Tag Archive for: Google

TV Real-Time Translation: Closed Captioning and Google Translate

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Although this translation vision still seems (and the hardware framework also looks) like early stages, it defines a translation reality that could become the future of Connected TVs. Easy Way Subtitles provides translation subtitles in any language for all people watching Brazilian TV through Closed Captioning technology combined with Google Translate via mobile devices. I cannot see this taking too long to become a real service via connected screens.

How about you…?

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Hey, Lufthansa! Not interested in Frequent Travellers?

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SkyThere were days when I thought it is better to stay out of the discussions around the changed terms and conditions for Frequent Travellers and lounge access. A long time did my trips hit the airports with the lounges where Lufthansa still values the status of a Frequent Traveller (FTL) as a “superior customer”. “Acces granted for FTL passengers!”

Now, in just some weeks it happened to me twice that I got the answer: “Access denied for FTL passengers!” I think, it is time to write some words in order to give Lufthansa the chance to reply to all the clutter that goes live on the Web. So, Lufthansa – please listen up.

Amsterdam Schiphol and London Heathrow! In both airports Lufthansa cancelled their contracts with the lounge partners for FTL passengers. However, there are rumours going on that in 2014 when the new Terminal 2 opens, that situation might change. True? Wrong? We don’t know! Lufthansa, is not monitoring or listening it seems.

The lounge access topic might have some financial background. Still, I wonder if Lufthansa knows what kind of economical impact this might cause. Lufthansa, do you believe in the power of Social Media? Seeing your massive activities on social networks I assume you do. But, why do you not answer the conversation that is led by some link in position 1 on Google for the quest: “Lufthansa FTL London Heathrow”? Doesn’t that show how much Lufthansa values FTL passengers? Sorry, Lufthansa! In my eyes, you want to get rid of the FTL status. Correct…?

And let me give you another reason why I believe that. I am just illustrating briefly the situation of a business man traveling around Europe quite often, and in my eyes approx. 50 times is often.

If I am allowed to have access to the lounge, I don’t lose time. Time is money, is efficiency, is essential for doing my business. Access means: No need to find a quite and comfortable place, buy my drinks and food, or ask myself why I pay your Bought Media. Lufthansa, understand that FTL passengers think about the benefit of paying you the extra thousand year-on-year to get to that status?

Amsterdam, London, or anywhere else. The lounge is the main value for FTL passengers to continue flying more often with you than with other airlines. No access to the lounge means, I will fly i.e. British Airways, one of you biggest competitors for the UK region. And there are many obvious reasons for this i.e. in London Heathrow: Cheaper flights, newer terminal, nice gates, better shops with more popular brands, a Fish restaurant, and, and, and… Do I have to continue the list? No? Thank you, Lufthansa, for making my time efficient and my critic spot on. That’s what I want you to understand!

In the end, the “lounge-access-thing” is just a numbers game. I doubt that your stakeholders at Lufthansa is good in understanding how to scale the business. Sorry Lufthansa, but I doubt you are clear about the long-term effect this “multi-level-lounge-access-nonse” might cause. Why? Let me tell you what happens, if I don’t have access to the lounge. Quite frankly…

No revenue for Lufthansa
250,- EUR
Revenue for BA:
170,- EUR
(without tax, petrol & stuff – average deal, booked early in advance, etc.)
Personal or Company Win: 80,- EUR
Result: Me or the company can safe money or be drunk & data addicted (ok, I am…), if I spend that on a bar at the gates in Heathrow!

I don’t believe the lounge rent, my two drinks and one sandwich costs those 80 EUR, right? So, not granting access to lounges for FTL passengers on different airport makes me think whether…
a) Lufthansa is testing whether you kill the FTL status.
b) Lufthansa doesn’t appreciate the money of Frequent Travellers.
c) Lufthansa has not made their business homework.
Lufthansa, please tick!

Taken it from an Earned and Owned Media perspective, I would suggest you know how often people fly with you, how much you could do with that, how you could engage on networks, how this would catalyse your brand perception, what that would do with people usually flying some oither airline, how this scales in sales. If not, contact The Strategy Web and we will tell you how Social Media scales your business, Lufthansa, predominantly if it comes along in a positive way.

Did I make the benefit of lounge access clear to you, Lufthansa? Next time I am flying, I will make sure I get my travel assistant check the lounge access before booking the flight. I cannot believe you are not interested in our business (feeding you), our needs (scaling your business) and our money (enabling acceleration and growth)?!

Gimme some arguments why I shall still fly with you when I am busy…??? Come on, Lufthansa!

Google: Demystifying Duplicate Content

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In many meetings, and I had one of those calls today, I understand again and again that managers have limited knowledge of what “Duplicate Content” means when working with multiple sites and/or using similar content on those. Now, what does Google really say about duplicate content? Can your business place similar text blocks or complete texts on different blogs and websites? And how about same content but in different languages?

In a video clip Greg Grothaus, a Google engineer for search quality, explains what “Duplicate Content” stands for and what it means to businesses.

General answer: Is there a Duplicate Content Penalty from Google? No, it’s a myth! Google wants diversity in the results that Google displays on search results. That’s the reason why pages might be omitted from Google which makes sense.

Deep answer: There are typical downsides of “Dupicate Content”.
– Dilution of link popularity: Better have 20 links go to one page, then twice 10 to two pages.
– User-unfriendly URLs in search results: Useless URLs effect branding & decrease usability – so better leave it.
– Inefficient crawling: The less Google has to crawl, the better for the new content to be seen.

Best answer: Google does not like Spam. Spam will find penalty, if it is done with a systematic approach, or when there is the absolute same content on different pages with no changes at all.

Our Advice: Create fresh content! Or do you want to buy the same stuff or gadgets you already have received as a present for Christmas? See…?

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Google Zeitgeist and YouTube Review 2012

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Each year Google Zeitgeist reminds us from a search perspective what happend in the last 12 months. And this year again, we get their point of view of 2012. So, no more words. Just watch it…

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Well, hang-on! Don’t forget to watch Google’s official YouTube review “Rewind YouTube Style 2012” as well. Are we surprised that it is representing the Gangnam Style “Call me Maybe”, and is including web stars like Felica Day and the viral success of Kony 2012, or the Walk Off the Earth?

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Trust the Right People

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These days it is easier than ever to position yourself as an expert in your field…even if you are not actually an expert. It is something that more and more people are doing and this can make it really difficult to figure out who the most trustworthy sources of information (and opinions) are. Nowhere is this truer than on the Internet. So how do you know which sources are worth trusting and which aren’t?
The first thing that you should do, when figuring out whether or not a source is trustworthy, is to check out their background. Do a Google search on the person and see what you can find. If all you can find are blog posts but no actual biographical information or records, you should probably move on to someone else. A trustworthy source will have done the work to build up that expertise. He or she will have verifiable degrees or practical experience backing them up. This doesn’t mean you can’t agree with a person’s opinion. It simply means that you shouldn’t use it as the reason to make a decision about important life matters.
For example, let’s look at Charles E Phillips former co-President, Oracle Corp.. When you put his name into Google a plethora of articles and records come up. This information goes beyond the boundaries of a simple Wikipedia entry (though Wikipedia can be a worthwhile source once in a while). There are articles in trusted publications about him and his background. The first page of the Google search brings up sources like The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, etc. This is what you want to see. If all you find are links to Ezine articles pieces, self published Yahoo News Network articles and a blog? You might want to treat carefully.
If you aren’t sure whether or not to trust a publication, check out its history. How long has the publication been in business? Who sits on its board? Who owns the publication? What are the backgrounds of these people? Do you trust that their opinions aren’t influencing the reporting done by the publication you want to cite?
Basically, when you want to know whether or not a source is trustworthy, you need to do a little “leg” work. You can’t assume that someone is automatically trustworthy because he has been published. Gone are the days of “well he has a book so he must know what he’s talking about.”

Google Study: How mobile-friendly sites help sales

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While Facebook turns more and more to search and ad exchange budgets, Google is still riding the mobile wave. In many moderations over the last two years, I could listen to their attitude towards building mobile websites, and why these are important to the business of the future. However, companies often resist to face the mobile evolution and still stick to their conventional desktop websites. Not to mention what this does to their brands when the user experience is driving into a nightmare of usability and readability.

To get more attraction for their mission, Google has now published some research data on their blog that will help them to evangelize in the mobile business world approach. The benefit for Google is obvious. The more people use mobile sites, the better the experience in mobile usage, the more people tend to approach the Google search which means more marketing budgets into their hands.

In their research of about 1,100 U.S. adult smartphone users conducted by  market research firms Sterling Research and SmithGeiger, Google gives some handsome advertising tips to make marketers better understand and evaluate the power of mobile.

The key findings can be summarized as follows…
– 67% of smartphone users state a mobile-friendly site makes them more likely to buy a company’s product or service
– 74% are more likely to return to the site with a good experience later.
– 61% made clear that when they don’t find what they’re looking for (in roughly five seconds), they’ll click away to another site.
– 50% of respondents said even if they like a business, they’ll use its site less often if it doesn’t work well on their smartphone.
– 72% see a mobile-friendly site important to them, however 96% have visited sites that aren’t.

Spot On!
The Google study advices marketers to create a fast mobile site with big buttons and text, and simplify the mobile experience in terms of keeping steps to complete tasks to a minimum. For sure, Google did not forget to promote the site with Google mobile ads with some good results: two-thirds of people who use search find a site. Their conclusion is that “having a great mobile site is no longer just about making a few more sales. It’s become a critical component of building strong brands, nurturing lasting customer relationships, and making mobile work for you”. There is not much more to add.
Still, we would be happy to hear from your mobile experience – with or without Google. Did you change your site lately and what did it do to your sales?

Google: Agile Creativity with Google Think

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The way the biggest search engine started their revolution is kind of a tipping point for companies today to get orientation in their creative evolution for further development: The Agile process. These days, Google wants to help companies and brands participate in that world of experience to help them elaborate new ideas and new ways walking on a more fluid way of creativity and innovation in order to keep track with the digital future. Their latest learning hub is curated by Think with Google. It offers a good range of Agile creativity tips and tricks from the leading agencies in the world.

A nice education piece for marketers, and don’t forget: “We are living in a world, where the only thing that is constant is change!”

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Augmented Reality: Sight and the Google's glass project

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Graduates need to take a look into the future. Some do it quite well and are creating an exciting picture of times and technical evolution ahead of us. The following short film “Sight” by Sight Systems was done from Eran May-raz and Daniel Lazo. It was developed from a graduation project from Bezaleal academy of arts and is definitely worth watching.

It somehow reminded me of the Google Glass project, a research and development program with the intention to create products that are hands free displaying information. For now, these are currently just available to most smartphone users, and allowing for interaction with the Internet via natural language voice commands, in a manner which has been compared to the iPhone feature Siri, as Google explains.

Whether there are similarities between the two projects or not, the film tells a story of a world which gets new impact through augmented reality glass technology. And if we will wear traditional glasses, contact lenses or whether these are implanted in the end, only the future can tell. However, the vision created in this film is scary, eye-opening to AR technology opportunities, and somehow disturbing the fascination of the unknown, unexperienced and undiscovered. Life as it is.

But now, watch it and tell us what you are thinking…?

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Study: Largest global corporates get over 10 million mentions a month; Twitter rocks, YouTube grows massively

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Companies in the Fortune Global 100 get a total of 10,400,132 online mentions in a month. Twitter is the catalyst for them as it generates the majority of these mentions. However, YouTube is the rising star this year. This is the main findings of the third annual Burson-Marsteller Global Social Media Check-Up, which also includes new data provided by Visible Technologies.

The study states that the majority of the big corporates (87%) are using at least one of the major social platforms. The main growth can be seen at YouTube with 79% of companies now using a branded YouTube channel (57% in 2011). The average performance figures showed more than two million views and 1,669 subscribers. The development is illustrating the importance of integrating original multimedia content that can be shared on the social networks.

Twitter is still the rock-star among the popular social networks in terms of corporate usage. 82% of Fortune Global 100 companies have at least one Twitter account with an average mention of 55,970 times on the 140 character platform. The importance of Twitter ca be seen in the fact that stakeholders are following global companies closely.

Compared to 2011, the average number of followers per corporate Twitter account almost tripled to 14,709 from 5,076. On Facebook, the average number of likes per company page has increased by 275% in two years to 152,646 likes this year.

“People want to interact and connect with these major companies, and these platforms are the bridge directly to the heart of these organizations. What’s even more impressive is how much companies are engaging back with followers. Seventy-nine percent of corporate accounts attempt to engage on Twitter with retweets and @-mentions, and 70 percent of corporate Facebook pages are responding to comments on their walls and timelines.”
Burson-Marsteller, Chief Global Digital Strategist, Dallas Lawrence

Some more findings of the study…

– Fortune Global 100 companies have an average of accounts of: 10.4 Facebook pages, 10.1 Twitter accounts, 8.1 YouTube channels, 2.6 Google Plus pages and 2.0 Pinterest accounts.
– 74% of companies have a Facebook page
– 93% of corporate Facebook get weekly updates
– 48% have joined Google Plus
– 25% are on Pinterest

And whatever else you might want to know about the Top Global 100 you can find here, or within their infographic….

How mobile is exploding in 2012

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The world is talking mobile. Desktops are dead. Smartphones and tablets are rocking! The market for mobile is massive and continues to grow around the world. Mobile is redefining the world we live in, the way we interact and the way we communicate on a daily basis.

The following infographic by Trinity explains nicely in a collection of stats how much the mobile market will influence our daily shopping behavior in the future. You just have to have a look at some numbers…

Worldwide, there are 6 Billion mobile subscribers. Obviously some own two devices which means that probably not 87% of the world population has one. The biggest growth comes from China and India that account for 30% of the growth. In only the last three years, developers have thrown 300.000 apps on the market. One of the main reasons why 1.2 Billion users access the Internet from their mobile devices. And the winner of all this development? Google! They sign 2.5 Billion USD in mobile ad spendings a year.

Mobile is exploding all over the world in 2012. And no marketer can dare not to see this development…