Marketing Pilgrim Published: “Facebook Focuses on Quality Which Means Fewer Memes” plus 3 more |  |
- Facebook Focuses on Quality Which Means Fewer Memes
- Tumblr Adds Mobile Ad Product
- The Black Friday Results Are In and It Was. . . .
- Amazon Delivery Drones? What’s Next? Teleportation?
| Facebook Focuses on Quality Which Means Fewer Memes Posted: 03 Dec 2013 06:04 AM PST
The social media giant is hearing what its users want more and less of which means high quality content may trump memes in the future. Can I get an AMEN?! An update in Facebook’s Newsroom tells us
Another change is the resurfacing of news stories that have been commented on.
Personally I welcome these changes as the apparent competition to ‘out-meme’ the more competitive members of some Facebook users’ circles can clutter a news feed with mindless junk. If Facebook wants to avoid becoming a second generation MySpace, making this kind of move is important. It also shows that maybe the company is realizing that its slipping market share amongst the younger set is a result of the fact that the format fits older users better. While that sounds tragically unhip it isn’t the worst thing for Facebook. Advertisers like reaching people with the resources to buy things. That’s what happens when you get older (which makes being ‘older’ sound pretty cool now, doesn’t it?). What do you think about this effort by Facebook to make the news feed something of greater relevance vs. a chance for your friends to try to be the funniest of the funny people on Facebook?        |
| Posted: 03 Dec 2013 04:26 AM PST
Tumblr is taking a swing at a form of native advertising with this offering.
While this looks like something that brands would get excited about the only issue I see is that the ‘subtle dollar sign’ is just that: subtle. We are getting dangerously close to where advertising and content are becoming indistinguishable from one another. While this is likely to work for a while what happens when the consumers catch on and start to push back by ignoring ads completely and even becoming angered at brands that are trying to make their ads less like ads thus appearing more deceiving? Do you see this as a problem in the future or will consumers just get sucked in and not mind?    |
| The Black Friday Results Are In and It Was. . . . Posted: 02 Dec 2013 01:13 PM PST
It’s Cyber Monday, which means folks are supposed to be making the switch from brick and mortar deals to online deals. During the night, the good people at the National Retail Federation pulled out their adding machines and set to crunching the Black Friday numbers. Here’s what they found out: More than 141 million unique shoppers took advantage of the Thanksgiving weekend to do a lot of their holiday shopping. This is up from 139 million last year. Many people grumble about stores that open on Thanksgiving but 27% more people shopped after dinner bringing the total up to 45 million. That’s a number that will certainly encourage stores to continue the practice. 25% of shoppers were at the store by 8 pm, leaving family members home to clean up the mess. 37.3% hit the store before midnight which is up from last year. In the future, stores plan to open earlier on Thanksgiving and just hand out turkey legs at the door. Eat while you shop! Black Friday was still the biggest day of the weekend: more than 92 million people shopped up from nearly 89 million last year. That was the good news. The bad news is that even though more people went shopping over the Thanksgiving weekend, on average they spent less. This year they each averaged $407.02 over from Thursday to Sunday. Last year that number was $423.55. Online Excitement 59 million shoppers went online to shop over the weekend – that’s just short of half of all holiday shoppers. The average spend was $177.67 per person. That’s a fraction of what shoppers spent offline but in general they said they were spending more of their budget online than in past years – a good sign for online only retailers. Black Friday was also the biggest day for sales online with a slight drop-off on Saturday. We shall see where today takes us later. What’s Going Under the Tree? Many, many people are going to finding clothing and accessories under the tree this year (57.5%). 37.7% pounced on great electronics deals and an almost equal number stocked up on toys over the weekend. Books, CDs, DVDs and Video Games were the next biggest sellers. 29.6% of people will get to pick out their own gift because they’ll be getting gift cards this year and only 16.9% bought jewelry – so if you find a ring in your stocking, you’re very, very special. While they were picking up gifts, 76.4% of shoppers also took advantage of deep discounts to buy something for themselves. That’s one way to make sure you get what you want this Christmas. Any bets for Cyber Monday? Will it be better or worse than last year?
Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community    |
| Amazon Delivery Drones? What’s Next? Teleportation? Posted: 02 Dec 2013 11:43 AM PST
Is this April Fool’s Day? I applaud their creative thinking but there are so many things wrong with this idea I don’t know where to begin. Let’s start with safety. The first time one of these things hits a person on the ground, breaks a window or scares off a cat Amazon’s going to get sued. Next, we have all the people who are going to call the police when they see an unidentified object buzzing past their house. Aliens or terrorists – either way, it’s scary. Let’s pause here to look at the video from Amazon. I’m wondering about those plastic boxes. They look expensive. Do they have to be returned to Amazon? Does the drone come back and get them? It’s not like a cardboard box that can be recycled. Next is the segmentation. The drones can carry around five pounds and have limited range. So if you don’t live within a half hour of a distribution center this won’t work for you. Or maybe we all live within a half hour of a center and don’t know it. . . it’s possible. Either way, only some people could use the service sometimes. What this reminds me of is Zorro’s Pizza. When I was a child, we used to go to Wildwood in the summer and dine on Mack’s Pizza. It was the best. But they didn’t deliver. So some smart business man came up with a business plan to get people to order from him. Delivery men dressed as Zorro. Instead of driving up to the house, they’d park a block away and run up to your door, cape flowing, lots of drama. It was cool. The pizza wasn’t that great but we all ordered because we wanted to see Zorro running down the street. If Amazon does launch this program (they say they will in the next 5 years if they can get past the pesky Federal government) people will use it just to see the drone land in their yard. I wonder if this is a 24-hour service? If so, it would be the perfect way to get a book or movie in the middle of the night when you can’t sleep. What do you think? Is Amazon Prime Air a viable business practice that will improve sales or just a fly-by-night idea that won’t come to pass or won’t last?
   |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Marketing Pilgrim - Internet News and Opinion To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
