craigslist
Here’s The Big Problem With Facebook’s New E-Commerce Effort (FB)
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-the-big-problem-with-facebooks-new-ecommerce-effort-2012-9
Yesterday, Facebook announced that it will sell gifts users can send to their friends.
Chris Dixon, a successful serial investor and one of New York’s most visible startup investors is skeptical it’ll work.
“Getting users to switch ‘modes’ from online to offline (& vice versa) has historically yielded very low conversion rates,” he tweets.
His point is that when people go to people go to Website for one reason, it’s hard to get them to do anything else.
Users go to Amazon to shop, Match.com for a date, and Craigslist for a free sofa. Users go to Facebook to share photos and maybe read news, not buy things.
Just because a new feature from Facebook appears, doesn’t mean users are going to suddenly start going there to use it.
“It’s all about the mental state. Are you sharing photos online [or] giving something offline? The numbers show it’s hard to switch.”
Other cases in which getting users to switch “modes” from offline to online or back again, that hasn’t worked include “showing URLs in TV ads or magazines” or “trying to sell anything on [a] social network.”
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All you need to do is choose a city and a neighborhood to get started. From there you can narrow down your options by choosing the number of bedrooms you want in your apartment and a price range. As you make your selections, Lovely will provide you with a grid of photos depicting the various apartments available to you. From there you can click on anything appealing for more information and view the entire listing if you choose. While browsing on a map is great, sometimes you just want to pick the places that look the best before you worry too much about the exact location. Lovely’s new tool helps you do just that.
The New iPad is Hot Because Its Processor is 310 Percent Huger
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5895299/maybe-the-new-ipad-is-hot-because-its-processor-is-310-huger
Apple’s unapologetically selling a new iPad that’ll go up to 116 degrees in your hands while playing a game. Maybe they should have done something about that, yeah. But the tablet’s new processor is so massive, we shouldn’t be surprised.
Chipworks, which compared the new hotness (am I right?) on the right to the first iPad’s A4 processor on left, has a pretty striking comparison on its hands:
The Apple A4, which by all accounts is still commercially viable given the price of used Apple products on craigslist, measured in at 53.3 mm². Only two (and a half?) generations later, we have the Apple A5X weighing in at 165 mm² – a whopping 310% larger.
It’s worth noting that the A5X is still built using a 45 nm fabrication process—which in human English refers to the size of the tiniest parts each chip is made out of. The smaller the number, the more transistors can be packed onto a processor, which generally translates into a more efficient, cooler chip. Apple didn’t make its CPU more sophisticated in order to crank out more retina display-filling power—it just made it humungous. [Chipworks via Cult of Mac]
A Retailer
Source: http://blog.compete.com/2012/01/03/pinterest-a-retailers-best-friend/
Last May, we wrote about the new kid on the block, Pinterest. A self-proclaimed “virtual pinboard,” Pinterest allows users to collect images, quotes, recipes, etc. from across the web and organize them onto their own “pinboards” which can be shared with other Pinterest users. Examples of common pinboard inspirations are Wedding boards, Food & Drink boards, Travel & Places boards, & Home decor boards.
Although Pinterest had shown promise back in May, there would have been no way to predict the type of success they have seen since. Having grown 84% in Unique Visitors since we last wrote about them and 50% from October to November alone, it seems that Pinterest has piqued the interest of more than a few.
Having recently joined Pinterest myself, I was curious to see how Pinterest might play into the role of marketing. I noticed that a lot of my friends were posted clothing & material items they liked in almost a “wishlist” sort of way, so I was curious to see if this could double as a sort of targeted social advertising.
I decided to look at incoming and outgoing traffic to and from Pinterest.com to see how virtual pin boards might affect consumers.
While most of the Top 10 Referrals to Pinterest.com are among the top sites on the Internet, the more interesting data starts at #11. Etsy.com, Amazon.com, Craigslist.com and Ebay.com all bring at least .39% of all traffic to Pinterest.com – not to mention their growth in referrals this past November. Etsy.com increased its referrals to Pinterest.com by 7%, Ebay by 23%, and Amazon by 50%!
Looking further into the data, we see that Walmart, Toys R’ Us, Target, Zulily, Baby Center, Kohls, Houzz, JC Penney, Best Buy, and Zazzle are all within the Top 100 Referrals to Pinterest.com. What could this all mean? In the context of Pinterest, it would seem that users are inspired and excited by the products they see on these websites and want to add them to their visual collections and share them with friends. But once users leave retailers for Pinterest, are the retailers benefiting?
Well, one could argue that the impressions made on Pinterest users who view the shared item are enough value in themselves. Viewing a cute dress for a little girl on Zulily.com might inspire a Pinterest user to visit Zulily in the future or even make a purchase at a later date. But could there be any retail sales that start directly at Pinterest.com? I checked out outgoing traffic from Pinterest.com to get the scoop.
As you can see, Etsy.com is the #6 destination from Pinterest.com, swiping 1.5% of all outgoing traffic. Amazon, Ebay, Craigslist, & Houzz are all in the Top 30 destinations users immediately visit after Pinterest.com. Target, Walmart, & Anthropologie are also among the Top 100 destinations from Pinterest.com. Interestingly enough, Anthropologie wasn’t among the Top 100 incoming destinations which means that the content from Anthropologie shared must be expectionally engaging with Pinterest users.
Are you on Pinterest? Have you ever been inspired to buy something after looking at a friend’s virtual pin board? If you are a retailer, or online marketer, what do you think the future holds for Pinterest in this context?
Leave your comments below!
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drag2share – drag and drop RSS news items on your email contacts to share (click SEE DEMO)
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5534285/how-much-tech-companies-are-spending-on-advertising
Yahoo’s reportedly ponying up $85 million for an upcoming ad campaign—nearly twice as much as they spent on advertising in all of 2009. But as this chart shows, Yahoo’s wager looks puny next to Microsoft’s massive ad spending.
According to Kantar Media, who provided Silicon Alley Insider with numbers for total ad spending (print, online, radio, tv, and outdoor), Microsoft spent some $518 million on advertising last year, over twice as much as Apple did, with $249 million. And I’m not entirely sure they got their money’s worth—I’m having a hard time thinking of much recent Microsoft propaganda besides those “make a PC for under $1000″ commercials, which basically seemed like Best Buy spots anyway. Update: also, this.
Of these six companies, eBay spent the biggest chunk of their revenue on self-promotion, presumably trying to keep their name prominent even as they lose members to services like Craigslist. And equally interesting to how much money Microsoft and eBay spent is how little Google did. I guess life is good when you’re a verb. [SAI]
the overall advertising pie will shrink
the greater efficiencies of “digital” mean that the same amount of “advertising” can be achieved with fewer dollars because more waste can be eliminated. The decreases in ad spending in traditional media channels like newspapers will only be partially replaced by ad spending online.
For example, the dollars that used to fund newspaper classified advertising has been replaced by free online classifieds through Craigslist. While newspapers had incremental costs due to materials, printing, labor, and distribution, online classifieds have virtually no incremental cost.
Similarly print advertising, which was based on targeting ads to specific demographics of readerships are being replaced by online ads which can be more finely targeted to even more niche readerships — e.g. contextual advertising. And the revenue models based around cost per click are inherently more efficient (and thus lower cost) than the impression-based revenue models of magazines. Again for every dollar taken out of print advertising, only a few cents are needed to replace it in “digital.”
Agree with me or tell me I’m stupid @acfou
Sign of the times – “garage sale” sites all seeing increases in unique visitors
re: Craigslist More Popular Than MySpace : Sign of Economy Says Hitwise
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/craigslist-search-hitwise/9391/
the comparison to MySpace is irrelevant for the conclusion; furthermore, the report uses search volume for the comparison and people search for “craigslist” and “myspace” for entirely different reasons. And MySpace continues to have 8X the unique visitors as Craigslist — so it is not that Craigslist is more “popular” than MySpace.
A sign of the times is that “garage sale” type sites are all seeing increases in traffic — e.g. Craigslist, OLX, Backpage, etc.
Digital Consigliere
Dr. Augustine Fou is Digital Consigliere to marketing executives, advising them on digital strategy and Unified Marketing(tm). Dr Fou has over 17 years of in-the-trenches, hands-on experience, which enables him to provide objective, in-depth assessments of their current marketing programs and recommendations for improving business impact and ROI using digital insights.
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