Iván Abrego
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Google+ Thought Leadership Video Series - Implications for marketers (@iCrossing Real-Time Insights)
At iCrossing, we recently launched a marketing thought leadership series called Real-Time Insights. The first set of videos focuses on the implications of Google Plus and Google Plus Pages for marketers. I look forward to your thoughts.
To see the full playlist, just hit the little TV button to the left of "CC".
Videos on playlist:
- Why CMOs Need to Embrace Google+ Pages Now
- Is Google+ the Next Facebook for Marketers?
- How Can Marketers Use Google+ Hangouts?
- What Does Google+ Mean for Search & Social?
Google+ Pages: Real-Time Platforms for Connected Brands | iCrossing Digital Marketing Blog
Yesterday, I collaborated with my colleague Alisa Leonard on thoughts about the implications of Google+ Pages for marketers. Read an excerpt below or the full post at greatfinds.icrossing.com.
Google+ Pages: Real-Time Platforms for Connected Brands
By Tarah Feinberg | November 7th, 2011
The launch of Google Plus Pages today provides marketers a distinct opportunity to engage in real-time marketing on an extremely powerful connected platform. Google+ is not another social destination site; leave your comparisons of Facebook and Google+ at the door, please. No, the doors have swung open for businesses and brands, large and small, to develop deep and focused connections with their audiences across bought, earned and owned media. Google now has an indisputable foothold across all of those media. Marketers that leverage the platform effectively will see impressive results.It is more important than ever for brands to act like publishers, and Google+ promises to enhance the relationship between search and social. But Google+ isn’t just about search, either. As our colleague Rob Garner wrote on MediaPost recently, “this is about social relevancy, or in other words, using technology to improve one’s social networking experience in a highly meaningful way.”
Read the full post at greatfinds.icrossing.comBrilliant TEDTalk: Eli Pariser (@elipariser): Beware online "filter bubbles"
This is an important and poignant discussion about how social and search algorithms have begun to filter our content, based on what it thinks we want. While this might be great when you're shopping on Amazon, it has dangerous implications on our awareness and understanding about what's happening in the world and our communities, outside of our most immediate or most frequented spheres. Pariser makes the point that when the Internet first launched, we had human editors; the problem with algorithmic editors is that they don't have the ethics, the moral compass to ensure that people are seeing what they NEED to see, not just what they might want to see.
I have to agree. I geek out on what tech can do for us every day, but this is exactly why I curate all of my own feeds on my social networks - it lets me choose the voices I want to hear, rather than letting a machine decide which content I should see, based on my past behaviors. Consider that if you do not curate your own filters, you're not seeing posts from a number of your connections, but you're also probably not seeing everything that the people you interact with the most are posting; you're only seeing the types of stuff you've interacted with from them before. That's a problem, in my opinion.One of my favorite parts about the Internet has been serendipity, discovery and the expansion of my worldview. If we remove that, we might as well abandon the web and go back to insular, local communities.
Watch this TEDTalk and let me know what you think. It's only eight minutes, but it's eternally important.
viaTED.com
Pro Tip: Access Gmail's Priority Inbox on Your Mobile Device
I'm loving Priority Inbox and this makes it even better.
Access Gmail's Priority Inbox on Your Mobile Device
Want access to Gmail's fancy new Priority Inbox sorting on your portable browser? You can view the messages you've trained Gmail to consider Priority through a simple email search bookmarked for later.
The search, as web PR consultant Steve Rubel reveals, uses Gmail's now-reserved "priority" label to pull up your messages. Load up mobile Gmail through your browser, then hit the Search button and look for this string:
label:important in:inbox
I added
is:unreadto my own search, because I usually don't want to dig through older emails when I'm checking my inbox on the go. Update: An earlier version of this post had an incorrect label tag for the Gmail search. Apologies for any misfired bookmarks.Once the search is complete, and you've got your messages pulled up, bookmark that search in your browser, and keep it handy on your smartphone home screen, if possible. You won't be able to "train" the Priority Inbox from this mobile view, but it does offer the same kind of important/not-so-important separation of Gmail's web interface that's really handy.
Priority Inbox on mobile device [@steverubel]Send an email to Kevin Purdy, the author of this post, at kevin@lifehacker.com.
via lifehacker.comGoogle to buy Zynga? Secretly Invested $100+ Million & launching Google Games. Powerful partnership.
Google has quietly (secretly, one might say) invested somewhere between $100 million and $200 million in social gaming behemoth Zynga, we’ve confirmed from multiple sources. The company has raised somewhere around half a billion dollars in venture capital in the last year alone, including $150 million from Softbank Capital last month and $180 million late last year from Digital Sky Technologies, Tiger Global, Institutional Venture Partners and Andreessen Horowitz. The Softbank announcement was never officially confirmed by the company, however, and the Google investment was likely part of that deal as well.The investment part of the deal closed a month ago or so. A larger strategic partnership is still in process.
The investment was made by Google itself, not Google Ventures, say our sources, and it’s a highly strategic deal. Zynga will be the cornerstone of a new Google Games to launch later this year, say multiple sources. Not only will Zynga’s games give Google Games a solid base of social games to build on, but it will also give Google the beginning of a true social graph as users log into Google to play the games. And I wouldn’t be surprised to see PayPal being replaced with Google Checkout as the primary payment option. Zynga is supposedly PayPal’s biggest single customer, and Google is always looking for ways to make Google Checkout relevant.
And there’s more. These same sources are saying that Zynga’s revenues for the first half of 2010 will be a stunning $350 million, half of which is operating profit. Zynga is projecting at least $1.0 billion in revenue in 2011, say our sources. This blows previous estimates out of the water.
Zynga continues to work on high level strategic business development deals. The reason these deals are so attractive to companies like Yahoo and now Google is this – Zynga allows them to rebuild the massive social graph, currently controlled by Facebook. For whatever reason people love to play these games and get passionately addicted to them, coming back day after day. That’s helped Facebook become what it is today. Google, Yahoo and others want some of that magic to rub off on them, too.
We’ve reached out to both Google and Zynga for comment. Neither have responded.
There will be lots more news on Google Games in the near future, we’re guessing. Here’s a job opening for a Product Lead for Google Games, for example:
Product Management Leader, Games – Mountain View
This position is based in Mountain View, CA.
The area: Product Management
One of the many reasons Google consistently brings innovative, world-changing products to market is because of the collaborative work we do in Product Management. With eyes focused squarely on the future, our team works closely with creative and prolific engineers to help design and develop technologies that improve access to the world’s information. We’re responsible for guiding products throughout the execution cycle, focusing specifically on analyzing, positioning, packaging, promoting and tailoring our solutions to all the markets where Google does business.
The role: Product Management Leader, Games
The Product Management Leader, Games will be a flexible, results-oriented, and experienced senior leader who will be responsible for developing Google’s games commerce product strategy and partnering to build and manage the business with a cross-functional team. You will have visionary product insight, combined with experience in the online content business, significant technical expertise and extensive leadership and business skills. The Product Management Leader, Games combines a great instinct for developing compelling products with a strong focus on users and technical aptitude to work with a world class engineering team and the business sense to drive product goals and strategies.
Responsibilities:
Identify market opportunities and define product vision and strategy.
Develop and launch new products and enhance existing products.
Lead and mentor a team of Product Managers.
Engage closely with the engineering team to help determine the best technical implementation methods as well as a reasonable execution schedule.
Establish partnerships as necessary to drive the growth of Google’s products.Requirements:
Technical degree or equivalent experience. Masters or PhD preferred.
Experience building an online gaming business both on the web and on mobile devices. Deep understanding of the game business and how to create hits.
Proven success in driving product strategy and product design for a successful game.
Solid product management experience with a track record of creating innovative and winning Internet or software solutions.
Significant people and organizational management skills. A natural leader and mentor.
Demonstrated ability to gather user requirements and convert them into a winning product vision. Strong quantitative and analytical abilities.
Strong communication skills with the ability to evangelize the merits of Google’s products internally and externally.
Website: zynga.com Location: San Francisco, California, United States Founded: July, 2007 Funding: $366M Zynga was founded in July 2007 by Mark Pincus, Michael Luxton, Eric Schiermeyer, Justin Waldron, Andrew Trader, and Steve Schoettler
Zynga is a network of gaming applications built off of classic games like Poker, Battleship, and Attack!. The… Learn More
Website: google.com Location: Mountain View, California, United States Founded: September 7, 1998 IPO: August 19, 2004 Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including:… Learn More
Information provided by CrunchBasevia techcrunch.com
Reviews, thoughts, images, articles and other content about digital media, real-time content, apps, advertising & technology that resonate with me.
