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Striking While the Iron Is Still Hot, Groupon Set To Go Public Today

posted on November 4, 2011

If you have been following this saga for any time you may have wondered if the day that Groupon goes public would ever come. Well, unless something goes terribly awry, today is the day and there is plenty of interest in the IPO.

Kara Swisher of All Things Digital reports

Groupon has priced its public offering at $20 a share, several dollars above the expected price range of $16 to $18. That will garner $700 million for the start-up, which is only several years old, at a valuation of close to $13 billion.

The offering for the Chicago-based daily deals site — which has had a controversial IPO process — was well upward of 10 times oversubscribed, meaning there was a lot more demand than supply of its stock.

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Majority of Young Workers Value Social Media Over a Steady Paycheck

posted on November 3, 2011

What would you rather have, a raise in salary or access to Facebook at work? How you answer that question is highly dependent on your age.

Cisco conducted a survey of 2,800 young professionals across fourteen countries and they came up with data that, while not unexpected, is still a little disturbing.

Part Two of the 2011 Cisco Connected World Technology Report focused on social media, mobile technology and the workplace. Overall, they found that connecting to people on the internet was a big priority for the under 30 crowd, so much so, that they were willing to sacrifice financial stability in order to have access.

More than half of college students globally (56%) said that if they encountered a company that banned access to social media, they would either not accept a job offer or would join and find a way to circumvent corporate policy.

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Yahoo Breaks New Ad Ground with Social Slider and Living Ads

posted on November 3, 2011

Yahoo has launched two new ad services designed to engage consumers in a more meaningful and fun way.

First is the Social Sentiment Slider. The slider is a sponsored poll that is attached to a piece of content on Yahoo’s site.

Here’s what it looks like:

We can’t see the article, but presumably it’s a news feature about the rise in luxury item sales, or something along those lines. People move the slider to express their opinion, the percentages change and then they can post that opinion directly to Facebook.

There’s no doubt that social engagement will help brand awareness, but there’s also a potential pitfall. The ad sponsor doesn’t get to choose the slider question, Yahoo does. In the above case, it can be disconcerting to see a high percentage to the negative side (Status) when you’re promoting a luxury car right underneath.

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Google Says “Get Your Fresh Search Results Here!”

posted on November 3, 2011

Google has announced an algorithmic change that is supposed to impact some 35% of searches. That’s a big number. The trouble is it’s going to be pretty hard to determine what 35% of searches that is. It’s like when I used to work in the insurance business. We would be trained to tell a prospect who was interested in life insurance that we knew exactly how many people would die each day, the problem was that we just didn’t know who (sign here Mr. Prospect). Now Google is telling publishers and their SEO’s to “sign here”.

In the Google blog post announcing his change we are told

Search results, like warm cookies right out of the oven or cool refreshing fruit on a hot summer’s day, are best when they’re fresh. Even if you don’t specify it in your search, you probably want search results that are relevant and recent.

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Google Offers Android App Available and It May Even Work

posted on November 3, 2011

In light of yesterday’s app wreck we now must take new app announcements from Google with a grain of salt. Of course, since the one announced for Google Offers is an Android app one hopes the troubles will be few and far between.

We hear from Google’s Mobile blog

Today we’re announcing our new Google Offers mobile app, that allows you to discover, buy and redeem your favorite deals on the go. The free app will notify you about all the great Offers that match your interests. You can purchase offers in just a few clicks and even redeem paperlessly with select merchants.

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Study Shows Differences Between B2B and B2C Marketers

posted on November 3, 2011

Its not news that B2B and B2C marketing techniques and preferences differ. As with most things, however, it’s when you see numbers tied to the assumptions that you can say “Hmmm, I didn’t know it was quite that different” or “Well, of course! I knew that already because I am a social media and marketing guru!”.

A report done by Webmarketing123 shows some of these stark differences particularly in the use of social media marketing. Here we see just how different the use of social media tools can be between the two disciplines.

What is more surprising about this is the B2C dependence on Facebook. Good news for Zuck and the boys, huh?

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Google’s Gmail App Wreck

posted on November 3, 2011

In an event that can only be classified as “Did this really happen? Really?!” Google has rolled out their Gmail app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. If you were do something this big end users would expect that it would be in good working order when the announcement was made, right? Not in this case. In fact, Google may have helped to coin a new phrase with this this one as we will no longer refer to messes like this as a train wreck but rather an app wreck.

In a nutshell, the app was not ready for prime time. To their credit the Gmail team did the right thing.