In the mobile operating system war, Apple’s iOs still dominates Worldwide but Android gained significant momentum in the last year. Android app downloads passed 10 billion mark and Android has become an important platform for developers.  Android is already the world’s most widely-used operating system. The operating system now spans more than 400 devices on 231 mobile carriers in 123 countries, Google says, and the sheer number of eyeballs landing on Android screens is making the platform more appealing than ever.

Android has a volume advantage over iOS but it has an important disadvantage:

Fragmentation. Its open nature means dozens of manufacturers and more than 200 carriers globally can distribute Android phones. So different versions of the software on phones with different screen sizes, user interfaces, and capabilities all operate in the wild at once. Android users can choose from Google’s official Android Marketplace, carrier app stores, and other independent venues—each with potentially different rankings, reviews, and standards. While consumers get more choice and developers more opportunities to share their apps, the overall experience is inconsistent and potentially complicated.

In order to make it easier for Android developers to get started with creating robust applications, the Android team announced an Android Development School site: Android Training. The tutorials, or classes, are very well put together, with splits into logical steps to make them flow well, along with sample code you can utilize to “do your homework.” Thanks to Google, all the content is free and waiting for Android developer candidates.

Here’s one more surprise from Google to celebrate holiday season. Type ‘let it snow’ in Google search, and you’ll see snowflakes falling down the page. Don’t miss out the opportunity to write your name in the frost. Enjoy and have a good holiday season

Apple has announced that 100 million apps have been downloaded from the Mac App Store in less than one year. Now, there are estimately 10.000 apps on the Mac App Store.

Developers are happy with Apple’s App Store Enviroment. Mac developers set the prices for their apps, keep 70 percent of the sales revenue, are not charged for free apps and do not have to pay hosting, marketing or credit card fees.

Apple’s most popular App Store is iPhone App Store but Mac App Store is valuable for developers, too. Mac App Store solves marketing and distribution challenges of software firms and give them more chance to focus on development process instead of marketing. “In less than one year we’ve shifted the distribution of djay for Mac exclusively to the Mac App Store,” said Karim Morsy, CEO of algoriddim. “With just a few clicks, djay for Mac is available to customers in 123 countries worldwide. We could never have that reach through traditional channels.”

In just its second year, the Small Business Saturday initiative managed to pull 103 million customers through the doors of small business establishments. This Thanksgiving weekend frenzy surpassed the projected number of 89 million and showed that the bourgeoning “shop local” movement is gaining traction in a real, measurable way. What’s most interesting about the push to shop local is how much of its success hinges on social media marketing; this is particularly interesting considering the two industries developed almost directly alongside each other, at least in terms of sophistication and popularity.

Small business has almost always relied on word of mouth to succeed. There are very few national TV spots and building-side ads trying to pull you into Daydreams Comics in Iowa City, Iowa or Homespun Crafts in Indianapolis, Indiana. Unfortunately, word of mouth for a lot of businesses can only go so far. Social media is essentially a rebirth for word of mouth in a digital age. Platforms like Facebook allow small bookstores to broadcast events to an always ready audience, reaching them on their cell phones as well as computers. Twitter is used by many “pop up shops” and mobile businesses to let consumers know where in the city the business can be found that day. Given the incredible success social media has had on small businesses this year, how should these businesses proceed moving forward?

Word of mouth has always been an important part of marketing, both because it is free and because, almost always, the words are going to a person from someone in their life that they trust. This gives credence to the brand and service, as well as giving confidence to the overall purchase decision. If you’re looking for what to do in Chicago, for instance, you are more likely to take the advice of a person you know and trust who has experienced it than from a kid who once saw a movie about Chicago and thought it was okay.

The massive shift to digital has opened up new avenues of marketing, which are ultimately cheaper and hold lots of promise for small businesses who have limited advertising budgets.

Google AdWords Express

In an effort to give small businesses a bit of an edge in catching the attention of customers, Google launched a service called Boost, which would later become AdWords Express. The idea here is that you register your business with Google and when someone searches for stores in your area, you stand out from the usual suspects (read: international corporations show up as red tabs and you show up as a blue tab that automatically sets you apart).

SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is emerging from the dark shadow of its past to become a massive force in Internet marketing. Large corporations use it to boost their rankings in search engines, but smaller business can use SEO to deepen their potential customer base. SEO is beneficial for one simple reason: people can’t go to your site if they can’t find it. Targeting keywords specific to your business and location will help more people find your site and hopefully walk through the doors of your storefront.

Mobile Marketing

After this past Black Friday and Cyber Monday, there are considerably more smartphones and tablets out on the market. That number is growing as people move away from stationary computer setups toward mobile Internet devices. Companies like Groupon have launched local services that allow small business owners to create offers and deals in real time and beam them to cell phones of customers who could be in your neighborhood. Your deal that day might win you a new regular customer.

The shop small revolution has a lot of support behind it in the shrinking world. People are starting to reject the convenience afforded by huge corporations and re-invest in their communities by shopping small. The movement will likely grow in the coming years and businesses looking to harness the increasing public enthusiasm for “small shopping” will have to evolve their marketing methods with the digital methods cropping up and leverage them to succeed in the current economic landscape.

Google announced that Android app downloads have passed the 10 billion mark in a short time. Thanks to Android users around the world, Android Market exceeded 10 billion app downloads—with a growth rate of one billion app downloads per month.

Apple just passed 10 billion app downloads in January. But thanks to the fast growth of the sale of Android phones, Google’s app downloads are growing fast. The first billion installs took 20 months, the second billion installs took another 5 months, and the third billion took only 2 months. The next billion took only about 7 months.

With these numbers, Android is already the world’s most widely-used operating system. To celebrate this milestone, Google partnered with some of the Android developers who contributed to this milestone to make a bunch of great Android apps available at an amazing price. Starting today for the next 10 days, we’ll have a new set of awesome apps available each day for only 10 cents each.

Whether you’re designing a website for personal use or to help build your business, you undoubtedly understand the importance of showing up in search results—the higher, the better. Whereas this was once accomplished with “black hat” tactics like keyword stuffing and spammy links, Google has made most of these tactics ineffectual at best.

Google’s Panda Update was unofficially aimed at “content farms”: “We’re evaluating multiple changes that should help drive spam levels lower, including one change that primarily affects sites that copy others’ content and sites with low levels of original content. […] As ‘pure webspam’ has decreased over time, attention has shifted instead to ‘content farms,’ which are sites with shallow or low-quality content.”

In essence, Google can now read at a 10^th grade level and is able to differentiate original, quality content from poorly written content with irrelevant links. When you add to this the newest algorithm update, tentatively called the Google Fresh Update, which rates pages based upon how fresh and up-to-date the content is, along with how often the page is updated, it becomes apparent that having your page rank highly in Google is no easy feat.

So what can be done to improve your site’s chances of success?

The first step to creating an effective website is to be sure your page is aesthetically pleasing, and that the words flow well. The best way to do this is to create a rapid prototype of sorts of your page, in order to be sure that it is easy to navigate and that all of the links are in working order.

By “rapid prototype”, I mean a tangible recreation of your page that can be seen from all angles, and moved around if necessary, without having to constantly rewrite code. Some do this with charts or graphs, while others prefer the more rudimentary Post-It notes on a whiteboard. Whatever your choice, by viewing your page in this manner, you will be able to spot flaws that may drive potential consumers away.

Once you are certain your site has met these standards, then it’s time to start taking the various Google algorithm updates into account. Is your content well-written and error-free? If there are links that have been placed in your text, are they relevant, or might they be construed by Google as spam, thus lowering your standing in rankings? If your forte is not writing, then it might behoove you to find someone to write your on-page content for you, in order to ensure maximum success with Google.

In addition to that, have you had the same page design and on-page content since your site first went up in 2005? The Fresh Update will demote your page for this! Take the time to re-do your page whenever you start to feel the itch for something new. Also, stay up-to-date with news that is related to your product or page, and add fresh, relevant content whenever you can, in order to rank as highly as possible.

Finally, once you are certain your page is at its best, request that Google recrawl your page in order to have the changes you have made noted accordingly. This way, you don’t have to wait to start seeing the fruit of your labor (even though this is a slow process that requires patience).  Over time, you will start to notice that your site is gaining traffic and rising in search results.

When Mark Zuckerberg (the real one) took the stage at the Facebook F8 conference late last month, he promised that Facebook’s next five years would be defined by “the depth of engagement.” With the introduction of new app partnerships, a new timeline, and a whole host of new smaller features, Facebook has been redesigned to make social media an immersive experience for users. Reading a book, listening to music, cooking a meal, sweating through a workout—all of these things can be shared, discussed and influenced with Facebook’s new features.

But another potential result of this overhaul is Facebook’s new impact on education. How will the new Facebook affect the 21^st century student and the classroom in which she learns? How will the prevalence of social media influence—or encourage—online teaching and learning? And can Facebook’s new emphasis on engagement be a benefit to teaching and learning as a whole?

A new kind of engagement

Facebook was conceived when Mark Zuckerberg was a college student, but it wasn’t until years later that Facebook focused on how it could be used in classrooms and online. And as the Internet becomes a repository for more educational resources, Facebook has invested in making their social media network a valuable educational tool.  Their partnership with Skype makes it easier for students and teachers to use the video chat feature, allowing classrooms to talk to each other face-to-face.  And the group chat feature is a quick and easy way for students enrolled in online education classes to hold study sessions or even for teachers to conduct online chat room lectures.  And students who use Facebook for the social aspect may be excited to use it to do their schoolwork and interact with their teachers and classmates.

The mobile classroom

Facebook’s new apps allow users to post information about their activities and to share them with friends in real time. What could that mean for education, particularly college and university classes? Apps like Hoot.me allow students to see what their friends are working on and to collaborate with them within Facebook. And teachers can hold virtual office hours, allowing students to reach them anytime, regardless of their locations. The emphasis on real-time interaction means that Facebook is becoming a valuable tool for teachers and students who can’t always be in the same room.

The future of education on Facebook

It’s becoming clearer that the Internet in general—and Facebook in particular—is making a physical classroom superfluous. Students no longer need to be in the same location to interact with each other and with their instructors, and while one of the benefits of attending school is to learn to socialize, the rise of the Internet is changing the nature of socialization itself. Facebook’s new emphasis on engagement has the potential to shift the focus of education from individual learning and personal achievement to collaboration and group accomplishment—a concept that could gain importance in a society that’s becoming more global and community-focused.

Since its inception, the only constant with Facebook has been change: the ability to anticipate users’ needs and respond to their suggestions is what makes it the most popular website in the world. But it’s also Facebook’s eagerness to make itself useful in various areas of everyday life, including education. Facebook’s recent changes will be beneficial for education, provided that teachers and students are willing to use Facebook as a platform for communication, collaboration and creativity.

Joseph Baker’s business experience in management spans more than 15 years. A leader of development and management teams, he also implemented budget reductions professionally and as an independent contractor. Joseph led strategic planning and systems of implementation for nine organizations, public and private, and worked extensively with small businesses.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management.

Could future vacation advertisements one day read: “Plan your next family vacation for the dark side of the moon!” or maybe, “Now offering an intergalactic tour featuring Mars, Neptune, Jupiter and the Estranged Pluto! Book today and save 20%.”

No, way. Right?

Maybe not. According to recent information the first ever commercial space port in New Mexico is nearing completion. Yes, commercial. As in, commercial airlines. That means it will transport Average Joes like you to the moon and back.

But, for most, space is still a big giant unknown. We’ve all seen the Alien movies and obscure episodes of Star Trek. Few people are willingly trying to butt heads with Klingons. Will travel marketing ever be able to convince earthlings to book a flight to a beautiful Venusian resort over the more traditional route of moving into new Panama City Beach condos? Maybe. But, if they could, how would they do it?

Tactic #1: All Your Friends Are Doing It!

If marketers are going to be able to convince you to take your family to the moon, the Internet (social media, to be precise) will most likely be their vehicle.

Social Media has a way of convincing its users to do whatever their friends are doing, or vice versa. If your friends are wining and dining at The Corner Restaurant after work, you’ll probably be there, too. Likewise, if you’re headed out to The Neighborhood Bar for a drink, posting it on Facebook will entice friends to do the same.

Sites like Facebook are becoming nearly overrun with advertisements. Companies and businesses can take to social media to promote themselves for free or with paid ads. Search re-targeting also lets Google know that you’ve been curious about Venus vacation packages, have given it a quick Google and will likely bombard you with pay-per-click ads, even if you change your mind and decide to search for Panama City Beach condos instead.

In a similar fashion, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) continues to evolve daily, meaning that by the time space travel is a legitimate option in 2013 and after, SEO will know exactly how to give you the results you want with little to no hassle.

Social media is an excellent form of advertisement and could be used to ease the fears and uncertainties associated with space travel. If the Wilson family is posting pictures to Facebook and tweeting about their Venusian vacation, you may soon feel the need to book one of your own.

Tactic #2: It’s Easy and Affordable!

The Internet also has a way of making things, especially travel, affordable for just about anyone. We’ve all heard about the amazing flight and hotel combo packages through sites like Orbitz, Kayak and Priceline and about the amazing coupons offered through sites like Groupon. With this type of money-saving technology expanding as the future unfolds, you could reasonably expect to see flight deals if New Mexico’s space port really takes off. No pun intended.

And, with mobile apps like Foursquare, you can earn points for checking into different locations and occasionally coupons and discounts depending on the business. With enough check-ins, you could be mayor of the moon or earn a free ice cream cone at the Uranus Creamery. Foursquare is basically all about free advertisement for businesses–a clever way for travel marketers to get the word out there about space vacations.

Tactic #3: It’s Safe, see for yourself!

 Viral videos never get old. From the first moon landing to Charlie the Unicorn, we always love a good video and the second we see it, we’re going to share it. Much of the unease surrounding space travel is the simple fact that we’re always seeing videos of space adventures gone wrong. Apollo 13? Exactly.

But, what if marketers began using videos of successful space travel? The video of a group of Spring Breakers landing safely on Mars or taking a spin around the rings of Saturn could go viral in an instant. Or, it could be used as clever marketing to get travelers to step a bit out of their comfort zones and shell out the bucks for a ticket to Jupiter.

The Future of Travel Marketing

 Clever marketing can get consumers to try just about anything—even space travel. And, while it’s still a long way off, when done correctly, we could soon wish to forego visiting Panama City Beach, London or Cabo San Lucas in lieu of Mars. It’s a long way off, but who knows? Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

This guest post was contributed by Joseph Baker.

Joseph Baker’s business experience in management spans more than 15 years. A leader of development and management teams, he also implemented budget reductions professionally and as an independent contractor. Joseph led strategic planning and systems of implementation for nine organizations, public and private, and worked extensively with small businesses.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management.

 As the world’s most popular search engine, Google has access to massive amounts of user data. Add to that the popularity of Gmail, Google’s email service, and the growth of Google’s social network, Google+, and it becomes clear that Google knows more about its users than nearly any other service in the world. Google uses this information to serve ads based on location, the content of email messages or the context of the page being visited.

Another action taken by Google based on its user knowledge is the tailoring of search results pages to specific users. Someone who has frequented the Klipsch website, for instance, will be more likely to have it return as a high result when searching for “home audio system.” Google+ is starting to have an effect on search results also. If someone’s friend shares a link to the Klipsch website, that fact will show up in a search engine results page for “floorstanding speakers.” Google knows that users are more likely to follow a link they have previously visited or was recommended by a friend.

Google+
Facebook’s ad network enabled businesses to target specific demographics, something that has not been available to Google because of its lack of pertinent user information. But the rollout of Google+ could mean big changes in advertising. With the phenomenal growth of Google’s social network, the search giant’s pool of data in its users is growing exponentially. Advertisers on Google’s network can already target specific keywords, but when users are signed into their Google accounts, they may soon be able to target specific users as well.

Search Results
In a TED talk in March 2011, Eli Parser gave a talk about online filter bubbles in which he pointed out that Google looks at over 50 different cues to determine what results to display. Even if a user is not signed into their Google account, their location, browser, computer and other information will be used to tailor search results to meet what Google feels they want. When a user is logged in, this allows Google to go even further in their SERP tailoring. A user who has recently purchased home entertainment equipment via Google Shopping will receive a different set of results when searching for “low distortion speakers” than someone who regularly searches for information on professional audio equipment or someone who has never made that kind of search before.
The potential information that Google can collect on its users is staggering and the ways it uses that information are mind-boggling. The future applications of the company’s ever-expanding reach are incredible. All of the uses can be a little frightening and give rise to many concerns. How much information should users be giving to one of the largest technology companies in the world, the gatekeeper of the Internet? What if Google’s database was compromised somehow? Though Google’s intentions seem to be to provide a wealth of useful, free services to users, the potential for something darker is always there.

A freelance illustrator Beatriz Torres, best known as Zirta has drawn the ongoing competition between Google+ and FaceBook in a funny way.

I think the most ironic part of the illustration is MySpace Founder Tom Anderson’s advice for Mark Zuckerberg to sell FaceBook before it’s too late. Tom Anderson actually  shared this comic and his thoughts about  the question of “when to sell” on his Google+ account :)

Thanks to Designer Manu Cornet, he has drawn how major tech companies are organized in a funny way.

Google releases new products or features frequently. As we listed before, Google has more than 101 services and every month, at least one new service is added to the list. Most of the serious Internet users even don’t know half of the Google’s products and Google didn’t have a page for their new products or features.

At last, Google has rolled out a new feature to keep you updated with everything new that’s coming from Google, aptly named Google New. With Google New, you’ll easily keep track of all the changes to your favorite Google services. You can also filter the new products or new features of existing products by filtering out your area of interest or a specific product name.

Google primarily provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers many  tools and platforms including its more popular products.

There are more than a hundred Google services & products and some useful ones are little-known. We prepared a guide for Google’s services and products to show you how big giant Google is. If you want to add a Google service or product that  doesn’t exist in this list, please feel free to comment.

We arranged Google’s services and products (only 130 of them!) into  10+1 categories:

Search, Advertising, Location, Communication&Publishing, Online Shopping, Personal Productivity, Business Solutions, Mobile, Development, Social Responsibility and Other.

All the Google Logos, trademarks, graphics and other material related to Google are properties of Google™.

This Site Is Not affiliated with Google™ .

References:

1. Google Company Profile on CrunchBase
2. Official Google Help Pages
3. List of Google products article on Wikipedia
4. Jooit’s Google Index

Today, September 27th is Google’s 11th birthday and Google has a special logo to celebrate its birthday.

Google is using its logo in marketing for both social and commercial purposes. What Google does with its logo is a good example to use company logos as a valuable marketing tool for free.

Google has changed our lives and still changing; even why we use logos. Happy 11th birthday Google!

Yesterday was September 9th, 2009 (09/09/09) and a special Google Logo appeared at Google’s homepage. Google has different and interesting logos for special dates and i think these surprise logos represent the  social side of the company.

The dates like 09/09/09 are exaggerated by some people. For example; in Russia and China thousand of people flocked to marry on ‘lucky 09/09/09′.

Numerologists and marketers alike share a fascination for dates like 09-09-09, which might explain why computer giant Apple, the distributors of Beatles music and filmmaker Tim Burton are all peddling new products. Tim Burton’s new movie premiered yesterday. It’s simply called “9.” The Apple Event was held at San Fransisco yesterday.

*Also, 09/09/09 was my wife’s birthday and she became 27 years old which equals  “3 times 9″. It was a lucky date  for me , because i gave her “9 gifts”.

This is the first colorful logo of Google. Google’s first name was Backrub. Backrub’s logo was simply a scan Larry Page’s hand from a flatbed scanner. Larry and Sergey decide that the BackRub search engine needs a new name. After some brainstorming, they go with Google – a play on the word “googol,” a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros. The use of the term reflects their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web. After the name change, the new logo is designed. The first logo looks like a ‘Wordart’.

The screenshot below shows how Google was in 1997.

]]> http://siteboat.com/the-first-google-logo/feed/ 3 http://siteboat.com/google-brand-worth-100-billion-these-days/ http://siteboat.com/google-brand-worth-100-billion-these-days/#comments Fri, 07 Aug 2009 21:19:21 +0000 Erdem OZKAN http://siteboat.com/?p=2266

WPP subsidiary Millward Brown Optimor released its highly regarded annual brand ranking BrandZ Top 100 (PDF) back in April.  It identifies the world’s most valuable global brands as measured by their dollar value.

Topping the list were Internet giant …

In January, one of the top stories of the Internet was that a single Google search generates 7 g of CO2. The story came out from an article published in The Sunday Times of London which focused on the enviromental impact of Google searches.   Google responded to the article very quickly, stating a Google search is actually equals to 0.2 g of CO2 and the efforts & supports of Google to further Green energy.

Google reminds us  how green it is, often since accused of being a energy hog. According to this official Google Blog post, Google engineers calculated that a cheeseburger emits as much CO2 as 15,000 Google searches and Co2 emissions of an average daily newspaper equals the amount of 850 Google searches.

Here are some other comparisons:

There’s no doubt that Google is polluting the earth less than its competitors per search, but Google should take into consideration that the total number of Google searchs are mind-blowing and these numbers continue to rise at the speed of light. Google has the most efficient datacenters but nobody has more datacenters than Google.

I think the only way for Google to protect itself from future “global warmer” accusations is to generate and use noteworthy part of the energy required for its datacenters from green resources and to show that to the whole world.
For the rest of us, we should think again about eating a cheeseburger

There’s no doubt that YouTube is the biggest player in online video industry. YouTube outperformed its competitors and has become a winner in video sharing. YouTube is one of  the most succesful web stories of all time, since 2006 and still growing very fast.

When Google acquired Youtube for $ 1.65 B, Google was criticized for paying huge amount of money for a website without a business model. Everybody except Google was thinking that YouTube was overvalued. Video sharing sites have the biggest costs in Internet World. They need really fast servers and huge storage space and the bandwith costs are the highest. Because of the high costs, ROI (return of investment) of online video businesses are very slow. It’s hard to monetize broadband video and the only ways to monetize this type of business are showing ads and subscription.

According to the YouTube Blog, YouTube’ s 1 minute is worth 20 hours. In mid-2007, 6 hours of video were uploaded to YouTube every minute and in January ’09 it grew to 15 hours per minute. Now,  20 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute and we’ll see 24 hours – a day’s worth of video uploaded to YouTube, very soon.

YouTube dominates the statistics of online video industry, but doesn’t make Google any money. YouTube streams more than 5 billions videos in a month but less than 5 percent of those videos have ads.  YouTube serves one-third of  all online videos. Industry experts predicts US Online Video Ad Spending as $ 750 M in 2009 and rising to $ 5.8 B in 2013.  Undoubtedly, YouTube will get a big part of this pie if it’ll survive. YouTube’s operational costs are rising and bandwith costs are estimated about $ 470 M for this year alone. Day by day, it’s getting harder and more expensive for Google to support YouTube.

Hulu, a smaller and newer competitor of YouTube made a head-to-head US revenue (about $90 M) with YouTube. Hulu is focusing on exclusively on professional content and held by NBC Universal, News Corp and Disney which are also very important video producers for television. Hulu’s advantage is its professional content without copyright problems. But because of some copyright restricitons, Hulu is a U.S. only service. YouTube proves that there’s a big market for user-generated content but Hulu shows us that advertisers want to spend money for professional content.

* YouTube had more than 77 million unique visitors in April when Hulu had about 7 million unique visitors.

Industry experts estimate  an average value of $15 CPM for video sites and $40 CPM for focused video sites like Hulu and Heavy.

Other video sites will never be able to grow as much as YouTube, but their revenue can surpass YouTube’s in the future. YouTube (and Google) must find a way to monetize its content effectively and reduce the costs. I think the only way to do is to serve more professional content as quickly as possible and find an innovative way to monetize user-generated content. Maybe, sharing the revenue gained from user-generated content with the users who created the  content can increase the quality and the chance of the user-generated content to get ads.

It’s true that YouTube has mind blowing satistics and  the third most popular website in the world. YouTube’s one minute is worth 20 hours; but we really wonder how much is YouTube’s one minute worth in US $?