July 31st, 2008 by Fiana de Guzman
Nielsen recently calculated for the magazine Automobilwoche that Ford invested 21.2 million euros into the Focus advertising campaign. With 31,212 sold vehicles that makes exactly 679 “ad-euros” per car – not including online advertising.
July 31st, 2008 by Fiana de Guzman
I tried out the “new” Facebook and just want to say: FINALLY and thank you! Most of the things I did not like about facebook.com have been altered so that the flood of “TMI” crammed onto one page does no longer overwhelm my friends – or me for that matter. What has been the “profile” is now divided into different sections or tabs (e.g. wall, info, boxes) and can be arranged as you like it – move, add and remove boxes, tabs and applications and edit them instantly. The layout, of course, has also been improved and distributes to the formerly unknown “clarity” of this social network.
Not everything is new but certainly better! See for yourself:
July 31st, 2008 by Nils Maier
Quite interesting and revealing statistics concerning the scopes of the U.S. election strategies 2.0 have been published. According to Pew/internet, approx. 46% of the over 18-year-olds actively use the internet for their political decision-making. As per survey conducted by the government of the United States of America, this adds up to over 50 million U.S. citizens. Here, two activities are especially prominent: 35% of the Americans have watched election speeches via YouTube and 10% are actively participating in social networks in order to form their political commitment.
However, it is a misapprehension to believe that the emphasis placed on online election campaigns was initiated by Barack Obama and his team. Election campaigns in 2004 already showed a clear tendency in political decision-making towards a manifestation of online channels. In autumn 2004, approx. 34% of all Americans were already gathering political information via online communication channels. After all, Facebook was still in the fledgling stages at that time and YouTube was not yet online. These types of media eventually seem to have supported this development.
The major American parties appear to have understood the social development concerning the media usage of their target group and voters. According to Pew/internet over 80% of the Americans are already online. Therefore, a possible conclusion would be that Americans include more and more offers, such as YouTube, MySpace and Flickr, into their personal media mix as a new means of communication and source of information. For this the U.S. election planners must be prepared. So far, they have put it into practice quite successfully. Furthermore, the social media activities of individual candidates obtain an immense international scope. This, surely, is also a reason for the current “Obama Hype” in Germany.
July 29th, 2008 by Nils Maier
On Monday morning I came across a highly interesting article in the Financial Times. The title of this article was Peace for Pixels. The article introduced a start-up from the Silicon Wadi. The company provides its clients an operating system which is not tied to a specific Mac or PC but can be used worldwide via browser and with any internet access. For the user, this service is free of charge and it enables him to access his self-made browser desktop from every web-enabled computer. The domain name g.ho.st also is the motto, at which g.ho.st is short for Global Hosting System. By means of the Palestinian browser desktop, it is possible for the user to administer his emails or have access to his previously filed Word documents, for example. The number of offers, which can be integrated into the g.ho.st desktop, increases from day to day. In order to guarantee a secure and comfortable access for the user, g.ho.st resorts to Amazon as web hoster. Below, the CEO of g.ho.st, Zvi Schreiber, provides a bit more insight into the idea behind the web-based operating system:
In addition to the highly promising technical idea behind g.ho.st, the way the Palestinian start-up works is also worth mentioning. Beside commercial success, Schreiber’s concept when founding this company was to encourage peaceful dialogue in the Middle East. The start-up is supposed to serve as a role model for international understanding in Palestine. G.ho.st has two pillars in this region. One office is located in the Israeli city Modi’in, the other in Palestinian Ramallah. Although the two towns are geographically only a one hour’s drive apart, the distance which is the origin of conflicts between Palestine and Israel is not conquerable without further ado. Nevertheless, in order to facilitate an effective cooperation a continuous video hook-up connecting the two offices has been arranged, for example.
Zvi Schreiber demonstrates the fact that the conflict between the Palestinians and the Israeli can also be peacefully solved by cooperating. In its own special way, the project g.ho.st illustrates the positive and highly innovative synergies which can result from such ideas.
July 18th, 2008 by Fiana de Guzman
In November 2007, Amazon.com introduced an e-reader to allow easy access to a vast library of electronic books to be downloaded and read on the device – the Kindle, an iPod equivalent to books. According to Crunchgear, Amazon.com is planning to release two new Kindle models: a smaller form factor Kindle that will be available in different colors (very apple!) to be released just in time for the holidays this year, and a large screen version to be released sometime next year. TechCrunch assumes that the large screen Kindle is perfect to target the college/university textbook market, a $5.5 billion market annually in the U.S. alone. The battery life is much longer than most electronic devices, and carrying a large Kindle is still a lot better than carrying ten heavy textbooks.
At first glance the Kindle seems to be predestined to substitute textbooks. Not only because they are heavy and bulky but especially because they generally are extremely high priced. Moreover, there are new editions almost every semester that students are obliged to buy even if the ‘older’ one they already have is almost identical. Therefore, the Kindle could clearly simplify matters. Ebooks are cheaper (bestsellers definitely are) than their paper counterparts and available 24/7 – any time and any place. And with the implemented highlighting and note-taking features as well as an integrated ‘find’ function that enables the reader to search for specific words within a book, the Kindle appears to be perfect for students. However, colored diagrams, graphs, pictures and the like cannot be displayed by the Kindle and so far I have not found out how or whether it is possible to back up your work.
Furthermore, publishers are not likely to embrace the ‘Kindle’ idea, since Amazon.com might own the market. Also, it remains to be seen whether textbooks in their electronic form will be offered at lower prices, because shipping costs etc. are no longer necessary so the publishers or distributors (in this case Amazon.com) have to ‘collect’ that ‘lost’ money elsewhere. And if there is no difference in price it just would not pay to kindle.
In the end, the ‘old-fashioned’ book might turn out to be more useful: Books are sold while ebooks are licensed; old or used books can be resold whereas ebooks that are no longer needed can be regarded as electronic waste. That is because the license cannot be resold. It is possible to argue, of course, that an option to resell ebooks could be made available. That, however, is simply unnecessary. Who would buy a ‘used’ ebook? It would have to be sold at a lower price than a ‘new’ one, which, obviously, would be complete nonsense to do, because the ebook would still be new after one person has kindled it. Therefore, there is no reason to sell it any cheaper.
Nevertheless, it is a great idea that was predictable and fits today’s lifestyle. And despite all of the issues discussed above, I believe that the Kindle will be a success – it actually is already. Whether it will be a success with textbooks remains to be seen.
As for myself, I can imagine receiving my daily paper on a Kindle. I am not sure though, whether I would want to read my favorite novel on a screen. Let’s find out.
July 10th, 2008 by Nils Maier
The innovative means of online marketing are the future. Thus, the results of a study conducted by Harris Interactive can be summarized. On behalf of the PR agency Fleishman & Hillard, 5000 European consumers were questioned about any influence the internet has on their purchase decisions. The results were classified by the CEO of Fleishman & Hillard towards the FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) as follows:
“The influence of the internet is much stronger than expected – and much bigger than the marketing budgets which are fed into the net. I expect that the budgets will soon be rearranged towards the internet.”
The future for online marketing in the collaborative media seems to look very promising. According to the results of Harris, however, the traditional forms of online marketing virtually have no influence on the individual consumer’s purchase decisions. On the other hand, market researchers were able to observe the fact that the more complex a product is, the higher will the influence of user opinions on an individual consumer’s purchase decisions be. If the data is to believed, the internet will become the major field for marketers in future. The change of media use in favour of the internet alone already illustrates this consequential development. However, in the field of e-business, it is not at all sufficient to rely on the traditional elements of online marketing. In fact, it is of greater importance to utilize the communicative character of collaborative media for a successful marketing. But how could such marketing tools look like? How much effort will it take and which range can be covered? Maybe the illustration below can provide answers to these questions:
July 10th, 2008 by Fiana de Guzman
In the course of an ABC interview, Michael Arrington provided some interesting insights into his thoughts and estimations around the Yahoo/Google deal. Here, his estimations concerning the collaboration of the two internet giants in the future are truly interesting. In the opinion of the Techcrunch chief blogger, the deal between the two companies will fail due to the United States antitrust law. This failure would result in the Yahoo share price still going further down the drain. The rather low rate of Yahoo shares will eventually prompt Microsoft to act in order to incorporate Yahoo as a bargain. It should be quite interesting to see whether Michael Arrington will be right after all.
