Business

Changes to business digitisation brings

Simply Hired, Job Site, Gets News Corp. Cash
News Corp continue their Internet-based investments by ~~chucking~~ jointly investing $13.5m into a jobs search engine company, Simply Hired Inc, with VC firm, Foundation Capita. Back in August, Simply Hired previously raised $3m in a Series B round.
Simply Hired has a different business model. Rather than solicit open job positions directly from potential employees, they gather job postings from a wide set of sites, including Monster, the Wall Street Journal, CareerBuilder, Hotjobs and craigslist. They currently make money from placing advertising next to the job search results.
Users can create searches for required jobs based on title, company name, location, or keywords. Once defined, jobs that pop into their system are altered to the users either via email or RSS.
Newspapers generally have been getting worried about their increasing losses from classified advertising, including job adverts.
Murdoch’s News Corp has been splashing the cash recently on a number of Internet business, the most high profile being MySpace (MySpace considered) for $580m.
Simply Hired News Corp
19 April, 2006
Europeans Love IM, Americans Not So Chatty
According to a new study by comScore Networks, 82 million people – that’s nearly half of the European online population – used IM applications to chat online during February.
Although impressive, Europe’s IM usage is dwarfed by messaging-crazy Latin America, where a massive 64 percent of the online population used IM during the same period.
Unusually, North Americans – a nation of people not exactly noted for their reluctance to chat incessantly – only registered 37 percent of the online population using IM.
Majestic Messenger
MSN Messenger was revealed to be the king of the IM applications, scooping up 61 percent of worldwide IM users.
In Latin America and Europe, Messenger ruled supreme, registering usage rates of 90 percent and 70 percent (respectively) of IM users.
Messenger also scored highly in Asia Pacific, grabbing 70 percent of IM users.
Things are a lot tighter in the highly competitive North American market, where MSN Messenger, AOL/Aim and Yahoo! Messenger battled it out to each grab between 27 percent and 37 percent of IM users in February.
Skype surges
Skype is seen as a growing contender (it’s our IM tool of choice), with the program now being used by 14 percent of IM users worldwide.
The VoIP/IM client application is proving to be a real hit in the Asia Pacific, where it has already garnered 26 percent of IM users, although it’s a different story in North America, where Skype can only claim 3 percent of the online population.
We love messaging
The study suggests that instant messaging has now become an integral part of people’s lives, with the 313 million worldwide users ~~wasting away precious work hours~~ increasing their productivity by staying online an average of about 6.3 hours a day.
comScore Networks
12 April, 2006
When Corporate Mashups Go Wrong: Chevy Tahoe
Companies are now starting to dip their toe into the world of Mashups/user-generated content – but when the user is generating it, the results might not always be what they expect or desire. We’ve seen a few examples of this today.
Uber-car maker Chevrolet – or their agencies – came up with a great wheeze. They’ve put tools on the Web to allow the worlds users remix and mash-up their latest Chevy Tahoe adverts.
It’s not hard to imagine the scene. The agency person, having hear from his ‘Geek’ source that mashups were ‘The Latest Thing’, over-enthusiasticly pitching it to Chevy
Amazingly the thing that they don’t appear to have noticed is that many people see Chevy as Uber in a couple of sense – the sheer size of their company and, importantly for this piece, in the sheer size of the cars on the road and fuel-guzzling nature.
Some witty wags have used the Chevy tools to create adverts mocking the over-sized cars, the nature of their advertising and the company generally.
Selection of spoof ads
Roll-up, roll-up get them while they’re fresh (and before they get taken down by those that be).
Where’s My Helicopter? – This mocks the unreachable locations that car companies put their cars in for adverts, then proceeds to question if a 4×4 car of this size is really needed when they are, on the whole, only used to drive to the shopping mall.
Global Warming – The sights of this spoof are a little more ambitious – asking why the USA reaction to the threat of Global Warming is to make and sell cars like the Chevy Tahoe.
Flowers – This one addresses the over-sized, aggressive nature of the car. Summary – Where have all of the flower gone? Who cares? My truck’s bigger than yours and I’ll crush you.
We love the idea of corporate tools being used against those who are paying for they development, hosting and bandwidth, but suspect that corporate number two who approaches this may take a different approach. This won’t of course stop those who are angered by this type of thing using their own footage to the same affect.
Expect people in the marketing department to get fired over this one. People who run companies like Chevrolet don’t like to be made to looks foolish. Perhaps if they moved to destroy the planet a little less they’d get a better reception from the world.
Thanks to Holy-Moly! for the pointer to the videos on this one.
7 April, 2006
Microsoft ‘World’s Most Valuable Brand’
Two new studies into branding have produced two very different results, with a UK study declaring Microsoft the strongest brand in the known universe, while research in the US saw consumers slapping Microsoft down to near-bottom of their ‘most trusted’ list.
Brand consultancy Millward Brown Optimor (MBO) rated companies by calculating the value their brand was expected to generate in the future.
Microsoft topped the list, with the study showing most consumers held positive feelings about the brand. Andy Farr, executive director at MBO commented, “When you look at what customers and consumers say to us, they do hold Microsoft in high regard.”
“They don’t love [Microsoft] like they love Google but they respect it,” he added just before his laptop crashed.
The survey results were based on a load of marketing guff that involved measuring buzzword-laded criteria like ‘brand momentum,’ ‘intangible earnings’ and ‘brand contribution,’ whatever all that means.
Tech companies hogged four of the top 10 global brand places with Vodafone grabbing the number one UK slot, while Google came in seventh overall for global brands and second for the tech sector,
Big-boy retailers also figured prominently, with Wal-Mart coming in at number six and Tesco notching up 30th place overall and number two in the UK).
According to the study, these are the top ten global brands (rated in $millions):
Microsoft Corporation ($62,039)
GE ($55,834)
Coca-Cola ($41.406)
China Mobile ($39,168)
Marlboro cigarettes ($38,510)
Wal-Mart ($37,567)
Google ($37,445)
IBM ($38,084)
Citigroup ($31.028)
Bose, Dell, and Apple Score High On Trust
Across the pond, a brand study by Forrester Research saw Bose, Dell and Apple Computer being declared as technology brands trusted by U.S. consumers, with users warily eying the likes of Toshiba, Hitachi, Microsoft, Gateway and LG.
Forrester surveyed 4,700 US households between September and October last year to find out how much they trusted 48 technology brands.
The results weren’t too encouraging for the industry, with the survey showing an across-the-board drop in trust in consumer computer and electronics brands – a trend continuing from 2003.
In the survey, only Apple and TiVo managed to register an increase in consumer trust between 2003 and 2005.
With Microsoft’s brand scraping in at a lowly 20th spot out of the 22 companies included in the poll, Forrester’s warned that Microsoft faces big a consumer defection risk.
With a deft turn of marketing-speak, Forrester analyst Ted Schadler observed that, “A decline in trust causes brand erosion and price-driven purchase decisions, which in turn correlates with low market growth.”
“Trust is a powerful way to measure a brand’s value and its ability to command a premium price or drive consumers into a higher-profit direct channel,” concluded Ted Schadler.
5 April, 2006
“In the near future, you will have 10,000 computers”: BT Futurologist
The quote isn’t quite accurate, but it makes the point. The words are (nearly) those of BT’s internal “tame futurologist” Graham Whitehead; and what he actually said was that you will be associated with 10,000 processors.
Whitehead’s job is to march around BT’s research facility at Martlesham Heath, near Ipswich (the facility formerly known as Adastral Park, but the name seems to be reverting to Martlesham) and tell the researchers what to study. A group of us met him on a visit to the facility where BT was showing off its vision of what IT can do to home, office, and other service providers like banks and doctors and chemists.
The fascinating thing about Whitehead was that he was the only part of the presentation to be an attempt to see the future. The rest of BT’s exhibition was (they emphasised this!) stuff you can actually buy. So the demonstration home had nothing in it you can’t go out and buy.
The future, however, is further away, and harder to guess: it’s Whitehead’s duty to provide the map for BT – and boy! does he do a good job. I just sat back and listened.
“The next ten years will see more changes in lifestyle than the previous hundred. We are moving towards the AORTA world – Always On Real Time Access – where everything BT does will be Internet Protocol over MPLS.”
“RFID? Don’t worry about being tracked down the street by RFID scanners. It will be your DNA that tracks you, because your VISA card will have your DNA on it, for biometric scanning, instead of the hologram it has today.”
“Mobile will go everywhere. BT’s biggest customers are the mobile networks. And the pattern will evolve along the lines of BT Fusion – a Bluetooth wireless phone which is also a cellphone, and which negotiates the best call rates for you every time you dial someone. The tipping point in our move to the mobile AORTA world, will come when nobody places calls any more. It won’t only be that my car will be able to converse with yours; it will be the point where they are connected anyway; no call needed, because both are always on.”
“The reason a car might talk to another car? Traffic. We won’t just know where the crashes are, so we can dodge them; we’ll have the car plan the route. It will know that it’s Saturday when I always go to see Granny, and it will map out the route before I even switch on the engine, and work out what other cars are doing and where the congestion will be.”
“Will it become anti-social to travel? By the year 2015, oil production will have peaked; oil will become a precious resource for the plastics industry, and travel for pleasure will reach the tipping point. People will expect to have the world brought to them, rather than having to go there.”
But will there be big surprises? He thinks so:
“Robots are coming. There is a Sumo robot. The Sony robot – now discontinued – is 19 inches high; it can look at symphony score and conduct orchestra, better than a human. But if it’s not selling, why is Sony wasting money on it? Because someone will have to push your wheelchair around the home in 30 years! It won’t be the little people who will push your wheelchair: we aren’t making enough of them. Instead, robots will be the cleaners, porters, intelligent wheelchairs, and other servants.”
And we’ll need them: “The latest baby has a better than 40% chance of reaching 150; it will be the result of stem cell research. There will be a window between the ages of 70-85 where some will get dementia; and if you don’t get dementia there, you will get through it.”
But the cost of energy will mean that today’s massive, hot processors will become unfashionable. “I see a lot of small distributed computers. You will be associated with 10,000 processors. Just for fun, I decided to investigate my car, and see how many computers it had, and I found 76 processors in my vehicle. So Intel will bring the clock speed down, bring the lines in from other processors. I think the total power of individual computers will go down, from now.”
HDTV? “Most of us won’t be able to see the difference, frankly. I can remember when a colleague retired, and bought himself the top-of-the-range hi-fi system, and was very proud of it; we all went around to listen. We all thought: ‘Awful mains hum!’ and it was. We got him to check his hearing; it turned out his ears levelled off at 300 Hz. But the problem is, if you buy a big TV set, HDTV will be all you can get.”
Spam? “It won’t be a problem, because it won’t be spam. It will be advertising precisely aimed at you. I’ll send you mail which will make you feel like you’re the only person in a group of one, and the most important possible person in that group.”
And what can’t the IT world do? “A pint of beer. I’ve been setting this challenge for 15 years now, and nobody can crack it. If you want a pint of beer, you’re going to have to get up and go get it.”
4 April, 2006
Virgin Mobile France Launches
Beardy rich bloke Richard Branson has picked up a baguette and waved it angrily at French telecom suppliers, accusing them of “ripping off” consumers as he launched his new Virgin Mobile service in France.
” In examining the French market we saw the bulk of people in France have been ripped off big-time,” table-thumped Branson at the media launch, before unveiling ambitious plans to recruit one million customers to Virgin Mobile in the first three years of operation.
Branson has teamed up with Europe’s grand fromage mobile retailer, Carphone Warehouse for the Virgin-branded venture, which will offer services through mobile phone operator Orange’s network.
The French market – long seen as one of Europe’s least competitive mobile markets – could prove highly profitable for Branson who said that pressure from regulators had gifted Virgin the opportunity to set up a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) in the country.
Branson’s Virgin Group were one of the early adopters of the MVNO concept in the UK, building the network into the UK’s fifth-largest mobile brand by customers, before exporting operations into the US, Canada and Australia.
France is currently dominated by its three network operators: Orange, Bouygues Telecom and SFR, all of whom have remained tight-lipped on the news of Virgin elbowing onto their turf.
They should be worried though, with Virgin’s rates set to undercut the competition with pre-paid services offered at a basic 0.42 euros a minute compared to the usual €0.48-0.55 rate.
To further tempt Frenchies, Virgin will be offering free SMS text to subscription customers signing up for 12 month deals (although Orange can review this later if its network subsequently becomes overloaded.)
Marketed and distributed through Carphone’s 200+ Phone House Stores and Virgin’s Megastores music stores, Branson is hoping to create a buzz in the younger market that will filter up to the crumblies.
“The marketing is aimed at young people because older people will buy what young people are buying, but young people won’t necessarily buy what older people are buying,” he commented.
NTL Deal set to finally go ahead
Elsewhere, NTL’s bid for Virgin Mobile – which has dragged on for an eternity – looks set to be sealed this week.
NTL are expected to announce that the Virgin Mobile board has accepted a revised offer – first rumoured in December last year – that will see Virgin’s mobile phone services added to to NTL’s ‘triple-play’ packages of voice, broadband Internet access and television.
Virgin Mobile
Virgin Mobile France
4 April, 2006
Mobiles Are Ruddy Annoying But Invaluable: Study
We didn’t think we needed a poll to find this one out, but a new poll in the States has found that just about everyone – including fellow mobile users – get annoyed by people talking loudly on their phones in public.
The AP-AOL-Pew poll questioned people’s attitudes towards mobile phones and although most declared their phones to be very useful things, nearly 90 per cent said that they encountered others being annoying on their phones.
In a fabulous act of self righteous denial, a mere 8 percent thought that their own public yakking could possibly be seen as sometimes rude too.
Hooked on handsets
The survey found that more than two-thirds of mobile users say they’d find it hard to be parted from their precious phones, while a hardcore 26 percent said they couldn’t imagine life without their mobile.
Half of mobile users say that they keep their phones permanently on, while seventy five percent say that they have used it in an emergency.
The convenience of mobile phones has its drawbacks too, with around twenty five percent complaining that they’re bothered by too many calls, and over a third of those interviewed moaning that their service bills were sometime “shocking.”
More worryingly, an idiotic 28 percent admitted to not driving a safely as they might because they were chatting on their mobile.
Multimedia is for da kidZ
Although most phone users stuck to the basics, annoying others with their public calls, growing feature sets are tempting users to fork out for phones with built-in cameras, MP3 players, games and Internet/e-mail access.
We’re not quite sure of the significance of this, but the survey found that “young adults and minorities” liked multimedia handsets best and were more likely than “older adults and whites” to text, take snaps, surf the web and play tunes on their phones.
Texting finally starts to take off in the States
Text messaging is nowhere near as popular in the States as it is in Europe and Asia, with a mere one-third of U.S. cell phone owners giving their keypads some texting action.
However, this text messaging may be set to cross over to the mainstream with two-thirds of American users between 18 and 29 year olds now using the service.
Not surprisingly, multimedia gizmos also found more favour with young adults, with over half using the camera functions on their phones, 47 percent playing games and 28 percent using the Internet.
Pew Research
3 April, 2006
Digital Music Sales In 2005 ‘Crazy’
New figures from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) reveal soaring global sales of digital music while overall music sales continue to decline. This in the same week that Gnarls Barkley and their musical ditty Crazy have become the first digital-only Number One in the UK Hit-parade, as we’d previously highlighted.
The IFPI reported record company revenues from digital sales nearly tripling from $400 million in 2004 to a massive $1.1 billion last year, with individual song downloads rising to 470 million units, up from 160 million.
Despite bumper digital sales, the IFPI said that global sales of music CDs and DVDs were down for the sixth consecutive year (down 3 percent), adding that burgeoning digital sales weren’t enough to offset the decline.
According to the IFPI, 618.9 million CDs were sold during 2005, substantially down 19 percent from the 762.8 million sold in 2001.
IFPI Chairman and Chief Executive John Kennedy pointed an accusing finger at online piracy as well as competition from other entertainment outlets and changes on the way punters get their music.
The growing single song download market (which accounted for 86 percent of purchases), has resulted in many listeners choosing to grab individual tracks rather than download entire albums.
The United States, Japan, Britain, Germany and France proved to have the strongest digital sales and were also the best performing markets overall.
“In Japan, digital has already made up for the decline in physical sales, and other markets should go this way,” commented Kennedy.
As we reported last week, the greater popularity of mobiles over PCs in Asia has resulted in far higher mobile music downloads. In fact, just 9 percent of consumers in Japan download music to their PCs compared to 65 percent in the US, Britain and Germany.
The biggest selling album of the year was “X&Y” by Coldplay, which could be heard being played – not too loudly, mind – in 8 million bedrooms, company cars and comfy living rooms.
Elsewhere, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) said that despite a bumper wholesale revenue of $7 billion, overall shipments of music products – including CD’s and digital albums and singles combined – fell 3.9 percent last year.
Mitch Bainwol, chairman and chief executive of RIAA boasted that illegal file-sharing on many popular online channels had been “held in check” as the industry continues its blitz on piracy.
International Federation of the Phonographic Industry
3 April, 2006
American Kids Losing Sleep Over Gadgets
American teens are getting far less kip they’re supposed to, and a new study points the finger of blame at electronic gadgets in bedrooms.
Boffins say adolescents should get nine hours of sleep a night, but a survey by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia found that 45 percent of middle and high school students were recording less than eight hours on a school night, with more than a quarter nodding off during lessons at least once a week.
Jodi A. Mindell, associate director of the Sleep Center at the Children’s said that computers, mobile phones, televisions, video games and other gadgets were all playing a part in keeping kids away from their slumbers.
“Those with four or more electronic devices in their bedroom were twice as likely to fall asleep in school,” she said.
The “Sleep in America” poll – which polled around 1,600 youths aged 11-17 and their caregivers – found that technological distractions were preventing kids from winding down and relaxing at the end of the day.
Back when we were kids (cue: Hovis music), we only had the option of listening to the radio or reading a book come bedtime, but American kids now have bedrooms positively buzzing with technological distractions.
The survey found that in the hour before bedtime kids would be kept wide awake watching television (76 percent), surfing the web/sending instant-messages (44 percent) or chatting on the phone (40 percent).
“Many teens have a technological playground in their bedrooms that offers a variety of ways to stay stimulated and delay sleep,” commented Mary Carskadon, director of the E.P. Bradley Hospital Sleep and Chronobiology Research Lab at Brown University.
“Ramping down from the day’s activities with a warm bath and a good book are much better ways to transition to bedtime,” she advised, adding that firmly upheld bed/wake times and TV-free bedrooms would all help kids get the kip the need.
Personally, we can’t imagine having a bedroom that wasn’t stuffed full of gadgets and gizmos but then we’re all, err, grown up. And tired.
Sleepfoundation.org
National Center on Sleep Disorders Research
29 March, 2006
eBay Opens Doors To Blue Peter Badge Cheats
The BBC are reporting that they are suspending a Blue Peter badge scheme. Why? Cheeky blighters are buying them on eBay and presenting them as if they ‘earned’ them and claiming the benefits.
Non-BBC readers may be confused as to the relevance of the Blue Peter badge. Blue Peter is a British institution. The late afternoon TV show for children, which every child in the UK has watched, awarded badges to children who hard work and appeared on the show. Back in the 70’s they were highly prized items – the sort of thing that people would place under their pillow when they slept.
In the thirty or so years since then they may have got a little slack with their distribution because people are now selling them on eBay. Heresy in the old days. It’s be like chucking out your Jim’ll Fix It badge.
This may not be news to owners of the hallowed Badge, but apparently Blue Peter has a deal with over 100 venues around the UK that gives free entry.
Some rotters have clearly come to learn this and have been pursuing on eBay. The £30-odd that they are paying for them more than balance the amounts of money they have saving by getting in free to the locations.
Having become aware of this, the BBC say that they have been forced in to reconsidering if the free access to venues will continue.
A spokesman said: “The BBC investigations unit has been monitoring eBay over the past few months and has noticed badges being sold in large numbers by individual sellers.”
Blue Peter
29 March, 2006