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Nielsen: “Advertising must be a conversation rather than a push model”

In their report “Global Faces and Networked Places“, Nielsen correctly points out that advertising in a social media context is about creating a conversation, not pushing ads. Not exactly an eye-opener, as anyone in the field has know this for year, yet it is good to hear the big research agencies are saying this too as it is all part of raising overall awareness.

The reports goes on to give glowing remarks to Facebook and tries to explain why they are so popular. Arguably, the popularity is a combination of a lot of factors.  Design may be one of them, which certainly this Chinese player has picked up 😎

Posted in Social Media Marketing.

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INQ data proves smartphone assumption fallacy

screen_facebookSo many people wrongly attribute the growth of mobile data to the iPhone and the growth of smartphones. I have time and time again argued that this is not the case.  Feature phones are perfectly capable data phones, however they are generally sold without data plans, and are not packaged and promoted as data capable phones.

As usual, H3G shows the way with statistics from INQ handset users. INQ is a feature phone that just happens to come with a data plan and is marketed as a “Facebook phone”.  The usage stats are very(!) impressive, and proves yet again that data growth has absolutely nothing to do with how smart the phone is but how smart the marketers are.

Posted in Mobile Entertainment, The Business of Mobile.

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Ballmer gets a trashing on mobile strategy

Tomi Ahonen, mobile guru extraordinaire, gives it to Steven Ballmer in an open letter to Microsoft (a bit long, but worth reading). Ballmer is clearly off the mark and mostly deserves what he is getting from Tomi.  This is not the first time a Microsoft exec has been misguided on mobile, when claiming that Apple had a first mover advantage in App Stores.

In their defense though, I happen to be a big fan of Windows Mobile.  And here are some reasons why:

* I have tried Palm OS and Symbian, and although older version of WM could not match them, starting from v6.0 and forward, the WM OS is stable, fast, and as usual incredibly well integrated with your PC.  You also have easy implementation of various UIs – and building touch screen functionality is easy (which HTC has done well)
* My WM phone is substantially(!) faster than any BlackBerry I have seen with similar amount of load (2000+ contacts etc). Of course, this is as much of a hardware issue than OS, but still
* There are tons of Apps available (much more paid than free though).  The main problem is accessibility. You need to know where to look – but if you are a Smartphone owner, you are likely to know this (which may become less true since Smartphones are becoming mainstream).

I have also tried the iPhone for 12+ months, and have to say if you set up your WM phone right, it is 10.000 times faster. Yes, the iPhone has an amazing app selection, but read stats on app usage and you know most apps are only used for a short time. So generally, you only care about quick access to the main apps (calendar, contacts, sms + perhaps a few more) which with any WM phone can be mapped easily to various keys.  I cannot say how strange I find the iPhone enthusiasts’ excitement about getting video on the iPhone, when that has been available on most smartphones for 6-10 years.  Even the availability of Skype on iPhone generated such a buzz, yet WM users have had Skype for over 2 years.  We all can learn from the Apple marketing team for sure…

Posted in The Business of Mobile.

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