2007 Year of Third Party Widget Developers As the market dynamics and content delivery systems change 2007 is the year of widgets. I've written already about Current and Future eCommerce Challenges leveraging network effects, Web Widgets as a Distribution Channel, of course Facebook's Open Platform as a Serious Trend for Future Marketing and Facebook Sets Trend for Distributed Networks.

Web widgets bring the Web to you, prominent use is iGoogle (released a set of tools in 2005 called Fusion), Google's personalized start-pages are frequently used as an information resource and a preferred place to personalize trust worth and up-to-date news and services via gadgets.

Inspired by the success of iGoogle, Google introduced a new pilot program dedicated to helping developers create richer, more useful Google Gadgets: Google Gadget Ventures

1. Grants of $5,000 to those who’ve built gadgets we’d like to see developed further. You’re eligible to apply for a grant if you’ve developed a gadget that’s in our Google gadgets directory and gets at least 250,000 weekly page views. To apply, you must submit a one-page proposal detailing how you’d use the grant to improve your gadget.
2. Seed investments of $100,000 to developers who’d like to build a business around the Google gadgets platform. Only Google Gadget Venture grant recipients are eligible for this type of funding. Submitting a business plan detailing how you plan to build a viable business around the gadgets platform is a required part of the seed investment application process.

Recently comScore introduced a new report called comScore Widget Metrix to serve advertisers wich relevant facts:

'“The recent explosion of user-generated content has helped create a worldwide marketplace for widgets,” said Linda Boland Abraham, executive vice president at comScore. “comScore is excited to be providing measurement for this developing content medium.”'

'comScore’s analysis of the top ten Web widgets worldwide revealed that photo-related widgets dominate the top positions. In April 2007, Slide was the top widget provider with a worldwide reach of more than 117 million unique viewers, or 13.8 percent of the total worldwide Internet audience. Other top photo-related widgets included RockYou (82 million viewers), PictureTrail (31 million viewers), and Photobucket (28 million viewers). '

'As more and more sites across the Internet employ Web widgets, the worldwide penetration will continue to grow. In April, widget penetration was highest in North America where 40.3 percent of Internet users visited a Web site with an embedded widget, followed by Western Europe (24.3 percent) and Latin America (17.5 percent).'

And of course there is already applications for the newly released Apple iPhone. I'm excited to watch this development to take off in the mobile space.

Labels: advertising, apple, google, networking, widgets

  ¶ '2007 Year of Third Party Widget Developers' posted by eA : 12:53 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Superior User Interface on Apple's iPhone Anytime, anywhere access to any multimedia services is in progress and addresses current trends in the telecommunications sector. Today's cellphones converge more and more into hybrids combining voice-centric and data-centric services.

Cellphone manufacturers were not capable to offer a convincing user experience so far, there is millions of products and services on every cellphone, but unfortunately beyond SMS nobody really uses them.

Apple iPhone attacks exactly that weakness and provides a superior and clever UI in terms of quality, video, photo and audio capabilities, leveraging a larger screen (320x480), omitting the physical keyboard in favor of a virtual keyboard on a touch screen and providing generous built-in memory (4-8GB).

It will be available on Friday in the US and by the end of the year in Germany. It hasn't been sold yet, but I think is has the potential to become the second iPod. Expectations are high, mobile carriers queue already...

The ability to anticipate consumer needs and to think outside the box are key factors to focus on consumer-centric innovation. The new core competence is creativity and new forms of innovation driving it forward are based on an intimate understanding of consumer culture.

Labels: apple, markets, usability

  ¶ 'Superior User Interface on Apple's iPhone' posted by eA : 3:05 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Promoting Google Checkout with AdSense Referrals Just discovered referrals for Google Apps and Checkout:

Google Checkout:

'When a user you refer to Google Checkout has an account in good standing and completes a transaction of at least $10 (before tax and shipping) within 90 days of sign-up, we'll credit your AdSense account with US $1.'More on Checkout

Google Apps:

'You will be credited (US $5) when someone clicks your referral and signs up for Google Apps with a domain that has not already been signed up for the service. The domain must then have one or more Google Apps email accounts in use for four consecutive weeks.' More on Productivity

Labels: advertising, checkout, google

  ¶ 'Promoting Google Checkout with AdSense Referrals' posted by eA : 4:00 PM  1 comments links to this post

  eBay back to Google Advertising When Google announced two weeks ago it would hold a Checkout party that coincided with the beginning of eBay Live!, eBay announced that they would take away all their US ad spending and they did it, but for the purpose of an experiment and treatment to find out how dependent on Google Advertising they are. The timing was just a coincidence. Via internetnews.com:

eBay spokesman Hani Durzy said 'that while eBay was pleased Google canceled the controversial "Freedom Party," the timing of its experiment was mere coincidence.'

Well, if eBay wouldn't need Google Advertising... eBay depends on the traffic from Google namly both, organic and non organic traffic, but Google does not depend on the traffic from eBay - and it's a global marketplace and I'm expecting Google to gain further market share in the search category. Via internetnews.com:

"We are now slowly turning AdWords back on, in a much more limited way than before," eBay spokeswoman Catherine England told internetnews.com in an email.

In a statement emailed to internetnews.com, Google said eBay remains a valued partner: "Over the last seven years, we have worked closely with eBay to drive customers to their site and build value for their business and the business of their sellers. We look forward to a continued partnership."

Google and eBay created the two most successful business models, search and auctions, on the Internet, but expanding into new markets led to an increasing competition in several other products and services (Rebranding into Google Product Search).

Google Base and Google Product Search compete with Craigslist, Kijiji, Shopping.com and of course eBay and the last year launched Google Checkout competes with PayPal, especially with the PayPal Express Checkout, where Google Checkout recently surpassed PayPal Express Checkout in terms of customer adoption, view interesting comments here.

More on Checkout:

• Google Checkout Surpassed PayPal Express Checkout (US)
• Google eBay Collision after eBay Live!
• Google's Integrated Checkout Strategy
• Current and Future eCommerce Challenges

Labels: advertising, checkout, ebay, ecommerce, google

  ¶ 'eBay back to Google Advertising' posted by eA : 8:20 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Expedition White Nile - Extreme Paddling, Rafting, Kayaking Bujagali Falls, a stunningly beautiful White Nile treasure, which is about 10km from Jinja, Uganda, situated at the source of the Nile at Lake Victoria, part of the African Great Lakes, is the center of some of the most extreme spots with water falls throughout the year and one of the most famous places in the world when it comes to paddling, rafting and kayaking white water rapids, washing machines and waterfalls.

It's just amazing how many high quality clips contributed by a very specialized community can be found in my AJAX-powered video search further down just by typing 'White Nile'. Those videos are attractive, entertaining, hype and innovative because they represent a service that would not make a commercial sense from a traditional media point of view.

Labels: emea, kayaking, paddling, rafting, travel, whitenile

  ¶ 'Expedition White Nile - Extreme Paddling, Rafting, Kayaking' posted by eA : 4:35 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Google's Next Steps into Personalized Search Some years ago when I decided to extend the personal and professional use of the Internet above the level of exchanging some pretty basic information I was amazed by the launch of a new product or service.

Today, 9 years after and 3 years on Google with an international experience a good knowledge of the consumer market, mobile and Internet industries, well in particular, with an excellent knowledge of interactive Web platforms designed for consumer markets it looks different.

If somebody asked me what kind of Yahoo! services I'm using regularly, I must admit that there is only Flickr left and the recent CEO exchange won't change anything in future. Yahoo! has not really any competitive services to offer, they lack decisiveness and without a clear direction, passion and commitment - weak performers stay, innovators leave - the change that is needed won't come.

If somebody asked me what kind of Google services I'm using regularly, well, there is award winning Gmail, Docs&Spreadsheets, Reader, iGoogle, Notebook, Finance, Blogger, many others and of course the most important: Search. Without search no information, without information no action. A life without search engine just sucks!

Google's automated search technology enables me to obtain nearly instant access to relevant information, it's products and services are numerous and free of charge for me sponsored by my Blogger ads. It's ideal for me to focus on new and innovative challenges.

To stay ahead requires constantly to acquire new information and to carry out and to participate in research and analysis on an international level across the globe. The increasing amount of information made it also necessary to apply new ways to look up existing information and to extract information quickly with precision: Personalization.

Well, I'm aware of privacy concerns related to gathering web history data and to anonymizing the logs after 18 months, but in the end I appreciate a fast and reliable service that searches billions of pages, three times more than its nearest rival and delivers relevant results within milliseconds. I'm excited to experience Personalized Search.

Labels: google, personalization, search, yahoo

  ¶ 'Google's Next Steps into Personalized Search' posted by eA : 9:24 PM  0 comments links to this post

  FedEx Shipping Discount for Google Checkout Merchants Nearly a year ago (June 2006) Google Checkout launched in the US, surpassed PayPal's Express Checkout already and announced already the next step: Google Checkout and FedEx teamed up to save Google Checkout merchants money through the FedEx Advantage program:

• Up to 21% off on FedEx Express® U.S. shipping
• Up to 13% off on FedEx Express® international
• Up to 12% off on FedEx Ground® shipping
• Up to 10% off on FedEx Home Delivery® shipments

From FedEx:

'You know you can count on FedEx to deliver expertise, great service and great value for all your shipping needs, virtually anytime, anywhere. And there are no enrollment fees and no minimum shipping-volume requirements, so you can start saving quickly with the FedEx Advantage program!'

Google and eBay created the two most successful business models (Search and Auctions) on the Internet and became market leader in their respective core markets, but expanding into new markets led to an increasing overlap in products, customers, and business models.

Google tapped into eBay's fixed price business competing in products, customers, and business model leveraging cost-effectiveness, checkout adoption and lots of room for further expansion.

Excellent market entry, just after one year Google is the winner on the checkout front!

• Google Checkout Surpassed PayPal Express Checkout (US)
• Google eBay Collision
• Google's Integrated Checkout Strategy
• Current and Future eCommerce Challenges

Labels: checkout, ecommerce, fedex, google

  ¶ 'FedEx Shipping Discount for Google Checkout Merchants' posted by eA : 11:36 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Google Checkout Surpassed PayPal Express Checkout (US) Checkout as a very integrated experience from initial advertising to final checkout targeting eCommerce platforms to advertise at Google both, consumers and eCommerce platforms can benefit, because it simplifies the checkout process, builds trust and tracks all orders and shipping in one place.

• Current and Future eCommerce Challenges

Recent analysis conducted by Cowen and featured by ZDNet has shown that GC has proven to be a formidable competitor to eBay's PayPal Express Checkout.

'Cowen surveyed the top 200 e-commerce Web sites and found that alternative payment platforms are catching on. Among the top e-commerce sites, Bill Me Later commanded 28 percent market share with PayPal and Google Checkout representing 26 percent and 13 percent, respectively.'

Google Checkout with 13 percent 'has surpassed PayPal Express Checkout, which was offered by 10.5 percent of the top 200 e-commerce sites,' Mr. Friedland from Cowen noted.

The major reason preventing Google Checkout from taking off is privacy concerns, but it's not really a show stopper it's more a delay.

'Negotiations between Google and the legal teams at large retailers have been protracted, resulting in delayed adoption.'

Places to shop with Google Checkout include major brands like BlueNile (diamonds), Toys R Us (toys), Starbucks (coffee), Dick's (sporting goods) partner of GSI eCommerce, a leading provider of outsourced e-commerce solutions having 25-30 partners live with Google Checkout and RitzCamera (electronics) which has repeatedly reported to benefit from GC. More stores:


With surpassing PayPal's Express Checkout and with the progress of eCommerce the recent Google eBay collision could opt for Google now tapping into eBay's fixed price business competing in products, customers, and business model.

• Google eBay Collision after eBay Live!

Labels: checkout, ecommerce, google

  ¶ 'Google Checkout Surpassed PayPal Express Checkout (US)' posted by eA : 4:00 PM  2 comments links to this post

  Google eBay Collision after eBay Live! Both, Google and eBay the two most successful business models (Search and Auctions) on the Internet, created brand new business models leading to high cash flows (Google, eBay), a very strong market share in their respective core markets, Google US with 49.7% search queries (comScore) in April 2007 within the search category and 120.010.000 unique visits overall in May 2007 (comScore) and eBay US with 94% visits (Hitwise) within the Auctions category in May 2007 and 79,428.000 unique visits in May 2007 (comScore) with an excellent brand awareness in their respective field and overall Google is the No. 1 brand worldwide and eBay No. 43 worldwide according to the 2007 BRANDZ Top 100 Most Powerful Brands report.

It's nearly a year ago (June 2006) that Google Checkout launched in the US, recently Google Payment Ltd. became authorized for e-money, launched in the UK and I'm expecting Google to launch in further European countries including Germany with the option to differentiate itself incorporating more payment methods respecting the local payments preferences. A clear collision course of Google and eBay.

• Google's Integrated Checkout Strategy

Market	Google	eBay
Classifieds	Google Base	Craigslist, Kijiji
Product search	Google Product Search, Google Base	Shopping.com, eBay
Payments	Google Checkout	PayPal
Communications	Gmail/Talk	Skype

'According to Hitwise data, last week (week ending 2/3/07) the market share of visits to eBay was 844 times greater than the share of visits to Google Base.'

'Paypal's market share exceeded Google Checkout's by 71 to 1 in the same period.' (LeeAnn Prescott/Hitwise Feb 2007)

On the one hand Google and eBay have a business relation, Google drives traffic to eBay and eBay buys Google's AdWords, on the other hand expanding into new markets led to an increasing overlap in products, customers, and business models today. When Google last week announced it would hold a Checkout party that coincided with the beginning of eBay Live!, eBay announced that they would take away all their US ad spendings.

I'm not sure whether this was a good idea, although eBay partnered with Yahoo! promoting PayPal. Google is the absolute leader in search and both Yahoo! and Microsoft admitted some weeks ago, that they lost the battle against Google. I'm expecting that Google will gain further market share in the search category, I think eBay depends on the traffic from Google, but Google does not depend on the traffic from eBay - and it's a global marketplace, not just the US. Google redesigned its product search experience - Rebranding into Google Product Search - just add a few more products...

The Economist titled it's Google Checkout - PayPal comparison 'A battle at the checkout': Here some quotes:

'Checkout has already signed up a quarter of the top 500 online retailers'

'Google is prepared to run Checkout at break-even, or even at a loss'

'A survey in January found that only 18% of Checkout users rated their experience as good or very good, compared with 44% for PayPal.'

'“The way we think about Checkout is not as a standalone business, but as a driver of the Google network,” says Ben Ling, Checkout's boss.'

Google's market entry strategy always starts like that, but as they a gain better understanding of the markets they act more savvy.

Digital business is quickly becoming the method of choice for any enterprise to offer products and services on-demand to their market. Competition is the natural evolution in the way we will interact with, share and purchase products and services within the fastest moving market in the world today.

• Current and Future eCommerce Challenges

Communications, content, commerce and search are the challenging activities today, simplicity is the most compelling competitive advantage and different business models associated with them lead to a natural segmentation of the marketplace.

Labels: checkout, ecommerce, google, markets

  ¶ 'Google eBay Collision after eBay Live!' posted by eA : 8:12 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Facebook Sets Trend for Distributed Networks I've written already about Current and Future eCommerce Challenges leveraging social network effects, Web Widgets as a Distribution Channel and of course Facebook's Open Platform as a Serious Trend for Future Marketing.

When Facebook announced at their F8 event a new strategy for further expansion focusing on distribution deals, Facebook as an Open Platform, they set a starting point to letting users build the site from the ground up. Amazing facts from the Facebook Developer Meetup in New York last week via ZDNet:

'Dave Morin, Facebook's director of platform, told the Developer Meetup audience via video conference that more than 40,000 developers have requested to be part of the project, around 1,500 applications have been produced so far, and some of the most popular went from zero to 850,000 users in three days. "This is unprecedented in the history of the Internet," Morin said to the developers.'

"If you think about just how we went about building the site," Zuckerberg said, "the traditional approach would have been to assemble the information and build the directory ourselves"..."Decentralised systems just tend to be more efficient."

Attracting more than 1000 developers a day and one month later it almost seams to be done - with an open platform it's no longer necessary to build all software in house - it even leverages the Long Tail sporting smaller, but very specialized applications far beyond the mainstream offering them an opportunity to capitalize on Facebook's large and loyal user base. I've never seen enhancing a platform in that short time!

• New Strategy: Facebook as an Open Platform
• Facebook's Open Platform a Serious Trend for Future Marketing
• Web Widgets as a Distribution Channel for Advertising

Of course there is also the risky side gambling with its image of being the anti MySpace. Letting things go in an 'unprotected' way and see what's coming out in the end might lead to spam & co and be overwhelming for some users, they might become tired of new apps, but seen overall this kind of strategy applying a strict policy in case has shown that 'no major problems had surfaced yet' according to Zuckerberg. No risk no win!

It reminds me to the success of YouTube, which came up by just letting users do it and finding out what they really want. YouTube holds 45% of the free online video market now - they are currently developing a software to detect and protect copyrighted material and offer online publishing tools and copyright free outlets to remix one's videos and to address a stricter policy.

• Google Developer Day: Going Offline with Google Gears

Labels: bizdev, facebook, networking

  ¶ 'Facebook Sets Trend for Distributed Networks' posted by eA : 2:40 PM  1 comments links to this post

  Remixing Flash Videos on TestTube Accessing the Internet at high speeds has several positive effects on Internet usage resulting in higher connectivity and new sorts of services. Powered by Adobe Premiere Express YouTube released the YouTube Remixer in beta of course via TestTube. It's a simple but useful productivity tool which extends the user experience and provides an easy introduction in online video editing - it supports insertion of graphics, text, audio, overlays, transitions and simple effects, easy!

• Increasing Demand for Online Video and Rich Media Advertising
• Current Business Models for Free Online Video

Labels: flash, mashup, productivity, youtube

  ¶ 'Remixing Flash Videos on TestTube' posted by eA : 6:58 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Summer Travel Trip: Petra, Jordan
After a Camel Safari into the Sunset of Dahab, exhausting Fun and Freestyle in the Gulf of Aqaba and exotic Free Diving Dahab's Canyon it's worth to visit the Nabatean city of Petra, a breathtaking wonderland of temples, tombs and elaborated buildings out of solid rock.

Coming from Dahab, Egypt crossing the borderline to Israel and Jordan, Petra is located in a basin among the mountains which form the eastern flank of Arabah (Wadi Araba), the large valley running from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba( Dahab).

Being nearly a world wonder Petra is part of several spectacular movies filmed in Petra like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997), The Mummy Returns, (2001).

Labels: emea, jordan, petra, travel, videos

  ¶ 'Summer Travel Trip: Petra, Jordan' posted by eA : 4:25 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Increasing Demand for Online Video and Rich Media Advertising The latest report from PointTopic shows that the world broadband closes in on 300 million subscribers in Q1/2007 with the top 10 broadband nations holding three quarters of the world broadband subscriptions (USA 60,362,830; China 56,258,499; Japan 26,533,000; Germany 16,142,750; France 15,304,900; South Korea 14,102,888; UK 13,953,000; Italy 9,348,250; Canada 8,010,139; Spain 7,185,932) and with the number of broadband subscribers within the OECD increasing by 26% during 2006 further growth is for sure.

Accessing the Internet at high speeds has several positive effects on Internet usage resulting in higher connectivity and new sorts of services. Clickz News reports that 'advertising online will nearly double by 2011 and broadband adoption will increase demand for video and rich media advertising':

"The major source of growth in the Internet area is from advertising budgets being moved from traditional to online media," said Karsten Weide, program director, Digital Marketplace: New Media and Entertainment at IDC. "At the biggest risk are newspapers and broadcast television; every single traditional media will lose revenue to online advertising."

I think the more we zap TV ads, the more important it becomes for brands to integrate products and services into the video programming and deliver an emotional outstanding experience for the audiences.

Video has become one of the strongest growing fields on the Web - Google Video Search recently gave its strategy a new direction towards a more comprehensive video search engine differentiating itself from YouTube incorporating more popular Web video sites.


Searchable sites include Yahoo! Video, MySpace, Vimeo, Veoh, AOL Video, Revver, Guba, YouTube, Google Video and more, which make it the most comprehensive video search engine providing best coverage far beyond 50% of the current free online video market making even fancy videos findable without swapping the search engine. Further expansions could include this list of video sites.

A frame on top of the page displaying the video search field including related items and the search result item page below represent the new item page.

With a current Web video market share of 45% YouTube dominates the Online Video market with an attractive user audience loving Internet-based clips and videos they can view, listen, interact with and participate when, what and how they want.

YouTube experiments with its embeddable player version displaying related videos. It might have the potential to increase the number of delivered web videos with several viral options at the end of the video.


As the market dynamics and content delivery systems change a user doesn't have to care about video standards any more, just upload a film and the website does the rest for one - Blogger in Draft recently got a new video upload feature. More:

• Current Business Models for Free Online Video
• Google Reader Supports Video Now
• Trendy: More Online Video Entertainment in 2007
• Web Widgets as a Distribution Channel for Advertising

Labels: advertising, branding, markets, trend

  ¶ 'Increasing Demand for Online Video and Rich Media Advertising' posted by eA : 4:05 PM  0 comments links to this post

  New Features Experienceable via Blogger in Draft Blogger released a variety of new things to its audience. There is a new Blogger in Draft, which makes new features experienceable prior to any official launch on Blogger.com, a new blog, Blogger in Draft, which announces new features and makes them discussable and of course there is a first feature in Draft introducing Video Upload.

After a click onto the new Video Upload icon an AJAX based screen appears and displays an interface to upload a video to Google Video in one of the accepted formats AVI, MPEG, QuickTime, Real, and Windows Media, 100 MB maximum size.

The procedure reduces the amount of friction to post a video to Blogger and transforms the accepted formats into Flash allowing users to easily embed videos into their own blog using Adobe System's ubiquitous Flash Player and demonstrates that simplicity is another time a competitive advantage, people require already mp3 upload...

Labels: blogger, collaboration, publishing, usability

  ¶ 'New Features Experienceable via Blogger in Draft' posted by eA : 1:45 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Web Widgets as a Distribution Channel for Advertising Web widgets bring the Web to you, prominent use is iGoogle (released a set of tools in 2005 called Fusion), Google's personalized start-pages are frequently used as an information resource and a preferred place to personalize trust worth and up-to-date news and services via gadgets.

As the market dynamics and content delivery systems change Web widgets or gadgets, badges, modules, capsules, snippets, minis and flakes, embeddable chunks of code written in Adobe Flash or JavaScript represent an application of a third party with a destination target including social networks, blogs, wikis, personal homepages and even desktops have proven to be an excellent way to distribute the message to the end-user.

With Facebook's new strategy for further expansion focusing on distribution deals 'Facebook as an Open Platform' resulting in an explosive growth for both, the social network and the services benefiting from a word-of-mouth and of course ground-breaking networking technologies and disciplines setting a serious trend for the future, Web widgets as a very successful way to distribute the message to the end-user might be the end of the page view as a metric for measuring a site’s popularity.

comScore introduced a new report called comScore Widget Metrix:

'“The recent explosion of user-generated content has helped create a worldwide marketplace for widgets,” said Linda Boland Abraham, executive vice president at comScore. “comScore is excited to be providing measurement for this developing content medium.”'

'comScore’s analysis of the top ten Web widgets worldwide revealed that photo-related widgets dominate the top positions. In April 2007, Slide was the top widget provider with a worldwide reach of more than 117 million unique viewers, or 13.8 percent of the total worldwide Internet audience. Other top photo-related widgets included RockYou (82 million viewers), PictureTrail (31 million viewers), and Photobucket (28 million viewers). '

'As more and more sites across the Internet employ Web widgets, the worldwide penetration will continue to grow. In April, widget penetration was highest in North America where 40.3 percent of Internet users visited a Web site with an embedded widget, followed by Western Europe (24.3 percent) and Latin America (17.5 percent).'

Popular widget platforms include Widgetbox, Clearspring, GoodWidgets, I'm expecting more companies opening up their platform to optimize value, to broaden reach and to attract the attention of niche markets and markets that did not exist before.

Labels: advertising, markets, networking, web2.0, widgets

  ¶ 'Web Widgets as a Distribution Channel for Advertising' posted by eA : 11:35 AM  0 comments links to this post

  Current and Future eCommerce Challenges People's behavior in researching buying related information and decision making has changed during the last months. Their favorite methods include researching buying related price comparison sites, RSS-feeds, review sites, blogs and travel sites, while consumer generated content and peer-reviews have a huge impact on their decision making.

• Easy Structure to Strategy 2.0 Evaluation
  

eCommerce is moving "full steam ahead" and is years away from saturation, with double-digit growth expected for several years. However directing the creation of new marketing tools and steering the execution of marketing and technology programs, successfully driving growth in targeted markets through implementation of key projects, building and guiding top-performing teams means to embrace the Web's unique strength, interaction and participation. Web 2.0 features increase brand loyalty and customer retention and easy to use tools have a huge impact on the way people and companies interact in communications, digital media and business. Here some challenges:

• Leveraging network effects (ratings, peer-reviews): Making interaction commercially successful requires users to create wonderful things. An active creator today can enhance brand visibility and credibility, achieve customer intimacy or just simplify the process to find the latest information about new products and services allowing visitors to subscribe via RSS and be notified when posting something new. While traditional media have content embedded making it only consumable at a certain time new media enhance the customer experience unfurling channels, formats and devices. Customers communicating with customers has triggered an unprecedented social networking phenomenon and a resurgence in the Long Tail economy.
• Reducing shopping cart & checkout abandonment (RIAs): Building the case, AJAX Web-applications provide enormous advantages compared to conventional Web-applications, they avoid slow response times and scrolling after the page has reloaded thus improve end-user productivity, lower bandwidth consumption and costs by partial page updates and reduce the time to wait for the next page. Applied to eCommerce systems AJAX even increases revenues making new applications easy and intuitive reducing the amount of friction for end-users.
• Reducing the barriers to purchase across sites (payments): Customers like to buy what they want wherever they are and a single personal checkout like Google Checkout provides an experience that centralizes and stores payment information and purchase history across several merchants for buyers and extends reach and enhances security for sellers and showed that a centralization on behalf of a user simplifies the checkout process, leads to more sales and returns customers thus Google Checkout is a wonderful new thing that really can improve one's digital lifestyle. Incorporating more popular payment methods respecting local payments preferences beyond the credit card would be a good differentiator especially in smaller countries where it's competitor PayPal does not.
• Focusing on core competencies (software as a service): The Web has quickly morphed into a giant global operating system which allows to remix the Web via mash ups resulting in improved social networking technologies fostering creativity and self-expression, service orientation and cinematic user interfaces based on AJAX and Flash complementing modern SOA's and require new ways of thinking and skills, including strategy, creative and technology for a successful approach. It's no longer necessary to build all eCommerce software inhouse.
  
• Productivity (wikis, web-apps): In an enterprise employees usually are organized in different roles around issues and it's always been messy to collaborate on projects created with MS Office products and to share them with co-workers. The better that there is applications like Google Apps Premier Edition with new administration APIs aimed at businesses for the next-generation communication and collaboration. The rapid adoption of broadband has made it possible to move more and more applications to the Web and it's a step further to a Web-based collaboration-suite with drastically reduced maintenance costs with an option to buy further premium services. Blogs and wikis are inevitable requirements for a modern work group.

Labels: bizdev, ecommerce, web2.0

  ¶ 'Current and Future eCommerce Challenges' posted by eA : 9:20 AM  0 comments links to this post

  1000 km Offshore RIB Race accross the Red Sea
Recently I found this video about offshore powerboat racing by coincidence typing Red Sea into my Video Search further below. Having a passion for travel and sports I started a bit of research about RIBs, Rigid Inflatable Boats and it's amazing what kind of highly specialized active community has built around RIBs.

The Red Sea usually is known for strong northern winds and rough choppy waves which make it an excellent place for extreme water sports like windsurfing or kite surfing so I wondered why they took the Red Sea as destination of choice, but participating RIBs powered up to 2 x 300 horse powers are special, they can also cope even with rougher seas like the Red Sea and due to their low weight RIBs often out-perform other similarly sized and powered boats.

The 2006 Red Sea Rib Rally seemed to have been such a success - it was broad casted by Sky News and EuroSport - but I could hardly find any blogs or flickr photos, I hope the 2007 remake will provide a better coverage, best coverage provided Google AJAX search, a combined YouTube/GoogleVideo search further below (Red Sea Rib Rally).

The race from Sharm-El-Sheikh to El Gouna (Abu Tig Marina) to Marsa Alam (Port Ghalib) then north against wind and waves to Soma Bay and back to Sharm also reminded me a bit of the famous Paris-Dakar Off Road Rally.

There will be a repeat in October 2007 (starting on Oct. 27th - Nov. 4th 2007) and since there is no other comparable event around I think that it could become the water equivalent of the Paris-Dakar Off Road Rally for RIBs.

Labels: events, red sea, rib, travel, videos

  ¶ '1000 km Offshore RIB Race accross the Red Sea' posted by eA : 1:10 PM  2 comments links to this post

  Dealing on Twitter a Product a Day Improved social networking technologies fostering creativity...

• Woot.com on Twitter
• Amazon.com on Twitter

I've seen already the first airlines twittering.

• eCommerce Fueled by Fast Broadband
• Quick Look into the Online Travel Industry
  
• Brand the most Valuable Asset of a Global Company
• Global Brand Awareness: YouTube and Wikipedia among Top 5 Now

Labels: ecommerce, networking, web2.0

  ¶ 'Dealing on Twitter a Product a Day' posted by eA : 10:18 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Facebook's Open Platform a Serious Trend for Future Marketing Since Facebook opened their platform letting information structure emerge instead of imposing structure developers can create their own services on top of Facebook now leveraging trendy and ground-breaking technologies and disciplines setting a serious trend for the future. Combining social networks with vertical applications means

• creating new opportunities for self-expression and collaboration
• complementing and competing in products and services
• leveraging network effects and monetization

Getting in front of potential users such as facebook members and showing them the value proposition is crucial to success of a service.

Both, the social network and the services benefit from a word-of-mouth spreading through social networking resulting in an explosive growth as a recent analysis from Fortune showed:

'The social network has gained another million users and is now up to 25 million.'

'The hottest application on Facebook is from a music social networking company called iLike. That service is now approaching a million users, growing at about 200,000 per day.'

'Now there are already 300 applications' (up from 85 at launch)

'iLike also demonstrates the viral power of Facebook's platform.'

Since Facebook will impose no limitations on how services make money besides selling one's own products and services business models for the open 'Facebook Platform' can involve

• Contextual, displayed, targeted and linked advertising
• RSS advertising
• Sponsoring and donations
• Affiliate programs and merchandising
• Social Commerce

I'm expecting more companies opening up their platform to optimize value, to broaden reach and to attract the attention of niche markets and markets that did not exist before.

• New Strategy: Facebook as an Open Platform

Labels: bizdev, facebook, networking, web2.0

  ¶ 'Facebook's Open Platform a Serious Trend for Future Marketing' posted by eA : 3:34 PM  0 comments links to this post