Apple Discovers a New Market in China: Rich Boyfriends - Nathan T. Washburn by Nathan T. Washburn | 11:30 AM May 4, 2012 The 8 million iPhones that Apple sold in China last quarter are a lot like exotic pets: They're cute and they make great gifts for rich young men to give to their girlfriends, but outside of their native ecosystem, their survival prospects don't look very good. The unexpected sales boom in China (8 million is my rough estimate) went a long way toward offsetting the company's less-than-robust performance in the U.S. market and helps explain Apple's record-breaking profits . In its native U.S. ecosystem, the iPhone functions beautifully. And then there's the problem of input. So Chinese users are cobbling together an iPhone experience from a variety of sources, and the overall experience is not very good. Who in their right mind would buy this phone? Recently, when shopping for a phone in the United States, I was tempted by the large, vivid screen of the newest Samsung device .
What Are People Doing Online? This post was written by Jenny Urbano, our Social Media Manager. Here at Demandforce, we love seeing and celebrating your ideas! And more than that, we love to hear from YOU. We want to bridge the gap between us and you, so that’s why we’re offering a once in a lifetime opportunity to win a trip to San Francisco, sightsee in this amazing city, visit Demandforce headquarters and share your ideas with us! 6 winners, and a guest of their choice will be flown out to San Francisco, California on March 12-14th, 2014, where they will stay in Union Square, spend a day at Demandforce, have dinner with the team, and explore the lovely City by the Bay! For contest rules, and how to enter, please visit our post in the Generation Demandforce Community here. Good luck!
Who Are the Top Retailers on Social Media? [INFOGRAPHIC] It's become practically mandatory that brands incorporate social media into their business strategy, causing retailers to compete for popularity in stores and on the Internet, too. Campalyst has provided this infographic, which covers the largest Internet retailers in the U.S., and their presence on the five key social networks: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+ and Pinterest. Victoria's Secret is the top retailer on Facebook, with nearly 18.5 million fans, followed by Walmart with about 15 million fans. On Twitter, Major League Baseball is the leading Internet retailer account with 1.9 followers. Retail channels on YouTube do not show numbers as large as the other social platforms. Pinterest is still relatively new to the social media game, which explains why its numbers are the lowest. SEE ALSO: 8 Strategies for Launching a Brand Presence on Pinterest The infographic also breaks down what retail industries are leading on each platform.
The Facebook Fallacy Facebook not only is on course to go bust but will take the rest of the ad-supported Web with it. Given its vast cash reserves and the glacial pace of business reckonings, this assertion will sound exaggerated. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. At the heart of the Internet business is one of the great business fallacies of our time: that the Web, with all its targeting abilities, can be a more efficient, and hence more profitable, advertising medium than traditional media. The daily and stubborn reality for everybody building businesses on the strength of Web advertising is that the value of digital ads decreases every quarter, a consequence of their simultaneous ineffectiveness and efficiency. Things Reviewed: Facebook ads At the same time, network technology allows advertisers to more precisely locate and assemble audiences outside of branded channels. Facebook currently derives 82 percent of its revenue from advertising. It’s quite a juxtaposition of realities.
Defining Earned, Owned And Paid Media The terms "earned, owned and paid (aka bought) media" have become very popular in the interactive marketing space today. In fact, taken together they can be applied as a simple way for interactive marketers to categorize and ultimately prioritize all of the media options they have today. Nokia was an early pioneer in this space (see Dan Goodall's posts on the subject). Yet as popular as these themes have become, they're often loosely applied across the industry and essentially no one is speaking the same language. Ultimately these types of media work best together but making the hard choices of what to include and what not to include is crucial - especially when budgets are tight. Create a solar system of owned media. Learn how to optimize your resources across your marketing mix with this complimentary report from Forrester Research: Mix Art And Science For Marketing Success.
Facebook's Advice to Marketers: Post Stuff About Your Brand It's no secret that Facebook has decided the best way to spur more advertising on the platform is to encourage marketers to use their brand Pages more effectively. With that goal in mind, Facebook looked at postings on 23 brand Pages over one month to see which posts did the best. The upshot: When you talk about things related to your brand, you'll get more engagement. For example, a post by a cruise line marketer (Facebook did not disclose which brands exactly were involved in the study) stating "I decided to go on my first cruise because ____," performed better than one that said, "Hang in there everybody. "Topics related to brand or about the brand were significant predictors of increased engagement," says Sean Bruich, head of measurement at Facebook. The advice may seem obvious, but Bruich points out that many brands try to stay relevant by "just publishing the latest meme." Image courtesy of Flickr, GOIABA (Goiabarea)
Twitter, the Startup That Wouldn't Die Life inside successful Web startups—especially the really successful ones—can be nasty, brutish, and short. As companies grow exponentially, egos clash, investors jockey for control, and business complexities rapidly exceed the managerial abilities of the founders. Venture capitalist Peter Fenton calls this phenomenon “the violence of a startup.” And nowhere has the violence been fiercer, or more public, than at a company Fenton invested in and has helped to guide: Twitter. Throughout its first five years of existence, Twitter always seemed on the verge of committing some excruciating form of startup seppuku. Photograph by Robert Twomey for Bloomberg BusinessweekDick Costolo, CEO Now something freakish is happening in San Francisco. In the past, Twitter’s too-cool-for-revenue attitude enhanced its Silicon Valley mystique. Brands are using the hashtag in part because it links them directly to an intense and nonstop online conversation. Illustration by Bigshot Toyworks He pauses again.
Twitter, Amazon, Instagram, Others Are Making No Profits Twitter’s long-awaited initial public offering is expected to arrive next week. But before you bust out your checkbook to own a piece of Silicon Valley’s latest hyped stock, consider this: Twitter has yet to earn any money. The company, whose initial share price range of $17 to $20 pegs its value around $11 billion, has posted a net loss of $134 million so far in 2013. That hardly makes Twitter unique in today’s tech landscape. Here’s a look at 9 companies that have crossed the $1 billion valuation threshold without having to worry about actually making money. (MORE: Apple: The Juggernaut Isn’t What It Used to Be) Twitter Current Valuation: Up to $11 billion Twitter has not yet made any money, but its revenue doubled to more than $420 million in the first nine months of 2013. Spotify Current Valuation: More than $3 Billion The streaming service has been hailed as a vital new revenue source for the music industry by some and a raw deal for artists by others. Pinterest Instagram Fab Snapchat Yelp
US Social Media Spending To Reach $9.8 Billion By 2016 That spending on social media advertising is on the rise should be a surprise to absolutely no one, but research firm BIA/Kelsey is putting a ring number on it. In the United States, BIA/Kelsey says, ad spending on social networks is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 21 percent, reaching $9.8 billion by 2016 (up from from $3.8 billion in 2011). Almost all of this ($9.2 billion) will go to display ads, the firm goes on. BIA/Kelsey (which advises companies in the local media space) further forecasts the local segment of US social media ad revenues to grow from $840 million in 2011 to $3.1 billion in 2016, driven by better performance and richer ad formats like videos.
Will Robert Kyncl and YouTube Revolutionize Television? On a rainy night in late November, Robert Kyncl was in Google’s New York City offices, on Ninth Avenue, whiteboarding the future of TV. Kyncl holds a senior position at YouTube, which Google owns. He is the architect of the single largest cultural transformation in YouTube’s seven-year history. Kyncl puts his whole body into his whiteboard performances, and you can almost see the champion skier he used to be. People prefer niches because “the experience is more immersive,” Kyncl went on. For the past sixty years, TV executives have been making the decisions about what we watch in our living rooms. Kyncl attacked the two-dimensional plane with his marker, schussing the media moguls, racing over and around them to the future. Isn’t that more or less what happened thirty years ago? “Absolutely that’s what happened,” Kyncl said, with a slight Czech accent. He set the marker down on the conference-room table, and smiled. I discovered the pleasures of YouTube around this time.