There you have it. 600,000 pre-orders turned into 1.7 million iPhone 4 sales through this Saturday — the Sunday transactions haven’t even been tallied up yet. One more reason for Steve and company to look smug. That eclipses the 3GS’ already phenomenal 1 million units sold over a weekend, and stands pretty much head and shoulders above any other launch the mobile world has yet seen.

Continue reading Apple sells 1.7 million iPhone 4s through Saturday, June 26

Apple sells 1.7 million iPhone 4s through Saturday, June 26 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Jun 2010 08:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple sells 1.7 million iPhone 4s through Saturday, June 26 is a post from: go-Digital Blog on Digital Marketing Strategy

Sure, Microsoft may have given away its lead and legacy in mobile and probably jumped into too many hyper-competitive sectors, but they still have the widest reach in technology. And they’re still pretty damn successful.

In recent years, Microsoft may be a step or two behind, but they’re relevant in nearly every sector. And with Office 2010, a new Xbox 360, Kinect, and perhaps most importantly, Windows Phone 7, all receiving substantial upgrades this year, 2010 is shaping up to be absolutely huge for them. And that’s coming off a 2009 where Windows 7, Bing and the Zune HD were introduced. We’re just so used to Microsoft being around that we sort of take them for granted for all the good that they do.

So Microsoft revealed some numbers to serve as a reminder:

• 150 million Windows 7 licenses sold

• 7.1 million projected iPad sales in 2010
• 58 million projected netbook sales in 2010
• 355 million projected PC sales in 2010

• less than 10% of US netbooks ran Windows in 2008
• 96% of US netbooks ran Windows in 2009

• 16 million subscribers to the largest 25 US daily newspapers
• 14 million Netflix subscribers
• 23 million Xbox live subscribers

• 173 million Gmail users
• 284 million Yahoo Mail users
• 360 million Windows Live Hotmail users

• $5.7 billion Apple net income for fiscal year ending in Sept 2009
• $6.5 billion Google net income for fiscal year ending in Dec 2009
• $14.5 billion Microsoft net income for fiscal year ending in June 2009

Yes, they’re patting themselves on the back a bit but the numbers are just staggering. If you’ve forgotten, now you know: Microsoft will always be a very, very big deal. [Official Microsoft Blog via Bits]

Microsoft Is Still Huge is a post from: go-Digital Blog on Digital Marketing Strategy

Look at the following graph of relative search volume. The spike in search volume for All-You-Can-Jet (in red) is about 4X higher than the orange line (Footlongs). And the blue line for “retina display”  is 8X. Consider the cost of the paid TV media campaign supporting Subway’s Footlongs compared to the cost savings of the social media launch of JetBlue’s All-You-Can-Jet Pass and the no cost media for Apple.

Of course, not all companies will achieve the same mass coverage, but the techniques for product launches can be the same. Footlongs is an expensive paid media campaign by Subway and note how low the orange line is compared to the TWO no-cost launches.

And one more graph that shows Drobo plus 2 social media success stories — Groupon and FourSquare that even blow away Apple’s retina display — all for FREE.

Other notable examples of using made-up word advertising include JetBlue’s All-you-Can-Jet Pass and Subway’s Footlongs. Further details about JetBlue’s launch of the All-You-Can-Jet Pass is here – http://go-digital.net/blog/2009/08/jetblue-all-you-can-jet-pass/

Earlier unfiltered results on Google within 10 hours of launch — there are 3.9 Million results which will be de-duped overnight.

Day 1 Stats – page 1 position 3 in 44.6 million results

Made-Up Word Advertising — “Retina Display” — is how Apple Launches New Products is a post from: go-Digital Blog on Digital Marketing Strategy

The folks at 2K Sports offered $1 million to the first person to pitch a perfect game in Major League Baseball 2K10—a supposedly difficult task. 24 hours after the game was released, they had to write a check.

Using Braves pitcher Kenshin Kawakami as his avatar, 24-year-old Alabama resident Wade McGilberry was able to complete his million dollar game in less than 90 minutes after returning home from work.

Great news for Wade because he recorded his attempts according to 2K Sports’ rules, but not so great news for them because as “insurance companies couldn’t possibly come up with the odds of throwing a perfect game, 2K Sports didn’t take out insurance and now will pay McGilberry a lump sum of $1 million out of its own pocket.” Oops. [CNBC via Sporting News—Thanks, Ezra Tenenbaum!]

Guy Wins $1,000,000 For Pitching A Perfect Game…In A Videogame is a post from: go-Digital Blog on Digital Marketing Strategy

Just how much moolah do musicians earn from online downloads and streams? For the artist to earn the US minimum wage ($1,160/month), they need 12,339 iTunes downloads or 849,817 streams on Rhapsody.

Lady Gaga apparently made just $167 from 1 million streams of Poker Face on Spotify—to earn minimum wage from that service, an artist needs 4,549,020 streams, according to statistics. Brain-fodder for the aspiring musician, for sure. [Information Is Beautiful]

Music Downloads and Streams In Cold, Hard Dollars is a post from: go-Digital Blog on Digital Marketing Strategy

make it more extreme like this (posted August 03, 2009) – 2.7 million views

Promote the heck out of it through paid media and traditional PR support (i.e. seed it to every gullible news outlet) and let them put it on the news (for free).   And be sure to cover your tracks by turning off “statistics and data” on the YouTube video so people can’t back track where you promoted the video.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, no one will ever know if this viral video drove any sales like the JKWeddingDance one did for Chris Brown’s single “Forever” which hit the top of the sales charts on iTunes and Amazon MP3 the same week.

The JKWeddingDance video was real; the viral effect was MANUFACTURED – Post 1 of 2

How to manufacture a viral video sensation and make viral profits – Post 2 of 2

Here are a few more funny videos for your entertainment.

and an external link

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/scary-rides/precocious-kids-mess-with-tracks-of-an-oncoming-train-327400.php

Like I said… viral videos can be made is a post from: go-Digital Blog on Digital Marketing Strategy

Several friends and colleagues had the same reaction when they found out about this video — that it was at such a high view count already and we were late to the party of finding out.  Then we did some more digging — digital forensics  :-)  And this is a case where a viral hit was indeed successfully manufactured.  There’s something to be learned from all this – how to successfully manufacture a viral video sensation and make viral profits.

Related: How to manufacture a viral video sensation and make viral profits – Post 2 of 2

Chris Brown is successfully tapping into the viral halo of a funny video that coincidentally used his song.

ReadWriteWeb article on how rights owners (Sony, Chris Brown) can make viral profits on other people using their work instead of suing them - http://bit.ly/KA3HI

The video was real. But promotional activities (possibly/likely paid) created the initial viral effect (led to the tipping point of the viral effect) which then got carried a further by people thinking they were simply late to the party, including myself (e.g. 440k bit.ly clicks and 3k detectable retweets out of the 13M views). The numbers don’t jive.

The viral halo has added 1 million more views to the video from August 1 – August 2.  (13.1 M to 14.5 M)

Ten ELEVEN TWELVE THIRTEEN proof points to follow, each with screen shot to illustrate.

1a. anyone notice that the “Forever” soundtrack is remarkably consistent throughout the video as if it were dubbed or added in after the original footage was shot. The sound is too consistent in volume and loudness to have come from a built-in, on-camera microphone. At the very end of the video, once it cuts back to the couple at the altar the sound quality goes back to the echo-y, tinny sound of an on-camera mic.

1b. The “TheKHeinz” user on YouTube was registered on July 19, 2009, the day the video was posted. We usually look for clues like this to detect “plants” by PR agencies.  This is an issue of trust — a user “CmdrTaco” on Slashdot has been around the forums for years, made hundreds of posts, and was rated by the community very highly. PR agencies trying to seed stories have to create new user accounts during the PR campaign (recent registration date) and have made no other posts or uploads before (no history).

2. The social intensity detected in all of the top social venues like Technorai, Delicious, Reddit, Digg, etc. indicate there was not enough organic sharing to support a view count of 13 million views in 11 days (updated: 14.6 million today August 2, 2009).

a) Bit.ly shows only 447k clicks on the shortened URL

“At Fortune’s Brainstorm:Tech conference Ashton Kutcher effectively took credit for boosting the views from – in his words – 12,500 views before he tweeted the link – to some 1.2 million views 12 hours later…”

Well, unfortunately he used a bit.ly link which provides public analytics on how many people clicked. Most tweets result in immediate traffic, which then tails off immediately after the tweet falls off the first page. In his case, look at the following bit.ly stats URL and click “past month” to see the peak clicks on July 23. All he can actually claim is that his tweet drove a peak of about 100,000 clicks on that day not 1.2 million

http://bit.ly/info/Z7vMw

too bad Ashton. next time you make a BMOC claim, be sure to use a non trackable method, so analytics won’t “out” you so easily.

after only 3.5 days of retweets the twitter intensity died off to next-to-nothing; if this were a truly viral video, carried forth by real people (and not by paid PR support and paid media) the retweet intensity would remain high. As of August 21, there are over 21M views on the video and the 505k retweets does not show actual organic support for that number.

b) Twitturly shows only 3 thousand retweets on the YouTube URL itself

c) Delicious shows only 447 bookmarks of the video itself

d) Reddit only shows 673 thumbs up for the video itself

e) Technorati shows only 277 blog mentions of the video itself — this could be undercounting if blogs used URL shorteners. But if you look at the blog intensity results (below) sorted by blogs with most authority the blogs have very little authority (i.e. influence or size of audience).

– these are real indications of interest by real people. The social intensity of the passalong for this video does not substantiate the huge number of views in 11 days.

What we are seeing now is the additional viral halo, as the momentum is sustained by large media outlets reporting on the story — even Google Blog blogged about it (boasting about the success of YouTube advertising in driving revenues). Of course TechCrunch is right that viral videos can be monetized: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/30/youtube-viral-wedding-videos-are-great-for-advertising/ )

3. Twitter shows nothing in the top “trending topics” related to this video – indicating few people are actually tweeting about it — if this video is SO viral (13M views in 11 days) then it has GOT to show up on a scan of social intensity. (see screen capture below)

July 31 (Friday)                 August 2 (Sunday)

4. The original video was posted July 19, 2009. The people from the video appeared on NBC’s Today Show and danced around Rockerfeller Center on July 25th (6 calendar days after posting). Today Show staff may be great at spotting news, but to get all the wedding party from the wedding to re-enact the dance on the Today Show in 6 calendar days — too good to be true?  Hmm…

5. Out of all the wedding videos on YouTube, how did Chris Brown detect this particular one that used his song. @glenngabe noted that there are song detection mechanisms  - ContentID - which detect the pattern of the copyrighted song and report that to the rights owners. We know there are hundreds, if not thousaands, or really funny wedding home videos — America’s Funniest Videos has been running for years and years on TV showing funny wedding blooper videos that people submitted to them.

6. ALL TEN of the top viral videos on AdAge’s Viral Video Chart took around 3 – 6 months to achieve full viral effect — not 6 days.  See all 10 videos’ stats, as reported by YouTube at the following link. This video has not shown up at all on the list of Adage viral videos.

AdAge Top Viral Videos all take 3 – 6 months to reach full viral effect

7. From @RedW0rm – YouTube Declares Wedding Video a Financial Success – http://bit.ly/9ZUtu

8. also check the velocity of this http://twitter.com/#search?q=jkwedding or this http://twitter.com/#search?q=jkweddingdance notice the tweets are not seconds apart but hours apart. Something that achieved 13M views in the 11 days since posting would show far higher velocity or twitter intensity.

9.  For a top-trending topic on twitter, there is usually correspondingly high search volume that is detectable.  At first glance, terms related to this viral video like “jkwedding” or “jk wedding dance” all seem to spike.  But if you put it against even “Corazon Aquino” (one of the top trending topics NOW on Twitter) those JK wedding search volumes are dwarfed.  (see chart below).

10.  Google only reports 366 links to the video and most of them are not even important websites (see Alexa blue bar)

11.  The video itself has no honors and no stats (yet); YouTube stats are conveniently turned off. Other videos have their stats graphs publicly available.

12. see the fine print in the YouTube description — For more information or to make a donation towards violence prevention please visit our website: http://www.jkweddingdance.com/ – why would a normal wedding video ask people to make a donation towards violence prevention? (see screen capture below), the WHOIS record shows the domain jkweddingdance.com was created 29-Jul-09 — today is 31-Jul-09

Updated: This was circumstantial evidence. A source confirmed that Jill is studying patterns of violence propagation for her PhD. Their choice of charity was their own choice. And the site was set up to help that cause.

Conclusion?  The video itself is real, made by those nice people in the wedding. They may not even realize why or how their wedding video went viral (and the tens of thousands of other wedding videos on YouTube did not). On the Today Show, “The couple told Lauer they were surprised at the video’s popularity” (also see NY Daily News article – http://bit.ly/OA3iG )

Related articles:

ReadWriteWeb – Build Profit Not DMCA Suits

WSJ – YouTube Declares Wedding Video a Financial Success

PSFK – Co-opting Viral Hits to Sell More Music

TechCrunch – YouTube: Viral Wedding Videos Are Great For Advertising

Huffington Post – Viral Wedding on YouTube Drives Buyers to Chris Brown Music

ClickZ – http://blog.clickz.com/090805-160921.html

The JKWeddingDance video was real; the viral effect was MANUFACTURED – Post 1 of 2 is a post from: go-Digital Blog on Digital Marketing Strategy

But that is because most clients are coming from a reach and frequency background. Some have moved to unique visitors, pageviews, and time on site. But what is more important today is not that people get to the site or the time they spend, but what they do … so social intensity is a benchmark which captures the quantity and frequency of social actions like sharing, discussing, commenting, voting, etc. All of these actions lead to value that accumulates for other future visitors to the site.

Adwords – lower cost per click

Clicks Impressions CTR  Avg Cost per Click  Total spent

511     61,894      0.82% $0.47 per click $242.16

PayPerPost – optimal is lowest payment per post

dollars pageviews/clicks

$122.50       2630/120 $1.02 per click 4.6% CTR   ($5 per post)

$183.25     1324/114 $1.61 per click 8.6% CTR  ($10 per post)

$291.25     2369/260 $1.12 per click 11% CTR   ($20 per post)

social media benchmarks is a post from: go-Digital Blog on Digital Marketing Strategy