Posts tagged Fight
Local Search Battle Heats Up: Can Yelp Fight Off Facebook & Foursquare?
May 17th
Is Facebook – and to a lesser extent Foursquare – becoming more Yelp-like, and thus a threat? Some might believe the answer is an obvious yes, but it’s worth looking at some of the moats Yelp has built in local search that won’t make it so easy.
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
How Retailers Fight Back Against Shoppers Who Use Them As Showrooms
May 7th
Showrooming, the practice of looking at items in a physical store and then buying them online, is yet-another pain-in-the-butt problem facing brick-and mortar retailers. Despite all the hand-wringing, however, there are ways to mitigate the problem.
First, there’s evidence to suggest that the showrooming is not quite as bad a problem as some think. A Pew Internet & American Life Project survey from the beginning of 2013 found that of surveyed consumers, fewer than half (46%) called someone for advice for a purchase, and only 28% used their phone to look up product reviews and 27% used their phone to look up product pricing during the 2012 holiday shopping season. All told, 58% of cell phone owners used their phones to try one of these shopping activities in the store. Not surprisingly, younger shoppers (78% of 18-29 year olds) and smartphone owners (72%) led the way.
Not Everyone Showrooms
But here’s something telling… even though the number of cell-phone shoppers increased from 2012 to 2013, “When asked what happened on the most recent occasion they looked up the price of a product inside a store using their cell phone, 46% of ‘mobile price matchers’ say that they ultimately purchased the product in that store – an 11-point increase from the 35% of such price matchers who said this in 2012,” the report stated.
The rest of the results were equally interesting: 30% of cell-phone shoppers didn’t buy the product at all, just 12% purchased the product online and only 6% went to another store to buy the product.
Retailers, it appears, are getting better at keeping customers buying in the store, no matter what they are finding on their phones and tablets.
(See also Paper, Bricks & Cash Will Die: The Inevitable Evolution Of Local Commerce.)
Still, 12% of cell-phone owners is a significant chunk of revenue. And there’s every indication that as smartphones continue to penetrate the market and older shoppers are increasingly replaced with younger, more showrooming-friendly buyers, retailers have to address the problem head on.
There are plenty of ways that proactive retailers can fight showrooming. These five are a good place to start:
1. Differentiate Your Products
Amazon got its start selling books for reason. Bookstores are especially vulnerable to showrooming because unless they are selling very specialized publishers’ catalog items or very rare and special books, a book is a book is a book.
If anything, the big booksellers made the very bed they are now forced to lie in. By presenting books as a bulk commodity, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million and the extinct Borders reinforced the notion of books as a pure commodity, and that it didn’t matter where you got the book, as long as you saved money. That was great when they were cheaper than independent bookstores, but it’s come back to haunt them in the form of lower prices online.
Other retailers may have things a little easier, because not every product is available online in exactly the same form as in the local stores. But stores getting hurt by showrooming should think about switching up their inventory with unique items that may be harder to find online.
2. Incentivize Local Shoppers
It’s old-school business to entice customers into your establishment with sales and coupons. Don’t stop; people still like that stuff. But other techniques can also help pull customers in the front door.
Mobile shopping apps are the bane of a retailers’ existence – anything that makes it easier to comparison shop can encourage users to walk out the door. But what about an app that does the opposite, rewarding users every time they walk in a participating merchant’s store?
That’s the hook for Shopkick, a mobile, location-based app that reward users with points that can be redeemed for in-store purchases and rewards from other merchants and brands who have partnered with Shopkick.
Cyriac Roeding, CEO and co-founder of Shopkick, said the app has more 5 million users and has delivered $200 million in revenue to Shopkick’s 15 retail partners – including Target and Best Buy.
While Shopkick is not primarily about anti-showrooming, Roeding explained, it can tend to help depress that activity. The main objective, Roeding said, is to get foot traffic in the door. Shopkick also includes features designed to help customers shop and discover products before they enter the store.
3. Provide Service… With A Smile
One thing missing from most product retailers these days is the need to repair anything. In our mostly disposable society, it is usually cheaper and faster to junk a broken product rather than have it repaired.
That means most buyer’s connection with a store ends the moment they walk out the door with their purchase – reducing the differentiation from online retailers. It doesn’t have to be that way. If post-purchase service doesn’t make sense, what about training and support?
4. Make Shopping An Event
Special events offer another way to entice buyers into brick and mortar stores. Grocery stores can set up cooking classes. Apparel outlets can host fashion shows. Any special and even semi-regular event that convinces your customers to come back will strengthen the perception that connection and make it less likely the customer will use your store for showrooming.
5. Don’t Panic
What retailers don’t need to do is panic. Most customers don’t walk into a store with showrooming in mind; they’re there to shop, as quickly or as leisurely as they would have been before smartphones came along. Pay attention to customers’ needs, put in the extra effort and, as the stats still indicate, they’ll likely follow buy from you, not from some faceless online retailer.
(Need more? See also Showrooming: 5 Ways Retailers Can Fight Back [Slideshow].)
Image courtesy of Shutterstock
View full post on ReadWrite
Street Fight Daily: Local News Lost, Groupon Bundles SEO – Street Fight
Mar 22nd
 Street Fight |
Street Fight Daily: Local News Lost, Groupon Bundles SEO
Street Fight Conor Friedersdorf: State, county, and local coverage almost everywhere in the United States is now significantly worse than it was in the pre-Internet era, when local newspapers enjoyed a virtual monopoly on classified advertising and invested part of … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Woman Comes Up Limp Yet Again in Google Search Suggestion Fight
Mar 11th
Beverly Stayart has come up limp in her bid to hold search engines accountable for a search suggestion that links her to erectile dysfunction drug Levitra. The middle-aged woman is now 0-4 in attempts to prove her name has been misappropriated.
View full post on Search Engine Watch – Latest
Case Study: Nationwide Property Manager Uses PPC, SEO to Boost ROI – Street Fight
Mar 7th
 Street Fight |
Case Study: Nationwide Property Manager Uses PPC, SEO to Boost ROI
Street Fight By creating independent community websites focused on the local areas that Lincoln Property serves, along with aggressive PPC, retargeting and SEO campaigns managed by ReachLocal, the management firm has been able to increase conversion rates … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Why 3D Printing Will Be The Next Big Copyright Fight
Feb 20th
It’s finally happening. That moment we’ve been hearing about for years – the one where futuristic-sounding 3D printing becomes ubiquitous – is actually upon us. President Obama even mentioned 3D printing in his State of the Union address. As prices drop and the technology improves, consumers are awaiting this disruptive new era with bated breath.
So are intellectual property lawyers.
Before long, many of us will be able to print physical objects as easily as we once burned DVDs. And just as the Internet made trading MP3 music files and ripped movies a breeze, downloading 3D images to print on your shiny new MakerBot printer will be as easy as torrenting “The Hurt Locker.”
3D Copyright Takedown Notices Begin
Last week, HBO sent a cease-and-desist letter to Fernando Sosa asking him to stop selling a 3D printed iPhone dock he modeled after the Iron Throne chair from the popular HBO TV series Game of Thrones. Even though Sosa designed the dock himself in Autodesk Maya, HBO owns the rights to the show, its characters, and apparently the inanimate objects that appear onscreen.
It has been two years since the first known Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice for a 3D printable object was sent. After 3D artist Ulrich Schwanitz created a printable version of the famous Penrose triangle optical illusion, another modeler mimicked (not copied) the 3D rendering necessary to print his own. Schwanitz sent a copyright infringement complaint, but then later rescinded it and released his design into the public domain.
In that case, the dispute involved two individuals. Now bigger, better-funded copyright owners are getting involved. As user-generated 3D model marketplaces like Thingiverse and Shapeways grow, expect to see them flooded with creations based on trademarked and copyrighted material. And expect to hear about more takedowns, lawsuits and new legal precedents.
Copyright and 3D Printing: It’s Complicated
Unlike music and movies, the relationship between copyright and physical objects is not always straightforward. In general, non-artistic objects – that is, items intended to be used rather than admired for their aesthetic value – do not typically fall under the scope of copyright law. Certain objects can be patented, as long as they’re not overly generic. Try as you might, though, you can’t patent a chair, for example, unless you’ve designed an entirely new type of chair.
But what if you design a chair with a very unique ornamentation on the armrests? If you download my chair design and print yourself out a version of the chair for your very own, can I sue your brains out, RIAA-style?
When it comes to copyright and objects, courts try to apply what’s called a “severability” test. That is, can you “sever” the artistic part from the useful part? If so, the artistic part is typically protected by copyright. The strictly useful part is not.
In a recent white paper titled “What Is The Deal With Copyright and 3D Printing?“ Public Knowledge explored these issues, but came up short on clear answers. Precisely how copyright law applies to 3D printing will be established only as the technology grows and lawsuits get filed.
In the meantime, expect the intellectual property disputes to proliferate, almost as rapidly as the technology itself.
Lead photo by Creative Tools.
View full post on ReadWrite
Update: Microsoft’s Fight Against Google Continues With YouTube App Complaint
Jan 4th
(This story has been updated to reflect additional comments Microsoft’s Dave Heiner made Thursday night.)
Even as the Federal Trade Commission ends its two-year investigation of Google with a whimper, Microsoft is desperately hoping that the war isn’t yet over. The latest battleground: the YouTube app for Windows Phone.
In a blog post on Thursday night, Dave Heiner, vice president and deputy general counsel from Microsoft, expressed his disappointment in the ruling, complaining that the FTC missed the boat on issues of data portability, standard-essential patents, and other issues that include search bias.
On the face of it, whether or not Google should be obligated to license Microsoft the API technology necessary to build a Windows Phone app to access Google’s YouTube video service seems relatively trivial. In a blog post, Microsoft said that Google has unreasonably blocked access to the necessary APIs, preventing it from doing so. Google already supplies a YouTube “app,” which is merely an HTML5 version of its website, which runs inside the Internet Explorer browser on the phone.
For its part, Google believes that’s more than enough. “Contrary to Microsoft’s claims, it’s easy for consumers to view YouTube videos on Windows phones,” a YouTube spokeswoman wrote in an email. “Windows phone users can access all the features of YouTube through our HTML5-based mobile website, including viewing high-quality video streams, finding favorite videos, seeing video ratings, and searching for video categories. In fact, we’ve worked with Microsoft for several years to help build a great YouTube experience on Windows phones.”
The problem, according to Microsoft, is that Google’s behavior with regard to Windows Phone YouTube app is emblematic of its behavior in general. Two years ago, Microsoft complained to the European Union about Google’s tactics, as well as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. (Longtime Microsoft watchers have long noted the irony of Microsoft complaining about anti-competitive actions, given the company’s issues with the U.S. Department of Justice, and the possibility that the EU may impose fines or other sanctions after Microsoft ignored the browser choice restrictions from a previous EU settlement.)
But now the FTC has ended its Google investigation with a slap on the wrist, Microsoft can’t seem to give up the fight: Dave Heiner, vice president and deputy general counsel from Microsoft said Wednesday that the YouTube app dispute is simply a representative example of the “misconduct” that Google has employed with respect to its practices on the Internet. “Just last month, we learned from YouTube that senior executives at Google told them not to enable a first-class YouTube experience on Windows Phones,” Heiner wrote.
“Google often says that the antitrust offenses with which it has been charged cause no harm to consumers,” Heiner added. “Google is wrong about that. In this instance, for example, Google’s refusal deprives consumers who use competing platforms of a comparable experience in accessing content that is generally available on the Web, almost all of which is created by users rather than by Google itself. And it’s inconsistent, to say the least, with Google’s public insistence that other competing services, such as Facebook, should offer Google complete access to their content so they can index and include it on their search site.”
In his midnight post Thursday night, Heiner claimed that Google “inexplicably has not promised to allow all advertisers to port their campaign data to other ad platforms—only those with a primary billing address in the United States”.
Microsoft also characterized the FTC’s ruling on the so-called FRAND patent issues ineffective. Motorola Mobility, which was acquired by Google last year, has embroiled itself in a string of lawsuits, seeking to coerce royalties for patents used in developing standards like Wi-Fi. Heiner claimed that the FTC’s lukewarm requirements, full of legal loopholes, would allow Google to continue its anti-competitive behavior.
“During patent licensing negotiations, Google can continue to threaten that it will sue for an injunction, knowing that many would-be licensees will not be in a position to engage in litigation or arbitration with Google and also meet all of the other procedural requirements set forth in the decree that are imposed on the licensee,” Heiner wrote. “Google can even continue to use its standard essential patents to fend off patent infringement actions against it: the proposed decree gives Google leeway to sue for an injunction on its standard essential patents if it takes the position that injunctive relief sought against it is based on a patent that is standard essential.”
Now that the FTC has made its ruling, those concerns may be moot. But Microsoft made several references to behavior overseas, an indication that it may be seeking to tacitly plead its case before the European Union – which some now see as the “hard man” of international antitrust law. Whatever the situation, it’s clear that Microsoft has no intention of giving up its fight against Google.
See also Google Escapes Unscathed From FTC Settlement and Google’s FTC Settlement Is An Epic Fail For Microsoft.
View full post on ReadWrite
Microsoft’s Fight Against Google Continues With YouTube App Complaint
Jan 3rd
Even as the Federal Trade Commission ends its two-year investigation of Google with a whimper, Microsoft is desperately hoping that the war isn’t yet over. The latest battleground: the YouTube app for Windows Phone.
On the face of it, whether or not Google should be obligated to license Microsoft the API technology necessary to build a Windows Phone app to access Google’s YouTube video service seems relatively trivial. In a blog post, Microsoft said that Google has unreasonably blocked access to the necessary APIs, preventing it from doing so. Google already supplies a YouTube “app,” which is merely an HTML5 version of its website, which runs inside the Internet Explorer browser on the phone.
For its part, Google believes that’s more than enough. “Contrary to Microsoft’s claims, it’s easy for consumers to view YouTube videos on Windows phones,” a YouTube spokeswoman wrote in an email. “Windows phone users can access all the features of YouTube through our HTML5-based mobile website, including viewing high-quality video streams, finding favorite videos, seeing video ratings, and searching for video categories. In fact, we’ve worked with Microsoft for several years to help build a great YouTube experience on Windows phones.”
The problem, according to Microsoft, is that Google’s behavior with regard to Windows Phone YouTube app is emblematic of its behavior in general. Two years ago, Microsoft complained to the European Union about Google’s tactics, as well as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. (Longtime Microsoft watchers have long noted the irony of Microsoft complaining about anti-competitive actions, given the company’s issues with the U.S. Department of Justice, and the possibility that the EU may impose fines or other sanctions after Microsoft ignored the browser choice restrictions from a previous EU settlement.)
But now the FTC has ended its Google investigation with a slap on the wrist, Microsoft can’t seem to give up the fight: Dave Heiner, vice president and deputy general counsel from Microsoft said Wednesday that the YouTube app dispute is simply a representative example of the “misconduct” that Google has employed with respect to its practices on the Internet. “Just last month, we learned from YouTube that senior executives at Google told them not to enable a first-class YouTube experience on Windows Phones,” Heiner wrote.
“Google often says that the antitrust offenses with which it has been charged cause no harm to consumers,” Heiner added. “Google is wrong about that. In this instance, for example, Google’s refusal deprives consumers who use competing platforms of a comparable experience in accessing content that is generally available on the Web, almost all of which is created by users rather than by Google itself. And it’s inconsistent, to say the least, with Google’s public insistence that other competing services, such as Facebook, should offer Google complete access to their content so they can index and include it on their search site.”
Now that the FTC has made its ruling, those concerns may be moot. But Microsoft may be seeking to tacitly plead its case before the European Union – which some now see as the “hard man” of international antitrust law. Whatever the situation, it’s clear that Microsoft has no intention of giving up its fight against Google.
See also Google Escapes Unscathed From FTC Settlement and Google’s FTC Settlement Is An Epic Fail For Microsoft.
View full post on ReadWrite
Obama Unveils Online Information Sharing Strategy To Fight Cyberterrorism
Dec 21st
“As President, I have no greater responsibility than ensuring the safety and security of the United States and the American people. Meeting this responsibility requires the closest possible cooperation among our intelligence, military, diplomatic, homeland security, law enforcement, and public health communities, as well as with our partners at the state and local level and in the private sector. This cooperation, in turn, demands the timely and effective sharing of intelligence and information about threats to our nation with those who need it, from the President to the police officer on the street.”
President Barack Obama, writing in The National Strategy For Information Sharing And Safeguarding.
On Wednesday the President issued a 16-page game plan aimed at strengthening the process and protection of online sharing to fight cyber attacks. It’s called the the National Strategy for Information Sharing and Safeguarding. The NSISS is a guideline aimed at creating a ”balance between sharing information with those who need it to keep our country safe and safeguarding it from those who would do us harm,” the President wrote. ”Sharing and safeguarding are often seen as mutually exclusive, in reality they are mutually reinforcing. This Strategy, therefore, emphasizes how strengthening the protection of classified and sensitive information can help to build confidence and trust so that such information can be shared with authorized users.”
In short, it’s a directive on how to share data, and improve data flow, informing U.S. citizens that they are now partners in this battle, and thereby required to share their data in the name of national security, all the while promising to protect civil rights and privacy.
Less an executive order than a vision, “the strategy does not define particular categories or types of information that must be shared.” Instead, it focuses on a sharing policy with three main principles:
- Designating information as a national asset.
- Shared risk management and safeguarding,
- Informed decision making.
1. Information As A National Asset
Making information a national asset is basically a step to streamlining the flow of data between governmental agencies. The push to cut across siloed Federal branches and bureaus and integrate information is extremely important for both national and regional security. What’s likely going to happen is interconnected federal networks and new databases.
The strategy lists five goals:
- Driving collective action through collaboration and accountability.
- Improving data flow and discovery.
- Improving effectiveness by sharing services.
- Defining new policies and processes and reform to protect data.
- Protecting user privacy and civil rights.
Number five “protecting privacy and rights” is tricky. The document cleverly words that data management extends to U.S. citizens, stating that these “stakeholders” also have a responsibility and are an integral part in the success of this plan.
“Information collected, analyzed, and disseminated by every stakeholder must be discoverable and retrievable, consistent with necessary legal restrictions, and guided by government-wide policies, standards, and management frameworks.”
In other words, while supposedly toe-ing the civil rights line, the government is saying if they need your data, it’s your job to give it to them. Just how jurisdiction is enforced will no doubt be a contentious issue. The document states that privacy will be leveraged by “governance bodies and existing procedures, to continually refine and establish necessary guidelines for appropriate protections of shared information.” But the how and why of collecting citizen’s data will likely unfold on a case-by-case basis, most likely with howls of protest from civil rights groups like the ACLU.
2. Information Sharing And Safeguarding Requires Shared Risk Management
This step is basically a relationship builder, calling for trust between the private and public sectors. It’s the government’s pitch that more sharing and safeguarding improves both policy development and tackling security problems.
“Policies, practices, and methods for information sharing and safeguarding can enable appropriate confidentiality while increasing transparency,” Obama writes. “To realize the benefits of sharing information, stakeholders mitigate and manage risk by taking appropriate measures to build trust in the processes that safeguard information from compromise.”
Part of the sharing process will also include heavy data tagging to improve discovery and new authorization and authentication controls to likely bolster security and accountability.
3. Information Informs Decisionmaking
This third directive ties together the first two steps. It states that the ability to discover and retrieve accurate data “depends upon an ability to make information easily accessible to federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, private sector, and foreign partners.”
In other words, here’s your “we’re all in this together” notice from Uncle Sam. You do your part, we do our part, and this ship should sail.
“The above principles and below goals will help us achieve an environment wherein decisions are driven by information that reflects our best assessments at every level — from frontline personnel to agency heads,” Obama writes.
Is This Plan… A Good Thing?
In the wake of the failed SOPA and PIPA regulation bills, there’s been a lot of public mistrust when it comes to the government keeping tabs on the Internet. But could this be a positive step? At least one major security pundit thinks so.
“Government needs to be part of that system,” wrote Dan Kaminsky in a recent op-ed in Politico along with Stewart Baker, a former general counsel at the National Security Agency and assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security.
“I’m encouraged to see Obama creating a framework,” said Kaminsky, one of seven Recovery Key Shareholders for the Domain Name System, and chief scientist at security firm DKH. He says sharing data is a key to making the Internet safer.
Trust Is The Key Question
In an interview with ReadWrite, however, Kaminsky said the public culture of fear and mistrust may make his support of the President’s move less than popular. Still, he says we know dangerously little about the details of cyber attacks on the whole – and sharing data could help lower the risk. ”You can’t solve a problem without data.”
“If our goal is to have a foundation for commerce, information, freedom, privacy, we need better data on what bad guys are dong and what stops them,” he added. “The hard truth is that American information assets are under attack. Public, private, and personal resources are being extracted wholesale.”
These acts of espionage are “tremendous, and the ability to respond is insignificant,” Kaminsky said. “It’s not like bad guys just attack military targets,” Kaminsky explained. ”Everyone’s under attack.”
According to Kaminsky, the government has a strong interest in avoiding a situation where “in order to run a business you have to field an army. That would destroy small business and any compeitive environment. At the end of the day, can every business large and small deal with activity of foreign nation state attackers? Honestly, no.”
In order for the effort to succeed, Kaminsky said, information must flow in both directions between the private and public sectors. But he warned that “We have a lot of work to do in figuring out what works and what doesn’t. Step one is collecting information. The challenge is – who watches the watchers – and how do you make sure that aggregating force that makes the ground rules doesn’t turn on everyone?”
Going After Bad Guys… Or 9-Year-Olds?
That’s a key issue. With SOPA and PIPA fresh in their minds, many worry that the feds will use the shield of national security to go after regular people. It’s “ridiculous,” Kaminsky said, but the issue is “our ability to arrest 9 year-olds. The average kid is not breaking into Honeywell and stealing nuclear secrets to cause terror. The average kid is listening to Justin Bieber. There’s some definite fear in our effort to protect the rest of the economy that we’ll see the same techniques used to deal with nation-state hackers used on our kids.”
If the feds pursue matters not linked to national security, Kaminsky warned, it’s going to threaten the credibility of the entire effort. Still, he’s optimistic that the NSISS is a much-needed good-faith step in the right direction.
Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.
View full post on ReadWrite
Showrooming: 5 Ways Retailers Can Fight Back [Slideshow]
Dec 6th
There was once a time that a trip to buy something fun could be an enjoyable experience. I remember how much I enjoyed picking out my first computer, a Tandy TRS 80. I browsed Radio Shack for an hour or more, talking to the helpful employee about my plans, picking out the cassette tapes that would one day hold my programming brilliance, attempting to convince my Dad that I needed a monitor to be able to use it. That day is one of my fondest childhood memories.
But retailers increasingly believe that even for luxury items, all the matters is the lowest price – and maybe they’re right. But bowing at the altar of the almighty dollar inevitably means less money and attention lavished on the shopping experience. Employees are paid less and get less training. Inventory and quality is reduced. Stores get dingy, dirty and ugly. Too often you end up shopping in a messy, over-lit warehouse, being ignored by reluctant, resentful clerks just to save a nickel on a few poorly made items. Fun.
The Online Alternative
Compare this experience with that of the online shopper. Sitting at home in comfort, you can browse the best retailers in the world. A quick search finds you the best price. The only reason to get up off the couch is that, sometimes, you may want to check out an item in person before plunking down your credit card.
Ironically, that makes things even worse for brick and mortar retailers. More and more shoppers now visit retail stores only to check out the merchandise, and then buy online instead.
Called “showrooming,” the practice is increasingly performed right from shoppers’ smartphones while they’re standing in the store. That means even less money for the store, and ultimately an even less pleasant shopping experience – which pushes even more shoppers online.
ReadWrite managing editor Fredric Paul found that out the hard way on a recent trip to Best Buy (see Another Reason Best Buy Is Doomed – And Why That’s A Problem), but he’s not the only one. Cyril Vart, vice president of strategy and development for “innovation architects” faberNovel had an even worse experience attempting to buy a digital camera. But Vart says it doesn’t have to be this way – and he came up with a presentation on 5 ways brick-and-mortar retailers can fight back against showrooming. Let’s hope at least some real-world retailers give it a shot.
Image courtesy of Shutterstock.
View full post on ReadWrite
