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IAB Reveals a Week in the Life of a Mobile Phone Shopper

posted on May 18, 2012

Shopping via a mobile phone isn’t an everyday experience for most people, but already we can see patterns forming around the how, the why and the when.

Last month, IAB asked a group of mobile shoppers to keep a diary of their activity in a two week period. Here are some of the things they found out:

Home Usage

Here we see that almost half of all e-commerce interactions happened at home. They found that purchasing peaked in the late afternoon, early evening. 49% said they shopped while watching TV.

The dollar amounts aren’t too impressive, only 38% reported spending more than $21 a month. Most of the purchases were digital downloads with clothing and entertainment items coming in second.

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Google’s Penguin Update Continues to Smack Small Business

posted on May 18, 2012

Last week, a small business owner talked to me about his new marketing plan. It went something like this: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, MySpace, blog, blog outreach, YouTube videos, forum posting, SEO articles written and posted to Squidoo, every other article site then promoted on StumbleUpon, Digg, Reddit and every other appropriate sharing site.

He figured someone could do this in ten hours a week. I told him he was in over his head. I told him he needed to focus on a few keys areas to start — Facebook and Pinterest since he was selling a very visual and colorful product. I also told him to forget article marketing, it not only wouldn’t help his business but it might actually hurt. I don’t think he liked my advice.

Channel Sponsors

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Ring in the New: Facebook Grows While HP Contemplates Huge Cuts

posted on May 18, 2012

We already know that Facebook and its 2,000 or so employees are about to hit the big time. If you haven’t heard you must live under the same rock as SpongeBob’s buddy, Patrick, does.

So rather than belabor an already over-reported “story” let’s do a quick comparison that today’s Facebook IPO brings to the forefront. Let’s just say this is a day when we may see the real changing of the guard in the world of ‘tech’.

I put tech in quotes because while many will claim Facebook is a tech company I will say that that idea is just plain wrong. Facebook is a media / publishing company that USES technology. It is a marketing vehicle. It is not going out and reselling technology solutions to people, it is going out and selling marketing solutions to people. As a result, Facebook is looking at a $100 billion valuation and many newly minted millionaires today.

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Twitter Admits Not Everyone Likes the Bieb and Offers Tailored Suggestions

posted on May 18, 2012

If you have ever signed up for a new Twitter account you have been ‘offered’ a list of suggested people to follow. Let’s just say that unless you intend to use Twitter for the most shallow and useless reasons (which, let’s face it, most do but I digress) that suggestion list is awful.

Well, six long years into this Twitter has admitted as much. As a result they are introducing tailored suggestions. The Twitter blog explains

Currently, when new users come to Twitter, we show them all almost the same suggestions for what or who to follow. That isn’t ideal. Since you have individual interests, you should get individual suggestions. After all, even though millions of people love Justin Bieber, FC Barcelona or Kim Kardashian, not everyone using Twitter may want to follow them.

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Postal Service Moves Ahead with Massive Closures

posted on May 17, 2012

“We simply do not have the mail volumes to justify the size and capacity of our current mail processing network.” And with that, the Postmaster General dropped the ax on 232 mail processing centers around the country.

We’ve seen it coming for awhile, but the Post Office is such a staple in our world that I don’t think any of us really expected to see it fail. Then again, think about all the things you don’t mail anymore. Letters to friends and family have become emails, ecards have taken the place of invitations and announcements. Bills have gone “green” and banks no longer mail statements. The only upticks come from online retailers but even they have options other than going Postal.

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Dish Network Risks Biting the Hands That Feed Them

posted on May 17, 2012

Dish Network is giving customers what they want — commercial free TV. The next sound you hear is that of network execs screaming.

The device that is causing all the ruckus is Dish’s Hopper, a DVR that allows you to automatically hop past all the commercials on a network TV show. You know, kind of like you already do with show’s you’ve recorded, only the Hopper does the work for you.

Understandably, the networks are furious. Commercials pay for the shows they produce. If networks don’t produce shows, then Dish Network wouldn’t have any content and they’d go out of business.

On the other hand, if Dish doesn’t keep their customers happy, they’ll go back to cable and again, Dish will go out of business.

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Twitter Allows Firefox Users A ‘Do Not Track’ Option

posted on May 17, 2012

Twitter may further separate itself from the social media crowd by doing something that some might think is anti-social media (at least from a business point of view). That something is allowing users to opt in to a ‘Do Not track’ mode when using the Firefox browser.

The New York Times Bits blog reports

It’s no secret that Facebook is worth about $100 billion because it collected personal data about its users. A lot of data.

Although Twitter tracks its users too — albeit in a much less aggressive way — the company has decided to take a different route. It announced Thursday that it is joining Mozilla, the maker of the Firefox Web browser, and giving its users the ability to opt-out of being tracked in any way through Twitter.