Mary Meeker’s latest report highlighted the rise of messenger app usage (and the Facebook gap). This slide was particularly telling: Notice the results: a 20x increase in messages received by Hyatt. This is significant, and important. People are extremely comfortable using Facebook Messenger to engage with companies. A few other items to notice: Hyatt only started offering this in November...
Twitter’s Ad problem
From a re/code article last week: But Twitter isn’t novel anymore, and brands and agencies who want to play with a new shiny object can go to Snapchat. and then: …sales on Twitter’s own properties — see how it’s dropping faster than the rest of Twitter’s revenue, which includes its third-party ad network? That’s brand advertisers pulling away from Twitter faster than direct...
Facebook and teenagers
While the usual caveats about a post with the opinions of one person (a teenager), that aims to provide insight into a group (US teenagers) apply of course, it’s still really interesting. These points jumped out at me: Facebook: In short, many have nailed this on the head. It’s dead to us. then this: Messaging on Facebook is also extremely popular among our age group, mainly because...
Well played Twitter, well played
Twitter’s ‘strategy statement’ update last week really got the twitterverse going apeshit. But I suspect it was all a cleverly concocted distraction to divert journalists away from the much more obvious message: ie Twitter has no idea how they are ever going to make a profit. Here’s the internal discussion that probably transpired: “We need to craft a message so...
Social Intent
Back in 1971 Herbert A Simon noted the rising abundance of information and, in turn, the scarcity of attention: …in an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a...
A change of scenery
It’s been a little while since I posted here, so I thought I’d mention that I’ve been blogging over on Tech Repeater lately (RSS feed here). It hit the 50 posts milestone today, so I thought it might perhaps be of interest. It’s mostly a fun side thing for now, although I do have some business related plans for it later in the year. Tech Repeater is more general than this blog, and is...
The Twitter Popularity Contest
I’ve been wondering what’s next after Twitter. Where are all the cool kids heading these days? After all, it has become so mainstream now that the inevitable transformation from intimate community to marketing broadcast is all but complete. The vibe on Twitter has changed. Yes I know, that’s what the Un-follow option is for, but that doesn’t stop the fact that Twitter has changed. And for...
Microsoft Oxite coverage
Microsoft released Oxite last week, and it garnered a lot of press (most of it enthusiastic). The Oxite story is pretty nice, as it delivers a very simple CMS/blogging tool, and as bonus it is ASP.NET MVC based, giving .NET developers a good chance to get into understanding MVC in a useful sample manner. However, you need to be aware that this is a beta version at best, and not to be rushing it...
Facebook statistics
Nick Ellery’s post alerted me to the incredible Facebook statistics (about half way down the article) that are (probably) driving them into the ground. Here’s a taste: 300,000 images are uploaded to Facebook every second. How do you pay for the infrastructure that supports that? Or a trillion page views per year. That’s serious load. How do you finance it? Advertising? Yeah, right. Whilst...
Two little things
Andrew Coates on Facebook If you are on Facebook, and haven’t already, please join the ‘Convince Andrew Coates to join Facebook’ group. We need 250 by this Friday afternoon. Click here to join. TechEd Windows app for checking sessions : What’s on Now? Here’s the little Windows app I use for checking what sessions are currently on. It’s very simple. Technorati Tags: TechEd...