Here is a cool little video that shows the power of social media:
Industry News
11
Feb 10
There can be only one! Google Buzz the Social Media Killer? [Op-Ed]
As you all must already know, Google unleashed their new creation “Google Buzz”, Why?
To kill, without mercy, the time on site of social monsters like Twitter and Facebook, Why?
To bring people back to Gmail and other Google tools that have been somewhat neglected by the common user.
Let me extrapolate;
We used e-mails, SMS and Instant Messaging applications (IM) to communicate (I could go back to snail mail days and pigeons, but give me a break), and when we wanted to hear the persons voice we would call him, Today, however, it works differently?
I send private messages to friends instead of emails (use my Gmail mainly to sign up to websites), the only time I would use an email is when I want to attach files to it, something that Social Media networks are not offering yet (and users eagerly await) in their private messaging features. And yes, I know that I can throw them on public file dumps, but it’s a hassle that I usually avoid.
I calculated meself and confirmed by my colleagues that if you have a surfing package on your mobile phone, it is cheaper to surf to Facebook and post something on a person’s wall or send them a private message in comparison to sending a regular SMS (text message).
IM’s are also struggling to survive, with ICQ unleashing a new version that offers updates and notification from all the mainstream Social Media networks and Windows Live Messenger offering their version of status updates (that I personally never use). The main reason for their struggle is the fact that Twitter updates so fast that you almost feel like you are surfing an IM and Facebook, they have Facebook chat just like MySpace, so there is really no reason to use any IM software besides Skype, and this will also end once there will be an integration of a similar voice service in one of the Social Media networks.
And in terms of voice calls, well this is my own speculation, the more features a Social Media network offers the less you actually call people, especially when you are near a computer. If I really need to make a call it would usually be done outside the house when I need to verify something or notify someone about something that is very urgent. In most other cases I would just send a private message, post something on Facebook or tweet.
Google are trying to take all the Facebook junkies (Please admit your addiction, this the first step to recovery), and move them to Gmail, by offering them the power to share, communicate and explore like never before. Here we are seeing that Google are ‘cheating’, unlike Google Wave that crahed on the online ‘Wave Breakers’ by having people react; “WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM US?” Now they are taking the huge amounts of Gmail users and just adding Buzz to their accounts, in other words they are recycling their Gmail users into a new service without the need for a signup or anything. Just click the button asking if you would like to check out buzz. This is done with a great call to action (CTA) focus on a very nice and vibrant button, with a plain text button saying “nah, just get me to my inbox”.
The problem is, because I rarely use Gmail, I actually have no followers, and my only option to get them is by name or email…I sense another Wave Breaker coming Google’s way.
I would like to finish by saying one simple thing, the only thing that can kill the iPhone is a better iPhone, and the only thing that will kill the massive Social Media networks will be a better Social Media Network. So next time you want to kill something huge in size go play “God of War” or something.
2
Feb 10
Yahoo! Allows AdWord Campaign Importing
A few months ago, in one of our long and exhausting meeting sessions inside the company, I came to a friend with what I have thought to be a great idea. An idea that would help Yahoo! search marketing attract new clients easily and cause more agencies to allocate budgets to Yahoo!. The basic idea was based on 5 assumptions:
- Almost no company runs an account in Yahoo search marketing exclusively.
- Most of the small\medium companies in the market won’t open an account in Yahoo! search marketing because of the low traffic in the engine and the very complicated and non user friendly interface of their ad management system.
- Most of the account managers in SMB’s won’t learn the Yahoo! search marketing system specifically and hence they will not end up managing accounts on Yahoo!.
- The only way to make a reasonable SMB open an account in Yahoo! search marketing – is to make it super easy to move the account and track it.
- For agencies that run multiple accounts it is beneficial to learn the Yahoo system, run multi channel accounts and transfer campaigns from channel to channel.
The idea was to offer Yahoo search marketing team a smart way to run an affiliate program in which they will offer every agency that copies account from Google to Yahoo! search marketing – a small percent of the managed budget as a commission. This commission will encourage agencies to manage their clients’ accounts also in Yahoo!, despite the low traffic volumes and the complicated management system.
The challenge of moving accounts from Google to Yahoo! seemed solvable back then. The Yahoo! search marketing team used to help account manager personally with transferring the accounts using spreadsheet files (.xls) and helped users to adapt to it in accordance with the search marketing rules and guidelines. The problem was the fact that the search marketing team is difficult to reach by phone or by e-mail, this made it much harder to do.
It seems like someone on the Yahoo! search management team recently got this idea, and the rational behind it, so they enabled users to import entire account files from Google AdWords to the Yahoo! search marketing platform in only a few clicks (and from other competing SEM platforms as well).
As I see it, if Yahoo! offers agencies an incentive to import account from Google to Yahoo!, and only a small portion will eventually make the transfer, they will increase the online budget that agencies run on the Yahoo! search marketing significantly.
An appropriate affiliate type program for agencies would be all that is needed to doubling the number of in Yahoo!. The CPC rates on Yahoo!, in most search areas, are still relatively low, so there is a clear benefit of the clients also.
A detailed word document that describes a simple yet cleaver way to manage an affiliate program such as this still lays on the bottom of my hard disk (I don’t see how I can make money from this more complicated than smart program anyway). But I hope that someone there in Yahoo! thought about this one before me and one day they will establish a program of this kind, that will be for a benefit for them, us, the agencies and the ultimately the clients that will enjoy the expansion of their campaigns
When I talked about it with a co-worker from a big company that develops management and monitoring systems for online campaigns – he said that there is a big legal issue with that. This guy is probably right, the terms and conditions of AdWords contain some paragraphs that refer to intellectual property etc. It looks like whenever Google sees that some of their budget transfer out from AdWords to Yahoo! search marketing they will do something to prevent it. But now it seems like the numbers are too small for the Google Empire to even deal with this and activate their army of lawyers.
