Siri, the digital personal assistant that’s been integrated into the new iPhone 4S from Apple, is generating substantial buzz. That’s because it’s so much more accurate than earlier iterations of voice command platforms. (Google’s digital personal assistant on the Android operating system has generated far less accolades by comparison.)
The question is, what will Siri do to change the traditional ways people interact with the Web? Because Siri is far more than just voice recognition. It’s what it does with the voice it recognizes that’s so interesting.
Siri can update your calendar, set reminders, play music, write e-mails and text – indeed, it’s a personal assistant in every sense of the word.
Users of the iPhone 4S are using Siri to send texts and e-mails. They’re tending to open fewer apps, since Siri is very effective in deciding which app, service or site will best handle the needed tasks.
In search, this means that Siri may supplant what users might have done previously: namely, open a browser window and search using Google or Bing. If a user is asking Siri to find the closest good-quality dry cleaning establishment, for example, the result may be based on more than the top spot on Google Places … it may also be based on customer ratings on Yelp or “likes” on Facebook.
That’s because Siri navigates a variety of application program interfaces, pulling not only your information, but also information provided by others.
The rise of social media platforms has already alerted us to the fact that simply having a highly relevant, well-optimized website is no longer enough. The “endorsement” of sites, the incidence of positive customer reviews and the degree of “engagement” with visitors are playing a bigger role now, thanks to Facebook, Google+1 and various rating sites.
But now, with Siri and digital personal assistants entering the scene in a major way, we may well see people migrating away from accessing search pages and simply using the friendly voice in their mobile device to send them where they want to go.
… It’s yet another example of the constant state of change that’s a fact of life in the world of digital marketing.
But despite the limitless subjects that are the topic of these searches, it turns out that search behaviors can be divided into three distinct categories.
That’s what research conducted earlier this year by survey firm Latitude Research found. The results of this highly interesting survey, which queried ~925 Americans age 21 to 54, revealed that users searching on the web exhibit just three major behavior patterns:
Answer Me – People in this mode want answers to exactly what they’re asking for … no less and no more. They also want the answers delivered to them in the most direct way possible. These types of queries are the largest component of searches … representing ~46% of all searches.
Educate Me – People in this mode are looking for comprehensive understanding on an issue, and they’re usually interested in multiple perspectives. They’ll search until their goal is satisfied … and this may occur over a lengthy period of time and through multiple searches on related topics. These types of queries make up ~26% of all searches, and they’re often on topics like finance and healthcare.
Inspire Me – The third category of queries are the creative, exploratory type of search where people have an open mind, are willing to be led, and are open to surprises. These types of searches represent the remaining ~28%, and are often on topics pertaining to the arts, hobbies, travel, home inspirations and gardening.
The Latitude Research report recommends that web sites include content that can appeal to all three categories of searches … although there will usually be a preponderance of one type over the others depending on the market segments, products and services involved.
The following suggestions were made for aligning content to query behaviors:
For “answer” searches … it’s wise to feature product/service benefits, in addition to presenting content in quick, easy-to-find answers. Clearly defined “selling” pitches work well in this setting.
For “educate” searches … present informative content that also provides ways to explore more facets of the issue … plus offering relevant links to additional online information sources. The “selling” in this case comes more in the form of educating and informing.
For “inspire” searches … focus on sparking the imagination of site visitors, with “surprise” moments that will generate interest and spur creative thought. When this is done effectively, strong sales pitches don’t need to be pushed because the viewer will be drawn into the buying process naturally and effortlessly.
For more on the interesting findings from the Three Mindsets of Search research study, click here.
More of the same: The courts throw out yet another defamation lawsuit against Google.To the casual observer, it seems like American society gets more litigious with every passing year … with legal judgments handed down in cases that might have seemed totally frivolous in earlier decades.
But one area where the courts don’t appear to be favoring plaintiffs at all is in the realm of Internet defamation lawsuits. No matter how many times someone brings a legal action – and with all sorts of corroborating evidence in hand — the cases are thrown out of court.
The most recent example of this comes from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has just ruled in favor of Google in a lawsuit involving a family-owned roofing and construction business. The owners of the business had sued Google for defamation, citing an anonymous post that appeared on Google Places.
The anonymous poster claimed that “this company says it will fix my roof, but all I get are excuses.” According to the suit, this post has hurt business prospects, but it’s been impossible for the company to attempt to resolve the customer’s problem due to the anonymous nature of the post – or even to confirm that it represents an actual customer’s experience.
And I don’t doubt at all that business has suffered for this company as a result of the negative review. Results from a new survey conducted by Cone Communications reveals that ~80% of consumers have changed their minds about purchasing a product or service based solely on negative information they encountered online. That percentage is up from ~67% in 2010.
Clearly, online information has more power than ever to “make or break” a product or service these days.
But the appellate court sided with the district court that had ruled earlier that Google was immune from liability. The court wrote: “The district court properly dismissed plaintiffs’ action … because plaintiffs seek to impose liability on Google for content created by a third party.”
As in all the other cases it has successfully checkmated, Google moved to have the case dismissed on the grounds that the federal Communications Decency Act immunizes web sites for libel claims that stem from users’ comments.
I’ve blogged before about courts and the Internet, and it’s always the same: Trying to sue for “transgressions” carried out on the Internet is like banging your head against a wall.
The wall doesn’t budge, and all you end up with is a big headache.
So it bears repeating: If you’re thinking about bringing a legal action against someone because of an online issue, do yourself a favor. Don’t bother.
Is the Internet today as important to people as the very air they breathe? That’s what the results of a survey of ~2,800 college students and young professionals seem to be telling us.
Market research firm InsightExpress fielded the survey for Cisco Systems, a consumer electronics, networking, voice and communications technology/services company.
The research effort collected responses from the USA and 13 other countries in the developed world plus emerging powerhouse economies (Australia, Canada, the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia, India, China, Japan, Brazil and Mexico).
What did the survey discover? More than half of the respondents said they couldn’t live without the Internet – it’s that vital to their lives.
In fact, for many the Internet is more important than dating, partying, and wheels.
Intriguing findings from the survey include:
~55% of college students and ~62% of young professionals believe that the Internet is such an integral part of their lives, they could not live without it.
If forced to make a choice between access to the Internet and access to a car, ~64% of the respondents would choose having the Internet connection.
“Virtual” relationships are gaining on face-to-face interaction. More than one quarter of the college respondents reported that staying updated on Facebook is more important to them than partying, dating, listening to music, or visiting with friends.
Smartphones are on the cusp of eclipsing desktop computers as the most prevalent means of connecting with this segment of society … which then makes it not much of a stretch to learn that ~60% of these same young professionals feel that “having an office” is unnecessary for being competitive.
And here’s another thing: These respondents are used to constant interruptions. ~80% report being interrupted by instant messaging and social media updates at least once per hour … and over 30% reported having five or more such interruptions hourly.
To me, this sounds more like disruption than interruption.
Marie Hattar, Cisco Systems’ marketing vice president, concludes that the survey findings “should make businesses re-examine how they need to evolve in order to attract talent and shape their business models.”
She also noted that “CIOs need to plan and scale their networks now to address the security and mobility demands that the next generation workforce will put on their infrastructure … in conjunction with a proper assessment of corporate policies.”
As the survey makes clear, at the rate things are evolving, the office environment will look and feel nothing like it did just a few short years ago. And it may be the biggest single transformation in the business world we’ve yet seen.
AptiQuant's "Not-so-smart IE users" research brief leaves more than one news organization with egg on its face.You may have read the news reports a few weeks ago of a study conducted by a Canadian research company that “concluded” that Internet Explorer users have lower IQs than users of other browsers like Firebox and Safari.
The “news release” was peppered with authentic-looking charts and graphs that supposedly provided backup for the conclusions, which purportedly came from online IQ testing of ~100,000 individuals found randomly through searches and Internet advertising.
Not surprisingly, the news that IE users are somehow “dumber” than the “bright bulbs” who use the supposedly more “hip” Chrome, Opera, Safari and Firefox browsers hit the newswires like a brick.
I saw reports on the research all over the place – from the BBC and Huffington Post to Yahoo, the New York Times, Forbes and MediaPost.
… And then, a week or so after the story burst on the scene, it began to fall apart.
One intrepid BBC reporter dug into the story deeper, and discovered in the process that AptiQuant, the Vancouver-based organization billed as a “psychometric consulting company” that supposedly conducted the survey, is an entity with no traceable presence back beyond just a few weeks prior to the deployment of its research findings.
Not only that, the AptiQuant website had been set up only a few days prior … and the site’s professional-looking photos lifted wholesale from a legitimate Paris-based consulting firm.
Curious, I trolled around online to find the original research brief released by AptiQuant. It seems to me that anyone reading the study’s conclusions would smell a rat.
True, the statistical data appear impressive enough. But no research organization worth its salt is going to make comments such as the following a part of its research conclusions, and I quote:
The study showed a substantial relationship between an individual’s cognitive ability and their choice of web browser. From the test results, it is a clear indication that individuals on the lower side of the IQ scale tend to resist a change/upgrade of their browsers. This hypothesis can be extended to any software in general ….
It is common knowledge that Internet Explorer Versions 6.0 to 8.0 are highly incompatible with modern web standards. In order to make websites work properly on these browsers, web developers have to spend a lot of unnecessary effort. This results in an extra financial strain on web projects, and has over the last decade cost millions of man-hours to IT companies. Now that we have a statistical pattern on the continuous usage of incompatible browsers, better steps can be taken to eradicate this nuisance.Nuisance? I mean, really!
A few days later, the perpetrators of the phony research report came forward and admitted as much. AptiQuant’s purported CEO, a person using the moniker “Leonard Howard,” laid the cards on the table:
“The main purpose behind this hoax was to create awareness about the incompatibilities of IE6 and how it is pulling back innovation. So, if you are still using IE6, please update to a newer browser. We got this idea when adding some features to our comparison shopping site … we found out that IE6 was highly incompatible with web standards. IE 7.0 and 8.0, though better than 6.0, are still incompatible with not only the standards, but with each other, too.”
It was also noted that “telltale signs that should have uncovered the hoax in less than five minutes” included the following red flags:
• The AptiQuant domain was registered only on July 14, 2011
• The IQ test that was referenced in the report (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale IV test) is copyrighted and cannot be administered online
• The company address listed on the report does not exist
• Much of the content on the website was ripped from other sites – including the photo images
• The website was developed using the WordPress platform, which would be highly unusual for any credible consulting firmBeyond the fact that “Mr. Howard & Co.” must have had way too much spare time on their hands … I think it’s interesting – and sobering – to witness how many reputable news organizations took this report and ran with it without so much as a minute of fact-checking – or even picking up the phone to get an additional quote from an AptiQuant company spokesperson.
… Especially since the topic and the conclusions drawn – namely, that some people are dumber than others – were bound to be controversial.
In the “old days,” a story like this would be lucky to be published in single outlet, if at all. But in today’s “brave new world” of online news, it took mere hours for the news to bound about the Internet and show up on dozens of legitimate news sites … thereby enabling the story to take on a “legitimate” life of its own.
I wonder what’ll be next. Because it’s sure to happen again.
One of the great aspects of online advertising is that every jot and tittle of users’ experiences can be tracked and analyzed.
Much of the findings confirm what we might already suspect in terms of the ways people interact with online advertising … but having confirmation and quantification helps in planning and carrying out advertising program tactics.
Take new research conducted by Casale Media, a Canadian-based online advertising network which specializes in promoting brands via banner, rectangle, tower, hover and pop-up ads. The company analyzed nearly 2 billion ad impressions generated during the first quarter of 2011.
Based on this research, Casale has come to three key conclusions:
Online display ads appearing “above the fold” – in other words, in the area that’s visible before the user starts scrolling the page – are nearly seven times more effective in generating clickthroughs compared to ads appearing below the fold.
Viewers are three times more likely to “act” on an ad if it is the first or second one they encounter during their web session.
The more times someone sees a particular ad, the more likely he or she will be to click through and take action. Casale finds that ads served five times to a user are 12 to 14 times more effective than ads shown less frequently.
The Casale conclusions support the findings of other studies utilizing eye-tracking data, where it’s been found that site visitors spend the vast majority of their time looking at information positioned within the web page’s initially viewable zone.
As for the finding that ads served to users later in their browsing session are much less likely to get attention and be acted upon … industry practitioners refer to this as “banner blindness.” It’s a phenomenon that has an antecedent in the print magazine world, where “far forward” positions were often the place everyone wanted to be.
And as for greater ad frequency generating more viewer actions, this also mirrors the offline advertising world, where multiple ad exposures are needed to achieve a degree of familiarity and to “register” with users.
Awareness and familiarity are the first steps in generating action. Of course, too much frequency can be counterproductive – but again, the tracking capabilities of online advertising enable marketers to experiment with different exposure levels to determine the optimum frequency that’ll generate the best level of engagement.
The idea is that famous brands could begin using their well-known monikers to further distinguish their activities on the Internet. ICANN’s spokespeople are on record claiming that the new guidelines will “usher in a new Internet age.”
Well … not so fast. The more people have been looking into this scheme, the less they like it. One of the biggest issues is the “pay to play” aspect. Unlike the days when people could purchase a domain name for just a few dollars … then squat on it until someone was willing to pay hundreds of thousands to use it, the cost to secure a new domain suffix like .pepsi or .hyundai will start at ~$185,000 … and go up from there.
That’s not chump change. But here’s the thing: For securing a famous brand name as a top-level domain name, it still represents a dandy opportunity for someone with funding (or a group of investors) to nab the “best brands” early on … then hold out to resell then name for a smart sum far greater than what they paid.
Which puts the onus back on the large companies who will feel compelled to pay the $185,000+ right off the bat – even if they have no intention of using the top-level domain name now or ever.
So it’s a very nice revenue stream to ICANN, ponied up by major international companies who don’t want the risk of having their names “hijacked” by someone bent on extortion – or worse, nefarious brand doings.
The concern is so great that the Association of National Advertisers, an organization made up of large national/international brand marketers, has issued an official communication to ICANN, warning that its scheme could have “potentially disastrous consequences” for marketers if the plan is implemented as proposed.
The letter also states that the ICANN scheme is likely to cause “irreparable harm and damage” to marketers, even as it “contravenes the legal rights of brand owners” and “jeopardizes the safety of consumers.”
Bob Liodice, president of ANA, has gone further in criticism of the ICANN proposal. “The decision to go forward with the program also violates sound public policy and contravenes ICANN’s Code of Conduct and its undertaking with the United States Department of Commerce,” he emphasizes.
Liodice contends that if the ICANN plan moves forward, it would create an ugly free-for-all environment in which many brand marketers would need to divert legal, financial and technical resources to applying for, managing and protecting their top-level domains … or risk the consequences.
“They are essentially being forced to buy their own brands from ICANN at an initial price of $185,000,” Liodice points out.
The sharp criticism of the plan ensures that these issues aren’t anywhere close to being resolved – and it probably puts ICANN’s anticipated January program launch date in question.
Stay tuned … ’cause it’s going to be a wild ride over the next few months!
I’ve blogged before about Twitter’s seeming inability to break out of its “niche” position in communications. We now have enough time under our belt with Twitter to begin to draw some conclusions rather than simply engage in speculation.
Endlessly hyped (although sometimes correctly labeled as a revolutionary communications tool – see the North African freedom movements) the fact is that Twitter hasn’t been adopted by the masses like we’ve witnessed with Facebook.
But whether you choose to believe the 15 million or the 65 million figure, it’s a far cry from the 150+ million Americans who are on Facebook – which represents about half of the entire American population.
You can find a big reason for Pew’s discrepancy by snooping around on Twitter a bit. It won’t take you long to find countless Twitter accounts that are bereft of any tweet activity at all. People may have set their acount up at one time, but long ago lost interest in using the platform – if indeed they ever had any real Twitter zeal beyond “follow-the-leader.” (“Everybody’s going on Twitter … shouldn’t I sign up, too?”)
This is the purest essence of hype: generating a flurry of interest that quickly dissipates as the true value (or lack thereof) is discerned by users.
Of course, Twitter does have its place. Some brands find the platform to be a good venue for announcing new products and sales deals. And it doesn’t take long for the best of those deals promoted on Twitter to leech their way into the rest of the online world.
Other companies – although far fewer – are using Twitter as a kind of customer service discussion board.
And as we all know, celebrities l-o-v-e their Twitter accounts. What a great, easy way to generate an endless stream of sound-bite information about their favorite topic: themselves.
Analyses of active Twitter accounts have shown that a sizable chunk of the activity is made up of media properties and brands tweeting each other … a lot of inside-the-park baseball.
What’s missing from the equation is the level of “real people” engagement one can find on Facebook in abundance … and maybe soon on Google+ as well. That’s real social interaction – in spades.
Actually, you mightn’t be too far off the mark if you deduced that Twitter is the digital equivalent of a bunch of industry insiders at a cocktail party … saying little of real importance while trying to appear “impressive” and “hip” at the same time.
I hear the complaint often that e-mail has become the preserve of “deal a day” promotions and communications from brands that have devolved into little more than breathless announcements about discounts that are “too good to pass up,” coupled with the obligatory “free shipping” pot-sweetener.
And then the next day, another deal shows up that’s practically the same as the last one …
But how surprising is this, really? Let’s not forget that daily newspaper advertising – the equivalent antecedent to e-mail marketing, has always had a similar focus on price, sales and deals.
It’s just that with e-mail, it seems more ubiquitous because they’re being pitched to us hourly on any number of digital platforms and mobile devices, rather than just once a day with the newspaper delivery.
And there’s no doubt that the sheer volume of deal activity is growing – the low cost of e-mail marketing makes sure of that. Not only is seemingly every consumer brand out there working the e-mail channel like they did catalogues and newspaper advertising in the past, there’s also the bevy of coupon marketers like LivingSocial, Groupon, Yipit and Gilt City, to name just the top few.
Some have discerned a decline in the “quality” of the information that is being provided; whereas there may have once been some educational, informative or “cool” content included along with the special deals, now it’s often devolved into nothing but “price, price, price” and “savings, savings, savings.”
The extent of consumer interaction with “deal-a-day” websites and e-mail offerings was quantified recently in consumer research conducted by Yahoo and Ipsos OTX MediaCT. The survey, fielded in February 2011, discovered that U.S. adults who are on the Internet subscribe to an average of three daily or weekly shopping e-mails or e-newsletters. (And more than half subscribe to two or more.)
How often are people reading these e-communiqués? With daily regularly, it turns out.
Nearly two-thirds of the respondents who subscribe to at least two of these “daily deal” e-mails or e-newsletters report that they read all of the messages that are sent. Here’s how reading frequency breaks out:
Read several times per day: ~22% of respondents
… Once per day: ~38%
… A few times per week: ~23%
Read once per week: ~7%
… A few times per month: ~5%
… Once per month or less: ~5%
The same Yahoo/Ipsos survey measured the degree of pass-along activity, which is one of the most potent aspects of e-mail marketing. Most recipients reported doing this – about 45% doing so on a weekly basis or more frequently:
Forwarding deals to friends or family several times per week: ~17%
… Several times per day: ~12%
… Once per day: ~10%
… Once per week: ~6%
Forwarding once per month or less frequently: ~19%
… Never doing so: ~22%
Despite the complaint commonly heard about groaning e-mail inboxes, the Yahoo/Ipsos survey gives little indication that consumers are in reality becoming all that tired of the onslaught of daily deal promos. In fact, over six in ten respondents in the survey reported that they subscribe to more of them today compared to last year.
Moreover, nearly half of the survey respondents reported that they’re excited to receive them … and that they “can’t wait” to see the latest deals being offered each time.
There’s another way we know that these deals are retaining their relevance: Three-fourths of the respondents reported that these types of e-mails come to their main inbox rather than to a separate account they’ve set up to receive such offers. So there’s little doubt that when people say that these deals are desirable, they actually mean it.
We consumers do like our deals, don’t we? And if you think that the popularity of deals and discounts is due to the recession, that’s belied by the fact that even America’s super-affluent are on the deal bandwagon. Unity Marketing’s recent survey of the wealthiest 2% of Americans — those earning $250,000+ per year — finds that value-priced Amazon is the top shopping destination for ~45% of them. Not only that, ~10% use Groupon for coupons and ~8% use Craigslist.
No, it seems bargain-hunting is the thing for practically everyone.
With the steady growth of social networking sites – particularly Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter – the characteristics and behaviors of their users continue to evolve.
The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has been studying these changes in recent years through conducting a variety of consumer research surveys, and its lateest findings have just been released. And some of these key findings are quite revealing.
For starters, Pew finds that nearly eight in ten Americans are now using the Internet. Of these, nearly 60% are also using at least one social media site. And social media users now skew more heavily female (~56%), which represents something of a shift in recent years.
The Pew research also finds that among those people who engage with social media sites, Facebook is the 500 pound gorilla; more than nine in ten respondents reported that they are on Facebook, compared to only ~18% who are on LinkedIn and an even smaller ~13% who are on Twitter.
Moreover, engagement with Facebook is at a higher level. About half of the Facebook users report that they are on Facebook every day. By contrast, only one-third of Twitter users engage with that social media platform on a daily basis.
The Pew study also found that the average number of Facebook friends a user has is nearly 230 – a figure that frankly surprised me a bit. What constitutes “friends” break down as follows:
Friends from high school: ~22%
Extended family members: ~12%
Coworkers: ~10%
Friends from college: ~9%
Immediate family members: ~8%
People from affinity groups: ~7%
Neighbors: ~2%
Interesting, on average about 10% of Facebook users’ friends are people that they’ve never actually met, or met only once.
Another interesting finding from the Pew survey is that Facebook users tend to be more trusting of others and more active in the extent of their social interaction on a personal level. This would seem to refute the notion that Facebookers may be more susceptible to pursue “cyber” relationships in lieu of old-fashioned personal relationships. To the contrary, the Pew report observes:
“The likelihood of an American experiencing a deficit in social support, having less exposure to diverse others, not being able to consider opposing points of view, being untrusting, or otherwise being disengaged from their community and American society generally is unlikely to be a result of how they use technology.”
And what about LinkedIn? Clearly, it operates on a completely different plane than Facebook and even Twitter. It has become the de facto Human Resources clearinghouse on the Web … an employment fair on steroids.
LinkedIn’s unique position in the social media sphere is reflected in characteristics like the educational level of its users. Whereas only ~20% of Facebook users have a four-year college degree – and just ~15% have post-graduate education – those percentages on LinkedIn are ~37% and ~38% respectively. (Twitter’s educational demographics are nearly identical to Facebook’s.)
LinkedIn’s age demographics also tend to skew older. This means is that even though LinkedIn users may not be engaging with the platform on a daily basis — in fact, only ~6% do so according to the Pew survey — they do represent a highly attractive professional audience that offers good potential for many companies in marketing their products and services.
Siri, the digital personal assistant that’s been integrated into the new iPhone 4S from Apple, is generating substantial buzz. That’s because it’s so much more accurate than earlier iterations of voice command platforms. (Google’s digital personal assistant on the Android operating system has generated far less accolades by comparison.)
Nones Notes 