It seems lately that Facebook has been adding a lot more features such as the subscribe button and the change in the news feed. The simplicity of the 'old' Facebook is being lost and the simple platform is as I noticed last night made some people turn to alternatives such as Twitter and Google+.
I imagine now that Google+ having added that blue chalk looking arrow pointing for people to "join" their new social network and the text below the search box suggesting the same thing to the hundreds of millions of visitors they get a day has helped their cause.
I even had someone tell me that they were moving to Google+ because Facebook was getting to complicated, they still haven't though and I suppose that's the effect Facebook has with people - to many people to leave.
Eventbrite is website for anyone planning or attending an event and was founded in 2006. They have since sold over 36 million tickets and raised almost $80 million in funding according to CrunchBase.
The service provides event organisers with a number of features to sell tickets;
Publish - Set up an event page, specify the different ticket types, let attendant buy tickets, embed widget on your own website.
Promote - Automatically get listed on search engines/ other event sites, build contact list from those registered, integration with social media, offer affiliate link payouts, integrate with Mailchimp and embed custom calendar to keep website users up to date.
Manage - You can track attendees through charts and graphs plus Set up a single page to manage multiple dates, let attendees pay through Paypal or Google checkout & collect data from potential buyers even when tickets have ran out so you are able to offer tickets to them if they become available. Also generate customised name badges and receive a check-in list. You can organise accepting donations for tickets too, so you don't have to charge a fixed price.
Sell Out - Set up collecting money at the door, pass the service charges of Eventbrite on to your attendees and many of the other features also mentioned previously.
Today brand holders and those with registered trademarks will have 50 days to pay a one time fee of around $200 to get their .xxx domain name. After the 50 days there will be a further 17 days for those in the adult industry to buy exclusively their domains. The sTLD or sponsored top-level domain has been designed for the adult entertainment industry.
The domains were implemented in order to encourage responsibility from website operators but also it enables sexually explicit material to be blocked easier. According to the ICM website ".XXX domain is scanned daily by McAfee for Malware"
There has recently been approval for domain which can have any suffix such as '.snak' or '.piggy' and so on. They won't be cheap and applications will start being accepted next year.
Klout measures your online influence and gives you a score from 1-100 with 100 being the maximum you can reach. You can sign in with Twitter or Facebook and then add a number of different networks to get a more accurate score - other networks you can add such as Tumblr, Blogger, YouTube, Linkkedin & even Instagram plus a few more. Klout will then tell you what area's your influential about "in everything from barbecue to tech gadgets to gardening".
Klout currently scores over 80 million people and brands use Klout to run campaigns with the people which have the most influence among their chosen market. Doug Clark the GM of Social Media & Customer Engagement at Audi of America said "We identified Klout as a skilled partner to help us recognize and identify our Facebook fans with followings and influence". You only need to visit their perks page to see some of the large companies they have done work for and look at some case studies of the work Klout have done. The fact on that page for businesses sums up the work they do perfectly;
"90% of consumers trust peer recommendations, only 33% trust ads".
Their are many tools that we can use with our social media accounts and twitter has one million registered twitter applications. Twiends is a tool that allows you to increase your following quickly which can be helpful for many reasons such as getting people to trust you. Using the tool will require
Every time you follow someone on Twiends you receive seeds which you then use to gain followers, because every time that someone follows you, they take your seeds - you set how many. Their is also the option to purchase seeds in bulk which means you won't need to spend loads of time following people.
The service is very strict on "follower churning" and they work to stop people from following people and then unfollows shortly after they say that " when certain thresholds are hit you may not find any new friends to follow".
Lets look at the number of twitter followers of our UK Dragons Den investors in the UK (On writing this post) and their reported wealth in The Sunday Times Rich List 2011. Check how the amount of money they have correlates with the number of twitter followers.
Ebay expects to have over 150 'million pound businesses' this year, that figure is up 25% from last year. They said that of those, 10% are expected to have turnover of at least £3 Million. Ebay said that five millionaires achieved £1 million turnover in 2010 within one year of trading. The Ebay business has been viable for some time now but Ebay say it has been down to the boost in exports to countries such as the United States, Australia and France.
Ebay was founded in 1999 and provides an online marketplace for the sale of good bringing together buyers and sellers. In the UK they have over 17 million unique visitors a month and 90 million active users. Sellers of all sizes use Ebay with over 160,000 registered businesses and 100 of well known brands and retailers. Ebay is a publicly traded company and has a market capitalisation of $37 billion.
The 2011 hurricane season is an event in the annual cycle of tropical cyclone formation. Both the Atlantic and Pacific hurricane seasons will end on November 30, 2011. Source: Wikipedia
Following the resignation of Apple CEO, Steve Jobs(56) and announcing Tim Cook as his successor. Here is an email from Tim Cook according to our source;
"Team:
I am looking forward to the amazing opportunity of serving as CEO of the most innovative company in the world. Joining Apple was the best decision I’ve ever made and it’s been the privilege of a lifetime to work for Apple and Steve for over 13 years. I share Steve’s optimism for Apple’s bright future.
Steve has been an incredible leader and mentor to me, as well as to the entire executive team and our amazing employees. We are really looking forward to Steve’s ongoing guidance and inspiration as our Chairman.
I want you to be confident that Apple is not going to change. I cherish and celebrate Apple’s unique principles and values. Steve built a company and culture that is unlike any other in the world and we are going to stay true to that—it is in our DNA. We are going to continue to make the best products in the world that delight our customers and make our employees incredibly proud of what they do.
I love Apple and I am looking forward to diving into my new role. All of the incredible support from the Board, the executive team and many of you has been inspiring. I am confident our best years lie ahead of us and that together we will continue to make Apple the magical place that it is.
Here's the statement from Steve Jobs(aged 56) resigning as CEO and showing the importance of a succession plan;
"To the Apple Board of Directors and the Apple Community:
I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.
I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.
As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.
I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.
I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.
Steve"
Applewas founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. Their first product was essentially a motherboard (Apple I) and now they have a strong hold on many of the devices many of us use today. But in 1985 after a power struggle with the board of directors Jobs left the company only to return in 1997 and turn Apple around. Now with over 46,00 employees and a market cap of around $348 billion they are the biggest tech company in the world.
The products are useful not only to consumers but business as well and the products are used by businesses the world over for better productivity because of the simplicity of their products. The number of apps available in their app store makes it possible for many to work from their phones.
Linkedin is a professional network with over 120 million members in over 200 countries and territories. It was founded in 2003 and by the end of the first month had 4500 members. As of 30th June 2011 Linkedin were adding 2 users a second. They recently completed their IPO on the New York Stock Exchange in May 2011 under the stock symbol LNKD and have a market capitalisation of around £7.5 billion.
Here are 7 reasons to use Linkedin;
Market Research - Finding local companies and spying on your competitors.
Looking for Work - Improve your career by making contacts with employers in your industry and Linkedin's job section may be helpful.
Getting Advice - Connect with people for advise or utilise your network by updating your status with your question.
Improving Connections - Use Linkedin to connect with people who may be useful in the future, people you have met and know.
Looking for Employers - Professional can use Linkedin to connect with potential employers and understand where your employers are to get in contact.
Promote Your Company - Join groups, get involved in discussions and start your own groups.
Make Yourself Visible - Get involved, communicate with contacts and show your skills but don't be annoying!
We all know about Ebay where you can set up a store and sell goods you have bought, collected and so on. However if your creative and have the marketing knowledge to launch your own store selling goods without having to purchase them! This service is called CafePress and what they allow you to do is well get an online store with "No set up fees", "No upfront costs" and "No out of pocket expense". This is how it works if you'd like to run a store, firstly you sign up, then upload your designs and choose your products and promote your store.
CafePress manage everything else for you so for example if you were selling t-shirts, you'd already have uploaded your design and then when someone orders they manage the billing, delivering and printing. You'll never actually touch the product as it will be delivered from the printers and they will send your check each month.
The company ships 6 million products annually through some 2 million shops where there are more than 325 million different products created through over 250 different product types.
If you have 10minutes this video tells you how they started;
MailChimp makes designing email newsletters, sharing them on social networks, integrating with websites, and tracking results a lot easier. With over 500,000 users and Mashable reporting last month that from a survey of 550 people working at startups, it was the most popular email marketing tool.
Mailchimp work using a freemium model and offers a range of prices to meet the needs of all business sizes. Obviously the more emails you want to send or more subscribers you have, the more you'll have to pay. The free service lets you have up to 2,000 subscribers and send a maximum of 12,000 emails each month.
The brilliant advert that aired this weekend featuring rising "media mogul" Jamal Edwards on how he built his empire online. The 1m30s video looks at the rise of SB.TV in to a leading youth broadcaster in the UK.
Here's a few things that you could write about through your social media;
1. Promotions - Why not run a promotion through your social media so that everyone that follows you can get a discount! e.g "10% off all products if you follow us on Facebook!"
2. Questions - Ask questions of your users to engage them and you may even get a bit of market research! e.g "Why do people where socks and sandals? #Crazy"
3. Company News - Tell your follows you "what's happening" at your company! e.g "Moved offices, have a new employee and featured in the press! [press link] #AmazingDay"
4. Facts - Give your audience a some facts that relate to your business! e.g "10k people order umbrellas every summer because their cheaper!" - Just an example, probably true though!
5. Friendly - Just give your readers a message to let them know you appreciate them and get seen! e.g "Good Morning! hope you had sweet dreams :)"
Bonus Box - Use hastags when possible (#theyhelp), Try to reply to people and show them you appreciate them!
All of the social platforms offer developer tools from like buttons with Facebook to real time status plugins on twitter check all of them out and with knowledge of your audience choose ones that will engage them best.
I've heard many times that sometimes it can be difficult managing your social media and thinking of new things to say, everyone gets writers block at some point. This series will suggest statuses you could use when your mind goes blank.
Edit them as you wish, of course.
How are you all feeling today? #GoodMorning
New employee he's great #brilliantcoffeemaker
Let us know what you have planned today and receive 10% off your next purchase!
Our deal of the day (insert link) #Deal
We have sold over 500 spoons this month!
Here's a bonus...
6. Hope your enjoying the weather! We are!
Let us know what you think and even suggest some to help others!
SkimLinks is an affiliate marketing platform founded by Alicia Navarro in 2008. Publishers use the platform to monetise their content by converting links in to affiliate links. The new SkimLinks solution SkimWords also allows you generate revenue from product references on your site and turns them in to "unobtrusive shopping links"
[Update - 02/09/2011] Skimlinks Payment Threshold dropped to $10/ £7
The great thing with SkimWords is that you just need to put the code in to your site and the site will automatically turn them in to affiliate links for your website to start earning you money. With clients such as WordPress, COSMOPOLITAN and T3 they have come far in three years. CrunchBase reports they have had funding of $2.52m and a recent interview with their CEO on Smarta.com last month reveals they have opened an office in the US. If you visit the press part of their website you can see what I can only imagine as a growing number of acquisitions.
Twitter the micro blogging platform that allows up to 140 characters in text and has over 200 million users. This company has raised over $360 million in funding and has a reported valuation of nearly $8 billion if they close the recent funding of $800m.
1. Allows people to develop and market their service - Twitter keeps users coming back by allowing developers to innovate tools which make their product more appealing. This is called the twitter ecosystem and their are over one million registered applications.
2. Take Money - Twitter has been very good at taking money from investors for a quite a while, but those investors are going to want to see a return and now they are rolling out promoted tweets in the main twitter timeline.
3.Celebrity endorsement - Without twitter having to pay them and state their interest makes their product very appealing to other users. It also allowed us to get in contact with people that may be very difficult to ever get in touch with.
What I like about Google is many of their productivity tools, which I only need one log in to use all the tools and services they offer.
1. Google Docs - Great for sharing projects if your working remotely or want to communicate whilst you edit a document (distracted us for hours on first use)
2. Google+ Hangouts - A nice way to stay in touch with colleagues (or others) if you want to look at up to ten peoples faces & share things whilst you speak. Perhaps whilst your away because you used Airbnb.
3. Gmail - Get an email address whilst your using the other products.
4. Chrome - A simple and fast browser which allows me to download applications for the web browser.
5. Calendar - Enter everything that's coming up and any tasks you need to do in to lists. You can then share your calendar or have separate calendars or work and home.
6. Maps - This one is just helpful for getting places and looking at places you cant afford to go too. But if you can afford to go, then you can get some directions. Going to London? get a public transport route.
When your a Start-up business, finance can sometimes be hard to come by and the expenses are likely to escalate. This also goes for larger businesses but consider cutting your accommodation costs when travelling and have a little fun with Airbnb.com. Airbnb are a marketplace for spaces around the world which handles the bookings and financial transactions for users.
Founded in 2007 after a local event was coming to town which they thought they should offer their place for people to stay. The company now offers places in over 16,000 cities in 186 countries and has even had an igloo rented out. The marketplace for property has an iPhone application with over 160,000 downloads since November 2010. This company has raised nearly $120 million after recently announcing their latest $112m series B funding.
That's right if your travelling in London then Google Maps has added a feature for you to "Get Directions" using "Public Transit". Hope this helps the London Olympic Visitors next year.
So now maps had more features that we might get to utilise globally in the future as street view was a slow progression. After Google+ launch earlier this year can we see Google with more good innovation.
4 Top Google Map Tools
1. Street View - Although I've noticed the address is often wrong.
2. Email Route - This is good for emailing the root to my mobile.
3. Directions - Great for getting directions to any destination by car/ walking and now in London Public transport. Also estimated route times.
4. Est. Fuel Cost - Good Indicator although I always add some more just incase.
LinkedIn which was launched in 2003 and now has over 100 million users has launched an application button for developers. The service which operates in over 200 countries allows professionals to network online. The company went public on the 19th may 2011 and today have a market cap of over $9.5bn (USD).
The new button will allow candidates to use their LinkedIn profile to apply for jobs when the "Apply with LinkedIn" button is displayed. See more Below or on LinkedIn Developer Page. Is this more good innovation from social networking sites to make sure they don't fade away fast and the recent professional users for Google+, do LinkedIn need to be scared.
If your lucky enough to eat at your desk (maybe not?) you probably snack on a pack of biscuits through out the day. I recently decided this needs to change and came across graze.com a company which delivers natural foods to the office whether its at home or in an office block, they deliver "nationwide in the UK" to "any address that can receive post". So I thought you might be interested and we are SnakSocial!
Started by 7 friends in 2008 they now send out over 130,000 boxes a with a price of £3.49. They deliver from Monday to Saturday and you can choose the day/s you which suit you.The snacks will come in a box which has four punnets with a variety of different natural food choices -They deliver olives, flapjacks, nuts, dried fruits and many more.
If your going on holiday, that's fine let them know to skip some deliveries. If you don't like something they won't send it again, if you like something they'l send it more often. The great thing is your able to get a variety each time your box arrives. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
I recently came across a real great tool which allows publishers, developers, website owners to make revenue from people leaving their site. Its called GapAd and its currently in its Beta Stage, we are all aware of sites such as entrepreneur.com which places adverts when someone enter the site.
This could be attractive way to monetise your site without filling the page with adverts but it also means that the ads placed on incoming traffic don't scare visitors away - because don't forget you have 7 seconds to impress. There is also the fact that you will have to have people on your site and they need to leave through an exit link. The other problem is if you adopt just this strategy of "Outgoing Ads" then you only get the chance to place on ad in front of the visitor/ user.
Formspring is a Q&A site that has over 25 million registered users and allows you to sign in with both Twitter and Facebook. They posted their first promoted question which promoted the movie "Rise of the Planet of the Apes". Formspring was founded in 2009 by Ade Olonoh and had 1 million registered users in 45 days.
This is definitely worth using for your business so that you can engage customers with questions and help you gain knowledge from your customers. I would say that this is a great tool for mass marketers and for use in conjunction with your social media to get the best results.
Twitter has "One Million Registered Twitter Apps" according to their blog - How great is that? Twitter which has over 200 million registered accounts and as of June were sending over 200 million tweets a day the company has an ecosystem for all users.
The ecosystem includes tools for organisations and people based on their different needs. The ecosystem for twitter itself makes the platform so attractive by allowing people to get real time data wherever they may be. A large number of organisations are taking advantage of the tools on twitter that allow them to get a good insight into their customers. Sometimes it feels like everyone's trying to promote something...
Last week we wrote a number of articles on Facebook but this is because they are such an interesting company that are getting so many things right. We are well aware Google+ bought out a product which allowed group chat(Hangouts) but Facebook know that the majority of people have one-to-one chats and launched their video chat feature.
Facebook have given businesses people lessons for years now and we managed to see some just last week
1. Get your product right - make sure the consumer loves it then start charging for it - this could mean market research first & knowing your customer - Facebook have data on over 750m people.
2. Innovate - because once you have a great product then people will copy and it's important to always be one step ahead - but for Myspace and Skype partnership in 2007, may have been to early.
3. Stay Efficient - if your not efficient enough to do something then outsource or partner with someone who has the resources such as Facebook and Skype - Spotify are also reported to be reaching a deal with Facebook.
From yesterday SnakSocial had been blogging for one week and what a week it has been.
We have been reviewing the new Google+, seen Skype come to Facebook, find out that the UK's 168 year old newspaper - News of the World is publishing for the last time on Sunday and MySpace get sold for £22 by News International for a fraction of what they paid for it. So really not a good week for News International which holds News Corp.
We have managed to get readers in over 10 countries, post 21 articles and tweet 35 times.Our Poll closed with Twitter being the favourite business social tool.
So thanks to all our readers! Let us know what you think...
The News of the World has had a lot of troubles in its time and the latest phone hacking scandals of celebrities and the British royal family have caused a long line of advertisers to pull the plug such as Boots and Vodafone which made up part of their TOP 10 advertisers who collectively bought in nearly £40m. So Sundays edition will be the last with the proceeds going to good causes according to News Corps Mr Murdoch. 168 years its been going and bad apples in their 200 staff have meant the fruit bowl has to go. The News of the world was part of the UK/ European division of News Corp which had bought in $1.61bn revenue in the year ending June 2010 to News International.
Ofcom reports that with Sky News they have a TV media reach of 11.7m, press media reach with news corp of 14.5m and an online media reach of 4.6m with news corp in the UK. In April 2011 News of the World had an average Sunday circulation of 2.6m people according to ABC.
This just stresses the importance of the operations of a business affecting a brand. This can be said for many websites online which have their revenue supported or wholly from advertisements. Earlier this year we had Wiki Leaks who had many of their service providers pull out because of the thought that their support would affect their own brands.
James and Rupert Murdoch have been getting quizzed by MP's in the UK.
Apple have recently announced that they have had 15,000,000,000 application downloads and this makes you realise the power of the phone applications knowing that this is no longer a FAD but the way we will consume information globally in the years to come.
So are you involved? I think it is important now for every business to make themselves accessible via an "app" to engage your customers through mobile because they'l see you everyday. We recently wrote about QR codes and how they can be used to take a user to a website on the go. Applications however give users the choice to see what your business is doing everyday. The problem is they can be expensive to make for the more complicated applications.
Their is a lot of competition in the Apple "app" store with over 425,000 of them to choose. Their are places which allow you to make applications for Androids and Ovi. Ovi App Wizard is in its beta stage and allows you to make an app in minutes for Nokia phones - not doing too well. Android from Google has an app inventor in Google Labs. Will the other operating systems catch up?
Google+ have today told businesses not to use their service whilst they continue to develop their platform for brands. They still haven't opened up the service to everyone yet either but those brands who have managed to get on their have been told that the service won't be ready until later this year.
With yesterdays launch of Facebook's video calling feature, is this going further damage to the appeal for Google+? because not everyone will need the Hangouts 10 way calling and will users stick to the brand profiles where they are offered things? - on Facebook. We recently wrote about the use of Google+ for professionals!
The recent reports were right - So we now have Facebook with one-on-one video chat, not to long after Google+ launched and gave us hangouts. This i'm sure is going to be quite a problem for Google attracting users, who don't need to chat to more than one person.
So we have Google+ hangouts where you can get up to ten people in to one chat and yet to be opened to everyone. Whilst Facebook has launched its one-to-one chat that brings Skype inside your browser. You don't need a new account either to use the Facebook video chat. I still see Google+ as an additional profile for remote workers and Facebook video calling for those personal social calls. We also found out that Facebook have their 750 million users - WOW!
How easy do you find Facebook's Video Calling - here's a clip from YouTube.
The recent knowledge that Google is going to rename their Blogger (very special to us!) and Picasa to Google Photos & Google Blogs is some interesting news for out tech readers but we also have a bit of business side to us as well so I think a mention of the importance of branding to an organisation needs to be mentioned.
Blogger and Picassa are already strong brands in their own right but Google has been ranked fourth by Interbrand best global brands with a "brand value" of over $43bn. We realise that it can have a lot more attraction to a larger market and we understand that Google is making a lot of changes to accomodate Google+, most recently their Realtime feature went down. Reported that this was because their contract for the twitter firehose ran out but also to work on developing it for Google+. The point is that these brands contribute a large part of the valuations of many of our big online names such as Facebook.
Another "brand" is Huffington Post and they have just launched their UK version, will they have the same success in the UK and will they get it right?
Quick Response Codes more commonly known as QR codes. They allow people with QR readers which anyone with a smartphone now holds, to be able to use their camera to access websites straight from their phone. I haven't really seen many QR adopters yet and with a growing number of smartphone users is it more likely business should start looking to QR codes.
Why not just type it in? its more fun to scan and see where it takes you :/
I can see a number of problems for some people who may not what to stop in the middle of the street to scan a QR code especially a busy one. However if we started to see them on adverts could it encourage customers to engage with your brand and perhaps take them to a site where they could review your business. Another function could be to get customers on your website whilst their out and I think that could be good for offering deals which once scanned they receive a coupon code to take to a local store. Customers could also find out more information about your company from an visual advert.
http://qrcode.kaywa.com/ - A QR code generator and they have an APP! (QR Code's CSI Moment below)
With a number of IPO's in the pipeline from many of the major online services we use, are we going to see less user targeted features and more shareholder "profit making" features. Just recently we have seen Linkedin go public on the 19th May this year and they have profits of just over $15m for the 12 months ending 31st December 2010. Shareholders are probably happy at the moment though - LNKD share prices are holding on the NYSE.
However with some of our other future IPO's such as Groupon later this year and also Facebook expected next April - these companies are said to not be making profits. A little consideration needs to be taken in to account at whether these organisations will come under pressure from their shareholders to give them a return. Will we see any changes in the user experience for the products we use online? I'm not saying they are all going to start charging monthly subscription but perhaps more adverts.
YouTube is a real cool tool for businesses and many have adopted the platform as part of their online marketing campaign.YouTube is a search engine in its own right and is the second most used in the world after Google. This makes it a very important part in the online presence of any business because of it’s viral capabilities. YouTube was bought by Google in 2006 for $1.5bn - they recognised potential.
So create a video and upload it to YouTube make sure the description, title and tags are what your audience would be looking for - but not false. You can find what your less competitive keywords with Google insight so that your video’s will often pop up in Google’s first page.
Few facts before your example...YouTube is third on the Alexa ranking(top sites used in the world) and Mashable reported "YouTube has 490 million unique users worldwide per month"
Anyway...I recently advised a start up business about the use of video and they have found it really helpful in explaining their idea to people who like visual concepts. Blendtec used this idea by putting objects that wouldn't usually go into a blender, into a blender and the video went viral. Another business called bluQube which makes software used it by starting a contest among some yachtswomen.
Their are a rising number of young people starting businesses since the Internet has been around and its cheaper to get started. I know that it is widely reported when a young person makes a success of their business but I have noticed that their are problems with the education sector and socially. We are improving with courses such as National Enterprise Academy but their is still a strong push for grades, work still needs doing.
Firstly the education sector, especially the one's I been with are really focused on grades that will get them a Job or into next level education and the league tables. Secondly the social expectations from parents and family pride putting pressure on the younger generation to find work, however work has dried up over the last few years( I won't bang on about the recession).
What changes need to happen? Change the league tables in to a long term goal for education to monitor students post education making sure that they are either choosing to stay in education or the student is in work (including running a business). This will show show a fundamental change in allowing education to prove its worth for the student and their future. In a nutshell a league table which works for both those who wish to continue their education and those who wish to work. Then I think we will start to see education provide better facilities for growing students to work or run a business.
