Search Plus
Constine: There’s blood in the water surrounding Google Search Plus; http://eicker.at/SearchPlus
Constine: There’s blood in the water surrounding Google Search Plus; http://eicker.at/SearchPlus
Battelle: All brands are publishers, learn how to be a good one; http://eicker.at/BrandsArePublishers
2D codes, like barcodes or QR codes, are adopted fast: 14M Americans scanned codes in June 2011; http://eicker.at/2Dcodes
Wikipedia: “A barcode is an optical machine-readable representation of data, which shows data about the object to which it attaches. Originally, barcodes represented data by varying the widths and spacings of parallel lines, and may be referred to as linear or 1 dimensional (1D). Later they evolved into rectangles, dots, hexagons and other geometric patterns in 2 dimensions (2D). Although 2D systems use a variety of symbols, they are generally referred to as barcodes as well. Barcodes originally were scanned by special optical scanners called barcode readers, scanners and interpretive software are available on devices including desktop printers and smartphones.”
Wikipedia: “A QR code (abbreviated from Quick Response code) is a specific matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code) that is readable by dedicated QR readers, smartphones, and, to a less common extent, computers with webcams. The code consists of black modules arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded may be text, URL, or other data. Common in Japan, where it was created by Toyota subsidiary Denso Wave in 1994, the QR code is one of the most popular types of two-dimensional barcodes. The QR code was designed to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed.”
ComScore: “…found that in June 2011, 14 million mobile users in the U.S., representing 6.2 percent of the total mobile audience, scanned a QR or bar code on their mobile device. The study found that a mobile user that scanned a QR or bar code during the month was more likely to be male (60.5 percent of code scanning audience), skew toward ages 18-34 (53.4 percent) and have a household income of $100k or above (36.1 percent). … ‘QR codes demonstrate just one of the ways in which mobile marketing can effectively be integrated into existing media and marketing campaigns to help reach desired consumer segments,’ said Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile. ‘For marketers, understanding which consumer segments scan QR codes, the source and location of these scans, and the resulting information delivered, is crucial in developing and deploying campaigns that successfully utilize QR codes to further brand engagement.'”
VB: “What this means for marketers and other decision-makers today is that QR codes, while rapidly evolving and gaining in adoption, are still far from being a mainstream technology. As a tool for reaching a diverse audience for a range of goods and services, QR codes have not yet arrived. Nevertheless, their popularity is growing rapidly – one report from QR company Jumpscan estimates a 1200% increase in QR code scanning during the last six months of 2010. … Around 58 percent of scans occurred while users were at home, with an additional 40 percent of users saying they scanned codes while in retail stores. As previously mentioned, traditional magazines and newspapers led the pack of QR code sources, coming in at 49.4 percent of user responses. Around 35 percent of respondents said they scanned codes on product packaging.”
RWW: “[I]t is still very early in the adoption of technologies capable of reading QR codes. This June, smartphone adoption in the U.S. was up 8% over the preceding three months, but there are still 155 million American mobile phone users who don’t have smartphones at all. The number of people unable to scan QR codes is more than 10 times the number of QR code users in comScore’s data. It’s still very early to draw conclusions about how this technology will impact the Web and its users.”
SPR: “I’m not saying don’t use QR Codes. There are a variety of applications where an element of utility, instant gratification or discovery makes perfect sense and a QR Code can be the best path to that goal – assuming your audience falls into the smart phone user/scanner profile. Don’t forget to track and analyze how the codes are being used.”
AdAge: “The spread of 2-D barcodes and icons through magazines hasn’t been matched by independent data on whether readers actually use them – until now. – Four percent of readers who noted ads with 2-D barcodes in the first half of this year actually took out their phones and snapped a picture at least once, new research from GfK MRI Starch Advertising Research has revealed. … Here are the best-performing magazine ads with 2-D barcodes in the first half of this year.”
HAD: “How to put your logo in a QR code – I’ll fully admit I geeked out a little, but in the process I figured out some of the theory behind embedding logos in QR codes. … For this ‘how-to,’ I’m going to walk through the process of modifying a Version 6 QR code.”
Parrish, marketing/privacy: We are trying to solve problems that we have not clearly defined; http://eicker.at/MarketingPrivacy
Donato: Social commerce will have its biggest impact with naturally relationship businesses: the locals; http://eicker.at/28
iPad opportunities for communications: capacity, payment, tolerance, intimacy, accessibility, connectivity; http://eicker.at/1a
Blackshaw: Marketers have jumped into social media, while consumer-affairs are having trouble keeping up; http://eicker.at/w
Dumenco and Ghuneim on Trendrr business intelligence: Why real-time marketing matters now; http://eicker.at/q
Media agency leaders: What the media agency of the future will look like; http://j.mp/9gUvYK
Gerrit Eicker 08:50 on 12. January 2012 Permalink |
Constine, TC: “Sharks Circle Around Google Search+: EPIC Cries Antitrust, Twitter Provides Evidence – There’s blood in the water surrounding Google Search+… EPIC believes that by surfacing in search results the private content shared with a user by their friends, Search+ may violate privacy. I personally don’t buy that argument. Yes, it’s a bit shocking to see private content in Google Search results where we’ve come to expect only public content. However, private content isn’t exposed to anyone that couldn’t already see it, so I think EPIC is fear mongering around privacy. … The issue is that Google has the data to surface its competitors in People and Pages, but doesn’t. Hey, maybe this is all a clever ploy to bring antitrust scrutiny to Facebook’s deal with Microsoft’s Bing to sour its IPO.”
Eldon, TC: “Google+ Search = A Way To Call The Feds In On IPO-Bound Facebook (?) – Like everyone else, I’ve been trying to get my head around why Google has force-integrated its Google+ social network into its main search feed at the expense of leading social services like Facebook and Twitter. The situation seems like an antitrust case waiting to happen, because Google could easily choose to feature the publicly available content from its social rivals in the same way it is showing its own product within its market-dominating search engine. It just hasn’t. … There could be a grand strategy for provoking the US government to investigate the market shares of search and social products as a single issue, in a way that puts Facebook on the defensive, especially as it looks to go public. … The big catch to this idea, at least for now, is that when you consider Bing’s relatively weak market share, and the lack of effect Facebook has had on it, it’s unclear if the Justice Department will take this sort of issue seriously. Facebook may be the Google of the future, but Google is the Google of the present. And maybe Google is just trying to see what it can get away with ahead of what we can expect to be habitually slow federal interest in whatever moves it makes.”
Coldewey, TC: “There has been a great quantity of vitriol corroding the social web over the last few days, a reaction to Google’s decision to optionally integrate Google+ features into their search. … Google is a datavore. All it wants to do is collect data, organize it, and then deliver it to people, peppered with ads and the occasional sales commission. Viewed from this perspective, the new social search is simple – innocuous. The biggest crime Google has committed is giving it such a cumbrous name. … A search that is ostensibly social-focused should be pulling information primarily from Facebook and Twitter, right? I agree. Yet it doesn’t. And people’s accusing fingers jumped up to point at Google, though the problem isn’t Google’s. … What rich data does Facebook share? What deep search does Twitter permit? Google can’t produce something it doesn’t have, and what it does produce isn’t destructive to search – and if it were so, it can be turned off with a click. … There’s nothing controversial about competition. Google has started a new service that gives social data prominent placement. Ironically, the fact that people are complaining that it is not integrative enough (as opposed to Twitter and Facebook initiatives, which are often not integrative at all, and sometimes deliberately exclusive) testifies to Google’s adherence to their promise of even-handedness. … I think it falls outside that area, which to me begs the question, but no doubt the discussion will continue, and Google’s actions will have repercussions further down the line.”
SEL: “Real-Life Examples Of How Google’s ‘Search Plus’ Pushes Google+ Over Relevancy – By having a dominant position in search, Google might ultimately be responsible for going above-and-beyond to include competitors. That’s part of what the current anti-trust investigations into Google are all about. One complaint over today’s move – though likely mostly about privacy – is already being readied. – Google’s job as a search engine is to direct searchers to the most relevant information on the web, not just to information that Google may have an interest in. – These suggestions would be better if they included other services, and that’s the standard Google’s search results should aim for, returning the best. … If You’re Not On Google+, You’re Not A Suggestion… Why Google+ Is A Must-Have For Marketers… Is there anyone out there who still wants to say that being on Google+ doesn’t matter? Anyone? Because when being on Google+ means that you potentially can have your Google+ page leap to the top in those sidebar results, Google+ matters. It matters more than ever before. … It’s not Google’s job to be sticking it to anyone with its search results. Those results are supposed to be showing what are the most relevant things for searchers out there. That’s how Google wins. That’s how Google sticks it to competitors, by not trying to play favorites in those results, nor by trying to punish people through them.”
RWW: “Will Bing Get A Boost Thanks To Google’s Your Way? – All of this could play well for Bing. Since 2009, the number three search engine has had a partnership with Twitter similar to the one that lapsed with Google last summer. Since the Google agreement expired, it is now easier to find tweets in Bing via realtime searches than it is in Google. At the time of the breakup in July, it was unclear which side walked away, but Bing was quick to renew its ties with Twitter and strike a similar deal with Facebook. … The fallout from search isn’t the only reason why Bing may get a boost this year. The company has improved integration of Bing with Xbox and Kinect, which helps Microsoft grab a younger demographic when gamers move their search activity online from their consoles. Bing has also been working to improve its mobile offerings, releasing a much-imtpoved Bing app for Android and iOS5. – But perhaps the biggest indication that Bing is worth paying attention to came from Google itself, when it paid $900 million to Mozilla to be the default search engine in Firefox for the next three years.“