Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Google TV: Everything You Need To Know

Editor’s Note: With all the buzz surrounding the Google TV announcement, here’s a great primer on what you can expect.

May 21, 2010: summarized from Business Insider -- Google's newest product is Google TV, which is a marriage of the web and traditional cable television. Google CEO Eric Schmidt calls Google TV the biggest revolution in television since color sets replaced black and white. That's Steve Jobs-sized hyperbole! Curious to find out what the heck he's talking about?

Read more at: http://bit.ly/brQWhc

E-Books Rewrite Bookselling

Editor’s Note: A great case study in the making. The music industry lost out in that industry’s migration to digital because the major players were late to embrace. The publishing is trying to get out in front of the wave as print moves towards digital. How will the U.S. gaming industry adjust when digital comes our way?

May 21, 2010: summarized from the Wall Street Journal -- Nowhere is the e-book tidal wave hitting harder than at bricks-and-mortar book retailers. The competitive advantage Barnes & Noble spent decades amassing—offering an enormous selection of more than 150,000 books under one roof—was already under pressure from online booksellers.
It evaporated with the recent advent of e-bookstores, where readers can access millions of titles for e-reader devices.

Even more problematic for brick-and-mortar retailers is the math if sales of physical books rapidly decrease: Because e-books don't require paper, printing presses, storage space or delivery trucks, they typically sell for less than half the price of a hardcover book. If physical book sales decline precipitously, chain retailers won't have enough revenue to support all their stores.

Some question whether book stores will go the way of music stores, which closed en masse once consumers could sample and download music digitally. Blockbuster Inc., the video rental giant, is struggling to reshape its business at a time when movies can be downloaded directly to digital devices.
Unlike music, the book industry didn't suffer dramatically from digital theft and, for years, couldn't figure out how to make money from e-books. There was no sense of urgency.

"It's fair to say that the leadership folks at the major trade publishers didn't believe until very recently that e-books had any economic life in them," says Arthur Klebanoff, chief executive of New York-based RosettaBooks LLC, an e-book publisher.

The success of Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle e-reader recently changed all that, proving to publishers that the e-books market was real.

But it wasn't until the arrival of Apple Inc.'s iPad last month—with its promise of one day tapping more than 125 million iTunes customers—that the true potential of the e-book market became apparent.

Read more at: http://bit.ly/bSeFe8

Facebook's New Functions (and How to Leverage Them)

May 17, 2010: summarized from iMedia Connection -- With its recent F8 announcements, Facebook has again one-upped the world as we thought we knew it. Brand marketers need to start looking at Facebook as a much deeper and broader solution than one that purely amasses a fan base. As Facebook rolls out new functionality, brands have the opportunity to act immediately in a variety of ways. In addition, it's important for brand managers to re-imagine their brands by leveraging social enhancements.

Brands need to be able to take immediate advantage of features such as the "like" functionality, but they also need to be visionary in how they can build their brands for the future and become truly social. While I encourage brands to take part in these new advancements, we also need to make sure that we keep an eye on the Facebook future and build with this future in mind.

So, in the quest to make your brand truly social, uproot your assets and think of new ways to infuse them through Facebook integration and by adding key social layers to the brand experience. Look toward the future and start evaluating the role that Facebook can play at retail, on the ground, and across every channel your brand touches. Not all opportunities will be a fit, but one thing is for sure: If you only look at Facebook as a place to have a fan page, you are missing the greater offering and will likely be sitting on the sidelines when the future arrives.

Let's take a look at some of Facebook's new and evolving functionalities, as well as what they mean for your marketing efforts.

Read more at: http://bit.ly/aD2Qp3

25 Awesome Charts On The State Of The Wireless Industry

Editor’s Note: A great summary for everyone who sees mobile marketing in their future.

May 21, 2010: summarized from Business Insider -- The Federal Communications Commission just released its latest massive report on the state of the U.S. wireless industry. The basic story: Smartphone penetration is getting huge, teens are texting up a storm, voice usage is going down, and data revenue -- while growing -- isn't making up for the decline in voice revenue.

As FBR Capital Markets analysts David Dixon and Dutch Fox note today, it's the first time the FCC did NOT conclude that the wireless industry is "competitive," despite no material changes in the industry over the past year.

The analysts' conclusion: The FCC may put restrictions on Verizon and AT&T during the next spectrum auction to slow their dominance, giving Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile a boost.

View charts at: http://bit.ly/dzAX0V