Interactive Business

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»Google hat die Preise kaputtgemacht«, klagen die Werber und Verleger. Deutsche Zeitschriftenverlage, Fernsehsender und Onlinewerber tun sich nun zusammen, um den groooßen bösen Daten- und Werbekraken zu bezwingen. Gelingt das?

»Google ist gut«, heißt es beim amerikanischen Anbieter, doch das glauben weder Datenschützer (nicht umsonst wird die Suchmaschine »Datenkrake« genannt) noch die Verleger, die sich schon zuhauf beschwerten, weil sie selbst wohl den Online-Markt verschlafen hatten.

Laut Frankfurter Allgemeine wollen Gruner + Jahr, Tomorrow Focus, SevenOne Media (ProSiebenSat.1) und IP Deutschland (RTL) ihre Werbereichweiten zusammenschließen, um ein starkes Gegengewicht gegen Google zu bilden. Denn bei Onlinewerbung erreiche die Suchmaschine etwa 90 Prozent der deutschen Internet-Surfer, die neue Allianz könnte es immerhin auf 80 bis 85 Prozent schaffen, orakelt die FAZ.

Ob das klappt? Man kann den Werbepreisverfall nicht so einfach stoppen, denn Werbeflächen im Netz gibt es in Hülle und Fülle. Dass die Verleger das volkswirtschaftliche Prinzip von Angebot und Nachfrage nicht rechtzeitig auf das Web bezogen, ist ihre eigene Schuld. Einige Player weniger auf dem Markt, und der Absturz ist wenigstens etwas sanfter.

Doch dass Onliner die Werbung nur dann anklicken, wenn sie wirklich am Thema interessiert sind und einen klaren Nutzen erkennen, ist gesunder Menschenverstand. Das bedeutet, die neue Allianz muss Technik schaffen, um die Zielgruppen genauso gut oder besser als Google zu treffen. Das Angebot von United Internet, deren »Targeting-Technik« TGP zu übernehmen , die in Web.de und GMX schon erfolgreich verwendet wird, haben die Verleger allerdings nicht angenommen, und so ist vor einiger Zeit UIs Versuch einer Anti-Google-Allianz gescheitert.

Neuer Versuch, aber ohne United Internet, den bisher größten Online-Werbevermarkter in Deutschland. Die Papier- und Fernsehvermarkter haben nun eine schwere Nuss zu knacken: Neue Online-Werbeformen zu schaffen, die ihr Ziel genau da erreichen, wo die Reklame den Nutzer auch noch interessiert. Aber bitte nicht so knallbunt, dass es die User abschrecken würde. Der Aufwand ist also viel größer als in Print oder TV – und der Erfolg auch noch messbar. Eine Schwitzkur für die Offliner.

Immerhin können Sie sich noch über Googles Rechenkünste amüsieren. Letzte Woche vergnügte sich das Web mit den Rechenfehlern des Suchkrösus – nicht mal die können nämlich 1 und 1 richtig zusammenzählen. Mit Abziehen ist es sogar noch schwieriger.

Link zu Quelle: http://www.theinquirer.de

Google just introduced Sidewiki, which enables anyone to comment on a page using Google’s toolbar.

I see danger.

Google is trying to take interactivity away from the source and centralize it. This isn’t like Disqus, which enables me to add comment functionality on my blog. It takes comments away from my blog and puts them on Google. That sets up Google in channel conflict vs me. It robs my site of much of its value (if the real conversation about WWGD? had occurred on Google instead of at Buzzmachine, how does that help me?). On a practical level, only people who use the Google Toolbar will see the comments left using it and so it bifurcates the conversation and puts some of it behind a hedge. Ethically, this is like other services that tried to frame a source’s content or that tried to add advertising to a site via a browser (see the evil Gator, which lost its fight vs publishers).

So this goes contrary to Google’s other services – search, advertising, embeddable content and functionality – that help advantage the edge. This is Google trying to be the center.

Quite ungoogley, I’d say. And mind you, I’m a known Google fanboy. Hell, I wrote the book.

If Google wanted to enable the conversation or collect more information about pages to be smarter about them – thanks to our smarts – fine, but do that at the edge, guys. This is wrong for the internet and, I’ll predict, bad PR for Google.

MORE: I know I’ll be asked whether I think this is evil. As I just said in a tweet, somebody should have asked the “is it evil?” question. That’s why it’s there. I sense no one did. Evil means inconsistent with Google’s mission and morals. Google is about supporting the internet – adding value to it more than extracting value from it (and from those who create the value… at the edge). That would be evil.

LATER: On Twitter, Google’s Matt Cutts says: “@jeffjarvis points taken, but if it gets larger group of people to write comments on web, that can be good. Plus API allows data to come out” And: “@jeffjarvis and I do see one very nice use case where people can add their comments about scammy sites, e.g. work-at-home scams.”

Points taken as well. It would enable sites without commenting functionality to get comments, including negative comments. In the case of a spam site, OK, that could be useful. But that could also include attacks that one now must monitor (watch out, Google: every story about Israel and race and Obama and health care will attract venom that affects my site but is not under my control).

I don’t think this was done maliciously at all. I think Google didn’t think through the implications.

I’m in favor of beta process; that’s what I wrote in my book. But it’s still incumbent on the developer of something new to try to think through these issues before the dangers are unleashed. At least ask.

LATER: So now in the Sidewiki, there’s a parallel discussion going on, separate from this. There’s no opportunity to respond in threads. I have no control over the content associated with my site essentially on my site. What has been added? Each of those people could have and normally would have commented right here. They get their comments on their Google profiles, but with Friend Connect that could be done from the comments here. The side comments have their own URLs and a push to promote them on Twitter and Facebook, which means that Google gets Googlejuice instead of me.

Article taken from the Jeff Jarvis Blog:

Link to: Jeff Jarvis at Wikipedia

Es gibt sicher deutlich spannendere Unternehmen als irgendeinen Telefonprovider in Massachusetts. Und dennoch hat es die Firma Grasshopper [S1] mit einer Mischung aus Guerilla- und Social Media Marketing geschafft, sich derart spannend in Szene zu setzen dass sich wochenlang hunderttausende von Menschen mit dem kleinen Telefonprovider aus Needham, MA beschäftigten.

Und das ging so: Stellen Sie sich vor, bei Ihnen klingelt FedEx an der Tür und gibt ein Päckchen für Sie ab. Tolle Sache - jeder mag Päckchen!

Sie packen die kleine Überraschung aus und erhalten eine Aromaschutzverpackung mit fünf schoko-ummantelten Grasshüpfern [S2] (WÄÄÄH!!!) und einem Link zu einem Video [S3]. Mehr nicht.

Der Plan von Grasshopper sah beeindruckend einfach aus - und war wahrscheinlich, wie jeder einfach aussehende Plan, ein Haufen harter Arbeit:

* Identify 5,000 Influencers (Identifiziere 5.000 Menschen, die im Internet einen großen Einfluss haben)
* Raise 25,000 grasshoppers and cover in chocolate (Züchte 25.000 Grashüpfer und ummantle diese mit Schokolade)
* Send 5 each via FedEx (Schicke jeder Person 5 dieser Grashüpfer via FedEx)
* Produce YouTube video to inspire entrepreneurs (Erstelle ein YouTube Video, um Unternehmer / Existenzgründer zu inspirieren)
* Start a movement (Starte eine Bewegung)

An dieser Stelle möchte ich anmerken, dass es eigentlich fürchterlich schwierig ist, Aufmerksamkeit über den Weg der kognitive Dissonanz (ich werde gleich einen echten Schoko-Grasshüpfer essen - Neugier versus Ekel) bei einer Zielgruppe zu erzeugen, ohne dass dieser Schuss nach hinten losgeht. Grasshopper hat diesen schmalen Grat mit Bravour gemeistert und die Zahlen können sich wirklich sehen lassen!

Social Media Marketing Kennzahlen der Aktion:

* 183.000+ YouTube Video Abrufe
* 2.959 Verlinkungen von Twitter
* 1.664 Verlinkungen von Facebook
* 170 Blog Posts und News-Artikel
* 51.709 Page Views auf die dedizierte Zielseite grasshopper.com/idea

Das alles bei Gesamtkosten für die Kampagne in Höhe von gerade einmal $68,103! Derartige Beträge bezahlen manche Unternehmen für ein paar bunte Seiten Werbung in der Tageszeitung. Grashopper stellt sogar die vollständige Fallstudie [S4] online zum direkten Download bereit - das ist freundlich, cool und passt irgendwie gar nicht zu einem Telefonprovider :-)

Einzig und allein eine Frage bleibt für mich derzeit noch offen: Wie viele neue Kunden hat Grasshopper durch die Aktion gewonnen? Meine E-Mail an Grasshopper ist raus, vielleicht bekomme ich eine Antwort. Ich würde mich freuen.
Links:

[S1] Website von Grasshopper: http://grasshopper.com/

[S2] Der Schoko-Grasshüpfer:
http://smallbiztrends.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/grassho...

[S3] Das Grasshopper-Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6MhAwQ64c0

[S4] Die Grasshopper-Fallstudie:
http://grasshopper.com/a/5000_final.pdf



..Story by Karl Kratz: http://www.landingpage-ebook.de..

With the launch of the ominous concept car "BB 1" Peugeot could tell you more about a successful social network campaigns:

1. First you build a website with an own domain, with a maddening flash intro saying "His father is a scooter. His mother a car".

2. You build a Facebook fan page, where the same slogan and a reference to the cool site by using TinyURL (of course without any final point - as you have probably read somewhere, that sloppiness in social networks is cool)

3. Then you set up a twitter account, where you shoot down you followers with a cool TinyURL linking to the same website as described above.

4. Of course you do not forgett to put the Facebook and the Twitter links on this website, but let them apear after your f...ing cool slogan has been noticed..

That's the way to do it, baby!


A nice circuiting for 55 twitter followers and 909 German fans who have submitted all 7 comments on the Facebook.

Reserach by Stephan Schmatz!

I think one of the next Google's business steps is to get into the back up storage business..

As our company is using Google Apps for email, and we are more than satisfied with docs, etc. I am sure Google will successfuly put Microsoft under pressure with the new Chrome OS. Microsoft will have to change its business model significantly and split the products into 2 Main groups:
- Basic products for free
- Premium products
As busines users we currently run over 80% of necessery applications in the browser..so, welcome to the future :-)!

Just how big a threat is the real-time web to Google? As Om has pointed out, real-time content marks a still-amorphous but important new phase of evolution in the web, allowing for the instantaneous discovery of newly added information. And Twitter and Facebook are emerging as an alternative to the traditional engine, which presents a big challenge to Google’s core business. As Larry Page admitted this week, the company finally gets that.

It’s easy to imagine Google falling further behind in the real-time content game. The company’s slow entry puts it in the position Yahoo has held for years in search: behind the leader, always playing catch-up instead of spending creative energy on new advances. Google has struggled with social content, producing mixed results. Orkut, for example, was a hit in Brazil, but not in other major markets; initiatives like Friend Connect have shown little traction. It’s had better success as a search partner, as with its MySpace deal.

Google’s search engine has thrived because PageRank uses democratic algorithms that tracked page links. By contrast, real-time discovery engines like Twitter and Facebok use a more dynamic kind of democracy, linking to content that users finds worthwhile. As a result, content on the web is splitting into two basic models, and understanding this distinction makes clear why Google’s centralized role is being threatened.

Simply put, it’s the difference between discovery and search, between the “Now Web” and the “Then Web.” Here’s a more specific analogy: In college, most of us spent a lot of time in the library but also in a social hub like the campus coffee shop. One was a place for digging up information, the other a more dynamic, conversational setting, where ideas were casually exchanged. Google has been the web’s library: archival, organized and oriented around research. Twitter and Facebook, on the other hand, are coffee shops: instantaneous, conversational and oriented around discovery.

I doubt Google will ever make a good coffee shop. But I also don’t see real-time content shutting down its library. Instead, it’s breaking open a new arena of the web over which Google has little control. That makes Google more of a specialized player, but still relevant.

Of course, Google is going to try to dominate this new terrain, just as it does in search. To that end, it essentially has three immediate options: It can buy Twitter or Facebook. It can create a competitor to them on its own. Or it can partner with them – maybe indexing their content into its search and even buying a small investment stake to deter similar deals with Yahoo and Microsoft.

A buyout is unlikely: Twitter has said it’s not for sale and Facebooks seems more interested at raising money to remain independent. Google’s efforts to replicate their success on its own, meanwhile, have disappointed. So it’s more likely to forge partnerships, giving it a place at the table but not the lead spot.

Such an ancillary role won’t satisfy Google for very long. Sharing more and more of the pie with others can’t really be much of an option at the Googleplex. In that case, Google has one last, longer-term option – hitting the upstarts where they are weak. For Twitter, that means its lack of an efficient filter. Google built a great filter for the millions of URLs scattered on the web. Its engineers will be working to do the same for real-time content with the hope that Google can maintain its role as gatekeeper to the web.

But whether or not Google succeeds, its presence in real-time search would push Twitter and Facebook to innovate that much faster, thus accelerating the web’s evolution even more.

Read more on nytimes.com

Xcerion, a swedish start up started to develop a web OS in the middle of 2007 with a funding of 10 million USD.
Now they are ready to start their facet of cloud computing for private customers with the "icloud" called product.
The offer includes remote desktop via browser with single sign in, 3 GB storage, and about 30 applications such as:
* Mail
* Instant Messaging
* Photo organizer
* File explorer
* Music & Video player
* Write
* Calendar
* Contacts
* Games
The interface looks like a mixture of XP and Vista, the engine is based on the Ubuntu platform. MS IE is recomended, Mozilla is not ready to go as they run a beta service currently.
A viennese company called "Netmonic" offers a similar solution for SMEs with costs of ca. 62 € per employee and month - see here.