Ad wars: AT&T forced to fight Verizon on its own
When Verizon went after wireless competitor AT&T with a "There's a Map for That" commercial showing AT&T's inferior nationwide 3G coverage in the United States, AT&T was caught off guard.
Its response: file a lawsuit. The justification: AT&T believed that the map was deceptive and that consumers would not understand that its map excluded areas where 2G coverage is available.
There's a lawyer for that: AT&T sues Verizon over new commercials
Telecom giant AT&T may be more than happy to partner with Apple, who makes fun of its top competitor daily with the now infamous Mac vs. PC ads, but the company is a little thin skinned when it comes to getting mentioned in its competitor's ads.
Today AT&T sued Verizon over the company's "There's a map for that" Droid ads. AT&T is asking for unspecified damages and a temporary restraining order to keep Verizon from running the ads, which say that AT&T customers are "out of touch" in places that do not have 3G capabilities.
Unfortunately for AT&T, the allegations aren't off base.
There is now a mobile device dedicated to Twitter. Why?
It may be hard to wrap your head around a device that exists solely to Twitter, but that does not negate its existence.
Starting today, Amazon is selling the TweetPeek. For the low price of $199, you can tweet for life. You may be wondering why you would shell out $200 for a feature that can be easily had on most mobile phones already. Well, that's a good question.
The ‘Vince’ update unravelled: does Google recognise brand equity? (pt 3)
Could this be the smoking gun, the SEO equivalent to 'CCTV' evidence of Google's manual intervention? I'll let you decide. My place is only to present the evidence.
Without wanting to sound sensationalist, I found this evidence quite shocking because as we all know, Google would never hand manipulate a SERP... would it?
Social media stats round up
Here's a selection of recent social media stats, taken from a range of sources, including Econsultancy's Social Media Statistics document, which forms part of the Internet Statistics Compendium, and other reports...
Google's iPhone Killer doesn't need to kill anyone to succeed
In the war against the Jesus phone, Motorola has a new contender. The cellphone provider has manufactured the latest Google phone, set to hit Verizon stores next week. Droid ads take on AT&T's iPhone directly, explaining functionality the iPhone does not have and what Droid does right, making it look like Verizon's trying to make a big play for the iPhone's business.
But Droid doesn't have to knock the iPhone off its popularity pedestal to pay off for Verizon, Motorola or Google. It just has to do better than the rest of the competition.
Mobile app review: Amazon
Online retail behemoth Amazon launched the UK version of its iPhone app this week, allowing users to search and shop from their mobiles.
I've been trying out the Amazon mobile app...
Pew: More internet users are reading status updates (and marketing messages)
It looks like Twitter can be carefully taught. According to the Pew Internet And American Life Project, internet users are becoming more comfortable updating their statuses online.
The report found that 19% of internet users polled say they use Twitter or another service to share updates. That's one in five internet users. And good news for marketers.
Mobile web experience letting users down: report
After years of too much hype, it's safe to say that the mobile internet is here. Sure, a lot of the activity is taking place in closed gardens (App Store, cough). But thanks to the wide availability of internet-enabled handsets, the rise of smartphones and 3G networks, more and more people are accessing websites through their mobiles.
Unfortunately, access and demand haven't yet produced the ideal mobile web experience. In fact, according to a recent study conducted by Gomez, Inc., in the past year two out of three mobile users have run into problems while trying to access websites on their mobiles.
Something else you can do with a spreadsheet
I recently visited Professor Ben Shneiderman at the University of Maryland, arguably the world’s leading expert on user interface design, and talked to him about human computer interaction, sustainability, social network analysis and spreadsheets.
Ben's most recent book, Designing the User Interface, with co-author Catherine Plaisant, is in its fifth edition and has lots of compelling new material especially in visualisation and social network technology.
Social media: the best and worst of 2009
Email marketing: six steps to improving customer engagement in 2010
Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
