Mar
11
Are you using social media in your business?
Filed Under social media, strategy, technology | Leave a Comment
Here’s a chart that shows some interesting statistics on business use of social media:
How Are Companies Leveraging Social Media?
Mar
11
Hamel on Apple
Filed Under innovation, leadership, startup, technology | Leave a Comment
Two articles from one of the world’s leading business strategists, Gary Hamel:
Mar
11
Bundling prices
Filed Under economics, technology | Leave a Comment
Here’s an article discussing aspects of bundling prices. There are cogent points, but it misses one huge one – bundled pricing makes it easier to make a sale.
When you are courting a new customer, you have several roadblocks to overcome. They must believe in your product, perceive the value, and have real pain (desire) to purchase. In most cases, a new customer isn’t an expert in your product/service, whereas you are. So, when they first enter into a discussion with you, having a bundled price eases the decision making capability of the customer, since they don’t have to invest ‘extra’ time deciphering every little line item and it’s price.
The Pros and Cons of Bundled Pricing
Mar
11
Article on eBooks
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With the iPad coming, there’ll be lots of articles on eBooks. Here’s one from NYT:
Math of Publishing Meets the E-Book
It’s interesting but wrong. The prices of eBooks will do down to zero. Why? Because the price of a good always moves towards the marginal cost, or the cost to reproduce a product. Since eBooks are digital, the cost of making a copy is essentially zero, which will drive down the price.
Mar
3
Chrome APIs are coming
Filed Under technology | Leave a Comment
More API goodness. This time for Chrome.
Link: Coming Soon To Chrome: Extensions That Can Alter Your Browsing History
Mar
3
Pirating iPhone apps
Filed Under technology | Leave a Comment
A very complete article about App piracy.
I agree with everything said in the article. One comment – There always will be people looking to break through DRM. DRM is not the right way to protect software. In this case, it seems that the word ‘piracy’ has more of an effect than the actual numbers. When people hear ’software pirate’ , they get into an uproar. Hopefully this article will help squash the uprising.
Link:
Mar
3
This type of stuff really scares me.
Link: Cyberwar Hype Intended to Destroy the Open Internet
Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/cyber-war-hype/#ixzz0h8SYvtk9
Mar
2
Facebook users and broadcast media
Filed Under innovation, social media, strategy, technology | Leave a Comment
This is pretty interesting.
Facebook users send more traffic to news sites than Google. Further, the sites they visit are mostly broadcast media. Google sends most of it’s traffic to print media.
What does this mean? I think it is starting to describe the usage of Facebook. Facebook (at least in this instance) is being used as a recommendation engine for news. Why don’t people recommend print stories? They do, but most people can’t stand to read long stories when a video is present. Why read when you can watch?
The real value lies in which companies can incorporate this into a marketing strategy.
Link: Facebook Users Prefer Broadcast Media
Mar
2
Innovation from Twitter
Filed Under innovation, leadership, strategy, technology | Leave a Comment
I believe that open APIs are the foundation for the next generation of web services. We’ll see great innovations from clever programmer who understand how to manipulate the APIs, create new things, and handle enormous amounts of data.
Link: Enabling A Rush of Innovation
Mar
1
Digital News is preferred method of consumption
Filed Under innovation, technology | Leave a Comment
This really isn’t shocking research, but Pew has found that news consumption is still shifting from mainstream channels towards the Web. The ‘Web’ includes news sites, personalized aggregators, but also smartphones. People in the tech industry have seen this coming for some time. Consumers are moving towards digital.
Here are a few links and commentary about the research:
Pew: Internet surpasses newspapers, radio for news (via Washington Post)
Pew Summary of Findings Overview (via Pew Internet Research)
News Has “Become a Social Experience”: Pew (via GigaOm)
The most shocking part of the day comes from a different story in which the print media giants are going to start an ad campaign to try and re-vitalize the print usage. My favorite ad slogan is: “The Internet is fleeting. Magazines are immersive.”
This is lame. Stunts like this just reinforce the fact that media co as an industry doesn’t get the Web.
Link:
Mags To Their Digital Units: Drop Dead
