tech news
$70 Million Budget Breaker
Sunday, June 15th, 2008
This had to hurt; I read recently that the 2007 budget for the BBC website had gone £36 million over budget (that’s around $70 million). The report sighted “a cocktail of oversight and budget mismanagement” that lead to the budget overspill.
About two-thirds of the £36m breach was down to “misallocation of general overheads and costs” - accountants had failed to include costs such as the buildings that house its digital teams. Then, there was the £3.5m in unauthorized overspend and a further £7.4m in overspending.
BBC.co.uk is one of the UK’s leading online media destinations and by the end of last year, according to Nielson, the website had an average of 16.5 million users a month, almost half of the total 33 million internet users in the UK.
Topics: tech news | No Comments »
Webkinz Owns Second Life
Thursday, April 10th, 2008
Webkinz and other kiddie web playgrounds continue to school adult virtual worlds like Second Life. Yesterday we heard just how much elementary kids love their virtual plush toy world in the final round of a preteen research study. By unanimous vote they placed Webkinz at the top of their “favorite” and “most visited” lists…topping mega brand sites from Disney, Nick, PBS Kids, etc.
The Webkinz usage numbers are pretty staggering….reports from Fall 2007 point to more than 6,000,000 unique visitors logging on to Webkinz each month. Around that same time Second Life’s “active user” base was somewhere between 500,000 and 600,000 (and has probably decreased since).
Brands are rushing to the party as eMarketer estimates that 20 million children will be members of a virtual world by 2011, up from 8.2 million today.
The magic of Webkinz starts with the purchase of a stuffed animal that comes with a special code. But it really takes hold when kids use the code to enter the website to officially adopt the animal, care for it (feed it, play with it, get it job, etc.), play games, interact with other kids, earn virtual Kinzcash to spend in a virtual store and more.
Topics: Fandango, Marketing & Advertising, tech news | 2 Comments »
Attention Bloggers: Let a Plugin Write For You
Thursday, March 27th, 2008
Ever have a hard time coming up with good pics, links, and related articles for your blog posts? Now you can give your brain a rest and let a plugin do the work.
Introducing Zemanta, just released in alpha (thanks TechCrunch). Here’s a quote from their site:
Have your browser understand what you are blogging about and suggest pictures, links, articles and tags to make your posts more vibrant. We are making blogging fun again.
In short: as you type, it finds the backup info you’ll need. Check out this video preview, then go get it.
Zemanta Blogger integration from zemanta on Vimeo.
Topics: Blogging, Social Media, tech news | No Comments »
Definition of Email SPAM Changes
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008
Most marketers understand email SPAM as “unsolicited commercial email.” But has the definition changed while we weren’t looking?
A recent survey from Q Interactive and Marketing Sherpa tried to find out why consumers hit the “MARK AS SPAM” button and what they consider SPAM.
The interesting part - most people didn’t even cite “permission” as an issue.
Here are some of their findings.
Definition of SPAM to consumers:
- 56% - consider marketing messages from known senders to be spam if the message is “just not interesting to me.”
- 50% consider “too frequent emails from companies I know” to be spam.
- 31% cite “emails that were once useful but aren’t relevant anymore.”
Why did you hit the “Report SPAM button?”
- “The email was not of interest to me” (41%).
- “I receive too much email from the sender” (25%).
- “I receive too much email from all senders” (20%).
So what does this mean to marketers? Here are a couple ideas:
- Take the pulse of your subscriber base. Find out what they think about the frequency and relevancy of your emails.
- Give more options for subscribers. Make it easy to segment your lists so subscribers only get the most relevant, topical emails.
- Educate your subscribers. The survey seems to imply many don’t understand what the “report SPAM” button does. Help your subscribers understand the process for managing your email communications.
Topics: Fandango, charleston sc marketing, charleston sc web design, email marketing, tech news | No Comments »
iPhone Usage
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008
Today M:Metrics released some interesting results from their January 2008 survey of iPhone users. Turns out that this newfangled gadget may have some potential as a “real” (i.e., not a Blackberry) mobile web device.
Here are some top line results:
84.8% access news and info (vs. 13.% of overall mobile phone market).
58.6% access search engines (vs. 6.1%).
30.09% watch mobile TV and/or video (vs. 4.6%).
20.9% watch on demand video or TV (vs. 1.4%).
49.7% access social networking sites or blogs (vs. 4.2%).
74.1% listen to music on it (vs. 6.7%).
YouTube and Google Maps are also quite popular with users like Karl Rove….30.4% are accessing YouTube videos and 36% are finding places using Google Maps.
Topics: Fandango, tech news | 2 Comments »
SXSW Day 3 - Random Thoughts
Monday, March 10th, 2008
Image courtesy of friend and colleague Josh Skidmore.
Today’s highlights…aside from a tasty lunch at Whole Foods World HQ:
Guy Kawasaki & Panel - In his panel discussion on social media websites Guy stressed that marketers need to stop overthinking things and just crank stuff out. Plan less, do more. There are many unintended consquences…the things you don’t plan are often the best that happen.
Judo Moves for Defending Your Reputation Online - interesting talk by Thor Muller from Satisfaction about how you manage brand reputations in the era of viral/social marketing. Best judo tip? CAST A LONG SHADOW - get out there and build content on Google to crowd out attacks and provide valuable context.
Managing a Creative Environment - probably the talk of the day…from Adaptive Path. Researched over 10 highly creative organizations/environments (arts, theater, culinary, etc.) and synthesized common approaches. Best points were: (1) generate new projects/assignments around the teams’ interests as that will ensure that everyone engages and goes further, and (2) celebrate failure…because to be innovative or inventive, you have to take risks.
The Agency: There Will Be Blood - general discussion (panel) on the changing landscape in the world of marketing, advertising and web agencies. The winners will be those who focus on maximize possibility in this new world…not those who are focused on minimizing risk by holding on to their past/current model. Also the changing nature of experience development from (a) building things so people will come to (b) moving out into the space where people are at (mobile, microsite, etc.).
Hope to get some sweet schwag from Adobe tonight…at their Sneak Peak party.
Topics: Marketing & Advertising, Sweat & Tears, tech news | No Comments »
Tool Talk - Twitter V. iPhone
Monday, March 10th, 2008
Two technologies are dominating the halls here at SXSW Internet. First, there’s lots of Twitter chitter chatter, including tons of talk on tweets, among attendees and presenters. A few panelists seem to be panelists solely because they twitter all day….perhaps an early signal that something’s about to jump the shark?
But of course the iPhone is the real stud here….everyone’s sporting one. So much so that we’re keeping Simpson’s dinosaur phone in his man purse for fear of being ridiculed or asked to moderate the “Yesterday’s Technology Today” panel discussion.
Simpy’s “Classic” Bag Phone
Topics: Blue Ion Team, Marketing & Advertising, SXSW 2008, Sweat & Tears, tech news | No Comments »
SXSW Starts
Saturday, March 8th, 2008
Greetings from Austin and the SXSW Internet conference…also known as SXSW Music’s nerdy brother/sister. It’s four days of chatter about all things digital - design, social networking, gaming, programming, Web 2.0, business, etc. Along with a good dose of nightly entertainment.
After an arduous trip thanks to American Airlines (we pulled an OJ through the Dallas airport) we arrived in time to catch a few panel sessions, including a solid presentation by Jason Fried from 37Signals. Some of the best points made during his “Ten Things We’ve Learned at 37Signals”…..
On the web there’s too much attention to pixels and too little to words.
Always err on the side of simple.
Long projects can be deadly for morale and motivation.
Be inspired by famous chefs…as they build by sharing all they know.
Interruption is the enemy of productivity…passive communication (in a work space) reduces interruption.
Morale feeds off of progress. Do lots of small things.
Topics: SXSW 2008, Sweat & Tears, tech news | No Comments »
Two Big Yahoo! Product Announcements
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008A couple of neat product announcements from Yahoo! came out over the last couple of days.
First up is their “Open Search Platform,” which allows third parties (like Blue Ion, hopefully) to modify your search results listings by adding images, more links, and hopefully some sweet animated gifs.
Here’s one from Yelp!
And here’s one I did for Blue Ion.
Learn more about it at the Yahoo! Search blog or from TechCrunch.
Second is the launch of Yahoo! Buzz. Similar to Digg, the more votes you get, the higher your story, video, etc. will go.
Bonus: some of the most popular stories make it to Yahoo! home page! Supposedly they sent Wired 2 million visitors when that happened to one of their posts.
Check out Yahoo! Buzz here, and more analysis at TechCruch.
Topics: Fandango, Marketing & Advertising, charleston sc marketing, charleston sc web design, tech news | No Comments »
Microsoft Offers to Aquire Yahoo!
Friday, February 1st, 2008In what is probably the biggest tech story of the last few years, Microsoft has offered to purchase Yahoo! for $44.6 Billion in cash and stock.
This is one of the few options anyone has of gaining market share on god Google.
Coverage:
Topics: Marketing & Advertising, tech news | 2 Comments »