ImaginativePRO Blog

AN ARIZONA COUPLE BUILDS A DELUXE 'CATIO' FOR THEIR 16 CATS COMPLETE WITH AN ENCLOSURE, RAMPS, PERCH POLE AND KOI POND

You know those people whom stray animals just seem to find? When it comes to cats, Tom and Liz are those people. At present 16 cats have found their way into their hearts and home. Some are shelter cats once deemed unadoptable, others have wandered onto their property, and a few came from various relatives who could no longer care for them. For this reason we’re withholding their last names and exact location, lest anyone get any ideas about leaving more cats with them. Tom and Liz love to save cats, but they are at their limit. 

When the couple moved to this home in Paradise Valley, Arizona, cat safety and quality of life were priorities. Their property is about an acre, surrounded by desert wilderness. Predators like coyotes, great horned owls and foxes prowl nearby, and even some of the plant life around can injure cats. A secure enclosure was a must. Here’s how they created cat heaven.

Beautiful tabby feline stares through the wire fencing in one of the 'Catio' cages (Click Image To Enlarge)

The enclosure is about 600 square feet total. Tom began by sketching out his ideas and rendering his plans using 3-D software. While he had a good understanding of construction and framing, he enlisted some help in setting the redwood fence posts in concrete. The rest of the work he completed by himself on nights and weekends. The project took a few months.

Tom and Liz used 4x4 fence posts to build several cat perches in the kitty enclosure (Click Image To Enlarge)

Liz says.

“The friends that helped with the fence posts already knew our cats.  It was a labor of love on their part.”

The metal you see here is plastic-coated galvanized fencing. The vertical posts are 4- by 4-inch redwood fence posts; the horizontal ones are 2-by-4s. The entire redwood structure has a waterproof stain.

Bird netting overhead protects the cats from winged predators. Shade sails provide relief from the sun.  Liz says.  

“Unfortunately, they’ve become hammocks and suspension bridges.”

Tom installed a system of 'catwalks' to allow his kitties roam and throughout the 'Catio' (Click Image To Enlarge)

Tom installed a system of catwalks, ramps and steps to connect the “catio” to the main house and the guesthouse.

Here is Tom working on the steps from the guesthouse to the top of the kitty enclosure (Click Image To Enlarge)

Here is Tom working on the steps from the guesthouse to the top of the kitty enclosure. The guesthouse is now a full-time cat residence, complete with linoleum floor and fiber-reinforced plastic on the walls, which can be easily wiped down.

Along the catwalk is "the clestial viewing platform." (Click Image To Enlarge)

Along the catwalk system is “the celestial viewing platform,” as the couple calls it. The cats enjoy sitting and taking in some of the best views on the property here.

A ramp leads from a platform along a catwalk to another ramp that goes to the ground level (Click Image To Enlarge)

A ramp leads from a platform along a catwalk to another ramp that goes to the ground level.

The experts at The Pond Gnome installed a pond inside — a habitat for koi, goldfish and mosquitofish (Click Image To Enlarge)

The experts at The Pond Gnome installed a pond inside — a habitat for koi, goldfish and mosquitofish. Contrary to popular belief, the cats don’t go after the fish, but they do enjoy watching them.

Liz and Tom are teaching the koi to come when they are called via treats (Click Image To Enlarge)

Liz and Tom are teaching the koi to come when they are called via treats (it’s a koi thing, they swear).   Liz says.  

“One day when a koi popped up for a treat, he scared the daylights out of Sylvia,”

Several cats congregate around the pool to view the koi, obviously for a nice snack (Click Image To Enlarge)

While they planned on lots of quality cat-visit time out in the enclosure, Tom and Liz were surprised to find how much they enjoy just hanging out in here, too. Liz says.  

“The sound of the water is so relaxing, and the cats just love it when we’re in there.  Our friends who love and know the kitties also enjoy coming out and having a glass of wine with all of us out here.”

The centerpiece of the cat enclosure is a rock garden with the cat perching pole and koi pool inside it (Click Image To Enlarge)

I know what you want to ask but are too polite to. The answer is, they rake out the enclosure once a week, and the cats also have litter boxes indoors. In fact, the couple is even training the cats to use the toilet in the guesthouse. I forgot to ask if they got the idea from Meet the Parents.

The cat enclosure is a work in progress. The to-do list includes adding rain gutters, box planters and cat grass along the perimeter. Some special cat doors that operate via magnets will control which cats can access the main house while barring those with spraying issues.

Liz says. 

“Several of our cats were deemed unadoptable, but all it took was someone who knows cats to adopt them,”  “Now they seem to say, ‘Hug me! Hug me now!’”

COMMENTARY:   Well, that's what I call a great idea if you love lots of cats.  You definitely need some kind of enclosure to keep them under control.   I didn't see any protection for the koi fish. It would be a huge shame if one of the cats were to catch a koi and kill it.  Koi fish are very expensive--upwards of $1,500 each.  What a shame that would be.

Courtesy of an article dated November 22, 2013 appearing in Houzz

APPLE'S NEW iPAD MINI 2 WITH RETINA DISPLAY AND A7 PROCESSOR EARNS HIGH MARKS BY 'THE VERGE'

Finally, the iPad Mini that Apple evangelists really wanted, and here's why.

Last year, the overwhelming message of the iPad mini was simple: the iPad mini was smaller, but it was still an iPad. Tim Cook, Phil Schiller, and Jony Ive all reminded us over and over that Apple had to make hard choices to make the iPad mini — it had a lower-resolution screen and a weaker processor — but said that the iPads’ commonalities trumped their differences.

In many ways, that was true: Apple’s experience has always mattered more than its specs, and the iPad mini converted buyers and fans alike despite the compromises. But even for those who bought Apple’s tablet, there was one feature noticeably missing: a bright, beautiful, high-resolution Retina display. Without one, the Apple experience feels obfuscated in ways both literal and figurative.

This year, the iPad mini with Retina display really is every inch an iPad. It’s no longer out of date, or worse in any way.  It comes with the same A7 processor as the new iPad Air, the same storage and connectivity options, the same battery life, and — most importantly — a Retina display with the same resolution. For $399 with 16GB of storage, it’s everything the iPad Air can be — only smaller and $100 cheaper. 

Last year, Apple needed to convince us that specs didn’t make the iPad. This year, equality isn’t just about offering the same look and the same apps – it’s about offering the exact same experience. Now, like the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air and like every TV you’ve ever purchased, there isn’t a better option and a cheaper option. There are just two options: iPad Air and iPad mini.

 

Miniaturized

The iPad mini with Retina display looks like the iPad Air, which looks like last year’s iPad mini — Apple overhauled the larger model to look like the smaller, and left the mini mostly untouched. The new mini is actually slightly thicker and heavier than last year’s model — the same thing happened when the iPad 3 first adopted the Retina display — but even though you do notice the slight extra heft as you hold them both in your hands, it makes little practical difference. This is still a light (0.73 pounds), thin (7.5mm) tablet that feels comfortable in my hands and looks great on my desk.

It’s wider than most tablets its size, and I found it hard to hold and use in one hand; grabbing the iPad mini in either orientation by both its bottom corners and using my thumbs on the screen has always been my go-to way of holding it. That’s why I miss TouchID here more than on the Air — I pick up the mini the same way I pick up my phone, and laying my finger on the home button now feels so natural.

iPad Mini 2 has two stereo speakers located on bottom on both sides of the Lightning connector. (Click Image To Enlarge)

Two stereo speakers sit on either side of the Lightning connector on the bottom — they sound pretty good, but they’re all too easy to cover when you hold the mini sideways. There’s a 5-megapixel camera on the back — I still shake my head judgmentally at anyone taking a picture with their tablet, but at least the mini’s not quite as ridiculous as the larger Air, and pictures don’t look so bad either. The FaceTime HD camera on the front, along with the noise-canceling dual-mic setup, makes for a potent tablet Snapchat combination.

The iPad Mini 2's camera lens, power on-ff and camera button are located on the top left corner of the device (Click Image To Enlarge)

The mini comes in Apple’s two favorite colors, silver and space gray, neither of which I like as much as the dark, dangerous black of last year’s model. Both models are beautifully made and virtually seamless save for the radio module on the LTE model, though they’re the sort of cold machinery that sits in stark contrast to the warm, soft, inviting feel of the Nexus 7. There’s no question that the mini is more impressive and more beautiful, but actual comfort lies in the eye of the beholder.

Save for the colors, you’d likely never notice the difference between last year’s iPad mini and the new model. But as soon as you press the tablet’s single circular button and turn the screen on, you can’t help but see it.

Backside of the new iPad Mini 2 (Click Image To Enlarge)

Retina dreams

The biggest difference between the two iPad models, for me, was never about consumption versus creation. It was time. The iPad mini was perfect for short bursts of attention: small enough to hold in one hand or use in a crowded subway, portable enough to go everywhere with me all the time. But the larger iPad was where I found myself lost for hours, spending an entire afternoon reading a book or binge-watching an entire season of Scandal. It was bigger, brighter, higher-res, and ultimately just more immersive.

"THE MINI'S SCREEN IS SMALLER, BUT IT'S EVERY BIT AS GOOD"

That may still be true — there’s just something more inviting about a big screen — but the gap has narrowed considerably. The iPad mini with Retina display now has a 7.9-inch display with the same 2048 x 1536 resolution as the iPad Air, and thanks to its smaller size has even higher pixel density.

It’s gorgeous. Text looks like it’s printed on paper, details in photos come through crisp and clean, and everything about the mini justlooks better. Side by side with this year’s model, the old mini appears to be covered in a thin layer of grit; it feels horrifically blurry next to the crystal clarity of the Retina display. I never really had a problem with last year’s model, honestly, but after an hour of looking at the new display it’s all but impossible to go back.

The iPad Mini 2's retina display offers excellent resolutionfor both images, videos and text (Click Image To Enlarge)

Suddenly I found myself wrapped up in Thomas Pynchon’s Bleeding Edge, reading for hours on the iPad mini. I found myself, if not able to work comfortably, at least able to get things done in a pinch thanks to the new, free iWork apps on the device. I started editing photos and video on the device, something I’ve only ever done on the larger iPad, because it works just as well here. Last year’s model was incredibly convenient, so I used it a lot; this one I use because it offers everything I’ve ever appreciated and expected from any iPad. That, and because it’s still incredibly convenient.

GREAT SCREENS AREN'T HARD TO COME BY ANYMORE

Here again, however, the Nexus 7 puts up a remarkable fight.  Its 7-inch, 1920 x 1200 display is almost exactly as pixel-dense as the iPad mini (323ppi for Google’s tablet, 324ppi for Apple’s), and I actually prefer its narrower form-factor for reading. But the iPad’s 4:3 aspect ratio is much more amenable to being used in both orientations — the 16:10 Nexus 7 is perfect for watching movies in landscape mode, but much too short for browsing the web or using most apps — and as a result the iPad’s a more versatile tablet.

That versatility isn’t just about the hardware, either. It’s about the software.

475,000 Tablet-Optimized iOS Apps

Four hundred seventy five thousand. That’s how many tablet-optimized apps are in the iOS App Store, a number Tim Cook said loudly and proudly as he announced the new iPads a few weeks ago. The message at that event was clear: tablets are as tablets do. And Apple’s tablets do more.

Android and iOS each offer hundreds of thousands of apps for smartphones, and with fewer and fewer exceptions, nearly any app anyone would want is available on both platforms. On tablets, it’s another story entirely; Apple likes to talk about how much more its tablets are used than anything running Android, because it illustrates the simple fact that there’s no equivalent tablet experience to the iPad’s. Paper, Star Walk HD, Ridiculous Fishing, and Byword are all apps I use often that simply don’t exist on Android tablets. There are dozens of other examples. Many apps thatare available on Android — even Facebook and Twitter – come only in clunkier, blown-up-phone-app form.

"ANDROID IS CATCHING UP TO IOS IN SMARTPHONES, BUT TABLETS ARE ANOTHER STORY"

Magazines look far better on the iPad’s Newsstand than on any Android tablet (though Google’s catching up in that regard), and AirPlay compatibility plus apps like Amazon Instant Video turn the iPad mini into a media machine the Nexus 7 can’t equal. The basics do exist on both platforms: if all you need is Netflix and Hulu and Kindle and Flipboard, keep your $170 and buy the $229 Nexus 7. But you won’t be getting the full tablet experience, the gamut from DJ tools to recipe app that only the iPad can offer.

All 475,000 apps work on both iPads, at the same Retina resolution. Because both tablets come with Apple’s new A7 processor, they even run the apps the same way. That’s almost always a good thing — the A7 is capable of running everything from a 1080p video to a hair-raising game of Infinity Blade III without signs of cracking. The new model scored more than five times higher than the old in GeekBench (2516 vs. 497), and scored basically identically to the iPhone 5S and iPad Air. Simply put: it’s really fast.

The iPad Mini 2's screen resolution is excellent (Click Image To Enlarge)

Pixels versus processors

Doing everything on such a high-res screen does take its toll — the mini dropped frames and stuttered while I played Asphalt 8: Airborne, and even occasionally hiccuped while playing a high-res video. It’s never a problem, but it’s there. The A7 also powers the iPhone 5S , which it does much more easily; it’s clear that more pixels simply mean more strain. The tablet also has a propensity for warming up during gameplay or heavy multitasking, too. It never gets worryingly hot, but my fingertips would occasionally start to sweat as I held the iPad in them.

In everyday use, the iPad mini feels fast, smooth, and solid. Except when iOS 7 gets in the way, as it has a tendency to do in a variety of small but annoying ways. When you pinch with five fingers to close an app, the icons jitter and jerk into place. When you tap on the 123 to switch from letters to numbers in the keyboard, it can take a second. Swiping down on the screen to search your device brings out similar stutters, and even multitasking can be imprecise. My review unit also had a tendency to simply reboot about once every 48 hours, an oddity without rhyme or reason that I’ve noticed in the iPhone 5S as well.

"THE A7 IS FAST, BUT HIGH-RES SCREENS ARE DEMANDING"

I’m getting used to the core tenets of iOS 7. I still don’t like the slow animations or the often-needless representations of layers and transparency, but I’ve come to understand the OS for what it is. As we discovered with the iPad Air, though, iOS 7 isn’t finished or polished on the iPad, not by a long shot. And in places it just feels wrong: the huge, overgrown Siri interface, or the sharing menus that pop up in odd, hard-to-reach corners. On the iPad mini with Retina display, where there are few real problems to divert your attention, the little things start to stand out.

More powerful processors and higher-density displays aren’t typically good news for battery life, but on the iPad mini at least they’re not a problem. The mini with Retina display easily gets the 10 hours of battery life Apple advertises, and that’s with heavy, constant use; in most cases the battery should easily last three or four days. There is one notable exception: with brightness all the way up, longevity plummets to only about four hours. But maximum brightness was too bright for me anyway, and at about 50 or 60 percent it’s a seriously long-lasting tablet.

The iPad Mini 2 with Retina display easily gets the 10 hours of battery life Apple advertises, and that’s with heavy, constant use (Click Image To Enlarge)

Wrap-up

The iPad mini with Retina display is a fantastic tablet, but one that defies categorization. On one hand, it’s most competitive with the Nexus 7 and Amazon Kindle Fire HDX, other high-resolution small tablets. But those are $229, fully $170 less than the $399 iPad mini, and they’re much smaller as well. (The difference between a 7-inch, 16:9 or 16:10 screen and a 7.9-inch, 4:3 screen is much more significant than it sounds — there are more than 33 percent more pixels on the iPad mini than the Nexus 7.) For some users, saving money might be the right idea, too: the Nexus 7 is a fantastic device for reading and watching movies, and as long as Google’s Play Store has the apps you need it’s absolutely worth considering.

The Apple iPad Mini 2 with Retina display (WIFI) earned an overall score of 9.3 Verge Score. (Click Image To Enlarge)

If you’re buying a tablet to keep, though, one to explore and grow into, the App Store becomes an absolute trump card. You’re paying $170 for access to 475,000 apps, including virtually all of the best options designed for a larger screen. Android can’t touch the iOS ecosystem on tablets. When you’re deciding whether to buy a Nexus 7 or iPad mini, you have to decide how deep down the rabbit hole you want to go — because the basics are covered beautifully in both cases, but there’s much more depth in Apple’s world.

The Breakdown - Apple iPad Mini 2 (Click Image To Enlarge)

On the other hand, what if you want to buy an iPad? Which one do you buy? Tim Cook might say both, but the real answer is it doesn’t matter. In talking to people about the new iPads, I’ve found everyone has an instinctive reaction — some people like the portability and smaller package of the mini, others appreciate the large screen of the Air. Some are price-conscious, others weight-conscious, others space-conscious, but everyone seems to lean one way or the other.

To those people, I say: go for it. You can’t lose. I’d buy a mini for myself, because I love having something that doesn’t take up much space in my bag and that I can wield even on a crowded subway. But the mini is now so beautiful and so immersive that you’ll never want to look away from the screen, and the Air now so portable and usable that you’ll rarely need to put it down. The mini used to be the lesser one, the reductive one, the one you bought if you couldn’t fit or afford the iPad. Now it’s just the smaller one.

Photography by Michael Shane

COMMENTARY:   Excellent review and overall high grade for the new iPad Mini 2, but the question that I would like to know is whether the iPad Mini 2 will hurt sales of the iPad Air.   Offering a smaller version of the iPad Air, which is essentially what the iPad Mini 2 is, could definitely cannabolize sales of the iPad Air because of the lower entry price.  

In any event, for my money the Google Nexus 7 2 is every bit as good as the iPad Mini 2.  I have yet to experience "Android Hell."   And it's $200 cheaper for the 16gb version.  So why spend more?!!   In my opinion, there are more than sufficient apps to satisfy the needs of most users.  

Courtesy of an article dated November 14, 2013 appearing in The Verge

BRAZILIAN GOVERNMENT ASKS 'LOVE' MOTEL OWNERS TO CONVERT THEIR ROOMS IN PREPARATION FOR WORLD CUP AND OLYMPIC GAMES

An expected shortage of accommodation has seen hotel prices already rocket to over 500 per cent.

World Cup fans heading for Brazil next year could find they are booking into sex motels as government tourism bosses look for ways to tackle the expected shortage in hotel accommodation.

The owners of “love” motels are being asked to convert their traditionally downmarket rooms into mid-market affordable lodgings in response as Ministry of Tourism research shows that hotel prices have already rocketed to over 500 per cent.

Motels rising to the challenge are undergoing fundamental changes including switching off 24-hour erotic channels and installing internet access. Some are even changing the M to the H.

The traditional short-stay accommodation, with drive-in bookings for a few hours at a time, is being standardised in-line with hotel reservations. The aphrodisiac finger-food menu, normally served through a hatch in the room to maintain privacy, is being phased out as the industry dispenses with rudimentary kitchen crew and hires chefs to provide a breakfast menu.

Antonio Morilha, director of the Brazilian Association of Motels (ABMotéis) told The Independent.

“We are trying to establish a new class of motel that provides a quality service and hospitality that rivals traditional hotels.  We are also working on a classification system with stars, similar to what already exists for hotels and we’re waiting for government approval.”

The organisation is also drawing on the services of leading architects to help owners improve their interior look. Out is the typically seedy flock red wallpaper and old-fashioned furniture with round beds and in is a cleaner more sophisticated décor.

Some motels keen to hold on to the signature mirrors-on-the-ceiling look are being advised to think twice if they want to qualify for children on the premises. Brazilian law prohibits minors in these establishments.

According to ABMotéis, the daily charge for motels is half the price of hotels in a similar category. However, analysts predict prices may radically change with the upgrade.

COMMENTARY:    The Shalimar love hotel located in Leblon, a very upscale and swanky neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro, is going family-friendly.  Workers strip mirrored paneling off the ceiling, as another pries up the fiberglass shell of a whirlpool bath. A third man takes a sledgehammer to a life-size statue of Venus de Milo posing topless with a swirl of plaster robes hanging from her waist.

The Shalimar Hotel 'Shalimar' suite (Click Image To Enlarge)

Like about a third of the city’s 180 hotels that rent rooms by the hour, mostly for amorous rendezvous, the Shalimar is trading its oversized round beds and bondage-ready chairs for proper couches, functional desks and other businesslike furnishings. The goal is reinvention as a standard pay-by-the-day tourist hotel.

With the 2014 World Cup soccer tournament in June 2014 and the 2016 Olympic Games arriving in this seaside city (and other cities), local officials are scrambling to solve a chronic hotel bed shortage so severe that during a UN conference here last year, the mayor had to appeal to residents to open their apartments to visitors.

The Shalimar Hotel 'Medieval' suite complete with chains (Click Image To Enlarge)

The plan? Slash property taxes for love hotels, known as “motels” in Portuguese, that agree to tone down the decor and free up 90 percent of their rooms for the tens of thousands of visitors expected to flood the city.

Antonio Cerqueira, a vice president of the Rio chapter of the ABIH hotel owners association, Brazil’s largest, said. 

“Motels have all the know-how to be able to put people from around the world up in style.  What throws people is really just the decoration.”

The Shalimar Hotel 'Ipanema' suite (Click Image To Enlarge)

With only 25,000 beds, or just half the estimated 50,000 needed for the Olympics, authorities here hope to add about another 6,000 beds through motel conversions, Cerqueira said. New hotels with another 14,500 beds are also in the works, he added.

By comparison, the last Olympic city, London, has some 110,000 hotel beds.

Brazil’s love hotels are virtual temples of kitsch and a longtime staple in the world’s largest Catholic country, where young people have tended to remain at home until marriage.

Giant, coin-operated vibrating beds compete for prominence with bubbling baths built for two; mirrors proliferate, covering nearly every surface, and condoms and other sex-related paraphernalia share space in minibars with cans of beer and chocolate bars. A maze of towering walls or dense shrubbery shrouds the motels from prying eyes, with individual, covered parking spots that lead directly into rooms. Many offer remote check-in that doesn’t require looking anyone in the eye. Theme rooms, sexed-up variations on medieval, swinging sixties, or tropical paradise motifs, abound.

Teacher Paula Moura said motels were an institution in Rio’s cultural landscape, and would be sorely missed if they disappeared. She said she used to go at least once a month with her boyfriend.

She said.  

“We’d dress up, look for different ambiances.  Plus you don’t have mirrors like that at home!”

Now that she’s unattached, she likes them because they’re a neutral space, she said.

She said.

“You don’t bring someone you don’t know well into your house, and you don’t expose yourself by going over to their house.”

Removing the sexy flair and giving the rooms a more neutral cast cost $15,000-$25,000 per unit, said Cerqueira, an investment that stands to be partially offset by a 40 percent reduction in city property taxes through 2019.

Motel operators are still in talks with city officials over the finer points, but Cerqueira said he expects the deal to be inked by the end of the month.

Love hotels in Brazil have been on the decline since the 1990s, with most struggling to reach 50 percent occupancy. Conventional Rio hotels regularly hit an 80 percent rate and completely sell out at peak times such as New Year’s and Carnival, said Cerqueira. Plus, because love hotel rooms must be cleaned and sterilized after each occupancy, which generally doesn’t last more than a handful of hours, they’re more expensive to operate than conventional hotels.

Cerqueira said. 

“Mores have been getting more liberal, and young couples who a generation ago would have had no choice but go to a motel are now welcome to stay at home.”

Most motel clients are married couples visiting on a lark, business travelers looking to save money by renting by the hour and the sector’s perennial staple: adulterers.

Decorator Fabiola Brandao has been working her way through the Shalimar renovations room by room over the past four years, revamping 25 of the hotel’s 61 rooms to date.

Brandao said.

“We usually do two or three rooms at a time, and kind of try to block off the area where the work is being done.”

Still, no matter how discreetly workers attempt to work, the banging of jackhammers and pop of nail guns often prove impossible to muffle.

Brandao said.  

“In those circumstances, we say to the client, ‘Can we upgrade you to a better room, with a better view?' And then we send up a complementary bottle of champagne. It usually does the trick.”

She added.  

"The new rooms are the kind of place where you can stay for more than an hour without running away screaming.” 

Toth the renovated and old-style rooms range in price from $34-$190 for a 12-hour rental, the preferred length of stay for business travelers.

The Shalimar’s management is planning to overhaul nearly all the units ahead of the Olympics, leaving but a few theme rooms, like the iron chain-strewn medieval suite.

Motel operators hope the tourist gold rush brought by the World Cup and Olympics will last far after sports fans have left. Despite its world-famous Carnival, the city attracts around 3 million foreign visitors per year, only twice the number of tourists London typically receives in the month of August alone.

Cerqueira said, citing the examples of 1992 host city Barcelona and Sydney, where the 2000 games were held.   

“We’ve seen it happen before that hosting the Olympics really puts a city on the map.  Rio de Janeiro has so much to offer, the beach, the spectacular cityscape, and with everything that’s happening we can only expect for interest to grow. We’ll be ready for it.”

Wow.  LOL.   The fact that Brazil's government is converting love hotels into tasteful accommodations for tourists staying in Brazil during the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics says they have a crisis on their hands.   Anyone contemplating attending the World Cup or Olympics is faced with a serious dilemna.  Never mind that prices for practically everything will easily double or even triple during these events, but not knowing where you might have to stay, or having no choice in the matter, and having to pay sky high prices, is a nightmare situation.  

Courtesy of an article dated October 29, 2013 appearing in The Independent and an article dated February 18, 2013 appearing in The Courier News Online

RETAILERS HOPE TO BAG RIVALS' CUSTOMERS ON TWITTER POACHING PURCHASERS VIA SOCIAL 'CONQUESTING'

Google “conquesting” has long been an e-commerce practice where marketers buy ads targeted at consumers searching for other brands’ products. But for holidays 2013, ’tis the season for poaching customers on a particular social platform that just went public.

Ammiel Kamon, evp of marketing and mobile at Kontera said. 

“The new conquesting game in town is Twitter.  Brands’ mentalities have gone real time.”

Retailers themselves aren’t talking publicly about the nascent area of Twitter hijacking, although Kamon works with a number of clients that are gearing up to nab customers from rival merchants. Per industry sources, last year Walmart was hugely successful in exploiting competitors’ problems like product availability or delivery deadline issues. The retail giant tweeted at consumers who had such issues with adversaries like Best Buy. Walmart’s Twitter Elves, the firm’s dedicated customer team on the social site, seemingly found the consumers by searching “@bestbuy” on the platform before pushing a counteroffer.

In a cutthroat marketplace, this tactic is fair game, said Jeffrey Roster, Gartner retail analyst.

He said. 

“I can’t imagine anybody that puts a complaint out on Twitter wouldn’t be thrilled that someone read it and responded.  I think it’s a great idea and is a good early example of the next arena that retailers will be battling in [via] social media.”

But the practice isn’t without risk, said Ken Wisnefski, CEO of WebiMax.  He said.  

“If you tweet that you have a product the competitor doesn’t have on Black Friday, you better have it in stock because people are going to drive across town to your store or spend time visiting your website.”

And they might complain about that experience on Twitter. Real-time conquesting involves a very public, potentially circular nature, unlike the Google version of the practice that targets users in a vacuum.

Nimble CEO Jon Ferrara said.

“On Twitter, everyone can see people talking to a brand or about topics like big-screen TVs.  And then you can engage with users who are researching those things.”

Sarah Cave, managing director at Retail-X, added, “This practice isn’t widespread yet, but you are going to see more of it because it makes a lot of sense.”

This is the first holiday season that retailers have in-house targeting software available for paid Twitter promos. The iPad launch last month provided a glimpse into poaching via Twitter ads, as Samsung, Nokia and Microsoft bought Promoted Tweets around Apple’s tablet debut. Per data firm Mashwork, Nokia scored highest for jumping on the iPad news, getting retweets, favorites and replies galore in a matter of hours.

So, expect holiday retailers to use these new tools to zero in on Twitter conversations.

David Deal, president of David J. Deal Consulting said.

“Retailers are using social in a more competitive way.  I think it’s smart, and it’s fair.”

COMMENTARY:     Many companies like Dell or Moonfruit have discovered Twitter as a separate sales channel. Both use rather similar strategies: They either offer special discounts or work with giveaways to attract followers, drive traffic to their sites and boost sales. In 2008 (when Dell was one of the first companies to use Twitter as a direct sales channel) the social network had made Dell over $ 1 million in revenue already.

So how exactly can brands poach Twitter for customers?

Actually there are many ways to use Twitter to increase sales and enhance your business. One of them is to scan the network for negative feedback surrounding your competitors in order to then contact the dissatisfied individuals with an alternative offer of yours. Here is a step by step guide on how to poach customers using Twitter:

1. Set up a Hootsuite account (Tweetdeck works too) and add a new tab – you can call it “competitors”.

2. Click on the new tab and and choose “add column“.

3. Now pick “search” and use the following syntax to scan Twitter for negative feedback about a competitor:

“Competitor’s name” negative-term OR negative-term OR negative-term OR  OR ? OR negative-term

Here is an example using “Dell” as my competitor:

“Dell” sucks OR hate OR  OR ? OR problem OR issue OR expensive OR broken

(The “:(” will show you all tweets that contain a frown and the “?” will show you tweets where the competitor’s name is mentioned together with a question)

4. Click on “Create Column“. Now the column is going to update automatically with all tweets containing your competitor’s name and one of the above specified negative terms.

5. Repeat for other competitors or possible variations of their names.

6. Scan the tweets that appear in each column and look for messages like this:

“@XXX Yeah they do but a few of my friends have Dell laptops and they have broken after like a year. I want a good one. My PC sucks! :O(“

7. Now you have two possibilities of contacting the two potential customers you just found (the author and the person the tweet was directed to). You can either “join” the conversation by using @reply, informing them about a great new offer of yours for an item that could cover the need or the problem expressed in their message. In this example a discounted offer for a high quality notebook could wake the interest of both individuals. Be careful though! Your competitors will be able to see your @replies and if you do this too often you might be perceived as disruptive and spammy in general. @replies do have the advantage though that they can be retweeted and can generate additional buzz.

8. If you prefer to contact the individuals discreetly using direct messages you first need to make sure that those people follow you. In order to do that your safest bet is to follow them first. Often people will (automatically or manually) follow you back – especially if the person’s number of followers is close to the number of people he/she is following. Then you can write a direct message to the potential customers including your offer. You will have to find a middle way between DMs and @replies – as DMs often aren’t read due to the number of automated spam emails clogging everyones’ inbox.

9. The most important rule here is to be personal. Adapt your offer and your message directly to the people you’re contacting and to the particular conversation you are referring to. Anyone who uses Twitter on a regular basis will have an eye for automated DMs and @replies and will ignore them as quickly as they pop up. The only way this strategy can work for you is if people don’t label you as “spam” and that will only be the case if you take the time to write personal messages.

More Twitter tips and guides can be found here.

Courtesy of an article dated November 10, 2013 appearing in AdWeek and an article dated March 22, 2010 appearing in twitip

ARE TWITTER ADS USELESS? THE ANSWER COULD BE A BIG "YES" JUST BASED ON THEIR TRAFFIC AND USER METRICS

Twitter rocked markets this week with a spectacular initial showing. But how do Twitter ads measure up against Facebook ads? Is it worth spending your ad dollars on Twitter?

When it comes to direct response marketing, AKA lead generation and/or Ecommerce, Google really takes the cake in terms of ad performance. However, if you’re set on creating a social media ad campaign, you’ll want to see how Twitter ads and Facebook ads compare.

In my article today, we’ll compare these two social giants across several pertinent criteria, including:

• Network Reach – Who has the largest audience?
• Ad Performance – Do Facebook and Twitter ads really drive results?
• Mobile Ad Performance – Who is dominating in the mobile space?
• Ad Formats – Which platform provides the most varied and effective ad types?

Let’s take a look!

Social Network Reach

Facebook gets a gold star for network reach, earning an A+ with its colossal 1.15 billion active users, sharing 4.75 billion items daily. Twitter’s reach isn’t too shabby, with 232 million active users tweeting 500 million times a day, but those numbers just can’t compare with Facebook’s.

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The Wall Street Journal theorizes that Twitter’s audience simply isn’t impressive enough to get advertisers excited, which might explain why Twitter owns only 13% of social media advertising budgets compared to Facebook’s 57%.

Ad Performance

Directly comparing Twitter vs. Facebook on ad performance is difficult since the two social networks use different metrics to measure performance (and Twitter keeps its cards close to the chest). However, we can dissect some data on how they stack up against one other.

Click Image To Enlarge

According to AdWeek, the “engagement rates” for Twitter ads can get as high as 1-3%, which is significantly higher than Facebook’s 0.119% CTR. Twitter’s advantage here is likely the result of their ad design – Twitter ads are in-stream, integrating ads with regular user content, rather than pushing ads off to the side as Facebook does. While this means that Twitter ads are seen more, Twitter’s average CPM (cost per impression) of $3.50 is much higher than Facebook’s $0.59.

Twitter Vs. Facebook: Mobile Ad Performance

Twitter’s design provides a big advantage when it comes to mobile ad performance. Twitter ads perform well on small screens, with ads seamlessly integrated into a user’s timeline to feel natural and organic. Facebook ads usually appear in the right rail, which isn’t even present in the Facebook mobile app.

Facebook does have one native ad format in the Facebook mobile app – the App Promotion Ad. However, for many businesses looking to advertise on mobile devices with Facebook, the App Promotion Ad isn’t applicable or desirable at all. In comparison, Twitter enables all of its ads to appear on desktop and mobile devices. Major win.

Here’s how Twitter and Facebook compare in terms of mobile performance metrics:

Click Image To Enlarge

Facebook leads with mobile ad market share, but we can predict major growth from Twitter – Twitter is expected to net $1.33 billion in worldwide ad revenue by 2015, and it’s expected that more than 60% of that revenue will come from mobile ads. You’ve heard it everywhere – mobile is the future, so Twitter is smart to be growing faster than Facebook in this category.

Ad Formats

Back in June, Facebook cut its ad format options in half, answering advertiser requests to simplify Facebook’s ad system. Robert Hof at Forbes notes that the new ad options make it easier for advertisers to accomplish specific goals, like gaining more fans and getting more app installs. However, if Facebook started off with 27 ad formats and is now down to 10, does that mean over half their initial ad formats were useless? That doesn’t do much to inspire the troops.

Twitter’s ad format offerings are much more simple by comparison:

• Promoted tweets
• Promoted accounts
• Promoted trends

We will likely see these ad options grow throughout the next year or so as Twitter makes more of an effort to boost its advertising strength.

So Which Should You Get Excited About? How About Neither?

When it comes to lead generation, Facebook beats Twitter, but both struggle. There just isn’t a ton of intent, especially compared to search engine marketing. Social platforms like Facebook and Twitter are a powerful option for engaging with fans and soft selling with content marketing, but the average small business isn’t likely to see much success when it comes to direct response marketing.

COMMENTARY:    It is a landslide for Facebook when compared against Twitter.  It's not solely that Facebook's audience is over four times larger than Twitter's, but the lack of engagement from its active users.  Of the 232 million MAUs Twitter reported for the quarter ending September 30, 2013, less than 5% are active on a daily basis.  Those users are the responsible for 80% of the tweets on Twitter.   Over 600 million users are inactive or spam accounts.   Simply put, Twitter has to find a way to increase user engagement, especially between users and brands, which is what matters when it comes to advertising.   Twitter, however, has one key advantage, 65% of Twitter's revenues are from mobile ads, while Facebook only generates about 48% of ad revenues from mobile.  But that advantage is mute when you consider the sheer numbers by which Facebook leads.   

Courtesy of an article dated November 12, 2013 appearing in Search Engine Journal 

 

TWITTER'S IPO IS OVERWHELMING SUCCESS, SHARES END AT $44.90, A 73% "POP" FROM $26 IPO PRICE, BUT QUESTIONS REMAIN

Twitter shares launched without incident Thursday, skirting the troubles that plagued rival Facebook in its debut last year and delivering the kind of hefty "pop" that investors in initial public offerings covet.

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"Phew!" tweeted Anthony Noto, the lead banker on the deal from Goldman Sachs moments after shares started trading.

Those five characters summed up the sentiment among those involved in the market debut of the 140-character messaging service, the second-biggest U.S.-listed Internet offering ever after Facebook.

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Shares opened at $45.10 on the New York Stock Exchange, up 73% from the $26 IPO price set Wednesday evening.   After a bit of a churn up, then down, the excitement quickly petered out.  Shares spent much of the day hovering around $46 before closing below the opening price, at $44.90.

Christopher Baggini, senior portfolio manager at Turner Investments, a Berwyn, Pa., firm managing about $9 billion in assets that bought shares at the IPO price, said.  

"They wanted this deal to work. They didn't want it to be in the penalty box like Facebook was for six months." 

The San Francisco-based company raised as much as $2.1 billion and ended the day with a market capitalization of about $25 billion. That made the six-year-old company bigger than more than half of the firms in the S&P 500 and larger than well-known brands such as Kellogg Co. and Whole Foods. 

(L-R) Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey, Twitter cofounder Evan Williams, and Twitter cofounder Biz Stone applaud as Twitter rings the opening bell at the NYSE. (Click Image To Enlarge)

The share price rise made Chairman Jack Dorsey a billionaire on paper. Chief Executive Dick Costolo's stake was worth $345 million by day's end. At Twitter's headquarters, its employees—some newly minted millionaires and many wearing T-shirts adorned with the company's bluebird logo—were feted with an overflowing doughnut tower and a lunchtime tasting menu featuring a grilled rack of lamb and fritters made of macaroni and cheese and roasted duck.

Fittingly, much of the merrymaking played out on Twitter with employees tweeting about co-workers who were tracking the stock.

 

Twitter has distributed nearly 86 million restricted stock units to its 2,300 employees. At Thursday's closing price, those units have a total value of $3.86 billion, or an average of $1.68 million per employee.

But the stock isn't divided evenly among employees. And they must hold the stock for at least one year before they can sell even one-quarter of it. The stock issued this year—more than half the total—can't be sold until August 2014.

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The outcome was a win for Goldman Sachs, which missed out on leading Facebook's megadeal to rival Morgan Stanley last year. And it looked good for the NYSE, which has pushed to sweep up more technology listings after the Nasdaq Stock MarketNDAQ bungled last year's Facebook debut. Facebook's offering was marred by a technology glitch and shares struggled for months, after a deal that critics say was too big and too expensive.

Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan & Co. led the Twitter deal along with Goldman.

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Twitter's offering wasn't a success for everyone. Because the stock gravitated little from its opening price—at one point cracking $50 before quickly declining—investors who didn't have an inside track to the $26 price and who bought Thursday hoping for a quick rise had little opportunity to sell. And some felt priced out in the $40s.

Nick Martinez, a Bronx-based investor who said he wouldn't pay more than $28, said. 

"Buying this stock at $45 is like a child waiting to grow into his parents' clothes." 

Untapped potential is what investors were paying for, as Twitter currently isn't profitable. At a share price of around $45, Twitter is "far and away" the most expensive stock in its peer group, valued at more than 20 times expected 2015 sales, said Mark Mahaney, Internet stocks analyst at RBC Capital Markets.

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That is nearly twice the level that user-generated reviews service Yelp trades at, and even further above where social networks LinkedIn and Facebook trade at, around nine times, according to RBC

Citing fast revenue growth, he said.  

 "I certainly think Twitter deserves the highest [valuation] in the space.  But whether it deserves double…is a hard position to hold."

The 73% first-day gain from Twitter's IPO price is far from unprecedented. Six U.S.-listed companies have seen their shares more than double in trading debuts this year, most recently Container Store Group last week.

But among U.S. IPOs raising $500 million or more—the larger companies less prone to first-day rallies—Twitter's opening-day gain ranks the eighth-biggest on record, according to Dealogic.

Glenn Carell, a senior floor broker at Barclays, quarterbacked Twitter's debut on the NSYE floor, matching buy and sell orders and deciding when to open the stock, and at what price.

Click Image To Enlarge

About 30 minutes before the opening bell, Mr. Carell had in hand orders to buy some 18 million shares of Twitter stock, a sizable amount compared with the 80.5 million share offering.

At 9:45 a.m. Mr. Carell barked out an initial, estimated trading price range at between $40 and $44. Over the next hour, as he juggled buy and sell orders, demand from investors suggested Twitter shares could open as high as $47 apiece. Then the range being called out on the exchange floor began narrowing.

Just before 10:49, Mr. Carell yelled, "The book is frozen," and reached down and tapped the "DONE" button on his keyboard.  That strike ended the stream of orders, fixed the opening "print" at $45.10, and Twitter became a public company.

About an hour later, Michelle Tandler got out of class at Harvard Business School and bought some shares at $45.69 through an E*Trade account.

Ms. Tandler, age 27, said she was drawn to Twitter because she is optimistic about companies that can "generate and capture tons of data," she said.

"I think it has a ton of potential still untapped."

Dan Greenshields, president of online brokerage Capital One ShareBuilder, said his firm saw triple the average daily new account openings on Thursday, with Twitter representing about 50% of all the firm's orders, primarily to buy shares.

The appetite for the shares suggests that Twitter "left money on the table" by not selling at a higher price.  At $45 a share, the company theoretically could have raised $1.5 billion more for itself than it did at $26.

But the company and its advisers judged that the additional money wasn't worth what could have been sacrificed had they priced it higher, namely good will with long-term investors who they hope will buy more shares in future offerings, the people said. Also, unlike with Facebook, Twitter insiders didn't sell shares, relieving the pressure to price shares higher.

For Twitter's employees, the IPO marks a turning point even if some of them can't tap their newfound paper wealth anytime soon.

Utkarsh Srivastava, an engineer at the company, said.  

"I remember waking up this early in the morning only for taking airplanes. Today it's for a rocket ship." 

—Julie Steinberg, Matt Jarzemsky and Steven Russolillo contributed to this article.

COMMENTARY:    To be totally honest, I was shocked when I heard that Twitter shares ended their first day of trading as a public company at $44.90, a pop of 73% above the IPO asking price of $26.00.  But, by Friday, November 8, 2013, Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) shares ended trading at $41.65 -- down 3.25 or -7.24%. It is obvious that a lot of investors who bought shares on the IPO day, cashed out their shares and made their profit.  Actually, 27 million+ shares exchanged hands on Friday, this is about a quarter of the number of shares (117 million) that exchanged hands on IPO day.   Twitter shares were back up over $44.00 one week after the IPO. 

Twitter's revenues for the twelve months ending September 30, 2013 were $452.1 million. Twitter's market capitalization at the end of trading on the IPO date was $24.457 billion.  This means that Twitter's market cap is 54 times its gross revenues.   Simply put, Twitter's shares are way over-valued when compared to other notable digital public companies:

• Facebook - Facebook's shares were worth $47.56 on November 7, 2013, for a total market capitalization of $116 billion or 16.88 times its gross revenues for the twelve months ending September 30, 2013.  
• Google - Google's shares were worth $1,007.95 on November 7, 2013, for a total market capitalization of $331.816 billion or 5.782 times its gross revenues for the twelve months ending September 30, 2013.
• LinkedIn - LinkedIn's shares were worth $211.47 on November 7, 2013, for a total market capitalization of $23.7 billion or 17.11 times its gross revenues for the twelve months ending September 30, 2013.
• Yahoo - Yahoo's shares were worth $32.11 on November 7, 2013, for a total market capitalization of $32.43 billion or 6.81 times its gross revenues for the twelve months ending September 30, 2013.

For a startup that has yet to generate a dime in profits, investors are buying Twitter shares simply for its future potential and all the investor hype generated in the secondary market and Wall Street.  If I were an investor I would be asking these questions about Twitter: 

"What is that potential, exactly?"

"Does Twitter's stock price reflect any 'hidden' values that are not reflected by the market?"

"What is it about Twitter that truly stands out and cannot be replicated by competitors?"

"What is Twitter's strategy to develop a business model that can generate predictable and sustainable revenues over the longterm?"

If you have been following my blog posts, you know how I feel about digital technology firms that depend almost solely on an ad-supported revenue model like Facebook, Twitter, AOL and Yahoo.  In a blog post dated March 20, 2011, I argued that Facebook's ad-supported revenue model has reached a critical inflection point as the number of users and advertising revenues slow.  We are already seeing strong evidence that Facebook's user growth has flattened or stalled.  

Facebook's ad revenues accelerated during 2013 due to the phenomenal growth in the number of monthly active users accessing their accounts via mobile devices (a factor I failed to take into account in my March 20, 2011 blog post), so it may appear that I am wrong in my assumptions, but rest assured, this is just a temporary condition.  In their most recent Q3 2013 earnings report, Facebook's mobile ad revenues represented nearly half of total ad revenues. Facebook investors went crazy over this, but it cannot be sustained over the long-term, and the fact that Facebook's share price has been dropping for its high of $55 reflects this market uneasiness.  The fact is this: Advertiser's are simply switching a portion of their ad budgets from desktop ads to mobile ads. Others are still standing on the sidelines, not sure how to deal with the new mobile advertising channel.  This is a sort of "zero-sum" game that digital technology firms are exposed to if they rely too much on an ad-supported revenue model, and many of them may not be even aware of it. 

Having said this, Twitter's management faces tremendous challenges easing Wall Street and Main Street investor concerns, that it can implement the right strategies to develop a sustainable business model that can generate sufficient and sustainable revenue growth to justify its huge price-to-revenues ratio of 54 times its gross revenues.  

Twitter has been the subject of tremendous criticism by Wall Street and social media analysts about its business model and plagued with a relatively long list of issues that it must overcome and fix in order to grow revenues sufficiently to generate a profit and justify its huge price to revenues ratio.  

• False or Spam Accounts - Back in April 2013 , Twitter's fake user population was estimated at 20 million accounts out of a total of 500 million. But Twitter spokesperson Jim Prosser also said at the time that 40% of Twitter accounts appear to be inactive because many people set up their accounts simply to "listen" to other people, rather than tweet themselves.  In its IPO S-1 filing, Twitter acknowledged that, "The numbers of active users and timeline views are calculated using internal company data that has not been independently verified.  While these numbers are based on what we believe to be reasonable calculations for the applicable period of measurement, there are inherent challenges in measuring usage and user engagement across our large user base around the world.  For example, there are a number of false or spam accounts in existence on our platform.  We currently estimate that false or spam acounts represent less than 5% of our MAUs.  However, this estimate is based on an internal view of a sample of accounts and we apply significant judgement in making this determination.  As such, our estimation of false or spam accounts may not accurately represent the number of such accounts, and the actual number of false or spam accounts could be higher than we have currently estimated. We are continually seeking to improve our ability to estimate the total number of spam accounts and eliminate them from the calculation of our active users, but we otherwise treat multiple accounts held by a single person or organization as multiple users for purposes of calculating our active users because we permit people and organizations to have more than one account. Additionally, some accounts used by organizations are used by many people within the organization. As such, the calculations of our active users may not accurately reflect the actual number of peole or organizations using our platform."
• 651 Million Users Have Abandoned Twitter -  Twopcharts, a company that has been monitoring Twitter registrations for years, says that the total number of registered Twitter accounts is currently 883 million.  That means 651 million accounts — about four times the number of active Twitter users — have been registered and then been abandoned by their owners.  Those 651 million accounts are Twitter's "dark pool" of users: the people who signed up and didn't like it. Their accounts continue to exist, unused, according to Twopcharts.   Twitter conveniently neglected to mention this problem in its S-1 IPO filing.
  
• Twitter's Growth Problem -  In its S-1 IPO filing, Twitter reported more than 215 million monthly active users. At the bare minimum, that means that as of June 30, the company has added on average only 15 million monthly active users since the company hit more than 200 million late last year.   Stack that up against Facebook’s 815 million monthly active users the company had at the time of its S-1 filing (As of September 30, 2013, Facebook reported it had 1.20 billion MAUs), and the message is clear:  Twitter is big, but it’s no social behemoth.
• Twitter's "Mobile Gap" -  Twitter isn’t supposed to have a mobile problem, since the company has been designed for phones from the start.  Recall that in the company’s early days, it was built specifically for text messages. And last year, when Facebook was flailing at mobile, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo made a point of telling people he was making real money from phones.  But it turns out that Twitter still has a mobile gap, just like everyone else:  When people use Twitter on their phones, they generate less money for the company.  Twitter doesn’t spell out the size of its mobile gap, but it does talk about it in its S-1 document.  The big problem:  Two of Twitter’s primary ad products — “Promoted Accounts” and “Promoted Trends” — don’t work very well on mobile phones because it’s hard for people to see them.  So that means that Twitter has “generated higher advertising revenue per timeline view on our desktop applications than on our mobile applications,” the company said.  And because 75 percent of Twitter users get to the service via a mobile device (at least some of the time), and because that number is likely to increase, the problem could become more acute: “To the extent that user engagement on mobile applications continues to increase faster than user engagement on our desktop applications, advertising revenue per timeline view may be adversely impacted even if total advertising revenue continues to increase.”  
• Twitter Product Development Problems - The company hasn’t had a profitable quarter yet, but if it is going to find success as a public company, that will have to change. And one of the ways it will change is through the introduction of new products. Unfortunately though, this is one place where Twitter has a problem, according to Mike Isaac of All Things D.  Isaac says the product culture is the opposite of that at Facebook, which moves quickly to roll out new products and features. He also says that this isn’t something new because it has been plaguing Twitter for many years now. Unfortunately, however, since Twitter is now a publicly traded company, it’s make it or break it time. Investors want to see new products that will rake in the dollars and bring in the new users. Without signs of growth toward profitability, Twitter itself will be in trouble.  
• Twitter's Average Revenue Per User Is Terrible - For Q3 2013, Twitter’s average revenue per user ticked up to 72 cents, even though the average user checked their timeline 1% less frequently compared to the previous quarter. The reason is that the revenue Twitter earned for every 1,000 timeline views grew from 80 cents to 97 cents between the second and third quarters.  Average revenue for the twelve months ending September 30, 2013 was only $1.95.  This is dark contrast with Facebook's $8.43 average revenue per user during the same period.  It is obvious that Twitter must find ways to increase MAUs and increase revenues from other sources besides advertising.
• Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings Could Be All Wrong - Recently, Nielsen and Twitter came up with another way for everyone to keep track of popular TV shows. They released the first installment of Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings, a weekly ranking of TV shows based on the total number of unique users who saw a related tweet on Twitter.   Some people expected the list of Nielsen Twitter TV rankings to correlate with the traditional Nielsen rankings. They did not. At all.  The biggest reason for the disparity in the rankings is that Twitter is not yet representative of the general US population. While almost 90% of Americans have heard of Twitter, only 18% of online US adults are Twitter users. According to the Pew Research Center, Twitter is most populated by 18- to 29-year olds. Yet, even among that group, only 30% of them use the site.  If major TV advertisers will depend on the weekly audience numbers reported Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings to place their ads, they could be wasting their advertising dollars.  This is a huge problem. 
• Twitter's UI Is Overdue For A Redesign - The premise of 140 character tweets, #hashtags, retweets, followers, following and lists has been baked into Twitter's UI since it was launched in 2006.  Although the latest UI is called the New Twitter, it is B-O-R-I-N-G.  In short, Twitter needs to change its look so that it is more appealing, fresher and exciting.  It must offer users more apps, ways to display their content, content filters and allow users more flexibility in customizing their home pages.  If it is true that 651 million users have abandoned Twitter, this could be the biggest contributor to that problem.  

It is obvious that Twitter has a lot of work if it is to continue to grow, increase revenues, generate profits, and remain competitive in the social marketplace.  If investors believe that today's Twitter price truly reflects the true state of Twitter and its future growth potential, they could not be more mistaken.

Twitter Faces Glut of Shares As Lock-up Periods Expire 

The supply of Twitter shares is set to increase dramatically in the months following the company’s IPO. For the first three months of Twitter’s life as a listed company, only the shares issued as part of the IPO will trade on the public markets; the remaining 87% of its outstanding shares will remain in “lock-up”—shares doled out to high-ranking employees and longterm investors that can’t be sold until long after the IPO. The lock-up structure is meant to stabilize the share price by staggering the available supply of shares.

Of the remaining 87% in lock-up, about 10 million shares held by non-executive employees will be available for sale in February; the bulk of the rest will hit the market in May.

When the expiration of Facebook’s lock-up period approached, short-sellers anticipated that employees and longterm shareholders would cash out and cause a glut of shares on the market, driving down the stock price. Groupon shares suffered a similar fate. 

Twitter acknowledges the risk of a similar fate in its IPO filing, the S-1 (p.46). But no one on Wall Street seems all that concerned. That’s partly because many analysts think Twitter will IPO with a more reasonable valuation than Facebook’s, which would in theory make its post-lock up shares more attractive and stable in price.

Courtesy of an article dated November 7, 2013 appearing in The Wall Street Journal, an article dated October 4, 2013 appearing in All Things Digital, an article dated November 10, 2013 appearing in ValueWalk, Twitter's S-1 IPO Filing, an article dated November 6, 2013 appearing in Business Insider, an article dated October 15, 2013 appearing in Quartz, an article dated March 20, 2011 appearing in PBT Consulting Blog, an article dated November 14, 2013 appearing in MarketingProfs, and an article dated November 6, 2013 appearing in Quartz

LG ANNOUNCES THE 'G FLEX', A SLICK SMARTPHONE WITH A CURVED 6-INCH OLED DISPLAY, BUT LACKS TRUE INNOVATION

LG announces 'self-healing' G Flex, calls it first 'real' curved smartphone -The Verge (Click Image To Enlarge)

LG's G Flex, the company's first smartphone with a curved OLED display, may have leaked via press renders and Argentinian TV shows before its eventual announcement, but today marked the first time we were able to see the device for ourselves. LG held a press conference in South Korea to announce launch details and provide us with an opportunity to see just how that curved screen works out in practice.

LG G Flex front view (Click Image To Enlarge)

Before you even notice the curve, you'll be taken aback by the sheer size of the G Flex. At 6 inches from corner to corner, the display beats out colossal rivals such as the HTC One Max despite having a comparatively low 720p resolution. While LG says the curvature of the screen makes viewing movies more "immersive," the size is likely to play a far stronger role in achieving that goal. In general use, we didn't find that the curve made much of a positive or negative impact either way.

LG G Flex side view. (Click Image To Enlarge)

Resolution aside, the display itself is as high quality as we've come to expect from LG in other regards. We found the G Flex impossible to use one-handed, however, and the screen's shape makes the phone even more difficult to pocket, if anything. Next to a Samsung Galaxy Nexus (below), which placed slightly curved glass in front of a standard OLED display, the arc is far more pronounced; this is thanks to LG's flexible OLED and curved battery technology. 

LG G Flex comparison to smaller Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone with 4-inch flat display (Click Image To Enlarge)

Otherwise, the industrial design is little to write home about: the G Flex looks just like a blown-up G2. Unfortunately we were unable to test the phone's most outlandish feature — its "self-healing" back cover — as LG representatives wouldn't let us scratch the device. As such, all we have to say about the phone's plastic build is that the "Titan Silver" finish is slippery and incredibly prone to picking up fingerprints.

LG G Flex close-up of OLED display (Click Image To Enlarge)

LG provided us with the following video demo of the truly flexible nature of the G Flex:

Ultimately the G Flex comes off as a proof of concept as much as anything. Although flexible screens may play a big role in the future, it's hard to consider phones like the G Flex and Samsung's Galaxy Round an effective application of the technology.  LG isn't even attempting to position the G Flex's display as an innovation that fundamentally enhances the smartphone experience — instead, the device is likely to appeal only to those who appreciate the tweaked form factor.  And even if that's you, you might be out of luck; the G Flex comes out in South Korea on November 12th, but nothing has been announced for other regions.

Update: LG officials have said that the company is working to release the G Flex globally. It's not ready to announce any specific availability information, but LG says it's making progress in bringing its flexible phone to the United States, Europe and China "as soon as possible."

COMMENTARY:    It's unfortunate that the LG G Flex smartphone, and Samsung Galaxy Round, for that matter, developed curved phones primarily for esthetic reasons, instead of leading the way in innovative technology, solving a real need in the marketplace, or disrupting an industry.  The iPhone was the first smartphone to utilize a touch screen and iOS operating system with its touch graphical user interface.   That was true technological innovation and disrupted the entire smartphone market.   These two curved phones are neither.  

LG G Flex vs Samsung Galaxy Round (Click Image To Enlarge)

In spite of the shortcomings of designing a curved smartphone, the LG G Flex will probably appeal to consumers who want a an extra large display, adequate display resolution, and a very fast microprocessor.  The fact that the LG G FLex is an Android phone, will not hurt either, since it provides owners with access to 800,000 apps to choose from.  That's a huge plus.

The LG G Flex and Samsung Galaxy Round are both configured with the Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800 processor, the first mobile processor to hand the iPad4's A6X (with its quad-core PowerVR SGX 554MP4 GPU) its graphical hat.

The A6X has consistently been the fastest ARM processor when it comes to graphical throughput since its release last November.  It's finally been supplanted, even if no real Snapdragon 800 products exist yet.

It is not known what effect the Snapdragon 800's impressive speeds will have on battery life. Qualcomm said to expect thermals that compensate for the chip's increased zippiness, but unfortunately didn't provide the number of hours (or more) it would take to actually test this.

Courtesy of an article dated November 5, 2013 appearing in The Verge, an article dated November 4, 2013 appearing in Engadget and an article dated June 18, 2013 appearing C|NET   

TESLA MOTORS REPORTS Q3 2013 RESULTS, LOSES $38 MIL, SOLD 5,500 MODEL S, BUT THIS WAS BELOW FORECAST, STOCK PLUNGES

California-based electric-car maker Tesla Motors said it lost $38 million in the third quarter, or 32 cents a share, according to GAAP, on revenue of $431 million.

That was worse than the 25-cent loss that analysts using GAAP had forecast.

Stock price tumbled more than $20, or 11.5%, to $155 in the first three hours of after-hour trading following the close of the Nasdaq exchange.

Tesla prefers to report results using non-GAAP methods — also known as adjusted results — under which it earned an adjusted $16 million in the quarter, or 12 cents a share, beating the non-GAAP forecast of 11 cents. Adjusted revenue was $603 million.

Acknowledging the adjusted results, but saying they weren't good enough, auto-industry analyst Brian Johnson at Barclays told clients in a note Tuesday afternoon:

"Results with somewhat slower ramp of Tesla S deliveries reinforce our view that Tesla had overshot in the past few months and is more properly valued at $141."

Tesla Model S electric luxury car and Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk at the company's factory in California. (Click Image To Enlarge)

CEO and founder Elon Musk earlier forecast 5,000 Model S deliveries in Q3. The company reported 5,500. Johnson had forecast 5,850.

Tesla on Tuesday predicted 6,000 Model S deliveries in the fourth quarter. Johnson wanted to see 6,603.

Tesla Motors Model S all-electric sedan. (Clik Image To Enlarge)

In a conference call with Wall Street analysts after the earnings announcement, Musk said,

"There is a huge amount of demand in North America" for the company's electric-power luxury cars. But U.S. sales might disappoint because the maker is capacity-constrained, "and we have to start delivering cars to Europe."

He noted that Tesla signed a new agreement with Panasonic for more cells that make up the power-pack of the Model S sedan as well as the Model X crossover SUV coming late next year and a third vehicle, priced about $35,000, after that.

The stock closed regular trading Tuesday at $176.81, up $1.61 or 0.9%.

Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) - Share Prices November 5, 2013 Through November 7, 2013 - Google Finance (Click Image To Enlarge)

Share price had been zipping upward since Oct. 30, after a 17% drop during that month. The recent climb came despite comments by Musk recently that the stock was overpriced.

An estimate by Nasdaq, where Tesla shares are traded, said that the stock was trading at a breathtaking 711 times earnings before the after-hours plunge Tuesday.

Karl Brauer, a senior analyst for auto researcher Kelley Blue Book, said.  

"Tesla's appeal is based as much on image and reputation as hard financial numbers. The company will likely remain on track, even after this quarter, as the financial darling of the car world." 

Selling Tuesday could have been investors locking in profits, rather than losing faith in the company. Regarded more like a volatile tech stock than a car-company stock, Tesla's share-price ride has been a wild one. Its 52-week high is $194.50 and the 52-week low is $29.33.This year, it's up more than 400%.

Musk has said a crossover SUV to be called Model X coming soon will be priced not much more than the Model S hatchback sedan, which starts at about $73,000.

In his quarterly letter to shareholders, Musk forecast fourth-quarter adjusted earningsabout even with third-quarter results.

But he said Q4 free cash flow would be "about break-even," which is a drop from the Q3 $26 million, a record for the company.

Musk said the company's cash on hand at the end of the quarter was $796 million, up $49 million from the previous quarter.

COMMENTARY:    Tesla Motors sold only 5,500 Model S sedans, well below the 5,850 forecast, and this setoff some alarms on Wall Street.  The financial results were not spectacular for a company whose stock has skyrocketed in value from $37.89 at the end of March 2013 to a high of $193.37 at the end of September 2013.  Wall Street really expected much better financial results from Tesla to justify its stock price performance.  The result was a drop in Tesla's stock of over 25 points at the end of trading on November 6.   The stock took another hit, dropping another 11.39 points on November 7 to end the day at $139.77.  

 

Tesla has yet to generate a profit, and is operating well below its breakeven point, the result is a net loss of $57.75 million for the nine months ending September 30, 2013.  This is substantially below the net loss of $306 million for the same period ending September 30, 2012, but this is still a loss, and investors are wondering when Tesla will begin generating a profit.  

Tesla Motors Inc - Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations (In Thousands) - Q3 2013 and Nine Months Ending September 30, 2013 - Tesla Motors (Click Image To Enlarge)

 Tesla Motors Inc - Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets in Thousands - Q3 2013 and Q3 2012 - Tesla Motors (Click Image To Enlarge)

Tesla Motors Inc - Reconciliations of GAAP to Non-GAAP Financial Information - Q3 2013 and Nine Months Ended September 30, 2013 - Tesla Motors (Click Image To Enlarge)

Although Tesla Motors's Model S sedan won Motor Trend Car of the Year in 2012 and garnered Consumer Reports highest grade for a car in 2012, the problem that I see is that Tesla is serving a niche market of mostly affluent, environmentally-conscience car buyers, and you have to wonder just how many Model S sedans it can sell at over $90,000 a pop, in a market that is basically finite in number, with the vast majority of sales in the U.S.   

A year ago I predicted that Tesla had to sell  21,000 Model S sedans just to breakeven.  The company has already sold 17,700 units through the end of September, and believes it will sell 21,000 Model S sedans by the end of the year.  At 17,700 units, Tesla is operating below this level, and hence it is losing money. What is really killing them is that they don't have enough fast charging stations installed and like many automakers, must continue to invest in R&D, to develop new vehicles and improve previous models.  For a small carmaker, this is a huge challenge, and a drain on cash.  

In short, Tesla simply doesn't have the sales volume at the high-end of the price spectrum with the Model S to sustain its growth, let alone its stock price.  However, the company plans on introducing a "moderately-priced" all-electric car that can go 200 miles on a charge, and will be priced starting at $30,000, in order to compete with the Chevy Volt and other electric cars in the mainstream electric market, which is much larger and broader in scope. That car won't be ready for market until 2015 so I see Tesla's stock taking an additional hit in Q4 and most of 2014.

Courtesy of an article dated November 5, 2013 appearing in USA Today 

MOBILE AD MEASUREMENT AND METRICS REMAINS A CHALLENGE AS THE NO OF MOBILE DEVICES AND MOBILE ADS INCREASE

 

Mobile advertising is a complex and fragmented ecosystem that needs to have sound and stable end-to-end measurement metrics to truly understand the attitudinal, behavioral, social media and transactional response that cover all elements of a mobile campaign. 

Consumers worldwide are rapidly shifting their media consumption to mobile devices. The mobile advertising ecosystem -- specifically smartphones and tablets -- presents huge opportunities (and unique ways) for brands and agencies to reach the right consumer at the right time and the right place using the right medium with the right advertising message.

However, despite the growth in the mobile advertising market, as well as the size of the audience, metrics and measurement of smartphone and tablet campaigns remains a significant challenge (and barrier) for agencies and brand marketers -- causing them to be more conservative in their mobile marketing spend and not fully embrace the channel.

While traditional metrics have been applied to the mobile industry, which makes sense to some extent, they don’t fully capture the breadth and depth of mobile -- which is capable of generating an incredible amount of intelligence around behavior and engagement with content, advertising, and real-world locations. Mobile advertising needs to have end-to-end metrics to truly understand the attitudinal, behavioral, social media and transactional response that cover all elements of a mobile campaign. This level of information will enable brands and agencies to measure performance and optimize at all phases of the campaign to ensure the best possible results. However, before we develop metrics that are more unique to the mobile ecosystem, we need to ensure that we have sound and stable measurement standards and reliable, consistent methodologies to understand audience behavior and ad effectiveness.

The mobile ecosystem -- which is complex, fragmented and both growing and evolving rapidly -- presents a very difficult challenge to develop an effective measurement framework.  In mobile, we have:  

• Mobile web 
• Mobile downloadable 
• Mobile search 
• Mobile video and TV 
• Mobile apps (the popularity of apps requires a measurement methodology that includes them as well)
• Mobile text messaging (SMS and MMS) potentially, and so forth. 

Each has attributes that are unique to the channel, creating a complex measurement environment.

In addition to these channels, the mobile measurement landscape is further confounded by the fact that there are multiple operating systems, varying technologies, handsets, devices/platforms, and carriers across smartphones and tablets. The various players involved use different (counting) methodologies, which causes massive discrepancies and inconsistent measurement, metrics and reporting standards -- all inhibitors to getting a clear view of a campaign's ROI. Basically, the problem is fragmentation of information.

This is why most in the space argue the need for a common set of reporting metrics and measurement standards for smartphones and tablets to unlock greater spending and value like with all other advertising. Determining bottom-line value is of the essence. In addition, in order for mobile to compete with online and traditional media vehicles, getting standardized measurements of success is crucial. After all, without metrics that are apples-to-apples, how will both buyers and sellers of mobile advertising have enhanced confidence that the performance and effectiveness of campaigns can be consistently and accurately measured?

Agencies and brand marketers need to be able to measure the results of their campaigns and do this in a manner that is more consistent, repeatable and scalable, allowing easy comparison of the effectiveness of each campaign. One of the greatest frustrations facing agencies and brand marketers is the lack of consistency between their online advertising campaign initiatives and mobile.

Measurement has become a critical element to quantify the mobile opportunity to drive brand involvement. With the introduction of greater accountability, accuracy and consistency -- via standardized definitions, measurement and (set of) metrics -- to the medium, agencies and brand marketers will no longer see mobile advertising as a "trial and error" exercise, but as an effective medium for reaching and engaging the most accurately targeted audience possible, and absolutely integral to:

• Demonstrating the value of the mobile channel
• Marketers learning how to use mobile most effectively
• Increasing the credibility of mobile advertising
• Establishing mobile as a legitimate advertising medium
• Increased investment in the mobile space
• Helping to determine what and how much to allocate to mobile
• Making mobile a cohesive and integral part of the marketing mix
• Prioritizing mobile against other media
• Measuring the effectiveness of mobile in multichannel advertising initiatives

The growth in consumer usage as well as the increase in ad spending on mobile platforms underscores the urgent need for greater transparency, improved methodologies and standards for mobile audience measurement and advertising effectiveness and industry-accepted currency. This will not be easy -- measurement rarely is -- and it will require the cooperation of all key stakeholders in the industry, something that is not easily done.

I am not advocating that the industry just adopt the (legacy) online measurement models and metrics without taking into account the specific strengths and unique characteristics of mobile advertising. Mobile has many facets, so it will be difficult to apply a "one size fits all" model to measurement and metrics. Mobile is one of those moments in media history when new consumption patterns are rapidly evolving, opening the door to new approaches to measurement and (deeper) metrics.

The value and success of mobile advertising isn't just about establishing standard measurement and metrics; it’s about figuring out how it helps across all media touchpoints. Mobile is not a stand-alone medium. It's a connective piece of a broader and comprehensive multichannel campaign and experience. If you measure it in isolation, you might be under-leveraging the value. 

COMMENTARY:   

Mobile Ad Spending To Surge 95% in 2013 and More Than Double by 2015

At the end of August 2013, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) reported that mobile advertising spending in the U.S. totaled $3 billion in the first half of 2013, up from $1.2 billion a year earlier.

eMarketer estimates spending on total worldwide digital advertising will reach $117.60 billion in 2013, up 13.0% compared to 2012 levels

Click Image To Enlarge

Worldwide mobile spending will hit nearly $15.82 billion, representing a whopping 79.7% year-over-year increase.

Click Image To Enlarge

Much of the spending growth stems from broader digital adoption of online video, music, news and information, entertainment, gaming and social networks on the part of consumers and the proliferation of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets.

According to eMarketer, the key figures on media usage and spending are as follows:

• Internet users: More than 36% of the global population today, compared to 21.7% in 2008.
• Mobile phone users: 60.7% of the population this year, compared to 40.0% in 2008.
• Smartphone users: Just under one-third of mobile users and about 20% of the global population, compared to 3.7% of mobile users and 1.5% of the population in 2008.
• Social network users: About a quarter of the global population, compared to 8.3% in 2008.
• Facebook users: More than 15% of the global population, compared to 3.1% in 2008.
• Total ad spending: $517.10 billion in 2013, up 2.8% from last year, compared to $484.30 billion in 2008.
• Digital ad spending: More than 22% of total ad spending in 2013, compared to 12% in 2008.
• Mobile ad spending: Just 2.6% of total ad spending and 11.9% of digital ad spending, compared to 2.1% in 2008.

The Global Media Intelligence Report is eMarketer’s largest and most comprehensive snapshot of the state of media usage and spending globally. The report contains more than 700 charts collected from over 150 global research sources, which SMG helped identify and gather for local and core global markets, in addition to benchmarks, analysis and context provided by eMarketer.

Mobile Ad Spending Not Keeping Up With Actual Mobile Usage

While the jump in mobile advertising may appear dramatic, it is actually creeping upward too slowly and is currently nowhere near where it should be. There continues to be a 9-point gap in the time people spend on their mobile devices (12 percent) and the mobile advertising budget allocated by companies (3 percent), according to Mary Meeker’s Digital Trends report.

Click Image To Enlarge

To close this gap, it’s important to understand that marketers can reach the same audience they are looking to engage through digital advertising on the Internet and social media. Earlier this year, TechCrunch reported that in the U.S., the mobile audience is roughly equal to Internet users on laptops and desktops and comScore reports that by 2014 this will occur globally.

Google, Facebook, and Yahoo! all have acknowledged a significant cost disparity between what they can charge for mobile advertising vs. their more established and more profitable digital advertising. That is exactly why marketers should take advantage of the lower cost-per-thousand (CPM), cost-per-click (CPC), and cost-per-action (CPA) rates in mobile—at least for now.

Mobile Ad Rates

Definition

CPM stands for "cost per mille," or cost per thousand impressions. Advertisers bid on online ads for mobile devices and pay more for those they consider more valuable and from which they get better responses. While advertisers pay per thousand times a mobile ad is displayed, statistics use eCPM, or effective CPM, calculated by dividing the total amount paid for ads by the total number of impressions and multiplying the result by 1000.

Mobile Advertising

Mobile advertising has been increasing rapidly, both in volume and value. Over the last three months of 2012, average mobile ad rates increased by 50 percent and they retained most of the increase in January 2013. Effective CPM rates ranged from $0.53 for an Android device in October 2012 to $1.12 for an iOS device in December 2012. In January 2013, eCPM rates for Android devices remained high at $0.88 while those for iOS devices decreased from their peak to $1.08. iOS devices achieved consistently higher rates than Android devices by about 30 percent.

Tablets

The tablet market is still developing and growing rapidly. Tablets are used differently than smartphones and they result in more traffic and higher ad values due to their larger screen sizes. The iPad is the leader, achieving a peak eCPM of $1.56 in December 2012 before falling back to $1.38 in January 2013. Andoid tablets showed a similar pattern over the period, with a December 2012 eCPM peak of $1.14 before falling back to $1.05 in January 2013.

Smartphones

Average eCPM rates for smartphones are lower than for tablets, but the iPhones achieve higher rates than the Android devices. The difference is less pronounced than for tablets, with Android phones receiving a peak eCPM of $0.91 in December 2012 before dropping back to $0.88 in January 2013. The iPhones achieve rates of $1.16 and $0.97 over the same periods.

Trends

The increase in eCPM rates for mobile ads has continued into 2013. Average mobile eCPM rates as of June 2013 are $1.31 and the split in rates between tablets and smartphones is continuing, as are the higher rates achieved by iOS devices. Mobile advertising has room to grow since its share of advertising revenue lags its share of media consumption and traffic generation.

Courtesy of an article dated September 3, 2013 appearing in MediaPost Publications Blogs, and article dated September 25, 2013 appearing in eMarketer 

PINTEREST METRICS THAT REALLY MATTER FOR LONG-TERM SUCCESS

Pinterest introduced analytics a few months ago. But, as with other prominent social networks, which metrics matter?

For instance, many still look at vanity metrics on Facebook and Twitter — things like the # of Fans/Followers. Now, while there is SOME slight advantage in having a larger network, most of that advantage melts away when your social network isn’t engaged.

Let’s take a look at this infographic to see which metrics really matter on Pinterest:

Click Image To Enlarge

Pinterest Metrics for Success

First, let’s take a little detour to look at how Pinterest works. First, folks create boards and pin pictures to the board — just like you might have posted exam dates and messages from your friends on the bulletin board in your room at home or in college. And, just like those bulletin boards, things pinned stay up there forever — well a few days or so, which beats the average length of time a Facebook post or Tweet stays up there.

But, just like Facebook and Twitter (and all other social networks) the key is the more engaged your audience, the longer your pin stays visible.

So, the Pinterest metrics we care about track engagement: metrics such as likes, comments, clicks — which reflect your micro conversions and macro conversions.

You can also see which specific pins are the most liked, commented on an clicked. Again, micro and macro conversions.

Another important set of Pinterest metrics are those reflecting reach, which includes followers (for a low-level of reach) and repins (which amplifies your original pins).

Velocity reflects how many pins show up on your pin boards per week (since others likely pin to your pin boards, as well) and helps you figure out how many pins you should put up per week by tracking the change in short-term engagement at different velocities.

Possibly one of the most useful Pinterest metrics deal with influencers. This metric is often hidden in many other social networks, but is prominent in Pinterest metrics.

Why is it important to know who your influencers are? Because it presents all kinds of opportunity to build on this influence. For instance, maybe you want to email influencers to thank them for engaging with you of find some other way to recognize their interactions. Recognition tells folks your value them and encourages them to continue engaging with you. Knowing your influencers is the first step toward keeping them. Also, if you understand who your influencers are, you can figure out how they became interested in your brand, which helps create more influencers.

Other Pinterest metrics are also valuable. Take a look at the list in the infographic and let me know what you think. How’s your Pinterest campaign going?

Courtesy of an article dated October 21 2013 appearing in Business2Community