Posts Tagged ‘social networking’
Wednesday, April 17th, 2013
 Social networking is claiming a significant part of the time we spend online, according to a new report. Experian Marketing Services, a global provider of integrated consumer insight, targeting and cross channel marketing, reveals that if the time spent on the Internet for personal computers was distilled into an hour then 27 percent of it would be spent on social networking and forums across US, UK and Australia in 2012.
In the US, 16 minutes out of every hour online is spent on social networking and forums, nine minutes on entertainment sites and five minutes shopping.
Global comparison
In the UK 13 minutes out of every hour online is spent on social networking and forums, nine minutes on entertainment sites and six minutes shopping. Australian Internet users spend 14 minutes on social sites, nine on entertainment and four minutes shopping online.
Across all three markets, time spent shopping online grew year-on-year, but the UK market emerged as having the most prolific online shoppers, spending proportionally more time on retail websites than online users in the US or Australia.
 UK Internet users spent 10 percent of all time online shopping in 2012, compared to nine percent in the US and six percent in Australia. This was in part due to a bumper Christmas season in the UK where 370 million hours were spent shopping online, 24 percent higher than the monthly average.
Consumption of news content also increased across all three markets with Australian users emerging as the most voracious consumers of news online. Six percent of all time spent online in Australia in 2012 was on a news website, compared to five percent in the UK and four percent in the US.
Social media time declines
There are signs that some of us may be feeling social media fatigue. The time spent on social media proportionate to other online activities declined across all three regions.
The US, which has been the most dominant market for social media consumption in the last three years dropped from 30 percent of all time spent online to 27 percent. That doesn’t surprise us, since we’ve cut back on the time we spend on social media ourselves, but it may also mean people are becoming more effective at getting whatever results they seek with less time.
In Australia time spent on social dropped from 27 percent to 24 percent while in the UK it dipped from 25 percent to 22 percent year-over-year. This highlights the rise in access via 3G and 4G networks as consumers spend increasingly more time online while on the move.
| Average time spent in 2012 by market |
|
UK |
US |
AU |
| Category |
% time 2012 |
% time 2011 |
% time 2012 |
% time 2011 |
% time 2012 |
% time 2011 |
| Adult |
4% |
4% |
4% |
4% |
4% |
3% |
| Business |
4% |
4% |
5% |
5% |
5% |
5% |
| Email |
3% |
4% |
5% |
6% |
2% |
4% |
| Entertainment |
15% |
13% |
15% |
16% |
15% |
12% |
| Lifestyle |
4% |
3% |
4% |
4% |
4% |
4% |
| News |
5% |
4% |
4% |
3% |
6% |
5% |
| Shopping |
10% |
9% |
9% |
8% |
6% |
6% |
| Social |
22% |
25% |
27% |
30% |
24% |
27% |
| Travel |
2% |
2% |
1% |
1% |
1% |
1% |
| Other |
31% |
32% |
27% |
23% |
33% |
33% |
| Source: Experian Marketing Services |
“Understanding consumer behavior across channels is more important than ever as more visits are being made on the move, particularly among social networking and email,” says Bill Tancer , general manager of global research for Experian Marketing Services.
“With smart phones and tablets becoming more powerful, our data clearly indicates the difference between mobile and traditional desktop usage further enabling the ‘always on’ consumer mentality. Marketers need to understand these differences, as well as regionally, to ensure campaigns can be tailored for better and more effective engagement.”
Mobile browsing
| Average time spent on US mobile devices – Q1 2013 |
| Category |
Q1-2013
(h:m:s) |
Percentage of time
for 1-hour |
| Email |
0:06:24 |
23% |
| Social Networking |
0:04:05 |
15% |
| Entertainment |
0:03:34 |
13% |
| Shopping |
0:02:59 |
11% |
| Travel |
0:02:33 |
9% |
| Source: Experian Marketing Services |
If we analyzed the US browsing data for mobile devices, email accounted for the largest time spent on average, among the same categories for Q1 2013. Email made up 23 percent of time spent on mobile devices for Q1 2013, while social networking accounted for 15 percent.
Entertainment had the third highest time spent with 13 percent, followed by shopping with 11 percent and travel with 9 percent. The mobile data does not include app usage, but does include mobile browsing within an app.
Make sure to read about these and more of the latest consumer trends in our 2013 Digital Marketer Report.
Tags: Australia, entertainment, Experian Marketing, shopping, social networking, time spent online, UK, US
Posted in Ecommerce, Internet/New Media, social media | No Comments »
Friday, November 2nd, 2012
 Using data analytics may give human resources departments a “quantum leap in credibility,” according to research from audit, tax and advisory firm KPMG – and they need it.
In a global survey of more than 400 senior executives, only 17 percent of respondents said HR does a good job of demonstrating its value to the business, and even fewer — 15 percent – viewed HR as providing insightful and predictive workforce analytics.
Data analytics is quickly evolving and can provide the next quantum leap for HR,” said Paulette Welsing, a KPMG managing director and global lead for the firm’s HR Transformation Center of Excellence for the Americas.
“Applying data analytics will allow HR to deliver empirical evidence to reinforce their recommendations and gain much-needed credibility at the highest levels of the business.”
“Human Resources is often relegated to a transaction-based organization lacking strategic insight and contribution,” said Claudia Saran, a KPMG principal and the US leader of the firm’s People and Change business. “HR executives must determine how to adapt their organization, including both its technology and people, to connect more explicitly with their respective companies’ business strategy.”
U.S. Findings
The survey, “Rethinking Human Resources in a Changing World,” found that more than 34 percent of U.S. respondents said data analytics, and various cloud-based technologies would comprise most of their companies’ HR-related technology investments over the next two years. Globally, 57 percent of respondents said that data analytics would help identify future talent gaps.
The study shows trends toward globalization: 72 percent of U.S. respondents said that their workforce had evolved over the past two years to include teams collaborating across borders and in different geographies.
Some 59 percent reported that they were sourcing key talent outside of their home markets, and 56 percent said they were creating HR policies to address a global workforce.
 When asked what their HR functions focused on most frequently over the past two years, the largest number of U.S. respondents, 29 percent, reported it was “retaining crucial skills and experience within the business.”
An even larger 41 percent said this area would receive the most focus over the coming three years.
In other survey findings from U.S. respondents:
- Over the next two years, 69 percent said they believed their companies would increase their proportion of virtual/flexible workers.
- Forty-nine percent said they had outsourced core business activities to external vendors over the past two years.
- Social networking sites had given their organizations access to significant new sources of talent, according to 37 percent, and 41 percent said the social networking sites made it easier for competitors to poach talent.
- Over the next two years, 63 percent agreed that coming up with the best talent management practices would be a key tool in their ability to compete in a more competitive global marketplace.
Tags: data analytics, HR creditiblity, KPMG, social networking, technology trends
Posted in Analytics, social media, Studies, surveys, reports, TechJobs | No Comments »
Friday, August 17th, 2012
 Resurgent macroeconomic uncertainty worldwide caught up with the technology industry, which had outpaced merger and acquisition deal value for all industries in the first quarter of 2012 but fell behind in the second quarter.
Deal value slowed to $33.4 billion of aggregate deal value in the second quarter of 2012, down 43 percent year-over-year (YOY), according to Ernst & Young’s Global technology M&A update: April-June 2012.
Nevertheless, a steady volume of deals (728 in 2Q12 versus 729 in 2Q11) reflected the ongoing drive of five disruptive technology megatrends: smart mobility, cloud computing, social networking, big data and cross-industry blur.
Sequentially, 2Q12 aggregate deal value increased 33% from US$25.1b in 1Q12; however, as the report highlights the first quarter is historically the lowest-value quarter for technology deals.
Cross-boarder deals see sharp increase
Cross-border (CB) technology deals showed a sharp increase in 2Q12. CB aggregate deal value surged 58% sequentially to US$17.4b and represented 52% of all global disclosed value for the quarter (compared with 44% in both 1Q12 and 4Q11).
Europe, Japan and Canada all saw substantial growth in CB transaction value, while US CB deal value declined 54% sequentially, to US$4.1b in 2Q12.
Joe Steger, Global Technology Industry Transaction Advisory Services Leader at Ernst & Young, says: “There were several surprises in the second quarter, with US buyers ‘sitting out’ a sequential increase in transaction value that was driven out of Europe, Canada and Japan.
“But despite macroeconomic uncertainty that just won’t go away, we continue to see spreading strength from the disruptive megatrends of ‘social mobile cloud’ and big data analytics, which drive strategic transactions and enable innovation throughout the global economy.”
Deals shed light on transformation
Many 2Q12 deals involved smart mobility cloud computing, software as a service (SaaS), social networking, big data analytics, and a growing sense of blur, with convergence of these technologies an increasing factor in global technology M&A.
Cross-sector and cross-industry deals underscored the way in which these five long-term megatrends are generating disruptive innovation in the technology sector while also leading to technology-enabled innovation in other industries.
The cloud/SaaS megatrend drove the highest volume and value of global technology transactions for the second consecutive quarter.
There were four cloud-driven deals among the quarter’s top 10, including the purchase of a SaaS company that also hosts a web-based B2B business exchange, two deals in which companies outside of the technology sector are buying data centers to offer cloud services and a purchase of a cloud hardware and software company.
In addition, a handful of deals pointed to a blurring between cloud data centers and high-performance computing, typically the domain of research scientists and defense agencies.
Advertising and marketing technology targeted by diverse buyers
All five disruptive megatrends came together to drive dozens of advertising and marketing technology transactions in 2Q12, including several by the largest global advertising firms.
Big data analytics that understands customers’ and prospects’ social networking activity was key to many of these deals. Other targeted technologies included marketing automation, SaaS and tools for optimizing mobile and online campaigns.
Social M&A value driven up by enterprise, patent-related deals
The integration of social functions into enterprise software continued to grow in 2Q12 as a deal-driving trend, with a related transaction appearing for the first time among the quarterly top 10 deals.
Patent-related deals involving diverse technologies topped US$2b, with social networking representing more than a quarter of the related disclosed value deals.
Strategic deal-making will continue, despite economic headwinds
“Disruptive technology megatrends continue to fuel strategic deal-making around the world, in spite of a difficult economic context,” says Steger.
“In the second quarter, we even saw new sub-trends emerge to drive deals, such as alternative input technologies like speech and handwriting recognition, in addition to the ‘social-mobile-cloud’ and big data analytics deal drivers.
While the current macroeconomic challenges may dampen the appetite for large, transformative deals in the near term, expect to continue to see smaller, strategic deals — especially in the technology megatrends. “The long-term outlook for global technology M&A remains strong,” Steger concludes.
Tags: big data, cloud computing, convergence, disruptive trends, Ernst & Young, Global technology M&A update: April-June 2012, smart mobility, social networking
Posted in Acquisitions, Internet/New Media, IT, Studies, surveys, reports | No Comments »
Monday, June 4th, 2012
 Google Android continued to grow its share in the U.S. smartphone market, accounting for 50.8 percent of smartphone subscribers, while Apple captured 31.4 percent, during the first quarter of 2012, according to digital measurement service comScore’s MobiLens.
Samsung was the top handset maker with a 25.9 percent market share.
Smartphone Platform Market Share
More than 107 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in April, up 6 percent versus January. Google Android ranked as the top smartphone platform with 50.8 percent market share (up 2.2 percentage points). Apple’s share of the smartphone market increased 1.9 percentage points to 31.4 percent. RIM ranked third with 11.6 percent share, followed by Microsoft (4.0 percent) and Symbian (1.3 percent).
| Top Smartphone Platforms
3 Month Avg. Ending Apr. 2012 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Jan. 2012
Total U.S. Smartphone Subscribers Ages 13+
Source: comScore MobiLens |
|
Share (%) of Smartphone Subscribers |
| Jan-12 |
Apr-12 |
Point Change |
| Total Smartphone Subscribers |
100.0% |
100.0% |
N/A |
| Google |
48.6% |
50.8% |
2.2 |
| Apple |
29.5% |
31.4% |
1.9 |
| RIM |
15.2% |
11.6% |
-3.6 |
| Microsoft |
4.4% |
4.0% |
-0.4 |
| Symbian |
1. |
Mobile Content Usage
In April, 74.1 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device. Downloaded applications were used by 50.2 percent of subscribers (up 1.6 percentage points), while browsers were used by 49.0 percent (up 0.5 percentage points). Accessing of social networking sites or blogs increased 0.3 percentage points to 36.0 percent of mobile subscribers. Game-playing was done by 33.1 percent of the mobile audience (up 1.3 percentage points), while 25.8 percent listened to music on their phones (up 1.3 percentage points).
| Mobile Content Usage
3 Month Avg. Ending Apr. 2012 vs. 3 Month Avg. Ending Jan. 2012
Total U.S. Mobile Subscribers (Smartphone & Non-Smartphone) Ages 13+
Source: comScore MobiLens |
|
Share (%) of Mobile Subscribers |
| Jan-12 |
Apr-12 |
Point Change |
| Total Mobile Subscribers |
100.0% |
100.0% |
N/A |
| Sent text message to another phone |
74.6% |
74.1% |
-0.5 |
| Used downloaded apps |
48.6% |
50.2% |
1.6 |
| Used browser |
48.5% |
49.0% |
0.5 |
| Accessed social networking site or blog |
35.7% |
36.0% |
0.3 |
| Played Games |
31.8% |
33.1% |
1.3 |
| Listened to music on mobile phone |
24.5% |
25.8% |
1.3 |
Tags: Android, Apple, browser use, comScore, downloaded apps, games, iOS, Microsoft, mobile, MobiLens, music, Q1 2012, RIM, Samsung, Simbian, social networking, text messaging
Posted in Analytics, Internet/New Media, IT, Mobile, smartphones, Studies, surveys, reports, Telecommunications | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 15th, 2012
Technology merger & acquisition activity slowed in the first quarter of 2012, but not as much as in other industries, according to Ernst & Young’s Global technology M&A update: January–March 2012 report.
The report says five megatrends – smart mobility, cloud computing, social networking, big data analytics and convergence maintain a positive outlook for tech M&A.
The biggest increases in tech M&A deals, the report says, came from online video technology and SaaS companies. Deal volume was also strong in mobile apps, healthcare IT, advertising/marketing tech, patents, social networking and big data analytics.
Aggregate deal volume fell
Aggregate deal value of global technology mergers and acquisitions (M&A) fell 12% year-on-year (YOY) to US$25.1b in the first quarter of 2012.
This was only half the value decline of M&A in all industries, as ongoing economic uncertainty continues to take its toll on global deal-making.
Private equity (PE) deal values for technology, meanwhile, climbed 171% YOY in 1Q12, despite falling significantly in all industries, according to Ernst & Young’s Global technology M&A update: January–March 2012 report.
The total volume of announced 1Q12 deals was 756 (counting both disclosed- and non-disclosed-value deals), up just 1% from 748 in 1Q11.
Growth flattens
Quarterly deal volume appears to have reached a plateau after two years of strong growth in 2009 and 2010 — for the last five quarters the number of deals has ranged from a low of 722 to a high of 756.
Joe Steger, Global Technology Industry Transaction Advisory Services Leader at Ernst & Young, says: “Even though technology M&A activity is down YOY, it’s doing a lot better than M&A in other industries.
“During the first quarter of 2012, the same disruptive megatrends that have been fueling global technology M&A since 2009 are now sustaining technology M&A against the continuing macroeconomic pressures that are holding back other industries.
“And the long-term outlook for technology M&A remains positive because those megatrends represent the driving force of disruptive innovation that is revitalizing and reshaping the technology industry.”
Five megatrends continue to drive technology deal-making
Steger was alluding to five long-term “megatrends” that are generating disruptive innovation in technology and leading to technology-enabled innovation in other industries.
They are smart mobility, cloud computing, social networking, “big data” analytics and a growing sense of “blur” and convergence, as technology sectors come together and the technology industry enters other industries as enabling innovation. In addition, all five megatrends are driving increased information security requirements.
Online video, SaaS deals surge
Though the 1Q12 technology report details many influential deal-driving factors, the biggest increases in transaction volume came from deals targeting online video technology and SaaS companies. These also generated the largest deals of 1Q12 by dollar value.
These were a US$5b transaction targeting technology that can relay video to mobile devices and aUS$2b deal targeting a provider of workforce management SaaS. In China, meanwhile, the country’s largest video website announced a US$1.1b agreement to acquire its chief rival.
At the same time, a multitude of smaller transactions demonstrated that both online video and SaaS deal-driving trends have widespread strength, according to the report.
Similar deal volume strength was seen in mobile applications, health care information technology, advertising/ marketing technologies, patents, social networking and “big data” analytics deals.
Patents, social networking deals change character
Ernst & Young’s Global technology M&A update: January–March 2012 report notes that the increasing importance of intellectual property (IP) caused transactions targeting patents to grow in 1Q12.
Social networking transactions also seemed to change in character, as post-IPO companies appeared to focus on acquiring strategic mobile technologies instead of talent acquisitions or geographic expansion, as they previously did.
Ongoing rise of PE changes M&A landscape
Despite a typical fourth-to-first-quarter dip, the report shows that the YOY value of disclosed PE deals soared 171% to US$5.8b, mostly in three big-ticket deals.
This continues a three-year PE growth trend. The 1Q12 report describes how the increasing reliance on technology of companies throughout the economy, combined with the developing maturity of technology companies themselves, is attracting more PE companies to technology transactions.
Increasing PE activity is changing the global technology M&A landscape by increasing the competition for deals and by providing better exit opportunities for corporate divestiture of non-core assets, according to
the report.
Tags: Big data analytics, cloud computing, convergence, Ernst & Young's Global technology M&A update: January–March 2012 report., Joe Steger, megatrends, online video, patents, SaaS, smart mobility, social networking
Posted in Acquisitions, Analytics, Cloud, Internet/New Media, IT, Mobile, social media, Studies, surveys, reports, Telecommunications | No Comments »
Monday, May 14th, 2012
 If you’re looking for professional networking results, job opportunities, or business introductions, you’re much better off spending your time on LinkedIn than on Facebook. So says OnlineCollege.org, which cites 20 reasons for spending more time on LinkedIn than on Facebook.
They include these reasons:
LinkedIn is professional to the core and was created for professional networking.
It is a great place to gain expert status and credibility.
It represents a more targeted audience.
LinkedIn users have a sense of purpose. You’re more likely to get recommendations on LinkedIn, and you may actually get hired there.
Here’s an infographic outlining differences between the two social networks:
Tags: Best Practices, infographic, job hunting, LInkedin vs. Facebook, onlinecollege.org, social networking, tech life/culture
Posted in Best Practices, Business advice, Internet/New Media, social media, Studies, surveys, reports, Tech life/Culture | No Comments »
Friday, December 2nd, 2011
 It’s no wonder casual online games, viral videos, and social networks are gaining such traction. They are all entertaining ways to pass time and a new survey from Pew Internet says that’s exactly what more than half of young adults want when they go online.
On any given day, 53% of all the young adults ages 18-29 go online for no particular reason except to have fun or to pass the time. Many of them go online in purposeful ways, as well, the new Pew survey shows.
The results of the survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project show that young adults’ use of the internet can at times be simply for the diversion it presents. Indeed, 81% of all young adults in this age cohort report they have used the internet for this reason at least occasionally.
These results come in the larger context that internet users of all ages are much more likely now than in the past to say they go online for no particular reason other than to pass the time or have fun. Some 58% of all adults (or 74% of all online adults) say they use the internet this way.\ And a third of all adults (34%) say they used the internet that way “yesterday” – or the day before Pew Internet reached them for the survey.1 Both figures are higher than in 2009 when we last asked this question and vastly higher than in the middle of the last decade.
The upsurge in the number of people who use the internet as a destination for fun and no particular purpose has coincided with a variety of trends: the rise of broadband connections, the increasing use of video that is enabled by those high-speed connections, and the explosion of social networking.
All of those factors are strongly associated with people who use the internet for fun: If they have broadband, if they are online video consumers, if they use social media of any kind – especially social networking sites – they are much more likely than others to go online to pass the time.
The trend also suggests the degree to which the internet has become a competitor to all kinds of other leisure activities that are pursued on other kinds of media. Still, the competition is fuzzy because most other kinds of leisure pursuits that can be digitized – from reading to game playing to “watching TV” and “listening to radio” – are now available online.
Our question wording was simple and did not ask about any particular online “fun” activity, so people were allowed to answer that they were online for fun however they defined the term.
The increases in the number of people going online for fun on a typical day and in the general population of those who ever go online for fun came across all age groups and other demographic cohorts.
The most recent figures about those going online for fun come from a survey conducted from July 25 to August 26, 2011 among 2,260 adults ages 18 and over, including surveys in English and Spanish and on landline and cell phones.
The margin of error for the sample is plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Tags: casual games, half of young adults go online just for fun, Pew Internet in American Life Project, social networking, using the net to pass time, viral videos
Posted in games, Internet/New Media, mobile games, Studies, surveys, reports, Tech Culture, TechLife, video | No Comments »
Friday, August 26th, 2011
Fully 65% of adult internet users now say they use a social networking site like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn, up from 61% one year ago. This marks the first time in Pew Internet surveys that 50% of all adults use social networking sites.
These figures come from a new national survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and mark a dramatic increase from the first time the Project surveyed about social networking sites in February of 2005. At that time just 8% of internet users or 5% of all adults said they used them.
Among internet users, social networking sites are most popular with women and young adults, but most of the growth over the past year came from adults over age 30. Looking at overall usage, wired seniors grew their ranks the most over the past year; 33% of those ages 65 and older now use the sites, compared with 26% one year ago.
As of May 2011:
- 83% of internet users ages 18-29 use SNS, compared with
- 70% of 30-49 year-olds
- 51% of 50-64 year-olds, and
- 33% of those ages 65 and older
Looking at usage on a typical day, 43% of online adults use social networking, up from 38% a year ago. Out of all the “daily” online activities that we ask about, only email (which 61% of internet users access on a typical day) and search engines (which 59% use on a typical day) are used more frequently than social networking tools.
The frequency of social networking site usage among young adult internet users was stable over the last year – 61% of online Americans in that age cohort now use SNS on a typical day, compared with 60% one year ago. However, among the Boomer-aged segment of internet users ages 50-64, SNS usage on a typical day grew a significant 60% (from 20% to 32%).
“The graying of social networking sites continues, but the oldest users are still far less likely to be making regular use of these tools,” said Mary Madden, a Senior Research Specialist with the Project and co-author of the report. “While seniors are testing the waters, many Baby Boomers are beginning to make a trip to the social media pool part of their daily routine,” said Madden.
In a separate question, when social networking users were asked for one word to describe their experiences using social networking sites, “good” was the most common response. Overall, positive responses far outweighed the negative and neutral words that were associated with social networking sites (more than half of the respondents used positive terms). Users repeatedly described their experiences as “fun,” “great,” “interesting” and “convenient.” Less common were superlatives such as “astounding,” “necessity,” and “empowering.”
“Social networking sites continue to cement their place as a significant part of mainstream online life,” said Kathryn Zickuhr, a Research Specialist and co-author of the report. “Even as some users find their experiences with social networking sites frustrating or overwhelming, most seem to view the services positively on the whole.”
Tags: baby boomers, Pew Internet in American Life Project, social networking
Posted in Internet/New Media, social media, Studies, surveys, reports | 1 Comment »
Friday, July 22nd, 2011
 Google+ has chalked up 20 million unique visitors since its launch three weeks ago, according to digital measurement service comScore.
ComScore used its global measurement panel of two million Internet users to estimate the number of visitors to the new social networking service from the search giant.
The invite-only scheme for Google+ certainly created much more interest than the company’s previous attempt to poach on Facebook territory, the inaptly named Google Buzz, which debuted with a splash and sank without further adieu into the backwaters of Google services.
A number of people in and out of the tech community have questioned whether Google+ could triumph over Facebook in the end, but some early adopters see it as providing Facebook-like social networking without Facebook-like drawbacks.
The Wall Street Journal quotes comScore’s Vice President of Industry Analysis, Andrew Lipsman, who says “I”ve never seen anything grow this quickly.”
Still, as the WSJ points out, Google+ has a long way to go before it matches Facebook’s 750 million users. The real problem for the service may be in acquiring the general Internet users who populate Facebook – not just the tech early adopters and luminaries already using it, but parents, children and friends of users.
Google+ lets users share comments, photos or links with “circles” of friends, or publicly so any user can see them. Google+ features will be incorporated in YouTube and other Google properties.
Tags: comScore, facebook, Google, Internet, social networking
Posted in Facebook, Google, Internet/New Media, social media, Studies, surveys, reports | No Comments »
Thursday, July 14th, 2011
 Banks are not taking full advantage of their online banking platforms, despite increasing customer engagement in the channel, according to a consumer study by Cable&Wireless Worldwide.
Sixty percent of consumers say that online banking has become the most valuable factor to engagement over the past two years, ranking it higher in value than banks’ trustworthiness and even their return on their money in the bank.
Cable&Wireless Worldwide has long-term relationships with most of the world’s leading banks and in the UK provides communication solutions to eight out of 10 of the leading retail banks. This includes integrated social media and online channels with banks contact centre and branch environments, and also connectivity to over 70% of contact centre agents with their customers and 4,000 UK ATMs.
The research also finds that online channels typically deliver only functional banking services, but that around half of customers want banks to incorporate social and human aspects of customer service – such as more personalised customer service and tailored advice – into online banking.
Untapped customer contact opportunities
The study suggests there are untapped oppportunies for customer contact in new technologies such as mobile technology, social networking and video conferencing. Customers are not using newer communications channels for buying products, but rather as channels for gleaning advice and information. But only 1% of consumers, who have sought advice from banks in the last month, have done so through video conferencing. Mobile phone applications (1%) and social networking (1%) are of similarly low incidence.
Michele Metcalfe, Director of Banking & Financial Services at Cable&Wireless Worldwide, says, “Consumers increasingly prefer remote interaction, but also want good customer service, greater trustworthiness and a fair level of engagement with the banks. These findings suggest that financial institutions have an opportunity to better meet customer preferences by investing in the right online innovation.”
- 33% of bank customers have been called Stressed Technologies because they have busy lifestyles (professional full time jobs). They find using technology easy and convenient and they use the online system for both functional banking, problems solving and buying new products. For them, social and human aspects of banking (ie more personalised customer service, tailored advice and help) delivered online would improve their satisfaction with banks.
- 22% are Stressed Complainers (like the Stressed Technologies but by their nature they are hard to please and very demanding). These adults still make heavy use of the online system but when problems arise they switch to telephone contact. This group of adults indicate a potential for enhancing the online system with greater compliant handling capabilities.
Further detail on the research findings.
Tags: Cable&Wireless, digital technologies offer untapped possibilities to banks, mobile, online banking platforms, social networking, survey, video conferencing
Posted in Internet/New Media, IT, Marketing, Studies, surveys, reports, video | No Comments »
Monday, June 20th, 2011
 Raleigh, NC-based Valencell, an innovator in mobile health and fitness technology, has received $5.5 million in Series B venture investment. The round was led by Best Buy Capital, the investment group of Best Buy Co., Inc., with participation from Series A investors TDF and True Ventures. Valencell was a presenting company at TechMedia’s Southeast Venture Conference in Atlanta in March.
Seeded by its three founders, Valencell previously raised a Series A round of $1 million and has been awarded more than $3 million in R&D grants.
Valencell created a technology it calls Healthset powered earbuds, which gives audio headsets the ability to monitor the health and fitness of the user.
Healthset sensor technology tracks real-time physiological metrics including heart rate, calories burned, steps taken, distance traveled, speed and more, while the consumer listens to music, talks over the phone, or goes about daily life activities. Data is streamed to smartphones and/or mp3-players through wired or wireless links, enabling live body metrics, training, and coaching via fitness applications on mobile devices and online.
“People everywhere are listening to music while running and exercising,“ explained CEO and cofounder Dr. Steven LeBoeuf. “Integrating heart rate sensors directly and seamlessly into music earbuds fits right into the behavior of consumers today. Everyone’s body responds differently to exercise, so being able to monitor the heart, the body’s engine, will help consumers customize and personalize workout regiments for their specific goals whether it’s for weight loss, toning or endurance. Users will be able to view their metrics live through fitness applications on their iPhone, Android phones, other mobile devices and online.”
Recent research from PricewaterhouseCoopers cites growing demand for mobile health monitoring: 88% of physicians said they would like their patients to track their health information and 40% of individuals said they would buy a personal health-monitoring device or pay for a subscription to send health information to their providers.
California-based social commerce firm BeachMint chews on $23.5M financing
BeachMint has secured a $23.5 million round of funding led by Scale Venture Partners and Lightbank, the technology investment fund started by Eric Lefkofsky and Brad Keywell, cofounders of Groupon.
Existing investors, New Enterprise Associates, Trinity Ventures, and Anthem Ventures also participated in the round. The new funding will be used to grow the existing brands, JewelMint and StyleMint (launching July 1), to accelerate the company’s phenomenal growth and to expand into new categories.
Sharon Wienbar, Scale Venture Partners’ managing director, will join the company’s Board. She said, . ”Consumer e-commerce is being transformed by social networking and curation,” said Wienbar. “BeachMint is redefining online shopping by taking advantage of these trends to deliver great consumer value. We are excited by the amazing traction BeachMint has achieved in a short time with JewelMint.”
BeachMint was founded by MySpace Co-Founder, Josh Berman, and serial tech entrepreneur, Diego Berdakin.
Evernote raising about $50M in new capital
TechCrunch reports that the popular notetaking service, Evernote, is raising about $50 million in venture funding in a round led by Sequoia Capital. It is already up to $40 million in the round. It previously raised $20.5 million. We use the free version of Evernote, which makes it easy to save text, images, and urls when you’re doing web research, and saves your data in the cloud, so it is available on any machine on which you install the software.
Daily Deals for Moms lands angel funding
Yet another niche play in the crowded daily deals space has grabbed initial angel funding.
Denver-based Daily Deals for Moms, a social couponing website for moms and families looking for and sharing great deals with a commitment to support small business and keep retail dollars in the community, says it has secured a round of angel funding. The group of investors includes Victor Lazzaro, Jr. of Denver based Volante Capital.
The company will keep the financing open to strategic investors, but intends to close the round within the next few weeks. The infusion of capital will fuel growth, further build infrastructure, and continue to drive awareness of the site as it expands into more cities.
Launched in 2010 by Mompreneurs Ashley E. Kingsley and Whitney Trujillo, Daily Deals for Moms primarily serves secondary markets such as Denver, Toledo, and Des Moines. It is specifically focused on daily deals for moms and families.
Some of these niche players in the daily deals and coupons sites may have a better chance of survival in the long run than the 800 pound gorillas if they create deals that benefit both the consumer and the business. If nothing else, they’re likely to be targets for the larger companies if they go public and have substantial reserves of cash to make acquisitions.
OwnerIQ closes on $7M for targeted advertising platform
OwnerIQ, the inventor of Ownership Targeted media and developer of one of the most advanced Real-Time media buying platforms in the industry, announced today it has closed a $7 million expansion round. All existing investors participated, and Longworth Venture Partners also joined this round.
Founded in 2006 in Boston, OwnerIQ operates a network of channel-focused websites to help consumers easily find and store must-have self-support product information. The company pioneered the concept of Ownership Targeting, providing brand advertisers with highly customized programs to precisely target consumers based on products they already own.
Tags: Atlanta, BeachMint, BestBuy Capital, Boston, Brad Keywell, CO, Daily Deals for Moms, Denver, ecommerce, Eric Lefkofsky, Evernote, financings, Groupon, Healthset, JewelMint, Lightbank, Longworth Venture Partners, m Anthem Ventures, mobile health monitoring earbuds, NC, NEA, online note taking software, OwnerIQ, Raleigh, Scale Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital, SEVC, social commerce, social networking, Southeast Venture Conference, StyleMint, targeted advertising, TDF, Trinity Ventures, True Ventures, Valencell, venture funding
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Friday, June 17th, 2011
 Pandora, (NYSE:P) the online radio service, saw its share prices tumble below its offering price of $16 in its second day of trading. The company’s shares were trading at $13.26 Thursday as the markets close.
Although the company’s shares rose as high as $26 following its initial public offering of stock Wednesday, they fell to $17.42 by the day’s close.
Following the smashing success of business social networking site LinkedIn’s IPO, Pandora’s debut on the NYSE was highly anticipated.
The company, however, has yet to make a profit, despite having 90 million users, and much media commentary about the Pandora IPO focused on the firm’s downsides. Those include a small advertiser base compared to its user base, the cost of its contracts with music labels (to which it pays a royalty every time a user plays a tune), and its losses despite increasing revenue.
Every time Pandora gains a customer, it has to pay more music royalties. Pandora also must renegotiate its contracts with the music labels in two years.
Pandora doubled its first quarter revenue in 2011 to $51 million, but also doubled its losses to $6.8 million compared to the same period last year.
LinkedIn (Linkd) , by comparison, is profitable and saw its first quarter revenue rise to $93.9 million, up 110 percent over the same period last year.
Groupon, the daily deal site that has raised a billion dollars in venture backing and filed to go public earlier this month, has also faced significant losses, chalking up a profit only in the first quarter of 2010. It lost $146.5 million in the first quarter this year.
A Rice University study says that daily deal sites are not developing a sustainable business. That could affect how Groupon’s IPO performs.
Tags: daily deals sites not sustainable, Groupon, Internet company IPOS, Internet radio service, Linkd, LinkedIn, NYSE, P, Pandora, Pandora share price falls, Rice University study of daily deals sites, social networking
Posted in Internet/New Media, IPOs, Money, social media, Studies, surveys, reports | No Comments »
Thursday, May 19th, 2011
NEW YORK – LinkedIn (NYSE:LINKD) shares took a huge pop as the business social networking firm’s IPO opened at $80 a share. By noon, the share price rocketed past $100, up 120 percent.
Shares are trading in the $100 plus range mid-day. It had a high of $122 at this writing.
The stock is showing some movement, trading between $80 and $90 a share Thursday morning.
The company now has a market value of more than $8 billion, a number which we admit astounds us.
Investors didn’t waste any time grabbing shares of LinkedIn Corp’s IPO at $45 each, the top of its projected range, even before the business social network went public Thursday morning on the New York Stock Exchange.
Money managers, mutual funds, pension funds and others were anxious to get in on the action ahead of the company’s Wall Street debut with 7.84 million shares.
The venture community, social networking firms, and investors are all excited about the LinkedIn IPO, the biggest hit for an Internet firm since Google launched its IPO seven years ago.
The craze over LinkedIn’s IPO has redoubled talk of another Internet “bubble,” since the company earned only $15.4 million in 2010. It also admits in SEC documents that the majority of its 100 million users do not visit the site regularly. Nevertheless, it does have superb demographics, since its users tend to be high end business people with substantial incomes.
On the other hand, the extraordinary pop of this offering does suggest something of the “irrational exuberance” of the last Internet bubble. What do you think? Let us know in the comments.
The huge opening IPO pop is sure to encourage more “bubble” speculation.
The company is on the leading edge of the social media IPOs expected over the next year or so, which are likely to include Facebook, Twitter, and Groupon, among others.
See also: a report on SecondMarket’s Ten Hottest Companies in Tech
TechJournal South is a TechMedia company. TechMedia presents the annual conferences:
SoutheastVentureConference: www.seventure.org
Internet Summit: www.internetsummit.com
Digital East: www.digitaleast.com
Digital Summit: www.digitalsummit.com
Tags: IPO, LinkedIn, social networking
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Friday, February 11th, 2011
 Do companies actually see a pay day in measurable ways from using Web 2.0 technologies from blogging to social networking? A McKinsey Quarterly annual survey suggests that companies using Web 2.0 technologies to collaborate and communicate internally and externally see measurable benefits across a range of business metrics, and the most highly networked appear to gain market share and increase profit margins.
The survey of 3,249 executives across a range of regions, industries, and functional areas shows that the number of companies using Web 2.0 technologies continues to grow, with 40 percent now using social networking and 38 percent doing blogs.
Respondents at nearly half of the companies that use social networking say that at least 51 percent of their employees use it. And in 2010, nearly two-thirds of respondents at companies using Web 2.0 say they will increase future investments in these technologies, compared with just over half in 2009.
A large majority of companies report that they are receiving measurable business benefits—with nearly nine out of ten reporting at least one. These benefits ranged from more effective marketing to faster access to knowledge, increasing customer satisfaction, decreasing travel costs, and increasing revenue, among others.
Three types of organizations, seem to have learned how to realize a much higher level of business benefits from their use of Web 2.0, according to the survey.
Some companies are achieving benefits from using Web 2.0 primarily within their own corporate walls. The survey results indicate that companies in this group—13 percent of those using Web 2.0—derive substantial benefits from deploying these technologies in employee interactions.
Other companies (5 percent of those deploying Web 2.0) achieved substantial benefits from interactions that spread beyond corporate borders by using Web 2.0 technologies to interact with customers and business partners,
Finally, some companies use Web 2.0 in revolutionary ways, the report on the survey says.
This elite group of organizations—3 percent of those in our survey—derives very high levels of benefits from Web 2.0’s widespread use, involving employees, customers, and business partners, according to the survey.
“In applying Web 2.0 technologies, fully networked enterprises seem to have moved much further along the learning curve than other organizations have. The integration of Web 2.0 into day-to-day activities is high, executives say, and they report that these technologies are promoting higher levels of collaboration by helping to break down organizational barriers that impede information flows,” says the report.
The McKinsey Quarterly performed a series of statistical analyses to determine if any of this actually promoted gains in market share, operating profits and market leadership.
Their findings suggest “that Web technologies can underwrite a more agile organization where frontline staff members make local decisions and companies are better at leveraging outside resources to raise productivity and to create more valuable products and services. The result, the survey suggests, is higher profits.”
It found that respondents at 27 percent of the companies in our survey reported having both market share gains against their competitors and higher profit margins.
“That kind of performance clearly makes these companies profit consolidators in their industries, with earnings growing faster than the rest. Highly networked enterprises were 50 percent more likely to fall in this high-performance group than other organizations were.”
It found that respondents at 27 percent of the companies in its survey reported having both market share gains against their competitors and higher profit margins, concluding, “That kind of performance clearly makes these companies profit consolidators in their industries, with earnings growing faster than the rest. Highly networked enterprises were 50 percent more likely to fall in this high-performance group than other organizations were.”
TechJournal South is a TechMedia company. TechMedia presents the annual conferences:
Internet Summit | www.internetsummit.com
Digital East | www.digitaleast.com
Southeast Venture Conference | www.seventure.org
Tags: blogging, business metrics, collaboration, McKinsey Quarterly annual survey, social networking, Web 2.0 technologies lead to pay day
Posted in Internet/New Media, Studies, surveys, reports, Tech Culture, TechLife | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 8th, 2011
 RESTON, VA – As the economic environment showed signs of improvement in 2010, the digital media industry responded with significant growth across various media platforms. Industry innovations brought an unprecedented number of options to consumers as digital media continued to weave itself even tighter into the fabric of Americans’ daily lives, says digital measurement firm comScore in its 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review.
“2010 was a very positive year for the digital media industry, highlighted by a strong rebound in e-commerce spending , significant innovation and increased demand for online advertising, and an explosion in digital content consumption across multiple platforms,” said comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni. “As we embark on a promising 2011, marketers must have a sound understanding of the digital media landscape and how it is changing if they hope to capitalize on key trends that can drive their business into the future.”
The report provides a comprehensive view across the fixed Internet and mobile sectors to uncover this past year’s important consumer trends.
Key findings highlighted in the report include:
- Following 2 years of depressed consumer discretionary spending, the economy showed signs of improvement, leading to positive growth for the e-commerce market. Total U.S. e-commerce spending reached $227.6 billion in 2010, up 9 percent versus the previous year. Travel e-commerce spending grew 6 percent to $85.2 billion, while retail (non-travel) e-commerce spending jumped 10 percent to $142.5 billion for the year.
- Social networking continued to gain momentum throughout 2010, with 9 out of every 10 U.S. Internet users now visiting a social networking site in a month, and the average Internet user spending more than 4 hours on these sites each month. Nearly 1 out of every 8 minutes online is spent on Facebook.
- The U.S. core search market grew 12 percent overall in 2010, driven by a 4-percent increase in unique searchers and an 8-percent increase in the number of search queries per searcher.
- U.S. Internet users received a total of 4.9 trillion display ads in 2010 with display ad impressions growing 23 percent in December 2010 versus December 2009. Social networking sites, which now account for more than one-third of all display ad impressions, were a significant driver of growth in the display ad market in 2010.
- In December 2010, the average American spent more than 14 hours watching online video, a 12-percent increase from the prior year, and streamed a record 201 videos, an 8-percent increase.
To download a complimentary copy of The comScore 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review report, see: www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Presentations_Whitepapers/2011/2010_US_Digital_Year_in_Review
Tags: comScore, Digital Year in Review 2010, e-commerce spending, Gian Fulgoni, online advertising, social networking
Posted in Internet/New Media, IT, Marketing | No Comments »
Friday, January 7th, 2011
 PALO ALTO, CA- Facebook may be required to start sharing financial information if it attracts more than 500 investors, which it expects to do by April next year (2012). The US Securities and Exchange Commission requires companies with assets of more than $10 million and 500 investors to disclose certain financial information, a rule designed to reduce investor risk.
The company is quite likely to pursue an initial public offering of stock once it crossed the reporting company barrier, say those in the know.
Facebook founder and Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year,” Mark Zukerberg has repeatedly said that he is no hurry to take Facebook public. Once firms trigger the SEC rule requiring them to become reporting companies, however, many decide they might as well go public. Google, for instance, launched its IPO in 2004 when it crossed the 500 investor mark.
Facebook’s latest investment of $500 million from Goldman Sachs and Digital Sky Technologies, valuing the firm at $50 billion, more than that of Yahoo or eBay, renewed questions about whether there is a new Internet “bubble.” Goldman Sach’s $450 million bought less than a 1 percent stake in the social networking behemoth.
Yet, a 100-page document sent to selected potential investors, according to reports, reports the company enjoys a net profit margin of 30 percent, a good deal higher than previously thought. The company’s primary income derives from advertising, which has increasing moved toward digital venues the last year, a trend expected to increase further this year.
The Associated Press reports that an unnamed source who saw the documents Facebook sent investors pegged the company’s income at $355 million on revenue of $1.2 billion for the first nine months of 2010. It had a similar profit margin in 2009, according to the source.
We finally managed to catch “The Social Network,’” the story of Facebook’s founding penned by West Wing scribe Aaron Sorkin. We then read the book, “You Don’t Get 500 New Friends Without Making a Few Enemies,” on which it is based. In both, Zuckerberg comes across much like Bill Gates, just this side of autistic in some ways, a computer genius with a lack of personal interaction skills.
Most of the information for the book, and thus the movie, came from other players in the sage than Zuckerberg, however. While both are absorbing, we’re wary of tales lacking input from both sides, especially when many of the players, such as Eduardo Saverin and the Winklevoss twins, have been suing Zuckerberg and Facebook off and on for years.
Recent reports says the Winklevoss twins – who were guests at one of Tech Media’s events a few years ago – are considering having their $65 million settlement with the company thrown out so they can sue again for more money, alleging Facebook withheld information from them about its true value.
The whole story remains a fascinating entrepreneurial soap opera. – Allan Maurer (Allan at TechJournal South dot com)
See also:
Wall Street Journal: Facebook Sets Stage for IPO Next Year
Tags: 500 investor barrier, Eduardo Saverin, entrepreneurial soap opera, facebook, IPO, Mark Zukerberg, SEC reporting company rule, social networking, the Winklevoss twins, Time Magazine
Posted in Internet/New Media, Money | No Comments »
Friday, January 7th, 2011
 WASHINGTON, DC – Personal Inc., a company developing an online mobile platform for sharing, has kicked up its funding to $7.3 million from investors including Grotech Ventures, Steve Case backed Revolution, and TCS Capital, according to a regulatory filing. We reported in September 2010 that the company had raised $1.2 million of a round targeted at $2 million.
Personal Inc. was founded in 2009 by former Nokia Corp. veterans Shane Green, Doug Wheeler, Edin Saracevic, Tarik Kurspahic and Jennifer Devereux,according to a Washington Business Journal report. Green was previously CEO of The Map Network.
The filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission disclosing the new financing includes as principals directors Don Rainey of Vienna, VA-based Grotech; Tige Savage, co-founder of DC-based Revolution; and Erci Semler, of NY-based TCS Capital.
The company is still in closed beta mode.
It sounds as if the startup is riding two hot trends, mobile and social networking, although details are scare at this point.
Email TJS Editor Allan Maurer: Allan at TechJournal South dot com.
Tags: DC, Don Rainey, Eric Semler, financing, mobile, Personal Inc., Revoltion, Shane Green, social networking, Steve Case, telecom, Tige Savage
Posted in Internet/New Media, IT, Potomac, Telecommunications, Washington, DC | No Comments »
Monday, December 13th, 2010
 FRAMINGHAM, MA – In 2011, and certainly beyond, research and analysis organization IDC expects these technologies – cloud services, mobile computing, and social networking – to mature and coalesce into a new mainstream platform for both the IT industry and the industries it serves.
“In 2011, we expect to see these transformative technologies make the critical transition from early adopter status to early mainstream adoption,” said Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC.
“As a result, we’ll see the IT industry revolving more and more around the build-out and adoption of this next dominant platform, characterized by mobility, cloud-based application and service delivery, and value-generating overlays of social business and pervasive analytics. In addition to creating new markets and opportunities, this restructuring will overthrow nearly every assumption about who the industry’s leaders will be and how they establish and maintain leadership.”
The platform transition will be fueled by another solid year of recovery in IT spending.
IDC forecasts worldwide IT spending will be $1.6 trillion in 2011, an increase of 5.7% over 2010. While hardware spending will remain strong (7.8% year-over-year growth), the industry will depend to a larger extent on improvements in software spending (5.3% growth) and related project-based services spending (3.5% growth), as well as gains in outsourcing (4% growth). Worldwide IT spending will also benefit from the accelerated recovery in emerging markets, which will generate more than half of all net new IT spending worldwide in 2011.
Spending on public IT cloud services will grow at more than five times the rate of the IT industry in 2011, up 30% from 2010, as organizations move a wider range of business applications into the cloud. Small and medium-sized business cloud use will surge in 2011, with adoption of some cloud resources topping 33% among U.S. midsize firms by year’s end.
Meanwhile, the more nascent private cloud model will continue to evolve as infrastructure, software, and service providers collaborate on a range of new offerings and solutions. Meanwhile, the vendor battle for two cloud “power positions” will be joined to determine on whose cloud platform will solutions be deployed, and who will provide coherent IT management across multiple public clouds, customers’ private clouds, and their legacy IT environments.
Mobile computing – on a variety of devices and through a range of new applications – will continue to explode in 2011, forming another critical plank in the new industry platform. IDC expects shipments of app-capable, non-PC mobile devices (smartphones, media tablets, etc.) will outnumber PC shipments within the next 18 months – and there will be no looking back.
While vendors with a PC heritage will scramble to secure their position in this rapidly expanding market, another battle will be taking place for dominance in the mobile apps market. The level of activity in this market will be staggering, with IDC expecting nearly 25 billion mobile apps to be downloaded in 2011, up from just over 10 billion in 2010. Over time, the still-emerging apps ecosystems promise to fundamentally restructure the channels for all digital content and services to consumers.
Social business software
Meanwhile, social business software has gained significant momentum in the enterprise over the past 18 months and this trend is expected to continue with IDC forecasting a compound annual growth rate of 38% through 2014. In a sure sign that social business has hit the mainstream, IDC expects 2011 to be a year of consolidation as the major software vendors acquire social software providers to jump-start or increase their social business footprint. Meanwhile, the use of social platforms by small and medium-sized businesses will accelerate, with more than 40% of SMBs using social networks for promotional purposes by the year’s end.
As the new mainstream IT platform coalesces in the months ahead, IDC expects it to lay a foundation for IT vendors to support, and profit from, a variety of “intelligent industry” transformations. In retail, mobility and social networking are rapidly changing consumers’ shopping experience as they bring their smartphones into the store for on-site price comparisons and product recommendations.
In financial services, mobility and the cloud are bringing mobile banking and payments closer to reality. In the healthcare industry, IDC expects 14% of adult Americans to use a mobile health application in 2011.
“What really distinguishes the year ahead is that these disruptive technologies are finally being integrated with each other – cloud with mobile, mobile with social networking, social networking with ‘big data’ and real-time analytics,” added Gens. “As a result, these once-emerging technologies can no longer be invested in, or managed, as sandbox efforts around the edges of the market. Instead, they are rapidly becoming the market itself and must be addressed accordingly.”
IDC’s predictions for 2011 are presented in full detail in the report, IDC Predictions 2011: Welcome to the New Mainstream (Doc #225878).
Tags: 2011 predictions, cloud computing, IDC, IT spending recovery, mobile, social networking
Posted in Internet/New Media, IT, Studies, surveys, reports, Telecommunications | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 12th, 2010
 ARMONK, NY – With all the debate over outsourced jobs, here’s a finding sure to please policy makers and job seekers alike: foreign growth market companies, led by those from China and India, are increasingly hiring in North America and Europe. That’s according to the findings of a major new IBM (NYSE: IBM) study of over 700 Chief Human Resource Officers and senior executives from 61 countries and 31 industries worldwide.
The study also found that top performing companies use social networking and collaboration tools to help teams work together effectively.
Unlike the traditional pattern of movement – in which companies in mature markets seek operational efficiency through headcount growth in emerging economies – the study shows workforce investment is moving both ways. The findings suggest that as companies expand globally, the need to identify workforces with the creativity, flexibility and speed to capitalize on growth opportunities is becoming a priority, leading to an increase in their workforce presence in North America, Western Europe and other mature markets. The IBM study indicates that:
- 45 percent of companies in India plan to increase their headcount in North America and 44 percent will expand in Western Europe
- 33 percent of companies in China plan to increase headcount in North America and 14 percent will grow in Western Europe.
Conducted by the IBM Institute for Business Value, the 2010 IBM Global Chief Human Resource Officer study, titled “Working Beyond Borders,” found that while organizations continue to develop and deploy talent in diverse areas around the globe at an accelerated rate, the rationale behind workforce investment is changing.
“The silver lining of globalization is that the shift toward expansion will require companies to redirect their workforce to locations that provide the greatest opportunities, not just the lowest costs, and at the same time, re-imagine their management strategies to reflect an increasingly dynamic workforce,” said Denis Brousseau, Vice President, Organization and People, IBM Global Business Services.
“More than ever before, competitive success will depend the leadership talent to assimilate information and share insights among a diverse group of employees around the globe.”
We think this was bound to happen. For one thing, businesses need people savvy in specific markets and geographies.
Social media having bottom line consequences
Another major finding of the study is that while social networking and collaboration may be regarded by many as a “soft” skill, study data suggests it can have bottom-line consequences:
- Financial outperformers (as measured by EBIDTA) are 57 percent more likely than underperformers to use collaborative and social networking tools to enable global teams to work more effectively together.
- Respondents indicated they most frequently employ collaboration tools to enhance the effectiveness of corporate communications and learning programs and to target and recruit external candidates.
- 21 percent of companies have recently increased the amount they invest in the collaboration tools and analytics despite the economic downturn.
- 19 percent of respondents regularly use collaborative technologies to identify individuals with relevant knowledge and skills, 23 percent to preserve critical knowledge, and 27 percent to spread innovation more widely.
We won’t be surprised to see increasing evidence that companies using social media well can demonstrate bottom line ROI.
For access to the full study report, including findings and case studies, see: ibm.com/chrostudy
To join the conversation about smarter leadership, please visit: smarterleaders.tumblr.com/
Tags: China, IBM study, India, social networking, tech jobs
Posted in Internet/New Media, Studies, surveys, reports, TechJobs | No Comments »
Monday, October 4th, 2010
 Andy Beal, Founder, Marketing Pilgrim By Allan Maurer
RESEARCH TRIANGLE, NC – Andy Beal, founder of Marketing Pilgrim and creator of online reputation monitoring tool, Trackur, wanted to be one of the first to get his hands on an Apple iPhone 4, but Apple let him know it might arrive earlier than it at first said. Beal went to the FedEx tracking site on the web. It said the phone wouldn’t arrive until the following day.
“So now I’ve got conflicting messages,” Beal says. “I checked around and found out the FedEx tracking tool was under strain from so many people checking to see when their iPhone 4 would arrive.” Now he was mad at FedEx.
“I decided to turn to Twitter to see if their was any glimmer of hope,” Beal wrote in a blog post about the problem. There he found @FedExLina. “Aha,” he wrote, “A FedEx employee who may be able to help.”
A look at the accounts Tweets made him suspect it might be an automated account just looking for mentions of FedEx, but he tried asked for help anyway. “Low and behold, FedExLina was not only real, she was willing to help!” And help him she did. His blog post includes a three-point takeaway.
The Takeaway
Be aware of issues and brief social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) users accordingly.
Empower employees to actually help your customers during a crisis. “What’s the point of being on Twitter if you can’t help your customers?” he asks.
And finally, the piece of advice we hear from social media experts far and wide, “Listen for the conversation. “Be proactive in assisting your customers.”
That, Beal tells us, is an example of a company using social media in a proactive and effective way. “Some companies are doing a great job,” he says.
Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim blog is rated as one of the top 10 in media and marketing by Advertising Age and has appeared on major media, from the Wall Street Journal and Business Week to ABC news, CNBC and NPR on Internet marketing and reputation managment. He is the co-author of the reputation management book, Radically Transparent. Beal has worked with Motorola, GlaxoSmithKline, SAS, Lowes, and NBC.
Beal is one of dozens of Internet executives, entrepreneurs, thought leaders and technology experts participating in the upcoming Internet Summit Nov. 17-18 in Raleigh, NC.
Find the influencers
Beal always has good advice for companies or individuals dealing with their online reputations. “The most important thing for a lot of businesses is to identify centers of influence,” he tells us.
“Where are your customers or employees likely to be hanging out and talking about your brand?”
Too often, Beal says, he sees companies “Act like kids in a candy store” when it comes to social media. It’s new and they start off gung-ho, but then get burnt out and don’t update in months.
Pick one channel
One way to avoid that is to “Pick one channel and do it right.” Do Twitter or do Facebook or LinkedIn, whichever is your center of influence.
Also, he says, “The idea is to provide value. For the most part, don’t spend the majority of your time trying to sell. People are sick and tired of being sold to. Fix problems, have conversations.”
He warns, “If you decide to get into a social media channel, get in 100 percent. The worst thing is to start a Twitter account, answer a few questions then abandon it. It’s worse than never starting to begin with if you’re there and ignoring them.”
You can even let users in on special deals, offer coupons or upcoming sales. “That provides value.” But you should always keep in mind that unless you’re Apple Computers or Lexus, or another fantastic brand people want to be associated with, you need to give them a reason to join your Facebook page or follow you on Twitter.
Beal says individuals as well as companies need to monitor the web for anything that might affect their reputation. “Be proactive,” he says. “Create a LinkedIn profile. Type your name into Google once a month and make sure nothing negative is showing up.” He also noted that the free version of Trackur “Will keep an eye on the web for you. If we come across your name on a blog or a web site, we’ll let you know.”
Tags: Andy Beal, facebook, FedEx, Internet Summit, LinkedIn, Marketing Pilgrim, reputation monitoring, social networking, Trackur, twitter
Posted in Carolinas, Events, Internet/New Media, North Carolina | No Comments »
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