Your money or your (social) life!
If you were a black-hatted hacker, what kind of devious malware would you spend your time writing- a program that cracks my bank account or a program that steals my twitter password? Easy choice, right? It may surprise you to learn that hacker-invented malware programs that steal social networking account information outnumber similar programs directed at stealing bank passwords nearly three to one, and the margin appears to be growing, according to a recent study by Kaspersky Labs.
This makes some sense. Rather than march me to my own ATM at the point of a gun, hackers could pretend to be me and then fleece all 426 of my facebook friends at once. Call it an investment in their future. Dirtbags.
Related story in the New York Times is here.
January 28, European day of data protection
The EU is increasingly concerned about data protection in the internet. Such is the concern that they have created and promoted a European day to create awareness about this issue. Last Thursday I was reading a European newspaper when I bumped into a banner promoting this event. Following the URL took me to the web below (sorry, it’s in Spanish, but I will lay you out the basic content). The web is structured around 3 main objectives. Inform internet users about their rights, explain them how they can report inappropriate behaviors and give advice about how to manage knew channels(they include, sms, P2P, video and social networks). They provide a 64 page pdf that explains you quite a lot about the issue. It is very good.
I believe that this initiative is pretty cool. People are generally quite illiterate about internet issues, even those we use internet all day. Educate people on how to behave, and let them know what they can expect is helpful, especially when the threats are greater and greater as hackers and other delinquents get more sophisticated.
https://www.agpd.es/portalweb/dia_proteccion-datos_2010-ides-idphp.php
Here’s a solution – Just alter your scandalous behavior
Quit your whining. Eric Schmidt is tired of you complaining about how his company is invading your privacy – He says: “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” There’s some truth to that right?? I mean, it seems fair to say that if you don’t want people to know what you’re doing, you certainly should not be doing it on the internet. Never mind what came first – the fact of the matter is, what you do every day, on and off the internet can be tracked and if I were you, I’d be flattered that someone found me as interesting.
Before I get to the point of this posting, I wanted to quickly share my definition of “invasion of privacy” – in my world, it is the “aggregation of public information in one neat location”. Here’s an example that neatly illustrates my point. In 2005, CNET allegedly googled Schmidt and then published what it found.
I strongly feel that the salary information should have been left in solitude in the dark corners of the 10K, free from disturbances from his other equally dull info such as:
(FYI – this is old news from 2005, I heard, or more accurately, read on some google search that he’s now a big fan of Elton John.)
And it’s not as if you have any will power to ditch google if they were to do such a thing.
Anyway, the reason I’m posting this is because last night’s privacy discussion made me think of the CNBC Original Series about Google and privacy aired December of 2009.
You can watch it here.
I credit this episode for making me obsessively aware of every word I type into google search.
FEBRUARY 10: Digital Media MBA Happy Hour at Union Bar
Well our last happy hour was such a great success that we’re having another one right away. Many of you were pleased at the chance to speak with our last “Featured Guest” and we are certain you won’t be disappointed this time either. Please join us for our Happy Hour this month when we will be joined by our latest high-profile “Featured Guest”, Rafat Ali, the Founder, Publisher and Editor of paidContent.org, a leading online news company covering the business of digital media.
Rafat, a tech journalist by trade, founded ContentNext Media in 2002 and paidContent.org became his company’s leading online web property. He sold the business to Guardian Media Group of London in July 2008, and is still running the company along with the exec team. Please stop by to speak with this highly respected journalist and tech insider. I’m sure he’ll want to tell you what you can expect to learn at his company’s first namesake conference, “paidContent 2010: Discussing the Economics of Content” which will be held in NYC on February 19. [NOTE: Rafat and paidContent have generously offered $300 off to Digital Media MBAs who enter the special discount code "COLUMBIA" when making their purchase.]
We continue to learn that many of our attendees have been making business connections as well as discovering potential job leads in NYC. Help us to spread the word that our happy hours are a fun and relaxing environment for meeting digital media MBAs from leading business schools as well as industry insiders from around the digital media community. If you haven’t come before, take this email as your invitation to join the best group of Digital Media MBAs — and those who love them.
The weather has been so cold this month that we’ve decided to stick with our last venue since it’s so convenient to get to and the staff treats us so well. So this month we will be returning to Union Bar on 17th Street and Park Avenue South.
You can RSVP here, or just show up.
Digital Media MBA
A networking and socializing group for MBAs working in (or interested in) digital media and technology. Meet your peers working in interactive and digital media in a relaxed informal atmosphere.
This group is an ongoing effort to encourage networking and community among Columbia Business School’s Digital Media MBA alumni, as well as others in the field.
Professor Jeremy Kagan of Columbia Business School (Internet Marketing, New Media Master Class) and Doug Herman are your hosts.
Apple = future. Kindle and Nook, nice try.
There has been a lot of discussion about the iPad and the Kindle, but not much mention of the Nook. Since I’m an owner of both eReaders (long story), I thought I’d provide my two cents on all three devises and why I think the iPad IS a revolutionary devise.
Is the damage done in revoking an e-offer worth it?
This morning, I received an email from FreshDirect as I always do. Except this one was different from the usual offers. Titled “Email sent in error,” it read:
Dear Anders,
Oops. We sent you an email and offer you should not have received earlier today. That email – titled “What’s Good: Get $20 Free Food, Plus New Garlic & Lime Rotisserie Chicken.” – mentioned an offer which, alas, you are not eligible for. We would like to make up for our mistake by waiving the delivery fee on your next order (or adding an extra week to your DeliveryPass). Simply enter code FREEDEL74 when you checkout before February 15.
Our apologies,
The Customer Service Team at FreshDirect
Alas indeed. It was like the e-quivalent of getting un-invited from a party. Imagine opening your (physical) mailbox and fining a note reading “Oops, we didn’t mean to invite you to our wedding – but you can attend the brunch the next day!” It doesn’t happen often in the physical mail world, but accidents like this plague e-marketers all the time – and frustrate consumers. Someone mixes up a spreadsheet and then gets trigger-happy.
From a business perspective, too, FreshDirect’s offer is kind of ridiculous. Delivery costs about $6 – and you can get it waived anyway by running a 5 second Google search for coupons. But say you did get the $6 waived, and FreshDirect saved $14. Is that worth the damage to the company’s brand? Because even a tiny mistake like this leaves a sour taste in the customer’s mouth (and we can just add it to FreshDirect’s sorry display at “lunch” last week, where they served tiny bowls of microwaved food to students who’d been lining up for quite a while after receiving several reminders about this great FREE lunch offer). Customer loyalty is hard to earn, but extremely easy to lose – especially in a market with alternatives. And just because email marketing is easy (in that you can reach out to all your customers with personalized offers) doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be taken seriously.
So what should FreshDirect have done instead? Bitten the bullet and learned from its mistake, I think. Direct online marketing tries hard to build relationships with customers. Companies pay copywriters to write snappy, friendly text. They pay designers to create a clean, appealing image. To lose it all over $14 just doesn’t seem worth it.
Sixth Sense: Augmented Reality?
Ever heard of Sixth Sense?
Pranav Mistry, from MIT, developed a revolutionary device for augmented reality.
The concept is simple… wear the interface around your neck and use simple hand gestures to interact – in a very natural manner – with the information projected on any surface of your world to augment it with all the relevant information.
There are many applications, among which:
Need the time? Lift your arm, the way you would do to look at your watch, draw a circle on wrist, and Sixth Sense projects a clock.
Don’t know which brand of soap to purchase at the supermarket? Lift the product, and Sixth Sense will project a green, yellow or red light, based on your own purchasing criteria.
Catching a plane? Bring your plane ticket out, and Sixth Sense automatically retrieves updates such as delays or gate changes.
For more information, visit the website: http://www.pranavmistry.com/projects/sixthsense
Bookstores don’t live here anymore
A recent article on CNN.com mentioned that Laredo, a city in Texas of 250,000 people, has been left without a bookstore. On January 16, Barnes & Noble closed their store in Laredo’s Mall del Norte. Despite the Laredo store being profitable it was closed as part of Barnes and Noble’s nationwide strategy to shut down their chain of mall based stores.
Laredo, the city with no books. Is that what future holds for this city? Will no one be able to buy or borrow a book?
Sure, you can always find some books at a supermarket or a drug store. Nowadays who doesn’t use the internet, or particularly Amazon to buy books? In addition, the article claims that the city of Laredo has two public libraries with a catalogue of 20,000 books. But is that enough?
In the last couple of years, with the widespread adoption of internet shopping online retailers like Amazon have gained ground versus traditional bookstore chains. Borders and Barnes & Noble have been forced to close down stores all over the world. For instance, just before Christmas the headline in The Sunday Times “Borders bookstore to close in its final chapter” highlighted the closure of all Borders stores across the UK.
Nevertheless, online retailers are not the only threat to brick and mortar bookstores. With the rise of the Kindle and the launch of the iPad, it seems like massive adoption of e-books is just around the corner and in a few years time everyone will be running around with a portable e-reader device instead of a bulky book.
I admit it; I will probably be one of those carrying a Kindle or an iPad. But I also want to be able to walk up and down the aisles of a bookstore before buying a book. I wonder if this is too much to ask, or if the internet will gobble up all retail stores as we know them.
All I know is that I don’t want my town to become another Laredo.
What is the right social media presence for you: Facebook v. Twitter?
On Tuesday, Silicon Alley Insider had the following headline: “Facebook Finaly Lands ‘The World’s Biggest Marketer.’” P&G to open a Silicon Valley office; spending princely sums on Facebook. Yawn — Interesting but hardly a shocker.
What was more interesting were statements P&G made, demonstrating how it–and, if we can extrapolate, big brands, generally–thinks about the differences between various forms of social media. The article quotes someone at P&G as saying “And while P&G’s thought leaders expressed some skepticism about the efficacy of Facebook’s ‘engagement ads,’ they certainly view Facebook as a must-have for digital advertising and brand building.” A paragraph later, another quote:
Mr. Hornik contrasted the enthusiastic outlook on Facebook to a less-enthusiastic one by P&G executives toward Twitter. “They described Twitter as ‘much more like television than one might think.’ To P&G, Twitter is a great broadcast medium — it is best for one-to-many communications that are short bursts of timely information,” he wrote. “P&G folks do not view it as particularly relevant to what they are doing on the brand-building and advertising side. … They do not believe that Twitter will ever approach the value they can get out of a Google or Facebook.”
I am one of the two people in class who raised his hand to the “how many of you aren’t on Facebook?” question. I used to be on Facebook, but commited FB Suicide last summer upon realizing that it felt not that fulfilling and rather like a ball and chain. By contrast, I am on Twitter, and find it fascinating how varied are people’s understanding of Twitter. Some view it merely as a stand-alone “What are you doing?” box (a la Twitter), and indeed I think that’s how many people begin to use it initially. However, there are a number of vibrant communities on Twitter self-organized around topics of mutual interest. I, for instance, follow a lot of local tech entrepreneurs and VCs and love the news-sharing, idea bouncing, and collective creativity that goes on. I think these communities and this usage pattern is less prevalent on Facebook (though I’d be hard-pressed to *prove* this to someone who disagrees).
From the perspective of the advertiser, this is an interesting difference. My working hypothesis is that Facebook probably offers advertisers more structured data with which to target ads toward certain demographics. However, as an entrepreneur trying to find customers who love my product and get their feedback and turn them into advocates, the other half of my working hypothesis is: Twitter is where more substantive conversations happen, and is therefore a better means for: (1) learning what customers think about you, and (2) discovering early-vangelists.
If my working hypotheses are true, so what? Implications: (1) Facebook is a great place for big brands who have found their footing, understand who is their target customers, and need targetted reach. (2) Twitter is a great place for fledgling ventures in search of product-market fit, still refining their offering, trying to discover their ideal customer, and looking for people to evangelize them in substantive conversations (vs. “friending” Pringles…).
Television is the key competitor for Digital Ad Dollars
In response to the post below, I found the following excerpt from Cynthia Turner Cynopsis- Digital (a great trade that goes out via e-blast http://www.cynopsis.com/content/view/2271/80/). It seems that Yahoo executives are now looking at Television as it’s number one competitor for Ad Dollars, given that is where advertisers spend most their money.
