Esta era una integración que se veía venir desde que Microsoft invirtió en Facebook. El cliente de chat de MS es muy poderoso y con una tremenda penetración sobre todo en America Latina. He probado Trillian, Pidgin y otros y la verdad creo esta es la solución más simple y fácil, sobre todo para quienes no usamos AOL, ICQ, Yahoo o GMail para chatear muy a menudo. Funciona perfecto, eso si sería mejor si se pudieran sincronizar los contactos y tener una lista única, cosa que seguro vendrá pronto. Les dejo el link para el how-to, muy fácil: http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2011/02/02/mess...

Interesante ver como Ebay se anticipó a un cambio en el modelo de negocios y se pasó rapidamente a la vereda del frente, que ahora crece más que su propio negocio. Un ejemplo de visión a largo plazo.

No soy diseñador pero me gusta escuchar argumentos simples y sólidos en cuanto a diseño se refiere, ya que uno más allá de las preferencias puede darse cuenta inmediatamente de los errores y aciertos.

Les dejo un breve video de Before and After, donde un diseñador pro ayuda a amateurs que le envían logos para su análisis.

El crecimiento de un 600% de streaming de contenidos vía web pone denuevo el énfasis en los contenidos y no en las tuberías. Podremos esperar planes de Internet que sean TV friendly? Imagino un Plan Movistar TV que tenga conexión directa con los canales y otros proveedores de contenidos audiovisuales, full HD :-)

Seth Godin, siempre tan inquisidor y preciso que me da gusto ver como plantea los temas. Aquì un post de cómo el llamado "Senior Management" toma decisiones equivocadas, principalmente entendiendo que Senior no es ser viejo, sino que hacer mucho tiempo lo mismo sin cambiar.

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Senior management

A newly-retired executive takes a job as an adjunct professor and really shakes things up. Both the school and the students are blown away by her fresh thinking and new approaches.

A forty-year old internet executive who has been running his company for decades misses one new trend after another, because he's still living in 1998.

One thing that happens to management when they get senior is that they get stuck. (As we saw with the new professor, senior isn't about old, it's about how long you've been there).

If you've been doing it forever, you discover (but may not realize) that the things that got you this power are no longer dependable.

Reliance on the tried and true can backfire (Rupert keeps missing one opportunity after another, and keeps misunderstanding the medium he works in) or it can (rarely) pay off (Steve Jobs keeps repeating the same business model again and again--it's not an accident that Apple has no real online or social media footprint. Steve believes in beautifully designed objects, closed systems and evangelizing to developers and creatives).

Worth quoting--one of Arthur C. Clarke's lesser known three laws:  "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is probably wrong."

The paradox is that by the time you get to be senior, the decisions that matter the most are the ones that would be best made made by people who are junior...

Posted by Seth Godin on August 26, 2010 | Permalink

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USD$700 millones de dolares en el último quarter de pérdidas para la división Online de Microsoft. Resume bastante bien como un ejecutivo definía modelo de negocios online: "THE WASTELAND" :-)

En Korea del Sur, Starcraft, un juego de PC, es deporte nacional y miles de fanáticos se juntan a ver a los campeones nacionales de este deporte. Ahora que viene la versión 2 de Starcraft, no es raro que se haga publicidad en los aviones de la línea aerea Koreana.
Esperamos ansiosos ver a las azafatas vestidas de Kerrigan y al piloto disfrazado de Zealot. :-)

Las redes sociales son cosa del presente/futuro próximo, pero lo que viene a continuación ya está definido. Me refiero a todos los servicios y productos que se generan al saber desde donde está conectada cada persona y/o dispositivo. La geolocalización es un tema que aún no ha despegado principalmente porque no había una masa crítica con aparatos de GPS que pudieran sustentarla. Ahora donde todos los teléfonos tienen un gps y se están masificando los smartphones, así como los planes de datos, esto es un tema cada vez mayor.

Soy usuario de FOursquare y, más allá de aún no encontrarle la utilidad al servicio, se ve claramente que el ir a un lugar y tener recomendaciones de qué hacer, que comer, ver, oir hablar, etc. es tremendamente potente. Sumemosle a lo anterior la capa de red social que hoy damos por garantizada y tenemos la posibilidad de llevar al offline nuestra red.
Les dejo el video de Google Places, un nuevo servicio orientado a la geolocalización de locales comerciales y su publicidad.
Como me repetían en clases de marketing, hay negocios donde siempre la ventaja competitiva será: location, location, location.

The Location War going on right now has many fronts (Foursquare, Twitter, search, mobile), but it is being funded by one thing: convincing local businesses to spend money on online advertising.

Google is escalating that war today by making a big push to become the de facto directory for local businesses on the Web.

Its Local Business Center is being renamed Google Places and it is introducing a whole bunch of new features including local search and map listings, realtime updates, custom QR codes and coupons, and even photo shoots for businesses.

While Geo startups like Foursquare, Gowalla, and even Twitter (and soon, Facebook?) are taking a social approach to local business listings, coupons, and offers, Google is approaching from the search side.

One out of every five searches is location related, but local search still represents a relatively small portion of Google’s revenues. Google wants local businesses to claim ther Places pages (4 million have already done so), update them and buy local search advertising.

For $25 a month, local businesses can buy “tags” which will turn up their listings in local searches, including on Google maps. They can print out custom QR codes (2D barcodes) which are readable by cell phones with cameras and QR readers and will pop up a mobile version of their Google Place page or a mobile coupon.

Businesses can also add realtime updates to their Places page (a feature that was switched on earlier this year), define the areas they serve, and even schedule a photo shoot for better pictures for their page.

Google Places is designed for one-off searches, and is powerful as a search tool a far as it goes. What is missing, however, is the social aspect. Why can’t businesses add their Twitter streams or Facebook pages? How do they establish an ongoing online relationship with customers? The location war is far from over.

Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/20/google-places/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_med...

Este gráfico es terrible para quienes trabajamos en un medio "tradicional", o como le dicen los gringos, "old media". Sin embargo es precioso para quienes trabajamos en los "new medias".

Lo triste es que, más allá de las bajas en inversión publicitaria, el marcado total declinó en un 12%. Esperemos los new media tomen un rol más preponderante en el 2010. Ya con la crisis atrás y en año de mundial, por lo menos en el resto del mundo no USA, debería ser un muy buen año para la industria en general.

Les dejo el extracto del texto:

"Media industry ad revenue declined 12% year-over-year to $125.3 billion in 2009, according to a report issued by Kantar Media, the WPP-owned research firm formerly known as TNS.

The only major growth area: Online ad spending. Internet ads -- display only -- increased 7% in 2009, according to the report.

Meanwhile, TV ad spending fell 10%, as cable outperformed network TV, and spot spending fell dramatically, as political ads from 2008 weren't around in 2009. Magazines dropped 17%, newspapers and radio each dropped 20%, and outdoor fell 13%."

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Facebook Overtakes Google Search
By Roger Browne

Hitwise, a web analysis business, said on its Analyst Weblog that Facebook was the most visited site last week, overtaking Google Search for the first time.

Hitwise suggests that Google Search accounted for 7.03% of US Internet visits last week, compared to 7.07% for Facebook.

If Google’s non-search services (Gmail, YouTube, Maps etc) are also included, Google remains in the lead with 11.03% of US Visits. Yahoo also beats Facebook, with 10.98% of US visits.

The Hitwise article includes this striking chart comparing the growth of Google Search and Facebook over the past year. Google Search has grown its traffic share just a few percent, whereas Facebook’s is more than two and a half times what it was just a year ago.

Does this mean that social sites are going to overtake search sites on the internet? Not so fast ... we might be seeing a see-sawing back and forth. In 2007 it was MySpace that was ahead of Google.

Facebook Overtakes Google ... by Roger Browne | Comments (4)

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Facebook podría facilmente transformarse en el nuevo HOME de partida, siendo un portal que agregue información, noticias y entretenimiento pero con la diferencia de los portales tradicionales de que sería información relevante al grupo de referencia del usuario. En síntesis, noticias y entretención en un contexto social, con búsquedas en el mismo contexto, algo que Google está tratando de lograr con Buzz pero que todavía no perfecciona. Facebook tiene la delantera, aunque como dice el artículo, antes pensabamos que MySpace iba a dominar la red y ahora poco se escucha al respecto.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Twitter can now let the world automatically know your whereabouts as well as your thoughts and activities.

A new feature unveiled Thursday gives Twitter users the option of including their location with the assorted musings posted on the Internet messaging service.

Locations won't be included unless users turn on the tracking tool. The technology, which shadows people through Web browsers, can be turned off at any time.

Twitter is responding to the growing popularity of other Internet services, such as Foursquare, Gowalla and Loopt, that broadcast people's locations. Facebook is expected to join the trend soon, too.

Many of Twitter's 73 million worldwide users already mention their location in their messages, or tweets. But that wastes precious space because tweets are limited to 140 characters.

Location sharing is becoming so prevalent that a Web site called Please Rob Me recently launched as a reminder that burglars can mine the information to help pinpoint places where nobody's home.

Twitter is advising its users to be careful about when and how they use the new location tool.

Persuading people to share their locations could help Internet services sell more advertising to companies looking to sell products and services in certain neighborhoods at a specific time.

Twitter's tracking tool is designed to work seamlessly with two Web browsers: Chrome and Firefox 3.5. The Internet Explorer browser requires downloading Google Inc.'s Gears software.

NYT Mar 5 2010, 06:40 PM EST

11.77	Change	% Change
	+0.40	+3.52%

The New York Times surveyed their staffers in December, asking them questions about the quality of management and other worklife experiences. About half of the Times' newsroom and other employees participated.

Today, a memo from publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and president and chief executive Janet Robinson was sent out to staffers reviewing the results.

According to the memo forwarded to us in an email, these are the following unsatisfactory issues for Times staffers:

• Career growth. Employees are looking to the Company to foster ways to help them grow professionally.

• Meritocracy. Employees feel that policies and practices should be administered in an even-handed way.

• Agility. Employees want the Company to make opportunities to learn new things more available, and to further encourage adaptability and change.

• Innovation. Employees want to try new and novel approaches in their day-to-day tasks.

Executive editor Bill Keller addressed that "career growth" issue a bit last week, explaining a bunch of editor-to-writer staff shuffles because "journalists are disposed to a kind of A.D.D., a restless curiosity."

But certainly Times executives will have to pay close attention to those "agility" and "innovation" issues. The Times is, after all, taking a year to figure out their metered paywall system. But that's just one of many issues. Jeff Bercovici at Daily Finance reports that there is "a great deal of tension about what kinds of video, if any, the Times should be producing."

Those are just two examples...

But working for the Times isn't all bad, of course. Their reportedly happy with work/life balance at the Times. We heard it was free "back rub" day earlier this week. Not too shabby!

Here's the full memo:

Dear Colleague,

It is critically important for senior management to know what you and your colleagues are thinking throughout the organization. In December we invited you to complete a survey so that you could discuss your work experience and about half of the staff participated.

Thank you for your time, effort and candid comments. When we read the results, it is apparent that you had much to say on a variety of different important topics, providing valuable insight into our Company’s strengths and where we need to improve.

Today we want to share highlights of this survey. Let’s begin with five strengths:

• Discretionary effort. Employees are putting in the effort to go the extra mile.
• Brand. Employees are proud of our brand.
• Work/life balance. The Company provides programs and supports approaches that help employees maintain a healthy balance.
• Employee voice. The Company encourages employees to share their points of view.
• Manager excellence. Those who have a responsibility to manage people are doing their job well.

You also mentioned a group of opportunities that needed to be addressed:

• Career growth. Employees are looking to the Company to foster ways to help them grow professionally.
• Meritocracy. Employees feel that policies and practices should be administered in an even-handed way.
• Agility. Employees want the Company to make opportunities to learn new things more available, and to further encourage adaptability and change.
• Innovation. Employees want to try new and novel approaches in their day-to-day tasks.

We take your suggestions and counsel very seriously. We know from past experience that it will make our Company a more productive and satisfying place to work. For example, in the 2007 survey, we learned that we needed to focus on the quality of our managers. Consequently, we designed and rolled out the Manager Excellence program and introduced new tools through Times Talent. Based on the recent survey findings, it is apparent that this effort is showing positive results.

You will shortly hear about your business unit results from your unit leader or manager. Thanks again for your participation; we know how busy you have been. With that said, we count on your active participation in these efforts. These surveys have proven time-and-time again to be one of the best ways to identify opportunities important to your career and the Company’s continued success.

Arthur and Janet

De vez en cuando es bueno hacer un reality check con tu gente, y ver realmente cuales son las preocupaciones e inquietudes. Bien por el NYT y ojalá no quede sólo en papel. Ahora, no dejo de preguntarme si la gente sabrá lo que "innovate faster" really means...

Les dejo un blog post de Seth GOdin hace 7 años atrás, que es igualmente aplicable hoy. La autodeterminación en avanzar, en crear y en estudiar, en ser mejor persona y en lograr todo el potencial que uno tiene. Bien motivante.

...are we stuck in High School?

I had two brushes with higher education this week.

The first was at a speech I gave in New York. There were several Harvard Business School students there, invited because of their interest in marketing and exceptional promise (that's what I was told... I think they came because they had heard that Maury Rubin would make a great lunch!).

Anyway, they asked for my advice in finding marketing jobs. When I shared my views (go to a small company, work for the CEO, get a job where you actually get to make mistakes and do something) one woman professed to agree with me, but then explained, "But those companies don't interview on campus."

Those companies don't interview on campus. Hmmm. She has just spent $100,000 in cash and another $150,000 in opportunity cost to get an MBA, but...

The second occurred today at Yale. As I drove through the amazingly beautiful campus, I passed the center for Asian Studies. It reminded me of my days as an undergrad (at a lesser school, natch), browsing through the catalog, realizing I could learn whatever I wanted. That not only could I take classes but I could start a business, organize a protest movement, live in a garret off campus, whatever. It was a tremendous gift, this ability to choose.

Yet most of my classmates refused to choose. Instead, they treated college like an extension of high school. They took the most mainstream courses, did the minimum amount they needed to get an A, tried not to get into "trouble" with the professor or face the uncertainty of the unknowable. They were the ones who spent six hours a day in the library, reading their textbooks.

The best part of college is that you could become whatever you wanted to become, but most people just do what they think they must.

Is this a metaphor? Sure. But it's a worthwhile one. You have more freedom at work than you think (hey, you're reading this on company time!) but most people do nothing with that freedom but try to get an A.

Do you work with people who are still in high school? Job seekers only willing to interview with the folks who come on campus? Executives who are trying to make their boss happy above all else? It's pretty clear that the thing that's wrong with this system is high school, not the rest of the world.

Cut class. Take a seminar on french literature. Interview off campus. Safe is risky.

Una de las estrategias a considerar es siempre llevarel tráfico fuera de Facebook a las Web de consumo, sobre todo para quienes somos medios de comunicación y nos interesa rentabilizar dicha audiencia. Este pequeño gráfico muestra cómo Facebook es preferido para medios audiovisuales mientras Google lo es para medios prensa.

Does Facebook traffic favor TV brands and Google News favor print? Facebook has become an enormous driver of traffic to news and information sites in the last year. As we reported recently, metrics firm Hitwise found that this popular social network even beats out Google now as the Web’s chief source of referrals to media sites.

Bur apparently Facebook users tend to click more on news coming from broadcast media than from print brands. Following up on her original research on the role social networks now play in driving media consumers, Hitwise analyst Heather Hopkins discovered that the overwhelming majority of the top ten news and media sites visited after Facebook were either broadcast entities like CNN.com, Weather.com or Fox News or large portal entities like Yahoo! News, Google News or Drudge Report. In fact, People magazine (#5) was the only print entity among the top ten recipients of “downstream” traffic from Facebook in the news and media category (week of Feb. 27, 2010).

...it's driven by the same old media love affair with distribution lock in. I've been on about this ever since I studied Google in 2001: Media traditionally has gained its profits by owning distribution. Cable carriage, network airwaves, newsstand distribution and printing presses: all very expensive, so once you employ enough capital to gain them, it's damn hard to get knocked out.  

The web changed all that and promised that economics in the media business would be driven by content and intent: the best content will win, driven by the declared intent of consumers who find it and share it. Search Social was the biggest wave to hit media since the printing press. And the open technology to make better and better experiences has been on a ten year tear: blogging software, Flash, Ajax, HTML 5, Android, and more and more coming.

But the iPad, just like the iPhone, is designed for vertical integration and distribution lock in. Apple is building its own distribution channel, just as it did with iTunes, and media companies are falling over themselves to make an app for that. Why? Well sure, for once, it's sexy and cool and hip. That's why everyone loved the Wired demo.

But the real reason media companies love the iPad is the same reason I don't: It's an old school, locked in distribution channel that doesn't want to play by the new rules of search social. Sure, you can watch a movie on it. Sure, you can read a book on it. And sure, you can read a publication on it. But if you want to use the web natively, with all the promise that the web brings to media? Not so much. Apple will include a browser, of course. But will media you find through that browser be able to interact with the iPad platform so as to bring full value to you, the consumer? Nope. Not unless that same media is approved by Apple and makes it into the iPad app store.

And that's why I don't like the iPad. Don't tell me, as a media maker, what I can make and how I can leverage the technology in my audience's hands. And don't tell me, as a media consumer, what's OK for me to interact with, and how.

Yep, I really don't like what the iPad augurs. And I hope, in the end, it's consigned to what it should be: A sexy version of a portable DVD player-cum-Kindle. Nice to have. Not a game changer. Certainly not revolutionary. Unless you're longing for yesteryear, when owning distribution meant owning audiences. Oh, and by the way, Traditional Media Folk: This time Apple owns that distribution channel, not you.

Harumph.

Y digamos que tiene toda la razón del mundo. Not a game changer, probablemente mueva un poco el mercado hacia este tipo de gadgets, pero no hay innovación en el modelo de negocios y el lock in al canal de distribución es más de lo mismo.

En contexto del nuevo lanzamiento de Microsoft por una plataforma móvil que le permita competir con Apple y Google, es bueno mirar cómo ha bajado el market share de suscriptores dependiendo del OS.
La consolidación de Apple ha sido creciente y constante desde el lanzamiento del Iphone el 2007. La de RIM ha sido más escalonada y principalmente la nueva línea de Blackberries ha probado ser exitosa.
¿Qué trae Microsoft a la mesa? Nada muy nuevo la verdad, y para agregar distorsión al lanzamiento, anunciaron hoy, Febrero 2010, el lanzamiento que será a fin de año.
Cómo dice la nota, fin de año bien podría ser el fin de la década a la velocidad que se mueven las cosas hoy, esto estará obsoleto mucho antes.