My recent post on U.S. airlines’ sorry consumer ratings led Robert, one of this blog’s faithful readers, to make a broader comment about America’s standing in the world today compared to years past. Here, in part, is what he wrote:
“… people are more or less brainwashed to think that the USA is #1 in everything. I think some people in the USA (the smarter ones) are now slowing waking up to discover that the rest of the world has really moved on since the early 80s — and at a very past pace … Where the USA was clearly leading the world in the 50s and 60s, the last 30 years are very, very different in that respect. An interesting topic [for your blog]?”
Robert is a true citizen of the world. He lives in the Far East currently, but his business activities have had him a resident in the U.S. and in Europe also. He’s brought up an interesting, perhaps controversial point to ponder.
Agree? Disagree? Somewhere in between? Feel free to contribute your own thoughts by posting your comment below!
Over the past few days, we’ve heard reports of how the post-election demonstrators in Iran have been using Twitter as a means for organizing protests, moving crowds from neighborhood to neighborhood to keep one step ahead of the armed authorities … and to upload images and video clips of the demonstrations to broadcast to the rest of the world. Twitter has played an important (and successful) role in engineering a “grand workaround” scheme, thwarting a government-ordered news blackout.
We saw the same phenomenon play out in the Eastern European country of Moldova just a few months back.
Viewed from this perspective, Twitter seems to be living up to its billing — in spades.
But there’s also research that shows another side of the coin. A just-completed Harvard University study of 300,000 Twitter users has found a classic rule of behavior in force: just 10% of users are generating more than 90% of the content on Twitter.
It goes even further than that. The average Twitter user “tweets” about once every 75 days … or even less frequently. And the median number of tweets made per person is … One!
That’s right. More than half of the 300,000 people in the Harvard study have sent just one tweet ever. It was with dry understatement that Bill Heil, the Harvard Business School graduate who carried out the study, reported, “Based on the numbers, Twitter is certainly not a service where everyone who has seen it has instantly loved it.”
I have an additional explanation to offer: Perhaps most people haven’t (yet) figured out what to do with Twitter to make it meaningful in their lives.
It didn’t help that Twitter itself set the bar at a pretty low level right from the start by suggesting that users answer the question: “What are you doing?” How inconsequential is that?
As it turns out, the trivial isn’t where Twitter has found its true voice.
Indeed, ask the Iranians or Moldovans whether Twitter has been meaningful in their lives. You’ll get a life-and-death answer in the affirmative.
Well, it didn’t take long for the marketplace to render its verdict on the Bing search engine phenomenon. Fueled by a multi-million dollar advertising rollout plus an aggressive PR push, web tracking service StatCounter has reported that Bing actually vaulted past Yahoo to become the #2 search engine … for one day.
That’s right. According to StatCounter’s data, on June 4th, Bing captured over 15% of the U.S. search share market, while Yahoo had only around 10%. By the next day, Bing’s share had dropped below 10% while Yanoo notched up a point to 11%. And by Day 3, Bing’s share had fallen still further to just under 7%.
Think it couldn’t get worse? The day after that, Bing was mired below 6% share.
Similar results were recorded worldwide.
What’s behind the primal shrug that Bing seems to have met in the marketplace? Certainly, all the PR hype was successful in getting people curious enough to click through and do a bit of tire-kicking. But it’s obvious that most weren’t particularly impressed by what they experienced, despite the fact that Bing does provide some user-friendly features not available over at Google.
But that’s not nearly enough for success. Google’s users are, by and large, quite satisfied with the search experience. It’s what they know. It’s comfortable. And unless there’s a compelling reason to switch — to change deep-seated habits — most people simply aren’t going to play ball … whether you put millions of dollars in advertising behind your pitch or not.
The folks at Google might have been shaken a least a bit on June 4th when their market share of search dropped to 72%. But they needn’t have worried. Four days later, Google’s share was back up to 80% — where it had been to begin with.
Despite the fact that Google has proven itself to be all but immune from threats posed by competing search engines, hope springs eternal. Within the past couple weeks alone, two new challengers have emerged, accompanied by much fanfare in the business press.
Microsoft takes yet another swipe at Google with its new Bing search engine. Based on an earlier one called “Kumo,” some industry observers — though not all — believe it is a pretty good competitor. Reviewers are particularly pleased with the presentation of refined versions of search queries. Bing also features a rollover display of each link’s content, allowing you to see how useful it will be before clicking through to the site.
The search engine also appears to index more recent “breaking news” items, whereas with Google, those results are not shown unless you click through to Google News — an extra step.
The big question is whether Bing will be able to wean web users away from their habit of searching on Google as their default choice. Certainly, Microsoft is putting some serious promotional dollars behind the launch — upwards of $100 million according to Advertising Age magazine. But based on the tea leaves, a wholesale change in search behavior seems unlikely. Search habits aren’t going to change dramatically unless there is a dramatic improvement in the effectiveness and speed of search activity. Fom what we see of Bing so far, we’re talking about improvements nibbling around on the margin rather than big sweeping change.
But “big sweeping change” just might be the recipe for Wolfram/Alpha, the other new entrant in the search engine sweepstakes. That’s because W/A isn’t actually a search engine in the classsic sense. Instead, its developers refer to it as a “computational knowledge engine” that uses complex algorithms to search databases to come up with answers to questions, rather than presenting a list of sources where the answer might be found. It can report some really cool factual results just based on the user typing in, for example, a date range, several city names, or an animal species.
The key difference between Wolfram/Alpha and Google is that W/A does not index web pages. Instead, it draws answers from a wide range of information-packed databases. So if you want to know the number and magnitude of hurricanes hitting North America in the past 15 years, you’ll get a specific answer rather than being presented with a series of web links wherein you might find the answer to be hiding.
Some observers see the potential for W/A and Google to team up rather than compete against one another. After all, what they do isn’t directly competitive, but in more respects complementary. And in an interesting twist, it turns out that Stephen Wolfram, the ~50-year-old computer scientist and developer who created the software platform upon which W/A is based (called “Mathematica”), once supervised a summer intern by the name of Sergey Brin — who would go on to develop Google with partner Larry Page.
Sergey and Stephen teaming up once again would be quite the coincidence … or would it really?
It’s not just inside observers who are predicting the demise of the printed newspaper. The “Great American Public” seems to be well clued in to the problems of newspapers also. In fact, a poll released by Rasmussen Reports on May 12, 2009 reports that fully two thirds of adult Americans believe daily papers will disappear within the next ten years.
Even more dramatic, nearly one in five respondents think that it will happen within three years.
When two thirds of all adult Americans predict daily papers will go the way of the dinosaur within the coming decade, that’s big news. No longer is this just a discussion among industry insiders … it’s crept into the popular culture. That’s yet another big danger signal for the papers.
All of this is underscored by Rasmussen’s findings that a majority of Americans (56%) purchase a paper once per week or less — and 37% rarely or never buy a print version of their local paper.
In a possibly related development, Rasmussen’s surveys report that the credibility of newspapers and other media has declined in the public’s eyes. For example, only about one in four respondents has a favorable opinion of the New York Times. That may be a new low for a paper that likes to think of itself as America’s #1 print news source.
The most recent Newspaper Association of America’s financial figures are showing that newspapers have lost a whopping $18 billion over the past three years in their print operations. And while many papers have been counting on their online operations to counterbalance all of this red ink, total Internet revenues over the same period amounted to ~$9 billion — not nearly enough to erase the losses on the print side.
Of course, as this is 2009, the story would not be complete without government officials coming to the rescue, offering their share of interesting proposals. But how does the public feel about these efforts by politicians to save the newspapers? Nearly 40% favor federal government subsidies to keep newspapers in business … but slightly more than half feel it’s better simply to let them go out of business.
It will be interesting to see what the federal and state legislatures actually end up doing — whether it be turning newspaper companies into not-for-profit entities as Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland has suggested … or providing special business tax breaks for the industry as has been proposed by Washington’s governor Christine Gregoire.
Whatever is attempted, my prediction is that it won’t have nearly the positive effect its proponents hope for. The sweep of change in the communications arena is simply too broad and deep for that.
Godiva is a late entry in the customer loyalty program sweepstakes.Godiva Chocolatier has just announced its first-ever loyalty program for customers. It promises to ply chocoholics with all sorts of goodies — from free in-store confectionery gifts to free shipping on online orders. Anyone over age 18 is eligible to sign up with no obligation to purchase … and for those who activate their loyalty membership before June 13th, there’s even a chance to win a complimentary “chocolate party” for up to 25 friends at their nearest company-owned Godiva boutique store.
How wonderful. Now, pardon me while I stifle a big yawn.
For a program that seems pretty decent actually, how come it all sounds so predictable … so mundane? That’s because everybody’s doing it. (And Godiva is really, really late to the party.)
A recent report issued by consulting firm Colloquy contains some interesting statistics about loyalty programs. With more than 1.8 billion loyalty memberships on the books, the numbers have never been higher. (This translates to a whopping 14 loyalty program memberships per U.S. household.)
These stats underscore the fact that loyalty programs have migrated well beyond the original airline frequent flyer and hotel frequent stayer programs to encompass seemingly every corner of consumer activity today.
But according to Colloquy, fewer than 45% of all loyalty programs are actually active, in that they’ve had at least one instance of activity in the preceding 12 months. “The relative ratio of active to inactive loyalty program members suggests that more than half of all program memberships are merely names in a database,” the report states. “The implication for marketers is clear — the era of growing membership rolls just for the sake of growth is over.”
What this suggests is that companies have done a better job of signing people up for loyalty programs to begin with … but not nearly enough to keep them engaged as regular customers over time.
Could it be that the single most popular tactic — offering a one-time 15% or 20% discount on purchases as a “sign on” incentive — has attracted customers who cheerfully take advantage of the special activation offers, but have no compelling reason (or even any intention) to participate over the long haul?
If that’s the case, the loyalty is only skin deep … and the current economic conditions will likely spark even more instances of lax participation.
But what if companies tailored loyalty programs to individual customers based on their unique profile and actual purchase history? Would better customer conversion result — along wth improved ROI?
It’s more challenging to run a tailored loyalty program … and it requires more focus and attention than many marketing department personnel are willing to devote to it. Moreover, there’s no guarantee that consumers won’t simply “take advantage,” without spending any more on merchandise than they would have done without the loyalty program being offered in the first place.
But with the sorry participation rates currently being experienced with loyalty programs … it’s certainly worth a shot.
While we’re all catching our collective breath after filing our 2008 federal and state tax returns … it’s a good time to consider the most recent findings on Americans’ tax preparation behaviors.
You might expect that a significant portion of tax filers are now using “cheap ‘n easy” computer software programs like TurboTax to complete and file their tax forms.
Well … not so fast. A just-released survey conducted by Mediamark Research & Intelligence finds that only about 20% of U.S. tax filers used software programs. Another ~13% prepared their own returns the traditional way — by hand.
But fully half of respondents relied on outside professional help from a CPA, tax preparer or national chain resource like H&R Block — despite the fact that such services cost much, much more.
Why would half of all adults who file personal federal taxes feel the need to pay a lot more for professional assistance rather than take advantage of affordable software programs? There are a number of reasons: the complexity of the federal tax code … intimidating tax forms and instructions … concern about the safety and security of computerized software programs and electronic filing … and, not least, fear of retribution from the IRS for making an error.
The fact that many of the tax returns completed by professional preparers still contain errors doesn’t seem to make much difference. Many taxpayers would rather shift the responsibility of “filling out and filing” to somebody — anybody — else.
Facebook has overtaken MySpace and other sites to become the largest and most popular social networking choice for young and old alike. And while LinkedIn still maintains an edge over Facebook as a professional networking resource, Facebook has done a very effective job in blurring the lines between personal and professional social interaction on the web.
The latest development that proves this is the increasing popularity of company “fan” pages on Facebook. Anyone can start a fan page showcasing a company they know and love … and many employees have taken the opportunity to create pages for their own organizations. My own company, Mullin/Ashley Associates, is no exception. Currently, Facebook offers more tools for uploading interesting content such as photo galleries and video clips, along with providing a great platform for news updates, wall postings and chat.
Going further, some companies have elected to turn Facebook into their vehicle of choice to promote themselves to prospective employees. Posting videos of employees talking about their positive work experiences … including pictures of the office environment … showcasing employee events … all of this brings a company to life far more effectively than just by advertising open positions on web job boards such as Monster.com.
The beauty of using Facebook in this manner is not only that companies can make a bigger and better impression, but they can do it without having to incur any significant cost. And if it’s done particularly well, it might even result in lower costs, as fee-based recruitment ad placements can be reduced or even eliminated.
Increasingly, people are being connected through social networks, and this phenomenon will only grow in the months and years ahead. In such an environment, companies that champion “content, creativity and community” will be the winners. That goes for hiring, as well.
It had to happen. With the dramatic rise in the popularity and number of blogs and other social marketing sites on the web, sooner or later merchandisers would get wise to the fact that they can use them to pitch their products and services. And for just pennies on the promotional dollar.
How? By offering free merchandise or cash payments to bloggers who will then be favorably disposed to write positive reviews about new products. And with blog postings being indexed by search engines in just a few days or even a few hours, it’s an incredibly cheap way to gain positive exposure for their products and brands in cyberspace.
… Not to mention that many readers will not be wise to the authors’ tidy mercantile relationships with the companies whose products they are reviewing. This despite the efforts the Federal Trade Commission is making to update its nearly 30-year-old advertising guidelines to cover the new new-fangled techniques brought forth by the cyber revolution — tactics few could even have dreamed of just a few years ago.
How long will it be before the FTC has these new guidelines in place? Who knows? For the moment, there are no hard-and-fast rules regarding paid reviews. But there are some moves being made within the industry to provide “full disclosure” to readers. Blog entrepreneur Ted Murphy of IZEA Social Media Marketing requires his “for-hire” bloggers to insert an icon next to each product review that states: “Sponsored Post. 100% Real Opinion.”
“One hundred percent real opinion?” Does anyone seriously believe any sponsored post will be completely free of bias?
Of course, sponsored bloggers could write a negative review … and then watch as it’s the last time they ever have the opportunity to write for that supplier. Practically speaking, that’s not going to happen — and everyone knows it.
A more fundamental concern is what paid pitching is doing to the credibility of the blogosphere in general. If people find out that even one or two product reviews they read turn out to be nothing more than disguised advertising for the merchandiser, it could cripple the credibility of bloggers overall in the minds of those readers.
This whole phenomenon has the risk of turning a highly powerful consumer information resource into a caricature of itself. Those who read product reviews tend to be the more cautious – or the more suspicious – consumers among us. And so, despite providing every assurance that bloggers who are paid cash compensation or receive merchandise freebies for their posts will remain honest in their opinion … that’s not how it’s going to be received by the audience.
Advice to bloggers: If you value your credibility and your reputation, don’t accept quid pro quo compensation from companies whose products you are reviewing. Advice to consumers: As always … be careful of what you read online.
By now, it’s obvious that Twitter has become the newest darling of the social marketing world. With somewhere around ten million users today and growing exponentially (there were fewer than one million just a year ago), it’s clear that Twitter has successfully made the leap from novel curiosity to mainstream communications vehicle.
Indeed, Twitter may have worthwhile applications beyond simply the ability for people to update their status information in real time from a mobile phone, computer or online portal. In fact, Silicon Alley Insider recently ran a contest inviting readers to submit their ideas for turning Twitter into a financially viable social network.
The winning entry? An idea from Chicago communications agency Denuo recommending that Twitter charge marketers for access to opted-in users willing to field an occasional research question from brands. Twitter would also charge for dashboard access to the research analytics.
I think this idea has a good deal of merit. Instead of incurring the cost to design and deploy custom research projects, simply tap into Twitter’s existing platform and huge user base to “anonymize” the data and open it up for mining.
Of course, some people voice concern that Twitter will soon be overrun by brand-related messages and advertising. That’s actually begun to happen as certain brands “follow” twitterers ad nauseum — so much it almost constitutes a form of cyber-stalking. But by offering operating an online research panel such as this, Twitter has the potential to deliver scads of valuable, actionable data at the speed of “now.”
Like YouTube, Twitter is actually going to have to figure out a way to make some money for its investors, and soon (imagine that?). So this idea bears watching.
Over the past few days, we’ve heard reports of how the post-election demonstrators in Iran have been using 
Despite the fact that Google has proven itself to be 
Nones Notes 