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  • Moms: A Driving Force in Mobile Media

    In many homes the CEO, CTO, and CFO goes by another three letter title: M O M. Moms get credit for a lot of things, but they rarely are mentioned as driving forces of innovation and early tech adoption. At Marketing Profs , Ayaz Nanji shares some data that shows the impact moms have on mobile commerce and social media. Here's a sample: -Compared with the general population, 49% more moms have smartphones (81% vs. 54%). -In a year-over-year comparison, smartphone ownership by moms is up 25% and tablet ownership is up 79%. -89% of moms with smartphones access Facebook on those phones, and moms are four times more likely to prefer to check social media on their smartphones. -45% of moms say they are emailing less and communicating more through social media. Don't forget that moms have the purchasing power in most households. So social engagement leads to online spending. Read Moms More Likely to Use Social Media and Mobile, and to Shop Online here .
  • Ritholtz: The Rising Value of Twitter to Investors

    It is easy to thumb your nose at social media as an unreliable news source these days. But then you turn on your television for coverage of developing events and, well, you quickly realize that @yourfriendsnamehere is often more reliable than a well-staffed cable news station. Delivery systems don't misinform people. Lazy people misinform people--whatever medium they use. The same can be said for investment news. In his weekly Washington Post column, Barry Ritholtz makes the case that Twitter has become central to savvy investors. For him, Twitter has become his first stop for news about markets and companies: To put this into context, think back to the 1990s. It seems like a million years ago when people worked on huge trading floors with hundreds of colleagues — analysts, traders, salespeople. That camaraderie allowed for a flow of ideas among various employees. In techland, Steve Jobs even had the new Apple headquarters designed to encourage more accidental meetings among employees to encourage idea exchanges. But Wall Street has downsized. Giant trading floors are now much smaller; exchange floors are smaller or closed. The professional interaction that was once the hallmark of finance seems to exist less these days as fewer people work on or for the big Wall Street firms. Into this finance void came social media. It is much more than reconnecting with your long-lost bunkmates from summer sleep-away camp. Social media has allowed all sorts of like-minded people to find each other digitally. One key factor is that Twitter is a meritocracy. In social media, people cannot build big followings organically unless what they are putting out to the world has value. The more valuable it is over time, the more followers you get. Twitter has become a group conversation of that type that used to take place on trading floors. Who are you talking to all day? With Twitter, you can build your own virtual trading floor and research department, populated by the smartest people on earth. Almost any subject or sector has you can think of, you can find a few people with an expertise in that area. When Europe is blowing up, you probably cannot read all of the foreign language newspapers — but you can find and follow reporters who cover Cyprus or Greece locally. Read How Twitter is becoming your first source of investment news here .
  • The Era of Datification

    As Data Editor for The Economist , Kenneth Cukier has been watching the impact of big data on global business from a front row seat. At the moment, that has meant watching the growth of social media companies and trying to understand how they "datafy" our lives and relationships. But Cukier says we are really at the beginning of the era of big data, and there will be so many new ways to use data. In this Big Think interview, Cukier discusses datafication today and in the near future:
  • Coca-Cola CIO Discusses Integrating IT with Marketing

    One often overlooked aspect of digital disruption at large companies is the extent to which various departments have had to engage more with IT. No longer does it make sense to see IT workers as servants to the people who are doing "the real work" to build up an organization. In an interview with McKinsey Quarterly , Coca-Cola CIO Ed Steinke speaks of getting his staff and marketing more integrated. Here is an excerpt: McKinsey : How is the role of IT changing at Coca-Cola, and, with it, your role as CIO? Ed Steinike : IT and marketing are very close partners at Coca-Cola today—more so, I think, than at most other companies—and that’s the way it should be. Coke is spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on digital marketing, and that number will, no doubt, continue to rise. Almost all of that spending is IT-related. This development calls for a broader CIO role. It’s not enough to be an operational back-office CIO running the systems. It’s also not enough to be a process CIO reinventing the supply chain and transforming support functions. Important as those two roles are, they need to be complemented by what I call the revenue-generator CIO or business-level CIO. McKinsey : What were the beginnings of the strategic partnership between marketing and IT at Coca-Cola? Ed Steinike : Our marketers started to think more seriously about digital channels five years ago or so. As mobile adoption expanded, they started to build a direct connection with our customers by pushing mobile applications for social-media sites and our loyalty programs, such as My Coke Rewards. Marketing was driving a lot of it through its own advertising and digital agencies while IT, at the time, was struggling to be relevant. We were viewed as a back-office function, not as one of the strategic leaders and partners in our digital-marketing efforts. I believed we should be bringing ideas to marketing instead of marketing coming to us for creative solutions and more often than not getting the answer, “Sorry. We don’t have the people to do these things.” Our first step was simply to offer traditional operating, hosting, and security for the sites and platforms the agencies were building. We did that quite well and now have over 600 consumer sites hosted in one platform environment with great data protection. Read the full interview here .
  • ExactTarget: Super Bowl Miss

    CBS set new records for viewers of the Super Bowl during our de facto national holiday last Sunday. But most of the advertisers who helped make it a great evening for CBS failed to fully realize how consumers are using technology beyond the television to experience big events, says ExactTarget 's Jeffrey Rohrs . Rohrs lists Oreo as a key exception: Sure, the press today is giddy with praise over Oreo's quick-thinking, news-jacking, real-time marketing effort -- a picture of an Oreo in the dark that has been retweeted nearly 15,000 times as of this writing. It has led many to say that "Oreo's Tweet Won the Super Bowl." There's no arguing that what Oreo did was fast, witty, and a helluva lot less expensive than their "Whisper Fight" Super Bowl commercial which was the only ad driving viewers to an Instagram page during the entire game. The real reason Oreo won the #BrandBowl, however, was because both their free and paid efforts sought to build and engage audiences. Their ads weren't just "one & done," they walk away from Super Bowl XLVII with bigger followings on Instagram and Twitter--and those are audiences they can activate long after the Ravens' victory has faded from memory. Rohrs offers some key lessons to other marketers and company leaders here . And ExactTarget's graphics team put together this infographic to drive home the point:
  • An Overlooked Labor Market: Microworking

    Wingham Rowan founded Slivers-of-Time to fill what we may think of as a very limited need: connecting people who require very flexible working hours with companies and organizations that can use them at seemingly random times. In this TedTalk , Row discusses the impact of his company's work, and how this highly specialized service makes a big difference for both workers with unpredictable constraints on their productivity, and for the businesses who employ them as important additional labor:
  • Don Tapscott: Stop 'Containerizing' Knowledge

    Don Tapscott says that it is time for organizations to shift their internal communication platforms. Out with email. In with effective use of social media. But don't make the mistake that he is making a simple point about just about how workers send messages. This is about decision making and knowledge management, Tapscott says. In this interview at the McKinsey Quarterly , Tapscott says that knowledge management "has failed." And the only way to fix the problem is to take knowledge out of a "container" and focus on "content collaboration":
  • A New Twitter Trading Platform

    Social media has become a valuable tool for investors to measure consumer sentiment. Now hedge fund Derwent Capital Markets (DCM Capital) is trying to take the use of Twitter as a stock trading tool to a new level. In this interview with the Wall Street Journal Markets Hub , DCM Capital CEO Paul Hawtin explains the plan to open up Twitter to more people by building a new type of trading platform:
  • Unlocking the Value Potential in Social Technologies

    The disruptive force that is social media has only just begun to show its influence on global business, according to McKinsey analysts Jacques Bughin , Michael Chui , and James Manyika . In a new article for the McKinsey Quarterly , the authors say that companies have not really begun to see the full potential of the "value creation" social tools provide: Since “social” features can be added to almost any digital application that involves interactions among people, the range of uses is immense and measurement correspondingly challenging. Thus, we cast a wide net. We studied several hundred cases of organizations using social technologies around the globe. In addition, we examined the patterns of knowledge work within organizations and drew insights from data covering several years of surveys involving thousands of global executives on the ways their companies use social technologies. Our analysis of successful uses served as a basis for modeling potential improvements across the value chain. Of late, some bearish sentiments surround social technologies after disappointments for several companies in the capital markets. It’s worth noting, however, that today only 5 percent of communications occur on social networks. Moreover, almost all digital human interactions can ultimately become “social,” and jobs involving physical labor and the processing of transactions are giving way, across the globe, to work requiring complex interactions with other people, independent judgment, and the analysis of information. As a result, we believe social technologies are destined to play a much larger role not only in individual interactions but also in how companies are organized and managed. We estimate that using social technologies to improve collaboration and communication within and across companies could raise the productivity of interaction workers by 20 to 25 percent (Exhibit 1--below). These dramatic gains would occur thanks to shifts in the way these workers communicate—from using channels designed for one-to-one communication, such as e-mail and phone calls, to social channels, which allow “many-to-many” communication. Specifically, our research indicates that interaction workers typically spend 28 percent of each day (13 hours a week) reading, writing, and responding to e-mails. A huge amount of valuable company knowledge is locked up in them. As companies adopt social platforms, communication becomes a new form of content, and more enterprise information can become readily accessible and easily searchable rather than sequestered as inbox “dark matter.” Employees will be able to find knowledge in the organization more readily and to identify experts on various topics, given the expertise implied by their patterns of social communication. We estimate that 25 to 30 percent of total e-mail time could be repurposed if the default channel for communication were shifted to social platforms. Read Capturing business value with social technologies here .
  • Learning to Embrace the Risk of Social Networks

    Some corporations are finding the age of social networks difficult, as the seemingly leaderless networks gain power. Barry Libert , CEO of Open Networks and the author of Social Nation , says that corporate leaders need to embrace the reality that "risk" now resides outside the organization--in social networks. No longer do these leaders have the power to control messages, and they don't control the data behind their decisions as they once did. Libert discussed the risks and rewards of embracing social networks in this Knowledge@Wharton video:
  • McKinsey Quarterly: 'Demystifying Social Media'

    When it comes to social media in global business, McKinsey & Company 's Roxane Divol , David Edelman , and Hugo Sarrazin say the experimentation stage is over. Facebook, Twitter, and other social media outlets are an integral part of the corporation-to-consumer relationship, and now executives of global brands know that. But, as Divol, Edelman, and Sarrazin write in the McKinsey Quarterly , "few have a deep understanding of exactly how social media interacts with consumers to expand product and brand recognition, drive sales and profitability, and engender loyalty." Despite offering numerous opportunities to influence consumers, social media still accounts for less than 1 percent of an average marketing budget, in our experience. Many chief marketing officers say that they want to increase that share to 5 percent. One problem is that a lot of senior executives know little about social media. But the main obstacle is the perception that the return on investment (ROI) from such initiatives is uncertain. Without a clear sense of the value social media creates, it’s perhaps not surprising that so many CEOs and other senior executives don’t feel comfortable when their companies go beyond mere “experiments” with social-media strategy. Yet we can measure the impact of social media well beyond straight volume and consumer-sentiment metrics; in fact, we can precisely determine the buzz surrounding a product or brand and then calculate how social media drives purchasing behavior. To do so—and then ensure that social media complements broader marketing strategies—companies must obviously coordinate data, tools, technology, and talent across multiple functions. In many cases, senior business leaders must open up their agendas and recognize the importance of supporting and even undertaking initiatives that may traditionally have been left to the chief marketing officer. As our colleagues noted last year, “we’re all marketers now.” The authors go on to outline successful approaches to integrating social media into global marketing and corporate growth strategy, and share some examples of effective models. They also provide a basic structure for leaders to consider, as a way of focusing social media efforts at key "touch points." Click here to read about examples of companies engaging with customers at these touch points.
  • Facebook Focuses on China for Future Growth

    In case anyone was still wondering about Facebook's financial strength, last week's filing with the SEC in advance of the company's IPO revealed some staggering figures. Here, from Statista , is a look at the company's revenue and net income over the last five years: The SEC filing also reveals some of Facebook's plans for future growth . And China is a big part of the future of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg discussed Facebook's China goals with Charlie Rose back in November. Here is an excerpt from that interview: Watch the full interview here .
  • Social Media Trends for 2012

    There may be new apps and new gadgets to facilitate our engagement with one another and with retailers and other companies, but surely social media will only become a bigger part of our daily lives this year. It will be interesting to watch how companies push new ways of interacting, and what trends develop. At Harvard Business Review , David Armano makes his predictions. Armano is executive vice president of the interactive arm of global communications for Edelman Digital, and he predicts that some social media activities that started in 2010 or 2011 will take off in 2012. Namely: Convergence Emergence. The Cult of Influence. Gamification Nation. Social Sharing. Social Television. The Micro Economy. Read Armano's descriptions for these trends here . And then weigh in, either by offering up your comments , or in discussions with your peers/classmates. What has to happen for these activities to become meaningful trends? What social media trends do you anticipate being a big part of commerce in 2012?
  • Tech Platforms as Key to Recovery

    While we're watching to for signs of whether the economy will grow more quickly or slide back into recession, Forbes contributor Joe McKendrick suggests we watch new technology platforms for signs of recovery. And he says the new platforms "tilt the scales" in favor of entrepreneurs (and consumers) for the following reasons: 1) Technology platforms offer new recruiting and employment tools. 2) Technology platforms offer entrepreneurial resources 3) Technology platforms offer access to capital 4) Technology platforms offer economic boosts for distressed communities or regions 5) Technology platforms offer access to new innovation Read Five Ways Cloud, Social and Mobile Technologies are Lifting Our Economy here .
  • Mark Thoma on Resolving the Disconnect Between Economists and Public Discourse

    Mark Thoma tackles the question of why--and how--the field of economics retreated from what he calls its "public mission," in an essay for the Institute for Public Knowledge . While once a discipline that engaged routinely with citizens and leaders in the public sector, Economics spent much of the latter half of the twentieth century exploring issues that, while important, were not part of the general discourse. Thoma calls this "The Great Disconnect," and he examines several reasons for it: Mathematics and the Desire to be a Scientific Discipline ...Michael Bernstein makes this point as well, as the discipline became more and more mathematical – the language we speak is increasingly symbolic rather than verbal – it became less accessible to outsiders. Positive and Normative Economics ...economists have become less willing to take sides in public debates, and more importantly unwilling to wade into public debates when doing so can be perceived as supporting one side over the other. Sociological Factors ...As economics has become increasingly mathematical and theoretical, it has also become more cliquish. Interest in Different Questions ...The fact that those inside and outside of academics are interested in different questions may have also play a role in severing the ties of academics to the outside world. The result, Thoma argues, is bad for the field, for economists, and for society in general: For all of these reasons, economics lost communication with policymakers and practitioners leaving room for all sorts of “charlatans and cranks” to fill the void. In doing so, academics ceded important ground to think tanks aligned with one party or the other, to self-appointed economic experts, to business economists maximizing profit rather than public knowledge, and to a media that doesn’t always comprehend the economics that underlie a particular issue. Even in cases where there actually was fairly wide agreement among academic economists about a particular policy proposal, the public debate in the media did not convey that economists were largely united on the issue. But there is good news. The last five years have brought about a lot of positive change. Thanks to social media and blogging, more and more economists are writing for a public audience. Thoma has seen the benefits of engaging with the public through his own blog, Economist's View (one of many daily reads for The Watch). He extols the virtues of blogging and writing for the public at large in the second half of his essay. Read New Forms of Communication and the Public Mission of Economics: Overcoming the Great Disconnect here .
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