New World of Marketing, or Not?

With the tagline “A New World of Marketing is Here,” Next Jump, an e-commerce marketplace founded by Charlie Kim back in 1994 has been working under the surface, underneath corporate intranets or retailer’s rewards websites, and expanding itself to reach a wider audience. “More than 100 million Americans have access to Next Jump’s e-commerce marketplace, and 10 million a year are customers” (Privacy Lives). It has become such a powerful advertising medium that “today, 60 percent of the Fortune 500 companies use Next Jump’s technology for their employee discount programs” (NYTimes). While the company continues to develop, Next Jump has been quietly gathering years of data from companies and customers, including personal details for demographic purposes; and even credit card transactions from American Express and MasterCard. Based on this information, each person’s characteristics and interests would be analyzed by Next Jump, enabling the company to tailor advertisements and offers that would spark the customer’s interest, often through emails. This microtargeting strategy employed by Next Jump has been proven to be so effective that, “for every 11 people who see of its ads, one person makes a purchase” (NYTimes).

The Internet has become a powerful tool for personalized advertising, one that has been effective in luring customers to buy products. However, is it fair to the customers that companies like Next Jump have been using the vast amount of customers’ information that they possesses to their advantage?

Paradox of Personalized Search

Last Friday, Google announced yet another change they’ve made to the search engine- Personalized Search. The idea of this new feature is to enable users to obtain the most relevant search results based on their search history. For example, if I look up “NYU,” www.home.nyu.edu would appear at the top of my list because I click on it so frequently. This is done through an anonymous cookie that is linked to one’s browser to ensure maximum relevance and precision. This feature was previously offered to users that are signed into their Google account, but the company has decided to extend this luxury to signed-out users, in more than forty different languages.

However, Personalized Search has received criticisms from many- mainly about how Google is probing into people’s privacy by going through users’ search activities, and collecting their data. Before this, users had the option of retaining their privacy by not logging into their Google account while browsing the web, but now, Google can track down every single user, whether or not they are signed in.

Personalized Search- is it bringing search engines to a whole new level with results tailored to suit the queries of users? Or are users losing their trust in the internet, having to limit their online activity to protect their privacy? Is the internet acting as a bridge to connect people with the infinite realm of the cyber world, or is it in fact limiting their agency to explore?

Black Friday

The day before yesterday was Thanksgiving. I didn’t go out, I didn’t have turkey, I didn’t even have dinner. Instead, I slept. I spent the entire day sleeping, until 9pm, in preparation for the infamous Black Friday. The day where shoppers trample all over each other to get their hands on discounted items.

But this year, several retailers took it up a notch- using Twitter and Facebook to keep in contact with their customers about Black Friday sales by tweeting their current inventory, answering customers’ questions, and uploading photo albums. Shoppers were able to share information about current sales, or leaks about the Black Friday sales before they were announced to the public. They were also able to share reviews about certain products or retailers. I was quick to hop onto the Twitter bandwagon. I managed to get most of the information I wanted from the instantaneous tweets, such as how much discounts each retailer would be giving, for what items, and what time the sales for each store would end. I did a bit of research to get a rough idea of where I should head to to get the most out of the discounts before the clock stroke 12, and arranged my schedule based on the time each store’s sales end.

Several major retailers including, Best Buy, J.C. Penney, Barneys, Bloomingdales and Toys’R’Us have taken their promotions to a whole new level, using social networks to reach out to customers.

Is this medium of interaction with the customers here to stay? Or is it just another marketing strategy which would fall into the background in due time?

I believe it is the previous.

Google Tunes?

Pretending to look busy while I browsed through the racks of clothes in UrbanOutfitters, or hanging in Starbucks just for a few minutes longer than I had to, my real intention wasn’t the clothes or the coffee. Instead, it was the music that kept me from stepping out the door. When a good song comes up on the speakers, I quickly whip out my cellphone, and start typing in fragments of the lyrics, which would later be entered into Google’s search box back at home. With the song title and artist, I will then proceed to iTunes to download.

However, Google has decided to take music to the next level- allowing live streaming right on its main results page; but most importantly, for free. It would also provide links to websites where the songs can be bought.

Listening to the songs I want right on the spot, right after I put in a few words into the search box, without having to go through the whole process of clicking into another website (or more), scrolling through pages, getting other links to streaming sites, or going to iTunes.

This idea of a one step proces is pretty brilliant. A few keywords and bam! I’m listening to my favorite tunes. Google Tunes definitely has my vote.

What is your take? Yay or nay?

Google to the rescue

The flu season is back, and panic over the H1N1 flu is still building amongst citizens throughout the world, especially after the new release of H1N1’s death toll in the United States estimating at 3,900 (The Canadian Press).

Just when we think the media have done all they could to inform the masses about vaccines, preventions and current news; Google jumped right in, providing yet another genius idea in an effort to ease the concerns of many with their new feature- Google Flu Trends and the Flu Shot Finder.

It has been observed that certain key terms entered in search engines are good indicators of flu activity. Therefore, ‘Google Flu Trends uses aggregated Google search data to estimate current flu activity around the world in near real-time’ (Google Flu Trends).

Flu Shot Finder helps one find locations that provide seasonal and H1N1 flu vaccines across the United States. The feature has collected data from 20 states, and is looking to cover all 50 states as the feature continues to develop. Locations that could be found today include ‘chains such as Walgreens, CVS and PDX participants, such as Kmart, Duane Reade, WinnDixie and Giant Eagle’ (Official Google Blog).

It is amazing what the internet can do today, Google in particular- from the ‘Street View’ feature on Google Map to ‘Flu Shot Finder’. Google wants to be included in everything, expanding its organization and rapidly covering every inch of the world, through the power of the internet.

Google Wave- a new form of interaction

After close to two years, Google has yet again come up with a breakthrough product- the Google Wave. ‘Google Wave is an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration. A wave can be both a conversation and a document where people can discuss and work together using richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more’ (Google Wave).

Google Wave is especially convenient for organizing events, doing group projects, sharing photos, sending meeting notes, brainstorming or playing interactive games. Any part of the wave can be edited with a single click, and changes are updated live on screen, which enables others to collaborate with the author of the documents.

With the collaborative editing and inline conversations enabled with Google Wave, different teams in an organization can work on different parts of a project, and merge their documents into the product wave. This means that more than one person can edit the same message at the same time and still transmit the messages live on the wire. When there are too many documents cluttering up, there are always tools for organizing these waves- through folders and tags, which could also be done by anyone else in the wave.

Like many browsers today, Google Wave enables extensions which extend the functionality of waves. For example, a few powerful extensions include spell checker (aka Spelly); Linky which recognizes links allowing videos to be embed; Searchy where you can insert anything you find from the web; Google Map and more. All these extensions when put into the wave allow editing or comments to be inserted at any point. There is also the amazing extension that I found extremely impressive- the Rosy etta which instantly translates more than 40 languages word by word, character by character during a live chat.

There is more to Google Wave than what I have mentioned here. There is the Federation Protocol where waves can be shared across boundaries and organizations despite the different wave systems. Playback wave is also a powerful tool which enables one to investigate and manipulate any part of the history of the wave, such as who did what and when.

It is impossible to explain the infinite functions that Google Wave provides. Although it is a fairly new product, I am positive that this will give a whole new meaning to communication, and what the internet can do to bring the universe into real-time interaction.

For a more detailed insight into what Google Wave can do, watch the demo.

Oh, and guess what, I learnt about this on Twitter.

business in the new era

It is no question that our world is shifting towards a heavier reliance on technology. For many, the line between virtual life and real life has become increasingly thin, especially with the growing popularity of online games. Even businesses have started diverging into the cyber world. I am of no stranger to online games myself- playing occasionally to kill my boredom, and constantly surrounded my avid online game players. I found myself addicted to Restaurant City on Facebook last summer- a game where each player builds up and manages his/her restaurant by earning virtual currency to buy decorations and appliances for the restaurant, and leveling up by attracting customers and earning gourmet points. Of course, there are also the exclusive products that can only be bought with real currency, or if virtual currency is low, one can always buy more with real money. My initial reaction was, ’who in the right mind would spend money on these virtual products that are nothing but pixels on the screen!’ I knew I was wrong when I saw a range of such decorations in other players’ restaurants. According to NY Times, analysts [have] estimated that virtual goods could bring in a billion dollars in the United States and around $5 billion worldwide this year. “It’s a fantastic business,” said Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners, a venture capital firm that has invested $10 million in several virtual goods companies. “Because it’s digital, the marginal cost for every one you sell is zero, so you have 100 percent margins.” Whether it is for competitive reasons, to impress other players, or just plain desire, business has entered a whole new level, this time including virtual goods.