Numbers are useful for many reasons, but sometimes, numbers can make us blind. We set objectives, and someone told us objectives must be quantitative. But measuring is not always possible. And qualitative objectives usually become secondary to their quantitative counterparts. Once you have a quantity, everybody turns his head to the big number, forgetting difficult things to grasp like qualitative nuances and intangible things.
Social Media is for activism… Or is it not? Malcolm Gladwell, a well-known author and journalist from The New Yorker wrote about it some months ago. He said that Twitter is not changing the world and that the engagement of people retweeting revolutions was near to zero. When it comes to playing hard and risking your life in getting some dictator out of your country, it takes more than pushing the “like” button on your Facebook profile.
But there are people who disagree with Mr. Gladwell. Big social media are helping people organise in ways never seen before. Hashtags in Twitter are getting people to spread the message without the help of any traditional media, including politically controlled media. The revolutions taking place in the Arab world is proof, as well as movements like 15M in Spain or the recent UK riots.
Thinking of these riots makes one think of the dangers of social media as a way to spread false news or to convince a lot of people of doing wrong just because it seems right in the beginning or because it is cool to fight against the establishment. Well, it is true that people will be able to organise to do bad things. Let’s assume the bad part of it, when putting in on the scale with the good part: transparency, participation and open data, will not weigh in so heavily.
Telefónica Project Nurtures Start-Ups -
By the end of this year, Wayra will take place in: Colombia, Spain, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela and Chile. Telefónica’s target is to select 10 projects in each country to back. Each will receive around $30,000 and $70,000 and will be under their wing for six months. In return, Telefonica will take an equity stake in each company they support.
Does facetime with friends suffer from online relationships?
One of the characteristics of “socialholics” is that they don’t distinguish between on and off. “Always on” means there is only one world, not two. When I started my blog, in 2004, I started also a strong networking activity. On August 31st, 2005, for example, five bloggers met for the first time in Madrid. We had never met each other in person and we named the meeting “Beers & Blogs”. When Octavio Rojas proposed to repeat the meetings each month it was the beginning of the “Beers & Blogs Madrid” meetups. In six months time from that day, some 50 people used to meet periodically in a bar and exchange conversation and, of course, beer, mixed in with some business opportunities.Many of the people who met around the blogging phenomenon at that time, have developed a career in the web 2.0 space and some others are even successful entrepreneurs.
And there are the TwittMad events and the Instagramers story as well. In six months time (once again but much bigger), 150 groups around the world have formed to meet together around the Instagram frenzy. And new groups are appearing everyday.
People meet online and want to meet offline. Traditional groups (school, family, old friends) may experience diminishing facetime from these activities. But new relations arise around special interests and hidden hobbies. Facetime will increase, but “old boring friends” will be less relevant.
Apple's iPhone has 89% retention rate, next nearest hardware is HTC at 39% -
Once you go iPhone, you stop reading blogs about smartphones… well, maybe just once in a while to discover about next iPhone new features.
“The mission of the PwC Portal is to enhance our connecivity and relationships with clientes and staff. We will generate revenue through innovative services delivery and support staff performance through enhanced knowledge and information sharing. We will achieve cost savings and improve user experience through shared infrastructure and common standards. This will strengthen our corporate image as a global integrated professional services firm while allowing underlying businesses flexibility to meet specific market needs.” —
Holly Cow!
This was the mission statement of the PwC portal as stated in the book “A thousand tribes”, published in 2002 by two PwC Consultants.
Really, did they think this mission statement (just for an enterprise portal!) would go anywhere? Do any good?
Social Media growth 2011-2015, according to Forrester
Always wondered what analyst numbers hide. Even if social media is not the category of major growth in the next five years according to Forrester (mobile’s growing faster), the growth will be considerable (2,7x). A lot of hype in any case for much less money than, let’s say, email marketing or search advertising. Why this hype? Because social media is a lot more than online advertising. Just as enterprise 2.0 is bigger than “a part of” the enterprise 2.0. And putting the social customer at the heart of the organizations will required a lot more effort than 1523 million dollars in social media agencies fees in the US by 2016.
Anyway, I am grateful to Forrester for their efforts in making projections. Not that simple indeed.
Vía Forrester.
With media fragmentation and the rise of web 2.0, advertising is losing momentum and even worse, productivity. It cannot be considered a magic potion for selling anymore. Advertising has damaged Marketing (with capital M). It has even stolen its name. It kidnapped the Client to make it a “target”.
Internet forces us to be much more transparent. Having a good product will be “sine qua non” because one catches the liar before the cripple. But it won’t suffice. Marketing will continue to involve communication, advertising, product development, market research and that’s why we’ll soon be facing a big budget redeployment from advertising to “engagement”. Engagement is the new advertising. In fact it is much more than advertising. Engagement includes advertising, the “good” advertising.
And Internet will be the natural space in which strength ties and relationships with customers who have become hyperconnected and much more social than ever.
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Isoco, a Spanish company trying to jump in to the stock market -
Isoco is one of the few survivors of the Spanish “puntocom” bubble. They develop 2.0 technologies and work for some of the most renown Spanish brands. With revenues of 6,3 million euros in 2010 (three times from 2005 when they reached profits for the first time) they are preparing their IPO for 2012 to get funds and go abroad.
I really hope it works. Good luck!