Tag Archive for: Google

Study: Permanent change of passwords is a waste of time

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The last IT managers and their data and identity security topics were always a challenge for me to find another password instead of ‘iloveyou’ or a mixture of birthday numbers. The question is: Is this permanent change of passwords really as effective as possible and in favor of our security? One thing is for sure, if users have a password manager, they just need to remember one powerful super password.

The Microsoft researcher Cormac Herley now found out that the hype around passwords can be doubted. Herley states that users who ignore security advice are acting rational – and not lazy or stupid. Nevertheless, the study concludes changing passwords constantly is a giant waste of time and money. Plus: It makes the users no safer from identity thieves.

Herley resumes that a task requiring one minute per day from every working adult in the U.S. costs about $15.9 billion per year. Unnecessary security advice “treats as free a resource that is actually worth $2.6 billion an hour.” Does that make sense from a ROI perspective?

The strategy of thieves is not to go for dictionary attacks. These won’t break security. Giving away security credentials through phishing or keylogging is the most effective way. The main issue of the paper is the common requirement that users have to change passwords at specified intervals. Hacker that steal your password will be using it straight away – waiting is nt his tactic.

“Insisting that users choose a unique strong password for each (account) which they change often and never write down is clearly a large burden.”

Spot On!
How do you see this study? Is the mega password with the password manager he best option for security?

Study: The importance of cross-channel sales

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Most companies wonder how the purchase funnel looks like when consumers evaluate products they think about buying. A recent study from ATG helps: 30% of consumers reach out to more than three commerce channels to research a product and make a purchase. This shows that retailers and merchants need a broader cross-channel approach to boost sales and enhance customer purchase decisions.

The consumer study found that more than three-quarters of consumers use two or more channels and nearly one-third work with even three or more channels to research and purchase products. While we have all expect that mobile use and social media find their way into consumers’ online commerce activities, it is surprising that traditional catalog channels are still popular.

“Merchants have heard the call for a stronger cross-channel strategy for many years, but what has been lacking is a deeper explanation about why this is so important. We are seeing a multi-channel revolution now, with a vast majority of consumers using multiple channels and now almost one-third actually relying on three or more channels to complete transactions. Retailers must direct their energy toward fulfilling the unique role and sales potential of each channel. This research illuminates the expectations consumers have for the Web, call centers, the store, catalogs, and email.”
Nina McIntyre, Senior Vice President Marketing and CMO, ATG

The key findings of consumers’ cross channel experiences…

– 78% use two or more channels to browse, research and make purchases; 30% said they use three channels or more

– 78% of all consumers say they use catalogs to browse and research products or services at least four times a year BUT 40% of those consumers never purchase products or services through catalogs.

– 43% start their research online or with mobile devices. BUT They need to call customer service or call center representative to complete the transaction because the product or service information cannot be found online!

– 39% browse via the online or mobile channel and then make purchases in the store because they prefer to touch and feel the product – reason for 36% is product and brand comparison

Interesting findings on mobile commerce (emphasis on the 18-34 age)…

– 27% of all consumers 18 and older use their mobile devices to browse or research products and services at least four times a year, and that number jumps to 41% for the 18-34 year-old age group

– 13% of all consumers 18 and older and 23% of the 18-34 age purchasing at least four times a year via their mobile devices; 8% of the later are doing it weekly

Spot on!
The study highlights how important it is to link online and offline sales communication and give the customers the same purchase service in multiple channels. It will always be difficult to understand where customers make their final purchase decision and where they finally buy though. This additional study by Google underlines the trend for an offline and online purchase decision mix. One things is for sure again: The need for more awareness around the incorporation of commerce activities in social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter is gaining momentum.

The end of the future of advertising agencies?

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An apocalytic vision of the advertising future? A prevision of advertising mistakes? Or just a gag of a digital event-organizer that wants to wake up the advertising industry? Or does the event need more attendees? Maybe it is just a simple commercial clip? Or is it even meant to be spread the viral way (well done then, it seems to work, right…)? A video clip that allows so many questions, is worth being mentioned.

This video commercial could also be just a short film to demonstrate the creativity of the co-production companies FITC, Saatchi & Saatchi Canada, Lunch, and Tool. For their next flash event in Toronto the FITC has started a remarkable commercial ad that will make the advertising agency world think… hopefully.

The spot introduces an advertising agency that does not exist but might have been the last agency on earth “mps+c worldwide”. And the story is told just after the last employees have left the agency. A nice idea, right?

Allow some remarks…
If I had had the idea, I had tried to set up a community website for this fictional agency (the creators did not… at least for now) and created a charity story or some alike fiction around it for all people working in the ad agency industry.

It could have been a nice approach. Especially for advertising people to get ideas out of the cultural advertising change trap. Agencies could have collaborated and networked. Agencies could have… But, do agencies really want that? Collaboration, communication, creativity in an open world?

I had tried to integrate social comments function to enable, engage and enter the conversation directly on the website. If you understand how the customers are moving along the web, then why not living the idea with the viral… (is the reason a lack of resources and community management for such a sustainable idea?)

The increasing trend on the web is described quite well and companies should be thinking about this customer change in web use: “Internet Viewing, Facebook Updating and Obsessive Blogging”.

The production companies of this video clip could done much, much more with such a nice idea. Oh yes… But the message sounds great. Should we say that agencies should really, really, really wake up? Oh yes… And I am asking myself what comes after the last advertising agency has gone? Oh yes… Produce another film? Why? Success is never final! (Winston Churchil)

The change we see is a cultural one with high social impact on the world we live in. And companies should start seeing the web from a business-strategic point of view and understand, find and align their web-strategy with it. Companies should stop producing TV ads or banners without any call-to-action. And starting Twitter streams like “clowns” is definitely not the right way to approach the future of customer communication…

The Last Advertising Agency On Earth from FITC on Vimeo.

Study: Comparison Twitter vs. Facebook

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A recent study by Irbtrax, a SEO Internet Marketing firm, tries to determine which platform is the best fit for a particular business application or niche. So, the results of the study is not saying the one or the other is better, but the results give some good basic orientation for marketeers.

Category 1: Traffic ranking and user metrics
Traffic Ranking US and Global traffic ranking:
Facebook 2 – 7 day average daily time on site by users: 32.2 minutes
Twitter 12 – 7 day average daily time on site by users: 7.8 minutes
Facebook has the lead due to its sheer size, traffic volume, and time on site.

Category 2: Online destination for potential clients in the B2C market
Facebook offers more potential as of the option to include photos, detailed information, multiple outbound links, videos, and other business to consumer apps. The study states it is easier to build a larger network of followers in the shortest amount of time to help market a consumer product or service.

Category 3: Online destination for potential clients in the B2B market
The advantage is on Twitter as it provides more viral marketing flexibility while requiring less followers. Viral Marketing is a core business to business social media application for service recognition and other benefits. Popular industry related tweets are redistributed creating a domino effect even if you don’t have thousands of followers.

Category 4: market research benefits
Again Twitter shows more potential. Its search features can be efficiently used to monitor what people are saying about a company, service, product and competitors. Increasing or declining trends can be tracked effectively as well.

Category 5: internal viral marketing benefits
Facebook is top as it’s much easier to build a larger following. Plus, Facebook ‘wall’ feature is much more interactive than Twitter’s internal communication features.

Category 6: external viral marketing benefits
Twitter offers a greater external internet reach – no front door. Google’s ‘Real Time’ search feature often streams live tweets. A comparison of the number of tweets an independent article/release receives verse the number times they are shared by Facebook accounts appears to strongly favor Twitter.

Category 7: Use of each platform for direct internet communication
Facebook offers an instant message feature which allows you to communicate with other users globally.

Spot On!
The study concludes that in order to maximize your social media marketing results companies ideally create a presence on both. And I am happy that a study mentions this: Which platform a company engages first, or where to spend the most amount of available time or budget depends on your customers!!! Businesses should be checking their web-analytic metrics to apply the findings to your target group, and evaluate the potential and strengths of each platform.

News Update – Best of the Day

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daily1The net gen world is exploring and surfing on the Google wave. As not everybody is familiar with the options of Google Wave, here comes a comprehensive user manual for those who want to have their questions answered and problems solved with their account.

The video to the book “Throwing sheep in the boardroom” by Matthew Fraser and Soumitra Dutta (see: The Strategy Web book-shop in ‘Social Media’) is a must for companies thinking about social media engagement.

Have a laugh, carnival starts in Germany today – sometimes you stumble upon funny commercials these days…

Best feature of social networks? The Pick-a-boo effect…

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pick-a-booDon’t we love to play this game with kids because we know how happy it makes them… Pick-a-boo. But as adults using social networks: What is it that makes us happy? Some weeks ago, I asked some friends of mine who in turn asked friends of theirs as well as their colleagues: What is the main benefitial feature of social networks? The most frequent answer that came up was the ‘Who has been on your profile lately’ feature which goes along the lines of ‘The Pick-a-boo’ effect.

Now, what does that mean ‘The Pick-a-boo’ effect’? Well, people register in social networks in order to get in contact or connected with peers, (old) friends or humans that are (or might be) interested in them or/and their work. The tricky point is that there are people in the world of social networks we don’t want to contact any longer, in the future or in general. Nevertheless, we still love to take a peek as we wonder if they are still interested in us, what they are up to and what impact is driving their lives. It’s kind of human vanity and curiosity thing. We want to compare ourselves with them, want to check out how ‘sexy’ our online (and offline) reputation is – not only in terms of business life. We want to play Pick-a-boo. We are there and everybody in social networks knows that, but we are not visible all the time. And, we would love not to be visible for everybody when we are looking at people’s profiles who appear not to be relevant for our life. But we’ll pop-up from time to time to stay ‘up to date’.

So, we make us accessible and available in social networks for those who are also users of these networks. As we don’t know the size of the target group of people who is interested in us, we want to find out about it. By this we are making the ‘ego-community’ transparent for ourselves. And most of us ‘social medians’ are eager and would love to know that, wouldn’t we? Some networks have acknowledged this desire of being famous and our nasty habit of being vain. And they satisfy our need and desire for that with great application features supporting this pick a boo effect: status updates, birthday calender or ‘contacts of your contacts’.

No matter if you are a sales person, a recruiter or a consultant. We all want to know how a person looks like after making a call, or attending a meeting or a conference. And we all want to know more about them, either because it facilitates a second conversation or because we would like to recruit someone or sell something. The more we know, the easier the effort. Playing Pick-a-boo has become standard.

The active Pick-a-boo
Let’s identify the active pick a boo effect in social networks. We try to find the person or/and go to a profile page, x-ray the contact or find out details on his mentality, personality or hobbies. So, we take a quick look at the profile and then we are off again. Sometimes, we might be going there for a second or a third time before getting in touch with that person. And the funny thing is: We know that the other person knows that we have been visiting their profile page. Is it because we want them to do the first step. Or we ‘pick-a-boo’ just to let them know, someone is interested.

The passive Pick-a-boo
The passive benefit of the pick a boo effect lies in the feature ‘Who has been to your profile’ application or widget. Although a paid service feature on some social networks (XING and LinkedIn), it is probably the most viewed or reloaded feature of active social ‘medians’, those users who have access to it. Why is this ‘pick a boo’ application so attractive for us? We can…
… receive transparency on the ego-community
… monitor the quantity and quality of visitors to our profiles
… identify our ‘personal branding target group’
… evaluate our job market options
… see how often Google is used for ‘Recruit-Googling’
… see who ‘delivers’ good contacts to us
and finally the best of all parts: Via the passive pick a boo effect, we can contact people and definitely have a starting point for a business and/or private conversation.

Spot On!
Seeing all these benefits of the Pick-a-boo application ‘Who has seen to your profile lately’, it surprises me that the biggest network of all, Facebook, still doesn’t have this application feature. Or will it be coming with the announcement of becoming a paid service platform? We will see…

Curious to hear your view and experience on the Pick-a-boo effect in social networks?

News Update – Best of the Day

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daily1Sponsorships on retail sites are more likely to convert into sales than clicks on organic search engine results… and visitors will spend more. This is what a new study by Engine Ready.

Another breaking deal is done! Facebook buys Friendfeed… and by doing that also a great real-time search-engine. Twitter refused a deal with Facebook some time ago and said ‘No!’. Now the question is if this was a strategic mistake? Or if their amangers hope for Google to buy Twitter. The future will tell us more…

As usual a very cool commercial video on ‘drugs and driving’ (just in German available but still easy to understand for the world)…

Google's new product list – or the freebie wishlist?

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gs-competitionIsn’t it wonderful sometimes. I mean, going on the plane… and going offline. I love it… And this small post is the result of it: obviously online…

The web is seen as the “freebie” media. And although I am seen as the “paid-content-advocat” and should not have done that… I have taken the issue of a magazine called ShortList… as it was a freebie. And all of a sudden, you read a magazine you would never have come across in your life. Yes, just as it is a freebie…

And with these freebies, you often get complete new insights and funny outlooks on the future of companies.

This happened to me last week, at London Heathrow airport. Waiting at the gate, I passed by a newsstand with freebies and found a magazine called ShortList…

In this magazine I found a very cool 10 bullets shortlist : “Where Google can go next”. It shares visions how Google could make us happy with new products and services. This shortlist seemed sometimes more realistic than a “vision impossible”. It created some freebie visions for Google which they might offer in the future.

I have decided to take my 5 favorites to share my comments (Best partner”) on those with you…

Google X-Ray
From the comfort of your desk you can check out the internal workings of people as they walk the world’s street.
Best partner: Earth TV – Possible doctors game: who finds the first broken rib in a city video…

Google Girlfriend
Worried your other half is having an affair? Simply track down and follow her every move with this handy satellite surveillance application.
Best partner: Twitter – Possible boy-friends game: how long it takes till somebody makes her aware of it…

Google dining
Why go to the expense and trouble of eating out? Simply order a takeaway then virtually take your seat at one of the world’s finest restaurants.
Best partner: toptable – Possible friends game: how long does it take to get thrown out of the restaurant? (Negative: You have to clear up yourself…!)

Google eyes
Having one set of peepers is limiting, but this lets you explore new angles by looking through other people’s eyes.
Best partner: Glassdoor – Compare what your competitor is about to launch, says about your company and if your employees earn to much.

Google Atoms
Being able to see trees, cars and people on the other side of the planet not enough for you? Zoom right in and study their atomic structure.
Best partner: Chemistry – There must be some more detailed way to dive into the chemistry of human’s ‘counter-gender’, right?

Spot On!
So, now that Google gets competition with Facebook (the social network just bought Friendfeed) I was wondering if this shortlist can be expanded with your help – Join in! Let’s be creative for Google and see if there might be something new that we want from them to develop.

Or has Google invented enough online freebies?

News Update – Best of the Day

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daily1Why do also small businesses need a website? The answer is easy. A recent Nielsen Online custom survey from WebVisible, Inc. shows that if somebody wants to buy a product, 92% do some research online first and then might purchase locally. So, if small businesses do not have a website, these companies are “virtually invisible to these local consumers”.

Launching a product in today’s business scenario is not the easiest effort. So, tips are always appreciated. Here are three tips I found lately that put your prospects in the center of attention. My brief summary…
1. Make it easy for prospects to find and study your new product.
Customers need to be ready – Stop convincing them that they are ready!
“Research by MarketingSherpa shows that customers now find suppliers — not the other way around — in 80 percent of b-to-b transactions. B-to-b buyers like to research, analyze, and make rational group decisions.”
2. Encourage word-of-mouth marketing.
Find VIP editors and bloggers, customers and influencers that your customers trust in.
3. Let your prospects help you figure out your new-product launch message and media mix.
The Dell Ideastorm approach… – Make the “voice-of-the-customer” design, create and promote your products. “Then, use their specific language in your advertising copy as keywords to attract their Google searches, etc.”

The viral video to Guitar Hero 5 is probably causing a lot of talks in the world…

Real-time is the future and real-time starts with Twitter?

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It was about time to relaunch the Twitter front page and some days ago, Mashable already mentioned this next step. From the old front page it was nearly impossible to understand what this platform is all about, the new one shows what this platform could be in the future…

Twitter becomes more like a mixture of user-generated CNN, Facebook and Google in taking the best of bread from all platforms. It is a real time information exchange news service in a social networking coat.

new-twitter1
Now, their new front page focuses on their biggest benefit for every single user in the world: their real-time search engine. In placing this in the main center of attraction and attention, Twitter leaves a lot of open space for thoughts and speculations about their future strategy in expanding their business (and business value).

The new real-time strategy is supported by the three tag lines…
– Popular topics right now (main tags real-time search)
– Popular topics today (last 24 hours)
– Popular topics this week (last 7 days)

Will they finally follow the Google business? At least some kind of similar bottom up strategy can be seen in this approach. A road that Google started off some years ago…

old-twitterCompared to the old front page (see right), the main benefit of Twitter becomes more clear now for new users and makes the USP of the platform obvious right from the start.

If we are just talking about search and the business benefit of “being and knowing first-to-market”, this will be a clear winner for Twitter compared to Google where search results for certain topics can be some years old.

Real-time is the future (of news business) and real-time starts with Twitter?