Emergence of Vertical Social Networks

When it comes to sheer social networking size, the three giant social platforms - Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn clearly dominate the social networking doman - they are the undisputed leaders when it comes to networking with friends, current or former colleagues and business associates.

But do people really get truly engaged on these platforms? Does they participate in passionate discussions? (Well, do you?) Do these social networks make any positive impact on Joe’s adult life and to career? Or are they simply a means of passing time, a side entertainment?

If the latter were true and remained true, it would be a shameful waste of a tool with great potential. Think about it: how many doctors, lawyers, and other professionals are already on LinkedIn? How many sports buffs, homeschoolers, alternative music enthusiasts, avant garde artists, and other niche markets are on Facebook? These people are in social networking sites for a reason: they want to network with people like themselves and potential clients and buyers.

To cater to the specific needs of these groups, niche social networks keep cropping up. But the weakness of these small social networks is that they have trouble holding on to their members. Unsurprisingly, people who join social networks quite naturally drift to places where there are more people – that is, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

The irony of it all is that when people move into these three giants, they often end up getting less engagement and less significant contacts from the specific group they wished to connect with in the first place. There are just too many other distractions in horizontal sites such as the big three.

There is a simple solution to this dilemma, the niche social networks now integrate with the giants - LinkedIN, Facebook and Twitter, whereby their connections/ or friends from the horizontal social networking platforms are imported and their posts on these niche networks are cross-posted (usually controlled by an easy to reset permission) to facebook, linkedin and/or twitter.  This way, people can network within their niche and yet maintain access to the rest of the world who are on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. In other words, the horizontal social networks are slowly but surely going vertical.

For instance, Ticlr.com uses your Facebook contacts to make it easy for you to send gifts to your friends and family. Gifts can range from personal services such as “Wash your car” to actual items such as flowers or sports equipment. And of course, there is the option to share your gift on Facebook and Twitter.

Another example: Tradesparq.com uses a person’s Linked contacts to add credibility to a supplier or buyer by putting the two business parties in contact with mutual acquaintances. It is an excellent social commerce model, and a good example of how a small social network links with a big one.

Through these collaborations and linkages, the lines between separate websites are slowly dimming. The Web is truly becoming interconnected. For social networks and social commerce, it seems that happier days are yet to come.

Twitter's Keyword Targeting

Twitter advertising has added a unique feature - it allows advertisers target the recipients of their advertisements by using a technology that analyzes that person’s communications.

Necessity is the mother of invention - this particular way of advertising was necessitated by the fact that unlike Facebook or Linkedin, Twitter users don't build an extensive profile. In fact, Twitter limits user profiles to 160 characters including spaces, and a link. 

In the past, Twitter allowed advertisers to target users based on their interest which were determined by analyzing the accounts that the user followed. But this method didn't utilize an important social commerce data resource - people's tweets. The tweets indicate a person’s actual interests in a very specific manner - not what they think they are interested in (i.e. follow) but what they really are talking about. The other good thing about this is that this keyword analysis can be done in real time. 

With the new social commerce tool, Twitter allows marketers to set keywords that would trigger their ad when the said keywords appear in a user’s tweets.

For instance, if the company is promoting an American Idol finalists’ concert in New York, they could make it so that their ads will appear on a user’s timeline when the user sends out a tweet containing the keywords “American Idol” or “New York.”

Companies can also make it so that their ads are triggered by Twitter searches and would appear in a user’s search results instead of the user’s timeline.

“Tweets are signals of what's top of mind for people in real time, including their intentions, needs and wants,” Twitter explained in the newsletter it sends to its subscribers. “You can reach users at the right time and in the right context based on keywords in their Tweets and the Tweets they've recently engaged with,” the newsletter says.

While this Twitter Ads tool is advertised by fans of twitter as truly revolutionary, it is not very different than an echo of Google’s contextual ad technology, which shows ads to their Gmail users based on the terms in their email messages. Same contextual advertising is also used by Google adsense advertising units while people reading articles on a blog or Google news receive ads based on the keywords included in the text of the news or blog. 



Authored by Yash Talreja, Edited by Blessie Adlaon

AnDevCon and GMIC Lead the 2013 Silicon Valley Tech Conference Season

The fact that Mobile technology has become the dominant sector in technology innovation was very clear this year in the Tech Conference scene as well - with San Francisco/ Silicon Valley hosting more than 10 large conferences related to Mobile Technology which were full of the same level of energy, enthusiasm and innovation as the Java One Conference used to be a few years ago (now folded into Oracle Open World). 

I was fortunate enough to attend a few of these as a VIP Invitee, including MobileCon by CTIA in San Jose, GMIC in San Francisco, AnDevCon at Burlingame and WIMA NFC & Proximity Solutions Conference at South San Francisco. Because of time constraints, I am going to cover two of these - AnDevCon and GMIC here. 

Even though AnDevCon is advertised to be an (Android) developer conference, there is

An exhibitor hands out "Freddy", the phone stand
with four fingers

actually a lot of useful information even if you are not a hardcore software programmer who develops code in Android for a living, but someone involved in the Mobile App industry. The 4 conference was held from November 12th  to November 15th in Burlingame near San Francisco Airport. In addition to numerous classes covering both broad topics such as Android Concurrency, Security, Cross platform development and Details of Specific sets of Android APIs such as those involving Image, Sound and Video handling, to very narrow and focused areas such as 3D modeling and Payment APIs for Paypal support; there were also several interesting keynotes by speakers from Google, Twitter, Qualcomm and Blackberry. There was also an "Android Business" track and a plethora of major companies exhibiting at the event, including Google (no surprise), Amazon, Sony, Adobe, and Intel, among others.

A YouTube Hosted Video for one of the courses at AnDevCon

MobileCon

MobileCon at San Jose was a bit disappointing - the scheduling and who can attend was ver confusing - for example, I got the conference pass for MobileCon for Free because I was invited by Good Technology, but I couldn't attend the Good Technology's one day leader ship summit because it was invitation only! The sessions I did attend were not too informative or revealing in terms of strategy, vision of direction. Despite the name "MobileCon" there barely any discussion of Apps or App Development. I I will most likely skipping this conference next week. 

Spreading Cheer and Joy at he Uber Booth at MobileCon

Global Mobile Internet Conference moved to a larger venue this year, to Moscone Center at San Francisco; it was held at San Jose Convention Center last year. It brought together more than 10,000 attendees from 60 countries representing innovative mobile start-ups, service providers, device makers, wireless carrier, individual developers, Venture Capitalists, Angel & Private Equity investors, and officials and speakers from large corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Box, UCWeb, Kabam, Tapjoy, Electronic Arts, Intuit and more. 

Sally A., a recruiter from HTC manages a Table at the hiring section at GMIC

In addition, two competitions were held. The first was an “appAttack” competition open to novel and innovative Mobile Apps which were introduced less than 12 months ago and were primed to be a global sensation. Among all the entrants, 100 were chosen and were given a demo booth at the conference. The other competition was the G-Startup competition, where 12 app developers were given the opportunity to present the business plan of their start-up to a judging panel. Members of the judging panel consisted of mobile industry leaders and investors including venture capitalists and angel investors from Silicon Valley and around the world.

In the conference portion of the event, Attendees discussed opportunities and trends in mobile applications and mobile web domain focusing on three areas: Innovation in mobile technologies and start-ups, global markets, and app monetization. Detailed comparisons were made between what percentage of money is made by selling apps v. the percentage made by in-app purchases and in-app advertising display.  There was also a "Global Stage" where 11 country or region specific panels and App show cases were held.

However, my favorite part of the conference was appAttack where 100 app builders showcased innovate apps hot out of the oven. Some of the more impressive apps I saw include (in no particular order):

1. Blippar™ . This app uses image processing technology for recognition and mapping. It works by having the user point the camera at photos from print media such as magazines and newspapers, or even actual products (like a beer bottle), and bringing them to life. In a product demo, the demonstrator pointed the camera at a still image of a synchronized swimmer from the Summer Olympics and the software “brought it to life” by looking up the image in its database on the mobile cloud and downloading the video. In addition, it could also help you purchase items--think about the mCommerce possibilities. You see a pair of shoes someone else is wearing and want to buy them too. You point your camera at a can of soup to see the ingredients or get a recipe. 

A Developer from NewzSocial Demonstrates the App on iPad

2. newzsocial not only gives you access to the news, but also allows you to curate, classify and organize news based on your preferences and keyword choices. You can personalize a dynamic news magazine and share news with your friends.

3. Vylinx allows users to organize their cloud video collection, which can consist of videos stored at various cloud locations. It automatically generates four 2-5 second long snippets from each video, which act like video indices. These are stored locally on the device. These help users to quickly browse through long list of videos and choose the interesting ones

These snippets are automatically created by using sophisticated image processing algorithms which detect change in scene and soundtrack, the speed of these changes, and the motion objects, people, and even change in people's facial expressions (like a smile).

4. AppKey is a new way of more effective mobile advertising by pooling in App developers and advertisers into the AppKey network and showing ads on users home screen. Users can keep using any App from the AppKey network for free as long as they install the AppKey widget. They see ads on their home screen instead of "in apps" advertising, and the revenue is shared with the app developers based on use of their apps. 

Yash at the 2013 GMIC Conference

5. The "Ultimate Food Fight" App - The name is a bit of misnomer; the app does not involve any food-throwing. What is involved is head-to-head competition among restaurants in a region where a dish can be pitted against the same dish at other restaurants in the same region. For example, users can locate the best burger in town, gourmet dishes at upscale French restaurants, preferred fro-yo shops, local breweries, or even food trucks. The highest ranking is determined by verified purchases. Participants enjoy reviewing the gastronomical delight up for debate and sharing photos. Sponsoring restaurants can chose to get the feed of user comments and photos and post them on their websites and social media pages.

Though the Global Mobile Internet Conference had been held in Beijing, China since 2009, this  was the second year for the conference to be held in US. 

Move Over Google, Facebook's Search is Here!

On January 15, 2013, Facebook announced a new service that is undeniably the social networking company’s brave attempt to take some of Google’s market share in the search engine arena. And – we never thought we’d say this – it looks like it just might work!

The service we speak of is Facebook Graph Search. In a nutshell, it’s a search engine that lets you search through your Facebook friends’ private information in addition to all of the world's public information. In other words, it gets you results that are practically inaccessible to all other search engines, even the mighty Google.

Okay, time to be more specific. Here are some examples of questions you can answer by using Facebook Graph Search:

• Which of my friends live nearby and play a musical instrument? (You want to form a band.)
• Which of my friends have a background in tax law? (You want free legal advice – no, we don’t recommend that you get your legal advice this way, but you know you will still do it if given half the chance.)
• Photos of my friends last Christmas (You’re compiling a collage?)

It even has excellent social and mobile commerce possibilities:

• Which of my friends have been to Asia? (You’re taking a trip and want hotel recommendations from people you trust.)
• Which of my friends have online stores? (If given a choice, you would prefer to buy stuff from people you know.)

If this works – and we think it will – Google will have something to worry about. After all, when Google tried to venture into the social networking platform through Google+, it bombed big time.

Heck, with its social and mobile commerce potential, Facebook Graph Search may even take some of Amazon.com’s sales away. In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised if one day, Facebook releases online store features such as shopping carts and “Buy This” buttons as well. Why not? Multiply did it.

There’s only one question in our mind right now: Although every IT guy worth their salt knows that a social graph is “all the people you are connected with on a social network,” it is never used in that context by the majority of Facebook users. So why use it to name an essentially non-IT product?

Facebook Graph Search: we give Facebook’s IT guys a thumbs up on this one – but what were their marketing guys thinking? Well, they were probably thinking, “Who cares about the name? This is gonna make Google quake.” And it will.

Facebook IPO Fails to Live Up to the Hype, Pinterest Gets 100 million Investment from Rakuten

The Facebook IPO failed to live up to its hype, with the stock gaining just 0.61% on its first day of trading, finishing at 38.23. In fact, rumors are that underwriters JPMorgan Chase had to exercise the contingency plan and put up a fight to avoid the stock finishing the day with negative gains. Even then, a gain of just $0.23 cents on the first day is embarrassing for an IPO that had been talked about for years, and a poor showing compared to other Internet and social commerce companies.

Last year, shares of LinkedIn closed at $94.25, more than 109% above the $45 IPO price on their first day of trade on the New York Stock Exchange, and Google had gained 18% on the first day of public trading when its  stock priced at $85 closed at $100.34.

Meanwhile, as per a report from Businesswire, Pinterest, which is now the 3rd largest social network, raised $100 million in an investment round led by Japanese Ecommerce giant Rakuten and a group of other investors such as FirstMark Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Andreessen Horowitz. 

This investment is meant to help Pinterest upgrade its services and expand its international user base. The move also signals the start of a partnership between the social sharing site and Rakuten, with the goal of helping Pinterest expand in Japan and in 17 other markets that Rakuten is currently targeting.


“We see tremendous synergies between Pinterest's vision and Rakuten's model for e-commerce. Rakuten looks forward to introducing Pinterest to the Japanese market as well as other markets around the world,” said Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani.


For his part, Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann stated, “Our goal is to help people discover things they love, by connecting people through their shared interests. Bringing Rakuten on board gives us an amazing opportunity to move a step closer to this goal.”


Rakuten is currently one of the world’s top Internet companies. Rakuten Ichiba, its flagship business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) model e-commerce site is now the largest e-commerce site in Japan and one of the largest in the world in terms of sales.


Rakuten has been reinforcing its global presence by gaining ownership of leading e-commerce sites such as Play.com, Tradoria (renamed to Rakuten Deutschland), Ikeda (now Rakuten Brazil), Priceminister, and Buy.com.


Rakuten’s strategy somewhat different from other marketplaces in that its model focuses largely on the Japanese service mindset Omonetashi, which seeks to encourage sellers to form strong and lasting relationships with their customers, thus integrating and element of social commerce into what used to be pure e-commerce sites.
                                                                                                 Yash Talreja, Independent Consultant
                                                                                                              

Digital Transformation of Enterprises - Summary of a lecture at MIT Sloan School of Management

I attended the Innovations in Management Conference at MIT last week. I had started attending classes and workshops there in 2009 - there is always something to learn in the Boston area (the other tech center of the United States). Silicon Valley has its characteristic sense of urgency and bias for action, whereas Bostonians believe in first figuring out where to run before they start running. 

Here I summarize one of the lectures during the two-day workshop. If I get time, I will try to follow up with a few more. 

The speaker Dr. George Westerman is a research scientist at the MIT Sloan’s Center for Digital Business. His talk focused on the ongoing movement of digital transformation – the confluence of advances in Social Networks, Mobile Applications and Commerce and Cloud Computing -   that is spreading worldwide in both fledgling and established companies.

Westerman defined “digital transformation” as “the use of advanced technologies, such as telecom and mobile technologies, internet, cloud computing and social networking, to radically improve the performance or reach of enterprises.” He likened   the transformation to the metamorphosis of a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, implying that the digital transformation can radically change the business and – make it fly!

In Westerman’s analysis of digital transformation, he interviewed IT and business executives from several billion-dollar companies situated around the world and operating in a wide range of industries.

His findings showed that a business can gain in three ways by use of digital and mobile technologies:

1. Enhanced Customer understanding involves analytics-based segmentation and “socially informed” knowledge about the customer.
2. Digitally enhanced selling via social and mobile commerce, use of predictive marketing techniques, and streamlined customer processes.
3. Coherence in customer service across multiple touch points and channels including in-person/ in store, telephone, web, mobile devices, and across various social networks including Facebook and Twitter.
   

All of these factors can be positively influenced: Business products, services and processes can be modified through product and service augmentation targeting internet and mobile channels, transitioning physical resources to digital resources, and adding digital and mobile wrappers. New pure digital businesses can be established through electronic goods and digital products (such as eBooks which within a few years have taken over physical books in sales) and by reshaping organizational boundaries. Digital globalization can be achieved through enterprise integration, redistribution of decision authority, and shared digital services.

Respondents to Westerman’s survey also reported that the pace of their business is, on average, 5.6 times faster than it was 5 years ago, and that their biggest challenges for movement are missing capabilities, ineffective coordination, and lack of vision. Surprisingly, only 40% of the companies involved in the study envision digital transformation to make a radical change in their business. This indicates that more than half of the world’s top corporations are missing out on one of the greatest movements of the modern age.

Westerman introduced the concept of digital maturity – how far along companies are in digital transformation based on the level of their digital intensity (DI) and transformation management intensity (TMI). The companies involved in the study were divided into four categories: beginners (low DI, low TMI), fashionistas (high DI, low TMI), conservatives (low DI, high TMI), and digirati (high DI, high TMI).

While it was exciting to note that nearly a third of the organizations surveyed were part of the digirati, it was also somewhat dismaying to see that a similar third of the companies in the study fell under the beginner category.

So what do you do if you want your company to attain digital maturity, be part of the digirati elite, and begin to fly?

Senior executives need to envision (What assets are valuable? How can the company upgrade customer experience and business models), invest (What are the key investment areas? What skills are missing?), and lead (How do you engage the organization? How will you iterate the vision?)

One thing that we all need to realize at this point is that Digital transformation of the society in terms of in terms of adoption of mobile technologies and social networks for connecting with others, making buying decisions and actually conducting commerce is here to stay  – it is a movement that will continue to push forward, bringing with it those who ride in the wagon and pushing aside those who are not. It would therefore be best for both small and big companies to understand digital transformation, use it to its fullest, and attain the advantage that will ultimately lead their organizations to greater heights.

Read my summary on the lecture of Social Influence on Human Decision Making. 

eBay Enters the Social Commerce Scene by Integrating with Facebook's Open Graph Tool

Online shopping market giant eBay has taken hold of the social commerce scene by integrating their platforms with Open Graph, a tool developed by Facebook.

Facebook’s Open Graph tool, in addition to connecting a website to Facebook, also allows you to insert and retrieve information with a new set of tools for programming. Basically, using Open Graph turns websites into social objects that are part of the continuously expanding Facebook network.

Open Graph was integrated with eBay’s GSI Commerce and Magento online shopping platforms, giving shoppers sharing functions capabilities such as “own” and “want” buttons, similar to the ever-popular “like” buttons on Facebook.

“By integrating Facebook Open Graph functionality, we’re enabling developers to seamlessly implement social shopping into their commerce experiences for retailers and customers,” senior manager of eBay media relations Johnna Hoff said.

The latest version of Facebook’s Open Graph platform was unveiled in September, along with its new Timeline format. Since then, Open Graph has made waves in social commerce, with more and more websites integrating the platform into their designs.

In addition to the integration with Facebook, eBay also launched its X.commerce open commerce platform this October. Hoff explained that this platform gives developers the means “to create new technologies and experiences that merchants who use Magento can use to scale and grow their businesses.”

It is widely expected that eBay’s integration of Facebook into its platform will make the shopping experience in eBay’s website more efficient, more interactive, and even more fun. Frequent users of eBay – shoppers and merchants alike – would welcome the upgrades. The changes are expected to increase the site’s activity and, as a result, attract more online customers.

The direction for social commerce is gravitating toward the maximization of the online communities created by social networks. With the development of platforms and their integration into commerce, similar to what eBay has done with Facebook’s Open Graph, social commerce is well primed to continue flourishing in the near future.

Will F-Commerce Succeed?

A researcher at the Forrester Research firm has recently asked herself the same question. And the answer she came up with was, shockingly, “No”. According to the analyst Sucharita Mulpuru there are a few main reasons for this conclusion.

First, right now only a handful of small retailers are seeing a double-digit percent of their sales coming through their Facebook stores. And even that is the result of special selling models, such as flash sales. Second, she found that the number one advantage of Facebook, namely the ability to target a very precisely defined market, is not being taken advantage of by retailers to the full extent. And the last main reason why F-commerce might not take off is the fact that Facebook is plagued by constant unresolved privacy and security issues. This problem affects both the buyers and the sellers. The former do not trust Facebook with their credit card information, while sellers are wary of implementing a payment solution through their f-store.

But is all this enough to claim that F-Commerce is doomed to fail?

To put it quite simply: No, it is not. Facebook commerce is new and companies, as well as customers are still getting used to it. The solutions for f-commerce, such as the f-store, are not yet perfected, while retailers are still in the process of learning how to use them.

Also, since it is all so new, people around the world are still not thinking about Facebook when they are in the mood to do some online shopping. Though this is not equally true for all types of products. The sale of digital products, such as, for example, renting movies on Netflix is already quite established on Facebook. Selling jeans, or other clothing still has a way to go, but it will get there.

Once f-commerce takes off, retailers will also become more efficient at utilizing Facebook’s main strength, namely the ability to very precisely target people from a specific interest group. Between what Facebook pages and ads people have liked, who they are friends with, where they went to school, what Facebook groups they belong to, and so on, there is a wealth of very valuable information on Facebook for online retailers and marketers.

As for privacy and security on Facebook, those are two of the biggest challenges to overcome in order for f-commerce to take off. But as interest in f-commerce grows, and sales through f-stores begin to take off, this challenge will be addressed swiftly and effectively. So, all in all, there are many more reasons to believe that f-commerce will succeed than that it will not.

Staff Blogger, the Technology Gurus, Inc.

Social Commerce Beyond Facebook

There is no denying that Facebook is an excellent promotional and social commerce tool. It is, after all, the most popular social network in the world and the most visited website in many countries. With the introduction of Facebook Deals and the F-Store, they have also made selling through Facebook almost as easy as creating a social network profile. However, Facebook is not the only social commerce tool out there. And a prudent entrepreneur, or business owner should use all of them to maximize the benefits of social commerce.

Other social commerce tools include adding reviews of your products by past customers to your website, encouraging customer discussions, adding social media and other sharing buttons, and so on. These are almost completely free and carry all the benefits of increasing your customer base organically through recommendations. These tools can also save you a lot of money on advertising costs, while raising your profits at the same time.

F-Commerce is also not free. According to some reports, Facebook is charging a minimum of £50,000 (approx. 80,000 USD) from brands for the Facebook Deals tool. And that is quite an investment, especially for a smaller brand or business. So, if you already have a well-established website, it is perhaps better to use Facebook for promotion, while incorporating easier ways to pay, such as mobile checkout, PayPal and so on.

And for those who do their business globally, leveraging the positive benefits of customer reviews just got much easier due to the invention of a new translation software by the British company Reevoo. This new software enables you to automatically translate existing reviews into many different languages. Sony recently piloted this new software across eight of its websites in Europe. They report that it has helped them immensely in overcoming the lack of an established reviews culture in Europe.

Currently F-Commerce seems like the best solution to cover all of your social commerce needs in a single package. However, people are nothing if not fickle. MySpace once held the spot Facebook occupies now and has since fallen quite low. Who’s to say the same won’t happen to Facebook in a year or two? Rather than risk this, it is best to spread your social commerce efforts across a series of social networking sites, namely Twitter, LinkedIn, and others. And do not neglect the new comers, such as, for example, Plurk.com. Who knows, any one of them could be the next Facebook.

Staff Bloggers, the Technology Gurus, Inc.

Believe it or not, in Advertising, TV is Still the King! What About Social Media?

Lately it seems that everything is making its way online. Physical stores are closing in favor of eCommerce websites, and if you were to believe the hype, social networks have taken over all human interactions, at least in the western world.

Is it really true? Have Internet and Social Networks really become the primary vehicle for advertising and marketing?

well, not really, but ....

According to a report recently published by eMarketer, in 2010 the average US consumer spent 11 hours each day using one of the major media outlets, namely the Internet, TV, Radio, and so on. Out of these 11 hours, half was spent watching TV, only about a quarter was spent surfing the web.

BUT, according to the recently conducted survey by Goldman Sachs people’s online buying behavior IS primarily influenced by search engines.

Sounds convoluted? It's get more confusing when we look at results around influence of social networks - only about 5% of the people who took the survey said social networking sites influenced them to buy something.

Based on these figures it can be concluded that social media advertising still has a long way to go before it will pose a threat to the more traditional forms of marketing and advertising.

With the projected growth of social commerce in the next few years that could well change soon. However, before you forsake the other kinds of traditional advertising in favor of social media advertising, there are a few things you should consider.

Social networks serve more as a vehicle to reinforce brands, rather than build them. For example, if your brand is not already well known few people will organically fan your Facebook page, which is something that does happen with larger, more popular brands.

But that does not mean social networks can be ignored, on the contrary, they add a very valuable layer to your marketing and advertising communications path. For example, people are becoming less and less tolerant to marketing messages via emails and choosing to either unsubscribe or worse, filter them out by flagging them as spam even when they like a product or a company. On the other hand, newsfeeds and status updates provide a more acceptable alternative - the recipient has the choice of paying attention if they have the time and interest and have a built in aging since they move down the list.

Television ads cost a fortune. For a small business owner, social media advertising gives a viable alternative by allowing them to target a very specific audience. It addition to targeting your ads to a specific age, gender or geographic group, facebook and linkedin let you target people based on what their college major is or was, when did they graduate, what type of special interest groups or societies they belong to, and more. And it is this that sets Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media advertising programs apart from the other Pay-Per-Click ad programs, such as those offered by Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Needless to say, this gives you access to your very specific target market segment without having to try to "guess" the keywords for context based display ads (As provided by Google, bing and others context based advertising systems) or basing it on what movie, or TV show people are watching, Of course, this is lot more valuable to a small business owner who does not really have the option of buying a TV ad spot.

Staff Blogger, the Technology Gurus, Inc.

The Birth of In-store eCommerce

With recent talk that the Amazon Payments division is testing the Near Field Communication (NFC) platform one thing is quite clear, Amazon is looking for ways to expand their mobile commerce capabilities. As well they might, given that the projected mobile commerce revenue in the year 2014 will be, according to the IT research firm Gartner, close to $250 billion. The area of mobile commerce is also expected to explode in the coming year. For those unfamiliar with it, NFC allows for shortwave communication between devices that can be used to make and receive payments with mobile phones and other handheld devices. In other words, it allows mobile phones to communicate with cash registers.

But why would Amazon need that? All their cash registers are, after all, of the virtual kind. The online retailer will not comment, but one avenue that will open up once they integrate the NFC platform is the ability for customers to compare the prices of items sold in a physical store with those sold on Amazon. For example, if you see an expensive TV in a physical store you will now be able to scan it, check its availability on Amazon, and get it shipped to your home from them, if they offer the better price, as often they do. Or alternatively, if you can't find the right size, or color in a physical store, you will now be able to scan the item, and then search for it and order it from Amazon. The integration of the NFC platform could also enable customers to order complementary, or related things, such as matching furniture items, accessories, or books from Amazon, while purchasing the actual item from another retailer. For example, buying a camera in a physical store and ordering the how-to manual from Amazon at the same time. Similarly, brave retailers could use this feature to sell Amazon items in their physical store and make a profit on the affiliate commission.


The Birth of In-Store eCommerce

There is some speculation that Amazon is considering venturing into the field of physical retail stores. This does not, however, seem likely in this age of social and mobile commerce, and the rapid dissolution of physical stores in favor of online ones. More than likely, Amazon is working on a new hybrid of eCommerce and mobile commerce, which will give customers even greater freedom in comparing items and prices offered by different retailers in order to get the best deal. It looks a lot more like Amazon is trying to cash in and build on the deals and coupons craze, initiated by Dealpon, and continued by Facebook and others.

By allowing customers to do a price comparison on a certain item right there in the store using their mobile phones is a smart move in our fast paced world. Provided Amazon carries the item in question, and that they offer it at a lower price, this could also prove to be almost like having a physical store, but without the added cost.

Staff Blogger, the Technology Gurus, Inc.

Has the "Website" Become Obsolete?

Traffic to Facebook stores and pages is now higher than traffic to classic websites across the board. According to the findings of Webtrend’s recently published report “The Effect of Social Networks and the Mobile Web on Website Traffic and the Inevitable Rise of Facebook Commerce,” Facebook stores are already enjoying sales conversion rates equal to those achieved by e-commerce websites. This phenomenon is also not limited just to e-commerce sites, but is also the norm for companies that are not directly selling anything to the vast majority of people who visit their website, such as Procter and Gamble, Boeing and others.

In light of these findings, it has become quite evident that it is, nowadays, much more prudent to create and maintain a Facebook page than a website for many smaller service and product providers, formal or informal special interest groups, non-profit organizations, and so on. In terms of putting yourself, your service, your product or your idea out there for the world to see, there is no faster or more efficient way than by launching a Facebook Page or Store. On Facebook, you are practically guaranteed traffic from the get-go in the form of your own followers, who will also help you spread the word about your new page across their own social web. And launching a Yahoo! or LinkedIn group can also be very effective.

If the findings of the Webtrends report, as well as those from the other reports recently discussed on this blog, are an accurate foretelling of the future then, by the end of 2011, an F-store and mobile checkout capabilities will be a must for anyone selling things online. And for individuals, groups and smaller organizations, a Facebook Page might just be the most important part of their online presence.

So to answer the question: No, the classic website is not yet obsolete, but it is no longer the most important element of the online presence of individuals, groups or companies. In some cases, such as small special interest groups, it is not even essential anymore. However, it is still a good place for offering more information about yourself, your cause, or your business, so it is perhaps not yet time to forsake it completely.

Staff Blogger, the Technology Gurus, Inc.

Social Commerce: Make it Personal

Social commerce is a broad term and encompasses everything from Twitter, to GroupOn, to having a blog. All of these tools have one thing in common, namely that you can lose all the benefits that they offer, if you fail to use them correctly. Effective social commerce requires the interplay of offering a great product, delivering good content on your social commerce vehicle, such as your blog, Facebook page, or Twitter feed, and interacting with your followers in a real and honest way.

Most Common Social Commerce Mistakes

The fundamental mistake you can make in your social commerce efforts is not using all the tools that it offers. Many companies do not blog, are not present on Facebook, or Twitter, and still rely only on email newsletters to get the word out to their potential customers. These days, the latter is simply not enough. As comScore’s 2010 Digital Year in Review showed, email usage is in decline, and being replaced by social networking sites practically all over the world, and for most age groups.

Next, social commerce, especially offering coupons through sites like GroupOn, Living Social and Facebook Deals, lets companies very accurately track the return on their online marketing investment. Not checking these statistics periodically and fixing, tweaking, or otherwise changing the campaign to make it more effective is also a mistake businesses often make in their approach to social commerce.

However, the most detrimental mistake made by companies when implementing social commerce approaches is not making the message personal enough. The main driving force behind the success of social commerce stems from the evolution of the Internet, the so-called Web 2.0, which is all about online communities and networks. And people want to know that there’s a real person behind the company profile that they’ve “Liked” on Facebook, or that they follow on Twitter.

There’s more to being successful in the sphere of social commerce than just having thousands of followers and informing them, in a routine and uninteresting manner, of your deals, promotions, and so on. It is far better to engage with them on a more personal basis, by asking questions, taking polls, posting comments, and so on. In addition to regularly updating them about your promotions, and new products or services, of course. You are selling something after all. But the goal with social commerce should always be to put people first, and products second.

Staff Blogger, the Technology Gurus, Inc.

Caring For Your Online Reputation

Many potential clients will do an online search for a company before committing to doing business with them. So needless to say, you should always be aware of your online reputation.

It is impossible to fully separate your personal, professional your business presence these days. One way to do so is to refrain from having a personal online presence at all, or, failing that, monitoring your online reputation closely. Some sites let you do so more easily than others though. Facebook, for example, lets you remove tags from photos of you posted by other people, while YouTube does not let you so easily remove such offensive content.

Managing Your Online Reputation

Perhaps the most important aspect of managing your online business reputation is through customer service. An excellent example of how refusal to admit liability can lead to an online reputation nightmare is the now infamous “United Breaks Guitars” video on YouTube. The message in this video is that United Airlines has such poor customer service that you are better off flying with someone else, and it has already been viewed by over 10 million people worldwide. Needless to say, this is something United Airlines could easily have avoided had they simply offered better customer service from the start.

These days people have myriad ways of being heard online and they will use every one of them to tell the world that they were wronged. They will create online Yahoo! or Facebook groups, such as the "TD Ameritrade - I hate TDAmeritrade's horrendous customer service" Facebook group. They will also rate your product or service negatively wherever they can do so, such as on Amazon.com, or elsewhere. They will tweet about their bad experience or your poor service, and Twitter posts have the capacity to circle the world in a matter of seconds. And yes, they might even make YouTube Videos about their bad experience. The problem is that any one of these pieces of negative user-generated content can easily go viral over night.

Online Reputation Management and Repair

The best way to avoid getting a negative reputation is to establish and maintain a positive and strong web presence of your own, closely monitoring it, and addressing anything negative as soon as you become aware of it. For example, keep an active Facebook profile and monitor it constantly, answer all customer queries and try to solve all customer problems in a timely manner, monitor what people find when they search for you in Google, and try to answer any complaint the best you can.

Obviously you can’t control and fix all of it, nor can you satisfy everyone. But by aiming to satisfy most, you are putting your business on a good path to having a positive online reputation.

Staff Blogger, the Technology Gurus, Inc.

Social Commerce Takes Over Europe

According to comScore’s 2010 Europe Digital Year in Review, social networking, and with it social commerce, is quickly taking over the online advertising and retail field in Europe. So, vendors everywhere, you do not want to miss out on this trend.

 Social networking and online discounting are the two areas that have seen the most explosive growth in Europe. To illustrate, in the last year the total number of monthly users of coupon sharing sites has grown by 164%, while Facebook commands over three quarters of the European social networking market. Interestingly, Turkey, as the sole representative of Eastern Europe mentioned in the report, took fourth place in terms of the reach of coupon sites, putting it behind Italy, but in front of Germany.

Advertising on social networking sites has also grown considerably in most European countries, which is a direct consequence of the rise in popularitiy of social networking sites. For example, in Germany the total display ad impressions on social networking sites grew by 102 percent, while France and the UK saw a growth of 64 and 47 percent, respectively. What this means is that social network advertising has taken the top spot in effective online advertising.

So in summary, the old continent is no longer lagging behind the US in terms of using social networking and coupon sharing sites. So anyone looking to increase their market share in Europe is well advised to take their social commerce efforts very seriously in this coming year.

The most surefire way seems to be offering coupons through GroupOn, or Facebook Deals, though a regularly updated Facebook page is an absolute must. As is the fact that this page must be updated by someone with a genuine interest of interacting with followers. After all, at the heart of social commerce lies the effort of making eCommerce more human. And this is, quite possibly, the main reason why social commerce has proven to be so successful and profitable.

Staff Blogger, the Technology Gurus, Inc.

Social and Mobile Commerce Make a Perfect Pair

The rise in the use of smartphones, tablets, and so on, for surfing the Internet is quickly rendering classic website selling obsolete. This is primarily due to the faster and more convenient shopping experiences made possible by using these, and other mobile devices. The area of mobile commerce will explode in 2011 and it will be the companies who get an early start on it that will be reaping the greatest benefits.


The Mobile Commerce Explosion

In 2010 many companies saw huge profits as a result of taking advantage of mobile commerce. EBay, for example, revealed that they made $2 billion in mobile sales worldwide in 2010. A similar success was also recorded by Steve Madden Inc. who announced that they made over $1 million in revenue in 2010 from goods purchased by the use of mobile devices. However, according to a study conducted by Acquity Group, the top spot in the area of mobile commerce revenue goes to Amazon, who has already made over $1 billion in mobile sales. Most of this is, however, the result of their slightly different approach to mobile commerce, namely allowing customers to purchase and download eBooks straight from their Kindle eReader. Acquity Group also found that, despite this huge potential for profits in mobile commerce, only an estimated 12% of online retailers have a mobile-ready website, while only 7% actually have checkout capability to go with it.

However, many website building companies, such as Usablenet and Vitacost, are already offering their customers the option of incorporating the Paypal mobile checkout with the final product. And the developers of ShopSavvy, one of the leading mobile commerce apps, have also recently invited Matthew Weathers, the lead developer of Paypal’s mobile checkout, to help them develop their mobile commerce strategy for this year, which will include the so-called QuickPay. This will enable users of the ShopSavvy app to buy the items without having to leave the ShopSavvy interface.
 

Convergence of Social and Mobile Commerce

Social and mobile commerce complement each other perfectly. While social commerce tools of sharing deals and offering individualized special savings, through sites such as GroupOn and LivingSocial, or by using Facebook Deals, drives people to visit online retailers, mobile commerce checkout tools help seal the deal without the need to visit another location. And, for retailers, it is here that the key benefit of using mobile checkout tools lies.

To put it more bluntly, it is ease of use, speed of transaction and instant gratification that the customer is ultimately looking for in online and mobile commerce. The pace of our lives has quickened considerably and everyone is looking for ways to do more in less time. Mobile commerce has the potential to provide this in the area of online shopping. Because of this, retailers offering mobile checkout options on their websites, along with their social commerce endeavors of course, will be the first to drastically increase their 2011 revenue.

Staff Blogger, the Technology Gurus, Inc.

Social Marketing: The Age of Sharing Deals

With the rise of money saving deals that can easily be passed from one person to another over the Internet, social commerce has gained yet another important layer. This concept is very similar to cutting out coupons from daily newspapers, only that it is much simpler and faster.

The Age of Sharing Deals

Facebook is already the leader when it comes to social media marketing, and with the recent addition of so-called Facebook Deals to their repertoire, they have further cemented this standing.  In a nutshell, Facebook Deals allows local businesses to offer special deals through Facebook, while customers are able to claim them using Facebook on their mobiles and then showing it when they get to the store.

This is Facebook’s attempt to cash in on the concept started by Groupon, the daily deals sharing site that lets people save money by buying so-called groupons and redeeming them at local businesses and service providers.  To illustrate just how popular these new type of coupons are, an estimated $1.2 billion has already been saved by Groupon users, while almost 30 million Groupons have been bought by customers worldwide, since the company was founded in 2008. LivingSocial also offers a similar service, though, for the time being, it is only available in the US.

Another way for companies to reap the benefits of sharing deals is setting up a reward scheme for every referral made by a previous customer to their friends and family. One company businesses can turn to for this service is Extole, which offers a custom-made Refer-a-Friend program through which people can quickly and easily share a product, or service with their social network.  Cafepress.com, for example, offers a $5 reward per paying customer referred via a link on your Facebook profile, while Vistaprint.com also offers a similar reward scheme.

In addition, Newsfeeds and tweets from Company “Pages” and accounts with their inherent "read if you have time" feature are quickly replacing emails as a way to communicate special offers and deals to the public.  By default, the newsfeeds, tweets and LinkedIN status updates have built-in expiration periods and prioritization, making them ideal for communicating deals without making the loyal customers feel spammed. In addition to directly reaching the “registered” fans and followers, the newsfeeds and tweets are amenable for viral marketing by and generally do not incur a lot of extra cost for the company.

Everyone’s a Winner

This type of deals sharing is a step up from the more passive way of encouraging people to share items they like with their social networks by including a link to “Like” an item on Facebook, or a way to share the link on Twitter.  Amazon and eBay, as well as a number of other websites still use this type of social media marketing, while a good number more use coupon codes.  The latter can also easily be shared through social networking sites and the like. 

Staff Blogger, the Technology Gurus, Inc.