social media savvy and that they are creating reviews and telling stories about their experiences online.
This is a massive change in influence for this industry, in which even as little as 5 years ago travel agents and lonely planet were the sources of all wisdom for a large number of travellers. Now bottom up consumer generated content is fueling much of the decision processes for travel, accomodation, hostels and destinations.
It was a great presentation (for me anyhow) and i hope this added alot of value for some of the audience who were unaware people were talking about them.
The call to action is - your customers are actively seeking recommendation for your products and services on social websites - are you going to join the conversation?
Hopefully we will have some video of the presentation for you soon.
Labels: communities, consumer generated media, consumer influencer, conversations, social networking, web 2.0
Posted by Nick HaC @ 1:35 PM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
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The new rules for the new economy can be summarized as:
Where ever attention flows, money will follow.
Almost anything else except attention can be manufactured as a commodity. Luxury goods are only luxuries temporarily. They quickly are counterfeited and commodified. Premium brands are only premium because they garner a surplus of attention.
Maintain an incoming flow of attention and money will follow.
Read the full article from Kevin Kelly's Blog
Labels: attention, behaviour, branding, consumer influencer
Posted by Nick HaC @ 6:48 PM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
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The Social Technographics Ladder classifies people according to how they use social media and social technologies. Where are you on the ladder?
Labels: social media
Posted by Nick HaC @ 11:51 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
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1. Blogs (Johnson & Johnson, Delta Air Lines)
2. Bookmarking/Tagging (Adobe, Kodak)
3. Brand monitoring (Dell, MINI)
4. Content aggregation (Alltop, EMC)
5. Crowdsourcing/Voting (Oracle, Starbucks)
6. Discussion boards and forums (IBM, Mountain Dew)
7. Events and meetups (Molson, Pampers)
8. Mashups (Fidelity Investments, Nike)
9. Microblogging (method, Whole Foods)
10. Online video (Eukanuba, Home Depot)
11. Organization and staffing (Ford, Pepsi)
12. Outreach programs (Nokia, Yum Brands)
13. Photosharing (Rubbermaid, UK Government)
14. Podcasting (Ericsson, McDonalds)
15. Presentation sharing (CapGemini, Daimler AG)
16. Public Relations - social media releases (Avon, Intel)
17. Ratings and reviews (Loblaws, TurboTax)
18. Social networks: applications, fan pages, groups, and personalities (British Airways, Saturn)
19. Sponsorships (Coca-Cola, Whirlpool)
20. Virtual worlds (National Geographic, Toyota)
21. Widgets (Southwest Airlines, Target)
22. Wikis (Second Life, T-Mobile Sidekick)
Via Mashable
Posted by Nick HaC @ 5:39 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
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TV is over. If people are interested, they'll watch. On their time (or their boss's time). They'll watch online, and spread the idea. You can't email a TV commercial to a friend, but you can definitely spread a YouTube video. The cycle of ads got shorter and shorter, and the most important ads were made for the web, not for TV. Your challenge isn't to scrape up enough money to buy TV time. Your challenge is to make video interesting enough that we'll choose to watch it and choose to share it.
Seth Godin - Marketing Lessons from the US election
Posted by Nick HaC @ 5:20 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
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Welcome to the 1st Official Shifted Friday's Weekly RoundUp!
A list of interestingness, news and opinions this week covering business, web, tech, culture, politics, startups & marketing.
You can join the email list at http://groups.google.com/group
Have a great weekend!
------------------------------
The tech-savvy are the new top of the social order (Reuters)
http://nickholmesacourt.
Photos of Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe (What a real crisis is like)
http://humorland.wordmess.net/
Accept Credit Card Payments with your iPhone!
http://arstechnica.com/
Australia's Top Web 2.0 Entrepreneurs
http://www.smartcompany.com.
How to lose a deal successfully
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~
The "Sky Is Falling" for many traditional media companies
http://www.prweekus.com/Sky-
Brain peaks at 39 years of age and declines thereafter
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/
Senator "series of tubes" Stevens convicted on 7 felony counts
http://www.politico.com/news/
How to Tell If Your CEO Is Clueless
http://blog.guykawasaki.com/
Sequoia Capital's 56 Slides of Doom
http://www.techcrunch.com/
Microsoft Office Comes to the Browser (Finally)
http://www.readwriteweb.com/
10 Fastest Growing Social Media Sties in September 2008
http://news.cnet.com/8301-
Aussie Google Phone to launch for $199 before Xmas
http://www.smh.com.au/news/
BigPond, iiNet and Internode MDs all say Australian CleanFeed ISP-level filtering will not work (Video)
http://www.zdnet.com.au/
10 best Social Media tools for PR and Journalists
http://mashable.com/2008/10/
Is underdog LinkedIn poised to beat flashy Facebook
http://www.nytimes.com/
Your Gmail Account is now an OpenID
http://www.techcrunch.com/
Labels: ShiftedFridays
Posted by Nick HaC @ 10:39 PM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
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Have you ever thought of being a model? I am sure a few of you out there have, because Shifted Pixels has just partnered with MyPhatBreak to inform the world about this great new website to give anyone the chance to be model scouted.
All you need to do is fill in a few details about yourself and upload a few photos and you will be posted into a model directory where model scouts will browse and find you if you suit there campaign.
So check out MyPhatBreak and sign up today!
Posted by Matt Vaughan @ 4:39 PM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
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Last night at the beresford, a swanky new hotel in Surry Hills, a group of Sydney and Melbourne Bloggers, Social Media Types and Twitterers met. Attendees included:
@juliancole @jjprojects @rosshill (melbourne) @stevehopkins (melbourne) @pixel8ted @nickhac @mattvaughan @stewface @davidsoul @JoshAnstey
@eskimo_sparky @gregdwyer @ben_phillips @timlonghurst @Ifarmer @DavidVanderberg
@brento @lozzz @armyofdolls @neilphillips @servantofchaos @misswired
@Scott_Drummond @mishy101 @liako @katiechatfield @noodles83 @wheelyweb
If i have missed you please accept my apoligies and email/comment to let me know so i can update the list.
An interesting thought on the night is that there was no centralised organisation for the event, you could have removed anyone and the night would have continued to happen - it was a Mob! Open source event management :)
Some of the most interesting quotes that came out from the evening were:
"Twitter is full of the people that CEO's go to for advice."
"Only dead fish go with the flow."
Here are few photos from the evening:
@ArmyOfDolls @Mishy101 @wheelyweb
@NeilPhillips
@Ben_Phillips @JulianCole
@Eskimo_Sparky @GregDwyer (The Happener Lads)
@Eskimo_Sparky @Ifarmer
@JoshAnstey @DavidSoul
@MattVaughan (Shifted Pixels) @DavidVanderberg (uT.ag)
@noodles83 @nickhac (shifted pixels)
@stewface (shifted pixels) @brento (IBM)
@TimLonghurst @JJProjects
Thanks to everyone who came, it was a great night! If anyone at the event had thoughts or feedback about the event, please leave a comment!
Labels: sydney social media, twitter
Posted by Nick HaC @ 8:08 PM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
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There have been a number of lists posted around the blogosphere about the Top 50 Australian bloggers or Top 100 australian marketing blogs etc.
As we couldn't find an equivalent list for twitter - we put together a list of Australia's most influential Twitterers.
Note: Shameless self promotion - this list was put together by @nickhac
This list is powered by BuzzNumbers:
The forumla we have used for calculating TwitterRank is:
TwitterRank = (Following / 10) + (Followers) + (Updates/100)
If you would like to propose an alternate formula we would be pleased to hear it.
Labels: Online PR, Online PR Sydney, Social Media Marketing, statistics, twitter
Posted by Nick HaC @ 8:32 PM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
I was reading Mike Cannon-Brookes (co-founder atlassian) blog, and he had a post with his slidedeck from web directons south 2008 - Organisational Wiki Adoption.
It provides a really great insight into Organisational Wiki Adoption, if your interested in using Wiki's within your company for collaboration - this is worth a few minutes to flip through
Labels: enterprise 2.0, web 2.0
Posted by Nick HaC @ 10:28 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
The Web 2.0 Expo was recently held in New York Sept 16 – 19 and Blip.tv have posted up coverage of the entire event which you can check out here
Web 2.0 Expo, co-produced by TechWeb and O'Reilly Media, is a conference and tradeshow for the rapidly growing ranks of designers and developers, product managers, entrepreneurs, VCs, marketers, and business strategists who are embracing the opportunities created by Web 2.0 technologies.
Two speeches that really stood out of from the rest for me were:
Jason Fried, 37signals
Jason Fried is the co-founder and President of 37signals, a privately-held Chicago-based company committed to building the best web-based tools possible with the least number of features necessary. They have created the ever so popular Basecamp online software platform.
His speech was directed towards software developers about how you shouldn’t put in all the features that customers want, as you are producing a product for a collection group not an individual, but you should still listen to customers but be very selected about which features you wish to leave in, to make sure select group of features are kept and the ones that will cause problems with others are discarded.
Ben Huh, I Can Has Cheezburger
Ben is the CEO of the company that runs I Can Has Cheezburger?, FAIL Blog, EngrishFunny.com and several other user-created humor sites.
The company has grown from nothing to serving 100 million page-views a month in less time than Sarah Palin has been governor of Alaska.
His speech shows how he was able to learn from users actions, and how user generated content can support his entire network of websites, it goes over the ways he allows users to easily create their own content whereby he now receives over 8000 submissions per day. Which goes to show how his strict guidelines for submissions and a specific formular for posting items has paid off.
Posted by Matt Vaughan @ 11:10 PM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
There is much buzz about social media marketing in Australia at the moment, which is great news for us. We have been delivering social media marketing to our customers for around 2 years and have a few stories to share.
One of the interesting things is oldskool advertising agencies trying to setup Social Media Marketing divisions without much experience in delivering real results. At the end of the day, they are all experimenting with their clients budgets.
At shifted pixels, we have been pulled into failed Social Media Marketing campaigns for a number of large marketing and advertising agencies to help them recover their positions and not look like complete jackasses to their fortune 500 clients.
So what can we share with you about Social Media Marketing? Well here are the tips of what not to do.
1. Social Media Marketing is not about spreading old creative in new ways
2. Social Media Marketing is not about shouting your traditional media marketing message in new channels
3. Social Media Marketing is a dangerous space. Your audience can revolt and take your message and use it against you
4. Bloggers are smarter and more influential in their networks than you are. Don't abuse them, dont spam them.
5. You need to approach social media - relationship first.
6. If you are interesting enough to create an environment in which social media groups care about you, you might then earn the opportunity to talk about your product.
7. You can't "polish a turd". If your product stinks - Social media marketing can't help you.
We will share more Social Media Marketing case studies in upcoming posts. Make sure you subscribe via email in the sidebar.If you are interested here are some older / related posts in this space
- Social Media Marketing - How to choose a Social Media Marketing Agency (June)
- Social Media Networks & Hyperconnectivity (May)
- Here comes everybody - Organising without Organisation (May)
If you have any questions or feedback, be sure to leave a comment.
Labels: communities, consumer, marketing 2.0, social media, Social Media Marketing, social media optimisation, Sydney Marketing Agency
Posted by Nick HaC @ 5:23 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
We were thinking this morning what kinds of questions you would need to ask to find out if someone was talking crap or if they actually understand the Web 2.0 and Social Media space.Here are the Top 10 Questions to determine if you are Web 2.0 and Social Media Savvy!
1. Name 5 known Bloggers in the Web 2.0 & Social Media Space?
2. Name 5 Australian Bloggers (or non US / your country Bloggers)?
3. Name 5 Trends/Technologies that are defined as part of Web 2.0?
4. Name 3 Social Networks other than MySpace, FaceBook, LinkedIn and Bebo?
5. Name 2 Social Bookmarking sites?
6. Name 3 Social News sites?
7. Web 3.0 is often referred to as The s__________ web
8. What do RSS, CGM and UGC stand for?
9. Which Top 10 Ranked Web 2.0 company did the 3 the former PayPal employees Steve Chen, Chad Hurley & Jawed Karim create?
10. Name 2 Microblogging Platforms?
Have we missed anything? Are these questions to hard? Leave a comment and let us know!
(PS If you think these questions might are all technical and not relevant to the average person, let me remind you my mum said the same thing to me about Web Browsers and Email not so long ago...)
Labels: social media, web 2.0
Posted by Nick HaC @ 6:18 PM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
More and more of our customers are seeing the value of social media monitoring. To provide clarity, we have broken down the social media monitoring space into 4 key areas.
1. Social Media Monitoring - Data Collection from the web
2. Social Media Monitoring - Reporting and Information Filtering
3. Social Media Monitoring - Social Media Analytics and Business Intelligence
4. Social Media Monitoring - Social Media Engagement and Enterprise 2.0 Tracking
This is obviously an early stage space, and we would recommend our partner agency BuzzNumbers for more information on social media monitoring.
You can find a great article called Social Media Monitoring FAQ and Enterprise Social Media Intelligence on the BuzzNumbers Blog.
Labels: Online PR, Online Reputation Management, online reputation monitoring, social media monitoring
Posted by Nick HaC @ 5:06 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
The NY Times is often considered the US newspaper of record, and it lives up to its reputation with an excellent article in today's Sunday NY Times Magazine about the ambient awareness enabled by Facebook status updates, Twitter and other microblogging tools.
Even readers familiar with both popular microblogging tools and their history should read this article. High points:
Microblogging enables ambient awareness of your broad friendship group:
In essence, Facebook users didn't think they wanted constant, up-to-the-minute updates on what other people are doing. Yet when they experienced this sort of omnipresent knowledge, they found it intriguing and addictive. Why?
Social scientists have a name for this sort of incessant online contact. They call it "ambient awareness." It is, they say, very much like being physically near someone and picking up on his mood through the little things he does — body language, sighs, stray comments — out of the corner of your eye.
Ambient awareness comes not from any single tweet or status update, but from the aggregation of the data.
Haley discovered that he was beginning to sense the rhythms of his friends' lives in a way he never had before. When one friend got sick with a virulent fever, he could tell by her Twitter updates when she was getting worse and the instant she finally turned the corner. He could see when friends were heading into hellish days at work or when they'd scored a big success. Even the daily catalog of sandwiches became oddly mesmerizing, a sort of metronomic click that he grew accustomed to seeing pop up in the middle of each day.
This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends' and family members' lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. The ambient information becomes like "a type of E.S.P.," as Haley described it to me, an invisible dimension floating over everyday life.
"It's like I can distantly read everyone's mind," Haley went on to say. "I love that. I feel like I'm getting to something raw about my friends. It's like I've got this heads-up display for them." … And when they do socialize face to face, it feels oddly as if they've never actually been apart. They don't need to ask, "So, what have you been up to?" because they already know. Instead, they'll begin discussing something that one of the friends Twittered that afternoon, as if picking up a conversation in the middle.
"It's an aggregate phenomenon," Marc Davis, a chief scientist at Yahoo and former professor of information science at the University of California at Berkeley, told me. "No message is the single-most-important message. It's sort of like when you're sitting with someone and you look over and they smile at you. You're sitting here reading the paper, and you're doing your side-by-side thing, and you just sort of let people know you're aware of them." Yet it is also why it can be extremely hard to understand the phenomenon until you've experienced it. Merely looking at a stranger's Twitter or Facebook feed isn't interesting, because it seems like blather. Follow it for a day, though, and it begins to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it's a novel.
Ambient awareness helps maintain "weak ties". Sociological research has shown that a large network of weak ties is more likely to be helpful than a small network of strong ties when trying to do things like get a job, find a mate, and other socially tinged objectives
Many maintained that their circle of true intimates, their very close friends and family, had not become bigger. Constant online contact had made those ties immeasurably richer, but it hadn't actually increased the number of them; deep relationships are still predicated on face time, and there are only so many hours in the day for that.
But where their sociality had truly exploded was in their "weak ties" — loose acquaintances, people they knew less well. It might be someone they met at a conference, or someone from high school who recently "friended" them on Facebook, or somebody from last year's holiday party. In their pre-Internet lives, these sorts of acquaintances would have quickly faded from their attention. But when one of these far-flung people suddenly posts a personal note to your feed, it is essentially a reminder that they exist.
Microblogging, ambient awareness and maintaining weak ties has the sideeffect of making it impossible to move away and "reinvent yourself" as your past will always be with you.
This is the ultimate effect of the new awareness: It brings back the dynamics of small-town life, where everybody knows your business…
"It's just like living in a village, where it's actually hard to lie because everybody knows the truth already," Tufekci said. "The current generation is never unconnected. They're never losing touch with their friends. So we're going back to a more normal place, historically. If you look at human history, the idea that you would drift through life, going from new relation to new relation, that's very new. It's just the 20th century."…
"If anything, it's identity-constraining now," Tufekci told me. "You can't play with your identity if your audience is always checking up on you. I had a student who posted that she was downloading some Pearl Jam, and someone wrote on her wall, 'Oh, right, ha-ha — I know you, and you're not into that.' " She laughed. "You know that old cartoon? 'On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog'? On the Internet today, everybody knows you're a dog! If you don't want people to know you're a dog, you'd better stay away from a keyboard."
Again, read the whole thing.
Posted by Nick HaC @ 7:30 AM
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After so many terrible "Viral Video" marketing attempts recently in the australian advertising industry its nice to see a podcast which is actually decent! I found this when a friend of mine posted it to FaceBook...
Does anyone know which agency did this?
Posted by Nick HaC @ 7:12 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
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So you have been put in charge of the email marketing service for the company you work for. Here are some tips which can help you run a opt in email marketing campaign for your business and start creating some articles that can greatly benefit your lead generation to your website! Start with this list of eight common rules for running bulk email marketing.
1. Keep your use of fonts to a minimum, I bet you probably have a few hundred fonts, maybe a thousand, Firstly I would recommend only use two maybe three at the most throughout your document from a design perspective, and from a usability perspective your email direct marketing newsletter will only be able to display the web friendly fonts on most computers (ie. Times, Helvetica, arial, verdana, etc.). Use one font for all heading then another font for the body, and perhaps choose a third font for a large pull quote if it fits in.
2. Create your heading for your email marketing campaign first – this will define the style of your newsletter and you will need to keep this consistent throughout not just this newsletter, but all newsletters that you send out. Try and keep the same set of colours, along with the same typefaces so the look and feel of the email marketing campaign will stay the same throughout all issues.
3. Keep all the sections and the locations of the section in your email marketing campaign the same in each subsequent issue, consistency is very important for you and your readers. Consistency is important for your readers in your email direct marketing will become familiar with the sections and know where to look for the information they are after.
4. Be consistence with the timing of your opt in email marketing. Decide in advance how often to send out your newsletter and keep this consistent.
5. Keep the balance in your email direct marketing in regards to text and imagery, you want an even balance so there is enough graphics to keep people interested and some text to back it up. Remember to keep whitespace so the flow of the email marketing campaign isn’t too busy.
6. This brings us to our next point to make sure that you use whitespace, whitespace is a great tool to use. It helps separate sections in your opt in email marketing campaign. Don’t over crowd your newsletter with content without whitespace to break it up it can become hard to read.
7. Typefaces! Select easy to read typefaces such as Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Trebuchet, and stick to 11 or 12 point size.
8. Proofread your newsletter.. TWICE!, then get someone else to read over it, there is nothing more unprofessional that spelling and grammatical errors.
This is just the beginning of how to write up a successful email marketing campaign, there is many more steps you have to consider when writing, and Shifted Pixels knows all of them, so if you are after a professional email direct marketing campaign for your business, which can be handled from concept to executions . Give Shifted Pixels a bell and have a look at their Email Direct Marketing Services.
Posted by Stewart @ 12:00 AM
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Need a fun new activity for your kids? Want them to spend some family oriented time on the internet without worrying about inappropriate content? Turn your happy snaps into even happier snaps!
Imagination station is a cool website to play with and have fun with your family photos. You can upload your family photos onto the website and then use the creative tools to let your imagination run wild. Put a moustache on the baby. Give Grandma some wings. Have a laugh with your children and know that you are spending quality time with them. It’s free, fun and safe.
Create new memories with the Imagination Station, kids can spend hours modifying photos and having a giggle at the new images. And don’t be worried about content, it’s all completely kid-safe and friendly. Oversized sunglasses and rabbit ears are as wild as its going to get on this website, the only thing going wild is the creativity of your kids.
As a bonus, you can enter the photos into Imagination Station competition and possibly win yourself and your family a $10,000 holiday. It’s that easy.
So to get started, go to www.hp.com.au/getcreative and get creative. Your kids and their imaginations are waiting...
Posted by Mush you @ 9:22 PM
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There are many so called industry secrets when it comes to working out how search engine optimisation works to rank your website well.
The #1 secret behind search engine marketing is that there is no shortcuts. High quality, unique content that is actually interesting to other humans is the most effective way to get good search engine rankings.
That said there are always ways to optimise and improve what investments you are making into SEO.
Here is a few search engine placement rules to consider when trying to increase your page rank:
1. Make your site attractive to search engines / directories by including a human friendly plain text, meta / title tags and including h1, h2 and h3 tags on your web site, but be careful of over stuffing your website with fake content.
2. Select the right search engines / directories to submit your site to - if you submit your website to google, yahoo and msn live you have covered 90% of all internet searches. It's important to get a high profile on search engines that receive high volume traffic so we recommend not worrying to much about the other search engines.
3. Many search engines prioritise web sites based on how frequently they are updated and the number of other websites that are linking to them, So the more content you have on your site, the more likely you are to be higher up the list in the search engine rankings.
4. An easy way to increase your Search Engine Rankings is to get links from other contextually relevant websites such as industry association sites. Try to get inbound links from external sides that have as a high google page rank as possible.
If this is all to confusing, or your are looking to outsource your Search Engine Optimisation to a ream of professionals who do SEO everyday. Give us a Buzz at Shifted - we are friendly and want to talk to you.
Labels: search, search engine optimisation, search marketing, seo
Posted by Stewart @ 10:58 PM
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A email direct marketing or Electronic direct marketing campaign can help your business grow when you send free newsletter to email to your clients you build a relationship with your customers and let them know about new products and services, as Shifted Pixels located in Sydney knows all about, but one slip up sending bulk email marketing a can lose you customers for life, avoid these pitfalls of targeted bulk email marketing with this list of dos and don’ts.
Let’s start with the don’ts:
· Remember you must include an unsubscribe link at the bottom of all email marketing campaigns as it is a requirement of anti-spam laws, and it doesn’t hurt to include a link to your companies privacy policy on your company email newsletter
· Don’t send out your email marketing campaign at the wrong time, we have found that the best time to send emails it at around 10-11am Mon-Fri, but also anytime Tue-Thurs 10am to 3pm works well. If you are targeting residential customers evenings and weekends work best.
· Remember not to use any background images or Javascript inside the email as these will not show up for people using Outlook 2007.· Don’t assume that all message recipients will be able to see the included images, as a default security feature in outlook is to disable all images. So remember to provide text alt descriptions for all graphics is your targeted bulk email marketing campaign. So make sure people can understand the email without the images being present.
· Don’t you dare send attachments, ESPECIALLY BIG ONES! People hate getting huge attachments in their email, and remember some people are still on dial up so even a 500Kb email will take a few minutes to download.
Now for the things that can really help out your email marketing campaign, so keep this list for reference so you remember how to boost your targeted bulk email marketing.
·Think up a snappy subject line that doesn’t sound like an advertisement for your marketing email. You will find that people are much more likely to open up and email that has a simple, news like and direct heading.
· Create a HTML email newsletter rather than plain text. A well designed newsletter or pitch which is full of images and product photos will give reader more incentive to read your marketing email
· Remember to mention your locations such as Sydney Australia; because email is a global area, it is often very helpful to customers for them to know your location.
· Remember that most people using outlook will be reading your email in a thin preview pain so keep the width of the email to around 550 pixels wide, and keep the most important information in the first fold which is 400 pixels from the top.
· You should also track your email marketing newsletter effectiveness, Most list management software such as Shifted Email Manager will be able to do this. They can track open rates, number of subscribers who unsubscribe and click through rates. You can also compare your email marketing newsletter with industry standards at this website which compares by industry.
Email Direct Marketing
If you are looking for a company to handle you’re direct email marketing campaign for you talk to Shifted Pixels in Sydney Australia, they have had years of experience handling campaigns for companies such as Hewlett Packard, Mercedes Benz, Microsoft, TomTom and Goldwell.
They will handle everything for your email newsletter design, from concept to execution.
Check out their email direct marketing campaigns today!
Posted by Stewart @ 8:23 PM
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The top 100 advertisers in the U.S., who represent 41 percent of total advertising spending, shifted about $1 billion last year from TV and newspapers to the Web. An analysis from Ad Age shows that overall media spending in "measured" categories (TV, print, radio, Web) by the top 100 advertisers was flat in 2007, with 0.3 percent growth to $61.3 billion. But spending on Web display ads rose 33 percent to $4.2 billion. The article notes:
Put another way, these top-tier marketers increased measured internet spending by $1 billion; slashed newspaper spending by $674 million; and cut TV budgets by $406 million.
Posted by Nick HaC @ 8:23 PM
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Also Direct Money offers personal loans at better rates than all the major AU banks. So if you are looking into debt consolidation or financing a future personal investment like a new car financing or extensions on your home then look into DirectMoney.
Direct Money is taking an awesome Australian P2P lending model that is fully ASIC compliant unlike all other Australian P2P lending models. DirectMoney also is run by a great team of sydney web entrepreneurs and finance guys with 100% secure backing from major global financial corporations.
Please leave a comment on what you think of Direct Money and Aussie P2P Finance with DirectMoney
Also DirectMoney has done some awesome social media optimisation....
Direct Money Bebo - Direct Money Blogger - Direct Money Craigslist - Direct Money Del.ici.ous Direct Money Friendfeed - Direct Money Furl - Direct Money Google Group - Direct Money Livejournal - Direct Money Myspace - Direct Money OpenID - Direct Money Pbwiki - Direct Money Pownce - DirectMoney Tumblelog - Direct Money Twitter - Direct Money Wordpress - Direct Money Youtube - Direct Money Zooomr
DirectMoney Bebo - DirectMoney Blogger - DirectMoney Craigslist - DirectMoney Del.ici.ous DirectMoney Friendfeed - DirectMoney Furl - DirectMoney Google Group - DirectMoney Livejournal - DirectMoney Myspace - DirectMoney OpenID - DirectMoney Pbwiki - DirectMoney Pownce - DirectMoney Tumblelog - DirectMoney Twitter - DirectMoney Wordpress - DirectMoney Youtube - DirectMoney Zooomr
Labels: Direct Money, DirectMoney
Posted by Nick HaC @ 5:05 AM
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One of the most fascinating documentaries i have watched in agers... watch it, is worth the time!
Posted by Nick HaC @ 9:26 PM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
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Labels: communities, consumer generated media, video, web 2.0
Posted by Nick HaC @ 8:55 PM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
Posted by Nick HaC @ 7:43 PM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
Reputation, which plays a key role in almost any economic or social system, is a fundamental, but not well understood, aspect of online business transactions, peer production of information and knowledge, and exchanges within virtual social communities. Traditional modes of authentication, accreditation, reputation, and prior acquaintance with participants rely on the social norms of close-knit communities and the accountability of meeting face to face. Since these mechanisms usually do not apply to online environments, we have witnessed the development of alternative models for reputation management including third-party certificate authorities, peer-produced evaluations, ratings, stars, points, karma and others.
These new models, which apply to businesses, community-mediated information sources, people, goods, and services, challenge our accepted notions of identity, social capital, accreditation, expertise, and risk as they shift the reliance of reputation systems away from traditional business and social networks, educational backgrounds and institutional affiliations and towards the wisdom of the crowd. This shift, in turn, entails dramatic changes to information privacy, information quality, ownership and the ability of groups and individuals to affect these issues. Technology-mediated, cyber-reputation management is based on transactions in information that are often sensitive and always contextual. The data and information that are collected in online reputation systems are both valuable and powerful. The ability to control this information, store it, process it, access it, and transport it, are crucial to the maintenance of the reputation economy.
Posted by Nick HaC @ 7:38 PM
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Someone had to do it!
Posted by Nick HaC @ 6:56 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
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MySpace
Countries with highest interest in MySpace:
- United States
- Puerto Rico
- Australia
- United Kingdom
- Malaysia
Dig deeper into Google's search statistics for MySpace here.
Countries with highest interest in Facebook:
- Turkey
- Canada
- United Kingdom
- South Africa
- Colombia
Dig deeper into Google's search statistics for Facebook here.
Hi5
Countries with highest interest in hi5:
- Peru
- Portugal
- El Salvador
- Dominican Republic
- Costa Rica
Dig deeper into Google's search statistics for Hi5 here.
Friendster
Countries with highest interest in Friendster:
- Philippines
- Malaysia
- Indonesia
- Singapore
- Myanmar
Dig deeper into Google's search statistics for Friendster here.
Countries with highest interest in LinkedIn:
- India
- Netherlands
- Denmark
- Belgium
- United States
Dig deeper into Google's search statistics for LinkedIn here.
Orkut
Countries with highest interest in Orkut:
- Brazil
- Paraguay
- India
- Pakistan
- Portugal
Dig deeper into Google's search statistics for Orkut here.
Last.fm
Countries with highest interest in Last.fm:
- Finland
- Croatia
- Estonia
- Czech Republic
- Norway
Dig deeper into Google's search statistics for Last.fm here.
LiveJournal
Countries with highest interest in LiveJournal:
- Singapore
- Russia
- Belarus
- United States
- Philippines
Dig deeper into Google's search statistics for LiveJournal here.
Xanga
Countries with highest interest in Xanga:
- Hong Kong
- United States
- Singapore
- Malaysia
- Philippines
Dig deeper into Google's search statistics for Xanga here.
Bebo
Countries with highest interest in Bebo:
- Ireland
- New Zealand
- United Kingdom
- Fiji
- Australia
Dig deeper into Google's search statistics for Bebo here.
Imeem
Countries with highest interest in Imeem:
- Philippines
- Thailand
- Malaysia
- Singapore
- Jamaica
Dig deeper into Google's search statistics for Imeem here.
Countries with highest interest in Twitter:
- Japan
- Taiwan
- United States
- Singapore
- Hong Kong
Dig deeper into Google's search statistics for Twitter here.
Posted by Nick HaC @ 6:53 AM
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Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
The Australian Law Reform Commission has passed down a number of recommendations to change Australia's privacy laws to protect citizens from the prying eyes of the media.
The new laws would enable citizens to sue the media for invasion of privacy if:
* There has been an interference with their home or family life;
* They have been subject to unauthorised surveillance;
* Their correspondence or private communication has been interfered with; or
* Sensitive facts about their private life have been disclosed.
But for an action to succeed, the complainant must also prove they had a "reasonable expectation to privacy" and the conduct must have been "highly offensive" to a reasonable person. In its report, the ALRC said people should be protected from unwanted intrusion.
The "Right to Know Coalition" which by the way represents Australia's top media groups, has opposed the recommendations, I think, because they have the potential to ruin top rating prime time hits such as "Today Tonight" and "A Current Affair".
Suddenly these shows may lose their ability to push onto people's property and enter their houses berrating them with questions, the answers of which will be taken out of context in editing anyway! Shame, Shame Shame.
Whilst Matt the citizen fundementally supports these recommendations, it does cause me to think of how these changes could effect the digital marketing space in the future.
Will there come a time where users could sue agencies for tracking click-thrus on email marketing campaigns? Could Facebook advertising potentially qualify as an invasion of privacy? Surely this could spell trouble for Social Media Marketing.
But for now I am writing this blog post with a smug smile on my face. I'm always pleased when someone kicks commercial TV in the guts. Not that I ever watch any, it's been youtube and torrents for a long time now.
Wait torrents! How would these new laws effect the free trade agreement with the states and the copyright laws. Would the MPAA still be able to track torrent downloads? Surely that is a big enough privacy invasion to warrant a class action. :-)
Labels: Copyright, democracy, Digital Marketing, digital media, Privacy
Posted by Matt Vaughan @ 5:12 AM
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Turns out that Bill Gates was not the only famous Microsoft identity to be spotted at the Olympic opening ceremony.Numerous bloggers also observed the cameo played by the so-called Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) - the Windows error screen that flashes up on your computer, signifying that it's time to reboot.
The screen was projected onto the roof of the National Stadium during the grand finale to the four-hour spectacular as veteran Chinese gymnast Li Ning, suspended 70 metres above the stadium floor, "jogged" towards the Olympic torch.
The BSoD message begins with the following sentence: "A problem has been detected and Windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer."
Usually, the only way to remove the BSoD is to restart your computer pressing the Ctrl+Alt+Delete buttons at the same time.
Images of the malfunction have popped up on Chinese forum sites showing the clearly visible error message projection.
The ceremony, which featured 14,000 performers depicting 5000 years of Chinese history, also involved the use of advanced technology to control the sound, lights and projectors.
At various times during the event, images of whales, clouds, and the faces of young children were superimposed on the roof the stadium - also known as the Bird's Nest.
And as Li Ning completed a lap of the stadium roof's rim, images of the torch relay were flashed up.
The spectacular opening ceremony also included 35,000 fireworks launched from 1800 sites around the city, to form patterns in the air.
Yesterday it was revealed that organisers digitally inserted computer-enhanced images of some of the firework displays broadcast during the opening ceremony.
The BSoD is a bit of an in-joke among geeks and is often used to poke fun at Microsoft's bug-prone Windows operating system.
Gates, who stepped down from his last official full-time position at Microsoft at the end of June, remains as the software company's part-time, non-executive chairman.
He has been spotted at several Olympic events, accompanied by his wife and is here is a private capacity. Microsoft is designated as an official supplier to the 2008 Olympic Games.
It's Windows XP operating system was chosen to run on all PCs used by the organisers a well as being the operating system installed on PCs supplied by Lenovo Group, the computer maker than is one of the major sponsors of the 2008 Olympics.
Microsoft's newer operating system, Vista, was not chosen.
Lenovo chairman, Yang Yuanqing, was quoted as saying that because of the complexity of the IT functions at the Games, it was decided to not use the the more recent operating system. "If it's not stable, it could have some problems," he said.
Posted by Matt Vaughan @ 5:04 AM
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Egham, UK, August 11, 2008 — Gartner, Inc. has identified 27 emerging technologies and predicts that eight of these will have a transformational business impact and should be strongly considered for adoption by technology planners in the next 10 years, according to the report "Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2008."
"Although Web 2.0 is now entering the Trough of Disillusionment, it will emerge within two years to have transformational impact, as companies steadily gain more experience and success with both the technologies and the cultural implications," said Jackie Fenn, vice president and Gartner Fellow. "Later — in between two and five years — cloud computing and service-oriented architecture (SOA), which is moving up the Slope of Enlightenment, will deliver transformation in terms of driving deep changes in the role and capabilities of IT. Finally, public virtual worlds, which are suffering from disillusionment after their peak of hype in 2007, will in the long term represent an important media channel to support and build broader communities of interest."
Posted by Nick HaC @ 2:26 AM
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Posted by Nick HaC @ 4:27 PM
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Above Image: Gartner's Generation V Quadrant, found via Marketing Charts.
Gartner: Generation Virtual not defined by demographics
Gartner has recently published research on the topic of "Generation Virtual" (Generation V) which essentially define as two things: 1) This generation isn't specified by demographics (age) but instead by technology usage. 2) There are four major behaviors
Gartner suggests that Generation V isn't a demographic categorization, but instead behavioral:
"Unlike previous generations, Generation Virtual (also known as Generation V) is not defined by age — or gender, social demographic or geography — but is based on demonstrated achievement, accomplishments and an increasing preference for the use of digital media channels to discover information, build knowledge and share insights."
This is an interesting notion, but I'd suggest that by segmenting by demographics is actually very important. First of all, demographics are how brands develop personas of who they are trying to reach, bucketing all internet contributors into one classification may be too broad. Secondly, within Generation V, demographics influences the different tools they use. For example, youth may be more inclined to participate in Club Penguin, while an older professional may be more inclined to participate in Linkedin or Xing –demographics do matter. We focus on Social Technographics, which is first segmented by demographics (age, country, gender, etc)
Gartner: Four major behaviors with Generation Virtual
Secondly, Gartner focuses on four different behavior types: creators, contributors, opportunities, and lurkers:
"Gartner has identified four levels of engagement within Generation V, addressing both the extent to which customers will engage with other customers, as well as the level of engagement needed from businesses to enable the community. The four levels of engagement include: creators, contributors, opportunists, and lurkers."
This is a helpful segmentation, it indicates that while Generation V composes of a movement of those participating, there are different levels to each behavior. One suggestion is to forgo the term "lurker" (reminiscent of someone standing in the shadows) and instead focus on "spectator". We note that there are other behaviors beyond the four listed, such as creators, critics, collectors, joiners, spectators, and inactives. They suggest only a limited number of activity per each behavior:
"Up to 3 percent of individuals will be creators, providing original content and can be advocates that promote your product and services. Between 3 percent and 10 percent of individuals will be contributors, essentially followers, who add to the conversation, but don't initiate it. They can recommend products and services as customers move through a buying process, looking for purchasing advice. Between 10 percent and 20 percent of individuals will be opportunists, who can further contributions regarding purchasing decisions. Opportunists can "add value" to a conversation that's taking place, while walking through a considered purchase. Approximately 80 percent of individuals will be lurkers (and all users start as such), essentially spectators, who reap the rewards of online community input, but only absorb what is being communicated. However, they can implicitly contribute and validate indirectly reporting the value from the rest of the community."
I've not read the full report to get the context (but would like to) but his coverage seems to slant the CRM side. I believe it's important to note that demographics indeed influence behaviors, see this technographic profile tool, and you'll quickly notice different behaviors, with an increase in adoption from those younger –particularly see the US charts.
Gartner's Analyst Adam Sarner does an excellent article featured in Forbes that lists more, it's a good read with some very practical recommendations. I hope to meet Adam someday (see his Gartner profile), and discuss communities more in detail.
To Consider: Demographics do matter
In summary, while this breakdown of "Generation V' is certainly telling of where things are headed, demographics are critical, as behaviors and where they participate will radically differ.
As an analyst at Forrester Research primarily covering social networks and communities for interactive marketers, it's confirmation to hear of other analyst firms discussing my same coverage area. For some, it may seem counter-intuitive for me to discuss about another firm's work, but it's important to me that I provide helpful information to my network, regardless of source, and hopefully they'll continue to trust me and come back to me –even when I send them away.
Source: Web Strategy by Jeramiah thanks ben phillips @ GPYR
Posted by Nick HaC @ 4:21 PM
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Posted by Nick HaC @ 8:16 PM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
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It seems that Hollywood has taken an interest in what we do!
Check out the film "August": - Synopsis below:
"AUGUST follows Tom Sterling (Josh Hartnett) as an aggressive, young dot-com entrepreneur who fights to keep his start-up company afloat during the dot-com crash of 2001. Tom finds himself on a personal and professional downward spiral as he struggles to reunite with girlfriend, Sarrah (Naomie Harris), regain control of his company from his apathetic investor Ogilvie (David Bowie), and deal with age-old family wounds with his father, David (Rip Torn) and his brother Joshua (Adam Scott)".
The film also features Jason Calacanis playing himself - founder of Techcrunch, Malhalo, Weblogs, and Rising Tide studios.
The film has already been released in the states, but doesn't have a release date here. Rotten Tomatoes gave it 35% and IMDB awarded it only a 5.8/10.
Still I'm curious to see a Hollywood glorification of this subject matter, and whether we can learn anything from it - I doubt it. The only meaning I have taken of late from recent Hollywood films is to watch more YouTube instead.
It begs the question though - when will they make a film about our latest impending dot-com crash?
Will it be 2008 or 2009?
Labels: dot-com crash, movies
Posted by Matt Vaughan @ 4:49 PM
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For a very long time, taste and artistic training have been things that only a small number of people have been able to develop. Only a few people could afford to participate in the production of many types of media. Raw materials like pigments were expensive; same with tools like printing presses; even as late as 1963 it cost Charles Peignot over $600,000 to create and cut a single font family.
The small number of people who had access to these tools and resources created rules about what was good taste or bad taste. These designers started giving each other awards and the rules they followed became even more specific. All sorts of stuff about grids and sizes and color combinations — lots of stuff that the consumers of this media never consciously noticed.
Over the last 20 years, however, the cost of tools related to the authorship of media has plummeted. For very little money, anyone can create and distribute things like newsletters, or videos, or bad-ass ugly myspace pages
Suddenly consumers are learning the language of these authorship tools. The fact that tons of people know names of fonts like Helvetica is weird! And when people start learning something new, they perceive the world around them differently.
If you start learning how to play the guitar, suddenly the guitar stands out in all the music you listen to.
For example, throughout most of the history of movies, the audience didn't really understand what a craft editing was. Now, as more and more people have access to things like iMovie, they begin to understand the manipulative power of editing. Watching reality TV almost becomes like a game as you try to second-guess how the editor is trying to manipulate you.
As people start learning and experimenting with these languages authorship, they don't necessarily follow the rules of good taste. This scares the shit out of designers.
In Myspace, millions of people have opted out of pre-made templates that "work" in exchange for ugly. Ugly when compared to pre-existing notions of taste is a bummer. But ugly as a representation of mass experimentation and learning is pretty damn cool.
Regardless of what you might think, the actions you take to make your Myspace page ugly are pretty sophisticated.
Over time as consumer-created media engulfs top down media creation, it's possible that completely new norms develop around the notions of talent and artistic ability.
We the media...
Labels: cgm, consumer generated media
Posted by Nick HaC @ 4:13 PM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
I came across a new Australian concept for a social networking site:
complementu.com.au
"A social networking interface connecting people who shared a moment. Despite age, sexuality, geographic location. ComplimentU is an outlet for positive comments guaranteed to put a smile on the face".
Interesting idea. Great website. But will it be popular in a world where every second startup is a new idea for a social network? Or on a web where every second site is some form of social network?
It strikes me that this site may work better as an app on Facebook. But who am I to judge.
Good job on the site - always happy to plug an Aussie web entrepreneur.
Labels: communities, Fun, internet, social media, social networking
Posted by Matt Vaughan @ 7:17 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
Remember The Show with ZeFrank?
I have been rewatching this series and i bumped into one i really enjoyed :)
Posted by Nick HaC @ 7:55 PM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
Posted by Nick HaC @ 4:51 AM
At Shifted Pixels, we deliver services that leverage the measurable business benefits of the online engagement.
Give us a buzz! We want to talk to you!!!
