What’s next for BYOD?

http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/27/whats-next-for-byod/

This is a guest post by Cimarron Buser, vice president of business development at Apperian.

Many companies have begun to embrace the concept of “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD). This starts with the agreement that your company’s email, calendar, and contacts can be used on an employee’s personal device and you may reimburse the employee via a stipend. But this is the easy part.

The challenge begins when companies want to move business processes to mobile apps or enable the sharing of corporate data out to a mobile end-point. Now, security issues take a sharper focus, and the mobile device management (MDM) solution that might have been installed a few years ago that allowed IT to check off the box for compliance is not enough. Device wipe and restricting users to specific apps doesn’t work.

So, how do businesses provide real, usable, and fun (yes, fun is important) apps to employees while securing corporate data? There are many solutions pitched today, and while each approach offers benefits there is probably no “one size fits all” approach as new technology evolves.

The latest approach to gain buzz is “dual personality,” which can be seen in the recent BlackBerry announcements, and will be launched soon by Samsung with its KNOX initiative. VMWare, Enterproid, and others have solutions in the market, but the trend towards building in the dual persona into the hardware stack and OS is likely going to raise the stakes.

The challenge for these systems lies in the heterogeneous nature of mobile: you can’t expect every employee and user to use the same hardware or OS. Another challenge is that the dual personality model chafes against the user who has been conditioned (let’s just say “iPhoned”) to a simple, elegant model where all apps run seamlessly together in the same environment. The user never has to remember which mode they are in, and sending mail or making calendar appointments just work.

If the jury is out (both in terms of market adoption and technology approach) on the dual personality solution, what else can a business do? Another approach is to treat each app and its data as an individual, secure “container,” thus making sure that personal and business apps and data are separate. However, from the user viewpoint, the apps are easily accessible and the experience is familiar. There are several ways to do this, but the most prevalent is “app wrapping” where policies such as authentication, copy-and-paste restrictions, integrated VPNs, and data-at-rest encryption can be applied to any app with the click of a check box.

Adding to the fun is that beyond iOS and Android (still the dominant platforms when it comes to the new enterprise app ecosystem), we will see BlackBerry and Windows Phone entering the fray. Any solution that needs to be applied to all your company devices needs to play well across the board. This is an additional challenge to the dual persona model, where unless everyone is using the same technology it may not be feasible to have universal policies, and training and support costs increase. We sometimes forget why we’re all building apps for employees in the first place. It’s all about employee productivity, convenience, and ultimately ROI for the business.

Apps — and their security model — should be easy to use. User engagement should be encouraged, and include consumer-like features such as app rating, comments, crowd-sourcing for new ideas, and even the (future) ability to build your own app with corporate data. Ultimately, security issues should be handled in a way which is seamless and based on user roles.

We still need to deal with lost devices or the circumstances when an employee leaves the company. However, security policy must be combined with employee education and forward-thinking companies make sure employees buy into the solutions, and not try to do workarounds to get their jobs done because no solution is offered.

Businesses have a great opportunity today to make all their employees more effective with these fancy gadgets, and industry leaders have already seen multi-million dollar ROIs on mobility investments.

The good news is that enterprise mobility works.

Cimarron Buser leads Apperian’s products and marketing for enterprise solutions. He has worked in technology for over 20 years, providing creative and visionary leadership for products and services in the technology, web and mobile arena.

4 secrets for monetizing mobile apps across platforms

http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/27/4-secrets-for-monetizing-mobile-apps-across-platforms/

Joseph Vito DeLuca is marketing manager at mobile ad platform SponsorPay.

While mobile applications are one of today’s fastest growing digital sectors, many developers are continuing to struggle with finding monetary successes for their work. Then there are the few, that launch an app which yields a high ROI, but are then confronted with an even more daunting task of being successful across multiple platforms. Few developers have made a smooth transition from Android to iOS or vice versa. The select few that have crossed over prosperously have endured a number of hurdles on their path to mass distribution and efficient monetization. Here, we’ll examine the major roadblocks, look at a few successful cross-platform apps and best practices.

1. User acquisition strategies

The biggest difference between the two operating systems is that Apple doesn’t allow for incentivized installs within the in-app environment. They are very strict about maintaining the integrity of their top ranking apps lists. They have actually barred several developers from the App Store because of what they consider questionable distribution tactics.

The Android platform is a lot more flexible and thus a lot friendlier when it comes to distribution and monetization strategies. Developers are able to incentivize installs in order to move up in the app rankings. Where iOS has a distinct advantage is that it only has one piece of hardware, where the Android platform is on several different devices from several manufacturers. Because of this, it is a lot more difficult to develop an app on Android compared to iOS.

2. Retention rates

Although it may be easier to acquire users on Android, findings point out that it’s easier to retain users on iOS. Findings from Localytics tell us that retention rates are 52% higher on iOS than they are on Android. Furthermore, 35% of iOS users opened an app more than 10 times, compared to 23% on Android.

Also adding to higher retention rates found on iOS is the fact the iPhone itself has a 94% retention rate to just 47% on Android devices. When users stick with the same phone or at least same line of phone, they are far more likely to transfer or re-download preexisting apps.

3. Best practices

The likes of Electronic Arts, OutFit7, Nordeus, and Creative Mobile have all had top-grossing apps on both iOS and Android with titles including Talking Tom Cat, Drag Racing, Top Eleven, and Real Racing. They were successful because of their ability to understand each operating system and their ability to devise not only efficient user acquisition strategies, but also effective retention and engagement triggers.

Creative Mobile was able to monetize its Drag Racing game by leveraging value-exchange advertising. They implemented a customized offer feed and offer banners that gave users the opportunity to engage with ads and trial other apps in exchange for their virtual currency, Respect Points. Through this tactic, they were able to double in-app revenues on its way to becoming one of the highest grossing apps of all-time while also rising up the iOS charts.

A newly emerging user-acquisition tactic is the use of app trailers, which highlight the key features and then give users the opportunity to install the app. This is especially useful on iOS, as only a completed video view is required for the user to receive the reward, thus circumventing the incentivized install ban. This leverages the growing mobile video sector. More than 25 million mobile owners stream at least 4 hours of video per month, as mobile video rises at a compound annual growth rate of 28% over the next 5 years, according to a study by Dancast.

4. Trigger happy developers

One of the biggest pitfalls for many publishers is that they don’t consider user retention and engagement during development. The most successful games are the ones built with timely in-game triggers that function on both platforms, keeping users both engaged in their current session and coming back and opening the app frequently and consistently.

A prime example of an app with great gaming mechanics is MADFINGER Games’ first-person zombie shooter, Dead Trigger. Users are automatically rewarded for logging in daily to the app with gold to be used to purchase additional items and with casino chips that can be used in a slot machine, giving players the opportunity to earn additional rewards. Furthermore, additional daily quests are presented to give users the chance to earn additional cash and experience points.

Having effective in-game triggers can also have a direct impact on in-app purchases (IAP). Imangi Studios’ Temple Run 2 does a great job leveraging this opportunity. When a user’s run has come to an end from falling, running into something, etc., an opportunity is presented to use gems which revives the character and prolongs the run. If the user doesn’t have any gems, they still have the opportunity to obtain them by making a direct payment right on the spot. This can be a very tempting proposition for someone about to reach a new high score or build upon a newly reached high score.

Although monetization is one of the biggest obstacles to success for freemium apps, the market is certainly ripe with opportunity. By incorporating the appropriate tactics — both in technical development and business development — users can effectively and efficiently be both acquired and monetized.

Will Wearable Computers Make Our Tech Addictions Even Worse?

http://readwrite.com/2013/03/27/wearable-computers-technology-addiction

If you think we're hooked on social status updates now, just wait. As connected computing starts to shift from our pockets to wearable devices like Google Glass and Apple's rumored iWatch, the flood of messages and bite-sized digital content is going to become even more relentless.
Just like smartphones, these devices will have a transformative impact on things like communication, navigation and productivity. But some are concerned that, like their pocket-sized counterparts, wearables could increase our reliance on technology in unhealthy ways.

The First Step: Admitting We Have A Problem

It's now beyond debate that owners of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets often exhibit something resembling an addiction to those gadgets. It may not be as serious as something like alcohol or crystal meth, but it's a type of dependence nonetheless. Sure, some of the press coverage of this topic may be overblown, but the science supporting the existence of widespread smartphone addiction keeps piling up. If that's not convincing enough, just look around.
A few weeks ago, I was waiting for a table in a crowded restaurant. As I sat on the bench, I couldn't help but notice the scene next to me: An entire family - mother, father and three kids - were all sitting in total silence, each of them staring intently into little glowing screens. Not once over the course of several minutes did any of them look up from their devices or say a word. Of course, I only noticed this family of smartphone zombies because, for once, I wasn't glued to my own phone.
Scenes like this are incredibly common these days. Sometimes, they're short-lived and innocent. In some cases, relationships, productivity and mental health can become strained. Evidently, we haven't yet figured out how to best fit these amazing little computers into our lives. While we've had no trouble discovering all kinds of beneficial uses for them, many of us have a hard time knowing when not to use them.
What makes us think we're prepared to wear computers on our faces and wrists?
That's precisely the question some psychologists are asking. Larry Rosen is a research psychologist at California State University and author of iDisorder, a book about the psychological impacts of technology, particularly as our reliance on it increases.
"We are already so distractible, checking in with our technology all day long," says Dr. Rosen. "When we don't have to reach into our pockets or our purses, we will be even more enmeshed and face even more obsession and compulsion."
With wearable devices, checking messages and updates not only becomes physically easier, but it will also be less noticeable to those around us. For human beings, pulling a small rectangle-shaped device out of our pockets and interacting with it is a relatively new behavior. Looking down at our watches is not, and thus it's less conspicuous. Sure, it would still be obvious and unusual if I were to look at my watch dozens of times in an hour, not to mention periodically swipe its touch screen. But by even slightly reducing the physical barrier to interacting with the digital world, we're ensuring we'll do it more.

Mainlining The Internet Directly Into Our Eyeballs

Head-mounted computers are a little different. For one, they're not intended for everybody. Not yet, anyway. When Google Glass first hits the market, we'll know (and probably disapprove) if somebody is wearing it at the dinner table. Early Glass users won't be able to use them whenever and wherever they please. But when they do use it, they'll be developing new digital habits. Instead of compulsively checking Facebook on their phones, they'll be able to mainline status updates and notifications directly into their eyeballs.
For awhile, the obvious design of products like Glass will limit their use, and thus curtail whatever disruptive effects they might have. But what happens when head-mounted computers become more seamlessly designed into normal glasses frames? Eventually, we'll have connected contact lenses. Hopefully we'll have enough time before their arrival to figure out some of the glaring social and psychological issues these technologies raise.
In the meantime, there's plenty to be excited about. As Sarah Rotmann Epps outlined recently, wearable devices can be hugely beneficial to our lives, especially if they're designed with our brains' limitations in mind.  And while Google Glass raises a number of weird social questions, there are lots of very compelling use cases for the device.
It's like any major advance in technology: There are going to be issues. The tech is going to evolve more rapidly than laws, etiquette or certainly the human brain itself. The era of wearable computing is coming regardless of how ready we are.

More New Androids Than Babies, And Other Surprising Mobile Facts [Infographic]

Smartphones are in fact taking over the world. An infographic from Web-application monitor service New Relic offers some surprising statistics about the mobile landscape.
For example, every day more than 1.3 million Android devices are activated — which is way more than the 300,000 babies born daily. Users now spend more time each day surfing the web or on their mobile apps than they do watching television.
There are more than a billion smartphones in use around the world, and age is no barrier — teens, adults and seniors are all well represented among their users.

Infographic courtesy of New Relic

Com2Us rides the Kakao mobile games wave and expands to the U.S.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/22/com2us-rides-the-kakao-mobile-games-rocket-and-expands-to-the-u-s/

Com2Us is one of those companies that doesn’t come to mind when you think about games. But the Korean mobile game company doubled its market value in 2012 to more than $500 million, and it’s successfully expanding into other markets, including the U.S.

In South Korea, Com2Us has hit celebrity status. Jiyoung Park [above], who cofounded the mobile game company while she was a student in college, is one of the best known female CEOs in Korean history. And the company is starting to benefit from games that are available on fast-growing mobile messaging networks such as Kakao Talk in South Korea. Com2Us has five games on Kakao, and they have become the company’s biggest titles. It also has two titles on Japan’s similar Line service.

“On our own platform, it took us five to six months to grow a game to 1 million daily active users,” Park said in an interview with GamesBeat. “On Kakao, it takes only two weeks to one month to get to a million users. The market is really changing.”

The top games on Kakao Talk (particularly on Android) are generating $1 million to $2 million a day in revenue, just in the Korean market alone, and that’s why 95 percent of the revenue on Google Play in Korea now comes from games. Japan’s Line and China’s We Chat are also taking off. The question is whether this new craze for mobile games is limited to Asia, or it could take off here too. If it does, then game developers will have a powerful way to get their games discovered. That’s a huge problem in an age of app stores with hundreds of thousands of competing titles.

Park said that the growth of Kakao Talk reminds her of the growth of Cyworld, which preceded Facebook as a major social network. Such networks are a great way for game developers to get more users, as friend recommendations are trusted and a great way to spread word of mouth about a game. But Facebook discovered that users hate getting too much spam from games, and it moved to limit it on its platform. That slowed the growth of games, but it gave piece of mind to Facebook’s non-gamers. Kakao and Line may run into the same thing, but Kakao already limits the number of game invites.

Multiple game companies are benefiting from Kakao’s growth, which reaches about 50 million people. That’s not a huge number, but it is a very active market. In January, five Kakao titles were in the top 10 revenue generators on Google Play, even though not all of those titles is ranked in the top 10 games in terms of downloads. The games are light, with a lot of gifting that introduces new players to the games. The popularity of these games is making the cost of acquiring users lower. But the content is curated, so that it isn’t available to every game maker, Park said. In Japan, the market is dominated by “battle card” games, like GungH0 Entertainment’s Puzzle & Dragons. NHN’s Line dominates there, but DeNA and Gree are setting up competing services.

One of the keys to the growth is that the mobile messenger services access your contacts, which are people that you know. It contacts them without using expensive text messages. By contrast, the U.S. doesn’t have a dominant messenger service here. The closest equivalent might be logging into Facebook on your iPhone.

The mobile messenger games are the latest craze for Com2Us, but this company is not a flash in the pan. Park started the firm in 1998 (with college friends) in the days of WAP phones, and the company went public in 2007. It launched its first smartphone games in December, 2008. It has 500 employees, including six in the U.S. It has offices in Korea, Japan, and China. Com2Us has more than 60 games on the market, and it is launching a graphics-heavy golf game in the U.S. The games generate 35 million monthly active users for Com2Us, including three million subscribers.

Park realizes that the Korean market is small on the global stage. While Koreans spend money, they will hit limits at some point. So that’s why it is important for Com2Us to grow in the U.S. market and figure out how to get people to behave the same way in the here.

“We want people to play more games in the U.S.,” said Don Lim, general manager for Com2Us in the U.S. “It is a crucial market here. The cultural backgrounds are different, but we will make games from the bottom up to be suitable for the market here.”

One of the keys is upping the quality on 3D graphics for recent titles on golf and snowboarding. That means it is taking more upfront investment to make games, but the titles are still making use of freemium models such as free-to-play with virtual goods sales. Right now, all game development takes place in Korea, but U.S.-born developers are making contributions to the games. One of Com2Us’s tower defense games hit No. 2 for top-paid titles in the U.S. In the U.S., Park said her company will launch 20 games this year. Over time, Com2Us will publish more games made by other developers.

Overall, Park’s ambition is to make the company more relevant on the global stage of gaming.

Massive Interactive targets North America in its quest to rule IPTV

http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/13/massive-interactive-north-america/

How is a startup that’s been around for 16 years going to reinvent the IPTV market in North America? For Massive Interactive, it’s by offering content owners a simple way to push media across a variety of devices with a single app.

The Sydney, Australia- and London-based company is now targeting North America after developing its technology for years and landing some major clients internationally (including the BBC, Sky Television, and Telstra). Massive Interactive announced today that it’s hired Alexander Drosin — previously president of Lorne Michael’s Broadway Video Enterprises — as its North American president, and also opened offices in New York City.

“We’ve kind of taken a very slow and grassroots approach to developing business here,” said Ron Downey, the chairman and chief executive of Massive Interactive, in an interview with VentureBeat. “We’re focused on tier 1 clients [in North America].”

So far, Massive Interactive says it has been in discussions with major U.S. telecommunications companies, studios, TV networks, and more. The company will be announcing its partner deals over the next few weeks, Downey says.

The company has been working in digital interactivity since the CD-ROM heavy days of the ’90s. It was also one of the pioneers of touchscreen interfaces and content distribution for international airlines in the early 2000s. That lengthy experience has paid off for Massive Interactive now that we’re all relying so heavily on touchscreen devices.

Massive Interactive’s core product is the Massivision framework, a service that companies can use to build a single application for their content that’s also easy to distribute to a variety of different devices. It’s a good solution for studios and content owners who want to offer their libraries digitally but have no experience with building or maintaining digital stores. Basically, it easily enables “TV Everywhere” — access to their content on just about any device.

Downey mentioned that one of its clients managed to run both their child-friendly and adult content from within the same app. The consumer only sees the content they want, and the client only has to worry about managing a single app.

“In an evolving and chaotic industry arena where the traditional models for the distribution and consumption of entertainment are being turned on their heads, there are a lot of silver bullet claims by technology providers,” Downey said in a statement today. “There is no silver bullet yet for multiscreen IPTV service delivery, but there are elegant and efficient solutions for large enterprises.”

Even though it’s 16 years old, the company hasn’t raised any funding yet — something that seems downright alien when we consider the current state of startup funding. Downey describes his business as a “classic bootstrapper.” It also helped that operating a company was fairly cheap in Australia. Massive Interactive eventually opened up a major office in London, which helped it gain a foothold in the European IPTV space.

Read more at http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/13/massive-interactive-north-america/#STgsTDDAP3OWD8wa.99

Adobe Closes BrowserLab, Blames Mobile Platform Rise

http://readwrite.com/2013/03/14/adobe-closes-browserlab-blames-mobile-platforms

When future historians look back and try to determine the exact moment when the personal computer and desktop form factor started to decline, there will be a lot of pointing at Jan. 27, 2010 - the day Steve Jobs announced the iPad. In truth, the downward spiral isn't marked by one event, but a lot of little incidents that mark the trail.

On March 13, Adobe unexpectedly added a chapter to the story of the fading of the PC, when it announced that it would be closing down its BrowserLab service effective… March 13.

The closure was as surprising as it was abrupt. BrowserLab enabled developers and web designers to test their work on different desktop browsers and operating systems, to help ensure cross-platform uniformity in look and operation.

In a statement to users on the BrowserLab blog, Bruce Bowman, Sr. Product Manager Edge Tools & Services and the Adobe BrowserLab Team, cited the popularity of mobile platforms as the big reason for BrowserLab's deactivation.

"When we originally launched BrowserLab as a free service back in 2009, our customers were struggling with testing their web content across desktop browsers and platforms. Since then with the growth of the importance of mobile devices and tablets, the landscape has changed dramatically. Because of this shift, we have seen the usage of BrowserLab drop over the past year while at the same time our engineering team has been focusing on solving this new challenge with new solutions.

"Due to this, we will be shutting down the Adobe BrowserLab Service effective immediately," Bowman added.

The resources BrowserLab must have taken up for Adobe must have been significant, for them to want to retask their team to focus on mobile development. Adobe has long been a strong presence in web design, desktop or otherwise, so it seems odd for them to abruptly drop even an ancillary service like this. While no one would argue that desktop is in decline, it's not completely going to go away.

An unspoken reason here may also be the way major browsers use rolling release schemes, where updates happen transparently and rapidly. Keeping up with those many different browser releases may have been too much of a challenge for Adobe, especially if is focused on delivering a similar service for mobile developers with its Edge Inspect product.

BrowserLabs users won't be left in too much of a lurch: Bowman specifically pointed out BrowserStack and Sauce Labs as two viable alternatives to BrowserLab.

In the grand scheme of desktop these days, I suspect the departure of BrowserLabs will create little more than a ripple within the development community. But it is one more signpost on the shift from desktop to mobile, and a potential harbinger to developers focused on the desktop that their tools and services may one day disappear.

St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York City 2013.

St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York City 2013.
New York City was a sea of green as hundreds of thousands of people lined the 42-block route on Fifth Avenue, where people waved Irish flags and cheered as soldiers and police officers passed.

 

St. Patrick's Day Parade 2013 in New York

The New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade is not only the largest St. Paddy’s parade in the entire world, it’s also the oldest, having been an annual NYC event since the 1760s. As in, since before the U.S. was even a country.
Held this year on the Saturday before St. Patrick’s, The New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade route extends for 1.5 miles down 5th Avenue in Manhattan. It usually takes five-hours for the entire parade procession to complete the route, and is always led by the 69th Infantry Regiment.
Following in tow, New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade marchers include bands, firefighters, military and police groups, social and cultural clubs, county associations, and more, all creating a procession line of more than 150,000 people.
The number of marchers alone is impressive, though this pales in comparison to the two million New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade spectators who routinely line 5th Avenue to watch everyone amble by.
If the parade is your main event, be sure to get up before dawn and head for the route to get a good spot or you’ll be standing for a long long time. If you’re mostly there for the citywide party, head for the bars in the 50s along 2nd Avenue for a celebration that goes late into the next morning. Try to get there as early as you can (some people even skip the parade all together) because by afternoon the bars will already have lines going out the door.

Samsung Galaxy S4 launch in New York City

March 14 2013, After the showstopping launch event at Radio City Music Hall in New York City for the new Samsung Galaxy S4.

10 Crazy Job Interview Mistakes People Actually Made

CREDIT: Interview Panel image via Shutterstock View full size image

Answering cell phone calls and appearing disinterested are surefire ways to make the wrong impression during a job interview, but new research shows that's just the tip of the inappropriateness iceberg when it comes to how some job-seekers are missing their mark.
In addition to highlighting the most common interview mistakes, which include texting during the interview, dressing inappropriately, chewing gum and talking badly about past employers, a new CareerBuilder study also reveals some of the most unusual interview experiences reported by human resources professionals. Among them:
·         The candidate brought a "how to interview" book with him to the interview.
·         The candidate asked, "What company is this again?"

·         The candidate put the interviewer on hold during a phone interview. When she came back on the line, she told the interviewer she had a date set up for Friday.
·         The candidate wore a Boy Scout uniform and never told interviewers why.
·         The candidate talked about promptness as one of her strengths after showing up 10 minutes late.
·         On the way to the interview, the candidate passed, cut off and flipped his middle finger at a driver who happened to be the interviewer.
·         The candidate took off his shoes during the interview.
·         The candidate asked for a sip of the interviewer's coffee.
·          When a candidate interviewing for a security position wasn't hired on the spot, he painted graffiti on the building.
·         Candidate was arrested by federal authorities during the interview when the background check revealed the person had an outstanding warrant.
·         Candidate told the interviewer she wasn't sure if the job offered was worth "starting the car for."
"It may seem unlikely that candidates would ever answer a cellphone during an interview, or wear shorts, but when we talk to hiring managers, we remarkably hear these stories all of the time," said Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources for CareerBuilder.
Lucky for interviewers, she notes that standing out from the crowd – in a good way – is typically a bigger issue for most job-seekers than avoiding a big mistake.
[Top 10 Most Outrageous Late Excuses]
Haefnersaid a successful interview is a presentation that marries the job-seeker's personality and professional experience to the needs of the hiring manager and the company. She recommends the following interview tips:
·         Do your research: Before the interview, research the company online by looking at their press room for recent company news, the "About Us" section for information about the company culture, and the list of products and services so you are familiar with all they do.
·         Keep it upbeat: During the interview, stay positive and avoid bad-mouthing previous employers.
·         Prepare examples and ideas: Bring your resume to life by practicing specific anecdotes that highlight your accomplishments and the ways in which you dealt with challenges in your past roles. Be prepared to share ideas of what you would bring to the position.
The research was based on surveys of more than 3,000 hiring managers and human resources professionals.
Chad Brooks is a Chicago-based freelance writer who has worked in public relations and spent 10 years working as a newspaper reporter and now works as a freelance business and technology reporter. You can reach him at chadgbrooks@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @cbrooks76.

http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2083-job-interview-mistakes-avoid.html

How Google Makes Money from Mobile

http://quibb.com/links/how-google-makes-money-from-mobile-visualized/view

Google's Mobile Strategy

We've highlighted and graded 20 Google mobile products based on quality, market adoption, value to users, value to marketers, originality, and other factors. As more internet users shift from desktop to mobile devices, Google will continue to gain valuable advertising revenue and build increasingly more innovative mobile products.

Google Mobile Location Extensions

Google’s mobile location extension ad feature lets AdWords users add a business address, phone number, and map to advertisements. Users benefit in that they get all the essential data they need without clicking through to another page. Maps and locations are key for mobile users on the move, so the map extensions feature is especially beneficial when users want to see how close a nearby business is to their present location.

Google Call Extensions

Google’s Click-to-Call feature allows businesses to add a clickable phone number to their ads that appear on mobile devices. Users can click the call button and have the number automatically generated onto their mobile device, making it easy to connect with businesses. The Click-to-Call ad extension is also great for advertisers as it increases clicks considerably – ads with the click-to-call extension see increased click-through-rates of 6-8%.
The Click-to-Call extension is especially handy for local businesses. Since mobile users are often looking for a local business to solve an immediate issue, the Click-to-Call button enables local businesses to connect with users quickly and see if the business can meet the user’s need.

Google Offers For Mobile

Google Offer for Mobile provides discounts that can be redeemed online or at store locations. Google Offers is Google’s version of other popular deal sites like Groupon and Living Social, enabling users to easily redeem deals by using discounts stored on their mobile device.
As with other deal sites, businesses must pay a certain amount to Google for posting their deal. Businesses who use deal sites like Google Offers can gain a lot of brand awareness and bring in new customers. However, sometimes the pay offs aren’t worth the hassle; advertisers risk a huge, temporary influx of non-returning customers who only visit for the deal. If businesses aren’t ready to handle the increase in orders, they can potentially go into the red trying to hire more workers and increase product volume to meet temporary demand.

Google AdMob

Google AdMob is Google’s mobile advertising platform that monetizes the app industry. While AdMob infuriates users with constant add pop-ups and game interruptions, it’s what enables users to get games for free; AdMob enables developers to generate revenue from ads that normally would be obtained by pricing the app.
AdMob is used by advertisers to promote their app within other existing apps. Free apps generate revenue by letting other apps advertise in-game. Either way, Google takes a cut.

Google Maps Mobile

Google Maps is one of Google’s flagship mobile products, setting the bar for mobile map and GPS apps. Google Maps boasts smooth, reliable, and fast directions for driving by car, public transportation, or walking on foot.
Google Maps has some great added features, such as indoor maps, 3D maps, street view, and maps available to download for offline viewing. Additionally, Google Maps lets users search for nearby local businesses.
Google Maps improves the local search experience with geo-targeted ads, which benefits advertisers who are looking to promote their local business. Considering that 1 in 4 Google searches are related to local, Google Maps is key in making it easy for users to find nearby solutions to meet their needs.

Google Now For Mobile

Google Now lets users customize their experience by selecting cards that categorize which subjects that are important to them, such as music, weather, sports, etc. Google Now also lets users input their daily commute, and Google Now can offer alternatives during high-traffic times. Google Now seeks to answers a user’s question before they ask, by knowing what is important to that individual user and delivering real-time data to assist them.
Google Now is still in its early stages, but it has a lot of potential. With a customizable card system and Siri-like voice commands, Google Now aims to serve as a user’s one-stop app for all the important things happening in a user’s day.

Google+ Local For Mobile

Google+ Local makes it easy for users to locate nearby cafes, restaurants, and shops that are highly rated by the Zagat rating system. Google+ Local isn’t really all that different from Yelp or other location-focused apps, but it does have the nifty option of seeing nearby locations recommended by friends in your Circles. This would be a lot more handy if people actually used Google+; right now there isn’t much activity, but that could change in the future.
If advertisers want to increase their chances of showing up on the Google+ local app, it’s essential to fill out a Google Places profile. Google+ Local also allows for sponored search results through AdWords, which will increase the likelihood of being found through the Google+ Local search.

Google Play Books

Google Play Books is Google’s e-reader app, letting users read ebooks on mobile devices. While it has some nice features like a built-in dictionary and the ability to sync bookmarks across devices, it doesn’t do much to set it apart from competing e-reader apps like Kindle.

Google Wallet For Mobile

Google Wallet merges smartphones and purchase payment methods to simplify online and in-store shopping in an entirely new way. Google Wallet lets users store credit cards, debit cards, gift cards, and loyalty cards on the secure Google cloud severs. Users can then access and pay with these cards by bringing up the Google Wallet app and tapping their phone on an NFC terminal at checkout.
Google Wallet is a great app that does a lot to modernize traditional payment options, but its lack of user adoption and the scarcity of NFC terminals keep Google Wallet from becoming a true success.

Google Voice For Mobile

Google Voice lets users take control of their voicemail by enabling free text messages, customized voicemail, and voicemail text transcripts. Users also have the option to make cheap international calls with a Google number. Google Voice has additional features like call forwarding and call recording, but those require a paid account.

Google Mobile Search

Google Mobile Search brings the Internet’s number one search engine to mobile devices. Google Mobile search makes conducting mobile searches easy, and for advertisers that means more ad impressions and clicks.

Google Shopper For Mobile 

Google Shopper for Mobile assists users in discovering products and making purchasing decisions. Users can compare brick and mortar prices against online prices, read product reviews, examine products details, and more.
Google Shopper is also capable of recognizing products by cover art, barcode, voice and text search, powered by Google Goggles technology. It’s a nifty app for the smartphone shopper.

Google Goggles For Mobile

Google Goggles is a remarkable image-recognition app that introducers users to visual search technology. Users can snap a photo of a physical object, and Google retrieves information about the image. Google Goggles can offer historical information on landmarks, translate foreign menus, and recognize books, CDs, and artwork. Currently Google Goggles works best on 2D objects, but as this technology continues to grow, we can expect Google Goggles to become even more sophisticated.

The Mobile YouTube App

Google’s Mobile YouTube App transforms the world’s most popular video sharing site into an app for mobile devices. Currently, 25% of YouTube’s traffic comes from mobile devices, with mobile video views increasing 300% in 2012.
YouTube isn’t just a win for users – Google benefits tremendously from YouTube through video ads. The new TrueView video ad format, which lets users skip ads after 5 seconds, has helped boost YouTube ad quality, encouraging advertisers to create ads viewers actually want to watch.

Google Mobile App Store: Google Play

Google Play is Google’s one-stop mobile store for purchasing apps, movies, ebooks, music, etc. These purchases can be shared across mobile devices and downloaded from the Google cloud.

Google Android OS

Google Android OS is Google’s Linux-based open source operating system for mobile devices. It has been the world’s most widely used smartphone platform as of 2010. Android offers users a “direct manipulation” interface for smart, natural phone use. Android’s open source code and permissive licensing allows device manufacturers, wireless carriers, and developers to adjust, customize, and distribute the platform freely.
Remarkably, Android has a worldwide smartphone market share of 75%. Android users are also more likely to interact with other Google products like Google Chrome and AdWords ads.

Google's Motorola Devices

Google bought out Motorola in 2012, combining Motorola’s existing mobile devices with Google’s popular Android software. Google initially wanted Motorola for its mobile technology patents, which would give Google power in the increasingly vicious patent wars. However, under the FTC settlement, Google was forced to allow competitors access to the patents Google spent big money to obtain, which basically was $12.5 billion flushed down the drain for Google.
While this was a blow to Google, there is little doubt it will recover, especially with Google’s rumored iPhone-killing “X-Phone” on the horizon.

Google Chrome Mobile

Google Chrome Mobile is a mobile internet browser that makes it easy for users to surf the web on a mobile device. The Google Chrome Mobile browser brings some of the original browser’s most popular features to mobile, such as tabs and incognito mode. Users also have the ability to sync bookmarks across Chrome browsers. Ultimately, Chrome makes a better mobile web browsing experience.

Google Glass

Google Glass is Google’s research and development program to create augmented reality eyeglasses. The eyeglasses work similar to a smartphone, letting users access the internet browser, camera, maps, calendar, and other apps by voice commands.
The demo videos for Google Glass seem like something that could only be imagined in futuristic fantasy films, but Google Glass will soon be a reality; the first set of augmented reality glasses, the Explore Edition units, are in the process of being approved by the FCC. These first editions will be for developers’ eyes only, but if things go well, don’t be surprised to find them on consumer shelves in the not-so-distant future.

Facebook revamps site, tweaks mobile apps

http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/07/tech/social-media/new-facebook-news-feed/index.html

By Heather Kelly, CNN updated 7:34 PM EST, Thu March 7, 2013 | Filed under: Social Media

The biggest new feature in the news feed is the option to filter posts by category. Users can view only updates from friends or the latest from the pages they follow.

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• Facebook has redesigned the news feed to fill more of the main page
• Web version of Facebook will look much more like the mobile app
• New categories have been added for music and photos
• Update will begin rolling out Thursday; revised apps are coming in the next few weeks

(CNN) -- Facebook wants to cut clutter.

The social media site, which has more than 1 billion users, on Thursday announced a newly redesigned news feed that blows up photos and visual content, and adds categories that focus on specific types of content. The Web version of the social network now looks much more like the mobile apps, which are also getting a revamping.

Facebook announced the changes during a media event at its headquarters in Menlo Park, California. The new Web version will roll out slowly to users starting Thursday, and updated iOS and Android apps will be available in the coming weeks.

Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg compared the revamped feed to a local newspaper and the new channels to the traditional sections, such as sports and business, you'd find there.

Facebook unveils redesigned news feed

"I think that there's this important and social place in this world for this customized newspaper," Zuckerberg said.

He didn't note the irony of comparing Facebook to an industry that his site and others are marginalizing.

The news feed is the first, and sometimes only, page people see when they log on to the Facebook website or fire up a Facebook mobile app. The nerve center of the Facebook experience, the news feed fills the middle of this home screen with updates, photos, articles and other content and activity from your friends, such as likes and app updates. Interspersed among that somewhat-chronological content are posts from pages you follow and targeted ads.

The main page, which Facebook is calling the "front page" to go with its newspaper metaphor, is adding categories so people can look at a more narrow feed of specific types of content as an alternative to the all-in-one view. There are views for all friends, most recent, close friends, music, photos, games and following.

Photos will show every single image your friends post as well as the photos posted by the pages you follow, including anything shared to Facebook from Instagram. The music channel will show a combination of nearby concerts, feeds from musicians you follow and the songs friends are listing to with third-party apps such as Spotify. The channels will appear on the mobile apps and Web versions of Facebook.

"Everyone's going to start on the front page like they do today. This just gives people more power to dig into the topics they care about," Zuckerberg said.

The individual elements that populate the news feed have been redesigned to fill the page better, the company maintains. Text is taking a back seat to visual content, which now makes up almost 30% of the content in the news feed, according to Zuckerberg. Photos, videos and albums are bigger. Shared articles show a bigger image and larger summary along with a logo for the publisher. Content in the feed about individuals and pages will show a little slice of their timeline, including their cover photo and a button to add them as a friend or to like the page. Maps and posts for third-party apps such as Pinterest have also been cleaned up.

Previously, the news feed occupied less than 40% of the real estate on the Facebook home page, according to Julie Zhuo, Facebook's director of design. To cut down on clutter and give the feed more room to breathe, navigation elements on the left have been slimmed down to a narrow black column of icons, similar to the mobile interface.

One thing that's not changing is the algorithm that decides what posts are displayed in a feed, which has received some criticism. Zuckerberg defended the practice of not showing a full and complete chronological feed of all content, saying people benefit from more important content, such as major life events, being given a more prominent place in their feeds.

The filters might be great for users, but they could have a negative effect on companies that have sunk money into promoting their pages and gathering fans, said one analyst. Those fans can switch to a more narrow feed of just their friends (or music content or photos) that doesn't include brand pages, potentially making it more difficult for companies to reach their followers.

"It's going to continue to erode the value of companies having Facebook pages and fans," said Forrester analyst Nate Elliott. "Facebook is walking a really fine line, they're not providing enough value."

Ads will still be featured on the friends-only feeds, so companies and brands that want to reach people who switch to those views can by buying advertising from Facebook. Elliot says this could be interpreted as a "bait and switch" by marketers.

Ads -- which are included in the redesign -- are Facebook's primary source of income. The company made $4.2 billion off advertising in 2012, which accounted for 82% of the social network's total revenue, according to Engadget. Most of that ad money comes from the Web version of Facebook, and 23% was from ads on mobile devices.

The company may get money from advertisers, but it needs to keep the users who click on those ads engaged, active and happy on the network.

5 Socially Unacceptable Things You're Going To Do With Google Glass

http://readwrite.com/2013/03/11/google-glass-privacy-creepiness

John Paul Titlow posted 2 hours ago

The nerds are so excited. Our Internet-augmented, face-computer-wearing future is just over the horizon. Leading us there will be Google Glass, the first iteration of this particular sort of wearable, semi-immersive computing experience. If the product is successful, it will merely be the beginning.
The anticipation is understandable. If having Internet-connected computers in our pockets can transform our world, just imagine what wearing them on our faces will do. The prospect of everything from augmented reality games to futuristic surgery has people pumped for the days head. It's all very cool, but there's another side to Google Glass: the creepy factor.
For every exciting use case, it seems there's at least one social or policy-related concern. How will this impact privacy? Will we even have privacy in the future? When will we overcome the social stigma of face-mounted computers? Will we?
It will be some time before these questions shake out, a process that will continue as the technology evolves beyond Google's audacious first stab at it. In the meantime, here are five socially unacceptable things we expect some of Glass's earliest adopters to get into.

1. Surreptitiously Recording the Opposite Sex

 

Glass will likely be popular among doctors and academics, but there's another class of people just as eager to get their hands on it: Perverts.
Smartphones already allow us to shoot photos and videos of strangers in public, if we want. But there's a simple social barrier: it's difficult to discreetly aim a phone's camera at somebody. Take the phone out of the equation and you remove that problem as well.
Now, instead of awkwardly staring at people one find attractive, they can just take a photo or video. The potential examples here range from the relatively innocent to the highly unnerving, with most of them likely falling into the latter category.

Note: As one helpful commenter politely pointed out, the above heading presumes that people are only attracted to members of "the opposite sex." This is clearly not the case.  We fully expect people from all walks of life to do creepy things with Google Glass, regardless of their sexual orientation.

2. Ignoring Your Family At Dinner 

If you thought ignoring your loved ones in favor of scanning banal tweets was easy with your smartphone, just wait until it's connected to a heads-up display. But unlike our phones, Google Glass will at least create the illusion that you give a damn about the lives and feelings of those you profess to love the most.

3. Watching Porn — And Creating Your Own!

It goes without saying that if you give the population a device with a screen that connects to the Internet, they're going to watch videos of people having sex on it. If those WiFi-connected kitchen appliances and thermostats had screens, people would undoubtedly watch porn there too. With heads-up displays like Glass, it will be easier and more discreet than ever.
I couldn't find any research illustrating the extent to which smartphones have led to a rise in homemade porn, but there's no way there isn't one. Just look at Vine. The handful of Glass-wearers who do manage to get lucky will surely use the device to make filthy home movies. Just be careful with those unexpected incoming Hangout requests.

4. Google-Stalking People You Just Met

Even though they have the technology, Google isn't including facial recognition in Glass, because they know precisely what kind of weird shit you would do with it. That, and the massive privacy freakout that would ensue isn't something they (or anybody) are ready for.
Maybe someday. In the meantime, you'll have to manually Google the person you just met. You'll have to be inconspicuous with the voice commands, but with a Google-connected heads-up display Google-stalking new acquaintances has never been easier.

5. Alienating Your Friends At The Bar

 

The first person in your social circle to show up wearing Glass will certainly get a lot of "ooh's", "ahh's" and questions about how the device works. They'll wow their friends one-by-one as they allow them to test it out for themselves.
Over time, those very same friends, one-by-one, will disappear as they realize that this gadget addict is constantly watching YouTube videos, verbally Googling things to settle debates and generally being douchier than anyone can handle.
Original photo of jogger by Lululemon Athletica

The Future of Social Media: 50+ Experts Share Their 2013 Predictions

The world of social media underwent major changes in 2012.
We saw the addition of Facebook Timelines for Fan Pages, the rise of Pinterest, revamped LinkedIn Company Pages, improved Twitter profile pages, and the increasing pressure to prove social media ROI.
As more companies begin leveraging social media for marketing, sales and customer service, it is more important than ever to stay ahead of the curve.
On December 4^th, 2012 at 2pm EST, Anthony Leaper, Shep Hyken and Pam Moore will participate in a roundtable discussion around “The Future of Social Media: How Will It Impact Marketing, Sales & Customer Service?”.  We hope you will join us and in the meantime please enjoy the following predications from over 50 thought leaders.

The Future of Social Media: How Will It Impact Marketing, Sales and Customer Service?

1.  Jason Stein, Founder and President of 24/7 Laundry Service – @jasonwstein
Social media has completely blurred the lines between all aspects of marketing. We live in a world where Facebook posts double as paid ads, and people’s tweets are a form of journalism. As a result, in the new year brands will really embrace the concept of “converged media,” and see owned, earned and paid as a unified program. This is the future of B2C communications.
2.  Mike Lewis, VP of Marketing and Sales at Awareness, Inc. – @bostonmike
Small and mid-sized market will be revolutionized by social customer acquisition at scale. Specifically, new social profiling and scoring tools will allows marketers to analyze and apply custom segmentation logic to their social databases to meet specific customer acquisition and conversion goals. As a result companies will see a tangible social marketing ROI – increase in sales and customer retention.
3.  Natalie Bidnick, Account Supervisor and Social Media Strategist at The Marketing Zen Group – @NatalieBid
Social Media will become an essential – not optional – form of communicating with customers. More companies will use Facebok and Twitter to both listen to their customers, solicit feedback, and practice public crisis management.
4.  Zubin Mowlavi, CEO of Lucid Fusion – @ZubinMowlavi
2012 was the year of data and more specifically, data as it relates to the Social Interest Graph. People and companies shared content more than ever, and this data was organized around interests rather than personal relationships. This trend continues in 2013 with the Social Product Graph which highlights shifting the focus to the sharing and serving of actionable content around products of interest. By doing so, social media will become a social stream for product discovery and commerce, thereby driving sales.
5.  Jeremy Goldman, Entrepreneur, strategist, & author of the upcoming book, Going Social – @jeremarketer  
Companies will begin to shift from thinking of “Social Media” as a department, or as a component headed by the same person who heads their E-Commerce operations. Instead, they will begin to shift social media responsibilities into multiple departments. Companies will begin to see social media as something akin to a telephone that can be used in multiple ways by multiple departments.
6.  Mike Wolfe, Founder & President, WAM Enterprises LLC – @WAMGolfs
Social Media will continue to grow in 2013 due to the increase usage of mobile technology, specifically smartphones. We can expect to see visual (images) to be a driving force and I believe an increase in internet video usage too.
7.  Patrick J. Sweeney II,­ featured contributor to Social Media Today and CNBC – @PJSweeney
The future of social media will evolve around the frictionless capturing of precious memories in the real world. When people are skiing, doing a triathlon, at a concert, or doing anything fun and engaging – mobile technology will enable them to capture the moment with very high quality pictures and video and instantly share online without lifting a finger. Brands will pay for or sponsor this infrastructure in order to have “product placement” on social media. See Cadbury at the Olympics for a great example.
8.  Kelby Brick, Esq., Vice President, Regulatory & Strategic Policy at Purple Communications, Inc. – @kelbybrick
In 2013 smart businesses will emphasize using social media for personal interactions and connections with their customers. This is different from 2012 where macro blasts were the norm. Personal connections result in a more loyal and valued customer base.
9.  Mike Bal, Creative and Digital Marketing Director at Baseline21 – @CreativeIthink
The biggest change we will see in the next year is that we are over the main hump on the adoption curve. At this point it’s not a specific demographic, it’s all of them from grandmas to elementary aged children.
Now that the majority of society has adopted social expectations have changed. Those expectations will dramatically affect customer service, marketing and sales.
Customer Service – People know they don’t have to wait on the phone to get help, they can tweet. This makes it easy for the customer to let the brand know about any and all problems. So any company who went ahead and distributed products with minor flaws in hopes that the customer wouldn’t want to deal with the hassle of a return or exchange will have a rude awakening. Many companies have adopted social media as a customer service tool purely for the fact that they can look good in front of thousands of potential customers. This year companies will start adopting it out of necessity. If a customer who doesn’t want to talk to a machine or wait on hold for 20 minutes, they are going to reach out via social. If you
don’t answer and they HAVE to call, they are going to be highly irritated and more demanding, ultimately costing the company more money.
Marketing – Having a presence on social media has become (or will soon) as important as having a website. Not being on social means you’re missing out on big opportunities in search engine real estate and with your customers. More firms will add social media to their offerings and the smartest ones
already have. We should have realized by now that it’s not a stand along media channel, it’s an essential part of a successful media mix.
Sales – Social media has become a powerful tool for both B2B and B2C industries. It can generate leads and drive buyer traffic to a specific product. Sales teams will evolve to include a digital lead generation
specialist and marketing strategies will be broadened as location isn’t as much of an issue when you’re running a powerful social platform.
10.  Joey Sargent, Principal, BrandSprout Advisors – @brandsprout
In 2013, we’ll see more social maturity in both B2C and B2B applications. Business will get “social smarts” and more fully integrate social media into their day-to-day operations across the organization. This means less social for social’s sake, and more focus on social media as a legitimate business tool to facilitate communication, engagement and loyalty.
11.  Beverly Solomon, Creative Director at musee-solomon
People are over saturated with social media. They will gradually remove themselves from all but a few networks, blogs, etc. So many ads come in everyday that they have lost their impact. Most
people just delete them before reading them.  Social media will function more to alert friends of rip-offs than to encourage sales.  Only the most clever sales campaigns will have any impact.  More and more advertisers will be leaving social media and returning to snail mail, print and other traditional ads.  Social media will continue to be a dating hook up, gossip fest and avenue for “gurus” to sell seminars. But real businesses will use social media less and less.
12.  Caroline Kornowicz, Social Media Manager for CliqStudios Cabinets – @CarolineSofiaK
The future of social media lies heavily in images, video and interaction for the user. It is exploring our senses further with sight, sound and touch. We are seeing current trends with infographs and statistics speak for themselves that an image or video provides higher engagement than plain text posts.
13.  Melissa Brodsky, co-founder of Smart Savvy Social – @smartsavvysoc
More and more brands will realize the importance and relevance of social media and begin to grow their online footprint. Also, I believe that Facebook will eventually burn too many bridges and a new network will become dominant, one that WANTS to help brands instead of only themselves.
14.  Brittany Dowell, Director of Publication Relations at Digital Talent Agents
Social media use is not going anywhere but up in 2013. Companies will hire more full-time employees dedicated solely to engaging with customers via Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. With customer service moving to more online interaction, we could see the need for traditional office space steadily decline.
15.  Jayme Pretzloff, Online Marketing Director for Wixon Jewelers – @jpretz
Going into 2013 social media will impact sales more than any other metric because of the continued integration as a marketing platform and the acceptance of users to be marketed to. In 2011, almost 70% of users said that no social media platform influenced their buying decision and in 2012, that was cut in half to 35%. In 2013, this number will be decreased significantly again because these sites have become an integral way to gain access to information on companies, promotions and products.
16.  Amanda Vega – @amandavega
Social media will continue to have direct and indirect impact on sales in 2013. Consumers will continue to expect an immediate response to their needs online, and a lack of timely response will have a hard-to-measure, but certain impact on brand satisfaction and recommendations.
17.  Tom Koulopoulos, Chairman at Delphi Group and Author of “Cloud Surfing: A New Way
to Think About Risk, Innovation, Scale, and Success” – @tkspeaks
The greatest shift in Social media over the next year will be the maturing of “behavioral business models” that use a deep and comprehensive cross platform understanding of consumer and enterprise
online behaviors as the basis for predictive analytics about their interests and habits. Companies that own the broadest range of platforms such as Apple and Google will be able to track online consumer activity
in ways that create enormous value for retailers. The same is true of enterprise applications of social media where online B2B transactions are being collected and analyzed by companies such as E2Open, which have created a similar capability in projecting future behaviors of markets in order to dynamically alter supply chains in real time to meet the needs of consumers. This notion of using behavior to predict the future will be a critical contribution of social media in an increasingly uncertain world.
18.  Joey Beachum, Digital Content Specialist at Markstein Consulting – @MarksteinChats
As wireless technology advances and smartphones continue to proliferate (they’re projected to form 54% of the total mobile phone market in 2013), consumers will become increasingly tied to social media in some form or fashion. This gives sales professionals even more of an opportunity at something I call ‘mass direct access’: reaching out directly to consumers on an individual level, like with a traditional sales approach, yet on a mass scale. More socially-connected consumers equal more potential touch-points and more sales opportunities.
19.  Kurt Uhlir, Cofounder and Chief Servant at Buzztastic – @KurtUhlir
There is a great wave of un-liking/un-following that will hit brands, at the least we will see people unselect “show in newsfeed” on Facebook. Consumers want higher quality content than what most brands are offering. This is a huge opportunity for brands offering engaging content that know how to activate an audience.
20.  Aalap Shah, co-founder at SoMe Connect – @some_connect
A companies mobile/tablet strategy (or lack thereof will define sales & marketing success for brands and companies in 2013. Consumers can access apps that display social data and activity of their friends anywhere and at anytime and retailers and brands need to have a consistent and clear message to push across social media channels. Without a mobile strategy, most companies will see their sales go to competitors that are where their customers are consuming information.
21.  Ed McMasters, Director of Marketing & Communication at Flottman Company
The future of social media for B2B will be held in the hands of LinkedIn – the new advances of LinkedIn make it a true Business To Business relationship builder. People that have their profiles at 100% and
continue to update them will have the biggest advantages. Knowledge that posting monthly or bi-weekly updates to your profile puts you in front of clients and potential clients is just like advertising only a
lot less expensive. I am a firm believer that LinkedIn will be the Social Media BIG GUY of the future.
22.  Sheryl Johnson, Founder of BD-PRo Marketing Solutions – @BD_PRoMarketing
Social media is here to stay. I predict that social media will evolve into a powerful knowledge management system that leverages virtual connections while capturing valuable information. The biggest challenge moving forward is to create a method of harnessing and connecting this data from all sources in a meaningful, searchable way.
23.  Ty Kiisel, Director of Content Marketing at Lendio – @tykiisel
I don’ think there’s any question that social media has become a relevant part of many brand discussions over the last few years generally, and 2012 in particular. However, more and more marketing leaders are finding that being social just to be social isn’t gaining them the traction in the marketplace they might have hoped. 2013 will see a greater focus on the creation of relevant and substantive content creation initiatives that provide value to customers that will ultimately create greater affinity for those brands that are most successful.
24.  Valerie Jennings, CEO of Viral Bolt Media and Jennings Social Media Marketing – @valeriejennings
Sales and marketing will continue to be impacted by organic SEO and SMO via social media. One major change may be the shift away from exclusively focusing on Facebook as a business sales and marketing tool and moving into more advanced programs including sales and marketing strategies that generate sales on Pinterest, Google+ and even FourSquare. If these platforms do not support sales and marketing strategies, other platforms via social networks will evolve quickly in the marketplace until there is one sold and remarkably profitable solution.
25.  Vickens Moscova, Owner/President of VM Enterprises – @VickensMoscova
I predict more and more people will get focused on utilizing social media to build their own personal brands, while more brands and businesses will realize that the control of their brand has shifted to having consumers having more control over their choices.
26.  Joan Barrett, Owner of The Content Factory – @ContentFac
My prediction is that social media will continue to have a strong impact on SEO, especially with Google
Algorithms becoming more and more personalized. The more social shares an article or site has, the higher it is going to rank.
27.  Tom Corson-Knowles, best-selling author of How To Make Money With Twitter – @JuiceTom
In 2013, we’ll see a lot more companies turning to social media primarily for customer service. We’ve already seen American Airlines cut down their phone service and instead encouraging customers to talk on Twitter if they need customer support. A lot more big companies will follow this trend in an effort to reduce overhead and expand their social media presence.
28.  Jeff Browning, Sr Director, Online Strategy at F5 Networks – @jeffbrowning
2013 is the year social leaps beyond projection / syndication and becomes more about listening, understanding, and driving better products and relationships that drive business. Vendors and agencies that provide useful big data analytics (ideally blending the inside and outside the enterprise) will become big dollar rockstars. Over 50% of C-level will finally realize social does not equal Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
29. Jim Caruso, marketing strategist & CEO at MediaFirst PR – @jimcaruso
Facebook will matter more for B2B, as will FB advertising, since stock price matters when you are a public company.  LinkedIn with matter more across industries and new players, like Pinterest, will continue to disrupt the big players in social media
30.  James Medd, Social Media Marketing Manager at Emailvision – @jamespmedd
In 2013, I predict brands will grow their investments in social customer service to better serve customers who engage with them through social media channels – who have been shown to spend 20% to 40% more than customers who are not socially engaged.
As social customer service matures, I expect to see more integration of technology platforms from traditional customer services with social monitoring and team collaboration. This will enable customers to receive the same level of support and information, regardless of their communication channel preference.
31.  Ryan Schram, CMO of IZEA – @ryanschram
Today’s consumer demands a genuine relationship with the brands they love; nowhere is that more apparent than in social, where soft-selling, brand-building, and real-time problem solving comes into the main more and more each day.   Brands are utilizing a diverse array of tools and resources to
maximize their presence on the social web, including the compensation of social influencers to promote products and services (known as Social Media Sponsorship).   The 2012 State of Social Media Sponsorship study indicated that almost 60% of brands have a stand-alone social marketing budget with that amount having increased dramatically since 2009.
32.  Stephanie Ciccarelli, co-Founder of Voices.com – @stephciccarelli
Sales, Customer Service and Marketing departments will need to work together to engage, sell and retain customers who choose to interact with a brand online via social networks. Companies will need to view those managing their social media as being on the “front lines” of a brand’s online customer service efforts. The best way to do this is to have a dedicated social media manager who can share content and engage a community online but also be a means of support to those asking questions.
33.  Dimple Thakkar, CEO and Impresario of SYNHERGY MARKETING – @dimplethakkar
Start planning a serious budget for social media advertising in 2013. Make sure you skip the promotional tone in your ad copy to build trust with followers. Consumers have an amazing radar for bullshit and your brand has a small window to make a good [first] impression.
34.  Caitlin Connors, Social Media Director at Boomtown Internet Group – @boomtownig
Social media is an elusive program for companies because it changes with your goals and with your audience and especially with technology. I predict that companies who use social media correctly, with an outsourced company that understands their brands and goals perfectly, will be overwhelmed with how much it can positively impact leads/conversions/sales.  In 2013, hopefully more people who claim to have an understanding of SMO will be aware of what effects ROI and how to customize SMO for each company. If they don’t (as many don’t know), leads aren’t happening and CEOs and Executives are doubting the effect of SMO. Customer Service could greatly benefit from SMO in 2013 with Twitter API’s for sites to have an “Ask Us Now” option to live chat, and a full-time Twitter manager to answer incoming questions. Google Hangout and new conversation management tools are now all in place to be utilized to find people having products with brands and services and actively seek them out to answer their qualms.
35.  Kevin Ohashi, Founder of Review Signal – @kevinohashi
I think the most important trend is customer service over social media.  Companies are more actively monitoring what is being said about them and consumers will become more empowered to see and react to the ways companies are engaging their customers. Access to information is democratizing and
consumers will be able to make decisions based on company behavior, and customer service is the biggest touch point between most companies and consumers.
36.  Adam Itkoff, Strategist at Fueled Mobile Design, NYC – @adamitkoff
As we look at growing usage trends across multiple social media platforms, we can only assume that these mediums will become more crucial to both business and sales. No longer must we ask, do we participate in Twitter or Facebook, but rather, how can we leverage these platforms best?  Look especially for Twitter and Instragram to keep growing strong.
37.  Flynn Zaiger, Founder of Online Optimism – @onlineoptimism
Social Media will help E-Commerce begin to surpass actual brick and mortar sales numbers. Expect Amazon to team up with either Facebook or Twitter to release an app that allows you to both see if a product is cheaper online, and also if your friends approve of how it looks.
38.  Melinda Janicki, Online Business Growth Catalyst, Internet Marketing Strategist & Implementation Expert – @melindajanicki
As social media moves from a simple networking site into being at the fore front of technology and SEO, I predict social media to be a must have customer services tool. Much like email has brought tech support
and customer service to a new level social media will be a must with apps, groups, Google+ hangouts, even Twitter chat rooms.
39.  Eula M. Young, COO of Griot’s Roll Film Production & Services Inc. – @griotsroll
Social media will replace the business website. If you don’t have a social media page with information on your products, services on your about page you are not in business. People will judge you on how they can get in contact with you through your social media page. Your “About” page will be more important than your website and you better have links to any other social media pages you have.
40.  David Drake, The Soho Loft – @TSLCCevents
US SMEs will start embracing social media strategies and crowd funding will drive this for startups and local business as crowd funding for equity is implemented as a law.  Social media strategies will become more readily available to consulting firms helping small medium-sized enterprises with the winners being local businesses learning the tools to embrace their eco system.
41.  Alex Schenker, President at www.WeRockYourWeb.com  - @WeRockYourWeb
Marketers will need to use fewer words and more voice, video and images to connect with today’s overly stimulated consumer (e.g. Pinterest, Voxer, YouTube).  More filters will allow consumers to better target/find what they are looking for which will lead to more qualified sales’ leads. As we become more inundated with content, it will become more vital to have filters on how we choose to consume the content.  Mobile devices will continue to drive social media communication so the social media of choice may depend on which device you hold and the successful marketing efforts will be customized to that
platform. For example, Google Chat is not directly accessible via an app on an iPhone so they will likely turn to iMessage which allows you to text several people at once, creating your own “social network” for each message you create.
42.  Raghu Bala, Board Member at Fanggle – @raghurambala
Vertical social platforms will emerge to enable people with similar interests to share information (text, images/pictures, video) on topics of mutual interest. The current metrics – ‘Likes’, ‘Followers’, ‘Fans’ – will give way to more meaningful means of measuring engagement. I also see social media becoming more immersed in everyday activity. For instance, with Google Glass combined with voice to text, one can automatically tweet and attach an image more naturally than currently possible.
43.  Ziggi Yaxley, Social Media Specialist at Bozboz, UK. – @ziggidotcom
Social media is instant, personal and available to everyone. It’s the new way to do customer service and it’s a way to connect with current and potential customers in exciting and innovative ways. It’s human.
2013 will see more businesses investing in social media for the first time and socially-equipped businesses allocating more resource to running their social media more efficiently.
44.  Vala Afshar, Chief Marketing Officer & Chief Customer Officer for Enterasys – @ValaAfshar
A truly social enterprise is not just about technology, it is about lifestyle. Enterprises that collaborate socially (and not just through social media) with their customers and employees are able to not only grow mindshare, but also their business.  For example, at Enterasys, we believe there is nothing more important than our customers – internally and externally – so if both are delighted, we know we are doing our job socially now and into the future.
45. Marifran Manzo-Ritchie, Director of Corporate Communications at Monetate
For marketers specifically, social media will continue to be a force in driving traffic to websites. Marketers will use social the same way that they’ve used pay-per-click and banner advertising in the past. However,
marketers need to take a careful look at metrics such as conversion rates before dedicating a huge chunk of the budget to advertizing on social media sites.
46.  Bill Corbett, Jr., President of Corbett Public Relations – @wjcorbett
The hype proliferated by “marketing” people about the tremendous business generating benefits of social media for small business will wind down. The reality will set in that social media marketing is only
part of an a comprehensive marketing plan which includes a digital media strategy. Businesses, particularly those in the business to business space, will recognize that they are not getting and probably will not get the ROI they need to continue to focus significant time, energy, effort and funds on social media marketing.
47.  Carrie Peterson, Social Media Director at Internet Marketing Inc. – @CarrieSavvy
2013 will be the year of social media mobile and tablet application for marketers. As consumers become more and more socially savvy and are using their mobile devices for research and purchases, it is imperative that marketers hop on the mobile train with a solid strategy and targeted ad campaigns. These campaigns should integrate behavioral targeting, relevant content per the niche demographic, and social share features to maximize reach and social word of mouth.
49.  Eric Courville, Director of Marketing and Alliances
Social media channels are creating more demand and opportunity for immediate content from brands. To take full advantage, marketers in 2013 will need to have marketing processes agile enough to produce fresh, relevant content at lightning speed and the tools necessary to easily track the use of all digital assets.
50.  Jane Horowitz, Founder of More Than A Resume
Today’s college student and those about to enter college (our next wave into the workplace) will reshape, along with new technologies the workplace over the next decade.  The way this generation, (Millennials) communicate in their social lives will be introduced to the workplace, and then transform it; fostering new ways of sharing ideas and collaborating to achieve outcomes. Goodbye email and PowerPoint presentations. Hello file-sharing, multi-media presentations.  Everything we use and come into contact with will be converted into data that will be available at our fingertips to make informed and therefore smarter decisions. Marketing, sales and customer service professional will need critical thinking, analytical and problem-solving skills.
51.  Ryan Aynes, Founder & Managing Director at EDGE Collective – @ryanaynes
There will be a larger demand to quantify social media impact and how that is impacting business performance. As spending becomes tighter due to the economy and a higher level of financial accountability takes place across organizations, agencies pitching social media will have to come up with their own annotations for “like” value.
There will also be a higher demand for integrating the entire marketing process. This means ad-buying teams will have to work more closely with social. The most effective strategies will be integrated paid, owned, and earned. Consumer analysis from each end educates the other on consumer behavior, which builds better forward strategies.
Mobile strategy will become the norm and not just an additional option. As more ways to reach consumers opens up through mobile experiences, brands and agencies will make the appropriate modifications to add this into their strategy and planning.
52.  Devin Redmond, CEO and Co-founder at Social iQ Networks – @DevinHRed
It’s very common these days to walk into a business and find that different departments all have their own social accounts and social marketing tools to connect with customers, recruit employees, and drive marketing campaigns. That new reality and infrastructure has become a rapidly increasing sprawl that can be disharmonious and prone to risk for their company and their own efforts. This will lead to a push toward greater social infrastructure management as companies try to get a handle on social media sprawl to improve their efforts without having to worrying about mishaps, abuse, and social media mistakes.
53.  Rick Mathieson, author of Branding Unbound and The On-Demand Brand – @rickmathieson
Look for a nascent social media backlash to gain traction among consumers and the brands trying to connect with them. While 20% of Facebook users say they log on once or twice a day, 52% say they plan to spend less time there in the future ­ and that’s an emerging dynamic across the socialsphere. In 2013, look for a new emphasis on quality of engagement versus quantity.  When engaging in social media, look for the emphasis for many brands to finally move away from “How” the mechanics of going social to the “Why”,  by clarifying objectives and building social media strategies to meet them.
54.  Molly Glover Gallatin, VP of Marketing at Compass Labs – @CompassLabs
As marketers we need to stop being hyper-focused on the immediate ROI question around social media (I know, it’s hard!), and instead get our management team focused on another question: What have I learned today from my customers? The future will be best for those who stop marketing and speaking *at* their audience and start creating dialogues instead. Content strategy should include conversations – they are the most critical element of social media – hence, the “social,” and they increase brand affinity and tip the scales in your favor regarding revenue, as well.
Free Webcast:  Join us on December 4^th, 2012 at 2pm EST, as Anthony Leaper, Shep Hyken and Pam Moore participate in a roundtable discussion around “The Future of Social Media: How Will It Impact Marketing, Sales & Customer Service?”.

http://blogs.sap.com/innovation/sales-marketing/the-future-of-social-media-50-experts-share-their-2013-predictions-022266