Richard Branson on 'Social' Relations Editor's Note: Entrepreneur Richard Branson regularly shares his business experience and advice with readers. What follows is the latest edited round of insightful responses. Ask him a question and your query might be the inspiration for a future column. Q: We've been trying to find a way to improve communication with our customers, but neither our website nor our Facebook page is producing results. A: This is a question keeping many company founders awake at night as they struggle to keep up with rapid changes in the digital world. People no longer want to be sold to; they want companies to help them find an informed way to buy the right product or service at the right price. How companies adapt to this energetic and sometimes chaotic world will define their future success. In the past, I would ask Virgin customers to write to me with problems or ideas, and I often called people to talk about the problems that came up. To succeed, such efforts must be supported from the top.
Google Rolls Out The Mother Of All Updates: A Larger Search Box Google is continually updating its search experience via the algorithms and the way results are displayed. But when it comes to the search box itself, it has largely left it alone. Sure, it has added drop downs for suggested results, but the box itself has stayed a thin input field. But now it looks like Google may be thinking about a change. Today, while using the Safari browser, we noticed that the search box has been made bigger, and the buttons made square. Notice how big the input box now is compared to the Google logo (below). Also remember that Google goes over data for every little change it does to determine if the change is worth it. Anyone else noticing this change in any browser besides Safari? Update: Additional reports say they are seeing it in some versions of Firefox too. Update 2: No less than Google’s Vice President of Search Product and User Experience, Marissa Mayer, has just posted on the matter. Says Mayer: Search, that is.
The 2010 Mobile Year in Review Comscore presents the inaugural Mobile Year in Review report, a look at the top trends in mobile throughout 2010 and their implications for the coming year. The report looks across the U.S., EU5 and Japan, providing insights on the dynamic mobile ecosystem: How did market enablers (3G penetration, smartphone adoption and unlimited data plans) impact the growth of mobile media in 2010?What were the year’s top device trends, how have smartphone devices changed the market?In what ways does mobile media consumption vary across geographies?
The Many Faces of Enterprise 2.0 Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. In nibh sapien, aliquet tincidunt fringilla at, feugiat quis enim. Cras consequat, ipsum et posuere venenatis, nulla massa mattis eros, sed varius turpis quam sit amet purus. Vestibulum vehicula consectetur congue. Sed facilisis nisi in lectus convallis, porttitor hendrerit est consequat. Vivamus hendrerit, ante sed ornare molestie, tortor lorem suscipit tortor, id sodales mauris metus quis purus. Aenean vulputate urna est, ac sollicitudin enim vulputate et. Sub-Sub-Heading Vivamus vel facilisis ante, vel porttitor metus. Executives and Social Media US executives have come to value social media very highly to enhance relationships with customers and build their company’s brand, according to the “Social Media: Embracing the Opportunities, Averting the Risks” white paper from Russell Herder and Ethos Business Law. More than eight in 10 management, marketing and HR executives responding to the July 2009 survey cited relationship- and brand-building as benefits of social media. Execs also considered social media a good tool for recruitment (69%) and customer service (64%), and 46% thought it enhanced employee morale. Respondents reported using social media most for brand-building, followed by networking, customer service, and various research- and information-related activities. Despite high levels of usage and awareness of benefits, executives still have fears about the issues raised by social media. Such concerns are not new. Keep up on the latest digital trends. Check out today’s other article, “Web Users Seek Info in Pharma Ads.”
The 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review Comscore presents the 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review, its annual report on the prevailing digital trends of the past year and their implications for the future. The report looks across the digital landscape to highlight the industry’s leading stories of the year. How did the rebounding economy influence retail e-commerce, what group-buying and flash sales sites found success in 2010? Social Commerce: About People or Software? There’s an interesting debate going on over at TechCrunch on a post by Craig Donato (CEO of Oodle, that runs the Facebook Marketplace), who is arguing that real social commerce is about “humanising online commerce” with conversations and relationships – not group deals, anonymous reviews, or other algorithmic e-commerce widgets. To illustrate, Craig asks if you’re looking for a new housekeeper, then which would you prefer a) A half-dozen reviews from people you don’t know?b) A coupon for 10% off the cleaner’s first visit?c) Two friends that use the same cleaner—and are fans? The point being made is that shopping with your social graph (social commerce 2.0) – i.e. with people you know and trust is smarter that other variations that pass for social commerce – principally group-buy – and user reviews (social commerce 1.0 – connecting customers online). If this is true, then the article suggests two implications for retailers and brands using social commerce Practice the art of conversation.
Coming soon: Finding your friends on YouTube YouTube has always been a place for you to share and enjoy videos with family and friends. Soon, we'll be making it even easier for you to find people you know on the site. We'll start by launching a "You may know these people" suggestions box on the homepage over the next few weeks that shows you the YouTube channels of people who might be your acquaintances, and lets you easily connect and subscribe to them. How will we make the suggestions? Want to see if you've previously allowed your channel to be found by others who have your email address, or want to change your settings?
Facebook Platform The Facebook Platform[1] is a software environment provided by the social networking service Facebook for third-party developers to create their own applications and services that access data in Facebook.[2] Launched on May 24, 2007, the platform offers a set of programming interfaces and tools which enable developers to integrate with the open "social graph" of personal relations and other things like songs, places, and Facebook pages. Applications on Facebook.com, external websites, and devices are all allowed to access the graph. History[edit] Third party companies provide application metrics, and several blogs arose in response to the clamor for Facebook applications. Applications that have been created on the Platform include chess, which both allow users to play games with their friends.[10] In such games, a user's moves are saved on the website, allowing the next move to be made at any time rather than immediately after the previous move.[11] High-level Platform components[edit]
Report: How Corporations Should Prioritize Social Business Budgets - Founder of Altimeter Group, Author of Open Leadership, Coauthor of Groundswell One question I frequently get is “How much should I be spending on social media?” The answer, of course, is it depends. This report looks at how 140 Social Strategists spent on social media in 2010 — and their plans for 2011 (read report). From this deep data, my co-author, Jeremiah Owyang, and I, found that maturity levels are a key driver of social technology adoption, and hence, social spending. (Jeremiah also wrote a detailed post about the report). I *love* data, so this was a particular fun and satisfying report to work on with the team (special thanks to Christine Tran and Andrew Jones for being our data gurus). I’ve included several key charts and points, as well as the report below. Budgets are the numerical depiction of your strategy. Report Details The chart below shows the three different types of maturity levels (take a quick quiz to determine your maturity level), and how the average budget, team size, and also the way they are organized differs. Recommendations
PubSubHubbub vs. rssCloud grack.com UPDATE: I’ve written a PubSubHubbub-to-XMPP gateway that solves some of the issues of running a real-time feed reader behind a firewall. UPDATE 2 rssCloud has a serious vulnerability that needs to be addressed in the protocol. I’ve linked some security recommendations here that rssCloud hubs should implement as soon as possible. These last few months have brought us not one, but two RSS-to-real-time protocols: PubSubHubbub and rssCloud. As a developer, the important question is: which of these two protocols should I focus on? When you compare the two protocols technically, you find that there are some similarities (UPDATE: see here for a more in-depth comparison of the APIs): Both PubSubHubbub and rssCloud allow the hub to live on a different server than the server that is providing RSS. There are some significant differences between the two protocols, however: Back to the question: which of these protocols should I focus on?
Kommentar: Tar Facebook over internettet? | Teknologia Tar Facebook over internettet? Med sine 350 millioner brukere, hvorav 175 millioner logger inn hver dag, er de helt klart en dominerende aktør, som bare vokser seg mektigere hver eneste dag. De siste to-tre årene har antallet Facebook-brukere skutt i været. For omkring et år siden passerte den populære tjenesten 150 millioner brukere. Selv om nettsteder som Google og Yahoo fremdeles er større når det gjelder antall besøk, er Facebook i en særstilling: Mens brukerne av Google benytter søkemotoren som en bro til nyttige nettsteder (og dermed forlater søkemotoren), forblir Facebook-brukerne på Facebook sine nettsider. Dette er det mange grunner til. Dette er litt skremmende. Windows – Facebook? Det første som slår meg er stillingen Windows har hatt når det gjelder operativsystemer. Spørsmålet er om vi nå ser liknende tendenser med Facebook? Vanvittig vekst En annen viktig faktor er Facebooks voldsomme vekst de siste årene. Facebook-dominans i Norge Også i Norge er Facebook svært dominerende.