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Cleaner, Easier, I Dig the New Digg

posted on August 20, 2010

There was a time when a story on the front page of Digg was the holy grail for any web publisher. But in more recent months, the average Joe has moved on from the once and powerful bookmarking site because of the monopoly caused by power players in the game. Then Facebook and Twitter rose in favor and it looked like Digg had met its match. Until now.

Digg is rising up from the ashes with a new version that emphasizes social connections and sharing and de-emphasizes the importance of hitting the front page. Will it help them regain their former glory? I’ve had a look around and it’s a good start.

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Moms Want More Mobile Coupons

posted on August 19, 2010

If you’re looking to reach parents by mobile messaging, send them grocery coupons and more than 50% of them will be happy to accept. That comes from a survey which was conducted by Harris Interactive and it showed that parents with children are more interested in receiving mobile text alerts from merchants than those without kids.

Great news for those of you with family-oriented products, but don’t start texting just yet. The reality is that only 7% (versus 2%) of people with kids said they were extremely interested in getting those messages. A whopping 65% of people with children checked the “not at all” box.

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China Wants to Check In As Well

posted on August 19, 2010

Once again we try to take a look at how the rest of the world is doing while Facebook’s announcement of its Places services gets worked and reworked by every media type on the planet.

Over at Forbes’ Beijing Dispatch they are taking a look at what might be happening in the geo-location game in China. Don’t expect any of the names you are familiar with to be making any inroads into this huge market. If history is any barometer there will be plenty of foursquare and Groupon knock-offs vying for the title of the Chinese king of the location craze. The originators? Not so much.

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Yahoo Looks to Maximize Happiness

posted on August 19, 2010

Already had enough of Facebook’s location service? Looking for news about the rest of the Internet? Well, while Facebook is trying to add value to services with products Yahoo is taking a bit of a different route.

It appears as if Yahoo is looking for some kind of Internet “secret sauce” that holds the key to happiness. Sound weird? It does to me because it sounds like the kind of talk that would be coming from a Northern California commune of the 60’s rather than the campus of one of the biggest Internet properties in the world.

Wired reports

Imagine a world where your favorite webpage doesn’t even exist until you go there, and then it’s exactly what you hoped it would be, and it makes you viscerally happy. Prabhakar Raghavan is thinking about just that, and as the chief scientist for Yahoo he’s actually in a position to make it possible.

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Google TV: Who’s Going to Pay the Bill?

posted on August 19, 2010

When Sony released the home video recording system in the late 70′s, TV networks and studios tried to have them run out of business. Universal Studios even sued the company in court saying that Sony was advocating home copyright infringement (Universal lost). An even bigger concern was the fact that the new technology allowed home viewers to skip TV commercials and it was thought that this would bring about the end of TV advertising as we know it.

Thirty years later, ad skipping technology has improved with the advent of the DVR but networks are still selling commercials. You’d think we would have learned something from that, but we haven’t.

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Facebook Places Are Here (And There and Everywhere!)

posted on August 19, 2010

Facebook’s location service called Places (couldn’t they have worked a little harder on naming it something a little more pithy?) is here. All of the guessing, wondering and speculating can end. Now, after all is said and done guess who has the last word on Facebook’s move to tell everyone where everyone else is at every moment of everyone’s existence? Why the ACLU of course!

From the website of the Northern California ACLU

Following Facebook’s announcement today about its new location-based product, Places, here’s what the ACLU of Northern California has to say on the privacy front:

Facebook made some changes to its regular privacy practices to protect sensitive location-based information, such as limiting the default visibility of check-ins on your feed to “Friends Only.” But it has failed to build in some other important privacy safeguards.

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Can You Pitch Your Company in Under 118 Seconds?

posted on August 18, 2010

The average elevator ride in New York City is 110 seconds and the average person’s attention span is 8 seconds. Put them together and you have the formula for the perfect pitch.

The concept itself was pitched by former Kodak CMO Jeffrey Hayzlett during his keynote speech at SES San Francisco. According to a report by ClickZ, Hayzlett really drove home the idea that elevator pitches are getting too long winded. He says that we need to tighten our focus and make every word count so consumers understand the value of the brand.

What is Kodak’s pitch?

“Only Kodak creates emotional technology that makes it easier to make, manage and move images and information so people can strengthen relationships.”

That one is a little corporate, but Hayzlett had a few more including: