Popular Android Apps
The top android application a few months ago should give a very plain message to developers – Namco’s PacMan (yes, the classic arcade game) was the top Android download.
Although android smartphones can be powerful web browsers and business tools, many users like to utilize them for gaming as much as anything else, so free games that collect customer data, promote your brand or give customers access to products for purchase are popular development solutions.
MySpace mobile is another highly popular android app, as is the Weather Channel. But what about non-proprietary kinds of apps, the kinds you can develop to promote your business?
Look at the Free Dictionary, another highly popular download, and consider what other similar services customers might like. Translation dictionaries and phrase translators are extremely useful and popular, for example. Provide G1 customers a quick service they can’t get somewhere else, or they can get better from you.
Politics Never Smelled So Tweet
If Senators John McCain and Barack Obama actually do debate Friday night, you will be able to watch what thousands of viewers think of their verbal sparring almost as they talk. Twitter, the service that lets techno-hipsters broadcast their thoughts in 140-character bursts, is setting up a special politics page to make it easy to tune into the chatter.
At midnight Thursday, the company is launching election.twitter.com, the first specialized section of its site. Like Twitter's main service, it is dominated by a big white box. But instead of typing an answer to What are you doing? the election site asks, What do you think?
15 Features Your Site Doesn’t Need
The worst mistake in internet marketing? Making things too complicated. It pumps up costs, slows site launches and keeps you offline when you could be online, selling stuff.
Who makes that mistake? You do. When you insist that that one feature is so important you can't live without it, you're killing yourself. If you can get 90% of the function with 10% of the effort, shouldn't you?
So, here's a list of features I think your site can probably do without, at least for now:
- Integration with your inventory management system. If you're already selling lots online, great! Spend the fifty grand it'll take to synchronize your store with your inventory system. Otherwise, forget it. Put it on hold.
- A fancy content management system (CMS). A full-featured, enterprise CMS is a great tool when you need it. But do you really need it? If you have a staff of two, you don't. Use Wordpress or Movable Type, instead.
- Community content. Yah, community content is trendy as heck. But you don't need to build your own bloody city. Before you spend the time and shell out the cash to add community content, ask yourself: Do you need to build the community yourself? Couldn't you use Facebook? Or MySpace? Or something else? Don't reinvent the wheel if you don't need to.
- A talking, walking spokesperson. I'm sorry, but no one needs a little video person that walks onscreen and starts babbling about how wonderful this product is. I go online to get away from that. So save the cash. Don't add a virtual spokesperson. Plus, they're creepy as hell.
- Video. I love online video. It's super-valuable to the right business. Is that your business? If you can't get your message across without motion or a 'face to face' human element, use video. Otherwise, save the money and time.
- Credit card processing. If you're selling online you'll need to process credit cards. But setting up a merchant account with your bank will make you wonder if you're in a Kafka novel. Instead, use a service like PayPal. Later, when you're selling in volumes where a .5% reduction in costs is important, you can set up the merchant account. Or, even better, get a lackey to do it for you.
- A custom store. Yes, you want your store to look just so. If you can save thousands of dollars and weeks of work, though, why not compromise just a little and use a prebuilt store like Prostores or Volusion? Be smart. Get selling.
- A custom lead management system. You want a CRM system that lets you manage 3,000 leads a month. Problem is, you don't have any leads yet. Try Salesforce or HighRise. You can hook 'em right up to the contact form on your web site and get 90% of what you want at 5% the cost in dollars and sanity.
- Web 2.0 features. Whatever the hell those are. If you really need a feature, trust me, you won't need to pigeonhole it with some trendy phrase. You'll know you need one-page checkout, or smart form validation, or a puffy logo that looks like it'll purr when you pet it.
- Multiple languages. Think about your audience first. Do you have a sizable group of folks who don't speak English in that audience? If yes, spend the money to translate. If not, stop right there.
- Your own server. Yeah. No. Start off in a shared, 'virtual' hosting environment.
- A live webcam. Thank heavens, these seem to be going away. I don't really want to see what you're doing at your desk 24/7.
- A 'wish list'. It's nice to save your favorite products in a little folder all your own. But is that why you buy? I don't think so. Add the wish list later.
- A 'virtual office'. You don't need to make your web site look like a real office. I'm on the internet because I don't want to go to your office! Give me a site that loads fast and gives me the shortest possible route between my question and your answer.
- A 'virtual mall'. See the previous item, and don't make me slap you.
When you're deciding on features for your site, analyze the costs and benefits carefully. Consider whether you want a feature because you think it's important, or because it'll really help your audience.
Close Encounters Of The Republican Kind: McCainSpace Relaunches
Why is it that both political campaigns feel the need to have their own social networks. Barack Obama has my.barackobama.com and John McCain has McCainSpace, which just relaunched with a new design from KickApps after failing massively on its own. The new McCainSpace design itself is functional enough, giving McCain supporters a central place to discuss election issues via blogs, forums, videos, and photos. But I'm not sure who the site is supposed to appeal to other than lonely Young Republicans who don't have any friends on Facebook.
The site is aimed at "Generation08," presumably the young'uns that the campaign is having a hard time reaching. The logo and default photo image remind me of something out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (remember that scene with the alien light coming through the doorway?) And then there's the welcome video of McCain on the homepage (embedded below), saying "Greetings my friends." Greetings, gramps.
Facebook v. MySpace In The U.S. Market: The Music Factor
Facebook is now the largest social network in the world. But they continue to trail MySpace by a massive 36 million users in the U.S., and at current growth rates it will take them 18 years to overtake them.
Most of Facebook’s growth is international, where they’ve executed on a brilliant strategy for quickly rolling out ...
OpenSocial Now Reaches 350 Million Users, And Growing
Six months ago, OpenSocial was nothing but a list of promised partnerships. But the social network application platform backed by Google has made a lot of progress since then as those partners started to go live with their OpenSocial Apps. First there was MySpace and Orkut, then Hi5, and most recently Friendster. ...
Barack Obama wins Web 2.0 race
Barack Obama has won! Barack Obama has won! That's right, in a nearly uncontested race for digital superiority, the upstart Democratic presidential nominee has obliterated John McCain at the digital polls, trouncing his opponent with an Internet onslaught that is almost embarrassing for the Republican nominee.
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