12 reasons Chrome OS will fail
Yesterday, Google held a press conference at its Mountain View headquarters to provide the world with an update on its new operating system, Chrome OS.
A lot of new details were forthcoming, which have have been well-covered by others. The questions on everyone's mind: is Chrome OS the real deal? Where does it fit in? How will it impact the OS market. My answers: it isn't, nowhere, it won't. Here are 12 reasons why Chrome OS is going to fail.
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.
Ignore the top of the funnel at your own risk
It's easy to see why search advertising is so popular online. Many brands focus on search because it has proven ROI — according to the IAB, 62% of all online revenue came from paid search in the first six months of this year. Meanwhile 8% of all internet users account for 85% of clicks on display advertising. Numbers like that often keep advertisers pouring money into search and holding onto dollars that might have gone toward brand advertising online.
But while search advertising may have the most proven business model in online advertising, businesses that ignore other areas and methods of increasing sales online do so at their own peril.
That was a recurring theme at Econsultancy's Masterclass in London yesterday, where Ian Dowds, vice president of Specific Media, put it like this:
"At the top of the funnel, there are a host of big brand advertisers standing like nervous tourists, dipping their toe in the online sea, debating the temperature and then turnng and running away every time the water laps above their ankles."
Salesforce.com tries to bring social networking to the workplace
Salesforce.com built a billion-dollar company by allowing companies to ditch their CRM software and bringing CRM to the cloud. Now it has its sights set on perhaps an even bigger feat: bringing social media to the enterprise.
Yesterday, the company announced that it will be launching a new service called Salesforce Chatter in 2010. Think of it as Facebook for the enterprise: a social networking service for companies with an application platform to boot.
How NOT to be The Social Media Guru
It's a tough time to be a 'social media guru'. Despite the rise of social media in general, there's a lot of skepticism when it comes to high-paid consultants who claim to have mastered it. From where I sit, that skepticism only seems to grow by the day.
That skepticism is reflected well in an amusing NSFW animation called 'The Social Media Guru', which has racked up over 100,000 views on YouTube since being posted at the end of September. It portrays a 'social media guru' as a snake oil salesman who claims to be more skilled than he is and who preys on foolish small businesses.
Eyeblaster: Video ads don't work in social media
Online video may be providing some much needed ROI for advertisers desperate to reach online viewers, but video ads do not work universally across platforms online. According to ad server EyeBlaster, video ads are not performing well in social media.
Why is that? Well, for starters, people don't spend enough time lingering on specific pages in social to view them.
How can etailers handle the Christmas rush?
Over the past year, we've seen a couple of examples of well known e-commerce sites being unable to cope with traffic spikes, mainly caused by sales.
This time last year, Debenham's website went down for around 24 hours thanks to the weight of sales traffic, while the Next website had to implement a queuing system in July thanks to a traffic spike.
But what can online retailers do to avoid such problems?
Coremetrics tries to lure Omniture customers post-Adobe acquisition
Adobe's recent $1.8bn purchase of analytics provider Omniture had many people scratching their heads. While Adobe's CEO called the acquisition a "no-brainer" and it just might turn out to be a very wise strategic move, it's certainly possible that some Omniture customers will ask questions about the future of the company now that it's an Adobe company.
So I was interested to come across a Coremetrics ad addressing the Omniture acquisition. It leads to a landing page designed specifically for current Omniture customers and wastes no time in making a sales pitch.
Time tackles technology with Techland
It's a blogger's world and print publications just live in it. Thanks to the power of internet self-publishing, mini media empires have been built by small companies and passionate individuals working from their homes. Increasingly, these online mini media empires have complicated the picture for print publications whose online presences have been forced to compete on less favorable terms for a more fragmented online audience.
In an effort to stay relevant, print publications are trying to sup up their internet efforts. The latest example of that: Time's new tech/geek blog, Techland.
The market for paid news: does size really matter?
How much is the news worth? It's a question that's weighing on the minds of many news media execs these days as they grapple with the challenge of figuring out new business models.
Paid content looks to be a big part of those new business models, but there's one question that still dogs execs: just how big is the market for paid news?
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
