ImaginativePRO Blog

FACEBOOK UNVEILS ITS 'BIG IDEA', ANNOUNCES VIDEO FOR INSTAGRAM, NOW HAS APP TO COMPETE WITH TWITTER'S VINE

 

On June 20, 2013, Facebook announced video for Instagram, saying it aimed to make video as easy to create and share as possible. The overall look and feel of the updated app are the same, but next to the main capture icon is now a video camera icon. The user taps the button to begin recording up to 15 seconds of video, and when published it appeared in the main Instagram feed. The updated app is available now on both iOS and Android.

 

On June 15, 2013, Facebook sent the following invitation to select journalists and media outlets for an announcement on June 20, 2013.

“A small team has been working on a big idea. Join us for coffee and learn about a new product.” 

That announcement led to a series of rumors about what the "big idea" would be.  Some writers though Facebook would announce a Facebook phone, other's a big acquisition, but surprisingly several thought that Facebook would release a Facebook video app similar to Vine.

This screen shot of the event’s live stream shows what the new Instagram video feature will look like throughout the app (Wired) - Click Image To Enlarge

Unlike Twitter's Vine app, which the video feature closely resembles, Instagram video contains a delete button. Tapping it will eliminate the most recently recorded segment. As you might expect with Instagram, the app includes filters: 13 of them to start, created with the help of a video artist, the company said.

The company worked with celebrities and brands to help promote the new feature. Kobe Bryant, Tony Hawk, Charity Water and Burberry all had videos ready to go as soon as the new feature was announced.

Systrom CEO and founder Kevin Systrom addresses the audience during the announcement of Instagram Video (Click Image To Enlarge)

Instragram founder and CEO Kevin Systrom tried to get in front of the inevitable question of whether Facebook had simply copied Vine by saying video was part of the original vision for Burbn, the app that became Instagram. In 2010, Systrom and co-founder Mike Krieger were working on an app that let users share photos and video with location, Systrom said. But they decided to focus on photography to start with and save video for later.

Instagram video allows you to select your own thumbnail for a video, another point of differentiation from Vine.   Systrom said.  

"It's an Instagram touch."  

Instagram video uploads in the background. Like pictures, it can be added to a user's photo and shared on other social networks.

The videos autoplay like Vines, but they do not loop.   Systron said.  

"It doesn't get in the way.  We've worked a ton on making it fast, simple of beautiful."

Instagram video also works to improve the quality of video, Systrom said. The company worked with video scientists to create a feature called "Cinema," automatically stabilizing video.  Systrom said.  

"It's completely mind-blowing."

The feature only works on iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 for now.

Still unclear is how fast videos will play in the feed. Vine has struggled with long load times for its 6-second clips.  Systrom told The Verge.  

"I'm going to set expectations: This is day one.  We have to figure this out. We have to fine-tune over time based on community feedback."

Not every video will be 15 seconds: The clips can be as short as 3 seconds, Systrom said.

In response to a question from a reporter, Systrom said the company was considering bringing its app to Windows Phone but had no news to share today.

Systrom said 16 billion photos have been shared on the service to date, accumulating 1 billion likes each day. It is used by 130 million people a month.

News that Facebook was working on video for Instagram broke shortly after the company sent out invitations to today's event. And though the company took steps to differentiate its product from Vine, the move also shows Facebook moving quickly to ensure its own users have access to fast and easy video sharing.

Released for iPhone in January, Vine has already attracted 13 million users. An Android version came out earlier this month.

COMMENTARY:   So how did Instagram and Vine users react to the Instagram Video announcement?  This video shows their reaction:

 

The updated Instagram app with video is available on Apple's App Store and Google's Play. In addition to its signature filters, Instagram will enable 15-second videos, custom cover frames and image stabilization.

The move by the world's largest social network underscores tense rivalry between Facebook and Twitter. Twitter's Vine short-form video service, launched in January, has amassed a fast following for its quirky and raw six-second videos.

Opus Research analyst Greg Sterling said.

"Image stabilization is a very appealing thing. It's a big product for Instagram that will be popular almost immediately. It may have a negative impact on Vine." 

Facebook has been unleashing a succession of ongoing defensive moves to capture restless mobile audiences in search of the next big thing.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a brief appearance at the stage.

"As our mobile strategy has evolved, we have focused on developing a number of different kinds of apps." 

Snapchat, the app that enables self-destructing photos and videos, became a runaway hit, leading Facebook to unleash a similar service, called Poke. Snapchat ranks No. 9 on Apple's App Store.

Vine users posted more videos on Twitter than did Instagram's photo sharers earlier this month, according to measurement firm Topsy Analytics. Vine is the No. 3 iOS app, trailed by Instagram at No. 21. Instagram has more than 100 million active members; Vine has 13 million.

Facebook has made mobile its priority. Yet after more than year as a public company its stock remains roughly 35.44% below its IPO offering price of $38.00.  Facebook shares for the week ending June 21, 2013 ended trading at $24.53, up +0.64 (+2.64%) following the Instagram video announcement.   

Facebook stock price up following Instagram Video announcement (Click Image To Enlarge)

Under siege from mobile start-ups, Facebook is also at battle with Google's Google+ social network, matching features, as the companies duke it out for display advertising.

Opus Research analyst Greg Sterling said. 

"There will be advertising associated with this. It may come six months from now, but there's no rush. They are going to be careful about it." 

Digital video advertising is poised to boom. It's expected to surge 41% to $4.1 billion in the U.S. this year from $2.9 billion last year, says eMarketer.  Mobile video advertising is expected to jump 112% to $518 million this year from last, according to the researcher.

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The Instagram video launch is "critically important for Facebook because younger audiences' engagement with the social network is growing much less than overall growth," said Erich Joachimsthaler, CEO of Vivaldi Partners Group.

In building the service, Systrom said the focus was on simplicity, beauty and community.

He said.  

“The interface is almost exactly the same [as Instagram], just with an added video button.” 

Instagram videos will be short clips up to 15 seconds long, and users will tag and caption the videos as they currently do on Instagram photos.

In addition, Instagram created 13 brand new, custom filters for video. Plus, there is a cover frame function to improve how videos look on mobile devices.

Courtesy of an article dated June 20, 2013 appearing in The Verge, an article dated June 20, 2013 appearing in HubSpot and an article dated June 20, 2013 appearing in USA Today

THE TRUTH ABOUT KIDS AND SOCIAL MEDIA, AND THE TOP 10 SOCIAL NETWORKS FOR KIDS

ACCORDING TO A RECENT STUDY, 78% OF PARENTS HELPED CREATE THEIR CHILDREN’S FACEBOOK PAGES, AND 7.5 MILLION USERS ARE UNDER THE AGE OF 13. THE WAY YOUR KIDS USE SOCIAL TODAY WILL SHAPE THEIR FUTURE. IT'S TIME FOR EVERYONE TO GET EDUCATED ON HOW--AND HOW NOT--TO LIVE ONLINE.

Kids and social media.

Most people cringe at the thought of these two terms used in the same sentence, and it falls into the same scary category of kids and drugs. Why?

We don’t like what we don’t know or understand. Parents don’t like the thought of their kids embracing social media because they don’t fully understand the benefits and dangers. In many cases, they also don’t understand the social platforms to their full extent. Education is key for the parents as well as the kids. Not to mention teachers! Everyone involved needs to understand the pros and the cons.

As most of us already know, there are clear downsides with kids using social media and this topic has been covered for years. Cyberbullying, privacy, and identity theft are only a few negatives that should be considered. Just as we teach our children how to ride a bike, we need to teach them how to navigate social media and make the right moves that will help them. The physical world is similar to the virtual world in many cases. It’s about being aware. We can prevent many debacles if we’re educated.

So what are the benefits of kids using social media?

This is where parents and educators need to think long term and recognize that kids are building a personal brand from an early age. Their digital footprint will have an impact on their future. Where they end up getting admitted to college, getting a job, and more. Social media will help connect them with like-minded individuals, including mentors, that share similar interests and aspirations that can help them achieve their long-term goals.

Here’s a scenario to consider. A few weeks ago, my team and I had 40 third graders come to the Digital Royalty office. They asked us questions and we asked them questions. When we asked how many of the third graders were either on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, more than half raised their hands. Facebook has a minimum age restriction of 13 years old to create an account. But according to Consumer Reports, last year 78% of parents helped create their children’s Facebook pages and 7.5 million users are under the age of 13 and lied about the age associated with the account.

After getting into a discussion with the third graders, we learned that several of them had abandoned their Facebook accounts because that’s where their parents were. They knew that the adult powers that be are a hop, skip, and a click away from monitoring the kid’s accounts on Facebook. The third-grade solution was to hop from Facebook to Instagram (which, ironically, Facebook also owns). In some cases, kids said they created new, rogue Facebook accounts where they connected with their friends and used their old ones as a decoy for parental supervision.

Admittedly, this is not formal research and not all third graders are using social media. However, if a substantial portion of third graders have embraced this new form of communication, what does that mean for fourth, fifth, and sixth graders? Are they seasoned pros at selfies? (And if you’re unaware of what a selfie is, I rest my case.)

Fast forward 8-10 years and the same children are now graduating from high school, or they’re preparing to, and they’re applying for colleges or jobs. Everything they’ve posted online for the past decade is searchable, and social media only amplifies what already exists, both strengths and weaknesses.

Imagine a college admissions recruiter evaluating two applicants side by side. They both look the same on paper. They shine academically, with impressive transcripts, essays, and SAT scores. Both have an extensive list of extracurricular activities and outstanding recommendation letters.

The difference is Applicant A has a large social following of Twitter followers and Facebook friends which they’ve used proactively to connect with future professors, industry leaders, and executives at companies. They’ve already built a network of people who they are sharing valuable content with, allowing their strengths to shine. You are able to get a genuine understanding of the applicant by seeing how Applicant A engages with their followers and posts about the issues he/she is passionate about.

Applicant B may have a social media presence (what college-age kid doesn’t?), but never took the time to fully develop it and turn it into an asset by having a “neutral” (read: a non-keg-stand) avatar photo, removing inappropriate language, and posting information that spotlights passions and strengths.

As the college admissions recruiter, you can only choose one. Who would you choose? In this case, Applicant A’s wise use of social media gives him/her an edge over an otherwise perfect Applicant B.

Why? Universities want to recruit the students that they believe will best represent the university, both online and offline, while in school and beyond. Students with a robust social media presence and clearly defined personal brand stand to become only more influential. These students are positioned to become leaders in their respective fields, which will reflect positively on the university social communication word of thumb. Additionally, the recruiter has full access to who the applicant associates himself or herself with by who they’re following and engaging with. It’s a sneak (organic) peek into the life of the applicant.

The scenario remains the same for job applicants. When choosing between two similar applicants, hiring managers are increasingly turning to social media outlets to supplement information they are unable to glean from applications or interviews. Many companies use social channels as screening tools. According to a recent study conducted by the Society Of Human Resource Management (SHRM), 77% of employers use social media to recruit candidates. Additionally, they can get a sense of cultural fit within the organization and identify red flags that may include inappropriate posts or even a candidate who is bashing a previous employer.

So now that we know education is key, many parents ask us at Digital Royalty, what’s the first step? Similar to how we begin the education process with executives of brands, sit down with your kids and ask them what they know. Do an informal assessment and study their proficiency. Hop on the computer and mobile phone to evaluate their proficiency and better understand what they know. You might be surprised. Then, after you’ve educated yourself, educate your children.

--Amy Jo Martin is the founder and CEO of Digital Royalty, a social media and education company based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and of Digital Royalty University. In 2012 her book Renegades Write the Rules made the New York Times Best Seller list. Follow her on Twitter at @amyjomartin.

COMMENTARY:   Over 20,000 kids age 13 and under try to cheat the age limit and sneak into Facebook every day, and it’s easy to see why. What kid wouldn’t want to watch funny videos of their friends, chat with their neighborhood peers or play an addicting game like Farmville? Unfortunately, Facebook and other popular social networks are also filled with adult content, unfiltered comments and potential for cyberbullying, identity theft and child predators.

With this problem in mind, several companies have attempted to create safer alternatives that are essentially “Facebook for kids” –safe social network platforms where kids can be themselves without all the risks.  Social networks for kids are built on the balance of entertainment, expression, experience, education and engagement without endangering exposure. Facebook isn’t for kids, but social networking can be.

Social networks for kids are a safe alternative to Facebook because they are built with safety in mind and age-appropriate fun. The best social networks for kids have all the features of traditional social communities (friending, chat, photos, profiles, comments, etc.) but also have more kid-friendly features like games, virtual gifts, contests, art projects and more. Most importantly, kid-friendly social networks are monitored and include parental oversight to make sure everyone is safe.

More than just a digital babysitter, social networks for kids can be a useful teaching tool, helping kids learn about appropriate social network etiquette, safe sharing practices and online citizenship. You and your kids can enjoy social network training wheels while they prepare for the inevitable rite of passage of one day getting a real Facebook page. When they're ready to move on to the real deal, you can still keep in the loop by using Facebook parental controls.

Click on any of the top 10 social networks for kids to learn more about the exciting features and benefits in store for you and your kids. You can find an age-appropriate social network that your kids will love and you can approve of. Your kids will like them better than Facebook, and you’ll rest easy knowing they’re protected.

Togetherville

For the kids: Togetherville is an “online neighborhood” for kids and their parents. The social network includes kid-friendly games, video clips, art projects and more. Kids can customize their own profile page and use pre-written status updates, text message comments and virtual gifts to interact with each other.

Adult supervision: Togetherville works in tandem with Facebook. Parents need to have a Facebook account in order to sign up their kids for Togetherville. Then parents will be able to log in and monitor their kids' Togetherville account directly from Facebook. In fact, your child’s online circle of friends is populated only with people they already know who you approve of through Facebook.

The lowdown on Togetherville: Disney put their trust in this online neighborhood, and so can you.

Click Image To Enlarge

What’s What

Kid tested: This kids-only social network is fun, safe and secure. A webcam is required to log in with biometric facial recognition for added account security. Once logged in, kids can customize their MePage, watch videos, play games, take polls and earn MePoints.

Mother approved: Friends are limited to kids within one grade level (unless the parent approves). Kids can share photos, join groups (school class, sports team, etc.), message friends and show off their talents. All photos and videos are moderated, and comments from peers will only display on your child’s wall if they approve to show it.

Our verdict: What’s What is a fun Facebook alternative for kids, complete with face-recognition login.

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ScuttlePad

For the kiddies: ScuttlePad is a new kid-friendly social network for basic status updates, friends, messages and photo sharing.

Supervised safety: The unique safety feature of ScuttlePad is that content in messages, status and comments are kept age-appropriate by only allowing pre-defined words from the special ScuttlePad sentence tool. All photos are reviewed by ScuttlePad staff before they are posted.

Our overall opinion: With fun features and supervised interactions, ScuttlePad is an especially good social network for younger kids.

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giantHello

Hi kids: giantHello is specifically devoted to kid-friendly social games but also includes profile pages, an internal messaging system, photo sharing and fan pages (animals, teen celebrities, games).

Hello parents: Friends are made through email addresses you already know, not from random online invitations. With plenty of games and other fun things to do, giantHello is a fun and safe place for kids to play.

Game on: If your kids are into games, giantHello is the social network for them.

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Skid-e-Kids

Kid-friendly features: Skid-e-Kids is filled with video games and social tools. Kids can socialize, sell or swap toys, watch full-length movies and even get help with homework.

Skid-e-Parents: Parents are always in charge, with special features that allow you to track all activity and monitor friends.

Should you skid? The rules, educational applications and pictures of kids wearing sweater-vests make it pretty clear this one is marketed towards parents; but kids might like it.

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Imbee

Kool kids: Self-billed as a social media mega-platform, Imbee has everything a kid could want in a social network: chat, photos, videos, blog, a “shout” wall, music, groups, avatars, games and celebrity news.

Parent features: Parents have full access to everything done on Imbee and can set age-appropriate parameters and enable or restrict certain features. Everything is constantly being monitored to ensure that Imbee is a safe place to play.

The verdict: Imbee is a trendy and feature-filled social network for tweens.

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Kidswirl

Kids world: Kidswirl is a fun online environment for kids, complete with games, photo albums, quizzes, videos, music and more.

Parental controls: The parent control panel lets you monitor all of your child’s activity and ensure that everything is appropriate.

Should you give it a whirl? While the idea behind Kidswirl is great, it doesn’t have the same finesse or security as the best social networks for kids.

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Everloop

Fun for tweens: Everloop is a “social looping” platform where kids can create custom profile pages, play online games, buy virtual goods and talk about what’s important to them with other kids via email, instant messaging and voice chat.

Keeping parents in the loop: Your kids’ private loop of friends is protected from anonymous intruders, and you can monitor all actions and approve age-appropriate activities.

Is it for me? Everloop is a new social network for kids that proves to be a compelling alternative to Facebook.

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Club Penguin

Kids Club: Disney’s Club Penguin is more of a virtual world and multiplayer game, but it’s hugely popular and does have some social-network inspired features. Kids represent themselves with a penguin avatar and can interact with others through emoticons, chat and social games.

Penguin Parents: Parents can sign up for a parent account to manage their kids' activity, and everything is monitored by adult moderators and “secret agent” veteran players.

Facebook alternative? Club Penguin isn’t a replacement for social networking, but it’s a friendly social community for younger kids to learn safe online interactions.

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Yoursphere

Cool stuff for kids: Yoursphere is a social network for kids that has games, contests and prizes, personalized avatars and access to the private social gaming community ourWorld. The kid-oriented social network lets you ask and answer questions with friends and chat about what you’re interested in. “Spheres” of interest include music, sports, gaming, fashion, art, animals, travel and more.

Parentsphere: Kids under the age of 13 can’t sign up with Yoursphere without parent approval, which also grants you access to a special parent portal where you can monitor everything your child posts (but only what your child posts).

Overall: Yoursphere is a pretty cool place for kids to interact, combining social networking features with a virtual world.

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Courtesy of an article dated May 24, 2013 appearing in Fast Company and an article appearing in 10TopTenReviews 

SEVEN TYPES OF POPULAR SOCIAL MEDIA FANS AND HOW TO ENGAGE WITH THEM (INFOGRAPHIC)

Take a look at how many fans your company has on its social platforms. Now, look at how many of those fans are active and how they interact with your brand. Some fans are supportive and gregarious; others, more critical.

ReachLocal researched the most popular types of social media fans then created the following infographic. It discusses such social media fan types as...

The casual liker. He likes your social media posts, and he wants his friends to see them as recommendations. The best way to reach this fan is to "develop creative and engaging posts about new or popular products or services, and ask these fans to share them," according to ReachLocal.

The deal seeker. He focuses on value over loyalty any day. Social media helps him keep abreast of the latest deals, and he goes where the savings are. To reach this fan, you'll need to "offer deals, promotions, and fan-appreciation specials to get more shares and new business," the infographic advises.

The ranter. She definitely has a strong opinion, and she's NOT AFRAID TO VOICE IT. This person may be a customer. Or not. The best way to handle her is coolly. "Avoid fueling conversations that aren't related to your business," ReachLocal says.

What other types of social media fans exist? Check out the following infographic for more profiles and suggestions for reaching those fans:

COMMENTARY:   In a blog post dated June 2, 2013, I listed the best ways to engage with your social media audience.

As there is no one-size-fits-all approach to social media, every business or organization should work from an approach that fits their situation. They should use social media platforms that align with their goals and purposes.

That said, it’s all about sharing quality content – Regardless of where you are sharing it with your audience.  Here is a list to consider as a place to begin…

9 Ways To Engage Your Audience With Social Media

1. Questions

Lead with a question, a prompt.  Get your fans and followers excited to tell you what is on their mind. This works on any platform.  Make them easy to answer, and strive to provoke emotion.

Your goal is to generate likes, comments and shares.  The message travels further with shares.  The more enticing the topic, the more it will be shared.  Be delicious!

Example: If your brand is a party supply store, ask your fans what color plates and napkins they would use to serve a fresh, frosted carrot cake to Paula Deen.

2. Focus On The Fan

People like to talk about themselves and what they think or want.  Give them the lead – Let them tell you how they fit in the picture!  Start with:

• Your choice
• You decide
• Yes or no
• Caption This!
• Fill in the blank

You might also share that you are working on a project and inquire what type of resource would help them.

This is a great way to learn about your audience, discover how you can solve their pain-points, and even plan for future posts or campaigns.

3. Infographics

Not all graphics are infographics, and not all infographics trigger engagement.  Your key here is providing value.

Questions to ask before offering to your followers: Will it help them solve a problem?  Will it help them look good if they share it with their friends?

If you can answer, “yes” to those questions, then share it with your audience.  You might ask them how they fit in with the graphic presentation.

4. Photos And Photo Albums

People like to peek.  Offering photos lets your audience feel like they are receiving exclusive content and a special – and even more intimate – view of something.  Especially with albums – Feature premium items and events related with your brand.  Be colorful!

Talking Facebook - Photos receive high priority and generate more interaction than other types of posts.  Albums see increased engagement.

Use your own images whenever possible.  If using others’, always check to see if permission is granted to use it first, and give attribution.

5. Audio & Video

Your goal here is to be customized and exclusive.  Let your audience see something they have not seen before.  Offering a peek into a private or rare setting is always attractive.  Or, let them listen to your voice, sharing a message only for them.

This type of media offers the ability to share infinitely via public link or intimately via private link.  Some mobile apps to help you:

• Vine -6 second video.
• Eyejot -Video email.
• AudioBoo -Easy voice recording.

Of course preparing video of a more public nature that can be stored in YouTube or Vimeo gives content a longer shelf-life and can be shared multiple times.  Keep in mind that YouTube is owned by Google, and is the second largest search engine.

6. Mainstream Public Figures

It’s been said that all one has to do is post a photo or talk about Kim Kardashian, and people flock.  The same for Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and others.

If you can find a way to relate very popular public figures with your brand – do it!  Not every day. Once in awhile.

Examples: If you sell hats, see which celebrity your fans think looks best in your new design.  If you are promoting a beauty salon, feature a mainstream-er that really likes a product you use or service you offer.

7. Quotes

Who doesn’t like a little inspiration from time to time?

Find out what authors and public figures are meaningful to your audience, and what trends seem to move them.  Then, offer quotes that support those ideals.

Quotes get a surprisingly high level of engagement when you consider all post types possible.  Text is fine.  Graphic quotes are more and more popular.  If you can relate the visual image with your brand  - even better!

8. Contents & Sweepstakes

Big reasons why fans choose to fan or follow a brand online is for exclusive discounts or specials, and for cool prizes.  Popular ways to go:

• Enter to win (photo or video contests)
• Pin it to win it (Pinterest)
• Like to enter (Facebook)

Should you choose to engage fans with a contest or sweepstakes promotion, you should have a complete strategy, or you will just encourage a “hop in and hop out” for the prize.  Having a plan for how you will engage fans and followers once the promotion is over is essential.

Popular Contest and Sweepstakes Tools:

• Wildfire App
• Strutta
• TabSite
• Short Stack
• Woobox

Each will have different features and fee structures, as well as style of connecting to your social platforms.

9. Cross-pollinate

This is for the experienced social media marketer. As noted above, multiple steps can be confusing. You want to present steps that connect easily, in bite-size pieces.

Here, you may be inviting your email contacts to your social networks.  Or, tweeting to your followers to join you on Facebook.

Even more interesting: Taking your Facebook fan to an exact YouTube video that requires them to make yet another step.  Some also call this trans-media.

The more opportunities you have to touch clients, the more they will engage with you, and the more effective the results from the relationship.

Actionable Advice:

It’s not about you, it’s about them.  At every opportunity, put the spotlight on your fans. Use language that requires an answer or action. Prompt with a call-to-action that is clear and concise.

Multiple steps tend to confuse. Confused minds do not make decisions, do not engage. Again, your goal is to get your audience to share your content so your message travels through social channels.

So what are some of the best ways to keep your social media audience engaged with your brand?

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Courtesy of an article dated June 18, 2013 appearing in MarketingProfs

WHY YOU SHOULD SELL DREAMS, NOT JUST PRODUCTS

 

YES, A $19.9 MILLION PRIVATE ISLAND ISN'T FOR EVERYONE, BUT THAT'S NOT THE POINT. AHALIFE FOUNDER AND CEO SHAUNA MEI SHARES HOW BUILDING AN AMAZING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE WITH A HEALTHY DOSE OF SHOCK VALUE MAKES ONLINE SHOPPING SING.

Shauna Mei isn’t your typical MIT grad.

After graduating with a degree in computer science and electrical engineering, Mei dabbled in finance before transitioning to the world of luxury retail and design. She now serves as the CEO of AHAlife, a luxury e-commerce website that gives customers the opportunity to discover high-end items not commonly available online. Mei believes that her willingness to take risks with bold, dream-worthy products sets AHAlife apart from the crowd.

Shauna Mei MIT grad and CEO of AHAlife, a luxury items ecommerce website (Click Image To Enlarge)

She says.  

"I think there are too many shopping sites that will only put up what they absolutely think will sell.  I think what we believe in is building an absolutely amazing customer experience."

In the retail frenzy leading up to last Christmas, Mei launched the AHA100, a list of the most-sought-after--if slightly unorthodox--products in the world. Customers could, were they so inclined and deep enough of pocket, purchase a $20,000 treehouse. Or, if they were even deeper of pocket, a $19.9 million private island, featuring a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house on the property.

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She says.  

"Those are ideas that we just kind of threw on there because they are really cool.  We didn't think anyone would buy them."

Surprisingly, at the end end of the promotion, the treehouse had sold.

"When you give people a dream or a product that's amazing, there is that customer out there that will buy it."

 

Bottom Line: Experimenting with your product offerings can draw in unlikely customers

COMMENTARY:    In a blog post dated October 1, 2010 titled, "8 Innovation Secrets From Apple CEO Steve Jobs," and a blog post dated October 6, 2011 titled, "How Steve Jobs' 'Digital Hub Strategy' Made Apple Into One of the Worlds Greatest Technology Companies," I commented Steve's innovation principle's for successful technology innovation.  One of those innovation secrets was "Sell Dreams, Not Products."  You can read about Steve's 8 innovation secrets below:  

7 Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs - Carmine Gallo from Carmine Gallo

 

Shauna Mei is correct when she says too much emphasis is placed on selling products to your target customers instead of offering an insanely different and amazing customer experience.   In a blog post dated June 14, 2013, I wrote about the five ways to build engaging customer-driven experiences, and I highly recommend you read it.

Courtesy of an article dated May 29, 2013 appearing in Fast Company  

FIVE WAYS TO BUILD ENGAGING CUSTOMER-DRIVEN EXPERIENCES, THE NONSTOP-CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE MODEL AND ROAD TO BRAND EVANGELIST

Loyal Metallica fans roar hysterically to show their loyalty for one of the greatest heavy metal bands known today -- the epitomy of brand evangelism (Click Image To Enlarge) 

For all the chest-beating by some retailers about their unbeatable low prices, you'd think that the race to the bottom was the only game in town. The reality is, competing on price is not a sustainable strategy for most businesses; after all, it's a cinch for the competition to copy your prices as soon as you change them.

So, instead of asking "how low can I go?" ask "how high can I set the bar to deliver an experience that connects with my customers?"

Today's consumers want to buy from businesses that acknowledge their preferences and desires. They like to buy from brands that forge an emotional connection with them. And they want to take a rewarding journey as they explore, shop, and interact with you.

The foundation of a successful and integrated commerce strategy calls for nothing less than communicating your brand's value and differentiators in a compelling way across all your customer touchpoints.

Know what makes your brand stand out and engage your customers through immersive brand and product stories that create excitement and stir their imagination. As you create experiences that inform, delight, entertain and inspire, you will, in time, build likability and trust that lead to sustained affinity and brand loyalty. The watchword is experience, and the key is sustained engagement.

FIVE TOOLS FOR BUILDING ENGAGING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES

1. Build your brand with compelling online content

Marketing today is much more than just customer acquisition. It's also about nurturing relationships that create loyal customers who will buy from you over and over, in spite of cheap alternatives that are just clicks away. The ability to continuously provide timely and relevant content is a must for sustained engagement.

No wonder that branded editorial are all around us these days. FitStudio, an online hub featuring health and wellness tips and blogs published by Sears, is a case in point. As its customers subscribe to this content, Sears keeps them in its orbit, building ongoing engagement. In turn, the retailer earns trust, credibility, and authority, with the big proof point being increased sales across its fitness offerings which Sears can attribute (partly) to content marketing.

Take a look, too, at The Journal, the online lifestyle and fashion magazine published by MR PORTER, the menswear offshoot of luxury purveyor NET-A-PORTER. On its pages, whatever a celebrity or model is wearing can be had for clicking the "buy now" button.

That is a brilliant example of creating desire via content then seamlessly connecting that impulse to conversion. How many of us have said "I love that coat" on sight and would have instantly dropped it in the cart if we could?

2. Immerse your customers in rich media

If pictures are worth a thousand words, then rich media is priceless for giving life to your brand and products. Enrich your storytelling via immersive narratives that connect with your customers. It's not simply about hawking your wares; it's about making your brand larger than the sum of your products to spark interest and capture your customers' imagination.

Enthrall them with the theatrics of videos, interactive catalogs, and look books, and provide them with interactive tools to enrich their understanding of what makes your brand different. Make a splash for your product launches in all their splendor and show new and bold ways of using or wearing your products.

Burberry has successfully reinvented itself as a hip brand, shedding its positioning as your grandmother's trench coat maker while still managing to retain its timeless legacy. It launched the global Burberry World campaign last year, wrapping its brand into a single experience that blends behind-the-scenes catwalk footage, interactive content, product stories, and music.

It's entertainment, shopping, interactivity all rolled up into a sensory experience that makes clear why it's not just fashionistas who love this iconic brand.

3. Be omnichannel, be mobile

Today's empowered consumers are blending online and offline experiences—mobile, social, and in-store shopping—to inform their shopping journey. To drive sustained engagement, you need to be where they are and you need to provide the right experiences while ensuring brand consistency across every channel.

Mobile is possibly the most challenging channel. Your content has to adapt to the devices' form factor, features, and capabilities, and that's no cakewalk, considering the myriad devices out there.

Saks Fifth Avenue is one brand that has successfully tapped the potential of mobile. Knowing that in-store customers use their devices to shop, the luxury retailer offers a mobile-optimized website and an iPad app. Those tools allow shoppers to enjoy a seamless experience that combines the efficiency of online interactivity with the sensuous immediacy of in-store shopping. Some Saks products carry QR codes that, when scanned, launch product videos or customer reviews that help inform purchase decisions. On seeing merchandise they love, shoppers can also search on their devices for sizes and colors that are not available in-store.

Not every business shares Sak's ambitions, but it's not above any brand to invest in the right content management tools that can scale to meet growth and take the complexity out of creating and publishing omnichannel content.

4. Build social communities that keep them coming back

Social is a great way to get customers invested in your brand. Allow your communities to become an extension of your storytelling platform and enable rich connections among your fans. Let them talk freely about you and give them a venue to share their own content that features your products. You can open new avenues for product discovery by inviting them to participate in product reviews, forums, and polls. Use your imagination and build a community worthy of your customers' participation.

Philips' online male-grooming destination, "Express Yourself Everyday," is an example of a clever and vibrant community. The site gets the community talking as visitors try on new facial hair virtually and see their brand new selves adorned with beard, goatee, mustache.... The updated images (using uploaded photos, live webcams, or Facebook profile pictures) can then be saved and shared, including on Facebook, so friends can comment on friends' faux new look.

Both practical and entertaining, this community delivers chuckles as the fellows have fun swapping out facial hairs while others seriously consider the fuzzy prospects of a hairier face.

5. Get up close and personal

So you're creating and publishing great, omnichannel experiences, but how do you deliver the right experiences to the right customers through the right channel at the right time?

Today's technologies put us ever closer to realizing marketing's holy grail—that of delivering a personalized, one-to-one experience to every shopper at their moment of desire, impulse, or decision. We already have some very powerful tools that help us understand our customers so we can provide them with very relevant experiences.

For instance, knowing that a visitor landed on your site from a search engine using the keyword "faucet," you can focus them on faucets only rather than showing them the whole kitchen sink. You can also segment your users and create various personas based on their preferences, geolocation, gender, age, and other demographic information to serve up tailored experiences.

Under Armour, the performance apparel and footwear brand, has taken this approach to an art form. To re-engage online shoppers who abandon the purchase path, Under Armour uses business rules based on an analysis of shoppers' online behavior and their calculated abandonment points to generate personalized offers and reminder emails, which are sent 72 hours after an order is abandoned. This program has produced an average lift of more than 300% in conversions, proving that getting personal can pay off in big ways.

Keep Your Ears to the Ground

To claim long-term success, you need to understand how well your delivered experiences are performing so you can improve them. Get your hands on analytics to gain insights into what is resonating with your visitors, what paths they're taking, and what's driving conversion.

As you merge customer knowledge with insight, including quizzing your user community about your products, you can better improve your customers' multichannel experiences as they shop in your store while researching on their mobile devices or consuming your campaigns.

Make the delivery of relevant experiences your labor of love this year and keep tweaking and fine-tuning them. It's a process that never ends; but, with all the tools available today, it's never been easier to start engaging your customers and earning their loyalty.

COMMENTARY:    When it comes to customer loyalty, emotional engagement is king according to Brand Keys, a research consultancy focused on customer loyalty. In Brand Keys 17th annual Customer Loyalty Engagement Index (CLEI) there has been a shift in how consumers emotionally connect with products and services.

If you watched the commercials on the Super Bowl in January 2013, it won’t come as a surprise that consumers desperately need greater levels of emotional engagement, if marketers want to – not just entertain – but actually sell products and build real brands. That fact was confirmed by findings from the Brand Keys 17th annual 2013 Customer Loyalty Engagement Index (CLEI).

Yes, consumer empowerment and the Internet and social networking and consumers’ never-ever-ending experiences with price promotions and discounting have finally reached a saturation level, which triggered a tipping point in the branded world, and now emotional engagement is the dominant driver of brand purchase decisions and brand loyalty.

Yes, we know, marketers (on and off the Super Bowl) have been making stabs at trying to understand emotional engagement for a while now, continuing to make the strategic error of confusing “entertainment” with “engagement.” And compounded that by trying to measure it via flavor-of-the moment approaches like neuro-marketing and twitter counts. Brand Keys assessments for the CLEI are based on an independently validated technique that fuses rational and emotional aspects of the categories to identify the real drivers of emotional engagement.

Companies who have sustained their brands, and continue to create meaningful brand differentiation and emotional engagement, where brands are defined as “products and services that consumers do not see as being freely interchangeable,” and ranking in the Top 10 Brand Keys 17th annual Customer Loyalty Engagement Index (CLEI) with some of the highest emotional engagement levels, include:

• Samsung (taking the #1 spot from Apple in Smartphones),
• Amazon (which took the #1 spot from Apple in Tablets) and kept its #1 ranking for its Kindle E-readers,
• Hyundai and Ford (tied for #1 in Automotive, with Ford moving up in a big way),
• Dunkin’ Donuts (in both Packaged and Out-of-Home Coffee Categories),
• Whole Foods (for Natural Food Stores, a whole new category this year),
• Clinique (for Luxury Cosmetics. See comment below headed “11 Categories No Longer are ‘Brands’” to find out what happened to Mass Merchandiser Cosmetics. And 10 other categories.),
• Subway (in Quick Serve, who served up enough emotional engagement to unseat McDonald’s (now #3), and
• Discover Card and Avis (#1 again this year).

Accenture Nonstop-Customer Experience Model

Drawing on decades of client experience and research on consumer behavior carried out by Accenture as well as by leading scholars, and informed by careful mapping and consideration of the most recent trends in customer behavior, Accenture has developed a new model—the Nonstop-Customer Experience Model (see below)—that captures what’s really going on. Successfully interacting with and serving customers in today’s often bewildering array of channel options begins with executives in all areas of the company understanding the new model. Companies must then integrate three guiding principles into their existing marketing, sales and service strategies, and even their product development and production efforts.

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Excelling in today’s marketplace means leaving the funnel far behind. By shifting to this new model and executing on the basis of the insights it provides, executives can create relevant consumer experiences, capture new demand, seize opportunities from less agile competitors and find new avenues to profitable growth.

What makes the Nonstop-Customer Experience Model unique? Among other things, evaluation, not purchase, is its focal point. Even after a purchase, customers today frequently reevaluate their decisions, and the alternatives. What if I can find a better deal by checking just one more place? I know that the product’s in the mail, but is there still time to cancel? As new information comes to light, it’s easier than ever for customers to change their minds.

Ultimately, the Nonstop-Customer Experience Model reflects how the experience of shopping—a journey for customers across the many activities in any given channel—has fundamentally changed in three critical, strategically significant ways.

The customer’s journey is now dynamic

Enabled by technology, customers can now easily control and vary their routes within (and across) channels to suit their needs at any given moment. Although shoppers move through the same fundamental stages today, they have replaced their traditional beeline route through the funnel with a variety of pathways that can be direct but more often than not are nonlinear, including loops and switchbacks.

The customer’s journey is now accessible

More content than ever is being put in front of customers, much of it beyond any given company’s control. And that third-party influence is increasingly insistent and influential. This content also appears from all sides. It’s anytime and anywhere, and it can come from or through anyone.

At the same time, in this more open environment, customers are demanding greater transparency about how their own data is being used. Companies will need to comply with these requests, even as they capture customer data and use it to enhance their own operations.

The customer’s journey is now continuous

In the not-so-distant past, customers might have considered a product on a Saturday and then had to wait until the following Thursday, when the store was open late, to purchase it. Today, technology—digital, mobile, social—means that such gaps have evaporated. Being exposed to a flux of touchpoints that are “always on” means that customers are almost always moving around the channel.

There’s a downside to this perpetual shopping, however: It’s easy for customers to become trapped in a state of endless evaluation, and unable to make the final decision to buy. Faced with that frustration, they may make a knee-jerk purchase driven by emotion, buy some-thing based on the last piece of information they processed or simply walk away.

While the journey will change for all customers, different customer segments will react with different behaviors to the dynamic, accessible and continuous environment (see chart).

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The Seven Steps To Brand Evangelist

In order to create an infectious and viral environment, brands must consider the makeup of their customers and employees and the strength of their relationship with the brand.  Trader Joe’s knows their customers and employees well and has created a winning culture within its stores and within its employees. As a result, the company’s quirky offerings, information center, and free samples have transformed regular customers into brand evangelists who live and breathe Trader Joe’s.  And who are willing to devote extensive time evangelizing for their favorite brand.

With few exceptions, I have never seen brand evangelist intensity that exceeds that of Apple.  In fact, the customer experience is the at center of Apple's branding.  Apple has successfully created legions of brand evangelists by not only designing beautiful, elegant and user-friendly products that "customers lust for," but has successfully integrated all customer touchpoints into a cohesive and uniform marketing message about its products, "it just works."   If product designers won't use their own products, why should their customers.  

Apple customers are told to "think different," and Apple evangelists are often mistakingly viewed as arrogant, cult-like and self-centered, but you cannot deny that they are fierecely loyal to Apple. I often joke that Apple evangelists would buy a toilet seat if it had the Apple logo on it.  They are so loyal that they don't mind paying premium prices for Apple products, over those of the competition, because of the firm belief that Apple makes the best products, period .  This level of evangelism has made Apple the most profitable consumer electronics company in the world.    

Apple has truly succeeded in differentiating itself by its unique products and post-sales customer service.  Apple stores are an excellent example of taking the retail customer experience to a whole new level.  Products are beautifully displayed for easy viewing and access in contemporary high-tech wooden counters separated by wide aisles.  Store interiors are beautifully laidout and well lit. Customers are encouraged to try each product first hand before buying.   There are never any pressure sales tactics.  Salespeople are not paid by commission, but compensated by salary.  It's Genius Bar is legendary for providing the epitomy of post-sales customer service.  The result: Apple stores have consistently ranked No 1 in sales per square foot year-after-year.

Very few brands ever achieve the level of brand evanglism of an Apple.  But, if you look at the seven steps to brand evangelist (see below), I am sure you will agree that the company has excecuted all seven steps supremely. 

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Courtesy of an article dated June 14, 2013 appearing in MarketingProfs and an article dated February 5, 2013 appearing in Forbes and an article dated October 2012 appearing in the Accenture blog

FACEBOOK COPIES TWITTER'S #HASHTAGS TO IMPROVE USER SEARCHES, BUT IS THIS MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING?

Facebook just announced that it is indeed launching ability to follow conversations via hashtags, as was reported in March.

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To be clear, there was nothing stopping you from including hashtags in your Facebook content before — it’s just that they didn’t have any real functionality. In its blog post announcing the new feature, the company acknowledges that this isn’t exactly a new idea, noting that it will be “similar to other services like Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, or Pinterest” — when you click on a hashtag, you’ll get a feed of comments using the hashtag. Facebook says its capabilities will include searching for hashtags, clicking on hashtags that come from other services, and writing posts directly from the hashtag feed.

 

Here’s how Facebook explains the reasoning behind the addition:

"Every day, hundreds of millions of people use Facebook to share their thoughts on big moments happening all around them. Whether it’s talking about a favorite television show, cheering on a hometown sports team or engaging with friends during a breaking news event—people on Facebook connect with their friends about what’s taking place all over the world. …

To bring these conversations more to the forefront, we will be rolling out a series of features that surface some of the interesting discussions people are having about public events, people, and topics. As a first step, we are beginning to roll out hashtags on Facebook."

Note that Facebook says it’s only “beginning to roll out” the feature, so you might not see it right away. (The company generally doesn’t turn on features for its entire user base at once, but instead rolls them out gradually.) Note also that the company says it’s going to be introducing more features in this vein.

To illustrate the scale of the conversation on Facebook, the company notes that between 88 million and 100 million Americans are using the service during primetime television hours. Game of Thrones‘ Red Wedding last week was mentioned 1.5 million times, while there were 66.5 million interactions (which include likes, comments and posts) around this year’s Oscars.

The blog post doesn’t go into something we wondered about when we started hearing about the feature in March — privacy. The idea of a “public conversation” works differently on Facebook than it does on a service like Twitter, since many Facebook posts have some degree of privacy restriction.

A company spokesperson told me that from a privacy perspective, hashtags will work similarly to Facebook Graph Search. In other words, you’ll only see the comments that you’re authorized to see. So if I include a hashtag in a friends-only post, then my friends will still be the only ones who can see it in a hashtag search.

COMMENTARY:    #hashtags are just another example of Facebook copying what Twitter has been doing for years.  How exactly will Facebook utilize hashtags to increase advertising revenues remains to be seen. Advertisers are already tracking Facebook "likes," but will the use of #hashtags reduce or cannibalize the use of the "Like" button on Facebook?  Typing #hashtag keywords is also more work for the user.  If you want to be efficient, Facebook users should also have a Twitter account, where they can tweet, and feed those updates directly into Facebook, in order to reduce duplication of effort.   In short, I am not blown away by this latest move, it's just too incremental, not true innovation, and I view this as a case of "much ado about nothing."      

Courtesy of an article dated June 12, 2013 appearing in TechCrunch

GOOGLE ACQUIRES WAZE FOR $1.1 BIL, GIVES A SOCIAL DATA BOOST TO GOOGLE MAPS, VC'S CASHOUT BIG TIME

After months of speculation, the fate of Waze, the social-mapping-location-data startup, is finally decided: Google is buying the company, giving the search giant a social boost to its already-strong mapping and mobile businesses.

Speculation has had the sale at $1 billion to $1.3 billion, and so far there is no price on the deal, but a source tells TechCrunch that it was done for $1.1 billion.

Update: Waze has also published a blog post on the acquisition. In it, CEO Noam Bardin writes that CEO Larry Page, Google GEO VP Brian McClendon and the Google Maps teams. Bardin said.  

“We are excited about the prospect of working with the Google Maps team to enhance our search capabilities and to join them in their ongoing efforts to build the best map of the world.”

Bardin also notes.  

“Nothing practical will change, with the company, now pushing 50 million users, we will maintain our community, brand, service and organization.”

He also raises the subject of why Waze decided to sell. Bardin says that it was motivated by the fact that an IPO appeared the route that would take the company more into being focused on returns and less on growing as a product for users.

“Choosing the path of an IPO often shifts attention to bankers, lawyers and the happiness of Wall Street, and we decided we’d rather spend our time with you, the Waze community.”

Of course, the burden of getting a return on the investment now become’s Google’s, but as you can see below there are a number of reasons why it would buy Waze, anyway. [original post continues below]

Update 2: Israeli tech blog GeekTime also confirms our $1.1 billion figure, “of which $1.03B will be transferred in cash directly to the company and its stockholders. An additional $100M will be awarded to employees based on performance.”

This is a doubly strategic move for Google. The purchase comes in the wake of what appeared to be failed negotiations between the Israel-based startup two big rivals of the search giant:

• Facebook, which was eyeing up the company but apparently faltered at the due dilligence phase; 
• Apple (neither company ever publicly confirmed interest in acquiring Waze).

The news comes after a particularly heated few days in which reports of Google’s interest in Waze reached new heights, after first surfacing two weeks ago. In the wildfire that is internet publishing, many even went so far as to report it as a done deal, making things even more confusing.

Waze had raised some $67 million in funding from Blue Run Ventures, Magma, Vertex, Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, and Horizon Ventures. And it looks like the majority of the payout in the sale will go to these VCs.  Globes, the Israeli business newspaper that first reported the latest interest from Google, estimated that payouts to co-founders — Ehud Shabtai, Amir and Gili Shinar, Uri Levine, Arie Gillon — and its CEO Noam Bardin, will be under $200 million in total.

There are at least a couple of places where you can see Google making use of Waze data.

Social. Under CEO Larry Page, Google has been especially bullish on where it positions itself on social, which it has been hinging on Google+ as a kind of web across all of its other properties to show you, the user, what those you know are doing, and also to let your connections see what you are looking at online. Taking a page from Facebook’s book, the thinking goes that this helps with discovery and engagement.

Waze, as a crowdsourced location platform, would give Google an additional, very mobile-based angle on this concept, letting users not just share places (i.e. sites) visited on the web, but actual places visited physically. As Bardim noted at the AllThingsD conference in April,

“What search is for the web, maps are for mobile.”

By this, he means that most of the searches you do on mobile have to do with location, and Waze is one of the few companies out there that is bringing that kind of search together with actual map data and a social layer. (The NYT ran an interesting piece yesterday with one mapping company describing how maps on mobile specifically become a “canvas” for all other apps.)

Competition. Waze could be a two-pronged fork for Google:

• On one hand, it gives the search giant nice, healthy wedge into the mass of consumers who are already using the app on iOS devices. 
• Gives Google a way of roadblocking how companies like Facebook could use Waze’s assets, if reports are to be believed.  

As the startup likes to point out, it’s not a mapping company, but a big data player. Facebook, making its own big push on mobile, would have been a natural home for a socially-focused company like Waze, which also happens to be one of the few home-grown mapping databases around. This will mean that Facebook will need to have to continue to use third-party data for its own location-based searches and information, or less look to acquire elsewhere.

(Now could be a good time to wonder whether Nokia might consider offloading Navteq, its loss-making but strategic mapping asset, to shore up its financial position…)

It’s interesting, in any case, that Google and Waze have now kissed and made up. It was only in April that Bardin jabbed at Google when talking about who the big players in mapping were and how Waze stacks up against them: Waze used to benchmark itself with Google, he noted at the AllThingsD conference, but after the search giant cut off access to its API, Waze started to benchmark to Navteq.

When the Facebook acquisition reports surfaced, we’d heard that one of the sticking points was that Waze wanted to keep its R&D in Israel, while Facebook was leaning to a Menlo Park relocation. Since then, others have told us that this was just smoke and mirrors and that there were other reasons the deal fell through (Mountain View’s most famous resident being one possible factor). Google, unlike Facebook, has a decent presence in the country, including a new hub for startups started in December 2012, Campus Tel Aviv.

Google today made it clear that it would keep Waze’s operations going in Israel — for now, at least.   Brian McClendon, Google’s VP of Geo, noted in the blog post announcing the deal.

“The Waze product development team will remain in Israel and operate separately for now.  We’re excited about the prospect of enhancing Google Maps with some of the traffic update features provided by Waze and enhancing Waze with Google’s search capabilities.”

In any case, it makes sense that Waze might want to keep its Israel-based operations intact. Just about all of the company’s 110-or-so employees are there, with only around 10 in a very modest office in Palo Alto, just down the street from another big-data startup, Palantir. That small proportion, however, is mighty: regular workers there include CEO Noam Bardin and Di-Ann Eisnor, Waze’s VP of platform and partnerships.

The U.S. is currently Waze’s largest single market — in April, Bardin noted that 12 million of its (at the time) 44 million users are based there — and this is where the company is putting its growth efforts for now, too. In February of this year, Waze expanded its U.S. operations, and its monetization ambitions, by opening an office on Madison Avenue, the heart of the advertising world in New York City, and we’ve seen that members of the team have been visiting New York recently. There is still a lot of development to be done on the advertising front — and given Google’s pole position in online and mobile advertising, that would give Waze another obvious fit with its new owner.

Ironically, the news comes as Google continues to fight other kinds of fires on the mapping front. In the U.S. it is trying to get a ruling overturned that it violated federal wiretap laws with its StreetView services.

In Europe, Google recently offered up a settlement in a search antitrust suit, originally brought by travel and mapping companies, that claimed Google, the biggest search engine in Europe by a longshot, was giving its own mapping and travel results more preference in search results over those of its competitors, making business untenable for smaller players. In that ongoing case, the EU competition regulator Joachin Almunia said at the end of May that Google still needed to make more concessions.

COMMENTARY:   In a blog post dated May 9, 2013, I commented on rumors that Facebook was in discussions to acquire Waze.  It now appears that there may have been some truth to those rumors.  I am glad that Google acquired the young startup.  It will make a tremendous addition to Google Maps, and once it is integrated with Google+, will boost the user experience and give it bragging rights over Facebook.  

Courtesy of an article dated June 11, 2013 appearing in TechCrunch

APPLE UNVEILS THE NEW MAC PRO, A RADICAL NEW CYLINDRICAL PRO DESKTOP COMPUTER FOR DEVELOPERS AND POWER USERS

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A Major Step Forward Requires Completely Changing Direction

When we began work on the next Mac Pro, we considered every element that defines a pro computer — graphics, storage, expansion, processing power, and memory. And we challenged ourselves to find the best, most forward-looking way possible to engineer each one of them. When we put it all together, the result was something entirely new. Something radically different from anything before it. Something that provides an extremely powerful argument against the status quo. Here’s a sneak peek at what’s next for the pro computer.

The New Power Structure

Engineered around workstation graphics with dual GPUs, PCI Express-based flash storage, high-performance Thunderbolt 2, new-generation Xeon processors, ultrafast memory, and support for 4K video, the new Mac Pro delivers state-of-the-art performance across the board.

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Processor

The new Mac Pro is muscle through and through, starting with the new-generation Intel Xeon E5 chipset. With configurations offering up to 12 cores of processing power, up to 40GB/s of PCI Express gen 3 bandwidth, and 256-bit-wide floating-point instructions, you’ll never be at a loss for speed.

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Memory

Every component in the new Mac Pro is optimized for performance. That includes a four-channel DDR3 memory controller running at 1866MHz. It delivers up to 60GB/s of memory bandwidth, which means you can fly through even the most compute-intensive tasks in no time. And since it’s ECC memory, your render job, video export, or simulation won’t be stopped by transient memory errors.

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Graphics

Traditionally, pro computers have relied primarily on the CPU for their computing power. But as GPU performance has dramatically increased, software developers have begun to leverage that power in their apps. With the new Mac Pro, we looked ahead and engineered an even more powerful GPU architecture. Not only does it feature a state-of-the-art AMD FirePro workstation-class GPU with up to 6GB of dedicated VRAM — it features two of them. With all that power, you’ll be able to do things like seamlessly edit full-resolution 4K video while simultaneously rendering effects in the background — and still have enough power to connect up to three high-resolution 4K displays.

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Storage

There’s flash storage, and then there’s next-generation PCI Express flash storage. We’re talking storage that’s up to 2.5 times faster than the fastest SATA-based solid-state drive and up to 10 times faster than a 7200-rpm SATA hard drive. Most flash storage systems connect via SATA buses designed for slower spinning hard drives. But we designed the new Mac Pro around new PCI Express-based flash controller technology to deliver the fastest solid-state drives available standard in a desktop computer. So booting up, launching apps, even opening massive files happens in, well, a flash.

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Unified Thermal Core

The new Mac Pro packs an unprecedented amount of power in an unthinkable amount of space. A big reason we were able to do that is the ingenious unified thermal core. Rather than using multiple heat sinks and fans to cool the processor and graphics cards, we built everything around a single piece of extruded aluminum designed to maximize airflow as well as thermal capacity. It works by conducting heat away from the CPU and GPUs and distributing that heat uniformly across the core. That way, if one processor isn’t working as hard as the others, the extra thermal capacity can be shared efficiently among them. No computer has been built this way before. And yet it makes so much sense, it’s now hard to imagine building one any other way.

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Cooling Fan

An incredible amount of innovation went into designing a fan system capable of cooling such a high-performance device. Instead of adding extra fans, we engineered a single, larger fan that pulls air upward through a bottom vent. As air passes vertically through the center of the device, it absorbs heat and carries it out the top. It’s simple and elegant — and also astonishingly quiet. To achieve that, we had to consider every detail: the number of blades, the size of the blades, the spacing of the blades, and even the shape of the blades. By minimizing air resistance throughout the system, we were able to design a fan with backward-curved impeller blades that runs at fewer revolutions per minute, draws air more efficiently as it spins, and creates considerably less noise.

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Expansion, Vastly Expanded

In creating a pro computer for the future, we wanted to provide an enormous amount of expansion — without being limited to the space inside the enclosure. Designed with built-in Thunderbolt 2, USB 3, Gigabit Ethernet, and HDMI 1.4 ports, Mac Pro sets a new standard in flexible, high-performance expansion. It’s our most expandable Mac yet. And it has everything you need to build a workstation completely customized to what you need and how you work.

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Thunderbolt 2

Thunderbolt is the fastest, most versatile I/O technology there is. And with Mac Pro, we’re jumping even further ahead. Thunderbolt 2 delivers twice the throughput, providing up to 20Gb/s of bandwidth to each external device. So you’re more than ready for the next generation of high-performance peripherals. You can connect massive amounts of storage, add a PCI expansion chassis, and work with the latest external displays — including 4K desktop displays and peripheral devices capable of broadcast monitoring in 4K. And since each Thunderbolt 2 port allows you to daisy-chain up to six peripherals, you can go all out by plugging in up to 36 external devices via Thunderbolt alone.

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Other I/O Connections

Mac Pro equips you with all kinds of connections for all kinds of peripherals. USB 3 gives you the versatility to hook up dozens of different types of external devices. Two Gigabit Ethernet ports let you connect to multiple networks. And an HDMI 1.4 port provides support for the latest televisions, projectors, and displays, including Ultra HD TVs. But the thought we put into expandability extends beyond the types of peripherals you can use. As you rotate Mac Pro to plug in a device, it senses the movement and automatically illuminates the I/O panel. So you can easily see the ports you need when you need them.

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Advanced Wireless

Access your network over three-stream 802.11ac Wi-Fi for the latest in high-speed wireless connectivity. For all your other wireless connections, Mac Pro includes Bluetooth 4.0. It’s the fastest, most reliable way to connect your keyboard, mouse, and other wireless devices without having to physically attach anything.

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Radical New Design

The new Mac Pro looks unlike any other computer. Because it is unlike any other computer. By rethinking the architecture of its internal components, we had the chance to rethink the entire enclosure. And since everything centers around a unified thermal core, we were free to design a much leaner, lighter, quieter, and far more streamlined structure. Its unique design and beautiful finishes are executed to an extraordinary degree of precision. And at just 9.9 inches tall with a diameter of just 6.6 inches, it’s a pro desktop computer that can actually sit on your desk.

 

Designed and Assembled In The U.S.

With the new Mac Pro, we’re assembling the entire product and machining several of its high-precision components in the United States. By leveraging the innovative power of industry-leading companies in Texas, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, and over a dozen other states across America, we're able to build a product that's impeccably constructed and beautiful in every detail. In other words, exactly as it was envisioned by our designers and engineers in California.

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Coming Later This Year

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COMMENTARY:    Apple’s new Mac Pro 2013 isn’t due to hit shelves until later this year, but that hasn’t stopped the desktop from getting a preview at WWDC 2013. Long overdue an update, the new Mac Pro hasn’t held back, a significant departure from the aluminum tower of the current model, not to mention ramping up the specifications until this is the most powerful Mac to-date.

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The circular, barrel-like design is likely to be polarizing. The old Mac Pro offered all the internal expansion possibilities that the iMac and Mac mini could never accommodate, but the 2013 Mac Pro approaches such matters of flexibility in a very different way.

Instead of internal SATA bays for extra drives, the new Mac Pro goes at it from a modular perspective. Six Thunderbolt 2 ports are each capable of handling six individual devices daisy-chained from them; that’s a total of thirty six peripherals – hard-drives, A/V interfaces, even 4K displays – that can be strung from the one compact desktop.

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Also likely to divide opinion is the switch to flash-only storage. Just as on the MacBook Air and Retina MacBook Pro, Apple has dropped spinning-platter drives in favor of more compact, faster flash memory. The headline numbers are up to 1.25GBps read rates and up to 1.0GBps write rates, though just as we’ve seen on the Apple notebooks, it makes upgrading – at least internally – more difficult.And yet, for all the potential headaches and changed perspectives when it comes to upgrades, we can’t help but be charmed by the new Mac Pro. The design has evolved from “another desktop” to something reminiscent of the unusual aesthetic of the old Power Mac G4 Cube. A completely different shape, of course, but approaching design in such an offbeat way that it’s eye-catching and engaging in a way a PC workstation seldom manages.

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There’s plenty to be answered still about the Mac Pro 2013. How fast its meaty Xenon processor runs; how effective the dual ATI FirePro graphics are; how much of a compromise being so reliant on external expansion is; and – nowhere near least – how expensive the whole thing turns out to be. We’ll know more answers later in the year, when the new Mac Pro goes on sale.

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Pricing and Availability

Apple has described the new Mac Pro glimpse as a preview, and as such there’s no official price or release date. However, given the nature of the components Apple is fitting, and the power-user positioning of the Pro itself, this isn’t going to be a cheap workstation.

I am absolutely amazed how much computing capability the new Mac Pro has in its relatively dimuitive 9.9-inch tall by 6.6 inch diameter cylinder.  This is nothing less than a computing beast, that will satisfy the demands of any jaded Apple evangelist power user or developer who must have the baddest and the greatest computer Apple has to offer.   Get your checkbooks out, it will be expensive, but having looked at the demographics of Apple computers, I am sure that many pro's will want one, or have their company pay for it.     

Courtesy of a press release dated June 10, 2013 issued by Apple and an article dated June 10, 2013 appearing in Slash Gear

SOCIAL MEDIA FIRM LITHIUM LAUNCHES LITHIUM SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE™ FOR MEASURING AND IMPROVING SOCIAL MEDIA ROI

Lithium Social Intelligence™ Provides Deep Insights into Customer Engagement across Communities and Social Networks

Lithium Network Conference, SAN FRANCISCO   - April 24, 2013 - Lithium Technologies, the leader in Social Customer Experience, today unveiled Lithium Social Intelligence™ a next-generation analytics product designed to help brands measure social ROI and improve the performance of social customer programs. Lithium Social Intelligence uses a unique combination of social science, real-time performance metrics and native web analytics to give brands unprecedented insight into customer engagement across both online communities and social networks.

Lithium President and Chief Executive Officer Rob Tarkoff said.

“Many brands struggle to measure the true business impact of social customer engagement, leading to missed opportunities and ineffective strategies that don’t move the needle for their business.  Lithium Social Intelligence is the first product that gives brands the tools they need to prove the value of their social customer investments.”

Dozens of major global brands are already using Lithium Social Intelligence to gain accurate insights and achieve real business results including Autodesk, Cisco, TomTom and many others.

Autodesk Vice President Customer Service & Support said:

“The mission of Autodesk's Global Customer Support and Operations team, is to help people imagine design and create a better world by providing rapid, accessible, and relevant support to a rapidly-expanding, passionate, global audience of designers, architects, engineers, and ‘makers.’ Lithium, as a Best in Class technology platform for engaging and hosting our global community, is central to this effort. Enabling and supporting thousands of community conversations every month, Lithium helps us engage key contributors inside the company and beyond it; recognize their efforts, and identify, amplify and share the trusted content that their conversations create and shape.”

Advanced Capabilities, Unmatched Insights

Lithium Social Intelligence uses a state-of-the-art big data architecture that allows brands to analyze billions of monthly social interactions, delivering results in seconds. It operates in the cloud at web scale, using advanced algorithms developed by in-house social scientists to help brands focus on the key metrics that matter.

Rob Tarkoff said. 

“We mine insights for our customers from more than 10 years of historical data, and we capture new information each month from nearly 100 million active monthly users.  No one is better positioned to provide leading brands with the knowledge they need to develop effective strategies for driving real ROI through social customer engagement.”

With Lithium Social Intelligence, managers are able to drill down into detailed metrics for individual conversation threads and analyze real-time performance data for each employee who engages customers on Twitter and Facebook. Data can be delivered anywhere, anytime in a variety of formats tailored for desktops, mobile devices or command center displays.

Dozens of capabilities in Lithium Social Intelligence enable companies to prove business impact and increase social engagement. Key features include:

• Community Health Index™ – advanced technology developed by Lithium’s in-house team of social scientists provides a unique measure of community health through a single index value –comprised of six key engagement factors and similar to a credit score.
• Native Web Analytics – Lithium is the first provider of online communities to combine traditional web traffic metrics with community engagement metrics for deeper insight into the highest performing content and authors.
• Benchmarking – Lithium aggregates more than 10 years of data from hundreds of Lithium Communities™ customers to help brands compare performance on key metrics.
• Mobile Metrics – brands can measure the increase in reach and impact that comes from interacting with Lithium Communities over mobile devices.
• Monitoring – tuned for insights that help brands determine where and how to engage, Lithium provides historical data on customer conversations across social channels.
• Role-Based Engagement Reports – designed to maximize productivity, Lithium provides each member of a social engagement team with personalized reports on performance against SLA targets.

Lithium Social Intelligence is designed to work in combination with Lithium Communities, Lithium Mobile™ and Lithium Social Web™, and is a key part of the Lithium Social Customer Experience Platform™ --the first integrated suite for engaging customers through on-domain and public social channels. 

Lithium is showcasing its latest advances and capabilities for innovative social customer experiences that deliver real, measurable business results at LiNC 2013, taking place April 23-25 at the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco.

About Lithium Technologies

Lithium helps companies unlock the passion of their customers. Lithium software powers amazing Social Customer Experiences for more than 400 iconic brands including  AT&T, BT, Best Buy, Indosat, Sephora, Skype and Telstra.   Lithium helps companies grow brand advocacy, drive sales, reduce costs and accelerate innovation to create social communities that redefine the customer experience. For more information, visit lithium.com, or connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and our own community – the Lithosphere. Lithium is privately held with corporate headquarters in Emeryville, Calif. and offices in Europe, Asia and Australia.

The Lithium® logo is a registered Service Mark of Lithium Technologies. All trademarks and product names are the property of their respective owners.

COMMENTARY:    Lithium Social Intelligence is a one-stop shop for measuring and improving performance across on-domain communities and off-domain social networks.  Through a unique combination of social science, real-time performance metrics, and web analytics, Lithium Social Intelligence delivers the deepest insights into customer engagement.

Identify The Most Important People and Content

Lithium provides the only analytics solution that gives you the ability to view web analytics and community engagement metrics together and drill down to the level of each conversation and community member. With this powerful set of capabilities, you can identify your top contributors and highest performing content in every area of your community in minutes.

Use this insight to focus your energy on effective strategies for increasing ROI, such as building superfan relationships and amplifying the reach of high value posts.

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Understand The Drivers of Community Health

Lithium captures data from billions of customer interactions each month and maintains more than a decade of historical data in a next-generation architecture optimized for high-performance reporting. Our team of in-house social scientists, led by Dr. Michael Wu, uses this vast data set to create algorithms that provide deep insight into community health and vibrancy.

The Lithium Community Health Index™ combines six key health factors into a index value similar to a credit score, helping you understand overall health as well as overall areas of strength and weakness.

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Compare Performance Against Peers

In addition to providing you with a wealth of actionable metrics for your own community, Lithium gives you the power to benchmark your performance against hundreds of other leading brands with Lithium Communities. See how you stack up on critical metrics such as Community Health Index™, average minutes to reply, average page views per visit, and more.

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For those of you who are serious about measuring your company's social media ROI, I highly recommend that you read Lithium's whitepapers, "Time To Get Serious About Social," and "Get Serious About Social ROI."

Lithium - Get Serious About Social from Lithium

 

Lithium - Get Serious About Social ROI from Lithium

Courtesy of a press release dated April 24, 2013 issued by Lithium

APPLE UNVEILS iOS 7 AT WWDC 2013, TIM COOK CALLS iOS 7, 'BIGGEST CHANGE SINCE THE ORIGINAL iPHONE'

At WWDC 2013, Apple officially unveiled the next generation of iOS, iOS 7.  Apple CEO Tim Cook introduced iOS 7, calling it "the biggest change to iOS since the introduction of the iPhone."

Apple CEO Tim Cook talks about iOS 7 at WWDC 2013 (Click Image To Enlarge) 

As rumored, iOS 7 has a less skeuomorphic look, with a more flat design and lots of whites tinged with color. That doesn't mean, however, that the new iOS is free from gradient or panache. Instead, it's a more modern take on what makes iOS iOS.

 

Control Center

New in iOS 7 is a Control Center. It's an area that can be activated from within any app that brings control to Wi-Fi, brightness and other frequently accessed settings.

From Control Center you can access a flashlight, start a song, toggle AirPlay and more.

Multitasking

iOS 7 will bring better multitasking and background processing to all apps. It will monitor which apps you use frequently to help determine which ones need more full-functioning multitasking. When apps send push notifications, for instance, the phone will know to start to give that app background processing so that it will work more quickly and intuitively.

Apple has taken a major cue from webOS (RIP) and added full-previews of running apps for multitasking. No more tiny icons!

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AirDrop

Apple is bringing OS X's AirDrop to iOS. AirDrop will let users share photos or files peer-to-peer with other iOS users who are nearby. "No bumping required."

AirDrop will only work on iOS devices running the latest wireless chipsets, meaning the iPhone 5, fourth generation iPad, iPad mini, and the latest iPod touch.

Photos and Camera

The Camera and Photo apps received a major overhaul. Not only is it easier to manage large numbers of photographs, users can now create Shared Photostreams — think group albums — into which other users can post photos as well as share with others.

Users can also share video with iCloud Photostreams in iOS 7.

Visually, the app looks similar to the latest Flickr redesign, is less focused on 4 x 4 grids of thumbnails, and offers users a better look at their photographs.

Music and iTunes Radio

The Music app gets the same visual overhaul as the rest of the system but the big feature with music and iOS 7 is iTunes Radio. Think of it as a hybrid between Pandora and Songza, built into iOS.

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Users can listen to theme-centric playlists or stations ("Songs for summer") or listen to artist-centric stations. And, like Last.fm, iTunes Radio keeps track of all the stuff you listen to across iTunes, Apple TV and on iOS 7.

It's free with ads, though iTunes Match subscribers get it free without ads.

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Safari

Safari for iOS 7 has a new look and feel — more similar to Chrome on iOS, we must say — including a new tabbed view. It also integrates with iCloud Keychain for password management.

The unified search menu, which was removed with iOS 3.0, is back. There is also access to shared links and the reading list improvements shown off with OS X Mavericks.

Tabs are now 3D and fully integrated with iCloud tabs. Users are no longer limited to eight tabs (hooray) and tabs can be reordered or removed with a swipe.

Siri

Siri has a new look and a new voice. Users can choose between male and female voices for Siri. Siri is also getting smarter: It will now pull in data from Twitter, Wikipedia and Bing.

iOS in the Car

Apple is going to bring iOS to the dashboard of your car. Support for iOS in the car will be coming to Honda, Mercedes, Nissan, Chevy, Kia, Volvo, Acura and others.

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New App Store

The App Store has a new design and will show apps that are popular nearby, as well as apps popular with your friends. The best part? Your apps now update automatically.

More

• Notification Sync
• Audio-only Facetime
• Weibo Integration in China
• Per-app VPN for Enterprise

Plus more than 1500 APIs, support for third-party game controllers, new multitasking APIs.

Apple is also introducing a feature called Activation Lock, which will prevent a thieves from activating your iPhone on another network unless they know your iCloud password.

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Coming This Fall

Developers will have access to iOS 7 on Monday and it will hit iOS devices this fall.

COMMENTARY:   Love the sharing of photos and integration with Twitter, the notifications center and bar (soial updates, messages, email, etc.), launching of apps within SIRI (voice activated, of course) and partnerships with Yelp (restaurant reviews), RottenTomatoes (movies) and OpenTable (reservations), improved iMessages, iMaps (and integraton within SIRI), addition of SIRI to the iPad, automatic integration with iCloud for all your digital content (music, images, films and eBooks), integraton of the Facebook app and Apple Store within iOS 7, and the improved Safari browser which looks like Chrome which includes tabs.  The expansion of different languages for SIRI.  Most of the changes improve the user experience, but there I didn't find anything that is earth shaking or disruptive.     

Courtesy of an article dated June 10, 2013 appearing in Mashable