Internet Auction Report #3: Results

 On March 11 2010, we finally sold out the first Sock Doll for White Day.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220566094519&ssPageName=STRK:MESOX:IT

Besides, the product awareness was also spread through the online campaign. The result is displayed as follows:

Items	No. of Views	No. of Comments
Valentine’s Day Promotion on Facebook	22	11
Valentine’s Day Promotion on Renren.com	14	9
Ebay shop: White Day Pink Bear	22	1
Ebay shop: Valentine’s Day Red Rabbit	14	1
Total	72	22

Campaign Highlights:

• Online social media such as Facebook or Renren.com is a good Word of Mouth Marketing channel.
• The product off-line display should be considered to attract target audience.When we brought the Sock Doll to the class, many classmates liked it or even took a picture by cell phones to post on Facebook or wrote comments on Facebook/renre.com.
• Interaction is important! In the Valentine’s Day promotion, winner’s photo display of their DIY process attracted not only the original friends’ but also many other new friends’ active participation on the online discussion.

Key Learning:

• Price should be lower. Some classmates who liked the doll complained to us that our price is a little high. So cheaper, more sales!
• Product off-line display should be considered to do more in the campus such as half-day product show outside of the campus canteen.
• Yahoo is a popular auction site than ebay in Hong Kong. Some friends just complained it took time to register account on ebay.com.

Appendix:
1. Valentine’s Day Promotion on Facebook

2. Valentine's Day Promotion on Renren.com

Tech Blog #10: YouTube Mobile Adds Ads

Do you see the Mazda’s ad picture on the left? Yes! It is a video ad on YouTube mobile site. This latest ad offering has attracted three large advertisers’ investments including Mazda, Kia Motors and Sony Pictures.

According to the statistics, YouTube’s mobile app has "tens of millions" of views per day and has grown 160% in 2009. So, how big cake it will be? However, making ads viewable on mobile phones is not as easily as imagined since those video ads should be encoded in a mobile-friendly format while most mobile browsers can't handle Adobe's Flash. So YouTube is still on the way to fix a universal mobile app for different smart mobile phone handsets. I am not a tech guy but I believe this kind of technology problem is just nothing for the smart YouTube guys.

What really get me to have a further thought are two findings.

Firstly, mobile offers advertisers many attractive possibilities. No other device is as personal, interactive and constantly within reach as a cell phone. And cell phones get advertisers more accurate ad targeting due to its parameters such as device type, mobile channel, location or even demographic information. But, how does mobile ad go far? Although mobile provide advertisers different formats including messages, banner and full-page ads on mobile Internet sites etc, advertisers seem still not to prefer it a lot. According to the latest statistics from OUTSELL (see the below picture), mobile ads not only occupy just a small amount (i.e. $1.1B) in the total ad spending but also face the spending decline (i.e. 15.9% down from 2009). So will YouTube’s new app change the situation? Will more advertisers except for those three ones above be involved? Let’s wait and see.

Secondly, from Facebook, Twitter, Skype to Kindle, YouTube, it seems that every popular tech app is rushing into the 3G world and being mobilized. SmarTone, the new iPhone operator in Hong Kong just developed a print ad with the proposition of “140,000 apps to be amazed” (see ad picture as follows). I think this is not just iPhone’s case. Other mobile phone manufacturers are also using a variety of apps offering as a selling point. Just like the ad saying, APPS REALLY MAKES OUR COMMUNICATION LIFE AMAZING!

Tech Blog #9: Skype 3G app

Early in 2009, Skype has just launched a lit version of Skype™, for mobile phones such as Blackberry etc. It helps to cut down the overseas phone cost as Skype mobile users are only charged by their mobile operator for local air time and data usage based on the type of calling service and data plan they have purchased. But many operators still blocked its calls, prohibited its customers from downloading Skype’s software or imposed fees to undermine Skype’s attraction.

So, what’s going on in 2010?

Fortunately in February, Skype has announced its partnership with Verizon from March to bring a new Skype app to Verizon's 3G service, which means the app will be more easily accessible on the fly. Besides, Skype 3G app will allow free and unlimited Skype-to-Skype calls only if your cell phone’s unlimited data package.

So how big of a deal is this Skype announcement? Let’s see Henry McCracken’s comment from PC World:

There's nothing inherently historic about Skype being available on phones -- it's on the iPhone (albeit over Wi-Fi only right now) and I first used the service on a Windows Mobile handset years ago. (Only briefly, though -- it taxed the phone to the breaking point, and voice quality was pretty miserable.) But a major carrier such as Verizon not only grudgingly permitting Skype but buddying up with it as a selling point for its phones is an interesting twist.

(source from http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2010/0217/Skype-3G-app-to-hit-Verizon-phones-in-March)

Tech Blog #8: What Made CNN a Global Reputation?

Everyone knows about CNN. But what made CNN so famous in the world? Someone maybe knows it is the first Gulf War! Definitely, during the initial hours of the Coalition bombing campaign in 1991, CNN became the only news outlet with the ability to communicate from inside Iraq, with live reports. At that time the bombing destroyed all of the usual communication channels including military ones. No wonder even President George H. W. Bush said he depended on CNN's news to decide what was the next step would be during the media interviews.

But why it is CNN instead of other media who can control the exclusive news source? It is the power of Satellite-fed communication! CNN just rented several Satellite Phones for its 24-hour live news broadcast. When this advanced and military-focused technology was applied for journalism, all the news became real-time. Besides, other media also depended on CNN’s source to cover stories about the Gulf War.

Even nowadays, satellite-fed technology is still the key or exclusive communication channel in disasters. Take an example for Sichuan Earthquake in 2008. Earthquake could easily destroy the cell phone and Internet communication except for Satellite-fed communication. The live TV news host utilized satellite phones to interview with the onsite reporters about the latest information.

From this point of view, it is not the news content but the amazing communication technology made media success!

Microsoft's Skinput

Just watched the following video on Youtube. Microsoft also developed a state-of-the-art touchscreen technology similar to Six-Sense Technology. Does that really mean we no longer need to bring the cell phone, PSP, camera or even netbook for a trip? Skinput or Six-sense Technology will be our another brain to help us solve everything.  Exciting!

Tech Blog #7: Are you ready for Search Engine’s Future?

Do you agree that we are now living in a Google world? It means the Search Engine technology world to get you to know anything you want to know. That’s why so many companies are willing to pay for several thousand US$ per month (at least in HK) to hire a SEO agency to improve their product or brand ranking on Internet. But since this technology is getting more involved in multimedia such as Google image, Google video or even Google audio index etc, what can marketing communication professionals do besides adding SEO related html language in their websites? Before any action taken, Let’s first have a look at how two new multimedia search engines work.

1. Visual Identification

More and more image search sites are gaining capabilities of facial recognition by vector point analysis and color hue. We can even read the text on the image, see its colors and classify it based on its form, shape and textures.

Besides, VideoSurf, another popular video search engine, conducts its searches based on visual identification rather than strictly text or meta-data. VideoSurf allows consumers to visually navigate through their results to easily find the specific scenes, people or moments they most want to see. Users can now spend less time searching and more time being entertained.

How this will change SEO and Internet marketing:

Internet marketers will have to be more cognitive of the content of the images and video than the actual meta-data, tags, titles, and descriptions they embed and/or apply to it.

It will be harder for black hat SEOs to get away with labeling false tags on a video in order for it to appear in the search results for that keyword.

2. Speech Recognition

YouTube, for the political channel, rolled out speech recognition capabilities, called Google Audio Indexing, which allows users to find keywords in politician’s video speeches. This is only the beginning for this technology, soon users will be able to search for keywords and mentions within all video.

How this will change SEO and Internet marketing:

Internet marketers will be forced to put much more stock into the audio content of their videos. Audio indexing combined with visual identification will vastly change the game of Video SEO.

Although the tech development will make our communication practitioners’ job more complicated or stressed, I am still quite expected on the SE technology’s future. After all, no pain, no gain.

Tech Blog #6: E-book Reader - A Revolution Occurring in Publishing Industry

Just like Apple’s iTunes changed people’s music buying behavior many years ago, Amazon’s Kindle is now also transforming people’s reading habits. This new E-book Reader device has made fabulous sales of over 300 million units in December 2009, making Amazon be the world’s largest supplier of E-book Reader terminals.

I am not its owner yet, but once had a chance to touch a course lecturer’s last semester. Fashionable looking, a screen size similar to a general book and just 1 cm thickness. What’s more amazing are those following unique features:

•  An E Ink brand electronic paper display to eliminate eyestrain
•  16-level grayscale display to read in sunlight
•  1,500 non-illustrated books’ storage
•  Bookmarks and Annotation to easily highlight, add a note and clip an entire page
•  A technology termed "Whispersync," getting customers to synchronize reading progress, bookmarks, and other information across Kindle hardware devices and other mobile devices.

Compared to a US$27 price for a New York Times best seller, would you reject to pay less than US$9.99 for an e-book version? It’s cheaper and no need to go to book store or await the book shipment any more.

 

This human-oriented and state-of-the-art device should be the most “in” in 2010. No wonder why Sony or HW (China brand) is also making their efforts to eat this delicious cake. In response, Kindle just arrives free on BlackBerry this month after its software application for iPhone users last year. By cooperation with these two most popular and high-end cell phones in the world, Kindle is now accessing to business audience with a great spending power.

As a consumer, I don’t care how fierce manufacturers’ competition is. What I actually care is a more reasonable device price for me to afford. But more competition, cheaper and better the product is. By then, there will be billions of device users, which as a result change the public’s reading habits.

As for publishers, it may be a nightmare. No need for print books, newspapers and magazines. No need for bookstores. So a revolution is coming!

If you would like to know more about e-book readers, please watch the following demo video

Tech Blog #5: Do You Have Many Followers or just Following in Microblogs?

Sina, the No. 1 portal in China just launched its microblog (http://t.sina.com.cn) in September 2009. Several weeks ago, Google also unveiled Google Buzz to challenge Twitter and Facebook. It seems that microblogs exist everywhere. It gets me to wonder two questions:

1. Why microblogs are so popular?
2. What is its role in our daily life?

It is early in 2005 when the world’s first microblog, Tumbleblogs was set up. But at that time, since 3G mobile phones were not as popular as nowadays, the widespread wireless technology was still unavailable for users to share instant information and generate a quick social buzz. That’s maybe why Sina didn’t launch its microblog service until September 2009 just after China Mobile started its 3G business in China. So thanks for 3G mobile phone’s wireless tech, microblogging, a good app of Web 2.0 is now becoming another killer app of Internet.

As we all are microblog users now, how much daily time you spend on it? How many followers do you have? Or what you do more in microblogs is just following others? According to Sysomos' Inside Twitter survey, based on more than 11 million users, it shows that 10% of Twitter users account for 86% of all activity. So there is a small group of active users contributing to most of the activity. This also matches Sina microblog’s case. Sina started a test version by inviting celebrities to use its microblog service including movie stars, singers, famous journalists and writers etc. By doing so, it satisfied fans’ curiosity about their stars’ daily social life and really attracted millions public users to register in. A good marketing research and business strategy, right?