Photo Credit: Anton Diaz
Sorry I didn’t publish last weekend’s editon. Super Bowl Sunday got a little crazy here. Yes, I’m still questioning Coach Carroll’s goal-line call for a pass play. Ugh.
Here are the Social Media ReInvention Community’s shareworthy links. Enjoy your Sunday Brunch! (more…)
Share-worthy and thought-provoking links I thought Social Media ReInvention Community Members would like to read while enjoying Sunday brunch:
1) The Wall Sreet Journal: US Mail Delivers Amazon Groceries in San Francisco. The US Postal Service (USPS) continues to hustle, reinvent, and adapt. They capitalized on their current strategic alliance with Amazon to play in eCommere and enter more profitable services (e.g., package delivery). Remember, when USPS started making Sunday deliveries for Amazon in 2011? The article describes the Amazon-USPS alliance as mutually beneficial:
2) BloombergBusinessWeek: How to Get Into an Ivy League College—Guaranteed. Can big data and predictive analytics get your child into Harvard? For $600,000, Steven Ma, Founder of Think Tank Learning, claims he can (and provides a money back guarantee). The company generates $18 million annually and serves 10,000 students throughout northern California and China (Beijing and Shenzhen). Northern California Asian American families and wealthy Chinese familes comprise 90% of ThinkTank's clientele. Their website and published content are an excellent case study in digital content marketing strategy and buyer personas. It's a fascinating story especially when American undergraduate programs are under fire for rising expenses and questionable ROI.
3) LinkedIn Pulse: Club Ed: How Some Colleges Became $41k-a-Year Gyms. Point-of-view from LinkedIn Influencer and Bain & Company's Jeff Denneen on the escalating costs at American universities. The article discusses "the arms race" or "Law of More" for student amenities at competing private schools (e.g., gourmet, organic-ingredient meals, student athletic facilities, enhanced student housing, etc.). Denneen poses the question on the ROI these costs deliver to students upon graduation. Why? Thousands of students from private universities can no longer afford these amenitiies post-graduation because of either A) Unemployment or B) Under-employment (accepting jobs not requiring a college degrees).
4) MarketingLand: Ford Motor Company Takes A Newsjacking Bite Out Of #Applelive Event. My fave article in this post.This is brilliant, timely, and funny newsjacking. Ford flipped on its head the attributes of the ballyhooed Apple Watch and apply them to their brands in real-time, laugh-out-loud, newsjacking examples. Denny's and Crest also delivered creative #AppleLive newsjacks.
5) Fortune Magazine: How Google Works. Eric Schmidt (Google's Chairman) and Jonathan Rosenberg (Google's former Head of Product Development and Senior Vice President of Product Management) provide excerpts and thoughts from their upcoming book How Google Works. Key insights shared include why Google's approach to sustaining its growth (systematizing innovation into company culture), identifying talent (hiring the smartest people possible who critically think and continuously adapt versus hiring for specific job position criteria), and nurturing talent (aggressively rotate the most passionate people into different organizations — e.g., "pass the M&Ms and not the raisins."
Did you enjoy this post? If yes, please share it with your friends and subscribe to my blog. Many Thanks!
Tony Faustino is a marketing and corporate strategist. He writes about how The Internet reinvents marketing strategy for organizations and individuals in his marketing strategy blog, Social Media ReInvention. Follow his tweets @tonyfaustino or circle him on Google+.
I started using and paying for Evernote when Yahoo signaled its intent to "sunset" its Delicious Bookmarking services in December 2010. Since then, I've curated roughly 1000 articles and other content items in Evernote. And, the number continues growing.
I often share this content on Google+ or Twitter. But, the real-time speed of these information streams makes locating content an oftentimes fleeting exercise.
The Premise / Goal / Timing of This New Weekly Feature
Premise. If you like the content in this blog, you may like the type of content I regularly read and study on the Web.
Goal. On a weekly basis, I'm going to publish links to three (3) articles I find interesting. I'll include a brief summary with some bullet points explaining why I think the content is worth consuming.
Timing. I'll publish this content every Wednesday / Thursday.
This Week's Three Evernoted Articles
1. (Bloomberg Businessweek) Amazon's Hit Man: Larry Kirshbaum was the ultimate book industry insider — until Amazon called: Describes how Amazon, Jeff Bezos, and Kindle-Nation are completely disrupting New York City's publishing dynasties. And, how Amazon recruited Larry Kirshbaum, a well-connected, influential, and veteran of the New York publishing machine.
2. (The New York Times) The Bookstore's Last Stand: The timing of this article's publication signals an ongoing public relations battle between Amazon and the New York City publishing dynasties. This piece positions Barnes & Noble as the last major ally the major publishing houses have against Amazon.
3. (TechCrunch) Why Every Entrepreneur Should Self-Publish a Book: A great article by James Altucher. Altucher goes into great detail about the many lessons he's learned both as a self-publisher and as an author who's worked directly with the aforementioned publishing houses.
The entire thesis of his article is "to pick yourself." His how-to commentary covers a lot of ground:
Your Feedback Please!
I'd like to experiment with this type of post for the next two to three months. Let me know what you think (especially if this idea sucks):
Link to Photo Credit by Andreas Cappell via Flickr
I love this recent article, The Great Tech War of 2012 by Farhad Manjoo from the November 2012 issue of Fast Company.
The article provides several insights on how Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google, compete in numerous industries.
Plus, there are a number of great facts and statistics about each company. If you’re looking for an article packed with facts and figures about these companies, read on …
Here are some favorites:
1. 49 Days Before Killing H-P's TouchPad. H-P’s foray into the tablet market with its TouchPad lasted only 49 days.
2. $100 Billion in Revenues by 2015. When Amazon doubled in size from 2008 to 2010, it hit $34 billion in annual revenue. Analysts expect Amazon to achieve $100 billion in annual revenue by 2015, faster than any company ever.
3. 17,000 Motorola Mobility Patents. Google acquired Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion (along with Motorola Mobility’s 17,000 patents).
4. $30 Billion in Revenue. Google’s advertising business is on pace to earn $30 billion+ in 2011, almost double 2007’s revenue.
5. 250 Million Facebook Shares Daily. Facebook members share 250 million+ pictures a day.
6. 800 Million Facebook Members. Facebook has 800 million+ members (as of the article’s publication).
7. 11 Industries. Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google are disrupting eleven (11) diverse industries (and compete against each other in many of these industries):
8. $1.5 Billion from the Cloud. Apple’s iCloud service is projected to generate $1.5 billion.
9. $28.57 Billion in One Quarter. Apple generated $28,571,000,000 or $28.57 billion in the third quarter of 2011 (nearly double the $15.7 billion it booked in third quarter 2010.)
10. $1.6 Billion in Advertising Revenue. Facebook’s ad revenue business for the first half of 2011: $1.6 billion (double the amount during the same period in 2010).
11. 400 Million Facebook Members Log-In Everyday. Facebook’s membership is now 800 million+ users. 400 million+ users log in every single day.
12. 2 Billion Facebook Likes or Comments. 2 billion Facebook posts a day are “liked” or “commented upon.”
13. Apple and Android Rule Smartphones. According to Nielsen, Google’s Android powers about 40% of smartphones; 28% run Apple’s iOS.
14. $368 in Profit Per Phone Versus $10 Per Year Per Device. But, Apple makes a $368 profit on each iPhone. Google, on the other hand, makes less than $10 annually per device for the ads it places on Android phones and tablets.
15. 28 Projects Dead. At the time of the Fast Company article’s publication, Larry Page (Google's CEO) killed 28 underperforming projects.
16. 30% Growth. Google’s traditional ad business is averaging about 30% growth in 2011.
17. 64% Market Share in US Search. Google commanded 12.5 billion of the 19.5 billion total searches in the US in August 2011 according to comScore. That’s a 64% market share in the US.
18. $70 Billion Markets (Domestic Advertising and Cable TV). Two (2) key markets Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google each want a piece of the $70 billion in domestic ad revenue AND $74 billion in cable-subscriber fees.
19. 6,000 Patents from Nortel. A coalition that included Apple and Microsoft spent $4.5 billion to outbid Google for 6,000 mobile-related patents owned by Nortel.
20. 2,000 Patents from IBM. Google paid an undisclosed amount to purchase 2,000 patents from IBM.
21. 21 Years for Amazon Versus 34 Years for Wal Mart. Analysts predict Amazon will hit $100 billion in revenue by 2015. This achievement will result 21 years after the Jeff Bezos founded the company. In contrast, it took Walmart 34 years to achieve this benchmark.
22. Amazon Prime Means $900 Per Year Versus $400 Per Year. Amazon Prime customers spend an average of $900 per year on the Amazon site. In the year before a typical Amazon customer joins Amazon Prime, he/she spends $400 per year. Growth in the Amazon Prime customer segment is 50%+ annually.
23. Will $24 Billion Grow to $200 Billion? Facebook and Google directly compete in the $24 billion online display advertising business. Google believes this market will be a $200 billion per year market in the next few years.
Note: I added numbers 21 thru 23 a few days after I originally published this post.