by Call2actionmedia | May 13, 2015 | Your Call To Action
Many people now consume their news via Social media. In a not too distant past, news was consumed by the masses typically with a morning news show and paper and unless there was an urgent need again in the evening time delivered by Television. For the most part deliverability was real time and consumed by the user in a timely manner. The reputation of the deliverer was also trustworthy for the most part. With the proliferation of the Internet came an explosion of new sources with no real standards except ones established loosly by the community. The Facebook news experience has been a work in progress. Users like News brands/sources and an algorithm determines which ones to place on your feed. Its unclear which sources are reliable although Facebook made great strides in scrubbing link baiting news sites from getting too much Feed attention. There is also the Timely factor for News distribution to be effective. As a user, I am drawn to the Headline “BREAKING NEWS” and depending on whether the issue is near and dear, start an adrenaline rush. Many times because of how the Facebook NewsFeed delivers, it was a false alarm since that Breaking News was from “yesterday @ 6pm” and quite stale. I think todays shift towards Facebook taking more control in the News function of the NewsFeed will ultimately result in a much great user experience for people who want to easily and reliably get their news fix while on...
by Call2actionmedia | Mar 31, 2015 | Your Call To Action
Google makes their bread and butter by having algorithms read many signals, interpret and serve accurate results to the inquirer. Knowing which signals to look out for and how to weight them is their secret sauce. But, can Google also be a provider of signals? What does this job posting signal about Real...
by Call2actionmedia | Mar 30, 2015 | Your Call To Action
Business is a competitive sport like any other. All of the essential elements of winning and losing are present in the day to day grind. Many startup gurus preach these elements to people who have these qualities in them but they are usually untapped because of the failed perception and understanding that succeeding in business takes the same skill required to win a hard fought competitive sport. Properly positioned and correctly focused, this makes succeeding in business a little easier....
by Call2actionmedia | Mar 9, 2015 | Your Call To Action
I am a huge fan of Google. I had a feeling from the begining that they would become the dominant force they became. In a world of unreliablility, Google was a solid pillar at least in terms of stable systems. Google’s strength lies in the fact that it is an advertising company creating connections between people whether it be consumer to business or business to business. It does this (and this may be debatable) by creating an agnostic system rewarding the highest quality providers with the most traffic. It has also done a great job making this system ubiquotous (case in point, my right click doing spell check on Google to check that spelling). While Google is clearly in a strong position in many businesses for example the Android mobile operating system, I feel there are some real issues under the hood with search. In February, it was revealed that Google lost 2 points of market share to Yahoo when Firefox switched their default search to Yahoo (see: http://www.zdnet.com/article/yahoo-search-share-gains-on-googles-losses-thanks-to-firefox-deal/). That means it wasnt important enough or the user did not detect (Yahoo is smart enough to make the UI/UX Google like to avoid issues) that this was not their usual Google search results. This is a big deal. Then there is the upcoming Safari deal where slowly Google’s wide net is suddenly becoming smaller. Additionally, mobile search is clearly not being dominated by any one player yet and Google has yet to show anything too sticky there. A more recent troubling sign has been Google’s recent moves into competitor territory in the lead generation business with moves into Car Insurance,...
by Call2actionmedia | Mar 2, 2015 | Your Call To Action
With the current stats on mobile data consumption, its clear people are relying on their smartphones for a large part of their content consumption. Critical information IE timely and relevant information such as planning an evening out requiring multiple sources to complete seem to be finally consolidating. I do not believe its feasible to have mobile screens with endless pages of apps or for the more organized to have many folders of categories. Mobile developers know the value of acquiring real estate on peoples devices, but at what point does it become too much. Que companies such as Vurb (see http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/26/mobile-search-david-vs-googliath/) . I believe this is the future. Consolidation, easy, bite sized content pieces coming from multiple data sources. Google Now is a great passive example of this by integrating with Gmail and pushing relevant content such as local weather, daily commute info, expected package arrivals, stock prices, sports team news etc. Vurb is aiming to make mobile search more user friendly by creating a simple path with a few taps to get users what they need and plugging into multiple partner content such as Yelp, Uber an Rotten Tomatos to provide a quick, seamless process to get users what they want in the least painful way. Cards are becoming more and more important and I believe with the amount of information being spit out at people on a daily basis, the only way a person can consume ala Twitter is through bite sized Cards. (see: http://techcrunch.com/2015/02/27/cards-transforming-web)....
