Posts tagged Makes
Zuck Voting for Mitt? How Facebook “Like” Makes Things Ambiguous
Feb 10th
Sometimes the “Like” button is not as clear cut as it seems. Even Zuck would agree.
ZDNet reports that a Facebook design flaw has accidentally convinced some readers that Zuckerberg is endorsing Republican Party presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
The awkward “Liking” took place earlier this week. Zuck “liked” a story by Salon.com’s Farhad Manjoo, who posted the following status along with a link to mittromney.com: “Try, just looking at the Romney logo without seeing the word MONEY.” When that image shows up on users’ news feeds, however, it appears as if Zuck “liked” the Mitt Romney link rather than Manjoo’s comment, coupled with a link to the Romney website. Whatever happened to the “Like” button making things simple?
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On Manjoo’s Facebook profile, however, it’s pretty clear that Zuckerberg “liked” his status update joke. Check it out. Facebook prominently displays Zuckerberg’s name as one of the 526 people who, as of right now, “like” this post.
Seeing this out of context in the main news feed might lead some to believe otherwise. It looks like Zuck is endorsing Romney. Here’s the screengrab of the news feed view that ZDNet posted:
This sort of screw-up is just a byproduct of Facebook’s annoying oversharing features that clutter up users’ news feed.
Do Facebook users really need to know what their friends “like” in as prominent a spot as the main news feed? The same goes for the news ticker, which brings a micro-view to what every single one of a user’s Facebook friends likes and comments on.
Just think: If Facebook tweaked both the news feed and the news ticker to show users content that has real value, rather than the mundane activities of other Facebook users, “like” ambiguities might happen a lot less.
But back to the whole Manjoo/Zuckerberg/Romney “like” thing.
On Manjoo’s side, the status update could have been clearer and more poignant if he just wrote that joke as a status update, and included an image of Romney’s name-as-logo. (Switch two letters around and Romney spells “money”!)
Still, the Zuckerberg “like” would have come up the same in the main news feed. It just would have looked like Zuck “liked” an image of Romney’s logo, which could also be misconstrued.
So to completely avoid any Facebook false endorsement snafus like this one, Manjoo should have posted this as a Twitter-like, witty one-liner status update. Of course, that would have been too simple, even by Facebook standards.
A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock.
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Priceline’s Shatner ‘Negotiator’ Makes His Last Deal Today
Jan 23rd
Perhaps not since “The Sweet Hereafter” has there ever been a more pivotal bus crash shown on TV or in the movies. Today Priceline begins a new ad campaign that shows the death of its William Shatner “Negotiator” character. (Sorry, but you might as well see the ad, get the ending up front.) For those of you that haven’t seen the movie based on a Russell Banks story, it is worth renting just for Ian Holm’s wonderful performance. But back to Priceline and Shatner.
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Shatner is still under contract with Priceline for another year, and has been the spokesmodel for the company for 14 years, one of the most enduring relationships in modern advertising times. Ironically, he was given stock warrants that were worth $10 million at the time of the company’s IPO, which he sold at the bottom of the market. These shares would be worth $5 million today: you could say that he didn’t negotiate the best deal for himself.
Priceline is using the bus crash ad to spread the word about its pay-full-price service: most of us know them for their deals for low prices on unknown hotels. It probably is a good reminder, and is as campy as the other ads involving Shatner, who in a blaze of glory, helps the passengers off before plunging to his filmic and fiery death.
As a teen when the original Star Trek series was first run on network TV, I was a big fan of James T. Kirk, the original character that Shatner played before becoming a self-parody with such delicious roles as a worn-out beauty pageant executive, an eccentric lawyer, a womanizing cop and a hyperbolic pitchman. And then there are the numerous spoken-word recordings too. Now, don’t get all hot and bothered: I love the guy, and his wooden portrayal of Kirk set the gold standard for other Trek leaders, including the only woman starship commander Kathryn Janeway, played by Kate Mulgrew. Mulgrew had her own role as pitching IBM’s OS/2, which was nicknamed Warp after the series.
So goodbye Bill. May you continue to live long and prosper.
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Internet Marketing for Attorneys: SEO Makes Biggest Impact on Lead Generation – JD Supra (press release)
Jan 21st
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Internet Marketing for Attorneys: SEO Makes Biggest Impact on Lead Generation
JD Supra (press release) According to WebMarketing123's 2011 State of Digital Marketing Report, which surveyed 500 B2B and B2C marketing professionals, SEO makes the largest impact when it comes to generating leads. 53 percent of all survey respondents said SEO makes the … |
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Little Startup Makes It To the Big Stage, the Super Bowl
Jan 20th
There comes a time in the life of any startup where the founders look at each other, let out a sigh of relief and say, “we’re going to make it.” Startup founders and their first employees work countless hours making sure the product is functioning, helping clients and customers and responding to mini-catastrophes that crop up all over the place like wild fires during the Santa Ana winds.
The founders of Boston-based startup Promoboxx must be breathing that sigh of relief. Promoboxx has landed a deal with Chevy to power its Super Bowl commercials from local dealers. Yes, that Super Bowl. The one where Madonna is playing the halftime show this year. How did a little startup out of TechStars Boston make it to the biggest stage in the world?
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Chevy will utilize the PromoBoxx platform to engage its 6,000 dealers with co-branded campaigns designed for each specific dealers. The commercials are being released before the Super Bowl and local dealers are given tools to promote their own specific version of the campaign online through email, Twitter, Facebook and their own websites.
Think about the logistics behind that for a second. That is 6,000 dealers with their own co-branded commercials. Each dealer has thousands of customers. That is a lot of very specific, locally targeted marketing going on. That means that Promoboxx’s platform needs to be very robust and scalable to deliver content at rates that size.
“We built it to be a cloud scalable platform that is able to handle practically simultaneous infinite users and large national brands” said Jamie Fiedler, lead engineer at Promoboxx.
To accommodate Chevy, Promoboxx had to create new user interface and unique experience for each of the 6,000 dealers. That is not easy. Promoboxx teamed with Big Fuel, a social media company out of New York, to handle the issue.
“The design and development team was updating the Promoboxx dealer engagement portion of the platform at the same time as they were revamping the entire product,” Promoboxx CEO Ben Carcio told ReadWriteWeb. Therefore, all of this new technology being developed will morph into the overall product offering. This made the Promoboxx technology team realize how flexible the product needed to be when working with such large brands, which forced them to build a Modular RESTful API.”
Promoboxx focused on creating a flexible backend to handle the needs of each specific dealer. This will be the biggest test for Promoboxx. With 6,000 dealers of varying degrees of technological prowess, the platform needs to be simple enough to be everything to everybody.
“The way the process works can vary per brand, so the importance of a flexible API/backend was super crucial. There wasn’t a defined path that every company or dealer would follow, so flexibility was an essential part,” said Fiedler.
Super indeed. Super Bowl that is. Promoboxx has likely hit an inflection point in its evolution. The company got its first big break. Now the real work starts.
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AdGooroo Trademark Insight Tool Makes Infringement Monitoring A Breeze
Jan 20th
Some of you may not have any issues with other advertisers infringing on your trademarked terms via search marketing… count yourselves lucky. For those of us who have been left by the search engines to self-police these problems, AdGooroo’s Trademark Insight tool can turn a laborious challenge into…
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How America’s Search Trends From 2011 Makes Google+ Stand Out
Jan 20th
More than 300 Billion searches were made in the US in 2011, according to ComScore. In December each year, the Big Three search engines publish the most popular searches of the year. In 2011, the top ten searches from the three search engines added up to more than 250 million searches alone. We…
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Social media replacing SEO as Google makes search results personal – Poynter.org
Jan 11th
 msnbc.com |
Social media replacing SEO as Google makes search results personal
Poynter.org But this week Google sent SEO as we know it into terminal decline, rolling out personal search results that are strongly shaped by each user's online friends and social networking history. Here's what this means to a news website. … How Google Plus Your World Will Impact SEO Free Google+ Marketing Video For Small Business Released By JM Internet Group Google 'Search, plus Your World': the experts' view |
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Samsung Doubles Down on TV at CES, Makes Smart TV an Internet Hub
Jan 9th
It’s not even Day 1 at this year’s CES in Las Vegas, but already we’ve seen a flurry of product announcements. One of the more impressive was from Samsung. Internet TV is expected to be a big trend of 2012 and as the world’s number 1 TV brand, Samsung is a company to watch. Especially given the gains Samsung made over 2011 with the Galaxy series of smartphones and tablets, which made it the leading vendor of Android-based devices in the world.
The big news from Samsung today was a Smart TV push. The word “smart” here refers to Internet connectivity. Samsung’s 2012 model TVs will enable users to consume a mix of traditional TV programming and Web apps. It remains to be seen how well these new Internet features are implemented, because software and user experience have not historically been strengths of Samsung. But the message today was clear: Samsung is doubling down on its core TV leadership and attempting to make the TV the main household Internet device.
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The official theme at Samsung’s CES event was “Pushing Boundaries.” Boo-Keun Yoon, president of the Samsung Consumer Electronics Division, told the CES crowd that Samsung aims to “break down the walls that exist between devices.”
Yoon began by noting that Samsung is the world’s number 1 TV brand, for the sixth consecutive year. It sold 1.7m TVs in the month of November. He then reiterated that the TV is its primary product and is a hub for all of its other consumer offerings. “While we may have many devices,” he remarked, “the heart of this ecosystem is the TV. The TV plays an important role in bringing family members together.”
This reminds me a bit of Microsoft’s strategy around the PC. Substitute a TV for the PC and you have Samsung’s Internet strategy.
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Samsung announced today that it is upgrading its TV line with a bunch of “smart” features. Labeled “Smart TV,” 2012 model Samsung TVs will feature Smart Interaction, Smart Content, Smart Evolution and Smart Hub.
The idea behind Smart Interaction is to move beyond the traditional TV remote control. Now, viewers will be able to control their TV using face recognition, plus gesture and voice controls. It will be similar to how Microsoft’s Kinect works on XBox.
Smart Content introduces social services to Samsung’s TVs. Yes, this means apps. Yoon claimed that Samsung Smart TV is already “the leading platform for developers,” with 25,000 developers working on the platform. 20 million apps will have been downloaded by the end of this month, he said.
At CES, Samsung introduced some key apps for its platform. One is called Family Story and it allows you to upload photos, videos and memos from mobile devices to your TV. Voice chat is coming in the future. Also, as if to prove that it is a major player now in the Web ecosystem, Samsung announced that Angry Birds will become available on Samsung Smart TVs later this year.
Smart Evolution enables you to upgrade your TV with future functionality, without having to buy a new TV. Basically it is an upgrade slot at the back of the TV and you will be able to insert an “evolution kit” into it. This will be available for all 2012 and beyond TVs.
Smart Hub is a new UI for the Web features and is in HD. Also announced at CES was an upgrade to AllShare, Samsung’s cloud connectivity service. AllShare now includes sync for photos and video.
Along with the Smart TV strategy, Samsung announced new television models. These included the ES8000 LED HDTV and the so-called “ultimate TV,” a 55-inch Super OLED TV. These and other high-end TVs which Samsung releases will feature an integrated camera, for both video chat and the motion controls.
What about 3D, last year’s Big Thing at CES? Samsung hasn’t entirely de-focused from it. Although 3D failed to get much interest from consumers, this year Samsung will attempt to drive 3D content through streaming services.
Other Computing Devices
The TV may be Samsung’s main weapon, but it’s been Android-powered smartphones, tablets and laptops that propelled the company to the top rung of Internet device vendors in 2011. At CES, Samsung announced that it sold 300m smartphones worldwide in 2011.
Among the many products Samsung announced today were several new computing devices. It unveiled a new tablet called the Galaxy Tab 7.7 LTE. Also the second generation of its “mobile PC” (a high-end laptop) called Samsung Series 9 2012 and a new “ultrabook” (a thin, lightweight laptop) called Samsung Series 5 Ultra.
Finally, the Samsung Galaxy Note, which appears to be halfway between a smartphone and a tablet. Which emphasizes another trend we’re seeing these days: it’s getting harder and harder to put a line between what is a smartphone, tablet or computer!
Whatever they’re called, all of these devices are becoming more integrated into Samsung’s Smart TV platform. Also with the Samsung Media Hub, coming to TVs later this year, users will be able to purchase content on their smartphone or tablet and watch it on TV.
Although TV and computing devices are the most high profile products for Samsung circa 2012, its consumer electronics range continues to be varied. Today at CES, the company talked about its latest WiFi cameras, refrigerators and a new connected washing machine (which enables you to control your washing machine using your smartphone).
Samsung announced a lot of products today, but the key thing to focus on is its Smart TV platform. With its traditional strength in the TV market, combined with its relatively new leadership in Android-powered computing devices, Samsung could become a very important company in the Internet ecosystem. Although again, we must caution that to date Samsung hasn’t proven itself in software or Internet implementation.
In the comments, let us know your thoughts on what Samsung announced today.
Image credits: The Verge
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Cloud, APIs, LTE: AT&T Makes the Biggest Splash On Day 1 of CES 2012
Jan 9th
The most profound announcements made on the first day of the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show was, by far, made by AT&T. The carrier is hosting its annual developers’ summit in Las Vegas and made a bevy of announcements today including new HTML5 APIs for developers, six new Android phones and one, enormous, Windows Phone, a partnership with an important cloud operator. Like Verizon, AT&T is making a push to give developers tools to make dynamic new apps intimately tied to the carrier’s service and platform.
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What AT&T Announced
New API Platform: Ma Bell is getting into mobile development in a big way. AT&T is releasing a catalog of new APIs for HTML5 development that will allow publishers tools for messaging, location-based services, advertising and payments. The platform will offer AT&T in-app direct carrier billing that developers can use to monetize their apps outside of the normal channels through the Android Market or Apple App Store. It will ultimately be available across mobile platforms and devices.
AppCenter for Android: AT&T will preload a widget on select Android devices that showcases a carousel highlighting quality apps from developer partners and the carrier itself. The Featured Apps widget will be available in the Android Market as well.
The AppCenter will feature both HTML5 and Android apps with the notion of enhancing app discovery along with the profile of apps made by AT&T. Call it the newest generation of bloatware to invade your Android device.
Application Resource Optimizer for Android: Also known as ARO, the Application Resource Optimizer is intended to enhance battery life for processor intensive Android apps. AT&T says that Pandora Radio is one of the first companies to benefit from the ARO. The best part of the ARO is that it is not just tied to AT&T but can be used by any app on any carrier’s network.
Mobile Application Management via Apperian: AT&T has signed an exclusive deal with MAM provider Apperian in the United States. AT&T’s Mobile Application Management works much like other MAM offerings in that it provides the ability to distribute, manage, analyze and secure apps within and enterprise network. It includes a cloud-based enterprise app store for IT managers to distribute apps to employees and gain visibility into how workers are using those apps.
Cloud Architect With OpenStack: AT&T is becoming the first U.S. telecommunications provider to join the OpenStack initiative. The OpenStack capabilities will be housed within three of the carrier’s data centers in Dallas, San Diego and Seacaucus, New Jersey. The open-source cloud option will give developers and enterprises a way to tie their apps to the cloud in either public or private profiles and AT&T will supply the code to help publishers take advantage of cloud capabilities.
Devices, Devices, Devices: What would CES be if there were not a million new devices announced? The big one, literally, is the HTC Titan II, a Windows Phone running Mango 7.5 with a 1.5 GHz processor and a 16-megapixel camera. Yeah, 16-megapixels. CES: Now with more eye-popping specs. Nokia’s CEO Stephen Elop also said that AT&T will get the company’s first LTE Windows Phone.
Two Windows Phones? Bah, Android says. AT&T announced six new Android devices (five phones and a tablet) some of which will be LTE and NFC capable. The highlight of the group is the Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket HD which is essentially a Galaxy Nexus device dressed up in AT&T’s clothing. The Galaxy Note from Samsung will be the featured tablet coming out for AT&T later this year. In a twist of what consumers expect from smartphones, the Samsung Exhilarate is made from 80% recycled post-consumer material. Pantech will also have two Android phones for AT&T, both sporting LTE. Sony is also bringing the Xperia ion to the carrier.
Closing The Gap … For Now
AT&T may have been the first carrier to have the iPhone but in many ways it has been trailing Verizon in a variety of developer and enterprise verticals. Verizon announced its own enterprise management and app store at CTIA Enterprise & Apps in San Diego last October. Big Red also has two developer centers, one on each coast of the U.S. A hardware specific developer center is located in Massachusetts while a innovation center for mobile developers is located down by the piers in the financial district of San Francisco.
Verizon still has the lead when it comes to LTE deployment but AT&T is pouring billions of dollars into broadband investment and announced 11 new cities to get the “4G” network last week. Verizon is also no longer the preeminent domain of all things Android as AT&T will soon have a robust line of comparable devices.
Developers: Has AT&T impressed you today or is this just another “me too” series of announcements from the carrier? Let us know what you think in the comments.
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Bing Makes Driving Directions Twice As Fast
Jan 6th
Chris Pendleton announced on the Bing Maps blog that they have pushed out a major update to their driving directions “routing engine.” The new routing engine is twice as fast as the old one and adds more features like adding up to 3 routes in one request. Previously, Bing Maps used a…
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