Google glasses keep user’s eye on web
read more: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0405/breaking30.html
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Who has funded companies including Apple, Google, LinkedIn, YouTube, PayPal, Cisco Systems, Oracle, Electronic Arts, Yahoo!, NVIDIA and many other?
Sequoia Capital is a Californian venture capital firm located on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California. The Wall Street Journal has called Sequoia Capital “one of the highest-caliber venture firms”, and noted that it is “one of Silicon Valley’s most influential venture-capital firms”. The New York Times has called Sequoia “one of the top venture firms in the Valley” and has said that it is “among the most successful venture firms in Silicon Valley.” The Washington Post has called Sequoia Capital “one of the pre-eminent venture capital firms in Silicon Valley.” The firm is known for the companies it has funded, and it estimates that 19% of the NASDAQ’s value is made up of firms Sequoia has funded.
Sequoia has funded companies including Apple, Aruba Networks, Google, YouTube, PayPal, Cisco Systems, Oracle, Electronic Arts, Yahoo!, NVIDIA, Navigenics, Cotendo, Atari, Ameritox, Kayak, Meebo, Admob, Zappos, Green Dot and LinkedIn. The firm has offices in the U.S., China, India and Israel. Sequoia invests in companies all over the world.
Sequoia was founded by Don Valentine in 1972. The firm’s partners include Don Valentine, Jake Anderson, Mickey Arabelovic, Roelof Botha, Scott Carter, Randy Ditzler, Michael Dixon, Jim Goetz, Michael Goguen, Gaurav Garg, Patrick Grady, Warren Hogarth, Mark Kvamme, Timothy Lee, Doug Leone, Alfred Lin, Greg McAdoo, Andrew Dryga, Michael Moritz, Chris Olsen, Luis Robles, Bryan Schreier, David Spector, Mark Stevens and David Velez.
Portfolio contains already 200 large-scale (largest in fact) businesses. Just to name few we all arvery well familiar with: Tumblr, Yahoo!, YouTube, Zappos.com, Square, Paypal, LinkedIn, ImageShack, Google, Electronic Arts, Cisco, Barracuda Networks, Atom Entertainment.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoia_Capital
The difference between traditional marketing and social media marketing
Are you teaching a class when you should be hosting a party?
Most brands’ and stores’ greatest single asset is the goodwill of their customers. And most do little to leverage this goodwill for marketing gain. There’s a fallacy in marketing land that just because you have a presence on social networks, you are doing “social” marketing. But when you look a bit closer, you see that most social initiatives by brands look a lot like traditional marketing and merchandising, just in a new place.
The essential idea of “social commerce” is: connect your shoppers and customers directly to each other. Not only does this help turn your shoppers into customers, but it strengthens your relationship with your customer base. Sounds obvious, but for most brands it’s a deep paradigm shift. Most brands still think in terms of a hub-and-spoke model of communication; the brand is at the center managing a dialog (or monologue) with customers. Sure, customers talk to each other about the brand here and there, but the brand really wants to dominate the conversation. The metaphor is brand-as-teacher; customers are the class. But there’s another approach in which brands actively facilitate dialog between their community members without dominating it. These connections don’t just help bring new people into the brand fold, they also deepen the affinity existing customers have with the brand. The metaphor is brand-as-party-host; shoppers and customers are the guests. Maybe the guests get a little interaction with the host during the party, maybe none, but either way, they are primarily interacting with each other. The brand doesn’t get the same opportunity as in the classroom model to drive home its officially-approved message, but instead the brand earns a more powerful, social type of influence – by having the guest list stocked with loyal supporters.
Though more subtle, the influence of the party-host approach can be both deeper and farther-reaching. Mikołaj Jan Piskorski has just published an article in the Harvard Business Review titled “Social Strategies that work” taking a rigorous look at the online social efforts of 60 businesses in a broad range of verticals. He concludes:
What the poorly performing companies shared was that they merely imported their digital strategies into social environments by broadcasting commercial messages or seeking customer feedback. Customers reject such overtures because their main goal on the platforms is to connect with other people, not with companies. That behavior isn’t hard to understand. Imagine sitting at a dinner table with friends when a stranger pulls up a chair and says, “Hey! Can I sell you something?” You’d probably say no, preferring your friends’ conversation over corporate advances. Many companies have learned that lesson the hard way.
In contrast, the companies that found significant returns devised social strategies that help people create or enhance relationships. These work because they’re consistent with users’ expectations and behavior on social platforms. To return to our dinner analogy, a company with a social strategy sits at the table and asks, “May I introduce you to someone or help you develop better friendships?” That approach gets a lot more takers.
To make this concrete, take a look at the Facebook presence of a handful of your favorite brands. See what page they have set for you to land on. Is it a crafted brand message, or does it have customers and fans talking to each other? Go to the brand’s wall. Are customers posting, or is it dominated by posts from the brands, with customers generally addressing their replies back to the brand? I just went to the FB page for the Gap. I landed on a high production values spread called the 1969 Denim Studio. No customer voice there. Then I went to their wall. There are 18 posts showing. All 18 of them are from the store. Here’s the dialog responding to the first one:
It’s not that this sort of brand marketing is bad. It’s just that it’s not SOCIAL. It’s missing the opportunity of providing a forum for shoppers and customers to engage with each other. In contrast, on Sephora’s Facebook wall, two minutes ago, 26 out of 26 posts were from members of the Sephora community. It’s not as tidy as the Gap’s – not all the posts are positive or interesting – but the approach does produce exchanges like this:
and this:
Another another place where you can see the difference in approaches in action is the social question-and-answer applications on ecommerce sites. If the Q&A dialog is primarily between the shopper and the store staff, that’s not social, that’s customer support. Hey, we love good customer support as much as the next person, and if that’s the goal of Q&A, fine. But most stores find that channels like live chat and phone/email are optimal for support, while Q&A is uniquely positioned to enable dialog between shoppers and customers. So if the store dominates the Q&A dialog (or if the Q&A system is not built to effectively produce shopper-customer exchanges), then the store is missing all the value that a social approach can generate: the credibility (and generally positive sentiment) of truly social answers, deeper shopper engagement, and stronger bonds with past customers.
Check out the difference between the Q&A dialog here on the product page for a camera at Staples.com, where most of the dialog is with staff, and on the page for a camera at Adorama.com, where most of the dialog is social.
So as you sit down with your team to map out the next phase in your social commerce strategy, ask yourselves this: are you teaching a class when you should be hosting a party?
source: http://www.turntonetworks.com/are-you-teaching-a-class-when-you-should-be-hosting-a-party
Glasses that will be able to stream information to the wearer’s eyeballs in real time!
Google X’s wearable technology - Google Goggles
People who constantly reach into a pocket to check a smartphone for bits of information will soon have another option: a pair of Google-made glasses that will be able to stream information to the wearer’s eyeballs in real time.
According to several Google employees familiar with the project who asked not to be named, the glasses will go on sale to the public by the end of the year. These people said they are expected “to cost around the price of current smartphones,” or $250 to $600.
The people familiar with the Google glasses said they would be Android-based, and will include a small screen that will sit a few inches from someone’s eye. They will also have a 3G or 4G data connection and a number of sensors including motion and GPS.
A Google spokesman declined to comment on the project.
source: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/21/google-to-sell-terminator-style-glasses-by-years-end/
Social Media Team – ingredients of success-recipe
Social Media Success-Recipe
Ingredients:
1. People (who will do it)
The ‘Digital Native’
The Coordinator
The Communicator
The Product Expert
The Analyst
2. Goals, Objectives, Tools & Policies (what we need to do and how)
Social Media Goals and Objectives
Your Own Social Media Policy
Social selling culture in the businesss
Social customer experience – marketing, PR, customer service
Technical development (apps, integrating API’s etc)
The ‘Digital Native’
The digital natives at your company are probably the easiest to spot. They participate in many different social networks, they probably blog; and they know how to find and gain followers, how to engage with other users and the opportunities in and limitations to the media. They will be the most enthusiastic to work on the team, since they will be able to enjoy one of their favourite activities in order to help promote the company.
They can come from any department, but they are likely outgoing and keen conversationalists, so they might easily be found in the marketing, PR, tech or online departments.
What you should look for?
- Socially active using mediums like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
- Regular users of social news sites e.g. Digg, Reddit etc
- May already have their own blog
The Coordinator
Coordinators need to know how social media activities fit within the company as a whole. They need to be able to forward queries, conversations, leads and issues to the appropriate departments as quickly as possible. Moreover, they need to be able to get those issues and queries in front of the people best placed to answer, not just a generic email address, so they need to know the company inside and out.
Knowing who to forward a query to can be learned, but the person responsible for this should have impeccable organisational skills. They will have to be able to handle issues as they arise, make sure old issues have been resolved and probably engage in some social media activity, all whilst also doing their daily work responsibilities.
What you should look for?
- Someone who knows a variety of people in departments across your business
- ‘Safe hands’ – someone who ensures things get done
- Strong organisational and/or project management skills
The Communicator
The communicator of the team will interact directly with customers and the general public. Whilst everyone on the team will probably chat with a fan or a follower at some point, the communicator will need to know what the company wants to say, when it should be said and how best to phrase it. They will also need to be professional, calm, friendly and open, especially when things get a bit heated.
For this role, you may want to look in the customer care or PR departments for someone who is well practiced at keeping their cool and keeping communication on-message.
What you should look for?
- Great written communication skills
- Someone who really cares about giving great service to your customers
- Someone who keeps calm in a crisis
The Product Expert
The product expert needs to be on the team to quickly and easily answer customer queries or complaints. People often go to a company’s social media sites with these issues, and you do not want a product query sitting unanswered on your profile page for very long. What your company sells should be the one thing your public-facing representatives know inside and out. Still, it is unlikely that every person you hire will know every detail about all your products, so you should have someone on the team who can answer most of those kinds of queries.
If you develop and sell your own products, your product expert should be from the product development team, but otherwise they could be from customer care or other customer-facing function.
What you should look for?
- Someone who knows your products and services inside out
- Excellent problem solving skills
The Analyst
The analyst should be someone who understands tracking, analytics and statistics. They should know what to track to show the ROI of your social media efforts, and they should be able to use web analytics to demonstrate whether or not your social media team are reaching their goals. It is obvious that this person will be essential at first, helping determine baselines and metrics for tracking goals, but their work will continue. It is through the tracking and measurement of metrics that you test the effectiveness of your strategies and approaches, so this person should be as committed to the success of the social media team as anyone else.
The best business advice {from 13 most successful executives in the world}
There’s a finite amount of time you’re going to be doing this. Do this really, really well – Terry J. Lundgren, CEO, Macy’s
..never to look back in regret but to move on to the next thing. – Richard Branson, founder and chairman, Virgin Group
I see a bunch of good choices, and there’s the one that you pick and make great. – Marissa Mayer, VP, Google
people will be very influenced by how you carry yourself under stress. – Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and CEO, Goldman Sachs
you’ve gotta learn to listen! – Maureen Chiquet, Global CEO, Chanel
follow my instincts and take the risk. I wanted to create a new way of looking at retail. – Tory Burch, co-founder and creative director, Tory Burch
Find a way to say yes to things – Eric Schmidt, executive chairman, Google
Eric Schmidt told her, “Stop being an idiot; all that matters is growth – Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook
just keep your mouth shut today, and see if you feel the same way tomorrow. – Warren Buffett, chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathaway
My advisor, Terry Winograd, picked that one out and said, ‘Well, that one seems like a really good idea – Larry Page, co-founder, Google
Warren Buffett has taught me a lot of things, but he got me thinking very early on that at some point I’d have the opportunity and responsibility to give the wealth back. – Bill Gates, chairman, Microsoft
Jim Sinegal: You know, I don’t want to be rude but this is exactly the wrong thing to do.’ This was my idea, and he was right – Howard Schultz, CEO, Starbucks
You have to have alligator skin. You can’t believe the good stuff, and you certainly can’t believe the bad stuff’ – Maria Bartiromo, anchor, CNBC
Evolution of a recruiter in social media
While a lot of noise is about the importance of the social media in recruitment the hard fact is that there is about the same number of recruiters using the social media and the ones that simply ignore it. There is very little written on the web about how social media is useless for a recruiter. People who do not use the social media do not publish online. In fact the most of them simply do not publish at all. Recruiters who do use social media in most cases just listen to what others are publishing. More courageous ‘like’ or ‘Share’, and the very small percentage of less than 5% actually create the original content. So here is a path of a recruiter in the adoption of the social media.
1. No social media presence
A lot of recruiters simply do not have a LinkedIn profile. Or they have a 100% empty profile, with just their name, a handful of connections, no picture, not bio. No twitter, or the one with no tweets. Facebook – closed for the friends and family / or none. They are doing their job as they did it 5 or 10 or more years ago. They do it good. They do not need the social media, have no time or interest for it. Most work in narrow industry niches, and are specialised in a location where there is not much competition between recruiters.
2. Listen
After reading in newspapers about LinkedIn, and listening about the success of Facebook on TV recruiters open their LinkedIn, Facebook and twitter accounts. Some fill their data guided by the wizards, and complete their profiles. Then they just listen. They invite a few colleagues in their networks, and when have time, they read groups discussions, and watch pictures on Facebook. They are never really tagged in pictures, and they watch closely their (minimalistic) social media footprint. They are the ones you will hear talking next to the water cooler about what someone wrote on Facebook. They take the social media content – offline.
3. Share
At some stage when you read a discussion that is about the topic you are passionate about, you will get an urge to get involved. The first steps usually are the little buttons that enable you to ‘Like’ a page, or ‘Thumb Up / Down’ the point someone made in a discussion online. You can ‘Score’ and answer, and do similar one click actions – that lure you in the world of the social media. You feel like you are a part of it. I have had my say! By clicking the Like button on some comment on Facebook. Great.
4. Create
The last stage of evolution of a recruiter in the social media adoption is the creation of your own content. Your first tweets, your first Facebook simple sentences, your LinkedIn answers and latter questions. Your LinkedIn Group contributions and later starting your own discussions. The next creating your own blog, and later on syndication parts of your content on the related industry blog networks. The number of people who actually create the continent is really small. It is really hard to justify the time, and hard to measure the ROI.
source: http://www.jobsboard.ie/Blog/posts/JobsBoard/
Something that will touch ALL faces of the organization – what is it?
Mark: When I first talked to Proctor and Gamble about social media, it scared the crap out of them—they were very concerned about their brand and how social might affect it. What if they were positioned next to a brand that wasn’t at their level, or involved in a conversation that tarnished their image? That conversation doesn’t exist today. P&G, along with a lot of other companies, has done a 180, and they are now big players in the social arena.
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“… used the example of the Old Spice campaigns that went viral on YouTube. P&G spends $10 billion annually on marketing, which works out to 9-11% of sales. That war chest won’t contract, but spends will be biased towards digital marketing. So does P&G’s move signal the beginning of the end of conventional marketing with its ritualistic advertising and promotions – and of dyed-in-the-wool marketers who are unable to ride the digital tiger? An IBM ‘Global Chief Marketing Officer’ study done in the fourth quarter of 2011 suggests that most CMOs worldwide, and in India, are “underprepared to manage the impact of key changes in the marketing are – read more - Return on social media marketing investment is more “efficient” says P&G (Proctor and Gamble), HUL, Vodafone, Cadbury Kraft and McDonald”
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Let’s face it, social is big and pervasive and touches every part of businesses today. Two years ago, people said social media was a PR thing and it belongs in a sub-component of marketing. Now they see it as something that touches all facets of the organization and they weave it into all parts of what they do. Customer support, marketing, sales, HR—there is not just one area that owns social, it cuts across everything. You can no longer use a siloed approach to mange customer experience.
“Me: What’s the biggest challenge in any social marketing campaign?
Mark: Letting go of the fear and just doing it.”
What Do the Extinction of Dinosaurs and Social Business Have in Common?
A failure to adapt is the failure to survive. In the 1920s the average lifespan of a company was seventy odd years, today its fifteen years according to Dave Gray of Dachis Group. Organizations today are dinosaurs; stubborn, lumbering beasts fighting adaptation. Fortunately (or not) the 21st century is the equivalent of the Mesozoic age before the big meteor or [insert your favorite theory here] wiped the dinosaurs off the map. Social is today’s extinction event for organizations. Companies need to adapt or they will fail to survive.
Dachis Group, a social business SaaS solution and services provider, kicked off their global Social Business Summit in Austin, Texas today fittingly to coincide with the annual launch of SXSW. Billed as a gathering of social business thought leaders and practitioners this is a very different conference. Held at the “W” hotel in Austin, there was none of the deep bass, heart reverberating production with rock star –status seeking CEOs and their entourage of cult fans so prevalent at many vendor conferences.
Instead, Dachis borrowed the format from TED with 30 minute presentations, no Q&A, and plenty of networking time. No one talked about PPC, SEO/SEM, social selling on Facebook, or painted lofty visions of social media. The conference focused on what it meant to be a social business and practical strategies for becoming one. Theories were balanced with realism and lessons learned. Dion Hinchcliffe outlined six social success factors:
1. Listen, analyze, and engage, continuously
2. Integrate social into the flow of work
3. Plan for change and the unexpected
4. Turn on the network effect
5. Remove barriers to participate
6. Enable everyone to participate.
According to Jeff Dachis, CEO of Dachis Group, social is the currency of engagement. While social technology has introduced a seemingly endless array of new interaction methods, in the end it is all about solving real business problems. Companies do not become social businesses for the heck of it. They embrace social to solve specific business problems because it offers a more effective way of doing talent management, supply chain collaboration, business agility, risk management, and more successful products to driving revenue. Social drives adaptation.
