Yearly Archives: 2013Blog

Apps vs Browsers? No Contest. It’s Apps!

When apps, those little applications that run on smartphones and tablets, first came out a few years ago, a debate arose over which were better, apps or mobile websites, and which would consumers prefer. Developers thought that offering tailored services through a browser was much more desirable, from both cost and usability standpoints, rather than apps, which users would have to update continually, and developers would have to maintain for several platforms. But consumers, hands down, have chosen apps. There’s something about these little one-trick ponies that people have come to love.

In this recent report from Flurry, a mobile analytics and advertising platform, it’s clear that apps command the most time spent on mobile devices by a whopping 4-to-1 ratio. Apps are obviously something consumers want.

Today, the U.S. consumer spends an average of 2 hours and 38 minutes per day on smartphones and tablets. 80% of that time (2 hours and 7 minutes) is spent inside apps and 20% (31 minutes) is spent on the mobile web. Apps (and Facebook) are commanding a meaningful amount of consumers’ time. All mobile browsers combined … control 20% of consumers’ time. Gaming apps remain the largest category of all apps with 32% of time spent. Facebook is second with 18%, and Safari is 3rd with 12%. Worth noting is that a lot of people are consuming web content from inside the Facebook app. For example, when a Facebook user clicks on a friend’s link or article, that content is shown inside its web view without launching a native web browser, which keeps the user in the app. So if we consider the proportion of Facebook app usage that is within their web view,  we can assert that Facebook has become the most adopted browser in terms of consumer time spent.

The article covers several additional points of interest regarding apps, but the takeaway is that it’s time to think about how to use apps to best serve customers. There’s also an opportunity to explore what other economies apps can provide. People are using them, so offering them will become a differentiator in the burgeoning mobile world.

Read full article: [no longer available]

Hispanics Making Their Mark On the Internet

As our society becomes more multicultural, reaching diverse groups becomes more important. Some recent research sheds light on a vital community — Hispanics — and reveals that their numbers online are growing. They are active in social media, and over 70% speak English or are bi-lingual.

Online Hispanics are digital mavens and leaders on a variety of social networks. The Hispanic demographic itself, though, has many distinctive characteristics, including preferred language and country of origin, and these differences create varied digital participation levels. An October 2012 survey of US Hispanics by the Pew Hispanic Center found that between 2009 and 2012, the percentage of foreign-born and native-born Hispanics who used the web rose by 18 percentage points and 27 percentage points, respectively. This helped drive up overall Hispanic internet use to 78%, from 64% three years ago … Latino social networking penetration among internet users reached 68% last year. Of these social media users, English was the dominant language for 34% of users, while Spanish was the dominant language for a quarter of users. Another 40% considered themselves bilingual.

Read full article: http://bit.ly/15JJcxi

Understanding Google Plus

Do we really need another social network? If you’re anything like me, you’ve had a hard time figuring out, much less using, Google Plus. Then about a year ago, Google changed its privacy policy and began integrating its many properties. Now you’ll often see a Google log-in for services like YouTube, where it didn’t exist before. There’s a method to the madness, though. If plans work out, Google Plus will become the hub of Google’s services. In the long run, this can be a far more integrated and meaningful approach to social networking than we have seen to this point.

Most people believe [Google Plus] is just another social networking service where all of our friends are supposed to join and share photos, status updates, and messages with each other. But it’s really not that at all.
Sure, there’s a social networking aspect to it, but Google Plus is really Google’s version of Google. It’s the groundwork for a level of search quality difficult to fathom based on what we know today. It’s also the Borg-like hive-queen that connects all the other Google products like YouTube, Google Maps, Images, Offers, Books, and more. And Google is starting to roll these products all up into a big ball of awesome user experience by way of Google Plus, and that snowball is starting to pick up speed and mass.

The article goes on to show how services like Google Authorship and Google Plus Local Business pages all come into play to make Google Plus membership a must-have. Maybe take a second look at Google Plus, and then get ready for a migration someday soon.

Read full article: http://bit.ly/XeiGt5

LinkedIn Endorsements: Frictionless = Meaningless

LinkedIn seemed to have hit on a great idea: let members endorse other members for their specific abilities with a single click. The problem is, it’s so easy to do that endorsements have become meaningless. Every day I get endorsements. Then dutifully, I go and return the favor by endorsing my endorser. The result is a click-fest that distorts what people actually do. Judging by my endorsements, I’m an expert in SEO and web marketing. We offer those things, but our strong suit is design, technology, strategy, and digital media, all of which appear at the bottom of the endorsements list on my profile. And because that list is so prominently displayed, visitors will completely misconstrue my business. Hopefully, they’ll read the summary portion of the page, but does anyone read anymore?

There is a way to make endorsement relevant, however. Make them harder to give. The article below suggests a couple of ways to do this:

Right now, endorsing is way too easy. When you go to a connection’s profile page, there’s usually a list of categories in which they can be endorsed. If you click the “Endorse” button, you endorse that person in every category … remove that all-in-one feature, and you’ll probably get rid of a lot of spurious or unintended endorsements. Second, when you endorse, give the endorser the opportunity to expand on the thought by citing a specific project they both worked on.

LinkedIn’s endorsements point out a more significant problem, however. Today, more companies are creating features that benefit themselves rather than users. A solid endorsement mechanism could provide value if it reflected companies’ and individuals’ true worth. Something like that already exists in recommendations. But they take some effort to write. It’s easier for users just to click an endorsement. Yay! Pop the cork and celebrate our brilliant feature. Everyone’s using it. But if there’s no meaning, you just end up with lots of data signifying nothing. Unless what really matters is LinkedIn’s user engagement numbers. That must be it.