After reading TechCrunch’s post on the marketing push for Google’s Nexus One, my thoughts turned. Maybe the most innovative “disruptive” element about this launch is not the device itself nor the way it sticks it the carriers (barely). The true game-changing move coming from this launch is the way it will be marketed and advertised, almost wholly online.
Think about the Droid and the persistent tv spots you see during primetime. That is not Google pushing it down our throats, it’s Verizon luring us in with the subsidized phone to sign a 2 year contract. The entire Google culture has been adverse to the big tv ad, the wasting of money just to get in front of millions of eyeballs. The billions the company has made is because of the data-driven, hyper-targeted ads coming from adsense. They are the masters of understanding who would want a potential product with their algorithms, not throwing money at a key primetime slot.
This is a big chance for Google, because it is it’s first foray into an actual tangible product not a service, to show that a physical product can be succesfully marketed without the use of print, tv or radio. Google can prove that the online advertising world can fully support and harness the growth of a product and a brand, which if done correctly can cause a paradigm shift in overall advertising spending.
Companies like Aol, Yahoo and Microsoft should be rooting for the Nexus One to succeed if it in fact is only an online push. It would be the greatest case study imaginable if this product sells well for increase in online advertising. The early word is that Google’s marketing pie will be almost entirely online and one can only hope they hold to that. The real game changer coming from this announcement could be the advertising business and finally a strong push to fully realized online campaigns.

                        

Enter Foursquare. Definitely not the only geo-location app out there, (Brighkite, Gowalla and Loopt all are in the geo-battle) Foursquare nevertheless is leading the charge in innovating ways to bring its users together. I experimented in August with the service, using it to check into a few bars, restaurants and occasionally Prospect park while i was taking a nap under a tree. It was interesting, but with hardly any friends on it yet and the only incentive to checking in being earning a “badge”, I stopped a couple months later. So what’s changed? Foursquare is now signing deals with bars, restaurants, music venues and galleries across the country to offer up discounts and special promotions for people who check in frequently. Techcrunch highlighted a restaurant in North Carolina that offers a free lunch to the mayor (person who checks in most frequently during a given time period) and 25% to those who have earned the “Gym Rat” badge. Deals like this can turn a pedestrian online game into a dynamic marketing and branding tool for local businesses while leading to social interaction amongst its customers. Imagine the competition you and your friends will have to get the glory of the free meal or free drink at your favorite watering hole. Imagine finding out you are not their most loyal customer, that dude at the end of the bar is. Would you strike up a conversation, set out to dethrone him? Granted, it is a gimmick right now, but as apoption rates increase, the service will continue to increase power and will make for a new marketing dynamic. 2010 could begin a new era of local business marketing, where the app on your phone becomes the power broker.

                        

I was there when people were calling it Amazon.bomb, and everyone was saying that when Barnes & Noble goes online, the game is over.

Are we right now seeing the growth of the next big media behemoth? With Hulu’s focus on the consumer and its understanding of our desire for media consumption on our terms, the dynamic is shifting in their favor.

Fast Company: Can Hulu Save Traditional TV?

And here is one of my favorite clips on Hulu:

                        

Since I signed up for the service a month ago, I have been pleasantly surprised with the quality and content. The updating of the queue has to be done through your computer, which I still think is a bit flawed (why not give the option of adding movies via the Xbox 360?) but the updates are almost instantaneous and the movie quality is pretty good. The big concern that many people have with the service is the availability of movies. Yes the supply is somewhat limited right now, but I am a firm believer that as DVD sales wane, the studios will be pressured into offering more of their hits on this streaming service.

With Netflix continuing to think of innovative ways to be on the cutting edge of the entertainment field, signing deals with LG to make Netflix capable TVs, streaming seems more and more like the foregone conclusion on how we will watch movies in the future.

Full Article: Netflix says 1 million Xbox members use movie service

                        

Picture taken from TechCrunch story, via Twitter

I have been using Twitter for about a month now and have really enjoyed the following part of the service. Looking up people whose ideas and interests intrigue me has been the most beneficial aspect of the site. Since I am not a voice that many people know or have heard of, my Tweets are probably going unread, but there is a definite communal feel to the interaction and stories like this will surely bring more citizen journalists to the site.

                        

Unfortunately, there’s no “Glue” for the social web. There’s also no happy medium between what it does – quietly observe, record, and share all your actions – and the control you have with a single, manual “like” on FriendFeed. The ideal social tool would be something in the middle. Not entirely passive, but also not requiring you to click, click, click all the time to register your opinions. What this may be, I can’t even imagine, but it would have to be something that ties the social web all together.

And why I am liking RRW’s site more and more, this from the comment section, posted by Todd:

Sounds like Ms. Perez and everyone commenting need to go back and re-read Professor Gelernter’s book Mirror Worlds…

“…Those are the goals of our lifestream. In our view of the future, users will no longer care about operating systems or computers; they’ll care about their own streams, and other people’s. I can tune in my stream wherever I am. I can shuffle other streams into mine — to the extent I have permission to use other people’s streams. My own personal stream, my electronic life story, can have other streams shuffled into it — streams belonging to groups or organizations I’m part of. And eventually I’ll have, for example, newspaper and magazine streams shuffled into my stream also. I follow my own life, and the lives of the organizations I’m part of, and the news, etc., by watching the stream flow.” – David Gelernter July 2003

Full Article on Read Write Web: The Perfect Social Tool

Wired Magazine profile of David Gelernter: Lifestreams

                        

Cloud computing: does the term make you cringe? It’s one of those phrases like Web 2.0 that gets thrown around without really ever getting defined. Hearing the term at a meeting or in a panel discussion, you are almost forced to nod your head and say “ah, yes, cloud computing.” But what the ef is it? Wired magazine does a profile on chief software architect Ray Ozzie of Microsoft examining MS’s role in bringing applications that normally sat on one’s PC into the spaces of the internet. And that’s all cloud computing really is: transferring the balance of where the data gets crunched from one’s own computer to the vast servers of the three big players, Google, Microsoft and Amazon.com, so an individual can use ANY computer and log into their documents. A bit from the article:

Ozzie unveils the new products that he’s been laboring over for more than two years: a top-secret set of initiatives designed to make Microsoft as dominant in the cloud era as it was in the days of the desktop. First up is a new operating system for Web-based applications, codenamed Red Dog—it’s Windows for the cloud. (See Editor’s update below.) Then comes a demonstration of Live Mesh, which will allow people to seamlessly synchronize all their information with as many people and places as they want, across as many devices (computer, phone, camera) as they want. Finally, another engineer demonstrates how Microsoft will make even its legacy apps accessible via the cloud. It’s a shocker. After years of Microsoft insisting that the desktop is the only proper place for its crown-jewel applications—the venerable Office suite—it appears that Word, Excel, and PowerPoint will levitate from the desktop and become services as well. In this demo, an Excel spreadsheet is running in the cloud with almost all its functionality intact, including features like auto-complete and auto-formatting as well as built-in collaboration and a way to link the spreadsheet results to emails and Web pages.

Now, Amazon.com has been offering its Elastic Compute Cloud service for some time now, which provides companies fully customizable computing storage on Amazon.com’s vast server base, thus making the computing and storage a sort of utility like electricty or gas(For more on this topic, check out the amazing book The Big Switch: Rewiring the World From Edison to Google ) User’s can scale down or up based on their needs at any given time, given them the flexibility in what they need.

And Google has also been quick to provide its millions of users free applications through Google Docs that are aimed directly at the Microsoft’s bread and butter Word, Excel and PowerPoint. It’s definitely been a long time coming for MS to offer up these programs online (still can’t say cloud) and as someone who is obviously invested (Full Disclosure: I work for Microsoft, but you know that) in Microsoft’s future, it is exciting to see Mr. Ozzie take the steps to propel Microsoft into the battle of the web.

It will be interesting to see over the next few years if Microsoft can sucessfully find a way to seemlessly intergrate all of their services (Office, Mobile, Zune, Xbox, etc.) so that it truly can be a connected experience across multiple platforms. One of the most frustrating parts of technology is when products that commonsense dictate should talk with eachother are completely separate, using entirely different software. As Ozzie says in the article

Our greatest challenge may lie within. Every day we make a choice to focus on the outside competitor or the competitor within.

For the full article:

Wired Magazine: Ray Ozzie Wants to Push Microsoft Back into Startup Mode

                        

Hulu has been the dominant destination for people interested in professional content, the shows they are used to seeing on the networks and cable channels, while historically YouTube is the spot to go for videos of cats playing pianos and lip-synching teenagers. YouTube is now moving fast into the acquisition business, cozying up the Studios who have sued them, because they have realized that they can’t monetize videos of adults doing the Supa’ Man in their apartment. Unfortunately, the content the studios are providing YouTube is mostly very old movies that have no chance of being sold as DVDs. This is where Hulu continues to win. By providing key shows like The Colbert Report, 30 Rock and The Simpsons in full online, Hulu has set it self up as the go to destination for humor craving laptoppers looking for prime time entertainment. It doesn’t hurt that Hulu’s UI is slick and easy to navigate.

Right now, advertisers feel more safe aligning their brands with Hulu because they know the content.
It will be interesting to see what other players like Joost, Veoh, and Bebo can add to the fray. The key will be in the acquisitions: there is a very small market of people excited to Critters 3 on their computer. The companies that will thrive will be the ones who can lock up major shows while also providing high quality exclusive programming of their own. Right now, Hulu has the early lead and a strong stable of hit shows that will continue to help increase its share, but YouTube has the Google money behind it to make this an intriguing battle for internet video supremacy.