Buzz vs. Twitter – Is there really a contest?

by Dan on February 17, 2010

At this point, everybody and their mom knows Twitter.  From its humble beginnings directing people to free booze at South by Southwest, it’s become an Internet powerhouse – books are written on how to market through it, Oprah (sort of) has an account on it, and an entire sub-culture has sprung up around cramming your life into 140-character snippets.

Now, though, Twitter has to deal with the biggest dog on the block, Google.  With the recent launch of Google Buzz (basically Google Wave, but with users), the big G has entered the world of… well, hell, what do we call it?  Microblogging?  Social media?  Mini-updating?  Up until about a week ago, it was just called Tweeting.

I deal with Twitter every day.  I may not be the most popular guy (on Twitter, thank you), but it’s a big part of what I do.  I monitor the @chitika account for customer service and tech support requests, and I run my own @danielruby account to try to make myself awesome, famous, and preferably uber-rich.  So, I feel a little qualified to compare the two.

First, the interface.  Google has a Web interface that – are you listening, Twitter? – does not suck.  You can be assured there will be no fail-Sergey Brins floating about.  Plus, the mobile version of Buzz is powerful enough to capture the smartphone market without relying on a slew of third-party interface creators.

Google has taken the elements that make Gmail the most user-friendly yet powerful webmail client and incorporated them into a social media element.

Twitter, meanwhile, just recently added the Retweet function – one of Twitter’s mainstays and included in every third-party client for the past three years.  The web interface doesn’t crash as much as it used to – the Fail Whale is gradually being forgotten – and it’s got a sort of spartan simplicity the likes of which made Google the go-to search engine.

Google 1, Twitter 0.

Another point is the user base.  Twitter has a massive base of people using it – 75 million, according to a recent report - but an estimated 83% of them are inactive.  Gmail – in which Buzz is built – is estimated to have over 150 million users.  How many of those users are active is unknown, but email is a core pillar of modern life.  The only real threat is the number of people getting Gmail through third-party programs, like Thunderbird and Outlook.

Update: TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington is concerned about the force-feeding of Buzz to Gmail users.

Google 2, Twitter 0.

There’s a few other things that Google Buzz has going for it.  Threaded conversations, for example, are brilliant, and I hope they come to Twitter.  It makes it easier to recognize and call out spammers, and allows the conversation to have continuity.  For Twitter to have the same continuity, whoever is reading has to go back and find the @ tags between users, or just have been involved with the discussion from the beginning.

In the end, it’s going to be a battle of adoption and usage.  Features-wise, both have their positives and negatives.  Twitter has an excellent network of microblogger/social mediaist/Tweeters built up who expect this kind of service.  Google has a massive network of general Internet users, who may or may not give two hoots about “updates” and “buzz”.

And one major thing to remember: microblogging is NOT Google’s core business model.  Search and text ads are.  Will Google put the effort into an auxiliary product that Twitter will put into its bread, butter, and cheese?  Looking at the long list of “beta” Google products that looked awesome but fizzled for lack of internal support (Wave, SketchUp, Google Video, etc.), that’s a distinct possibility.

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iPad vs. Kindle… wait, what?

by Dan on February 4, 2010

I’ve got to say, a big part of me just doesn’t quite get the comparisons between the iPad and the Kindle.  No, I’m not an idiot.  Yes, I’m aware of the fact that both can function as eBooks.  No, I’m not shilling for Amazon.  I just… don’t get it.

The Kindle is a niche product.  It does one thing, and does it really well: it allows you to read books on a little, easily transportable device.  Let’s take a look at the Kindle and a few of its advantages.

- It’s simple
- Long battery life
- Always-on wireless connection (at no charge)
-  E-INK

Etc., etc., etc., but the e-ink is kind of the main selling point.  Anyone who has used a Kindle knows how much easier it is on the eyes than an LCD screen – not only can you read longer thanks to the battery (a week of read time between charges), but you can read longer without wanting to stab your eyeballs out with a ballpoint pen (e-pen?).

On the other hand, you’ve got the recently unveiled iPad.  This is a COMPLETELY different product.  Yes, it can function as an eBook, but essentially along the same lines a $200 netbook can.  Reading on an LCD screen is pretty much anathema to anyone who wants to read for long periods of time.  While I was admittedly extremely disappointed in the iPad’s unveiling ceremony (still love the image of the iPad Mini), I’ve softened my stance a little since then.  iPhone OS 4.0 could conceivably fix a lot of my complaints with it.

So, let’s take a similar look at the iPad and its advantages:

- Fantastic touch browsing experience
- Tons upon tons of apps, with more to come
- Long-ish battery life
- WiFi and 3G (with subscription)
- Capable of both work and play, to varying degrees

This, my friends, is not an eBook.  It can be used as one, but it’s certainly not ideal.  What it does appear to do is bundle a lot of entertainment into one device – games, social interactions, information, news, etc.  The color screen is nice, and as a co-worker of mine points out, the backlight allows you to read in the dark.  However, no e-ink means a (comparatively) lackluster eReading experience.

My point, I suppose, is that  this whole iPad vs. Kindle debate is fueled by hype more than reality.  Anything the iPad brings to the table to attack the Kindle could be accomplished by a cheap Dell Mini and Microsoft’s free Reader software.

So, while the media continues to froth over the GREAT AMAZON/APPLE WAR OF 2010, let’s try to cut through the hype and realize that these are two very different products, with very different purposes and demographics.

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One-Way Marketing is Not Needed

by Dan on February 2, 2010

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the business world and marketing, it’s that the old rules don’t apply.  Specifically, if you think you are the one in control of your brand image, than quite frankly, you’re rather out of touch.  No offense.  Some eighty percent of the corporate world is still stuck in this particular mindset.

You don’t own your brand image; your clients do.  Long, long gone are the days of dictating, via ads and promotional materials, what your brand stands for – in the 21st century, the consumer-to-consumer chatter is what determines that.

This is why you must be involved in – and honest with – the consumer chatter.  You hear every day that businesses must be on Facebook, and must be Tweeting, and need to have a blog.  What you hear less is the why: with Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc., the makers of your brand image have an opportunity to discuss with each other and with you.

Corporate traditionalists fear this, because someone might say something bad about their product or service (God forbid not everyone grovels for the chance to kiss your company’s ass).  Seriously.  This may have worked in the ’80′s, when clients had little opportunity to speak candidly with each other (or know who each other was), but fear not, their complaining is a good thing!

If someone complains about a company, product, service, etc., then two possibilities arise: one, the majority of people in on the conversation jump to your defense, thus rendering the complaint null by unbiased users; or two, people agree with the complaint, and you get an invaluable insight into your offering, and know exactly what to improve on.  The most valuable customer reactions are ones in which they are speaking candidly, anonymously, and as a group.  If a ton of people think your widget is awful because it doesn’t, say, clean itself every 3rd day, then rather than quashing the complaint, maybe you should listen to the people you depend on to stay in business.  Put out a self-washing widget.

Advertising seems to be the last bastion of one-way communications.  Way back when I worked for designer toy company Mimoco, I was introduced to Chitika by way of the VBU – the Viral Branding Unit.  The ad unit consisted of a video advertisement (fairly standard), with embedded tabs that offered comments, ratings, and sharing.  The addition of multi-directional communications tools to an advertisement were simply mind-blowing – I could see firsthand what people thought not only of my products, but of the advertisement I was using to promote them.  Brilliant!

Unfortunately, the VBU is currently in a state of death.  In hindsight, it may have been a bit ahead of its time – there are a lot of companies out there that are uncomfortable with both two-way communication and multimedia online ads.  But it represents, to me, an idea for the future of advertising – let your customers and (hopefully) customers-to-be own the communication capabilities of your marketing.  Don’t just allow, but encourage comments and discussion on the pros and the cons of what you do and what you offer.

And most importantly, when a negative opinion surfaces, make sure people know that you’ve heard the complaints.  No quashing.  No ignoring.  Acknowledge, and be very open about the fact that you’re working to improve or fix the situation.

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iDisappoint – the iPad fails to impress (me)

Image from apple.com

by Dan on January 27, 2010

Man, that’s brutal.  I’ve looked forward to the iSlate iPad unveiling for quite some time, and up through the last few minutes of the presentation, I was still intrigued, at least.  Then the price point appeared.  Really?  $500-$830?  A $130 surcharge for the right to pay $30 a month for 3G?

Pass.

I was following along with Engadget’s excellent live blog of the event (while working, of course) all afternoon.  Certain aspects of the iPad are great – the ability to use iWork, the excellent looking interface, and the external keyboard.  But through it all, I kept thinking the same thing – “where’s that ONE feature that makes this a must-have?”

Much to my chagrin, it never happened.  It started off looking like they’d blown up the iPod Touch.  Then it morphed into a blown up iPod Touch with more firepower and a better UI.  Then, in the end, it became a blown up iPod Touch with more firepower and a better UI and a massive pricetag.

What did I expect?  Well, to be honest, I don’t know.  The idea of a tablet didn’t thrill me to begin with, but Apple tends to be very good at making things I want.  The word “revolutionary” kept getting thrown around, so I thought, OK, ignore the fact that tablet PCs have been around and rather underwhelming for years.  Apple will do to tablets what they did to cell phones.

Yeah, that’s what they did – a little too literally.

I don’t know what I wanted from the iPad, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t this.

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Apple vs. Google – Where’s the power?

by Dan on January 27, 2010

Apple and Google.  For the longest time, these two companies seemed to be the best of friends, united by two things: their “creative” reputation, and their mutual loathing for Microsoft.  All that seems to have come to a screeching halt with the release of a constantly-growing slew of Android-powered cell phones and Apple’s less-than-friendly response.  The latest salvo?  After Apple reportedly started chatting with Microsoft about making Bing the default iPhone search engine, just this week Google fired back with a Google Voice HTML5 site that bypassed the App Store and Apple’s death grip on VOIP apps.

The clash of the icons has begun.

But in a war between the traditional peddler of search and the traditional peddler of devices, who holds the advantage?  For Chitika Research this week I ran a study on how influential the default search engine was to iPhone traffic, and the results were stunning: not only did Google hold over 97% of the iPhone’s search traffic, but it held over half of all iPhone web traffic! All!  Check the graph below for a visual:

iPhone Web Traffic Breakdown

To put it into perspective, the Internet in general sees about 2/3 of its traffic come from “non-search” sources – direct links from sites, social networks, IMs, emails, etc. etc. etc.  Google makes up about 30% of the traffic.  Google at that ratio is considered extremely dominant, and nigh untouchable, and yet on the iPhone the number is some twenty percentage points higher.

So, it appears, then, that Apple has the distinct advantage.  A captive audience of iPhone users, locked into AT&T contracts and the Safari browser, are highly unlikely to ditch their beloved, cult-inducing phone (I know I won’t) because of the name attached to the search box.  And make no mistake, that default search box will continue to be the easiest, fastest, and by-far most-used way of browsing the mobile Internet on iPhones.  So while Google keeps firing shots at Apple, the geniuses in Mountain View have to realize that they have much, much more to lose in a Google/Apple divorce than do the Cupertino-ites.

Microsoft, meanwhile, has to be loving this.  Their two strongest competitors (sorry Linux fans), throwing heavy haymakers at each other, trying to eat into each other’s major market, all while Bing and Windows 7 have quieted the majority of Microsoft’s loudest critics.  Throw Bing in as the iPhone’s search engine of choice, and suddenly walls between Apple fanboys and Redmond’s product lines are torn down, and violently.  Not only does Microsoft immediately become relevant in the iPhone market, but given Apple’s dominance of the smartphone field, Bing could immediately take over a quarter of all smartphone traffic (see the Chitika Research story for supporting numbers).

So what’s Google got to gain in all this?  Why wouldn’t they just concede some points to Apple, maybe pay them a bit more for their searches, and keep on dominating the mobile search market?

Personally, I think it comes down to Google realizing that the balance of power is, as it stands, skewed towards Apple in this relationship.  Google has never been one to let anyone have the advantage on them – at least, not for long.  Android is Google’s way out of this imbalance – if phones like the Droid and the Nexus One are any indication, Android may well be the smartphone OS of 2010 and beyond.  To continue to placate Apple might be a smart idea in the short term, but that mentality would certainly hinder their attempts to become a major force themselves and, perhaps, take the iPhone’s crown.

In the end, the only company that is nearly guaranteed to benefit from this strife is Microsoft.  As long as Google and Apple are fighting, they’re not focusing on threats to their properties like the cloud-enabled Office 2010 and Windows 7, the first threat to OSX in nine years.  Opportunities abound for Redmond, and signing Bing on as the iPhone’s default search engine would be a momentous first step.

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The Struggle Towards Effective Mobile Advertising

by Dan on September 30, 2009

So lately I’ve been writing mostly for other sites, and the most recent article is “The Struggle Towards Effective Mobile Advertising” over at digiday: DAILY.  Check it out – it’s a bit of a psychological breakdown of mobile vs. non-mobile Internet users and what’s going on with advertising on mobile devices.

New article coming tonight, God willing.

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Step 1: Analytics. Step 2: ??? Step 3: Profit

by Dan on September 21, 2009

So today SEOMoz.org posted a story I wrote a while back on the missing link between analytics and profit.  It’s a bit simplistic, but sometimes I feel that people get bogged down in the minutia, and miss the three key indicators.  Check it out.  I’ll have something new up for the site soon.

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Marketing WTF: You sent me a shoe?!?

by Dan on September 7, 2009

The best marketers in the world are, generally speaking, also the weirdest.  Case in point: the marketing team assigned to last year’s Batman blockbuster built up buzz by defacing its own billboards.  So, as a marketer myself (for Chitika, of whom I speak rather often, because I like them and they pay my rent), I’ve always thought the weirder the better.  Earlier this summer, I may have hit my first real Marketing WTF?!?! home run.

I was trying to come up with a way for an Internet company to take advantage of a traditional direct marketing campaign, but without just sending hundreds or thousands of little envelopes directly to people’s garbage cans.  So, in a fit of insanity, I decided to send out single shoes.  That’s right: I chose a test group of potentially important publishers, and sent each one a single shoe, with a URL paper clipped to its tongue.

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Advertising’s Dilemma – Privacy vs. Crappy Ads

by Dan on September 7, 2009

Right now, the United States Congress is debating a bill that, if passed, will severely limit advertising networks’ ability to… well, to advertise.  It’s a privacy bill, operating under the assumption that ad networks are out to break down the walls of privacy and open up a flood of new gadgets, gizmos, services, and crap invented by a mom, and drop this flood on your unsuspecting behind.

Now, I understand people’s desire for privacy – I use Firefox, I keep a watchful eye on my cookies, and I really don’t want people snooping about in my private world, but here’s the catch: to an advertising network (like Chitika, where I work), you’re not you; rather, you’re WEB USER XJ3910B4, a random individual with no name whose browsing habits we want to know.  This myth that we’re going around trying to find you, individually, by name, and know everything about you, is just that: a myth.

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