This is an interesting report with valuable data. We still do not know how social networking is going to shape our businesses, but it is obvious that smart marketers cannot sit and wait. It is the era of engagement: actions speak louder than advertising and brand culture can become brand fun!
I am a news junkie. I do lots of my weekly reading on my subway commute to and from work. I was going through my copy of the Economist and my attention was totally caught in this week’s special report: “A world of connections“. The article argues that social networking is here to stay and will influence our life even greater in the future. However, what intrigued me more of this study was the graph shown on the left. The countries with the highest social networking traffic are: 1) Australia; 2) Britain; 3) Italy; 4) United States. So, this morning I conducted a little survey in the office. My Australian colleague thinks that Australia ranks first because of the remoteness of her country. This does not explain why Britain, Italy and the United States are in the top four though. It is a surprise that Italy ranks third since bandwidth penetration is relatively low and 49,9% of Italian families do not own a personal computer. Read the rest of this entry »
The speculations about the new Apple device came to an end when Steve Jobs finally showcased the iPad on January 27. Some pundits were overenthusiastic about it, others disappointed. The fact in itself that people are talking so much about something that they barely have seen and probably not yet touched is significant.
Personally I love my iPod Touch, but I use my Blackberry for email and reading RSS feeds on-the-go: I can rely on a better battery life and have not got used at typing on the iPod’s touchscreen. However, recently I finished to read Open by Andre Agassi through the Kindle application on my iPod and it was a very pleasant experience. I also worked on a few applications to distribute travel guides on the internet (i.e. Monaco) and I would not think about doing it for a Blackberry. I believe that the iPad will consolidate the ongoing trend that tablets, netbooks and smarphones will be the favorite access points to digital content. Still not sure how much of an impact it will have on consumers and travelers in general. Troy Thomson at Travel 2.0 has an interesting take on it. I am sure that once the device is in our hands will find favorite ways to use it and developers will implement new ideas to make it more powerful than what it looks now.
Video from iwikiphone.com
The PhoCusWright Conference 2009 in Orlando was a truly great event last week. Once again, it confirmed to be the Must Go conference of the year if you are involved in the online travel market. Before I keep on writing, I have to disclose that I was there simultaneously as Web Executive for Monaco Government Tourist Office and Italy Analyst for PhoCusWright. Here are some of my quick observations about the conference:
1) The organization of the event is awesome. Every single detail is taken care of. The conference was briefly disrupted by a fire alarm, but this had very little effect on the schedule of the event. The PhoCusWright team is phenomenal and I am not saying this because I am part of it. I had very little to do with the organization of the conference at all. Philip Wolf’s insights are top-notch and entertaining at the same time. Read the rest of this entry »
