Posts Tagged ‘Google’
CES 2012: Sin City Goes Techy
Thursday, January 12th, 2012
All Las Vegas cliches aside, this show is absolutely incredible. I’ve been to CES before, but haven’t ever stepped foot on the show floor – instead being stuck in dark press briefing suites. After only a day on the floor, I can say that this is absolutely the craziest thing I have ever been a part of.
Besides the endless rows of iAccessories (seriously, if you can put it on or put your in something, it’s here), there is a lot of innovative tech at CES this year – and some of it might actually be useful.
MommyTech (FamilyTech)
Mommy bloggers changed the way the internet world looked not only from a content perspective, but from a marketing perspective as well. Now, a whole new sector of tech is aimed at providing an enriched family experience to consumers – not just moms.
From companies that are offering geo-fencing technologies for cell phones so parents can keep tabs on their teens to prenatal learning technology, it’s all here and it’s all interesting. Gamification is definitely in play as parents look to reward healthy lifestyles and development. There are pedometer-based technologies that look more like toys than a boring pedometer, which could lead to envy among some kids if their pedometer isn’t as cool as the next.
Look for influences in the MommyTech to start changing the way families not only interact with each other, but how they interact with technology. The more apt consumers are to input and share information, the more likely they are to interact with brands using new technologies.
Health + Fitness
This was probably the most-interesting part of the floor that I saw today. United Health Group, an insurance agency, had an incredible booth that not only showcased some of their technologies that are helping companies create healthier employees, but it also was just really well done. The health and tech worlds have long been friends, but up until recently that friendship was purely functional as technologies pushed forward and brought data management solutions and patient care advancements to the health field.
What United Health Group and others in the area bring to the table now is a truly enriched experience for users that puts them in control of information and support for their health needs. Throw in some game mechanics that can be shared with friends/coworkers and you’ve got a modern day recipe for healthy living.
One of the companies in this space that’s been making headlines recently is FitBit. Their pedometers which are crazy-tiny and not ugly at all are being used in offices across the U.S., but their recent product – the Aria scale is almost too pretty to keep in your bathroom. The scale, which connects wirelessly to your home network, allows consumers to track progress, share stats, and connect with friends through their online interface. When paired with FitBit’s pedometer, consumers have an integrated solution that (hopefully) leads to a healthier life.
Motorola, fresh off the heels of their acquisition by Google, launched their fitness-focused product – MOTOACTV. The watch-like device is hyper-tuned to keeping people motivated, while tracking and logging their progress. The device is the same size as a watch and comes running a variant of Android. As my colleague from IPG Media Lab said today “stuff’s going to get crazy when people start rooting these.” The possibilities are endless.
Again, this is a space where people wouldn’t have dreamed about being in 5-10 years ago. Sharing weight loss and fitness information didn’t happen – or at least not outside of Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers groups. Today friends are sharing their runs with apps like Runkeeper, tracking calories with MyFitnessPal.com, and using Nike+ like it’s no big deal. Imagine what’s next.
Up Next…
Car tech, more TVs than you can shake a stick at, social everywhere, and the weirdest things I’ve found at CES.
Disclosure: Some photos and descriptions of products may reference clients of Spring Creek Group’s parent companies, Mediabrands and IPG. These are not meant as advertisements or endorsements and no compensation has been made to this blog or the author.
Harshtag
Thursday, March 5th, 2009@ EricSchmidt Don’t you think that an email system is kind of just a poor man’s version of a robust social media network? Plz discuss: http://tinyurl.com/aw5ml8
Google Me, Baby
Thursday, February 26th, 2009
Everyone Googles. They were doing it before Merriam-Webster made it an official verb in 2006, with its addition to the dictionary. You can bet you’ll be Googled when applying for a job, bidding for a contract or even meeting someone for a date. That’s just the way the world works in the age of advanced search.
Designer Ji Lee, in his wacky world of design, (he’s the artist/designer who started the Bubble Project) took the inevitable and turned it into an idea for a minimalist business card. Where Patrick Bateman and his Pierce & Pierce cohorts compare shades of white and raised lettering, Lee’s card screams simply: Google me.
But, what if the recipient of the card does just that? What do they find?
Online reputation management (individual and company) is reaching new heights of importance with mouse cursors hovering over the search button. Are you ready? Is your company ready?
What if we Googled you right now? What would we find?
We know what our friends, clients and competitors find when they Google Spring Creek Group. Try it and find out for yourself.
(Original article at Geeksugar, syndicated on Gizmodo. Image from Please Enjoy)
Bad Karma for a fake Dalai Lama
Monday, February 9th, 2009Over the course of just one weekend the Dalai Lama created a Twitter account, gained nearly 20,000 followers, made multiple tweets and the story was picked up by dozens of accredited publications reporting the news of His Holiness tweeting under the alias @OHHDL (The Office of His Holiness the Dalai Lama). However, this enlightening account can no longer be found.
Apparently, this top Twitter success has been confirmed as being a hoax and now those who attempt to follow His Holiness will simply see “That page doesn’t exist anymore!” and next to all previous stories you will see an italicized “update” letting readers know about the fake Dalai Lama and his exile from Twitter.
There is talk that Twitter is working to get the real Dalai Lama set up with an account as it’s obvious he is quite popular among Twitterers. With about 20,000 followers in a 48 hour span, the fake Dalai Lama was one of the fastest growing accounts that Twitter has ever seen. Imagine what the real one could do.
As much fun as it is knowing what your co-worker ate for lunch or your friend’s most recent table tennis score, it could be a nice change of pace to have some inspirational and zenful tweets from His Holiness the Dalai Lama mixed in the bunch.
Here is the real story about the fake Dalai Lama: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iPC3EetHJJfkiyc-t8HxO8xziFcQ
The 5 Cs of Savvy Social Marketers
Monday, January 5th, 2009Commitment:
Don’t just post a profile—social media is not a set-it-and-forget-it realm. Get involved in your network, and make it a part of your routine.
Connections:
The more connections you can forge, the more powerful you’ll be online. This is true for corporate and personal brands.
Content:
Share helpful, useful, and interesting information as much as possible. People will better understand you and your goals this way.
Commentary:
Applaud others. Thank those who help you. Give hat tips and re-tweets and leave comments on blogs. Critic carefully. Question things that puzzle you. You’ll further integrate yourself into the fabric of the conversation(s).
Character:
Remember that Google never forgets, and use that to you advantage to shape your reputation.
Ask the Social Media Guy: Pink slip 2.0
Monday, December 15th, 2008Q:
I just got laid off. How can social media help me get a new gig?
A:
Your pink slip is a great opportunity to embed yourself into the social media landscape.
Not only can you forge new connections, get back in touch with old contacts, and brand yourself online, but you can also make yourself more valuable to future employers. And we all know that “more valuable” is secret business code for “more expensive.”
You need to set up profiles (the more detailed and numerous, the better) on (at the very least) LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. You can use one of those pages as your homepage, or you can set up a blog (it’s simple and free, unless you want to get fancy) at WordPress, Blogger, or Tumblr. Look for industry-specific niche sites, too.
Post your resumé, pieces of work if you have them, and enough about you that your personality (effervescent and charming—never desperate, bitter or depressed) and skill-set are obvious.
Ask everyone in your address book who isn’t a spammer to post about your plight and pass on your information. What you know is who you know—especially now that social media is becoming a dominant form of media.
Not only should you work all the contacts you already have, but you should reach out and make new ones. If you’re introverted, fake being a people-person online (at least until you land a gig) and you’ll eat less ramen.
Frankly, laid-off or not, everyone needs to have their profiles in good shape online. It’s 2008, and there’s really no excuse for not having an online presence. The most important reference that ant employer will check is Google. If Google doesn’t know you, then nobody does.
If you have a name like Joe Smith, Michael Jackson, Jane Doe, or Alex Rodriguez, you have my sympathy. Google will not give your resume much love. Try to include your middle name if your name is ordinary, in order to give those searching for you a better chance of finding you. Always include your desired job title in your profiles, too. That way, if someone searches for “Jim Jones” + “VP of Sales,” they’ll have a better chance of finding Jimmy and offering him a job as an administrative assistant.
Now that you’ve put up as much info as you can, search for yourself, and if you find anything embarrassing or non-professional, do whatever you can to take it down. Bribery is encouraged in such situations.
Good luck. Oh, and one last hint: the shrimp-flavored ramen will give you nightmares and rashes. Always go for the chicken-flavor instead.
Have a Q for us? Shoot it over to askus@springcreekgroup.com
Ask the Social Media Guy: How do I know I’ve “made it”?
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008Q:
How do I know I’ve “made it” in social media?
A:
You can measure your traffic, your brand’s awareness, your sales, your number of friends or followers, your Google rank, your expenses, or your share of whatever. You can count your ad-sense income or your blog-related appearances on Larry King Live. All of those measurements can help you see if you’re attracting attention or customers, but the true measure of social media success is the Velveteen Rabbit test.
Yes, it’s one of the most depressing kids’ stories ever: A boy gets a nasty disease and so his family has to burn almost all of his clothes, bedding, and toys. The Velveteen Rabbit, one of the boy’s favorite stuffed animals, is a labeled a biohazard and doomed to burn.
While waiting to go up in flames, the rabbit contemplates his situation and concludes that because he was loved, he’s real and his existence was not in vain—that because someone cared about him, he won’t be truly destroyed when the flames melt his polyester insides and his glass eyes crack apart. I told you it was a depressing read.
So: Are you loved online? Does your brand (personal or corporate) matter to anyone out there in the cloud? If you are, and it does, then you have “made it” in the realm of social media.
Search your brand’s links and references to see what people are saying. If no one’s saying anything, you’re seriously toast. If people are talking about your brand, congratulations: You’re a real brand, and you’re not going to go down in flames just yet. And even if you vanish today, Google will find you tomorrow.
Velveteen Rabbit test: If you matter to someone online: you’ve made your mark online.
The worst thing is to not exist.
The best thing is to matter to everyone.
Just ask the rabbit.
Have a Q for us? Shoot it over to askus@springcreekgroup.com
Using Social Media to Launch a Product
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008It’s the day after Labor Day, so that means the furious 10-12 weeks of PR flurry has begun. Everyone is back from their vacations, and replaced their beach reading of self-help business books, romance novels and spy thrillers with Time, Newsweek, and the WSJ. In return, reporters have switched from Op-Ed analyses of Olympics, Conventions and other personal indulgences to rewriting Press Releases. Basically everyone has between now and the week before Thanksgiving, before the December freeze begins.
So it’s really no surprise that Google jumped their big fall announcement to the front of the line. The launch of Google Chrome could be their big contribution to web and technology community. But instead of the traditional PR launch of dropping a Release on the line at 9am Eastern, Google added Social Media to their PR mix.
Starting over the weekend, Google “accidentally leaked” a cartoon explaining all the features of the product. No screenshots, just drawings explaining everything that was coming. With this leak out there, everyone knew to check in with the Mega-bloggers like Mashable and Techcrunch to see what the Google guys had released out to Arrington and crew ahead of time. Plus, they used their own blog to supplement the leak.
Backing up all of this is a complete Wikipedia entry published before the product even hit the market. In fact, the Wikipedia entry announces the date and time of the Press Conference. It shows how far we’ve come in Social Media when we are getting our product news from Wikipedia before the bits even ship.
Obviously not everyone has the power to consciously tell the WSJ, NYT, etc…that they get 2nd dibs after the blogosphere. But it does show a slightly different model for using Social Media as part of a large PR blitz.
Google to Tweak Ad System
Friday, August 22nd, 2008If you do a lot of buying across search engines and networks like Google and LiveSearch, you’ll want to dig into this announcement from Google. Cnet has a top level overview about some upcoming changes to the way they “score” or “auction” the spots in which you can buy placement.
Cnet quotes the Google AdWords blog, which explains, “We are replacing our static per-keyword Quality Scores with a system that will evaluate an ad’s quality each time it matches a search query. This way, AdWords will use the most accurate, specific, and up-to-date performance information when determining whether an ad should be displayed.”
It seems one other interesting feature is that Google will recommend prices you should expect to pay in order for you to place at a high level, rather than the old way of just recommending a minimum price.
We’ll dig into this a little deeper in some of the forums, and ask the guys from Reach Machines to provide some more insight on how this might affect methodologies and strategies.
The Free Web Application Syndrome
Tuesday, August 19th, 2008This post was originally entitled “Can Twitter Ever Make Money?” But as we wrote it, we realized the issue is bigger than simply wondering how, when and if companies like Twitter will monetize.
The early days of innovation are truly fantastic for early adopters and consumers who are ahead of the market. VC’s and Private Equity firms pour billions of dollars into cool ideas. Those who are “in the know” early are/were able to get M&M’s brought to them on a Friday night (Kozmo.com), groceries delivered free wherever they lived (Webvan), 100 pounds of pet food without a shipping charge (Pets.com), free music to their PC (Napster), free phone calls across the world (Skype) and more.
The problem is, like your economics teacher told you, there is no free lunch. Someone is paying the bill. And eventually, that person paying the bill, the person paying the salaries of all the people doing things for you, well, he wants to get reimbursed for his efforts.
So look today at what we are getting for free. We can stay in touch with every one of our business contacts no matter how many times they switch jobs, thanks to LinkedIn. And we know the personal lives of all of our friends, thanks to Facebook. And if we want, we can get global updates in real time, 140 characters at a time, thanks to Twitter. All of this for free.
Now the business models that the investors saw said something like this. “We are going to be hugely popular. Everyone will love us. We’ll run some ads. And if we get 1% of the people to click on an ad, we’ll make a gajillion dollars.” It’s the model that has worked since Mr. Marconi showed off his first radio nearly 100 years ago.
But 1% of the people aren’t clicking on Facebook ads, or upgrading to premium LinkedIn accounts. And Twitter hasn’t even come up with any ways to make money. Throw in the fact that the economy is struggling, and that even rich people don’t like losing money. Someone has to start generating profits some day.
Well, that’s the story FastCompany is addressing in this article. Their synopsis – everything cool you get today for free will basically become a lead generation tool for Google, Microsoft, Amazon, eBay, Apple, etc…. For the Social Media Marketer, that means that these are the days to leverage the creativity and free form activity this medium allows. We all remember how Flickr got destroyed when Yahoo turned it into a way to generate YahooMail accounts. Take these great opportunities available to you today, and grab them before they are simply ways to get you to buy other products. Of course, it wouldn’t hurt if we all would just click on a few ads 
