Harkable Tumblog

How A Gamer Shops For Groceries

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 03:41:08 +0100

How A Gamer Shops For Groceries:

What, you’ve never drifted with your shopping cart?

Google+ Vs Facebook [cartoon]

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:37:42 +0100

What Makes People Want To Follow A Brand?

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 10:21:00 +0100

Click for large version

What is the network effect?

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 13:38:07 +0100

What is the network effect?

Where Did The Iconic Fallout Shelter Symbol Come From? [Design]

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 13:48:01 +0100

Where Did The Iconic Fallout Shelter Symbol Come From? [Design]:

CONELRAD recently posted a great piece that explores the origin of the famous fallout shelter sign that appeared across the country at the height of the Cold War. Worn and rusted,…

60 Seconds on the Web What do you do in a minute? In 60 seconds...

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 09:51:38 +0100

60 Seconds on the Web

What do you do in a minute? In 60 seconds the landscape of the web can completely change. This graphic illustrates what has been occurring whilst I write this post… Staggering.

Why Augmented Reality Is Poised To Change Marketing

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 12:43:27 +0100

Why Augmented Reality Is Poised To Change Marketing:

Sam Travis Ewen is the CEO and founder of Interference Incorporated, a non-traditional marketing agency, and is co-founder of Supertou.ch an…

"If you feel that you’ve figured it out, you’re probably wrong. The key to product design..."

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 11:16:00 +0100

““If you feel that you’ve figured it out, you’re probably wrong. The key to product design is managing what you have and constantly reassessing””

- Rebekah Cox / Quora

10 Ways For Entrepreneurs To Build Brands Online

Fri, 27 May 2011 03:36:42 +0100

10 Ways For Entrepreneurs To Build Brands Online:

Benjamin Lang is the founder of EpicLaunch and co-founder of MySchoolHelp. You can follow him on Twitter @entrepreneurpro and find out more at BenjaminLang.com

Every Movie Featuring Aliens In Four Minutes

Tue, 24 May 2011 05:28:53 +0100

Every Movie Featuring Aliens In Four Minutes:

With the upcoming release of Super 8, Green Lantern, and Cowboys & Aliens, here’s a look back at some movies about space. Plus, The Killers. Enjoy.

Watch Video ›

Women Influencers Are Susceptible (You Guessed It) to Influence

Fri, 13 May 2011 13:19:35 +0100

Influential women are themselves more likely than other women to have their purchases influenced by everything from online reviews to expert endorsements. But they’re not always as swayed by the big names you’d expect and often give more weight to media and media brands than to individuals.

Those are among conclusions of a study of what and who influences women by PR firm Marina Maher Communications and word-of-mouth-tracking firm Keller Fay Group. The strong showing for such media properties as HGTV, Parents magazine and Johnson & Johnson’s Babycenter.com suggests that even in word-of-mouth campaigns that don’t directly involve advertising, media brands and their associated talent can play a substantial role.

Marina Maher, which represents such brands as Procter & Gamble Co.’s Head & Shoulders and Cover Girl, Kimberly-Clark Corp.’s Poise and Kotex and Jameson Irish Wiskey, used a survey of more than 2,000 women to identify a group of 12% of women who have outsize influence on the purchase decisions of others.

These “Influence-Hers” have considerably larger social networks — both online and offline — totaling on average about 170 people they interact with regularly, compared with75 for a typical woman, said Marina Maher Managing Director Keith Hughes.

Besides having a larger social circle, they also tend to be more actively engaged with brands. The Influence-Hers are 38% more likely than typical women to “like” brands on Facebook or to provide personal information to brands they like on Facebook. They’re also 105% more likely to post positive experiences and 125% more likely to post negative experiences about brands online.

Creating something of an amplified echo chamber, the Influence-Hers can have a big impact on making Facebook marketing more effective, Mr. Hughes said. Their comments and interactions with brand wall posts are both more frequent and seen by more people, which in turn positively affects brands’ ranking in the algorithm that determines how well posts do in the “Top News” rankings of wall posts.

Of the female influencers, 83% rely on expert reviews very or fairly often; 84% rely on consumer reviews to make purchase decisions; 42% say they’re relying more in the past few years on expert reviews; and 59% are relying more on the reviews of other consumers to make decisions.

They’re also as much as 90% more likely, depending on the category, to value the input of endorsers than other women. So the Influence-Hers both consume and generate far more buzz than other women.

Expert and peer reviews are having a much bigger impact, these influencers say in the survey, than editorial coverage (with 25% of influencers saying it has a bigger role for them now), advertising (only 16%) or sales staff (13%).

Yet the influence of media brands still shows in many categories and in the fact that some of the strongest endorsers are closely associated with media brands rather than big names in their own right, Mr. Hughes said. For example, in home care and design, where nearly 90% of these influential women are more likely to be swayed by the right endorser or expert than are women generally, Ty Pennington of ABC’s “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” rated well ahead of style maven Martha Stewart or designer Michael Graves in influence. The stable of home-care celebrities associated with HGTV also rated high with influential women, Mr. Hughes said.

In the parenting and family categories, Parents magazine carried weight with almost twice as many women as Dr. Phil and had an even bigger edge on Kelly Ripa. Mr. Hughes said Babycenter also carried more endorsement weight with influencer moms than the celebrities did.

Of course, no one human being packs the buzz impact of Oprah among the buzz generators, who are 76% more likely to read a book endorsed by her than are women generally.

The Influence-Hers are also 55% more likely than other women to go to a restaurant after seeing it on TV and 91% more likely to buy something for her home after seeing it on a morning TV show.

The implications of the research include a need for marketers to look beyond broad Q Scores and favorability ratings when doling out endorsement dollars, Mr. Hughes said (and, not surprisingly, Marina Maher has a proprietary index for that).

“Marketers need to be more targeted and strategic in the way they’re targeting these women,” he said. Among other things, he said brands need to give these highly influential women more opportunities to create and aggregate reviews either on Facebook or websites and to provide them with relevant information they can pass along — both branded and unbranded.

via AdAge

Social Media Ad Spending to hit $8 billion by 2015

Thu, 05 May 2011 17:02:18 +0100

Social media ad spending will hit $8.3 billion in 2015, up from $2.1 billion last year, according to a new report.

BIA/Kelsey, a media consultancy, predicts that display ads will retain the lion’s share of the business, but innovations like Twitter‘s Promoted Tweets will make inroads as well.

By 2015, $7.7 billion of that $8.3 billion will be from display ads, the firm predicts, and most of that will belong to Facebook, though the report didn’t break out Facebook’s exact share. A rep for BIA/Kelsey says the figures were determined by “third-party and public company reports” as well as BIA/Kelsey’s knowledge of the social media advertising market.

BIA/Kelsey‘s definition of social media advertising doesn’t include virtual goods and rewards, social gaming, social commerce or social marketing.

These estimates are more or less in line with those of eMarketer, which pegged social media ad spending at $2 billion in 2010 and predicts the segment will hit $3 billion in 2011 and $3.93 billion in 2012. The Internet Advertising Bureau, meanwhile, reported that U.S. online advertising as a whole hit $26 billion in 2010. The IAB doesn’t break out social media advertising revenues.

To put the forecast in perspective, the IAB estimated [PDF link] that TV ad spending totaled $68.7 billion in 2010 while newspapers and radio took in $22.8 billion and $15.3 billion, respectively.

Is BIA/Kelsey’s report credible? Facebook’s ad revenues were believed to have hit $1.68 billion last year, and this year the company’s ad prices are on the rise. Its business isgrowing faster than previously predicted. Taking that information into account (and assuming that Facebook will continue to dominate the segment), $8.3 billion seems plausible, even conservative.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

Source via Mashable

Robert Scoble: The Next Web Is 'H+R+V'

Tue, 03 May 2011 16:16:00 +0100

Robert Scoble (@scobleizer) spoke at The Next Web conference in Amsterdam this week, showing his favourite apps and services that illustrate how the future of technology lies in the convergence of ‘H+R+V’ - the human plus reality plus virtual.

What does this mean? When we give humans technology, via an intuitive and appealing interface, which allows them to share their reality in the virtual space and share their virtual reality through physical devices we have a connected world where so much more is possible.

How many of these apps do you use?

How It Feels To Be Cheered Into The Apple Store On IPad 2 Day

Sat, 26 Mar 2011 01:01:47 +0000

How It Feels To Be Cheered Into The Apple Store On IPad 2 Day:

I uploaded a YouTube video: iPad 2 Launch, Covent Garden, London

Enter a new form of marketing. Enter influencer marketing.

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 10:48:05 +0000

Enter a new form of marketing. Enter influencer marketing.

iOS 4.3 Released

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 20:57:15 +0000

Apple has just released iOS 4.3 for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.

New features include:

Faster web browser
Better support for AirPlay
Personal HotSpot on the iPhone 4
Home Sharing for iTunes

Open iTunes and plug in your iOS device to update! If you’re rocking an Apple TV 2 go to the “check for updates” menu on the device itself.

We also found the direct download links:

Game You Play In Your Browser Address Bar!?!

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 16:22:14 +0000

We always love it when developers play with the limitations of the web and current technology and here is a surprisingly playable game which takes place entirely in you browser’s address bar. Play over at probablyinteractive.com/url-hunter - what’s your high score?

Will (@willfrancis)

Every frame from Requiem For A Dream condensed into one image to...

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 10:24:45 +0000

Every frame from Requiem For A Dream condensed into one image to show the colours of the film. Loads more over at this amazing Tumblog - moviebarcode.tumblr.com

Almost Ready To Launch Beta

Wed, 09 Mar 2011 00:17:03 +0000

We’ve been busy squirrelling away to ready ourselves for the invite-only beta phase of our development. This is coming in the next few days and will allow influencers to apply for a beta invite and for companies to create accounts ahead of our full launch in Spring. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook or here on Tumblr to stay up-to-date :)

Will (@willfrancis)