WikiSticks Controversial site Wikileaks may have upset Governments and their loose-tongued diplomats but there is very little that can be done to stop the leaks now. Despite founder Julian Assange’s legal problems, the sites history is now glued permanently online by supporting “mirror” sites that duplicate the Wikileaks content all over the world. Despite financial institutions withdrawing their support for Wikileaks and major online hosts vowing to remove all content – the very nature of the Internet and those who support Assange has ensured the content they’ve already released is forever in the online realm. The same challenges that have faced the recording and movie industries that have attempted to curve piracy in the past without a great deal of success, now thwarts the governments wishing to shut down a site that no longer resides in one place and continues to duplicate across the web to thousands of willing participants happy to spread Assange’s leaks. A good coverage of the Wikileaks story so far can be found in this article.
Stop Glaring at Me One of the apparent drawcards for many to products such as the iPad or Android Tablet this Christmas is the apparent ability to read books on demand from these lightweight devices rather than the traditional paperback. Unfortunately many are realising that reading from a screen predominantly designed to play high definition movies and for browsing the Internet doesn’t necessarily work well on the eyes when it comes to reading books. That, and the ‘glare factor’ when attempting to read outside is drawing people toward products such as Amazon’s Kindle and Borders Kobo Reader. Both known as E-Readers, their screens use LCD technology to make the page seem more like reading from a book, there is no reflective glare and the devices sit nicely in the palm of the hand making it feel more like a paperback than an oversized iPod. The downside? Basically it just shows there is still no one-size-fits-all product for consumers and businesses. If you’re into reading, have a play with an E-Reader – they’re cheap (< AUD$200) versus the approx AUD$1000 iPad and they work well. If you’re looking for an array of features from email to remote accessing your PC/Mac at work and editing documents then look at Tablets and remember that E-Readers are a one trick pony but that they do it quite well and might be worth keeping beside the bed.
Are we all Twits? OK, I’m going to get the elephant out of the room.. some people.. actually.. A LOT of people still don’t get the point of Twitter. If that describes you then you are in good company.. CEO of Twitter Dick Costolo when recently asked “what is the point of Twitter” replied “I’m still trying to get some clarity on that question.” Uhmmm.. great! Considering his company has a user base of 190 million people they and their investors are probably going to want to figure out how to make money out of it sooner rather than later. For the rest of us just trying to figure out where Twitter might fit into our businesses here it is: Twitter is a micro-blogging service that allows you to create channels where you “tweet” (basically just like an SMS) about a thing, product, service, change, interest or basically whatever you feel like writing about. You have people who follow you and your tweets, and you have people who you follow because you’re interested in what they have to say or tweet, or because they are a person of interest i.e. someone you might like to get to know.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be asking companies like Twitter how we can use their services to build brands and earn revenue especially when they haven’t figured it out themselves. Rather let’s look at who fits the profile of the product or service we sell? (1), do they use Twitter? (2), if they do, what are they interested in that we can tweet about? (3) and how do we measure wether that “tweet” converted to a lead/sale oradvocate by who “retweets” what I write about or who buys what I sell (4). Rinse and Repeat. It all comes back to market research. We can blindly update our Facebook pages or tweet our tweets but the same rules of marketing always apply – if people aren’t watching where you advertise you probably just blew your advertising budget. But remember, even if your customers aren’t using Twitter yet doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t engage new ones there or better still, provide special information or special deals that can only be found on Twitter and tell your customers to find it there. Here’s an interesting idea.
That’s all for this week!
