Fashion and aesthetics in mobile phones

Originally for Satama Research Blog

Arcchart states in its latests report that:

Aesthetics of a device now plays a significant role in triggering an emotional response from consumers in mature mobile markets. The handset has become the most ubiquitous item of personal consumer electronics ever produced; it travels everywhere with its owner. As a result, the mobile phone can act as a canvas for an outward and visible statement of the owner’s tastes and values. This moves simple aesthetics into the realm of fashion and style.

RSS Readers visit more sites than non-RSS readers

I wrote last year about the power of RSS. It has proven to be a powerful medium and means to consume online content.

Nielsen Net Ratings reports that RSS users are significantly more engaged in online news than non-users, visiting an average of 10.6 news sites compared with 3.4 news sites for non-users. Main reason for this is convenience. Not only do RSS users visit more news Web sites than non-users, they also visit those sites more frequently. RSS users visited the top 20 news Web sites nearly three times as often as non-users and all other news Web sites four times as often.

So what, what does this mean? Well, well. I would say that online brand and marketeers really have to start leveraging RSS in their actions. And be aware that, the users fly around their sites – they no pop-in only if there is something new and boosted by RSS feeds. Old online community slogan “Community management is shooting all the time – once you stop, users will drop” (by Johanna Sarviharju, 1999) could not be more true for this too. Internet’s pace in intensifying once again- are you up to speed?

If not, choose your favourite RSS reader from here (I recommend Feeddemon) and get your OPML-listings (read sources) e.g. from me or from any other heavy RSS-users (e.g. Henri). Study also carefully e.g. this site. It is crowded with good reasons why RSS rocks!

Googlebombing

Orginallly for Satama Research Blog

In the booming times of search-engine optimisation (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM), it is worth to take a look at to an extreme case in it. George W. Bush is definately among the most controversy persons in the living history. If you try to type in “miserable failure” into Google, you will get his bio are number one hit. Why so?

Wikipedia explains this nicely. Google page rank is based partly on how many other sites link to a site. The more one has, the higher one can arise in the search results. So what? Why am I bringing in this issue?

Well, I think we as digital service professionals, should constantly consult our customers how they could become “George W’s” within searches related to their industry and products. We should help them to rank among the highest in search results. And this can be major business for us too. E.g. with a help of a tool such as WebCEO, we can give rapidly advice to our customer what to do. Try it out – this SEO and SEM is among key issues in the near future of our industry.

By the way, Forrester estimates that by 2010, European marketers will spend almost €3 billion on search engine marketing, up from €856 million in 2004. I think we should make sure that part of this growth accumulates also to our turnover