Here's The New Blackberry Ad That Aired Right Before The Super Bowl Power Outage:
Blackberry aired its make-or-break Super Bowl ad right before the power went out in half of the Superdome in New Orleans during the Super Bowl. It was one of the few ads that wasn't teased or released prior to the big game. The ad launches the BlackBerry 10:
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Sunday, February 3, 2013
Saturday, December 22, 2012
A Company Called 'Dropbox' Is Taking Over The World
A Company Called 'Dropbox' Is Taking Over The World:
BEFORE Apple launched iCloud in 2011, Steve Jobs allegedly offered to buy Dropbox, a file-sharing service founded in 2007, for $800m. When Dropbox declined, Apple's late boss disparaged it as a feature, not a company. Soon after, Dropbox raised $250m, putting its value at over $4 billion.
In December Dropbox concluded a promotional campaign that, in just a few weeks, added 2m new users, bringing the total to over 100m, roughly double the number when Jobs made his comment. Consumers, it seems, can't get enough of the feature.
Dropbox dominates online file-sharing. It boast three times as many users as its closest direct rival, YouSendIt. (Its dominance is even more pronounced when it comes to the volume of data stored.) It eats up 20% of all bandwidth consumed globally by browser-based file-sharing services, against 1% for YouSendIt. Dropbox users save more than 1 billion files every day.
Most of them use the free version of the service. The company makes makes money by charging for extra storage. Around 4% of users plump for the premium version, though the proportion is growing, according to Arash Ferdowsi, one of the Dropbox's co-founders. The recent campaign, called Space Race, gave away free space to university students in return for getting their peers to sign up to the service. The hope is that when access to this extra storage runs out after two years, the students, by then freshly-minted professionals, will pay to keep using it.
Dropbox relies on individuals and small firms, for whom its rudimentary security features are good enough; bigger businesses with sensitive information prefer more secure services like Box.net. The advent of competitors in the nebulous form of iCloud, Google’s Drive and Microsoft’s Skydrive, which come pre-installed on their respective makers' gadgets, does not seem to have dampened enthusiasm for Dropbox. Unlike iCloud, which boasted 190m users by October thanks to its deep integration with Apple's mobile devices, the service is "platform neutral"—ie, works across different devices and operating systems—and allows easy file-sharing, both useful traits in an increasingly connected world where few people hew devoutly to a single device-maker.
Google and Microsoft clouds emulate Dropbox in these respects. But at a little over 10m users each, they do not yet benefit from from the incumbent's powerful network effect. If you are sharing files with a dozen other people on Dropbox, a move to Google or Microsoft would require all 12 to move with you.
Dropbox is also striving to make itself the default choice for smartphone users. In 2011 it struck a deal with HTC, a Taiwanese phonemaker, to preinstall Dropbox on its Android devices. In return it gives HTC users 5GB of space for free. HTC has been struggling of late, but Mr Ferdowsi says that his company is in talks with other manufacturers, hoping for similar arrangements.
A bigger long-term worry is the plummeting price of digital storage. With its vast scale, Amazon has driven down costs substantially for the likes of Dropbox, which leases server space from the e-commerce giant. But Google Drive already offers 100GB for $5 a month, half what Dropbox charges for the same amount of storage. And Google can advertise its cloud across its myriad online offerings. Dropbox's margins are only likely to get wispier in the future.
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BEFORE Apple launched iCloud in 2011, Steve Jobs allegedly offered to buy Dropbox, a file-sharing service founded in 2007, for $800m. When Dropbox declined, Apple's late boss disparaged it as a feature, not a company. Soon after, Dropbox raised $250m, putting its value at over $4 billion.
In December Dropbox concluded a promotional campaign that, in just a few weeks, added 2m new users, bringing the total to over 100m, roughly double the number when Jobs made his comment. Consumers, it seems, can't get enough of the feature.
Dropbox dominates online file-sharing. It boast three times as many users as its closest direct rival, YouSendIt. (Its dominance is even more pronounced when it comes to the volume of data stored.) It eats up 20% of all bandwidth consumed globally by browser-based file-sharing services, against 1% for YouSendIt. Dropbox users save more than 1 billion files every day.
Most of them use the free version of the service. The company makes makes money by charging for extra storage. Around 4% of users plump for the premium version, though the proportion is growing, according to Arash Ferdowsi, one of the Dropbox's co-founders. The recent campaign, called Space Race, gave away free space to university students in return for getting their peers to sign up to the service. The hope is that when access to this extra storage runs out after two years, the students, by then freshly-minted professionals, will pay to keep using it.
Dropbox relies on individuals and small firms, for whom its rudimentary security features are good enough; bigger businesses with sensitive information prefer more secure services like Box.net. The advent of competitors in the nebulous form of iCloud, Google’s Drive and Microsoft’s Skydrive, which come pre-installed on their respective makers' gadgets, does not seem to have dampened enthusiasm for Dropbox. Unlike iCloud, which boasted 190m users by October thanks to its deep integration with Apple's mobile devices, the service is "platform neutral"—ie, works across different devices and operating systems—and allows easy file-sharing, both useful traits in an increasingly connected world where few people hew devoutly to a single device-maker.
Google and Microsoft clouds emulate Dropbox in these respects. But at a little over 10m users each, they do not yet benefit from from the incumbent's powerful network effect. If you are sharing files with a dozen other people on Dropbox, a move to Google or Microsoft would require all 12 to move with you.
Dropbox is also striving to make itself the default choice for smartphone users. In 2011 it struck a deal with HTC, a Taiwanese phonemaker, to preinstall Dropbox on its Android devices. In return it gives HTC users 5GB of space for free. HTC has been struggling of late, but Mr Ferdowsi says that his company is in talks with other manufacturers, hoping for similar arrangements.
A bigger long-term worry is the plummeting price of digital storage. With its vast scale, Amazon has driven down costs substantially for the likes of Dropbox, which leases server space from the e-commerce giant. But Google Drive already offers 100GB for $5 a month, half what Dropbox charges for the same amount of storage. And Google can advertise its cloud across its myriad online offerings. Dropbox's margins are only likely to get wispier in the future.
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Sunday, December 9, 2012
3 Unconventional Ways to Boost Your Facebook Engagement
3 Unconventional Ways to Boost Your Facebook Engagement:
Do you want more Facebook fans without running contests or advertisements?
Are you interested in increasing the engagement on your Facebook Page?
If you’re looking for some creative ways to boost your brand’s profile on Facebook, here are three ways to do it that don’t involve giveaways or advertising.
In friendlier language, crowdsourcing is when you ask your community of users to offer their suggestions for how you might solve a problem or address an issue.
Crowdsourcing can be a great engagement tactic. Image source: iStockPhoto.
In the years since Howe’s story, crowdsourcing has been adopted by many multinational companies and organizations, such as the mining company Goldcorp and NASA. And with the growing popularity of social media, crowdsourcing has spread to Facebook, too.
Social networks including Facebook and Instagram have made it easy for businesses to reach out to their community of friends and fans, and recruit new ones. It’s a way for companies to get relevant information from users and target audiences.
One reason crowdsourcing is effective is that it gives a business’s audience a voice and an opportunity for recognition.
Of course you don’t have to be a huge organization to use the concept. A few years ago, vitaminwater invited its Facebook fans to choose a new flavor via an app called “FlavorCreator.” It was wildly successful and the company ultimately called the winning flavor vitaminwater connect.
vitaminwater's FlavorCreator app allowed fans to contribute to the first vitaminwater made by the fans for the fans.
Another example is the t-shirt company Threadless, which depends entirely on crowdsourcing. They asked graphic designers to submit designs for the community to vote on. Threadless uses a basic poll to crowdsource.
Threadless invites its users to vote on their favorite designs. The shirts with the most votes go into production and are sold on the website.
The designs with the most votes win, and limited runs of the t-shirts are sold online.
The bottom line is that your customers have great ideas and chances are good that they’d love the opportunity to share them with you. So why not take advantage of the wisdom of your crowd? Invite them into the conversation and you should increase engagement.
If you want to learn more about crowdsourcing and how you could incorporate it into your business, check out this crowdsourcing industry resource.
People like to do business with companies that they feel they “know,” and there’s no better way for them to get to know you than by introducing them to your employees.
Plus, when your employees get a nod, your brand may have greater exposure to their friends and friends of friends.
Adding this human element can also boost EdgeRank if your posts get more posts and comments than usual.
Last week, one of my employees put a funny photo on Facebook of me eating a donut that was nearly as big as my face. It got 66 likes and 18 comments… pretty good for a random status update.
Our fans like to see that we have real employees and that they do human things, like eat huge donuts.
There are other easy ways to give your employees shout outs* on Facebook. Since Facebook is one of the most personal social networks, and the place where your employees’ friends and family are most likely to be, it’s a great public place to highlight employees’ accomplishments.
This inspires a sort of positive cycle because they, of course, want to share their kudos with their friends, and in turn it shines a light on your business. You can highlight an employee every week or every month, making it a regular feature of your Page.
In the image below, ToolSelect shows it’s not a one-man operation but a tight-knit group of professionals. Now you can know exactly who is bringing the website to you.
ToolSelect highlights all of their employees on a Meet Your ToolSelect Team app.
Use a Q&A as a low-maintenance way to get the information you can use to share on Facebook and bring focus to individual employees. Create a simple questionnaire—What’s your proudest accomplishment? What’s your favorite non-work pastime? The best book you’ve read lately?—and ask every employee to fill it out.
Get a spontaneous photo of the featured employee or a photo of him/her receiving an award, and give a shout-out to different employees on a regular basis.
In the image below, Moment Skis posted a photo of their Production Prep Pro in their factory.
This simple concept brought them a large amount of engagement.
One word of caution: Not everyone likes to have a light shined on them, so just be sure that your employee is comfortable with public kudos.
Highlighting your employees’ accomplishments is a great way to boost likeability and engagement in your Facebook community.
You can design a Facebook app that reveals a new product, service or special offer every day for a month. This gives your business the chance to show off the products or services that are not as well-known to your fans and customers.
Here are some examples of companies that have made announcements in innovative ways.
Nescafé
Earlier this year, Nescafé in Greece did a campaign that involved the unveiling of some new packaging. They filled an aquarium with coffee beans, buried the new package in it and then told fans with each like, they’d reveal a little bit of the package.
Within 22 hours, the company had received more than 3000 new likes and fans got to see the whole package.
Many people would say “Who cares?”, but obviously people who were curious played along. The aquarium became the brand’s cover photo, at least for a day.
Check out the time-lapse video.
People love new products. Using interactive photos and apps to launch a product draws more attention and engagement for fans.
Medal of Honor
In July, the folks behind the super-popular Medal of Honor franchise invited fans to like poll questions on Facebook in exchange for the early unveiling of a new multi-player gameplay trailer featuring an all-new map.
The excitement of the reveal of a new game is an easy way to get fans to engage with a brand on Facebook.
To encourage sharing with a campaign like this, you could say something such as “The more likes we get, the more we’ll show you.” This won’t violate Facebook’s terms of service. Anyone who knows a gamer knows all about the anticipation for a new game.
The Medal of Honor app is another example of putting the release of a product in the hands of the fans.
Iron Man 3
Films have also been promoted this way. Iron Man 3 gave fans a glimpse of what to expect once they had liked a relevant Page.
Iron Man 3 used the simple act of liking to reveal a trailer, making it easy and fun for fans to get involved.
You don’t have to be a huge brand to use some of these innovative ideas. What they’re doing can inspire your own “reveals” on a much smaller scale and increase engagement with your community on Facebook.
What do you think? Have any of you found success using crowdsourcing, employee highlights or reveals? Please share your comments below.
Do you want more Facebook fans without running contests or advertisements?Are you interested in increasing the engagement on your Facebook Page?
If you’re looking for some creative ways to boost your brand’s profile on Facebook, here are three ways to do it that don’t involve giveaways or advertising.
#1: Crowdsource
Crowdsourcing is a term credited to Jeff Howe, who wrote about the phenomenon for Wired magazine back in 2006. He defined the concept as a “new pool of cheap labor: everyday people using their spare cycles to create content, solve problems, even do corporate R & D.”In friendlier language, crowdsourcing is when you ask your community of users to offer their suggestions for how you might solve a problem or address an issue.
Crowdsourcing can be a great engagement tactic. Image source: iStockPhoto.
Social networks including Facebook and Instagram have made it easy for businesses to reach out to their community of friends and fans, and recruit new ones. It’s a way for companies to get relevant information from users and target audiences.
One reason crowdsourcing is effective is that it gives a business’s audience a voice and an opportunity for recognition.
Of course you don’t have to be a huge organization to use the concept. A few years ago, vitaminwater invited its Facebook fans to choose a new flavor via an app called “FlavorCreator.” It was wildly successful and the company ultimately called the winning flavor vitaminwater connect.
vitaminwater's FlavorCreator app allowed fans to contribute to the first vitaminwater made by the fans for the fans.
Threadless invites its users to vote on their favorite designs. The shirts with the most votes go into production and are sold on the website.
The bottom line is that your customers have great ideas and chances are good that they’d love the opportunity to share them with you. So why not take advantage of the wisdom of your crowd? Invite them into the conversation and you should increase engagement.
If you want to learn more about crowdsourcing and how you could incorporate it into your business, check out this crowdsourcing industry resource.
#2: Introduce/Highlight Your Employees on Facebook
Brand likeability is more than product favorability. Publicly acknowledging the people behind your brand—your employees—on Facebook and beyond is a great way to bring them, and your business, recognition.People like to do business with companies that they feel they “know,” and there’s no better way for them to get to know you than by introducing them to your employees.
Plus, when your employees get a nod, your brand may have greater exposure to their friends and friends of friends.
Adding this human element can also boost EdgeRank if your posts get more posts and comments than usual.
Last week, one of my employees put a funny photo on Facebook of me eating a donut that was nearly as big as my face. It got 66 likes and 18 comments… pretty good for a random status update.
Our fans like to see that we have real employees and that they do human things, like eat huge donuts.
This inspires a sort of positive cycle because they, of course, want to share their kudos with their friends, and in turn it shines a light on your business. You can highlight an employee every week or every month, making it a regular feature of your Page.
In the image below, ToolSelect shows it’s not a one-man operation but a tight-knit group of professionals. Now you can know exactly who is bringing the website to you.
ToolSelect highlights all of their employees on a Meet Your ToolSelect Team app.
Get a spontaneous photo of the featured employee or a photo of him/her receiving an award, and give a shout-out to different employees on a regular basis.
In the image below, Moment Skis posted a photo of their Production Prep Pro in their factory.
This simple concept brought them a large amount of engagement.
Highlighting your employees’ accomplishments is a great way to boost likeability and engagement in your Facebook community.
#3: Reveal New Products and Features
Fans of your brand always want to know what they can expect next from you. Whether you own a bakery or a car parts manufacturing company, people who use your products want to know what you’re working on and Facebook is a great way to inform them.You can design a Facebook app that reveals a new product, service or special offer every day for a month. This gives your business the chance to show off the products or services that are not as well-known to your fans and customers.
Here are some examples of companies that have made announcements in innovative ways.
Nescafé
Earlier this year, Nescafé in Greece did a campaign that involved the unveiling of some new packaging. They filled an aquarium with coffee beans, buried the new package in it and then told fans with each like, they’d reveal a little bit of the package.
Within 22 hours, the company had received more than 3000 new likes and fans got to see the whole package.
Many people would say “Who cares?”, but obviously people who were curious played along. The aquarium became the brand’s cover photo, at least for a day.
Check out the time-lapse video.
People love new products. Using interactive photos and apps to launch a product draws more attention and engagement for fans.
In July, the folks behind the super-popular Medal of Honor franchise invited fans to like poll questions on Facebook in exchange for the early unveiling of a new multi-player gameplay trailer featuring an all-new map.
The excitement of the reveal of a new game is an easy way to get fans to engage with a brand on Facebook.
The Medal of Honor app is another example of putting the release of a product in the hands of the fans.
Films have also been promoted this way. Iron Man 3 gave fans a glimpse of what to expect once they had liked a relevant Page.
Iron Man 3 used the simple act of liking to reveal a trailer, making it easy and fun for fans to get involved.
What do you think? Have any of you found success using crowdsourcing, employee highlights or reveals? Please share your comments below.
Image from iStockPhoto.
Why an Apple-Google partnership to buy Eastman Kodak patents isn't surprising - Washington Post
Why an Apple-Google partnership to buy Eastman Kodak patents isn't surprising - Washington Post:
 The Mac Observer |
Why an Apple-Google partnership to buy Eastman Kodak patents isn't surprising
Washington Post Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. and Google Inc. have joined forces to offer more than $500 million to buy Eastman Kodak Co.'s patents out of bankruptcy, said two people with knowledge of the situation. The two companies, competing for dominance of the ... Apple, Google Are Surprise Allies in Kodak Patent BidBusinessweek Report: Apple and Google Team Up for Bid on Kodak PatentsPC Magazine Apple & Google Team Up for Kodak Patent BidThe Mac Observer TechCrunch -Register -Cult of Mac all 104 news articles » |
Monday, November 26, 2012
The 4 Pillars of Communication
The 4 Pillars of Communication: One of the key challenges in the social business world is, how can companies honestly be customer-oriented? I believe that by focusing on what I call the four pillars (4C's) that are mentioned below, any company can overcome this obstacle and vastly improve in this area.
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