report
Please Euthanize This Big Boy Already – How Lack of Innovation Killed Another Giant
Not only did the shift towards digital communication cause a continuing decline in revenues, the lack of innovation caused the U.S. Postal Service to fall far behind able competitors like FedEx, UPS, etc. (lowering prices is not innovation; and delivering 3 days a week is not innovation either.) We are at a point now where if the USPS disappeared, consumers will shift their remaining habits towards digital and existing delivery competitors will (gladly) absorb the incremental business (because they already work the routes anyway, and can even lower prices due to extra volume).
Source: http://bit.ly/9RHDtQ (BusinessWeek)
March 4 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. Postal Service, facing a $238 billion budget deficit by 2020, should consider cutting delivery to as few as three days a week as the agency attempts to pare costs, a consulting firm said.
Those cuts are among changes McKinsey & Co. presented in a report this week at a postal conference in Washington. Options also included expanding business lines and restructuring retiree health benefits.
Apple, Android, and RIM winners in 2009 smartphone growth, Nokia and Symbian still dominate
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/23/gartner-apple-android-and-rim-winners-in-2009-smartphone-os-g/
Gartner just released its annual numbers for worldwide mobile phone sales to end users in the year known as two thousand nine. Looking at smartphone OS market share alone, Gartner shows the iPhone OS, Android, and RIM making the biggest gains (up 6.2%, 3.4%, and 3.3% from 2008, respectively) at the expense of Windows Mobile (down 3.1%) and Symbian (down 5.5%). Although Gartner says that Symbian “has become uncompetitive in recent years,” (ouch) it concedes that market share is still strong especially for Nokia; something backed up by Nokia’s Q4 financials and reported quarterly smartphone growth of 5%. Regarding total handsets of all classifications sold, Nokia continues to dominate with 36.4% of all sales to end users (a 2.2% loss from 2008) while Samsung and LG continue to climb at the expense of Motorola (dropping from 7.6% to 4.5% of worldwide sales in 2009) and Sony Ericsson. See that table after the break or hit up the source for the full report.
Gartner: Apple, Android, and RIM winners in 2009 smartphone growth, Nokia and Symbian still dominate originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 05:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Cybercrooks Target Social Networks
Source: http://feeds.marketingcharts.com/~r/marketingcharts/~3/16mASWhC9kU/
Cybercriminals are turning their attention to users of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, according to a new report [pdf] from IT security and data protection firm Sophos.
Spam, Malware Attacks on the Rise Sophos’ Security Threat Report: 2010 indicates criminals have increasingly focused attacks on social networking users in the past 12 months, with a [...]<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/marketingcharts/~4/16mASWhC9kU" height="1" width="1"/>
Twitter Stats
source: http://www.sysomos.com/insidetwitter/
Summary
Over the past few months, Twitter has experienced explosive growth, attracting celebrity users such as Oprah, and a growing mountain of media and blog coverage. Sysomos Inc., one of the world’s leading social media analytics companies, conducted an extensive study to document Twitter’s growth and how people are using it. After analyzing information disclosed on 11.5 million Twitters accounts, we discovered that:
- 72.5% of all users joining during the first five months of 2009
- 85.3% of all Twitter users post less than one update/day
- 21% of users have never posted a Tweet
- 93.6% of users have less than 100 followers, while 92.4% follow less than 100 people
- 5% of Twitter users account for 75% of all activity (see the report on analysis of top-5% users)
- New York has the most Twitters users, followed by Los Angeles, Toronto, San Francisco and Boston; while Detroit was the fast-growing city over the first five months of 2009
- More than 50% of all updates are published using tools, mobile and Web-based, other than Twitter.com. TweetDeck is the most popular non-Twitter.com tool with 19.7% market share.
- There are more women on Twitter (53%) than men (47%)
- Of the people who identify themselves as marketers, 15% follow more than 2,000 people. This compares with 0.29% of overall Twitter users who follow more than 2,000 people.
brands are no longer what advertisers say they are
brands are now what consumers say they are and what they tell their friends
•78.2% of Germans are irritated by advertising, only 24% actually still watches it (GfK Marktforschung)
•54% of US consumers avoids products & services which “overwhelm” with advertising (Yankelovich Partners)
•85% of Chinese stop watching TV during commercial breaks. More than half change the channel, while the rest do housework, eat, chat or use the bathroom. (McKinsey & Co.)
• 91% of consumers are likely to buy on reccomendation (source: http://www.slideshare.net/kameran/word-of-mouth-marketing-techniques-womm
Creating Buzz – Kameran Ahari Napa Consulting Group)
• Most influential information sources in purchasing electronic goods:WOM from friends & family 33%, newspaper coupons 25% magazines 4%, TV 4%, radio 3% (Source: CMO Council’s Retail Fluency Report, 2005)
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.



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