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Smart new kids on the block
To me, this seems really, really rich. When you're looking at stock quotes in the newspaper, you're "hunting and gathering", writes Deepak Mankar.
To me, this seems really, really rich. When you're looking at stock quotes in the newspaper, you're "hunting and gathering". On the other hand, when you're looking at TV listings ("What's on tonight?"), you're "grazing". No, as usual, it's not my brainwave. I'm merely a hunter and gatherer or, maybe, a grazer here. This piece of astonishing sociological taxonomy comes, courtesy John Morton, a newspaper industry analyst based near Washington, DC, via Frank Barnako. barnako.typepad. (31 May 2006) Apparently, it was inspired by the Boston Globe, the Chicago Tribune and others deciding to cut back on daily stock quotes. scpress. By the way, try as it might, TV Guide cannot give complete listings even in the major cities what with the plethora of "half a dozen lineups of channels delivered by cable systems, satellite services, and over the air services. But the local newspaper can," writes Barnako. [See Chuck Jaffe, 'Demise Of Newspaper Stock Tables Agitates Some Investors': news.morningstar]
Dramatic debut! For India, the whole world is now the stage.
Good news for Indophiles. The short and sweet takeaway of Julia Hanna's 'India Arrives on the Global Stage' is simply this: "Economic reforms and a young, entrepreneurial workforce have lifted India into the global economy and raised its hopes for social development. Harvard Business School alumni talk about doing business in a country that has captured the world's imagination." Read the full article here: hbswk. [Also see: 'India 2020: Emerging or Surging' hbs.edu and 'It's India Above China in New world Order' hbswk.hbs.edu]
How does google work? Nobody knows. No transparency.
In 'The One Bit of Info Google Withholds: How It Works', Chris Gaither's complaint is the same as that of advertisers, competitors and Wall Street analysts. Google is too secretive about how it works, they all wail. Here's a typical complaint, this time from Jordan Rohan, a financial analyst at RBC Capital Markets: "It's somewhat of a paradox. Google's whole purpose is to make information easier to access - unless, of course, you want to know information about Google." latimes. Here's another noteworthy quote. Google "is the big kid in the schoolyard," opines Andy Beal, chief executive of Fortune Interactive, an online marketing firm that works with Google and other search engines. "It makes the rules, and it reserves the right to change the rules. But there's only so long it can continue to do that before the other kids say, 'We're not going to play with them anymore.' "
Cloak-dagger. Mini-Microsoft who?
Intrigue. Espionage. Tattle-telling. Danny Westneat who writes for Seattle Times is (rather was) on a first-name basis with the notorious so-called 'Mini-Microsoft'. Westneat wrote about how the latter implord him not to reveal his name in his column ("I don't know what would happen, but I'm not ready to risk being exposed.") seattletimes (28 May). Mini-Microsoft decided to stop writing his "anonymous, highly critical" anti-Microsoft tirades around then, apparently. In it he described the Redmond giant a "passionless, process-ridden, lumbering idiot", people working there as "bad tech-boom-era hires, who suck up time and money 'writing crappy code, doing crappy testing and designing crappy features'…" and the management as "(t)one-deaf and boosterish (sic!)". minimsft.blogspot.
Smart new kids on the block. Fashion blogs.
There's something to be said about looking like a magazine rather than a website - specially when it comes to fashion marketing. That's what Glam.com glam has managed to do by developing "custom software" after more than 18 months of hard work. It allows "print-experienced editors and layout people to apply their design skills to Web pages," as Frank Barnako explains in his June 1, post. Their shrewd business plan has got them going places. As Samir Arora, MD, put it while explaining why Cosmopolitan tied up with Glam.com: Cosmo "saw us as an interesting company because we had the brand. We had the advertisers. We had a voice, and we had the editorial appearance that everyone aspired to." barnakocom. They also have a sister site with a clutch of fashion blogs blogs.glam taking inspiration from girlspoke and fashiontribes.
New in china. Internet hunting.
A new sort of mob psychology has been let loose in China with the Internet playing a starring role in the online drama. The first reported case concerns a supposedly cuckolded husband who accused the alleged paramour of his wife, a student, with a 5000-word 'open' letter posted on one of China's most popular Internet bulletin boards. This act enlisted him within days the unstinting support and sympathy of a virtual mob. One of them wrote: "Let's use our keyboard and mouse in our hands as weapons to chop out the heads of these adulterers, to pay for the sacrifice of the husband." The erring student's identity and address was literally hunted down. He was hounded out of his university. His family members had to barricade themselves inside their home. Apart from adultery, the other 'causes' taken up for investigation and hunt on the Internet include fraud on online auction sites, the secret lives of celebrities and unsolved crimes. "One case that drew a huge following involved the poisoning of a Tsinghua University student - an event that dates to 1994, but was revived by curious strangers after word spread on the Internet that the only suspect in the case had been questioned and released," writes Howard W French in 'Mob rule on China's Internet: The keyboard as weapon'. Some people find this course of events akin to the Cultural Revolution, whose 40th anniversary was in May. "There has been recurrent talk by the government of registering all Internet users, and many here worry that a wave of online threats and vigilantism could serve as a pretext to impose new limits on users." iht.
Carewords - 1. I want you to hold my hand.
Here's a great idea whose time has come. gerrymcgovern. Gerry McGovern needs no certificate from me. He is the expert to consult when you want to use the write words at all the right places on your website. "If you use the words your customers care most about, your website will deliver more value. Best practice web management is about knowing your customers better than they know themselves," says his website blurb. And: "When a customer is self-serving, behavior is impulsive and instinctive, rather than careful and considered. Eyes rapidly scan your pages. Nature magazine reported that people get lasting impressions of your website within half a second. As soon as they find a link that contains the words they are looking for, they will click. If they don't see those words, they may well hit the Back button." His clients include Pioneer, UCLA, Directgov, HP, Aer Lingus and Microsoft.
Carewords - 2, How it works in real life.
Some examples of how the Carewords strategy works follow. "1. Microsoft changed one word in a particular heading and saw a 300 per cent increase in the number of people who clicked on the heading." 2. "Changing the text in a button from 'Click to qualify - it's free' to 'Am I eligible? Find Out Instantly.' resulted [in] a 40 per cent increase in people clicking on the button." 3. "In an extensive analysis of tourism-related words carried out in 12 countries over a two-year period, we found an incredible commonality between the top ten words people chose. In fact, the top two words/phrases (Accommodation, Special Offers) were either first or second from Singapore to Sweden, from Seattle to Switzerland." 4. "In the United States, over 80 times more people search for 'cheap flights' than for 'low fares.' In the United Kingdom, 6,500 times more people search for 'cheap flights' than for 'low fares'. No, that's not a typo. It is 6,500 times more! 'Low fares' is what the airline industry likes to say. 'Cheap flights' is customer language. This [is] an extremely common mistake organizations make on the Web: assuming that their words are their customer's words. Never, ever assume that."
That's all for now though there's plenty more out there. Join me again next week, same place.
Copyright (c) 2001- 2006 by Deepak Mankar. All rights reserved. Deepak Mankar, an advertising practitioner on the creative side since 1965, is also intensely passionate about the web and web content creation. Read his online articles at asiaondemand.com. Website: http://www.addgandhi.com/original/. You may e-mail him at dmankar@bom8.vsnl.net.in. Blog: popgoestheslop.blogspot.com.
