There’s a great piece over on Adage this morning about a recent situation involving Discovery Channel’s purchase of the Promoted Trend – the sponsored slot that appears at the top of the trending topics list on Twitter – for Shark Week. Those who use Twitter regularly know that the list of organically occurring trends is wildly unpredictable and can range from the benign (#bieberfever) to the not-so.
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The folks over at Econsultancy have released the Internet Marketing Strategy Briefing, a free report covering online trends in digital marketing. Yesterday they posted an excerpt about measuring social media. While much has been written about this topic what I liked about the Econsultancy piece is that it’s balanced, doesn’t place undue emphasis on any one “metric” and seems to provide a richer understanding of how a variety of data sources should be considered in measuring the value of social media practices.
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There seems to be a recent explosion in startups related to bringing mobile -based health solutions to a public that is both increasingly more comfortable exchanging personal data on devices, as well as more health conscious. One at the forefront, Azumio, announced yesterday that it has raised $2.5 million from a variety of investors and will use the money to expand its product line which currently includes Instant Heart Rate, Stress Check, and Stress Doctor.
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So I’ve received one of the coveted early invites to join Google+, the search behemoth’s full force foray into social media. Does it live up to the hype? Some have described it as Facebook for Grownups. Others say it’s fun but “empty” due to the current dearth of users, due in equal measures to the current invite-only membership as well as the fact that Facebook currently holds so many users who may not want to add yet another social media site to their daily roster. After my brief examination of the site and its features – because, to the emptiness point, I currently have only 4 friends – I think both assessments carry some weight. As someone who is a bit of a Facebook junkie, I can actually see myself migrating to Google+ over time – provided that more of the people I want to connect with do, as well.
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Virgin America announced that starting tomorrow and running through September 30 they will offer passengers on select routes the opportunity to check out a Chromebook laptop for use in-flight. The Chromebook is Google’s web-optimized machine, running Google’s Chrome OS. The offer is available to passengers traveling from the airline’s hub in San Francisco to Boston, Chicago O’Hare and Dallas.
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It’s certainly not surprising that the definition of the American family has been changing over the last quarter century or more. But it’s somewhat shocking the degree to which the once prototypical American household – married with 2 children – has declined. According to AdAge’s Stat of the Day, it now represents just 1 in 5, the lowest it’s ever been.
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There’s an interesting post over at Fast Company Design about the influx of new tablets coming to market over the past few years. As technology has improved, tablets have become more powerful which has helped them increase not only in utility but in popularity. The key question that author Ryan Coulter posits is how the addition of tablets into a user’s current arsenal of smartphone and laptop evolves the role of all three.
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As we head into the holiday weekend, the folks over at NetBase have put up a graphic that shows a 12-month trend in social media sentiment for 5 major grocery retailers – Safeway, Costco, Walmart, Kroger, and Whole Foods. The data feeding the graphic comes by way of their Brand Passion Index, which analyzes consumer passion for vertically-based brands. I don’t find the results very surprising.
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Keep it simple, stupid. Yes, it’s a slightly snarky acronym but it’s also exactly the right mantra to have in mind when thinking about creating mobile content for your customers. Whether your content will be B2B or B2C, the people who are interacting with it expect it to be easy to understand and interact with. Herewith, a few guiding principles to help you KISS your app.
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