The #9 prediction was that there would be “more Flash, not less” on websites in 2010.  The authors posit that Flash on websites will experience a resurgence online in 2010 due to increased adoption of broadband, improved track-ability, and new options for making flash sites more search engine friendly.  They also predict that flash will deliver the “rich, brand-extending experiences” that consumers are craving.

While I’ll keep an open mind for Flash in 2010, I still have many doubts built up from whenever Flash came out through 2009:

1. While more track-able, Flash still doesn’t offer the depth of analytics (or at least not easily) that other formats offer
2. While more search engine friendly, Flash still doesn’t offer the rich, index-able content that search engines still reward
3. Flash is still a “specialty” skill set, which makes site maintenance and optimization more tricky
4. There still seem to be usability/accessibility issues with most of the flash sites and micro-sites I see.  In most cases, people aren’t interested in learning a brand new interface on every site
5. I’m not convinced that consumers are looking for “rich, brand-extending experiences” that are best-served by Flash.  People are still task-oriented, and want to “get in and get out,” especially when it comes to researching purchases or making purchases
6. Flash sites seem to be the sites that display “creativity for creativity’s sake,” and don’t focus on the prospects’ needs, motivations, and goals.
7. Except for some niche applications, flash animation doesn’t accomplish much that AJAX and other similar approaches can’t do (without requiring a downloaded browser plugin)
8. While broadband may be continuing to grow, there are still PLENTY of customers (especially in rural areas) that don’t have lightning-speed connections.  Do you really want to exclude them in any way?

Are there exceptions to the above?  Of course, but exceptions won’t make something a trend in 2010.

Another thing to keep in mind about Flash is that there are really two schools of use:  One is using Flash animation, and the other is using the Flash format to deliver true video experiences.  In my opinion, using Flash to deliver video experiences is the more valuable of the two approaches, so maybe that’s where the resurgence in 2010 will come from?

Another question in my mind is whether Adobe’s recent acquisition of Omniture will have any effect on the track-ability of the Flash technology.  My bet is “yes,” but I’m not sure how soon changes will come.

So, Grok readers, what are your feelings about Flash in 2010? Do you plan on using it more?  Less?  The same?

The Words ‘Marketing Automation’ are Like Music To Our Ears

According to one definition:

Marketing automation is the use of software to automate marketing processes such as customer segmentation, customer data integration (CDI), and campaign management. The use of marketing automation makes processes that would otherwise have been performed manually much more efficient, and makes some new processes possible.

In plain English, marketing automation uses data (like your web analytics) to do some of your marketing tasks for you. Herein lies the problem I keep running into: Your decisions and those of your marketing automation platform are only as sound as your data.

I’ve seen marketing automation software that helps your email marketing, your ppc bid management, segmentation and personalization, and others. As Jeff Sexton recently pointed out, if you have the wrong analytics it could cost you 30% of your sales. Can you afford that today?

A few weeks ago we were helping a client optimize her website and we wanted access to her historical data. All she had was the analytics from her marketing automation vendor. Now the fact that you could only access these analytics using Internet Explorer (we are mostly on Macs) was one failure, but the main failure was that it looks like the analytics was an after-thought by the vendor. Anyone can throw up some reports on a screen — but the issue is, do they tell you anything meaningful? There was virtually nothing to make you smarter as a marketer. Today’s smart marketers understand the value of data-driven decisions. Unfortunately, this vendor’s reports provided in an abstract way what happened but did not provide the vital statistics to diagnosis and prescribe any sort of optimization to the company’s efforts.

Marketing Automation Must Make You Smarter Not Lazier

I was talking to friend who is a superstar B2B marketer. He was telling me about this new enterprise PPC bid management software he was evaluating. He deals with thousands and thousands of terms so automating the bidding would be a huge help. He told me about the slick interface and the bidding rules, etc. Then I asked him the question that made him stop like a deer in the headlights.

“Have you checked out the data reporting behind the algorithm? What actionable insights does your ppc automation vendor provide you?”

Of course, vendors will shout “proprietary formula” and we marketers fall for this marketing B.S. We don’t need the complex details behind it but we do need to get a sense of what and how they look at data, keyword attribution, etc. What metrics do they value most? If you fall for the “black box” how do you and the system continue to learn? How do remove it if you are unhappy with the vendor? How do you create your internal best practices unless you have a clear picture into what is happening?

Without good data at the core, you may just end up with a mechanical turk. You need data to share in your organization and data that tells you details of what you’re doing and how to improve it. Also, beware of bad software that takes what you need done and tries to completely automate it. Just because it is automated won’t guarantee it is optimal for the way a good marketer works.

Don’t Forget Your Job Is to Make More Money, Not to Make Your Job Easier

The point of marketing automation is to free you up to do more of what you are really good at by letting the glorified calculator do what it is really good at. Good marketing automation lets you use your insights about your customers in ways you couldn’t before; bad software takes those decisions away and prays that the computer will do it for you. Keep in mind we have created a computer that has barely beaten a great human chess player, despite its intricate and complex algorithm –  and we’re still far off from a computer to beat the best human poker players. Do you really believe that some algorithm is going to be better than you at creative marketing insights?

Without solid data, scientific method and reporting, how does your marketing automation software show you it is making money? Whether or not you are using marketing automation, you still need access to great metrics. In the case of marketing personalization, how do you know if the efforts are working if there aren’t control groups to measure against? How do you control for other external factors?

The Marketing Automation Future, Now

Don’t get me wrong — I am an advocate for marketing automation. But only if there is a core focus on the insight derived from data, not the automation, first. Analytics must be at the foundation and not an afterthought. You can identify first generation automation tools by their focus in on automation first and reports second. Today’s next-generation state-of-the-art tools have to have great metrics and analysis at their core and are focused on helping you optimize your business; that is, making you more money and proving their value to you.

Please feel free to tell me more about your marketing automation love fest or worries.

P.S. Full disclosure: like my good friend and analytics evangelist Avinash Kaushik, I work for and sit on several advisory boards of companies that use data as their foundation for marketing optimization and automation.

I call it persona-lization.

Thankfully, today’s technologies have come a long way from those that would recommend “customers who bought my book ‘Call to Action‘ should also buy clean underwear.”

Moving Beyond Demographics

For over a decade, I’ve been railing about demographics’ limited value. Just because your visitors fall into a certain demo doesn’t mean the same things motivate them. Demographics don’t reveal motivation.

Customers have individual needs and different reasons to buy. They’re at different stages of the buying process. Their motivations, largely driven by their unique personalities, are diverse. To maximize ROI (define), a personalization campaign must address and effectively bucket (or segment), then persuade a visitor based on this data as well. This go well beyond demographics.

One place where demographics can be used effectively with personalization technologies: shipping rates. There is an extreme difference in shipping costs for East Coast and West Coast customers; you can make each demographic a different shipping offer.

Hunting the Bargain Hunter

David Brussin, CEO of Monetate.com, describes a campaign involving client ModCloth, an online retailer:

• • 1,590% lift in conversion rate vs. control
  • 2,050% lift in new customer acquisition vs. control
  • 2,314% more revenue vs. control

ModCloth.com’s marketing team came up with the idea of incorporating a game into the sale, by giving customers the opportunity to “win” a discount on their purchase by finding a hidden creative somewhere in the sale catalog. Since this was a holiday promotion, they hit on the idea of using Rudolph as the hidden creative.

The idea was to display a creative on a product page somewhere in the catalog, and once that creative has been seen by a customer affect a discount on their shopping cart at checkout for the rest of that visit.

The results were compelling; customers who searched for Rudolph were committed to the purchase:

This personalization is especially exciting because it effectively targeted and engaged a very distinct persona preference type — the bargain hunter. This campaign went beyond just offering a bargain; it delighted this persona type by actually giving them a virtual hunt. Once this persona type actually hunted for a discount, it was unlikely they were going to abandon it. Many of them completed a transaction and likely told every one of their friends (another common bargain-hunter behavior).

Building a Meaningful Relationship

In these rough economic times, we’re all tempted to bend over backwards for bargain hunters (who isn’t looking for a bargain, right?), but you shouldn’t do it at the expense of the other buyer types.

One is the relational buyer, the relationship-focused decision maker. This persona type wants to build a relationship with those she purchases goods and services from. She wants to know who she’s buying from.

Jim Cain, senior analyst at Sitebrand, which develops personalization software for Web sites, tells the story of how the company reached out to relationship-focused customers:

The Sitebrand team crafted a call to action simply saying “First Time Here? Click here to see our welcome page” and ran it in a banner that would be shown on the first page view of the visit, regardless of landing page.

The welcome page itself, also built and optimized by Sitebrand, allowed their client, the CoffeeForLess.com team, the ability to write the equivalent of an “about us” page with copy designed specifically for this segment. There were no discounts or promotions included in this dialog, only the most relevant information for this unique visitor type and calls to action to help them start their shopping experience.

In the four months this dialog has been live, the impact to conversion has been significant. In the month of January alone, this effort resulted in a 304% segment specific conversion lift, accounting for over 50,000 in incremental sales.

Taking the Offline Online

Let’s face it, a significant portion of our visitors simply don’t like computers or spending time online. These people aren’t luddites; they just live life away from their computers in the offline world. We call these shopping types the spontaneous buyers. This includes buyers with little patience on your site, visitors who won’t spend time searching and looking or who won’t wrestle with complex online tools and builders. So how do you deal with this type of persona? Improve the online experience not with bells and whistles but with actual help purchasing.

Online fragrance commerce site Scentiments was great at personalization offline, but it had to take it up a notch online. From Howard Wyner, CEO of Scentiments.com:

While Scentiments has always emphasized a personalized approach in the stores — it even has an online and phone-based “Fragrance Guru” to answer specific questions from individual shoppers — we had not developed an in-house recommendation capability before then because we did not have the internal staff time or expertise to do so.

Scentiments.com contracted with MyBuys.com to generate personalized product recommendations on its Website and to manage its email list to send personalized email alerts.

We learned quickly to have more fulfillment staff on the job Wednesday afternoons and Thursdays, because the personalized email alerts go out on Wednesday. We always see a spike in sales on those days. The results are outstanding, Scentiments.com’s email open rate was 29%, click-through rate was 7.8%, and conversion rate was 16%. That level of personalization fosters loyalty and boosts sales.

While this isn’t a specific campaign, it is a concerted effort to emulate the offline shopping experience online. Your site should be good at doing what the best of your sales team does offline. After all, the best offline salesperson personalizes their pitch.

Getting Started With Personalization

While the vendors mentioned above are trusted colleagues and friends that I’d recommend, not everyone can afford these types of technologies and solutions. So if you are small or lack budget, or if you want to prove the personalization concept, there are free tools that will help you do just that.

If you want better insight into motivations and your site’s current ability to meet visitor expectations, free survey tool 4Q can give you some preliminary data to start segmenting customers based on behavior. BTBuckets is also a free tool for doing personalization by behavioral segments and targeting. Of course, Google Website Optimizer (GWO) will allow you to test your personalization efforts at no cost, and BTBuckets has even worked on an integration for using GWO.

Before this, however, you might want to create a few personas and create specific campaigns designed to speak to their most base motivations. Then create experiences that will exceed their expectations.

Tell us your personalization stories through the comments section below.

Of course, there have always been some level-headed voices of dissent, but it was still interesting to read this bit of research on the effectiveness of fast-forwarded / DVR-ed ads.

Turns out that viewers have to pay attention to their TV Screens in order to fast forward through ads.  A real shocker that one, but hey, that means the viewer is actually seeing the ad (rather than running to the fridge for a snack) and that, properly formatted, these fast-forwarded ads can still influence viewers.

The trick was simply to keep the important brand images and information in the center of the screen as the task-focused fast-forwarding viewer was unlikely to see anything else.

So does this have anything to do with Websites?

Well, keep in mind that most Web visitors are also task-focused and unlikely to pay much attention to peripheral information.  So keep your important information, calls-to-action, and controls in the center window, otherwise, visitors may not see them in their “fast-forward” movement through your site.

PS Don’t forget to join us for our Free Webinar with guest Jim Sterne: 2009 is Our Year to Shine. Even if you can’t attend, please register to be notified when the play back is available.

“By continuously changing the names of their store networks to such things as OrderAnotherCoffeeAlready, BuyCoffeeForCuteGirlOverThere?, HaveYouTriedCoffeeCake?, BuyAnotherCupYouCheapskate, TodaysSpecialExpresso1.60Euro and BuyaLargeLatteGetBrownieForFree, the chain is able to both promote items as well as guilt patrons into realizing free WiFi really isn’t totally free.“

How are you experimenting with words to boost your conversions? In this economy you must always be testing.

P.S. Manoj’s from Web Analytics World just published an interview about our book Always Be Testing.

OK, actually, we share a few things in common.   But one of them is an interest in technology designed specifically for women.   Too often, we see big companies who want to reach out to the women’s market, so they simply take an existing product and make it pink.   We’re both members of the “no pink phones’ movement.  But the difference between Ying and I is, Ying actually took action and did something about it.

Ying Cheng started LA YIN a company devoted to fusing High-Tech with fashion and style.

Amen sister.

I recently bought a way cool red laptop zip cover to protect my MacBook while traveling.   And talk about giving new life to something as dull as a USB drive!   I now have a snazzy new red USB drive with cool swirly things on it.   (Sorry Ying, I know I don’t do justice to your beautiful designs with my bad American slang, but “snazzy” is the highest praise I can give).

I asked Ying what it is that women want from technology products.  Here is her answer:

We want products that make our life (which is not always the same as of our counter gender) easier and we want them to be easy to use, not too intimidating. We also want them to look good, in particular mobile phones, music players and other personal devices – as these are equivalent to personal accessories, they are an extension of our own personal expressions.

I think the key point here is, yes, many women look at technology products as a personal accessory or a personal expression.  I think guys feel that way as well, to some degree.  But a man’s idea of fashion and style may differ from a woman’s.   Which is why I’m so excited to see more women taking matters into their own manicured hands and designing what they want.

LA YIN is starting with a few products, but Ying has plans to expand in the future.  She has a board of over 100 women from around the world guiding and supporting her efforts.

I, for one, love my new LA YIN USB drive and laptop cover and am planning on giving them out as presents and thank you gifts to help spread the word.   Why should I be the only one who looks fabulous with my stylish high tech devices?

They’re bringing a balance back to the sometimes-crazy world of SEO enthusiasts.

I’m not an SEO expert, but it’s an interest of mine. I attended with a friend who’s a talented web/software developer, so I enjoyed seeing him “nerd-out” in his element of very, very technical folks.

It was a great set of presentations about AJAX, JavaScript, and making sure the major search engines can easily index your websites. In other words, making all the great technology you worked so hard to build play nice with the major search engine robots.

But it had nothing to do with FutureNow’s mission of helping businesses market better, conversion rate optimization, and Persuasion Architecture…or did it?

I walked away with a few impressions, and hopefully useful insights, about the material that we discussed. By the way, some real heavy-hitters in the SEO world were represented: we had an ex-Googler, Microsoft Live Search, SEOmoz.org, and Amazon.com represented.

First, I was blown away and happy when the Live Search representative, in the midst of everyone talking about JavaScript and sitemap files, reminded the room that the IT changes the developers applied to increase their organic search rankings should be tested to see if they increased conversion. Score one for Microsoft!

Second, it was mentioned that search engine robots don’t like it when you hide your site’s category structure inside a dropdown menu. Picture the dropdowns on many of our sites that are shortcut ways to drill down into site content. They often say things like, “I want to…” and then the menus contain options like, “Get a price quote,” “Talk to a salesperson,” “Read customer stories,” etc. These dropdown options are usually (and should be) redundant ways to navigate without using the site’s top/global navigation or its left or right-hand navigation links. I started thinking about this common web design “convention” and where it came from. It came from some so-called experts and design gurus a few years ago telling us users will only click three times. You need to get them to what they want in three clicks.

Fallacy! It wasn’t ever tested to see its effect on conversion rate! Might work for some, but how many?!? I file this one with the “users won’t scroll below the fold” nonsense.

Us younger web design folks thought to ourselves, “Well, if we have to get visitors to everything they might want in three clicks, the only way to do that is to put a million links on the homepage, or to put them in dropdown menus.” So we ended up doing something that wasn’t that great for visitors, and was never tested or proven to be more persuasive to our customers.

And now, the SEO “revolution” has brought attention back to the fact that search engines rank our sites based on how good of an experience we give visitors. Search engines want to see your site’s information architecture in a readable, no-frills format. Maybe our visitors do, too!

So while I don’t always agree with the amount of frenetic attention site owners give to Search Engine Optimization efforts, it’s nice to see that the SEO game is forcing us to clean up our web pages, clean up our code, and question design decisions that are perhaps past their prime. It even appears to be causing folks to focus on making changes for the sake of conversion, not just for the sake of getting more traffic to our sites.

To get a better sense of what is going on, we’ve put together a 4 minute survey.

Will you please take 4 minutes out of your day to complete this survey; we’ll publish the results in about a week. If you are wondering about the type of questions we are asking, here you go:

How frequently do you look at your web analytics reports?

If resources weren’t an issue, what is the one area you feel you would like to improve on your website?

What one marketing tool/software could you not live without?

Once you finish the survey, please feel free to forward this link to your colleagues and friends to complete it as well. Like me, I am sure you would love to know that one tool marketer’s can’t live without.

Oh! If you didn’t register for our webinar on July 9th, please go ahead and do it now.

PayPal recently announced a streamlining of its payment flow process that doesn’t require a PayPal account to use. In other words, you can “check out” via PayPal, reap the security benefits of the merchant store not knowing your financial details, and pay for your item without having created any long-term relationship with PayPal (although they wouldn’t mind).

Adding PayPal to an e-commerce site can sometimes result in lower conversions — which makes sense because you’re being taken away from the experience you were just having at the merchant site. On the upside, some mid-sized UK merchants using this new process are reporting an increase in their monthly total payment volume, with gains of over 9% on average.

But I’ve got a different request altogether.

I use PayPal. A lot. Probably at least $500 a month of online purchases of various things that, at the time, I’m convinced I really need. It always amazes me how confusing the PayPal part of the checkout process is. First I’m on the merchant site. Then I’m off it — but not so obviously that I notice right away. It’s just a white, empty-feeling page with the merchant logo and a familiar PayPal button. Then the interface changes again to make it obvious that it’s PayPal.

In order to return to the merchant site, I have to click a small-font text link that competes with PayPal-branded buttons for my attention. At this point, I’m still not sure if the purchase “took” — that confidence doesn’t come until I return to the merchant site.

Won’t some of those e-tailers enjoying that volume increase please, please, PLEASE put just a fraction of that revenue toward hiring a bright developer to create a way to do this undercover? Its seems this could be easily resolved with a bit of (*buzzword alert*) AJAX.

Enter your PayPal user name, maybe some kind of modal lightbox pop-up to asks for my password, it goes back behind the scenes to confirm this with PayPal, then seemlessly closes the pop-up and updates my status on the merchant site to say, “Purchase completed via PayPal. Thanks for your business!”

I like using PayPal. I just don’t want to notice it. Kinda like the electricity in my home; I just want it to be there when I plug in my laptop.

What do you think?

This comes after Amazon snuck One-Click past the patent system by changing the word “a” to “the,” and adding the phrase “purchasable through a shopping cart model.” According to Slashdot, lawyers for Amazon “apparently managed to reinstate two of CEO Jeff Bezos’ 1-Click Patent claims that were rejected a month earlier.”

Once again, Jeff Bezos is making his mark on commerce.

Amazonian Customer Disservice

If you don’t get your order on time, just chalk it up to Amazon thinking you aren’t worth it as a customer. Do you think they’re doing this to prevent other companies from providing lousy service?

I already have a leash, model number BlackBerry 8700g. I enjoy guilty introverted fantasies of a device that will allow me to provide a mild-yet-meaningful electric shock to everybody who calls me; not to torture them, but to have them reconsider whether or not it requires a conversation.

With a voice that no librarian could love, I’m certain that I’ve been that cretin who won’t shut up more often than I’m comfortable admitting. Not wanting to be rude, I’ll apologize if I’ve disturbed you. But my liberty should end at the boundaries of your liberty, otherwise just call it license and add it to those “rights” so bellicosely defended by libertines garbed in libertarian costumes.

My friend recently purchased a cell phone jammer. I don’t know if he ever used it but we laughed deviously at its delicious potential during show and tell. Can you imagine?

Cellphones have changed our lives forever. Remember the Seinfeld episode in the Chinese restaurant where they couldn’t reach each other? That episode is about 15 years old and it feels as fresh as the leftovers in the Honeymooners’ icebox.

We love our cellphones and, as they evolve, we can’t imagine life without them. We hate our cellphones as they become more intrusive in our lives and the lives of others.

Do you ever turn off your cell phone? Do you ever ask other people to? What are/should be/might be the rules?

TheNew York Times also got me thinking about this in an article called “Devices Enforce Silence of Cellphones, Illegally“:

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 2 — One afternoon in early September, an architect boarded his commuter train and became a cellphone vigilante. He sat down next to a 20-something woman who he said was “blabbing away” into her phone.

“She was using the word ‘like’ all the time. She sounded like a Valley Girl,” said the architect, Andrew, who declined to give his last name because what he did next was illegal.

Andrew reached into his shirt pocket and pushed a button on a black device the size of a cigarette pack. It sent out a powerful radio signal that cut off the chatterer’s cellphone transmission — and any others in a 30-foot radius.

“She kept talking into her phone for about 30 seconds before she realized there was no one listening on the other end,” he said. His reaction when he first discovered he could wield such power? “Oh, holy moly! Deliverance.”

As cellphone use has skyrocketed, making it hard to avoid hearing half a conversation in many public places, a small but growing band of rebels is turning to a blunt countermeasure: the cellphone jammer, a gadget that renders nearby mobile devices impotent.

The technology is not new… [Read the full article - registration required]

What are the implications of the new Google mobile platform?

Atwood shows that YouTube’s copyright tips page, although refreshingly plain-spoken, is a bit self-righteous, considering that, as he puts it, 90% of the content on YouTube is ripped-off copyrighted material…

It’s completely glossed over on the YouTube copyright page in favor of 100% original content, but the loophole in copyright is fair use. Under the banner of fair use, you could legally upload a video without the copyright holder’s permission. Anyone who contributes anything to the web should have the four factors of fair use commited [sic] to memory by now:

1. the purpose of the use
2. the nature of the copyrighted work
3. the relative amount of the portion used
4. the market effect of the use on the copyrighted work

Atwood goes on to explain why “The typical YouTube clip does well on the last two factors of the fair use test, but utterly fails the first two.” It’s an eye-opener for anyone who creates original content.

Meanwhile, our attitudes toward the media landscape continues to shift according to generational fault lines. In AdvertisingAge, Mike Vorhaus shares some telling figures:

Americans also believe their use of online video has cannibalized TV. Overall, more than 15% of respondents say they watch TV less as a result of watching online videos. And 25% of 18- to 24-year-olds believe that online video is cannibalizing their TV viewing. In comparison, fewer than 11% of 45- to 54-year-olds report such cannibalization.

Hmm… Does it count as watching TV if you’re watching TV on YouTube?

Michael Dell said that about Apple 10 years ago.

Pretty, pretty…bad advice!

Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports:

Apple’s (AAPL) market capitalization today is more than double that of Dell (DELL):

Apple: $140.4 billion

Dell: $62.27 billion

But don’t shed a tear for Micheal Dell. According to a list of the 400 wealthiest Americans published last month, his net worth is more than triple Steve Jobs’.

Michael Dell: $15.5 billion

Steve Jobs: $4.9 billion

I’m not crying for either one but I just finished syncing my iPod with my MacBookPro. Apple marketing is brilliant but the company is very far from perfect. Apple’s brand is eroding and it missed a huge opportunity to make more headway into the business market because it insists on pursuing a broken distribution model.

Are you a better fortune teller than Michael Dell? Please let us know where you think Apple and Dell will be in 2017.

The New York Times has some bubble-bursting hindsight on the broader effect of eBay’s soured Skype acquisition.

Skype earned $90 million during the second quarter of 2007, far below eBay’s projections. EBay said in a regulatory filing that the charge was “the result of the updated long-term financial outlook for Skype.”

The Skype deal helped to initiate a renewed acquisition frenzy in the online world, and a return to what some call a bubble mentality. After the spectacular dot-com flameout seven years ago, Internet executives pledged to begin judging technology companies by revenue rather than by something as ephemeral as “eyeballs,” or traffic on a Web site.

But somewhere along the line, the high-tech industry reverted to its old form.

“We are almost going back to year 2000 types of errors,” said Aaron Kessler, a senior Internet analyst at Piper Jaffray. Internet companies “are buying users instead of revenue and profitability. That’s what eBay did for Skype. They saw a great asset with tons of users but no clear monetization path.”

How bad’s the bleeding? Ebay says it’s $1 billion-bad. Silicon Ally Insider’s Henry Blodget says it’s probably $1.4 billion-bad. And, on The Next Big Thing blog, Don Dodge even adds Skype to his list of “Worst Billion Dollar Acquisitions of All Time”. Says Dodge:

I wrote a post “The 10 Worst Billion Dollar Internet Acquisitions of All Time” Skype didn’t make the list at the time because it was too early to tell. Not anymore. It takes a spot very high up on the list. AOL, Lycos, and Excite are still the clear leaders in this dubious category.

If you’re reading this, eBay, we may not be able to provide much comfort — but here are some tips for selling “it” on eBay.*

[*Please Note: The term "it" may not apply to "IT".]

If the subject interests you, then also check out SaveNetRadio.org

“Confident multitaskers of the world, could I have your attention?

Think you can juggle phone calls, e-mail, instant messages and computer work to get more done in a time-starved world? Read on, preferably shutting out the cacophony of digital devices for a while.

Several research reports, both recently published and not yet published, provide evidence of the limits of multitasking. The findings, according to neuroscientists, psychologists and management professors, suggest that many people would be wise to curb their multitasking behavior when working in an office, studying or driving a car.” read the article (registration required)

Attention fellow “CrackBerry” addicts: The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem.

]]> http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/03/26/tell-the-truth-have-you-ever-read-email-in-traffic/feed/ 1 http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/03/14/technology-and-the-2008-presidential-campaign-ltd/ http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/03/14/technology-and-the-2008-presidential-campaign-ltd/#comments Tue, 13 Mar 2007 21:06:19 +0000 Michele Miller http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/03/14/technology-and-the-2008-presidential-campaign-ltd/ John Edwards twitters me nearly every day.

It’s not quite as provocative as it sounds. The John Edwards campaign is working hard to connect and start discussions with people through technology. Whoever is in charge of the Edwards online presidential campaign has a firm grip on the effect of social media and…

]]> John Edwards twitters me nearly every day.

It’s not quite as provocative as it sounds. The John Edwards campaign is working hard to connect and start discussions with people through technology. Whoever is in charge of the Edwards online presidential campaign has a firm grip on the effect of social media and is workin’ it hard.

Visit Edwards’ website and prepare to be amazed. On the home page, there’s a large section titled, “Connect With the Campaign,” which gives visitors a choice of plugging in via MySpace, Gather, Flickr, eAssembly, and more. The site’s blog doesn’t just report campaign news; it’s an interactive tool where anyone can write and post.

Then there’s Twitter, the latest social media platform that’s taken the Internet by storm. Allowing for only 140 characters per post, it’s a cool combination of mini-blog and IM. Almost every day, I receive a text message directly from Edwards:

3/8/07: Interviews, airplanes, and just arrived in Houston.

3/9/07: Left Houston this morning. Holding a community meeting on healthcare in Council Bluffs, Iowa today. Des Moines tonight.

3/10/07: Community meeting on healthcare in Newton, IA. Then 1 hr 1/2 drive to Burlington for a similar meeting. Later tonight, back in NC.

Suddenly, watching Edwards on the evening news, I can connect with where he is and what he’s doing. I am in-the-know. When I joined Twitter last week, I became Friend #256 on the John Edwards Twitter list. As I write this less than a week later, the number of friends has reached 738.

How cool would it be if John Edwards promised to keep Twittering if he were elected? Can you imagine how hooked into the White House we’d feel if we got a daily Twitter from the President?

2/1/09: Lunch today with Kim Jong Il. He wants to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” afterward. Hope there’s popcorn.

4/12/09: Calling Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this afternoon. We’ll talk uranium, religion and peace.

10/23/09: Today is the vote on universal healthcare. Have you called your congressman to register your vote?

I don’t even know if John Edwards is my personal choice for president, but already I feel I know him better than any of the other candidates. His Second Life headquarters may have been trashed by insurgents, but his real life on the campaign and his attempts to reach out via social media are fascinating.

Could this be the election that hinges on connection… and winning… through technology?

]]> http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/03/14/technology-and-the-2008-presidential-campaign-ltd/feed/ 2 http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/02/28/have-lots-of-domains-you-monitor/ http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/02/28/have-lots-of-domains-you-monitor/#comments Wed, 28 Feb 2007 01:57:00 +0000 Bryan Eisenberg http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/02/28/have-lots-of-domains-you-monitor/ A convenient service courtesy of XBlog: Domain Log Book is a place for you to track all of your domains. All you do is add them to your log book and it shows you their Google page rank and Alexa traffic rank all on one page, as well as a link…

]]> A convenient service courtesy of XBlog: Domain Log Book is a place for you to track all of your domains. All you do is add them to your log book and it shows you their Google page rank and Alexa traffic rank all on one page, as well as a link to WhoIs information. Supposedly there are more stats coming in the next few weeks.

]]> http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/02/28/have-lots-of-domains-you-monitor/feed/ 0 http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/02/20/the-feminization-of-the-web/ http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/02/20/the-feminization-of-the-web/#comments Mon, 19 Feb 2007 23:33:46 +0000 Holly Buchanan http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/02/20/the-feminization-of-the-web/ Is the Internet, created largely by techie guys, turning into more of a girl thing? Leon Benjamin thinks so. Here’s what he has to say:

In general, my experience of participating in online communities in the past few years is that despite their male dominance the posture, attitude and expression of these…

]]> Is the Internet, created largely by techie guys, turning into more of a girl thing? Leon Benjamin thinks so. Here’s what he has to say:

In general, my experience of participating in online communities in the past few years is that despite their male dominance the posture, attitude and expression of these communities are predominantly female. By this I mean people are genuinely welcoming, offer unsolicited benevolence, guidance and assistance and freely give the most valuable thing that anyone can give; their time. This isn’t normal for other types of male dominated organisations.

To this day, I have no idea what particular combination of software, ethos and policies these networks have implemented, that attracts people to exhibit these female qualities online, but it’s basically changing people’s behaviour, and that behaviour is female in nature.

Both men and women participate in online communities. I don’t know if I agree males dominate these communities. Men and especially women enjoy the human connection these communities provide. This may be more of a right brain/left brain issue than a male/female issue – that’s what my fellow marketing to women expert Michele Miller thinks.

I would actually venture to say that rather than the Internet being “female,” it actually exhibits traits of the right brain. Recognition of patterns, tapping into emotional experience, the bonding factor… these are characteristics of both genders, which is why it works so well. It’s just that left-brain dominant humans (men) tend to think in terms of hierarchical structure, while right-brain dominant humans (women) think in patterns and “webs.” Men do this too, just not as quickly in everyday life (given that women have four times as many connections between hemispheres of the brain). But with the Internet, the right brain dominates. Men may think it’s “female,” when in fact it’s tapping into their right brain as well.

The Internet isn’t the only place enjoying success with right brain communication style. Look at some of the most successful brands out there. One of the most important things they do is create communities. Think Jimmy Buffet’s Parrotheads or The Harley Davidson Owner group or HOG. It’s about tapping into the right brain. It’s about connecting with other people. It’s about building a community with members who are, to borrow Leon’s words:

…genuinely welcoming, offer unsolicited benevolence, guidance and assistance and freely give the most valuable thing that anyone can give; their time.

Maybe being “girly” isn’t such a bad thing? Instead of ruffles and frills, think right-brain communication style whether you’re building a community, a website, or a brand.

]]> http://www.grokdotcom.com/2007/02/20/the-feminization-of-the-web/feed/ 5 http://www.grokdotcom.com/2006/03/01/a-tool-for-how-the-mind-works/ http://www.grokdotcom.com/2006/03/01/a-tool-for-how-the-mind-works/#comments Wed, 01 Mar 2006 08:00:38 +0000 The Grok http://67.59.138.131/2006/03/01/a-tool-for-how-the-mind-works/ Is mind mapping for you? If so, then this is our favorite software!

And now for something completely different.

We do a lot of brainstorming … projects, problems, reports, how to communicate a difficult idea. And we’re pretty visual folks around here; we work best when we can “see” how our thoughts…

]]> Is mind mapping for you? If so, then this is our favorite software!

And now for something completely different.

We do a lot of brainstorming … projects, problems, reports, how to communicate a difficult idea. And we’re pretty visual folks around here; we work best when we can “see” how our thoughts relate.

A while back, I wrote an article about the top ten application toolsthat consistently made our day. MindJet’s MindManagerwas (and still is) on the list. It’s the tool that lets us develop our ideas and visually map out plans of action on the spot, then share those creations with others.

Given our happy experience, I’d love to turn you on to mind-mapping. We mentioned the program to our colleague, Fredric Gluck, who was so thrilled, he wrote up this review so I could share his (and our) enthusiasm. Think of this as one of my very few word-of-mouth spots! Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 126

]]> http://www.grokdotcom.com/2006/03/01/a-tool-for-how-the-mind-works/feed/ 0 http://www.grokdotcom.com/2004/07/01/tools-of-the-trade/ http://www.grokdotcom.com/2004/07/01/tools-of-the-trade/#comments Thu, 01 Jul 2004 06:25:36 +0000 The Grok http://67.59.138.131/2004/07/01/tools-of-the-trade/ Ten business tools we wouldn’t be without!

Let me first swear up and down: nobody bribed me to write this and nobody is planning to pop my picture on their “packaging” (although I am receptive to offers!). We were just sitting around the offices one day feeling really happy. The source…

]]> Ten business tools we wouldn’t be without!

Let me first swear up and down: nobody bribed me to write this and nobody is planning to pop my picture on their “packaging” (although I am receptive to offers!). We were just sitting around the offices one day feeling really happy. The source of that happiness? Folks out there had developed a particular application that helped us accomplish some task with a minimum of fuss and bother.

And that got us thinking about those applications without which we really couldn’t do our job well. So what essentials are in the prop room of a conversion rate marketing boutique? Walk this way …

Read the rest of this article.
Read the entire newsletter: Volume 95

]]> http://www.grokdotcom.com/2004/07/01/tools-of-the-trade/feed/ 0