Google announced today its “offering free software to
anyone who wants it under the relaxed terms of an open-source license,
which will allow developers to view the source code for that software.
This also means there will not be a “gPhone,” or any sort of phone with
the Google brand on it.”

“ The approach has already
been endorsed by 33 companies who make up the new Open Handset
Alliance, including some of the world’s largest wireless carriers and
cell-phone manufacturers.”

“ Rubin said Google hopes to
make money by increasing the number of people who are exposed to its
Internet advertising. Currently there are about 1.5 billion people in
the world who can see Google’s advertising on personal computers. In
comparison, an estimated 3 billion people use mobile phones”

“ Finally, there are tools
for individual developers. On Nov. 12, Google will release a free
software development kit that will help programmers write applications.”

Related: Look at the mobile OS and smartphone market segmentation analysis.

Interesting they talk about this being better than anything Microsoft offers. I think they know that Symbian “owns” the smartphone OS market at about 67%+ share, and Microsoft is a bit player, but they still want this to be them vs. Microsoft.

From the horses mouth.

Here’s a case study about my blog I learned the hard way. I lost 50% of my RSS feed subscribers in one day. 50% – ONE day. For absolute numbers that was a loss of about 197 subscribers. But at the same time my site visits are up 30% from a month ago. Go figure. I am getting a lot of new visitors and my existing audience (community centric) is probably leaving is my guess at this point.

What changed and some possible explanations (still digging for details)

1. Focus on the audience: This blog primarily use to cater to community managers and interested observers in social networks when I started. Over the last 2 months it has tried to expand too quickly to people in marketing, social networking and about anyone in technology for that matter. I think I forgot I was writing for an audience as opposed to writing for myself and a few very good friends.

2. Lack of strong editorial oversight: Since I control the blog, I pretty much talked about what ever I wanted to. Not sure when my subscribers decided that was not they signed up for originally. Posts on marketing, Google phone and other things that interested me were all game for me. My audience probably felt otherwise.

3. Frequency of posting: Has increased significantly since when I find good information and I post it. That has meant the # of posts went from one a day to close to 2-3 including del.icio.us tags. For a lot of people that’s too much to digest in a day. I used to think this is a positive (frequent posting), but you can use this reason both ways is what I learned.

4. Lack of “attention span” among readers: There are way too many options now: facebook, twitter, other very good and well written blogs, so I really doubt anyone is able to keep up. Something’s gotta give.

5. Not good enough content: I hate to admit this to myself, but I may have to look at it again. At the end of the day I firmly believe that if you have great content, you win. If not, people will ignore it. Compared to some of the excellent content that exists on other blogs, I may have to admit, this blog is a nice to have.

6. Turned off comments: Not sure if this had an impact, but I turned off then on again comments a week ago. I have heard from several folks that a “blog” is not a blog without comments. So for the record, comments are back on.

Not sure of other reasons, but I’m sure there are others. Drop me a line if you unsubscribed so I could learn why. mukund@bestengagingcommunities.com

Update Nov 4: 8:30 PM Pacific. Here’s why  my subscriber count went down. Thanks for all the email’s of support BTW.

Aaron gave me a pre-release copy of the book “ We are smarter than me” a couple of weeks ago at the Office 2.0 conference. Its a quick read and filled with many examples.

The most unique part of this book:

The entire book was community written – by members of the community. In their own words:

“In
a time where community and social networks are starting to infiltrate
every aspect of our personal and professional lives, WE decided to test
the notion that a book of business best practices could be written by
“the crowd,” and we are excited to have participated in this
groundbreaking experiment.”

With strong backing from MIT, SharedInsights (Barry Libert), Prentice Hall and Wharton, this book was written in wiki style with hundreds of contributors.

Here’s what I really liked about the book:
1. Lots of examples. From P&G to Brewtopia, this book has a lot of “real world” examples of how companies have been able to successfully tap into the power of the community to create value.

2. Tangible case studies: Since there are many examples, you can get practical tips on how to start a community, grow and let your community thrive.

Who’s this book for?
1. If you are in  marketing, customer service, or product development in any large organization and are looking to present a case to your management team about the value of building a community, this book is a must read. It will give you a great set of case studies to present.

2. If you are interested in learning more about crowdsourcing and themes around community driven businesses this book is a good read.

3. If you are looking to write a book about social networks and communities and social media or the User generated content theme / metaphor, pick up a copy of this book as a reference or citation.

What I thought the book missed the mark on:
1. The main points were lost because of so many examples. It was not easy at all to connect the main points, key assumptions and supporting facts. Since there were many examples how customers use communities it tends to be just a lot of case studies but leaves the reader to connect the dots. Maybe there’s a sense of discovery you might get from this as a counterpoint.

2. The value of editing. I am always amazed when I see final copies of a book especially after I saw the author’s pre-release copy. Editors rock. This book would have benefited from a stronger editorial influence.

3. There’s a place for online connection, and this book missed that. I prefer books that are “living” to ones that are written once and done with. What I mean by that is when book authors continue the conversation and provide relevant links on a website that makes the book a living project. I think the website wearesmarter makes an attempt at that, but the examples could be brought to live with interviews, podcasts and updates from the companies that were featured in the examples.

Overall a very quick (2 hour or less) read. Recommend you get a copy.

Digging deeper on Who has the most to lose because of the Google Phone or Gphone story.

First there are several numbers and they are all different:

Total number of smart phones shipped: (114 Million) ~10% of the total mobile handset market. Growing at ~50% annually through 2010. – IDC

ABI Research forecasts that the
whole smartphone market segment will grow from 218 million units in
2007 to 426 million units in 2012. – ABI research.

Gartner (see below): 48 Million in 2006, 64 Million in 2007 and expected to be 100+ Million by 2007

Zelos research: Sales of full-feature handsets
will grow to about 290 million in 2008, or 42.5 percent of all
handsets, from about 10 million in 2003


Annual Growth of Smart Phones.

2005: ~40+ Milllion

2006 64 Million (Canaly’s)

2007: 114 Million (NYTimes)

Market Segments:

1. By geography (From Gartner and Telephia)
a) Japan 31%
b) Europe 27%
c) North America 19%

d) Other

2) By device vendor (From Canaly’s)
a) Nokia ~40%
b) RIM (Blackberry) 6.5%
c) Motorola 5.3%
d) Palm 5%
e) Microsoft < 5%
f) Other

3) By operating system ( IDC) and ( Canaly’s)
a) Symbian ~60%
b) Microsoft ~12%
c) RIM (Blackberry) ~7%
d) Linux ~6%
e) Palm ~5%

4) By user demographic of all mobile (not just smart phones)
a) Communication (phone & camera, text message) centric
b) Entertainment (music, video, games) centric
c) Information (email, internet, applications*) centric

Looking now at this analysis, I would say the biggest losers because of GPhone would be Motorola, Palm & from an OS perspective I think Google will eat into some of the Linux and Symbian leadership.

We all read, view and find great things on the web, and sharing that is the best part of it all. I use many mechanisms to share stuff I find and wanted to do a quick review of those tools and the “effectiveness” of those tools.

There are 4 primary criteria that I use for my sharing:
1. How easy is it to share? If its too cumbersome, (like cutting and pasting, sending email is) then it has a barrier to my own adoption of it.

2. What is the timeliness of the information? Keep it in the research area? Or news that has a half life of a firefly? The more permanent something is I tend to keep it in my own sharing area (like del.icio.us) and the more ephemeral, I tend to use mechanisms that are here and now (like Twitter)

3. What is the reach? How many people can I get to share it with? Put another way, if I want a few people to view this will they do it using the medium I sent it to them.

4. What item I want to share? Most cases its a cool article of web page or a blog post. In other cases its a photo (still on a web page). The most difficult items to share have been files and documents and of course calendar items.

Here are my results:
1. For the most easy way & blog posts to share web pages: del.icio.us, Google Share and Share on facebook are the best, in that order. I say in that order, because they are all the same in terms of ease of use, but effectiveness to my audience, del.icio.us is the best. Google reader sharing is also good, but it is not as effective in terms of reach. Maybe because I have not publicized it enough.

2. For timeliness of information, nothing beats Twitter. My del.icio.us tags lag in terms of the people that view them but the results of sharing in Twitter are great. If I have something that is very topical and good for about half a day or 10 hours, and useless after that, I use twitter.

3. Nothing beats email for reach though. One because its personal, two because of its smaller audience set and three because it “comes to you” instead of you “going to get” it. It does have some “lack of timeliness” to it was my perception, but I am surprised by how many people email back within 1 hour of me sending something to share.

4. For Blog posts I get best results from Google reader share. For web pages its Stumble Upon followed by del.icio.us. For documents and PowerPoint (I know a few people that will hate me for this, but email’s still preferred by the people I want to share it with).

Here are more details:

1. Share on Facebook:

Pros: Quick, easy and fast. Plus all your “friends” get a mini-feed subscription, so its non intrusive. Most of the items I want to share are with people that I care about anyway, so this “ closed wall“. To get this just log into facebook.com. On the right nav you will see “Post on facebook” or “share on facebook”. If you drag and drop it to your browser tool bar,, it makes it easy to click on that link each time you see a page you want to share. You can add your notes to it also.

Cons: “Closed wall” – this is also a negative. If you are not my “friend” you dont get my feeds. Most new blog readers are not my friends yet. Its also not very timely. Finally it has a tendency to “overload” my friends with stuff. You dont also get RSS feeds out to your shared items easily.

2. Google Share & Google Feed Share

Pros: Similar to Share on facebook, Google Share allows you to click on a link (on the toolbar) and immediately add comments as needed. Its simple and a BIG plus is that you can give an RSS feed to your shared items. Google Reader feed sharing (or link blog as Scoble calls it) is simple and it has a keystroke (Shift S) on my blog reader to share with other folks. Google Feed reader also provides a “widget” ( see on my blog) which makes it easy to share with people I dont know yet.

Cons: Still not adopted by most of the people I want to share with., probably because I have not promoted it well. Also because its not integrated into my blog feed (which is what I’ve done with my del.icio.us feeds). Google Share also has far fewer people (people on my Google shared list is very minimal) using it (with del.icio.us there are over 500 people that “tag” things they want to share with me).

3. del.icio.us:

Pros: For sharing with great presence, nothing beats del.icio.us. Lots of users, many items to discover and social tagging makes it easy to share and also get shared items. Its also among the easiest – like Google Share and Share on facebook I have a tag icon on my toolbar.

Cons: Not very timely (but that’s expected) and the number of people sometimes overwhelms you. Too many items to view so I tend to ignore a great many.

4. Tumblr: To be honest I am new to sharing on Tumblr but I have a sense this will get some traction. Most of my venture capital friends are beginning to use this.

Pros: Photos, images, Video, blog posts – this is the best way if you share different media formats.

Cons: Very few people that use it still, but the early adopters still maintain their blogs, so this is yet another thing to update.

5. StumbleUpon: I like it to find new items and new websites. Its apparently the fastest growing and is doing well since the eBay acquisition.

Pros: Great to find stuff that others have shared.

Cons: Its not as socially adept – meaning that I get more things from random folks, and certainly not “targeted” to meet my specific needs.

6. Twitter

Pros: Quick and timely. Its the fastest to share and easiest. It has about 10% of the audience I want to reach so I get the initial reaction quickly.

Cons: I hate to have to cut and paste it the website / blog site. Guy Kawasaki has apparently used the Twitter API to setup automatic feeds into his twitter channel, which is cool. Very few of the folks I really share these items are on twitter.

7. Good old fashioned Email

Pros: Gets the best results for actually people viewing stuff. I have been surprised by its timeliness especially with the people I send it to. Its easier also to attach stuff like PowerPoint, other files, etc.

Cons: I have to enter the name (email) of every person I want to share with – which wastes time. Very difficult for me to go back and review what I sent to whom.

8. Weekly aggregation post: Jeremiah does this weekly for Social Media news. The basic concept is to review all items for the week and read over 100’s of items and put them in a single post and give them context. The best I have seen doing this
is Ritholtz.

Pros: Single way to share lots of items.

Cons: Takes too much time to do and also is not very timely for both the people receiving it or me to gather it over the week.

If I had only one way to share I would still choose email though. Followed by del.icio.us

<img src="/images/64360-56413/google_phone.jpg” border=”0″ width=”91″>

“Google is expected to hold a press conference on Monday to unveil the project, which is expected to incorporate software from the Linux world into a mobile platform code-named Android that’s designed to run on phones, according to sources familiar with Google’s plans. A software development kit for what’s being called “a complete mobile-phone software stack” is believed to be in the works and will be released relatively soon thereafter, the sources said. It’s not exactly clear what kind of software will come as part of that stack, but it’s said to include everything you need to run a phone.” – CNET

“Another key point will be how such an operating system, full of data applications, might increase data traffic. Data use on phones is already exploding, driving up revenue for carriers. Increasing that traffic is a top priority for them.” –

The smart phone market is expected to grow from 114 Million in 2007 to
300+Million by 2010. Most “basic phones” are going to be replaced by
smart phones. – Nytimes

According to a Forbes article on Nokia, there are over 1+ billion cell phone subscribers in the world and another 300 million+ expected (mostly in Asia) by 2010. In India where literacy rates are not the highest, the phone in its pure for for voice communication is and will continue to be the killer application for the next generation of buyers.

If you look at the Americas, EMEA and some advanced parts of Asia (Japan, Korea, etc.) data is the driver – whether its video, games, text messaging. The “smart phone” market is a relatively small part of the entire mobile phone handset market.

Google’s going for the advanced consumer market (versus corporate where Blackberry rules) with their GPhone OS launch is my belief. If you segment the cell phone buyer into a tangible set of user types:
Forbes

Detailed smart phone segmentation shows that there are several ways to slice this market.

1. By geography (Americas, Europe, Asia, etc.)
2. By primary usage pattern (Voice, text message, music, videos, games, email, etc.)
3. By user frequency (casual user, intense data user, intense voice user etc.)
4. User profile: business, home (consumer), professional, etc.

I am sure there are other segmentation models, but these are primary.

1. Apple at it core has aimed the initial iPod for the advanced Americas (and Europe), for usage patterns that are mostly voice and music and a person that is an intense user – most likely either professional or consumer, NOT business. Its lack of keyboard and poor integration with Microsoft Exchange (currently) makes it a poor choice for businesses that already have investments in Exchange.

2. Google on the other hand is going to get the most traction with a more global footprint (since they have a lot more carriers and handset makers involved) with a primary usage pattern for data (web surfing, etc.) and for most likely an intense user at that. I suspect the user profile would be a professional also. So the introduction of the Google phone is most likely going to hurt Nokia and the “rest” of the crew – Motorola and other (see 5)

3. Blackberry is trying to address multiple segments but primarily the data intense user whether its business or professional. Its the best for the business user for data. Most businesses already like Blackberry, because it addresses the key issues of security, email access and integration into enterprise technologies.

4. Microsoft has its hands on all pies, but great in nothing.

5. The rest: Samsung, Motorola, Palm, etc. are going for the mass segments is my sense. Basic phone, camera, etc. aimed at the consumer. Not for the smart phone (yet) and even if they do they’re not good at it.

6. Nokia like Microsoft is aiming everywhere, but since they are the incumbent, they can afford to have options everywhere.

So back to the Google phone.

I think most corporate business users still want email integration to Microsoft Exchange. Any linux based phone OS is not going to have the best support for that – Blackberry’s going to be ok.

Since Google’s trying to crack the smart phone for the masses market, the ones most likely to lose because of that are the fringe players – I suspect Motorola to further lose and either get acquired (by a small niche carrier – Alltel, Metro PCS) to be part of an end-to-end offering.

I think target iPhone is mis-leading. They are not after the same market segment currently.

What do you think?

I like options. I think.

I got a spam email from a “social media consulting” company based in Atlanta. Standard cold call pitch – not specific, no homework done, just another email from yet another company. But the email signature of this person was interesting.

14 lines long! Fourteen!

Name: <Name>
Company Name < Each letter in different colors BTW>
Phone: <Direct Line + extention>
Cell:<CELL #>
Fax: <FAX #>
Email: <Email address?
Website: <Website.com>
Blog site: blog site name
Twitter: <a href="http://www.twitter.com/name
Facebook:”>www.twitter.com/name
Facebook: facebook
Del.icio.us: username
Skype: username
AIM: messenger name
Yahoo: messenger name

I get it. You got an account everywhere. You know your stuff. Please help me with my social media.

thanks for the image: mindvalleylabs

In my day job I run Marketing for a Global Supply Chain Visibility software company, Inovis. Its about a ~$140 Million company. Our Marketing Budget allocation is pretty simple.

First some background. I believe there are 2 kinds of marketing teams:
1. Those that market for the sake of the marketing team: These do campaigns, events
to make sure their marketing team gets kudos for the great flash
website, being socially connected etc.

2. Those that market to drive revenue: These teams work closely with #1
constituents: customers and #2:sales to drive campaigns that generate
leads, engage with customers and closely monitor lead conversion etc.

I have read in several places that Social Media marketing is going to take over traditional marketing.

“More than three-quarters of US
marketing professionals surveyed think that social media marketing—also
known as Web 2.0—can give them a competitive edge, according to Coremetrics’ “Face of the New Marketer” study.”

“The same respondents said that only 7.75% of their online marketing spending went to such tactics. “

So you ask “What’s going on?”.

1. For most parts Social Media Marketing is “cheap“. Unlike events (which cost a lot and have a lot of hard $ costs), putting a blog, community site is relatively inexpensive, which is why it will never be a big part of the budget. You need resources but not an expensive upfront investment or a costly ongoing investment.

2. I do like Social media – I have 2 blogs, we Twitter, Utterz, do video blogs, have an online community etc, but still our bread is not buttered with social media. Why? The prospects and customers we intend to engage (in B2B) still dont view them as “aiding their research process”. They find them entertaining and “useful” but the call to action needs to be more subtle, so it ends up being less effective. If we do have strong calls to action they are viewed as being “sales-y”.

3. There are very few processes and proven methods to move a customer along the “lead funnel and process” with social media. I know this sounds old, but we are mostly measured by how much business a campaign drove. If you cannot quantify, something to the effect of – we targeted 100 people, 40 responded, 10 engaged, 3 sales cycles were initiated and 1 account was opened at $120K annual value of contract, it becomes very difficult to justify.

I am speaking on a panel at the Digital Asset Management and Marketing Operations conference. Nov 12th and 13th at the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel in LA. Registration. If you are attending, please say hi. I’ll buy you a drink.

The first one:
Marketing Performance Measurement Panel: Insights
into Creating and Using a Marketing Dashboard
The Power of a marketing dashboard begins with having the right metrics,
your ability to interact with data to reveal hidden patterns,
connections, and insights and use the dashboard to facilitate strategic
and resource allocation decisions. To provide you with insights into
process and best practices, the panel participants will share:

• The marketing metrics they chose and why

• Their marketing dashboard development process and challenges

• Guidance into securing buy-in and usage

• Lessons learned

Moderator: Laura Patterson, President, Vision Edge Marketing

<img style="width: 508px; height: 95px;" src="/images/64360-56413/banner.gif” border=”0″>

Ask any large company’s IT system and they’ll tell you that email is
the #1 application. Its used by everyone, so its mission critical. The #1 problem with email is SPAM.

Many attempts have been made before to bring the concept of Email postage. Since sending email is “free” that gives a lot of incentives for people to spam. Take the concept of “pay for email” to marketers, I am sure many would sign up.

To solve the problem of spam and unsolicited email though we have to go beyond just charging people to send email.

I believe we need to

give control of email BACK to the “recipient”.

So how do we do that? Provide a system that:
1. Allows each person to setup a “cost” to send email to them. This can be setup by the user. For e.g. I can put an unrealistically high number (say $5). That means anyone that wants to email me has to pay $5 / email. Of course when I receive the email I can “waive” that cost.

2. If any person wants to send “bulk email” to me as part of a list, the email system they use has to connect to the email servers to find out the approximate “total cost” of that email campaign. So if there’s a list of 10,000 names in that list, to ensure “delivery” of email to that list it the sender has to pay the total “price” each person has setup for receiving email.

Pros:
1. Any person can setup their “price” themselves – this removes the administrative barrier for ISP’s. ISP can set a minimum “threshold” but if the user chooses they can increase it or waive it.
2. This system guarantees an email will be delivered . It does not assure the receiver will read it.
3. If you keep a high “price” for your email, you will probably miss certain emails and offers that might be beneficial to you.
4. As a sender you dont have to worry about “CAN SPAM”. Why? If you want to spam people, and still spend a lot of money to do it, I am sure a lot of people are willing to accept payment for “practically doing nothing but deleting unwanted email”.

Cons:
1. Cost of implementing the system is high, especially for all email systems globally, but I’m not sure everyone needs to implement this at the same time. I am sure users will drive their companies / ISP to implement it.
2. Reduces “democracy” of email & “free flow” of communication – Not sure that’s a bad thing.

Like some other opinions / pros / cons: Robert Scoble, Chris Carfi, Ross, Jeremiah, Shiv & Vinnie.