At Metablocks we wear both developer and marketing hats! Most of our business revolves around user interface and application design, especially social media applications, but we also have a growing consultancy business around social media marketing.
One of the new social media marketing tools that has gained popularity and momentum in recent months is Twitter and a growing number of new media marketers have become big “Twitter Marketing” fans (IgnitePR, Citizen Agency,TechnoSailor, i.e.)
What is Twitter, you ask? Twitter defines itself as a tool for “staying in touch and keeping up with friends no matter where you are or what you’re doing.” (more…) Marketers have reinterpreted that as a way for companies and brands to stay in touch with customers or prospective customers no matter where they are! For those interested, I recently added a page on our Wiki with a list of Twitter marketing related resources including articles and success stories.
Here are some practical applications of “outgoing” Twitter marketing in action:
- A TV show or music network automatically updating viewers and fans via Twitter about upcoming episodes
- A news network distributing news headlines regularly on Twitter
- A corporate blogger automatically updating their Twitter feed with links to their latest news, events or blog posts
- A local government sending weather and other alerts (such as Amber alerts) to their residents via Twitter
Here are some “incoming” Twitter marketing applications:
- A cable company using Twitter to identify customers with support needs or issues
- A technology company using Twitter for find information about competitors
- A marketing company using Twitter to gauge the “buzz” or interested around a Brand
- A reporter using Twitter to find out what the “Topic De Jour” (topic of the day) happens to be
Another interesting “application” (verb) of Twitter is to actually integrate it into desktop and web-based applications (noun) to automatically share information about a users activities or interests (with their permission of course). Here are some examples
- Your cable set top box automatically “tweets” the TV shows you are currently watching
- Each time you sell an item on eBay, Craigslist or vFlyer, it show up on your Twitter feed
- Videos or photos you share on sites like YouTube and Flickr instantaneously get reflected in your Twitter feed
- Blog posts, news and events you create automatically show up in your Twitter feed
Too much information (TMI)? Perhaps, but a growing number of people are now living “Twitter-enhanced” lives and marketers are realizing that Twitter may indeed be that best way to reach them!
After my post on Hillcrest Labs, one or two clients mentioned that they didn’t realize we were such big Adobe Illustrator users! I am not surprise since its not common knowledge that in addition to our core business of web and social media application design and development we provide a broad range of other service to clients including infographics and other information-driven communication. Most of this work stems from our web design group who help clients better communication aspects of their technology or architecture visually. In the process we have developed a growing library of “object-art” that helps us in the story telling process.
Here are a couple of examples of some past infographic work:
Tags: infographics, diagrams
Whenever we build applications for a new platform we like to understand the target market, market drivers, and the overall competitive landscape. In the process of understanding the set-top box market, I ran into a handful of great HDTV, set-box and video stats and facts that I thought would be interesting to share:
HDTV and TV
- Approximately 70% of people aged 34 years and younger surfing the Internet while watching their TV – CEA
- Nearly 60% of HDTV owners consider themselves sports fans – CEA
- 50% of HDTV owners cited HD sports as their primary purchasing factor – CEA
- 90% of fantasy sports players use Internet to look up sports info while watching TV – Fantasy Sports Trade Ass.
- Favorite sports programming watched in HD include Super Bowl (78%) and college football (41%) – CEA
- This year’s Super Bowl is expected to drive the purchase of approximately 2.4M HDTV units – CEA
- 18% of consumers watching the Super Bowl expect to be online during the game to check stats, IM with friends or check betting lines – CEA
- 12% plan to use a PC in another room to check statistics during the game and 13 percent expect to use their mobile phone for the same purpose – CEA
- Samsung is the worldwide TV brand leader with 20.8% of the revenue share (Q1 2008) followed by Sony, LGE and Sharp – Digitimes
- Around half a billion homes worldwide are expected to have digital TV by 2011, and in the future the integrated media center will be at the heart of the Digital Home – BuddeComm
- CEA predicted that 16M HDTV would sell in 2007 bringing the total number of HDTVs sold in the US to 52.5M – CEA
Digital Set-top Boxes
- In April 2007, Motorola announced shipped its one millionth IP-based set-top box – Daily IPTV
- Apple TV could eclipse both TiVo (4.4M users) and Netflix (8.8M users) – Daily IPTV
- AT&T expects targeted advertising on its video and mobile services to become a $1B business by 2010 – Daily IPTV
- Set-top boxes are merging Web-based services with TV. AT&T invested $26.5 million in ChoiceStream last year. Time Warner Cable rolled out software from Biap Systems that allows users to bid on eBay and track fantasy football statistics wither their cable remote – WSJ
- Google has partner with EchoStar to use set-tops to buying, selling, and measuring the impact of TV ads running on Dish Network – WSJ
- According to In-Stat, it is estimated that the number of set-top boxes shipped (worldwide) since 2000 will exceed 150 million by 2009 – WSJ
- Google is already streaming YouTube videos into living room via devices like Apple TV and HP’s Media Smart TV as soon the Playstation 3.
Online and Mobile Video
- 57% of adult Internet users have watch or download video from the Internet – Pew
- 57% of online video viewers share links to the videos they find with others – Pew
- 75% of users have receive links to watch video from someone else – Pew
- 63% of Apple iPhone users have viewed videos vs 28% of regular cell phone users – Interpret
- 18% of mobile phone users reported they have recorded a video on their phone, 10% said they had watched a video on their phone – Pew
- In Feb 2008, 10.1B videos were viewed online, a 66% year-over-year leap – comScore
- 123M Americans viewed online video at least once a month in 2007 – eMarketer
