Za Book Title
Many people have helped me pick the title of my new book in contributing ideas or reviewing options. It seemed only fair to update you now that we've made the decision. (in this case, we means the great team at...
Web 2.0 Expo NYC - Murder as a Way to Win
November 16, 2009 - 9:00 AM
Nilofer Merchant
Web 2.0 Expo
Javits Center, New York, NY
Online Reviews Second Only to Word of Mouth as Purchase Influencer in US
A broader investigation into how business can exploit online community underlines the importance of online information in driving purchase decisions, but the most influential information is beyond the direct control of companies selling products and services. Courting the small fraction of Internet users who write online reviews and comments is a very important task for many companies, but one they often neglect.
Many companies downplay the importance of online communities because only a few percent of all Internet users contribute to them heavily. What they don’t understand is that most other Internet users read those reviews and rely on them heavily when making purchase decisions. Taking good care of online communities can be a huge money-saver for companies trying to get more marketing impact from limited budgets.
WinMarkets Blogs
Software platforms as a business tool: How we got here, and where we're going
By Michael Mace on May 21, 2009
Intuit and Stanford recently asked me to give talks on computer platforms and what makes them successful. (By platforms I mean software with APIs that third party developers can write apps on top of; Windows and Macintosh are both platforms,...
Recessions Are Good for Your Business
By Bruce LaFetra on May 16, 2009
Can your business grow in a down economy? According to a VARBusiness survey of 117 solution providers ("7 Ways to Grow in a Down Economy, VARBusiness, February 2009), fully half are expecting to grow in 2009. Does this seems crazy? It didn't seem so to me until after I read the list of top strategies that the VARs had for achieving this growth. Any business that helps customers do more with less should do very well; something to which the booming SaaS / on-demand software market can attest. But, unless you are in a hot growth market, the same-old, same-old will not produce results in 2009. And, if you are in a hot-growth market like enterprise SaaS solutions, doing the right things during a down market will act like a competitive force multiplier.
Smartphones as appliances: Different phones for different usages
By Michael Mace on April 24, 2009
The growth of the mobile data marketplace is one of the bright spots for business in the current recession. Mobile carriers report increasing demand for data services, and Apple and Research in Motion both reported strong earnings aided by sales of their smartphone products.
Understanding Twitter's growth and usage
By Michael Mace on April 22, 2009
One of the hottest recent stories in the tech industry has been the rapid rise of the messaging service Twitter. Starting from a small base of enthusiast users, the service has rapidly risen to prominence in the media, with extensive coverage of its adoption by celebrities. In the last month, Google counted about 65,000 news stories mentioning Twitter, and the web tracking service Alexa reported a remarkable 400% increase in traffic to Twitter.com in the last four months. In April 2009, Alexa reported that daily visits to twitter.com surpassed those to cnn.com:
Proposition 8 and community review sites: Everybody loses
By Michael Mace on December 13, 2008
The passage of California's Proposition 8 (the gay marriage ban) has created a nasty problem for Yelp and other online reviews sites. The situation is a good example of the complexities of running a social site, and the ability of...
Think-ectomy Needed
By Nilofer Merchant on December 12, 2008
I believe consumers will end up co-driving what you produce and that will result in better products, that serve real needs. Our mindset needs to change. We need to have a think-ectomy on who is in charge.
Influencers vs. the swarm: Why both views of purchase influence are wrong
By Michael Mace on December 3, 2008
Summary. There's been a heated online debate about the ways consumers are influenced to buy things and adopt new social trends. Some people say a small group of Influencers drive most consumer decisions. Others argue that ideas spread through society...
Marketing Marketing
By Bruce LaFetra on December 2, 2008
The business equivalent of making sausage is the marketing of marketing. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (November 29-30, 2008), Tom Hayes and Michael Malone explain the new world of marketing in a Web-based world. They have a provocative name ("Marketing 3.0") and a new concept (the business meme or "beme"). In the end, they sound like apologists trying to make a pitch for why advertising agencies are still relevant and reminds me of this humorous video imaging what would happen if a modern advertising agency designed the stop sign. In short, they are marketing marketing.
Online Communities and Their Impact on Business: Ignore at Your Peril (Introduction)
By Michael Mace on October 23, 2008
In our strategy work with tech companies, we're frequently asked about web communities -- how they operate, what they can and can't do, and how a company should look to work with them. The companies we deal with generally fall...
Swing Thru the Ball
By Nilofer Merchant on October 23, 2008
What should you do? Do you stop things? Start things? Answer: yes, to both. Of course you should rethink and reevaluate but if you do that for long you put at risk the current business or effort simply because you didn't execute what you could have done.
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