conversations

More Kin Dirt Surfaces

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5581704/more-kin-dirt-surfaces

More Kin Dirt SurfacesIf people had talked this much about Kin while it was still alive, it might have stood a chance. Oh well! The battle continues to rage over who gets the write the final chapter in Kin’s history.

Mini-Microsoft has been a prime staging ground for these kinds of comments, with accusations aplenty being flung back and forth by current and former Microsoft employees. A sampling from today’s batch shows that Andy Lees is again a popular target:

All I can say as a former Windows Mobile employee who is now working for a competitor in the phone space is that this is good news for the rest of us. [...] Personally I quit because of the frustrating management and autocratic decision style of Terry Myerson and Andrew Lees. The only exec in the team myself and other folks respcted was Tom Gibbons who is now sidelined. Lees and Myerson don’t know consumer products or phones. Gibbons at least knows consumer product development. We often talk about how Andrew Lees still has a job but Microsoft’s loss is a gain for the rest of us.

And that the folks at Danger, acquired by Microsoft to help bring Kin to life, were confounded by the sudden perceived incompetence around them:

You are correct, the remaining Danger team was not professional nor did we show off the amazing stuff we had that made Danger such a great place. But the reason for that was our collective disbelief that we were working in such a screwed up place. Yes, we took long lunches and we sat in conference rooms and went on coffee breaks and the conversations always went something like this…”Can you believe that want us to do this?” Or “Did you hear that IM was cut, YouTube was cut? The App store was cut?” “Can you believe how mismanaged this place is?” “Why is this place to dysfunctional??”

Please understand that we went from being a high functioning, extremely passionate and driven organization to a dysfunctional organization where decisions were made by politics rather than logic.

So: we get it. All is not right with Microsoft’s corporate culture, which may spell trouble for Windows Phone 7. But in the meantime, can’t we just let sleeping Kins lie? [Mini Microsoft]

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Wednesday, July 7th, 2010 Uncategorized No Comments

Facebook is going down – pageviews, average stay, pages per visit – why?

From the Compete charts below, it is clear that Facebook is seeing a decline in pageviews, average stay, and pages per visit.  But why?

I know that I have reduced the time I spend on Facebook and I have also reduced the number of messages and other social actions as well.  And I have deleted virtually all of my personal and family photos and will not upload any more. These may be the first signs of a waning of Facebook due to a number of factors.

I can’t get my stuff back out

For example, Facebook has stated that it will not participate in OpenSocial because they do not want people to be able to export their content, conversations, photos, etc, out of Facebook and use on another social network. I am concerned that I will not be able to retrieve or back up content which I believe is mine. I like to have control over my family photos, conversations with friends, etc. I am willing to accept as a “cost” of using the Facebook system the fact that they know who my friends are.  But I am less willing or unwilling to continue putting my content where I cannot get it back, in its entirety.  (Google Docs, for example, just launched a feature where you can back up everything back out of Google Docs into Microsoft Office formats).

Ads in the stream, erosion of trust

A second issue mentioned in a previous post is the increase in advertising on Facebook and also the more unscrupulous practice of injecting ads “into the stream” — ads masquerading as status updates. These are harmful to the overall trust built up in the community and I have un-friended quite a few people whose accounts were clearly used to promote events, products, etc.

Ad-effectiveness sucks

From a prior post – http://bit.ly/EhiW9 – Facebook advertising metric are absolutely abysmal. They keep trying to sell advertisers on the hundreds of billions of pageviews they throw off. But advertisers are getting smarter and more and more of them will buy ads on a cost-per-click basis (instead of CPM, cost per thousand impressions basis).  This means that the ad revenues that Facebook enjoyed from gross INefficiencies will be decimated.


facebook pageviews Facebook is going down   pageviews, average stay, pages per visit   why?

facebook average stay Facebook is going down   pageviews, average stay, pages per visit   why?

facebook pages per visit Facebook is going down   pageviews, average stay, pages per visit   why?

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Friday, October 30th, 2009 Uncategorized No Comments

The ROI of Social Media is ZERO

What is the ROI (define) for social media? It’s zero. That’s because there’s no such thing as “social media.”

People’s conversations are not media; they can’t be purchased as such by advertisers. In other words, people don’t talk whenever advertisers want them to and they won’t say whatever advertisers tell them to — so it isn’t “media” like TV, print, and radio.

If you treat people’s conversations as media, you’d be doing it wrong. Social marketing done right means asking for and respecting people’s conversations and giving them a public place to talk so others can hear. If the advertiser’s product is already great, much of the conversation will be positive. But even if it isn’t the advertiser will have the benefit of free “product research” because people will give them ideas for improvement.

twitturly1 The ROI of Social Media is ZERO

Untargetables are hard to reach. Unreachables are not reachable by traditional advertising media or channels.

read more about the ROI of social media on ClickZ … http://www.clickz.com/3633341

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Friday, April 10th, 2009 integrated marketing No Comments

paid advertising <-- $1 --> social marketing ?

if you had a dollar to spend today, where would you spend it? on paid advertising or on social marketing? why?

Paid advertising – it’s over once it’s aired

Social Marketing

1. peers telling peers – a lot more effective and trusted by modern consumers than a paid ad

2. archived conversations – when people take social actions like rate, review, comment, recommend, and share, these actions are archived for everyone to see online (valuable to future users doing research)

3. it yields a continuously increasing stream of free traffic (enhances SEO efforts)

after seo paid advertising  <    $1    >  social marketing ?


So whatcha gonna do?

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Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 Uncategorized No Comments