Posts tagged think
[Study] Android Fragmentation Not as Bad as You Think
Feb 1st
Fragmentation is often seen as the biggest bane for publishers developing Android applications. There are hundreds of Android devices on the market, running different versions of the operating system across disparate screen sizes and pixel resolutions. But it might not be as bad as many people think. Mobile analytics company Localytics studied Android fragmentation and notes that things might not be quite as bad as everyone fears.
Localytics found that between that nearly 96% of all devices in its network are running either Android version 2.3 Gingerbread or version 2.2. Froyo. From a screen size point of view, there are only five major smartphone screens. While there is certainly more to deal with when developing for Android, focusing on key areas should ease the pain for many publishers.
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Gingerbread Still Dominates
To a certain extent, Localytics assertions are a little misleading. We are currently at the early stages of the rollout process of the newest flavor of Android, version 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. That means while ICS is adopted, the fragmentation of the OS itself will once again grow as Gingerbread and Froyo are phased out. Gingerbread was found to run on a vast majority of devices that Localytics tracks, with 73% of the market. Froyo is still kicking strong at 23%.
Since Localytics tracks applications and recognizes the device it is running on, these numbers may be a little high. For instance, last month 54.9% of Android target devices were running Gingerbread and 30.4% were on Froyo. The new target device numbers from Google should be released later this week, likely on Friday, Feb. 3, and we will see how close Localytics numbers are to the actual landscape. Gingerbread will certainly see an appreciable uptake from last month with Froyo taking a commensurate dive though it would be unlikely that Gingerbread jumped a full 20% in a month. Ice Cream Sandwich will also make a bigger blip on the radar though likely no more than 5%.
To put this in perspective, Localytics told us last month that 66% of iOS users had upgraded to iOS5.
Screen size is a better indication of fragmentation because it is not as volatile on a month-to-month basis. Of all app usage used for Localytics study, 41% of Android devices used 4.3-inch screens. 4-inch screens had 22% of application sessions while 3.2-inch screens had 11% and 3.7-inch 9%.
Almost two-thirds of screens were running at 900×480 pixels. Pixel density is often one of the biggest problems cited by developers when working around Android fragmentation. No other pixel density had more than 15%, with 480×320 pixels at 14%. That means that the most popular Android spec was a 4.3-inch screen with a 800×480 pixel density, or consistent with many of Samsung’s popular models as the picture on the right shows.
7-Inch Tablets Abound
From a tablet perspective, the three most popular Android slates were the Kindle Fire, Barnes & Noble Nook and the 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab. In reality what that means is that 74% of all Android tablet usage was on a 7-inch screen, running Gingerbread at a resolution of 1280×800 pixels. The only real 10.1-inch tablet on the market, the Galaxy Tab 10.1, had 22% of usage (there are other 10.1-inch Android tablets but none with an appreciable market share).
About 71% of Android tablets were running Gingerbread with 14% running Android 3.2 Honeycomb. The 14% is significantly higher than Google’s released target device numbers, which put Honeycomb 3.3% of total devices in January.
The best thing we can say about these numbers is that the Android ecosystem is stable … for now. In six months when there is a flood of Ice Cream Sandwich devices on the market, developers will be dealing with the need to support a vast number of Gingerbread devices while also supporting the newest functions in Android 4.0.1. In terms of the operating system itself, the nature of fragmentation is cyclical as new updates are released. From a device perspective though, do not look for much to change. Smartphones will likely stay in a 3.7-inch to 4.3-inch range and developers can hit most tablet users by supporting either 7-inch or 10.1-inch screens.
The various permutations of the options still make testing difficult. Though the most likely device will be a 4.3-inch screen running Gingerbread at 800×480 pixels, there will still be a 4.0-inch screen running Froyo at 480×320, or other combinations thereof. The best an Android developer can do is take the most utilitarian approach and try to make the best app for the most amount of people while still supporting the rest of the ecosystem. Bottom line is that you cannot please 100% of people 100% of the time. Do the best possible job for as many as possible.
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Think Before You Tweet, And Other Good Advice From The Experts
Jan 30th
Officially, Sree Sreenivasan is the dean of student affairs and a professor at Columbia University’s Journalism School, but for many he is the curator of Sree’s Tips, a Tumblr blog crammed with how-to social media information, as well as a leading figure in the social media movement. This past weekend he was also the point person for Columbia’s Social Media Weekend in New York.
What follows is a recap of some of Sreenivasan’s best advice for better utilizing Twitter from the weekend, as well as nuggets of information for doing better social media that were culled from the more than 50 speakers. When talking about social media, Sreenivasan tends to stress connections over self promotion (although being connected tends to lead to better promotion). He was also quick to stress throughout the weekend “We’re all learning here.”
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Think Before You Tweet
Sreenivasan says he spends an average of three to five minutes thinking about and composing every tweet he sends out, which is a lot of time for a guy who pumps out half a dozen tweets on an average day.
It’s even more time considering that Sreenivasan concedes that “most people will miss most of what we send” through social networks. Still, Sreenivasan says what he tweets tend to have the biggest impact, and are therefore worth the extra care.
Content Is King
On Sunday, Sreenivasan pulled up his own Twitter page, which had tweets full of links, hash tags and mentions of other users. An @ mention insures at least one person will see your tweet, while links add value to the tweets you put out into the world.
“See all that blue?” he said, referring to the links. “All of those are connections or potential connections.”
Indeed, several presenters stressed the importance of not only including content, but presenting content in a way that encourages click-throughs. Erica Anderson, Twitter’s manager for news and journalism, said when sharing articles, try to find an interesting quote or tidbit from the story instead of simply tweeting the headline.
Anderson also said photos and video had also become more important since Twitter’s redesign late last year. In particular, they have become popular among reporters embedded with the presidential campaigns, who have been sharing candid moments. “People love photos on Twitter,” Anderson said.
Overhaul Your Twitter Profile
Sreenivasan pulled up the Twitter profile of New York Times reporter Brian Stelter and noted that he included two phone numbers, an email address, a Web site and a description of what he covered for the Times (as opposed to just saying he was a reporter for the paper).
Sreenivasan said that despite having more than 100,000 followers, Stelter has never received a prank phone call.
Stelter, who is as close to being a social media expert as one can get in journalism circles, also uses his full name on his profile. Users who just defer to their Twitter handle, a company name, or nick name risk not being found by people who want to follow them, Sreenivasan said.
Finally, Sreenivasan directed people to look past the number of people following Stelter and look at the 2,500 Stelter himself follows. That, Sreenivasan said, is the real value for using social media in journalism and other fields: by seeking out people to follow, we’re seeking more information, he said.
“Whatever you have as a number in that ‘following,’ space, it’s not enough,” Sreenivasan said.
Be Safe
Anderson spent a portion of her Saturday morning talk stressing security. She gave a plug for multi-platform manager 1Password and said people should get in the habit of checking their browser’s address bar for https:// as opposed to http:// before logging into Twitter and other sites.
Anderson also recommended using a company email account when signing up for Twitter and other sites where social interaction is encouraged. That can prevent hackers from accessing personal email accounts, which may have more sensitive personal information.
Keep Reading
One blog post is not enough to digest a weekend’s worth of info sessions. Some of the best tips have been curated under the hash tags #smwknd and #smwkndcool.
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Do you think web site blackouts for SOPA / PIPA make sense? [POLL]
Jan 18th
There has been a lot of talk in social media lately about SOPA, PIPA and website blackouts. Some are all for it and some are totally against it. Some think it is a waste of time and effort. We would like to know what you think. So please participate in our poll and also tell [...]
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To Understand Google Favoritism, Think “If Google+ Were YouTube”
Jan 12th
Google’s favoritism of Google+ in its new Search Plus results is just the latest in the line of favoritism it has done with vertical search? It’s not, because Google hasn’t really favored itself with vertical search. It is favoring itself with Google+, and that’s why things…
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
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3 Common B2B SEO Mistakes – Customer Think (blog)
Jan 3rd
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3 Common B2B SEO Mistakes
Customer Think (blog) It's very easy to make small mistakes with your company's B2B SEO campaign that can have lingering effects on its long term success. Many B2B companies don't even realize they are making these simple mistakes and can't understand why their SEO campaign … |
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Hey Girl, I Know You Think This Meme Thing is Just Temporary But I’m Not Going Away
Dec 23rd
Surely you saw the #OccupyWallStreet pepper-spraying cop Internet meme. And perhaps since then you’ve been inspired to create your own Internet meme. If so, then take a hint from the “Hey Girl” Ryan Gosling Internet meme, which features a picture of the actor alongside an intellectual pick-up line. It’s been going strong since December 2010, and it’s not disappearing anytime soon.
Ryan Gosling Feminist, one of the smarter iterations of this meme was created by Danielle Henderson, a graduate student in the University of Wisconsin Madison’s women and gender studies program. We asked her a few questions about her take on the popularity of “Hey Girl.” And just days after we did that, the Internet produced Museum Hey Girl, for the artier among us. Hey Girl Happy Hannukah appeared on December 20, the first day of the holiday.
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The idea for RyanGoslingFeminist came about after lunch with a few new graduate school friends who hadn’t heard of the “Hey Girl” meme. Henderson decided to introduce them to it by creating a few flash cards based on the theory they were learning. The she posted them to Tumblr, and RyanGoslingFeminist was born. This was on a Friday evening. By that Saturday morning, Jezebel picked it up.
This is not at all the first celebrity-inspired Internet memes. LesbiansWhoLookLikeJustinBieber points to the secret that everyone fears blurting lest they appear homophobic – Justin Bieber is as androgynous as most boyish lesbians, and vice versa. And then there’s RappersDoingNormalShit, which makes the all-mighty rapper appear as mundane as your boring next-door neighbor.
These memes are never-ending virtual art shows curated by either one person or the collective Internet. Henderson wasn’t really thinking about that when she created FeministRyanGosling, which provides a feminist context to the blank slate that is the open-ended “Hey Girl” meme.
“I don’t really follow memes, and don’t think of what I’m doing as fitting into that category,” she tells us. “I’m still just posting flashcards for my friends, and could stop the whole thing tomorrow. I have no allegiance to this format. I’m just a nerd trying to get through the semester.”
Truth be told, she actually dislikes memes and the collective impact they’ve had on the Internet-at-large.
“It’s like in junior high when people would repeat the same joke over and over again until eventually it removed all joy and just filled you with contempt,” she says. “I think memes contribute to the community feeling everyone thinks the Internet should instill in us so that we don’t feel so bad about spending most of our free time communicating to a machine, but they mostly serve to remind me how unoriginal and boring we’ve become.”
“It’s like in junior high when people would repeat the same joke over and over again until eventually it removed all joy and just filled you with contempt. I think memes contribute to the community feeling everyone thinks the Internet should instill in us so that we don’t feel so bad about spending most of our free time communicating to a machine, but they mostly serve to remind me how unoriginal and boring we’ve become.”
Like the nice guy who won’t leave your side, Ryan Gosling hangs on till the bitter end – even when the meme he inspires makes us feel like completely unoriginal pop culture-obsessed media consumers. Henderson, for one, counts herself as one engaged in this love/hate relationship with memes. “I’m including myself here, of course,” she tells us, “as what I’m doing is totally derivative.”
Here’s a full list of the “Hey Girl” meme iterations that we’ve found.
- Hey Girl I’m A Serial Killer
- Librarian Hey Girl
- Ex-Boyfriend Ryan Gosling
- Feminist Ryan Gosling
- Ryan Gosling Disneyland Cats
- Typographer Ryan Gosling
- Fuck Yeah Ryan Gosling
- Museum Hey Girl
- FeministRyanGosling
- Hey Girl Shabbat Shalom
Please enjoy a few more variations on “Hey Girl.” We picked these especially for you.
Did we miss any variations on “Hey Girl”? Let us know in the comments below.
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Big Question (Answered): “Do You Think You Need 3G/4G on Your Tablet?”
Dec 13th
Earlier today, a guest post from R. Paul Singh had us buzzing in our virtual offices. While we all thought the post was well reasoned, his experience did not reflect some of our own experiences. Of those of us who differed, we disagreed with his stance that Wi-Fi was all a tablet owner needed. Dan even wrote a counterpoint that asserted Wi-Fi was not enough for many tablet owners. We decided to put the question to our readers directly.
Do You Think You Need 3G/4G on Your Tablet?
We asked and culled your responses from Facebook, Google+ and Twitter and we used Storify to present it all back to you. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.
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SEO in Lead Generation: 2012 Budget Analysis – Customer Think (blog)
Dec 2nd
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SEO in Lead Generation: 2012 Budget Analysis
Customer Think (blog) Search engine optimization (SEO) is a main focus now of many advertising and marketing campaigns for businesses. After all, most leads these days tend to be generated online. Even so, various companies treat their SEO efforts very differently when it … |
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Think Big SEO Comes With Affordable SEO Packages to Increase Traffic and Visitors – Press Media Wire
Nov 25th
 PR Web |
Think Big SEO Comes With Affordable SEO Packages to Increase Traffic and Visitors
Press Media Wire Bethel Park, PA (pressmediawire) – Think Big SEO, the Pittsburg internet marketing company promises to increase traffic and visitors through affordable search engine optimization. SEO has changed drastically over the past decade. … Dallas Businesses Partner up with SEOPartner |
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