I have previously blogged about the increasing use of social media impacting the number of users accessing webmail accounts and now it appears the same is happening with instant messaging services. The number of minutes spent on instant messaging services has dropped by 1 billion minutes in the past year! A billion! bringing the total time spent to 2.9 billion, that over a 25% drop in usage.

The drop is being blamed on the emergence of social networks as communication tools. With Facebook now offering instant messaging and also the multitude of ways you can use to keep in touch through social network, messaging services are apparently becoming unnecessary. As with anything else it is unlikely to be “the end” for these services but it has certainly had an impact. I use messenger for work purposes and Facebook is obviously never going to take the place of that, and you could argue that Facebook is only a rival to messaging to the people who are constantly online, and wont apply to people who only check their account once a week. Either way, 1 billion minutes is a lot to lose.

In a bold move into the world of social media and UGC Becks has announced that it is searching for a fulltime blogger to become PAYE and work just for them.  This is an interesting move by the beer brand and they have obviously given it some thought, at least I hope they have.  Id be interested to see what they think somebody is going to blog about all day long in the beer/alcohol industry,  The content produced will obviously benefit their site and hopefully keep people coming back but is this just a case of another company deciding they need to “do” social media, without fully considering what that means to them?  Who knows.  Im not sure I will be applying but it will be interesting to see the outcome of the project and whether it has any significant benefit to them as a company.

http://www.mad.co.uk/Main/News/Articles/7b004cd4e19e4330adeab76402946f2d/Beer-brand-Beck’s-hunts-for-full-time-blogger.html

In a recent report into “Online Solutions” aimed at imparting advice on how to develop an effective web presence American Express have advised companies not to “waste money” on search engin optimisation specialists.  Apparently suggetsing that this is a sure fire way to get your site banned from the listings.  This is a very strong statement and one which Im sure please their incumbent SEO agency, Greenlight!  Imagine being the agency for a company who makes a statement like that! Cant fill you with much confidence for your next contract renewal.  I wonder whether the phrase “expensive” and the warning about being penalised refer directly to Greenlight’s work or whether this is jus a coincidence!?!

The full article is here and I have copied the offending paragraph below:

—  optimize your search engines

Search engines, like Yahoo! and Google, are usually the first place people will look for you. Make it easier for them to find you. Yahoo! and Google offer tools to let them know the site map structure of your Web site. Also, using clean U.R.L.s such as yourdomain.com/store/widgets instead of yourdomain.com/store.php?id=42&categoryID=widgets will increase your chances of getting indexed in a search engine. Finally, don’t waste money on so-called Search Engine Optimization (S.E.O.) specialists. Search engines are very quick to penalize sites that try to trick their filtering techniques, and once your site has been put on Google’s blacklist, it will take forever to get off.

As the saying goes, the early bird catches the worm, and after last nights earthquake in lincolnshire the most search for keywords today are bound to be related to this event.  So I thought I’d have a look to see if anybody was on the ball and had already added the keywords to their PPC account.  A few searches later and it would appear most of the advertisers in the UK were still asleep or in shock from the quake as not many of them had woken up to the opportunity in front of them.  From all the searches I completed across various engines only one adveriser had specifically chosen to advertise based on the quake and they are a bean bag company! Brownie points for them or their agency but I cant really see how they are going to get any business out of it.  The people who should be on these terms are the news networks and papers, although you could argue their natural rankings should support them, the cost of clicks on these terms would be negligable, 1p-5p depending on the advertiser, and if you compare this to the fees they charge advertisers they would be quids in.  I wonder if anybody will wake up over the course of the day?

I came across a site today which I found interesting.  Firstly if you are an i-phone user it is very interesting, offering all new plug ins and applications for you i-phone from wallpapers, games, icons and general accessories for the latest must have gadget from Apple.  The site offers a whole heap of options for the i-phone user and makes the customisation of your i-phone simple and easy to do as the sites includes instructions of how to install the applications and plug-ins it provides.

But secondly it got me thinking about how the development of technologies such as these create new opportunities for sharp entrepreneurs in a niche market.  For those quick enough to set themselves up as the “go to” provider for the latest gadget or gizmo there can be a very lucrative path ahead.  What this requires however is to be one step ahead of the rest of the marketplace and get a foothold before the competition.  Take the site in question planet-iphones.com, 12 months ago they wouldn’t have had a business.  The i-phone wasn’t released and even if you knew it was going to be it would be impossible to develop i-phone applications or iphone mods unless you had insider information on how the platform was going to be built.  Now, 8 months on from the launch you have sites such as planet-iphones offering a full spectrum of products for the handset.  In this case the early bird certainly does catch the worm and those that can react quickly enough to new phenomenon can reap the rewards.A search on Google for iphone wallpapersreveals a lot of sites who are attempting to do just this, and establish themselves in this market, but on research none are quite as extensive as planet-iphones.  So my advice? If you are an owner of an iphone, and are looking for an iphone wallpaper, pay them a visit and modify to you hearts content!  If you are an entrepreneur, get thinking about what could be the next big niche to exploit and it could just pay dividends.virtual sex  virtual adultery

A number of recent articles have suggested we may be heading for the second web crash.  Most of these theories are base don the inflated prices being paid for barely profitable companies because they fall under the category of “social media” or because they are the latest phenomenon on the web.  Others are quoting the fact that advertiser supply is outstripping demand and many websites are being left with unfulfilled inventory.

But does this signify the beginning of the end? I don’t think so.  I’m not saying change isn’t around the corner, but at the end of the day many companies are yet to fully embrace the potential of the Internet and so there is still growth on the horizon as far as I can see.  I agree with the comments about inflated prices, Google is unlikely to ever recoup the $1.65 Billion it paid for Youtube unless it can come up with a more innovative way of monetising its traffic.  Similarly, although it is a profitable network, Microsoft paid a massively inflated price of $240 million for a measly 1.6% share in Facebook which it will never see a return on (in my humble opinion).  But this does not necessarily mean that we are seeing a repeat of the dot com collapse.  For a start, Google and MSN can afford it, they have VERY large warchest built up from years of successful ventures. 

More likely, for me, is that we will see a fall in the ad prices demanded as inventory grows and needs to be fulfilled.  This may mean the demise of some smaller players in the market but those with a strong legacy and a solid proposition will survive and continue to prosper.  In any industry you are at risk unless you have a solid offering and the Internet is no different, just because a few bedroom companies go out of business doesn’t make it the end of the Internet!

All of this can only be good for advertisers as the market levels out, and potentially dips a little, so will the prices.  Bring it on I say!

Just as people are getting to grips with the so called web 2.0 phenomenon already there are people within the internet market touting the arrival of web 3.0! hang on, what happened there? did I miss something?

Apparently, where as web 2.0 was about engagement and interaction, web 3.0 is the “semantic web”, where computer intelligence interprets information without use intervention.  An example given by Ruth Mortimer of brand strategy, is that of search engine spiders and how, with the emergence of web 3.0, will be able to interpret context and meaning of text within a page rather than simply looking at code without meaning, hence giving a more sophisticated search result.

But where did web 2.0 go? I think there is a real danger here of people getting ahead of themselves and predicting the future before theyve mastered the present.  Many companies are yet to embrace the web 2.0 ethic (and some even the basics of online!) and to go around touting the revolution is scare mongering in the extreme unless it is given some context.  My advice to companies reading these articles would be to look at your webstie from a customers point of view, decide what they would want to see, what they would want to do and provide this functionality.  If you get the basics right to start with and put in place an infrastructure solid enough to support it you will be in a strong postion to embrace whatever new technologies are around the corner.

It has been reported this week that the rise in traffic to social networking sites has coincided with a drop in traffic to web mail sites such as yahoo mail and hotmail. This has sparked discussion about the use of social networks for communication sparking of the demise of web based email. Obviously this is an overreaction, as tends to happen with the press, but it is an interesting point all the same. Where is the need for personal email accounts when you can be in touch with all your friends through myspace, facebook, or whichever else is the network of the moment. This led me to consider what are the limitations of social networks which could be the saving grace for web mail solutions? So I compiled the list below:

• Reach: although the social networks have huge user bases they are unlikely to cover everybody you know, yet most people will have a functioning email address. There is therefore likely to be at least a few people within your group of friends you cannot contact through your network of choice.
• Flexibility: you can write what you want in an email, and can attach any type of file you wish, making it a much more flexible solution than the networks. They are however catching up through the various plug ins and applications that are sprouting up daily.
• Privacy: emails are more private than wall post, although facebook has the facility to send private messages as well.
• Length of message: wall posts are more like the text messages with emails as the phone calls. more detail can be added and more information contained and explained, the phone call still isn’t dead despite the popularity of texts.

I’m sure there are more to add to the list but none that I can think of right now. It will be interesting to see if the trend continues though and what this means to the email portals. Falling usage must also results in a fall in advertising rates and available inventory??

I’ve decided to add a new feature to my blog for a little fun. You see, I’m a big fan of Yahoo answers, it’s interesting, useful, interactive and most of all, hilarious! There are some real comedians on the site and although it probably annoys the hell out of the people asking the questions, I find it highly amusing when I come across comedy answers to posted questions. So moving forward I am going to post some of the best of yahoo answers on my blog each Friday, just for giggles. Here are the first offerings:

Question - As a christian; how would you approach a homosexual?

Answer - from the rear of course!

Question - Since there is no marriage in heaven, do you think that we will lose the feelings for the opposite sex?

Answer - We all get 75 virgins! WOOOH!

Question - What is Hell Like?

Answer - its in northern england and its called crew

Answer - Warm most of the year. Windy in March. Great Mexican food. Great night life. Not a whole lot of high culture. Taxes are way too high. Nice people. Bring your English/Spanish dictionary.

Radiohead recently attempted to revolutionise the way music is sold by offering their latest album In Rainbows through the website, with the purchaser choosing how much they wanted to pay.  The minimum cost of which would be 45p for the handling fee.  Apparently of the 5000 responses they got to the survey of purchasers asking how much they paid a quarter admitted to being freeloaders and taking the album for the minimum price.  The average price paid for the standard album was £3.88, not bad really considering this figure is 862% above what they could have got away with paying.

But will this spark a trend for music sales? will other artists follow suit?  I remain unconvinced.   For a start the model only works through the artists own website, where the perception is that the money is going direct to the people who made the music.  It would never work for a retailer such as hmv as people would be much more inclined to pay the minimum if they thought that the “middle man” was taking a cut.

I do though see it as a good test of  honesty and perceived value.  I recently spoke to some people who refused to download free music from the internet as they felt that the artists had put in a lot of time and effort in producing it and so should be recorded through a real purchase.  These are the sort of people who undoubtedly paid a lot higher than the 45p minimum.  I also think that by giving people the option of choosing how much they pay you are tapping into their conscience and getting a real view of whether they are a “free-loader” or not.

Interesting to note that the album will get a full cd release as well and so radiohead were not pinning all hope on this model.  Maybe it was just a publicity stunt, who knows.

How much would I pay? I am not sure.  Certainly more than 45p, probably more like £5, that seems like a fair figure for a full album.  It will be interesting to see whether the trend actually does catch on and this is the model which revolutionises the music industry.