Is your NICKNAME still available?
Would you like to have the same nick at all SocialNetworks? Feel free to check at http://namechk.com/
Pete Cashmore: 10 Web trends to watch in 2010
Editor’s note: Pete Cashmore is founder and CEO of Mashable, a popular blog about social media. He is writing a weekly column about social networking and tech for CNN.com.
(CNN) — As 2009 draws to a close, the Web’s attention turns to the year ahead. What can we expect of the online realm in 2010?
While Web innovation is unpredictable, some clear trends are becoming apparent. Expect the following 10 themes to define the Web next year:
Real-time ramps up
Sparked by Twitter, Facebook and FriendFeed, the real-time trend has been to the latter part of 2009 what „Web 2.0“ was to 2007. The term represents the growing demand for immediacy in our interactions. Immediacy is compelling, engaging, highly addictive … it’s a sense of living in the now.
But real-time is more than just a horde of new Twitter-like services hitting the Web in 2010 (although that’s inevitable — cargo cults abound). It’s a combination of factors, from the always-connected nature of modern smartphones to the instant gratification provided by a Google search.
Why wait until you get home to post a restaurant review, asks consumer trends tracker Trendwatching, when scores of iPhone apps let you post feedback as soon as you finish dessert? Why wonder about the name of that song, when humming into your phone handset will garner an instant answer from Midomi?
Look out, too, for real-time collaboration: Google Wave launched earlier this year, resulting in both excitement and confusion. A crossover between instant messaging, e-mail and a wiki, Wave is a platform for getting things done together. Web users, however, remain baffled. In 2010, Wave’s utility will become more apparent.
Location, location, location
Fueled by the ubiquity of GPS in modern smartphones, location-sharing services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite and Google Latitude are suddenly in vogue.
As I ruminated in this column two weeks ago, Foursquare and its ilk may become the breakout services of the year … provided they’re not crushed by the addition of location-based features to Twitter and Facebook.
What’s clear is that location is not about any singular service; rather, it’s a new layer of the Web. Soon, our whereabouts may optionally be appended to every Tweet, blog comment, photo or video we post.
Augmented reality
It’s yet to become part of the consumer consciousness, but augmented reality has attracted early-adopter buzz in the latter part of 2009.
Enabled by GPS, mapping data from the likes of Google and the accelerometer technology in modern phones, AR involves overlaying data on your environment; imagine walking around a city and seeing it come to life with reviews of the restaurants you walk past and Wikipedia entries about the sights you see.
When using Layar, for instance, the picture from your phone’s video camera is overlaid with bubbles of information from Yelp, Wikipedia, Google Search and Twitter. The challenge for such services is to prove their utility: They have the „cool factor,“ but can they be truly useful?
Content ‚curation‘
The Web’s biggest challenge of recent years is that content creation is outpacing our ability to consume it: „Information overload“ has become an increasingly common complaint.
In the attention economy, with its millions of daily status updates and billions of Web pages vying for our time, how do we best allocate that scarce resource? One solution has been algorithmic: Sites like Google News source the best stuff by technical means, but fall short when it comes to personalization.
In 2008, the answer revealed itself: Your friends are your filter. With the launch of its Facebook Connect program, Facebook allowed sites to offer content personalization based on the preferences of your network.
Meanwhile, Google’s Social Search experiment is investigating whether Web searching is improved by using information gleaned from your friends on Twitter, Facebook, Digg and the rest. Increasingly, your friends are becoming the curators of your consumption, from Web links to movies, books and TV shows.
Professional „curation“ has its place, too: Who better to direct our scarce attention than experts in their fields? I explored this possibility in a CNN article last month titled „Twitter lists and real-time journalism“ .
Cloud computing
Cloud computing was very much a buzzword of 2009, but there’s no doubt this transition will continue. The trend, in which data and applications cease to reside on our desktops and instead exist on servers elsewhere („the cloud“), makes our data accessible from anywhere and enables collaboration with distributed teams.
The cloud movement will see a major leap forward in the first half of 2010 with the launch of „Office Web Apps,“ free online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote released in tandem with Microsoft Office 2010.
Next year will also see the launch of Google’s Chrome OS, a free, Web-centric operating system that forces us to ask: How many desktop applications do we really need?
Internet TV and movies
Is 2010 the year the majority of our television starts coming to us via the Internet? There’s certainly more activity here than at any other time: Among the early-adopter set, Hulu, Boxee, Apple TV and Netflix’s Roku box lead the field.
Hulu in particular has sustained remarkable growth this year, while the movie studios are getting on board with the launch of Epix, a Hulu for films.
Convergence conundrum
The outlook for devices in 2010 appears somewhat contradictory: While the convergence trend continues apace and many of our gadgets are folded into the smartphones we carry around every day, we’re seeing a converse trend in which task-specific devices gain popularity.
GPS device maker TomTom recently introduced a $100 iPhone app that removes the need to buy a TomTom hardware device. Google then one-upped the company by releasing free turn-by-turn directions on devices running its Android operating system. Garmin and TomTom beware: Standalone GPS devices may meet their demise in 2010.
Also on the endangered gadgets list: Flip video cameras, which PC World declared dead upon the launch of the iPhone 3G S. Meanwhile, Apple executives say the iPhone is cannibalizing the iPod: Why carry two devices when you only need one?
Paradoxically, the e-book reader is seeing traction as a single-use device. With hard-to-read, power-hungry laptop screens proving impractical for reading, and smartphone screens proving too small, the Kindle and its competitors are gaining buzz.
However, I’d argue that the e-book reader is a fad: Carrying an extra device is never desirable, and the major factor preventing convergence is the lack of superior screen technology. Flexible, expanding low-power screens on cell phones might tip the balance.
The real power of Amazon’s Kindle is its ease of use: a virtual bookstore so simple that it does for books what Apple’s iTunes did for music. The devices will converge, but the „app store“ model for books will persist across all devices. The technology won’t be with us in 2010, however.
Social gaming
There’s little risk of social gaming proving a bad bet in 2010 — Zynga’s FarmVille game on Facebook now counts more active users than Twitter, claims a Facebook executive. Meanwhile, rival Playfish was recently acquired by Electronic Arts in a deal valued at up to $400 million.
Of growing interest in 2010, however, will be the virtual currencies these games have spawned: In the allegedly unmonetizable world of social media, virtual buying and selling may be the route to riches for some social media sites — a concept I outlined in this column under the title „Is Facebook the future of micropayments?“
Mobile payments
I’d wager that 2010 will be the breakthrough year of the much-anticipated mobile payments market. While much of Asia has embraced the technology, the U.S., in particular, has lagged. There’s reason for optimism in 2010, however: From PayPalX to Amazon’s mobile payments platform for developers, the big players are seizing the mobile payments opportunity.
Meanwhile, newcomer Square, founded by the creator of Twitter, began its rollout this week to much early-adopter excitement: The company enables merchants to accept payments via Apple’s iPhone.
Fame abundance, privacy scarcity
Warhol was right: Fame is now abundant. Social media has birthed a galaxy of stars in thousands of niches: We’re all reality stars now, on Facebook, Twitter and all the myriad online outlets where we hone our personal brands.
We’re seeing the ongoing voluntary erosion of privacy through public sharing on Facebook and Twitter, the rise of location-based services and the inclusion of video cameras in a growing array of devices.
The incredible efficiency of Web-based communication and our Google-fueled appetite to know everything about everything (or everyone) right now are combining to make Tiger Woods the canary in the privacy coal mine. Expect personal privacy — or rather its continued erosion — to be a hot media topic of 2010.
more by Pete Cashmore at www.mashable.com
Article originally published under: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/03/cashmore.web.trends.2010/index.html
10 Black Friday Secrets Retailers Don't Want You to Know
By Mike Elgan
published on internetnews.com
November 16, 2007
They don’t call the day after Thanksgiving „Black Friday“ for nothing. It’s all about launching the megastores „into the black“ – into profitability. They profit not by offering goods at a loss, but by using ultra-low prices to lure you into their stores, where they can employ dirty tricks to make money.
But with my secrets, and some smart planning, you can make „Black Friday“ profitable for yourself, not the store.
Here are the 10 things they don’t want you to know:
1: Most Black Friday deals are leaked early online. Check sites that post leaked Black Friday ads and info, and give yourself an advantage over the masses. The four best sites are: bfads.net, blackfriday.gottadeal.com, blackfridayads.com, and blackfriday.info. Some of these sites will optionally send you an e-mail whenever they post a new ad or new information. (So will Wal-mart’s „Secret Section.“) Some have cell phone versions of the site for referring while in-store.
2: Many Black Friday deals are bait-and-switch scams. They may sell you a very cheap product with a very expensive warranty, or use a given price, but add software, accessories or other over-priced add-ons as a required but unadvertised part of the purchase. You’ll find out about this only at the register. If the price at the register is significantly higher than advertised for any reason, ask to speak to a supervisor and insist on the advertised price. If they still refuse, threaten to write a letter to the attorney general.
3: Get the best price without hassles by knowing price-match and return policies. Many stores offer price-match guarantees (if a competitor offers a lower price, they’ll match it). Increasingly, Black Friday sales are exempt from all this. Others have a return policy that, in effect, is a price-match guarantee for the store itself (if they drop the price, the difference is later refunded to you if you ask for it). If you know which product you want to buy, and can find a store with a price-match guarantee that honors Black Friday prices, buy it! When Black Friday rolls around, you can go looking for the best price, and not have to worry about whether the store is out of stock. If a store is willing to refund the difference between its own normal price and its Black Friday price, buy it early for the same reason.
4: Beat the system by shopping in teams. Stores rely on a long list of tricks, from limited sale hours to low inventories in order to lure you into the stores without giving you the time to comparison shop for the product you want at the best possible price. Have one team member in each store when it opens, each with a list of what everyone wants to buy. Use Joopz.com to set up broadcast SMS. Each team member finds every product on the list, then broadcasts pricing. The person at the store with the lowest price for each item buys it.
5: Use your cell phone browser to check competing deals, and also product quality. You can also use standard sites like BizRate.com, Shopping.com and PriceGrabber.com to check just how good prices are. Sometimes Black Friday prices can be beat online anytime.
6: Some Black Friday promos are designed to unload loser products. Products that are obsolete, unpopular, damaged or returned are prime candidates for Black Friday sales. Make sure you narrow your list of products, so you don’t end up buying something you don’t really want.
7: Shop early. Very early. Many stores will open at midnight this year. Many open as early as 5 am. Find out in advance what time each store opens, so you can plan accordingly.
8: Some of the best deals are advertised only on Thanksgiving — or even on Black Friday itself. Make sure you get all the local newspaper on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday.
9: Some Black Friday deals are actually buyable online. Others are buyable only online, or have prices that actually beat in-store prices. Start checking prices on Thanksgiving. Check Web sites again very early Black Friday morning, and shop there first — then go to the stores only if you have to. Still other stores let you order items online the day before, and pick them up on Black Friday.
10: Plan ahead to think clearly. Bring food, wear comfortable shoes, and leave the kids at home (kids can influence impulse buying or convince you to leave early). Stay focused, and don’t let yourself be caught up in the frenzy.
Black Friday is a zero-sum game. Either the store wins, or you do. Use these tips to beat the stores at their own game.
In addition to writing for Datamation, where this column first appeared, Mike Elgan is a technology writer and former editor of Windows Magazine. He can be reached at mike.elgan+datamation@gmail.com or his blog: http://therawfeed.com.
Article published at InternetNews.com
Read the comments on this article here: href=“http://www.internetnews.com/commentary/print.php/3711701″>http://www.internetnews.com/commentary/print.php/3711701
Some Twitter insights
The Science Of ReTweets
View more presentations from Dan Zarrella.
Applications – the new multimillion dollar business?
It all started with Apple’s App Store and it turned into an avalanche almost unstoppable.
Today you can get all kinds of applications for an ever growing number of different phones. Or even cars!
Rumor has it that BMW is working on an own application store where you can download apps to implement in your car. Yes, I mean it. At this year’s IAA automobile fair in Frankfurt, BMW presented a small glimpse of what is yet to come.
BMW onboard app
Based on BMW Connected Drive, this new new technology could enable you to download local maps on the go (or rather on the drive), update your car’s operating system with whatever application is useful. Stay in touch with friends – no problem with facebook on board. Or Twitter the most recent traffic jams right to the global web audience. You could also access personal music libraries while driving miles away from your home.
Applications are everywhere, and they grow at an enormous pace. You will barely be able to surf on facebook or myspace without encountering Farmland, CastleAge or some useless cookie surprises. But if you thought this was just the output of second-rate developers or bored geeks, you may find your facebook account the center of a multimillion dollar industry. In recent times, purchases of such app businesses have reached triple digit millions. Electronic Arts acquired Playfish for up to $400 million and now the creators of blockbusters such as Farmland and MafiaWars are estimated at almost a billion dollars. Bloomberg reports that “if the IPO [for Zynga] were timed to price around mid-2010 or later, our expectation would be for a billion dollar or greater valuation.” As cute as the Farmland animals may be, this is serious business, almost billion dollar business. Let’s see how classical game producers such as EA, Ubisoft, or Nintendo react to this. One solution seems promising: Buy them now while they are still available at a fair price. Whatever a fair price may be….
Image source: BMW Deutschland
NSeries Nokias Say Goodbye to Symbian, Hello to Maemo
Here’s a bold statement: Symbian S60 is simply not good enough. I’m sure that many Nokia owners and analysts who know that Symbian currently holds around 50% of the smartphone OS market would disagree. But I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the new generation of smartphones – primarily Androids, the iPhone, and webOS based devices – are simply better than Symbian S60 and Windows Mobile (up to) 6.5 when it comes to doing what the today’s users want from a smartphone: browsing the web, using Facebook and Twitter, gaming, and finding simple apps that will satisfy their specific needs.
And now, at the official N900 meet-up in London, Nokia has pretty much admitted it. Nokia’s NSeries devices – i.e. most of their high-end smartphones – will all be powered by Linux-based Maemo by 2012.
While this doesn’t mean that Symbian is going away completely, it’s a major focus shift from a platform that Nokia has been pushing for so long. Nokia has probably recognized that Symbian will not be able to compete with Android (Android) and the iPhone in the foreseeable future, so they’ve decided to build their own Android (Maemo, just like Android, is Linux (linux)-based) and push their flagship devices on it, while Symbian will probably keep powering the video and photo focused X and E-series devices.
Furthermore, Nokia will first run its Maemo app portal, Maemo Select, alongside Ovi Store (Symbian app store), but plans to merge them into one later on. While we’re thrilled to see more Nokias on the powerful Maemo platform, running two mobile smarpthone OSs and two separate app stores will definitely cause confusion to the customers.
NSeries Nokias Say Goodbye to Symbian, Hello to Maemo
Posted using ShareThis
Social Commerce
Social Commerce
View more presentations from Andrey Menshikov.
The A-class equal to the 1-series or the A3? Never if you ask me
Mercedes Benz and its small-car dreams
Posted by: David Welch on November 13 on BusinessWeek The Auto Beat
The Mercedes A-class
American seems to be obsessed with small cars these days. Not American consumers, mind you, but policy makers and executives at the companies who must bend to their will. First, we had General Motors and Fiat-Chrysler rushing small cars to market as part of their argument for federal assistance earlier this year. Ford has a few of them coming in response both to high fuel prices and new fuel economy rules. Not to be outdone, Daimler AG CEO Dieter Zetsche says Mercedes may export some small cars to the U.S. Luxury buyers still want luxury, he told the Wall Street Journal, but some may want to make a less ostentatious, low-carbon dioxide statement.
This is wrong on so many levels. The article says that the Mercedes compacts will take on the Audi A3, BMW 1-series and BMW’s Mini Cooper brand. As for the A3 and 1-series, yes the Baby Benz will take them on, battling for all 12,000 cars worth of sales that the two models have sold this year. That’s right. Audi has sold about 2,900 copies of the A3, one-tenth the sales of its A4 sedan. The 1-series has done a bit better, selling almost 9,500 cars. That pales next to 3-series sales of 75,500 cars. Even if Mercedes gets a piece of that compact luxury biz, it will be small potatoes. As if Mercedes needs another model that sells fewer than 10,000 cars a year. The company has about half a dozen or so right now. By the way, Mercedes once shelved plans to bring its small B-class (pictured above) to the U.S. because of currency problems. Well, the dollar is still pretty weak. That will make the car either expensive to buy for consumers or profit-challenged.
And what about taking on Mini? The brand has sold almost 40,000 cars through October and just keeps growing. But it has everyone fooled. First of all, the brand has an incredibly unique image that blends modern technology of BMW’s vaunted engineering with the British styling and heritage of its past. And it is quirky. Mini stands alone unlike any brand in the car market as accessible exclusivity, though not traditional luxury. Will its buyers look at a Baby Benz? I doubt it. One BMW marketer once told me that in their research, they found that Mini owners view BMW owners the way most people view Ferrari owners. Loosely translated from the original profane description, Mini owners seem them as men with more money than confidence. I doubt Mini owners will see the Mercedes brand any differently.
I’ll give you one more practical reason why small cars won’t sell as fuel savers or as a green statement. Take a four-cylinder Chevrolet Malibu. It gets 26 miles per gallon combined and costs $1,526 a year to fuel up. A compact Chevy Cobalt gets 27 mpg and costs $1,482 a year at the pump. Who will sacrifice the passenger space of a Malibu to save $44 a year in gas? Answer: The buyer who can’t afford the Malibu.
Translate that to the luxury market where buyers are less concerned about gasoline prices, and there is even less incentive to go small. As for the low carbon statement, that won’t wash either. By the time Mercedes gets its compacts to the U.S., there will be Chevy Volts, plug-in Priuses, Fisker plug-in hybrids, Tesla electric sedans and plenty more expensive greenery for well-to-do do-gooders. Isn’t this idea just a wee bit silly?
Source: http://www.businessweek.com/autos/autobeat/archives/2009/11/mercedes_benz_a.html
SOM Marketingberatung:
Folks,
in no way does the A or B-class Mercedes compare to any of the models mentioned. They all have what the Mercedes lacks: they represent young, dynamic drivers who can afford to buy a small premium car and are willing to pay a markup for a strong brand. The typical A and B-class drivers – in terms of perceived and actual age – are seniors. Of course there are also some younger drivers whose parents drive a bigger Mercedes model and who want „to stick with the brand.“ The same is true for the C-class. The average age of drivers still ranges somewhere around 50. That is in the home market of Germany. For long, there have been discussion whether to finally stop these two models: they are simply not profitable enough. And here’s another one: guess which vehicle is currently the most hated rental car in all of Germany: yes, the B-class.
So dear friends down in Stuttgart, you are in need of action now. Define your brand! Either find a new profitable positioning for these two models or combine them into one car. As of today, both are too expensive and do not offer what a Mercedes represents. And do not compare the current A class with a 1 series BMW or an Audi A3. Event rental companies rank these two higher than the A-class.
New Models for Engaging Consumers: A Report from Opportunity Green
The business and sustainability conference Opportunity Green, held this past weekend in L.A., was an amazing experience. As we watched the various films and presentations, my wife and I moved from fear (How will the world survive?) to guilt (Look how we’ve polluted our planet!) to the hope that we can all work together, connected by the belief and passion that we will find a better way.
The Story of Stuff
One of the presentations that struck me most was when sustainability expert Annie Leonard shared her film, „The Story of Stuff.“ The animated work takes a hard (yet humorous) look at the pitfalls of our consumer society. It has developed quite a following, with more than 7 million views to date. After watching it, you come away wondering if it’s possible to have a consumer-based economy and achieve true sustainability.
This is something that both industrial designers and their clients have to consider. Traditionally, we are dependent upon consumers to buy the things we create. Shifting the consumer paradigm has to begin with a fundamental shift in the way we think, the way we do business, and the way we all live our lives.
This syncs up well with a point cognitive anthropologist Dr. Bob Deutsch has been making for years now. According to Deutsch, we need to do a „search and replace“ in the way we speak, and to move from talking about „consumers“ to talking about „people.“ Perhaps this is the first step on the path to finding ways to thrive in business without consuming ourselves and our world into oblivion.
There are many aspects to consider in building a new paradigm for sustainable products, practices, and business models. But perhaps the most important piece of the puzzle is creating sustainable experiences. The experience is where we connect with people. If we create products or services that are terrific for the environment, but which fail to empower and delight, people will not use them. To truly be sustainable, a product or practice must feel more like a reward than like something we „should“ do. If it feels like penance, we may do it once or twice, but it won’t become a part of who we are.
The viral videos of The Fun Theory (a Volkswagen initiative) are a terrific example of how appealing to key emotions (in this case, joy and surprise) can be used to create positive change in behavior. In the videos, a staircase is turned into a huge piano keyboard to encourage people to take the stairs, the „world’s deepest bin“ encourages people to use a trash can instead of littering. In the video below, the simple act of recycling is turned into a fun arcade game. In each case, people were enticed to change their behavior not because it was the right thing to do, but because it was a more fun and engaging experience.
Opportunity Green showcased several fine companies who understand the power of emotion and who know that empowering people is the first ingredient in finding a better, more sustainable way. Still, it’s clear that we are at the beginning of this paradigm shift. And it is equally clear that to make a shift of this magnitude we will all have to work together to find new ways for companies to continue making money while making a difference.
Posted using ShareThis
