chocolate
5 Valentines Stocks That Typically Disappoint
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/5-valentines-stocks-that-disappoint-2013-2
At Seasonal Odds we examined the Valentines week return of selected marquee Valentines Day stocks over the last 5 years, covering the traditional areas of chocolate, diamonds and jewelry, and flowers.
Motorola’s Releasing Intel-Powered Androids Later This Year [Intel]
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5875005/motorolas-releasing-intel+powered-androids-later-this-year
![medium 1571e131f4c666997499063d386f6ab1 Motorolas Releasing Intel Powered Androids Later This Year [Intel]](http://cache.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/4/2012/01/medium_1571e131f4c666997499063d386f6ab1.jpg "Motorola's Releasing Intel-Powered Androids Later This Year")
Intel’s about to get its peanut butter all over Motorola’s chocolate. And, in addition to the Reese’s Pieces, we’ll see the first Intel-powered, Android smartphone in the second half of this year.
The two companies announced today that they’ve signed on for a multi-year strategic relationship which will span multiple platforms—including tablets and phones. Specifically, Motorola hopes to employ Intel’s low power system-on-chip architecture. “With Android as the leading smartphone OS globally and advancements in computing technology we see tremendous opportunity.” Sanjay Jha, Chairman and CEO of Motorola Mobility told Business wire. Intel’s new Medfield chip could to be on-board.
And, while the phones may not end up as sleek as the Intel design reference above, with the Medfield’s ability to support up to a 24MP camera and 1080p playback, Apple may have some real competition on its hands. What’s more, given that Google owns Motorola, these phones could very well have an inside track to the latest and greatest Android OS builds. [Marketwatch]
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specialized channels with niche and original content
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/08/youtubes-got-big-plans-for-web-tv-specialized-channels-with-ni/
YouTube’s come quite a long way from its roots as a repository for random videos from the public. It’s gone from “Chocolate Rain” and the Tron guy to streaming Disney classics and now creating original, quality content. The New Yorker spoke extensively with YouTube’s Global Head of Content Robert Kyncl about the site’s future plans, and YouTube’s got its sights set on grabbing a big slice of TV’s $300 billion pie. Kyncl thinks the future of TV is in niche content, and YouTube’s original channels are just the vehicle to deliver it direct to your digital door. The site is commissioning people and companies to create the channels (as opposed to individual shows or pieces of content) which gives the creators freedom to program their channels as they see fit — all YouTube asks is that they provide a certain number of hours of programming per week. This production model is apparently pretty attractive to content producers, given the talent that’s on board and the amount of content that’ll be rolling out over the next six months.
The idea is that all the original content will get people watching YouTube for longer periods of time, and in turn grant more opportunities to reap ad revenue. Of course, these specialized channels don’t provide the wide advertising reach of traditional television, but they do allow advertisers to target very specific audiences with focused ads. That presumably provides them with better bang for their buck. Time will tell if YouTube’s new plan will win the war against traditional television and web TV (including Kyncl’s former employer Netflix), but free, quality on-demand content certainly sounds good to us. Get a fuller accounting of Kyncl’s vision at the source below, and feel free to sound off in the comments if you’re picking up what he’s putting down.
YouTube’s got big plans for web TV: specialized channels with niche and original content originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 08 Jan 2012 06:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Social Gaming Network OpenFeint Coming to Android
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5581997/social-gaming-network-openfeint-coming-to-android
Good news for Android users who are miserable due to the limited game selection on their devices: Social gaming network OpenFeint is coming to Android and it’ll hopefully encourage development of more games for the mobile operating system.
OpenFeint To Bring World’s Largest Mobile Gaming Developer Community To Google’s Android Platform
Mobile Social Games Network’s Expansion to Android will Accompany Titles from Glu Mobile, Digital Chocolate, And Hudson Entertainment.
Burlingame, CA – July 8, 2010 – OpenFeint, the leading mobile social gaming ecosystem for iOS devices, today announced that its 9,200 member game developer community with thousands of published games will soon have a complete solution to thrive in the Android apps economy. Launching later this summer, the company’s complete solution will include its de facto standard SDK, a game discovery store and mobile payment options. It will also include high quality content from leading publishers Astraware, Digital Chocolate, Glu Mobile, Hudson Soft and independent studios like Distinct Dev (Moron Test), ustwo (Dot Dot Dot), Pik Pok (Flick Kick Football) and RocketCat Games (Hook Champ).
With a strong set of partners at launch, OpenFeint’s ecosystem provides Android users the most compelling way to discover and buy high quality online games. In addition to incorporating Google Checkout and leading community features into its developer SDK, OpenFeint will extend its wildly successful Game Spotlight discovery app to Android. Interested parties can register at www.openfeint.com/developers/android for details as they emerge.
At the same time, OpenFeint continues to invest in and expand its efforts on Apple’s iOS devices and maintains the largest mobile social gaming ecosystem on that platform with over 28 million users and a presence in over 2,200 live games.
“Android is an evolving gaming platform that will greatly benefit from OpenFeint’s industry leading online gaming and community technologies,” said Niccolo de Masi, CEO of Glu Mobile. “OpenFeint is leading the charge for game developers on Android, helping simplify and improve the game discovery and purchase process for players on the platform.”
OpenFeint also announced that its expansion to Android is backed by a recent strategic investment by leading Chinese online gaming company, The9. This marks the path for a significant expansion for the company as it rolls out its cross platform strategy. As always, OpenFeint will remain open source and free for both developers and players.
“OpenFeint continues to demonstrate leadership and innovation in building community technologies which drive considerable discovery and monetization for publishers,” said Jason Loia, COO of Digital Chocolate, one of the industry’s most highly-rated publishers of mobile and social games. “We are excited about their entry into the Android ecosystem and we look forward to partnering with them to bring the best gaming experience to the Android platform.”
With over 160,000 Android powered devices shipping daily, Google’s mobile platform is growing rapidly and leading game developers recognize the tremendous opportunity to bring quality content to the platform.
“This is a big step for OpenFeint and an even bigger step for Android as it becomes a serious mobile gaming platform,” said Jonathan Goldberg, Analyst at Deutsche Bank Equity Research. “OpenFeint ushered in mobile online gaming for iOS devices and we think they’ll lead the revolution on Android.”
OpenFeint also re-affirmed its continued commitment to the Apple iOS device community where thousands of games are in development and several games are approved in the App Store daily with OpenFeint enablement.
Even Major Sites are Not Yet Benefiting From the Full Power of Search
@glenngabe‘s post on FaceYahoogle – The Impact of Facebook, Yahoo, and Google on Website Traffic inspired me to also look at the search terms driving traffic. Most sites, even major ones have their own brand terms driving traffic. This is OK, but it is taking significantly less advantage of the full power of search.A more ideal scenario for sites is that they have a large number of non-brand terms driving traffic — i.e. the keywords they want to be known for are driving traffic to them. The premise is that if the user already knew the brand or brand name, it would be redundant for the advertiser to spend awareness ad dollars on them. The advertiser wants to get users to their site who do not already know their brand name. This is especially true for pharma drug websites, as you will see in the following examples.
GENERAL SITES
These sites have such a diverse set of products, services, or topics, we don’t expect the top search terms driving traffic to be anything other than their brand terms. But they should have a long tail of thousands of keywords driving traffic (and they are, in the following examples).
NYTimes.com
LinkedIn.com
Weather.com
CATEGORY SPECIFIC SITES
These sites focus on specific product categories, so one would expect that they should have keywords around their product category driving traffic — e.g. clothing, chocolate, wine, etc. But as you can see, most don’t and the total number of keywords driving traffic could be larger than it is now (implying more long tail keywords).
JCrew.com – clothing
Apple.com – computers, consumer electronics, iPod, music
Godiva.com – chocolate
AnnTaylor.com – clothing, women’s
SINGLE NICHE SITES
Such sites should be all over search terms that surround the topic areas that they want to be known for. But as you see from the analytics, most don’t. Instead, the top terms driving traffic are their own brand name. Again, if the user already knew the brand, additional advertising would be wasted on them. The sites need to make efforts to “own” additional keywords (or at least “show up at the party”) so people who don’t know the brand name might still have a chance finding them when they type in other keywords surrounding the specific niche.
Sutent (Pfizer) – cancer drug
Nucynta (J0hnson & Johnson) – pain drug
Spiriva (Boehringer Ingelheim, Pfizer) – COPD drug
NOTE: This is the best of the bunch of drug sites. COPD, the disease area they want to be known for, does actually show up in the first 5 search terms driving traffic, along with emphysema and their product name handihaler. Also, notice they have nearly 10 times the number of keywords driving traffic compared to the other 2 drugs cited (65 vs 7 or 8 )
Interesting Search Observations – chocolate covered cherries vs chocolate covered strawberries
Chocolate covered cherries are more popular (more searched) at Christmas; but chocolate covered strawberries are more popular at Valentines. By observing what people pull for, we can derive insights that are useful in business strategy, inventory planning, and marketing (by ads around chocolate covered strawberries for valentines but cherries for christmas)
Source: Google External Keyword Tool – Search Volume Trends
via Niall McKinney, uTalk Marketing. At Valentines, women need more help picking gifts (search volume for “gifts for guys” consistently higher every February for the past 5 years). But “gifts for girls” shows dramatically higher volume every Christmas.
Spend polarization
The 2011 year-to-date stock performance of retail stocks show that “ultra low end” Dollar Tree (DLTR) and “ultra high end”Whole Foods (WFM) are the best performers whereas companies that are in the “practically undifferentiated middle” are down — Target (TGT) and Saks (SKS).
ORIGINAL POST: February 23, 2009.
Spend polarization – in this economy, people will try to save every last penny so they will spend more at Wal-mart (low prices). But when they do treat themselves, they will spend on even higher end items like $40 balsamic vinegar, or high end chocolate (high prices).
Jacques Torres was packed before Valentines this year
low end
1. people buying private label, generics, or store brands (quality of which are pretty comparable to name brands)
Private Labels winning the battle of the brands
http://adage.com/article?article_id=134791
high end
2.we were at Williams Sonoma yesterday and I watched 3 families buy Shun knives (super expensive) and Shun has just released an even higher end series of knives by Michel Bras
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