We’re sure you’ve heard of The Social Network, this new movie about the founders of Facebook. It opened earlier this month and so far, from what we’ve been hearing, it sounds like this 120-minute thriller-docudrama-comedy will be making plenty of noise at next year’s Oscars. You should see The Social Network if you haven’t done so yet. Not only is it a thrilling closer look at what went on behind the creation of today’s biggest social networking site; it’s also a really, really good movie. You don’t even have to be a Facebook fan to enjoy it. Directed by David Fincher (Seven, Fight Club), written by Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, A Few Good Men), and starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Brenda Song, Rooney Mara, and huge pop musician Justin Timberlake, The Social Network – as Rolling Stone describes it – “brilliantly defines the decade”. Of course, if you’re a startup, small business owner, or marketer, you also might want – Read the full article
The process of establishing and enhancing your presence on the Web takes a lot of time – time that you, as a startup or small business owner, may not have. It also requires a full range of skills: content writing, online networking, search marketing, project management, web design, programming, etc. – things that you also might not have a lot of experience with. Sure, it’s convenient to hire dedicated full-time staff members to perform a bunch of Internet marketing jobs for you – but is it really always worth it? Wouldn’t that deplete your resources, as well as the money and the infrastructure you need to run your business? We’re still in the midst of recovering from the recession, after all. Surely, there must be a better and more cost-effective alternative. Like outsourcing. If you think that outsourcing – online – might be a worthwhile option for you, there’s a marketplace where you can find freelancers and hire them on – Read the full article
Online business meetings bring the world to your presentation or discussion. Unfortunately, online business meetings can cost the human element that makes a sales relationship lasting. Let’s discuss the pros and cons of an online business meeting as opposed to booking meeting rooms. Pros of an online business meeting Anywhere, Anytime – Anytime, anywhere, by anyone and to everyone was one of the promises of the Internet. Online business meetings can fulfill that promise. Online presentations can be offered by sales teams around the world, reaching audiences everywhere at once. Economy of Scale – Both the digital broadcasting hardware and receiving hardware in the form of computers have become commonplace, reducing the cost of producing as well as receiving online business meetings. Online meetings also make meetings more affordable to everyone with the hardware to view it. Whether thirty interested experts attend or three thousand potential customers listen in is only a limit of the processing ability of the server. – Read the full article
Intel’s recent purchase of McAfee for $7.68 billion directly addresses the movement towards an age of Internet of Things. According to IMS Research, the number of objects connected to the Internet is expected to hit 5 billion this month and eventually 22 billion by 2020. Right now we are accustom to “devices” like computers, cellphones, GPSes, modems, and televisions having connection to the Internet but there is already incredible momentum of more things gaining connection. That is to say, Internet connection is no longer restricted to devices. Objects are gaining Internet connection, or rather, Internet identity and presence, which in turn makes them into devices. Think about the Smart Meters ComEd now offers around Chicago. We can monitor our energy usage with real-time updates when we visit our account online. Considering this quote referring to the necessity of cyber security in the coming of such an age on ReadWriteWeb.com, though, we see that there is a lot more to in – Read the full article
Critics are quick to point out that the Apple iPad isn’t exactly a replacement for your laptop. More than a mobile business platform, it’s a sleek tablet device for consuming content on the Internet. This doesn’t mean, however, that the iPad can’t increase your productivity while on the go. As the Apple commercial goes, “There’s an app for that.” Below you’ll find a list of essential iPad apps for small business users of the device. GoodReader At 99 cents, GoodReader is an affordable app for viewing PDF files and important business documents in other formats – like Word, Excel, PNG, PPT, TXT, and JPEG. It also supports high-resolution images, and can even do audio and video – perfect for opening and viewing all kinds of files, regardless of size. Need to download a presentation or a report from Google Docs for offline reading? GoodReader can also do that, and can even unzip those files and folders for you. Memeo Connect – Read the full article
Having read Jay Baer’s blog post about the Starbucks Digital Network to come to all stores this fall, I became quite impressed with Starbucks’ movement towards material or person-to-person community, local-business support, and access to non-local news and entertainment sources, all for “free” or, rather, with the expectation of purchase. I gain a sense that apartments with close-location to Starbucks may become a bit more desirable to those who may have previously frowned upon the purchase of cappuccinos stained by capitalism. As Baer questions, “…does this change where you might go get your next cup of coffee and how you come to discover music and other consumer products,” he considers the shift in the meaning of ‘end content.’ Yes, I think this will affect where someone will buy their next coffee for a full sit-and-enjoy session, but not for those in and out purchases. And sure, this will affect people who already search and buy music from iTunes music purchases, – Read the full article
Old-fashioned PR professionals will tell you that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Well, this no longer holds true, at least not in the age and realm of the Internet. Thanks to Google, it has become so much easier to search and find customers, clients, employees, employers, readers, fans, and business partners online. It’s become so much easier to “Google” a name or a brand and find out everything there is to know about it. The downside? It’s also pretty easy to get misrepresented online. Just ask the boss who has to deal with an undiplomatically-mouthed ex-employee. Or the brand owner who’s facing an angry, dissatisfied ex-fan. Or the business owner whose troubles from many years ago have come back to haunt him. Negative search results on Google – or on any other search engine – can potentially cost companies and business organizations thousands, even millions, of dollars. A number of online reputation management companies promise to remove – Read the full article
Remember the Marshall McLuhan phrase, “The medium is the message”? Well, in the era of social web and social media, that might undergo a slight modification. It might be more appropriate to say instead, “The audience is the message” – that is, if we’re to describe the findings published in a recent data study by 360i. According to “The State of Search”, the whitepaper released this November by the company, most of the social media search listings that appear for brand-related queries are actually created by individuals not affiliated with the brand. This includes customers. Fans. Advocates. Maybe a few haters, too. They – and not the brand marketers – control or publish a staggering 77% of YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook listings that appear for brand searches. What this means is that when someone searches for “Insert Brand Name Here” on social media sites like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, then chances are that the results that come up were published – Read the full article
