Big Data: It’s a people issue now

I had been considering a New Year’s resolution to stop using the term “Big Data” (it’s overused to the point where it’s sometimes hard to remember what it actually is) but not quite yet. Chalk it up to that list of deferred new year’s resolutions. I’m pulling in Big Data again because I really liked what my colleague, Matt Ariker, recently said about it as part of our series, Marketing Outlook 2013.While all that data can lead to real and significant growth, nothing happens with it unless you can use it. And you can’t use it effectively,...

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Three resolutions for social media success in 2013

By now, many of you have probably decided on what resolutions to hold yourself to in the new year. Personally, as I recently told Fast Company, one of my New Year’s resolutions is to visit non-technology comapanies to learn and get inspiration from other industries and organizations. From the beginning of Hearsay Social, my co-founder Steve and I have honed a culture and work ethic based on our experiences at tech companies like Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com. By incorporating lessons from non-tech companies, I hope to continue to...

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iPad Becomes Advertisers’ Best Friend

Advertisers favor showing up on iPads over any other device, and they’re willing to pay for it. Sky-high click through rates on iPad have helped it surpass the iPhone in popularity amongst advertisers despite competition making iPad placements the most pricey. The data from mobile ad platform MoPub’s Q4 2013 study of 90 billion ad views shows advertisers are betting on the biggest little screen. Elain Szu, Director of Product Marketing for MoPub ...

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Facebook's Graph Search takes on Yelp, LinkedIn, and, yes, Google

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a new search feature that's designed to entice people to spend more time on his company's website and will put the world's largest online social network more squarely in competition with Google and other rivals such as Yelp and LinkedIn. Called "graph search," the new service unveiled Tuesday lets users quickly sift through their social connections for information about people, interests, photos and places. It'll help users who, for instance, want to scroll through all the photos their friends have taken...

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MOBILE USAGE: How Consumers Are Using Their Phones, And What It Means

Mobile is no longer a communications utility, but a media distribution hub. According to eMarketer, mobile now accounts for 12 percent of Americans' media consumption time, triple its share in 2009. Where is this consumer attention being focused?   The biggest beneficiaries have been mobile apps. Time spent on apps dwarfs time spent on the mobile Web, and smartphone owners now spend 127 minutes per day in mobile apps. In...

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90 Percent Of Passwords ‘Vulnerable To Hacking’

Even passwords that are considered strong are vulnerable because users can't remember them, new research says. Global consultancy Deloitte claimed that over 90 percent of user-generated passwords, even those considered strong by IT departments, will be vulnerable to hacking in 2013. Jolyon Barker, global lead for Deloitte's technology, media and telecommunications industry, said “Whilst moving to stronger, longer passwords means greater levels of security, people understandably find these harder to remember.” He added that so-called ‘two-factor...

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This App Schedules A Date Between Two People Who Know Nothing About Each Other

OkCupid is trying to make it even easier for people to find love. Today, the dating company is launching a standalone app called Crazy Blind Date that sets up dates for single people. To use it, all you have to do is sign up, create a basic profile, select places you'd like to meet, set which nights you're free, and upload a photo. Even though you upload your picture, your potential date will only see a scrambled version of that photo. The goal is to help people find matches more efficiently by getting rid of OkCupid's standard back-and-forth...

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Facebook Allows More Data Derived From Google Search Into Its New Ad Platform

Facebook has allowed a second company that targets ads using data derived from users of Google into its ad exchange. Search retargeting firm Simpli.fi announced that it had qualified to become a partner in Facebook Exchange, or FBX, the social network's real-time online bidding ad auction platform. The first company to bring search data derived from Google users was Chango, which signed a similar deal to target Facebook users in December. The pacts indicate that Facebook is intent on encroaching on an area that Google has long-dominated: using...

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iPhone Demand Remains Strong, Says ChangeWave Research

Finally some good news for Apple investors. ChangeWave research has a new report out this afternoon that says demand for the iPhone is as strong as ever. Recently, there's been a number of reports that iPhone demand was weakening. Those reports seem to be largely based on supply chain chatter that Apple cut orders for iPhone parts. ChangeWave, which surveyed 4,061 consumers in North America, says 50% of people are going to buy an iPhone...

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Small Steps to Analytics Maturity!

Recently a client asked me an interesting question: How would you start analytics in an organization?This also seems to depend on the industry. While Banking has greater maturity in the use of Analytics, FMCG companies may have different challenges given the lack of end customer data. Also it takes time to build analytical maturity in a company. And it takes a certain unique mix of people- a combination of left & right brain talent!    The...

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Moontoast Raises $5M For Premium Social Ads

Social advertising startup Moontoast just announced that it has raised $5 million in Series B funding. CEO Blair Heavey told me that the company currently works with about 50 clients. It’s not an enormous list, but one that includes names like Universal, Lexus, Nike, Hyundai, Lady Antebellum, Time, and Simon & Schuster. Advertisers use Moontoast to create custom, interactive ads for social media — the ad types listed on the Moontoast site include a “social store,” surveys, sweepstakes, and a unit to offer free MP3s in exchange for email...

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What Businesses Are Doing Wrong on Social Media (And 5 Tips For Success)

Over 1 billion people in the world are on Facebook, including over 175 million Americans, or 1 in 2 adults. Twitter recently surpassed 400 million accounts. LinkedIn boasts over 200 million users. Small business owners are trying to take advantage of these trends, but few are fully reaping the rewards. For many business owners, the temptation is to use social networks to promote themselves and broadcast their messages. But if you stop thinking like a marketer and start thinking like a customer, you’ll understand that the secret to social...

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Good social media strategy: Lots of moving pieces moving quickly

The social media explosion is forcing companies to take a very different look at the suite of analytics tools that they're using to help them understand what’s happening – from monitoring what’s going on, to managing responses, to thinking about the broader picture about what those responses mean for decisions they need to make, and then think about the processes to react to all the interactions. Acting quickly requires processes to take all the insights wrung from the data and do something about it to increase the impact of your product...

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The second generation of cloud startups is here

Fred Destin is a partner at Atlas Venture. There’s a little strategy game that both entrepreneurs and venture capitalists excel at.  It’s called re-segmenting markets. It’s as old as marketing itself and it’s very useful when you’re trying to define white space for your market. So cloud has now morphed into a series of acronyms that somehow all manage to incorporate “as a service”. Maturity in PaaS Behind all the hard work in seducing...

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The Facebook Phone Is Coming Tuesday, TechCrunch Is Sort Of Reporting

Facebook is holding a press event at its headquarters on Tuesday. The company hasn't said what it's announcing. TechCrunch columnist MG Siegler says Facebook will finally announce a "Facebook phone." Or, at least, Siegler kind of says that. He writes: Multiple sources have told us that they expect some sort of Facebook Phone to be on display on Tuesday. Now for the caveats (and they’re important). It’s not entirely clear if this will be an actual piece of Facebook branded hardware or if they will simply use hardware from a phone maker...

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