Aug 10
30

Will Google Give Skype A Run For Their Money?

Google Logo

Google Introduces Voice And Video-Chat Service In GMail

You probably have a Skype subscription or use some other VoiP (Voice Over IP) service. Now you have another alternative: Google Voice For GMail and Google Chat! With Google Voice you can now make calls to any phone number from within your GMail account at only 2 dollar cents (Skype charges 2,4 cents) per minute and free calls in the US and Canada. If you are not located in North America you’re officially excluded from this beneficial service as it’s a pilot for now but if you set your language to: English (US), what pops up? Right: your new Google Voice client! That is if you have downloaded and installed the service.

fig 1: Google Voice Introduction Video

Benefits/ Drawbacks

The great thing about Google Voice is that it unifies voice services at a low charge with chat and email. As yet Skype doesn’t have the added benefit of email unless integrated with a third party service such as our very own Networker PRO service for example (which also integrates GMail).

You have to have a GMail account to have access to this service but where GMail was only available by invitation before, Google has just changed it’s policy (in a timeframe close to the release of the new service) and you can now register for a free GMail account by divulging your mobile phone number (which probably indicates Google is planning to further integrate it’s mobile platform with the new browser based service. GMail has many benefits including integration with Google Buzz (somewhat like Twitter), chat, docs and now Voice as well as a huge storage space (the latter with the intent of advertising to your personal preferences as made apparent by key words in your email archive).

fig 2: This is where you’ll find Google Voice In GMail

Apparently Google Voice is not (yet) compatible with the use of the widely spread SIP protocol which drives many VoiP devices.

In the near future Google Voice (along with other advanced and beta services) will be made available in Google Apps as well. If you have a Google Apps account you can request these services by filling out a form.

Ditch the landline?

Before you do: know this. VoiP in general has the drawback that it is not as reliable as an infrastructure as your regulatr landline so if you have an alarm installation, need to be reachable at all times or want to be able to make distress calls, in other words have the reliability of a landline available to you for whatever reason, it’s better to have both in place.

Fig 3: Google acknowledges (as any VoiP service) reliability issue

Fortunately there are devices in place which give you the advantage of both infrastructures and enrich your user experience at the same time. Some IP Phones and PBX’s have the added advantage of dual connectivity to IP and analogue infrastructures. For example: this PBX has room for a large number of IP Phones and will call out and receive calls over one or two analogue lines as well. And some phones such as this one have browser capabilities, video calling and all the benefits of VoiP and SIP connectivity while also connecting to your normal landline. Such devices can save you money because with the maturing of VoiP you can downgrade your analogue subscriptions, get rid of extra lines and integrate your office with the web for more efficiency while maintaining the reliability of an analogue line.

VoiP Market Maturing

It may very well be that this step by Google is a sign that the VoiP market for consumers is now maturing and will replace the landline and mobile infrastructures in the next few years or at least make them subservient to an IP based infrastructure which will be primary in the the voice market as well. This means that traditional phone companies will become low margin utilities providers once again instead of the sexy money making machines of the ninetees. Some CEO’s of phone companies have been heard muttering about this possibilty and are rethinking their company’s strategy as we speak. So if you have any (still?), sell your stock and watch the market closely for the possibility of a Skype IPO which is rumoured to be hastened by Google’s recent move.

The corporate market has been doing it for years

Large corporations have known about the benefits of VoiP for years and have virtually unified their offices in different locations by integrating their PBX’s and phonelines with VoiP technology to dramatically lower phone costs. Now with services such as Google Voice possibly opening up the consumer market on a much larger scale by giving virtual monoplosists such as Skype a run for their money, more cheap devices will be developed and cost of usage may be lowered even more dramatically. This will give home users and small businesses similar opportunities.

Read More About Google Voice On The Web

Official GMAil Blog On Google Voice integration with GMail
Official GMAil Blog Introducing GMail Voice and Videochat
Official Google Blog on Google voice and video services for Google Apps

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Posted in Consumer Culture Desk Research Economy Efficiency Everyday Market Research Market Trends Marketing Strategy Media Networks Research Social Social Media Social Media Strategy Technology by Job Folbert. No Comments

Free NetworkJoin Our Free Network

Aug 10
27

Why Google Wave failed / Alternatives

Google Wave logo

R.I.P. Google Wave

This month Google said it will drop the experimental service Google Wave.”Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked,” said Google senior vice president Urs Holzle in a blog post.Google said it will maintain the Google Wave site at least through the end of the year, and its technology will find its way into other Google projects. Parts of the code are already available as open source.

Clearly Google Wave offers a promising combination of technologies, allowing you to chat, share, bookmark, make appointments and collaborate in all kinds of other ways in a single stream of activity. Why then did it fail?

Distribution

The problem with Google Wave is not so much on the technological side as it is in the distribution model. For example: when I heard about Google Wave for the first time I was immediately enthusiastic and tried to find out how I could integrate it into my blog and social media site as an enriched commenting system. It turned out that when I got my Wave account, I could only invite 25 people, there was no WordPress Plugin available apart from some slightly lame widgets. And for my social media site there was no obvious and easy implementation to be found either.

Integration

Oddly when you look at Google’s own social media products no efforts have been made to integrate Wave either. There is no integration with GMail, Buzz, Orkut, Reader or any other Socially oriented Google product. According to Google’s statement we may see such cross functionality in the near future and apparently some open source code has been made available for developers (who haven’t done much with it sofar), so we may see some third party adaptation too although the announcement to drop the technology will make this less likely.

What’s Next?

Had Google taken a more open approach to the product’s introduction with many more third party plugins and options, more along the lines of Twitter’s business model, I think the product might have been a success. It could also have given it’s own products such as Buzz a competitive edge. But maybe it will in the near future. Let’s wait and see. For now Google Wave has gone the way of other “If you build it they will come” distribution models.

Alternatives

If you are looking to add some functionality to your site or team, similar to parts of Google Wave (or what it could have meant to your organization), have a look at these open source tools and resources:

Snipi: Collect, organize, share and collaborate. Learn more
Hootsuite: Collaborate in a team across networks (although the free version has little real value).Link
Drag To Share: drag content and share it. Read the tutorial and download the code here
Meebobar: drag to share alternative and many other social and sharing options. Learn more.

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Posted in Consumer Culture Desk Research Market Trends Marketing Marketing Strategy Media Network Networks Organization Research Resources Services Social Social Media Social Media Strategy Technology management marketing news social by Job Folbert. 1 Comment

Manage All CommunicationsOffice Manager Personal Edition

Aug 10
26

Free Social Media Monitoring Tools

Up,Up,Up!

Free Social Media Monitoring Tools

Measuring Your Online Success

Social Media can be hard environment for people who have particular goals in mind wether commercial or otherwise, because there is simply too much info out there. And yet social media is the most complete and all encompassing resource when it comes to customer preferences. Knowing this, some social media sites such as Hyves even have large brand preference polls members can fill out and attach to their profile (on a voluntary basis). And targeted advertising on networks such as LinkedIn and Facebook is booming.

These are just some examples. The point here is that all the lifestyle information on the social web is treated more and more as a marketing resource. So: what if you want to know what people are thinking about you, your brand, market, business or competitor and you don’t want to spend money measuring it? Googling the term you’re after is just not enough. If you want to know where you stand in terms of brand awareness compared to the competition, you’d better have some tools to make it easier for you. Find some in depth search tools in this article.

Most of these sites aggregate multiple search engine results. These results are not always equally relevant depending on the technologies used. Some of the sites use algorithms to rate the results given to give an overall score for your social media presence and some combine the score / results with tips to improve your performance. Here are some known and lesser known sites and tools for you:

Multi-Site Trackers

How Sociable?


How Sociable is especially great if you want to view your impact on many different social media all in one singl screen. On the basis of it’s results it gives you a score, so you know where you stand on average. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to pick up all content. But it’s fast and free and covers many popular platforms. So visit How Sociable? and give it a go.

Addictomatic

Addictomatic Page
Addictomatic is easy to use and allows you to create a page of relevant results across many social media in a few clicks. You can create as many free pages about different subjects as you like each with their own URL to revisit so you can monitor brandnames and other subjects on all the sites you see in the screenshot. Not all results are equally relevant but most are and all are good enough to have on your own free page. Visit Addictomatic to try it yourself.

Icerocket


Icerocket is a great tool. It’s simple and effective: simply enter a search term and a category (Blog, Web, Twitter, MySpace and others) and it will give relevant results. Especially good if you want to monitor MySpace. Visit Icerocket to see for your self.

Measuring Twitter Activity

Twitter Search


The most obvious tool for measuring activity and conversations on Twitter is Twitter’s very own Twitter Search. It looks like a simple search box but if you press the advanced link just below it an incredibly powerful array of search options allows you to very clearly define your search by time, location, person etc.etc. Searching Twitter has recently spawned new (semi-)sciences and scientific methods: that’s how powerful it is. So if you want to measure your brand’s impact on Twitter: start here.

Kurrently


Kurrently is a compact and to the point tool to measure recent activity on Twitter regarding your search term such as your brandname. Results are relevant but restricted in time and scope. Visit Kurrently and try it out.

Twittergrader


Hubspot ( a marketing agency) offers a number of great tools to measure how effective your social media presence is. These “graders” do just that: give you a grade or score and give you pointers by partly revealing the criteria they measure and benchmarking your performance. Twitter grader does it for Twitter but other graders for LinkedIn, social media in general etc. are also theirs. Visit Twitter Grader.

Measuring Facebook Activity

My Like Button


My LikeButton is compareable to Addictomatic but just for Facebook: it aggregates content based on your preferences and facebook friends in a single page. It then organizes this content in categories and boxes you can conveniently access, monitor and follow. Visit My Like Button to immediately see for yourself.

Measuring Blog Activity

Technorati


Technorati is a legendary place for bloggers and aggregates blogs from all over the world. You can add your own blog to be part of the equation and hopefully see your blog rise in the blogospere by claiming your blog. Or simply read their top 100 blogs to find relevant content. It seems doubtful that Technorati can remain as influential as it once was given the 126 miljoen blogs in the world (if that is even remotely the right number anymore). But it’s none the less worth a visit.

Cocomment

If you’ve claimed your blog on Technorati you may want to visit Cocomment which uses the Techorati blog claim technology amongst other things. CoComment is both a normal social media site with features such as groups and a social media monitoring tool. The idea is to develop a community of authoritative commenters and follow their comments and yours. coComment keeps a copy of all comments you make on the web (on blog sites, flickr , digg, full list of compatible platforms is here ). coComment displays all the conversations you’re tracking in one convenient place – it works just like an email inbox – so you can effectively follow the whole conversation.If you’re a blogger, coComment allows you to display the comments you make on other sites back on your own blog. It offers all kinds of tools and code you can add to your site such as a forum and you can use it as a sidebar while browsing. It’s a great concept but in order to receive relevant information it seems to be important to be an active member and use many of their own tools. So if you’re looking for a quick fix this is not it. Visit coComment to learn more.

Finally: if you like visiting many different social media quickly and easily and have acces to social media monitoring and other tools and talk about them with others. Visit our own free network The HOB.Biz: Business & Social Media!

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Posted in Benchmarking Customer Centric Customer Centricity Customer Focus Customer Satisfaction Desk Research Efficiency Guerilla Marketing Market Research Market Trends Marketing Marketing Strategy Research Social Social Media Social Media Technology by Job Folbert. 1 Comment

Save Money With VoiPVoiP Solutions

Aug 10
26

Yoono: Great Monitoring And Multi-Posting Tools

Yoono Logo

Browser Integrated Multi-Poster

You should give Yoono Browser Addon a try if you like to use Firefox or Chrome, and you like to be aware of your friends’ activity at all times and/or regularly update any or all of the following Social Media accounts:

  • Several IM’s
  • And more

What It Does For You

As you can see on the left hand side of the browser window in the picture a live activity feed of the platforms of your preference is inserted by Yoono.This allows you to follow live updates of your friends’ activity on various platforms and easily multi-post updates. You have a choice of viewing all updates in a single screen or just IM’s, social sites and updates in different tabs.
Here’s a screenshot of the handy collapseable sidebar this adds to your browser window:

Yoono Browser Addon

Evaluation

The only possible drawback is that if you have a slow connection or many friends on many networks it might slowdown browser performance too much for your liking. But you’ll have to judge for yourself. Another feature that may annoy some is the little popup window for new updates of friends which can get in the way of using functionality in the same location on your screen sometimes.

Yoono also offers desktop and IPhone applications, so check them out at: http://www.yoono.com and try it yourself.

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Posted in Consumer Culture Everyday Networks Social Social Media Social Media Technology management social by Job Folbert. No Comments

Optimize Your Social ProfilesSocial Media Training

Aug 10
26

Digg’s Recent Overhaul And Your Content

Digg Logo

Digg Redesigned

Digg have recently updated their site with some great new functionality, making it a more complete platform. Updates include:

  • A sharper more contempory look
  • Options to share web addresses and feeds more easily and add them to your profile
  • More options to integrate third party websites such as Facebook, Google and Twitter
  • Options to easily follow content providers that match your preferences

All of this is great ofcourse but unfortunately it seems they have discontinued the Diggs/History of Digg members, meaning in our case for example the loss of a huge collection of Diggs on Business & Social Media.

Thanks For Nothing

Thanks for nothing Digg! Anyway we’ll start Digging lot’s of interesting content all over again and we hope that you haven’t been experiencing the same problem. Or if you’re unaware of this issue you may want to double-check your Digg account.

This development drives home the interdependencies of different actors on the social web and it’s dynamic character which forces us to continuously monitor and update different accounts, interfaces and technologies in sofar as they are not our own, controlled by us or developing over predictable trajectories.

The Social Web

As a consumer of Diggs service I’m not happy. But since like a monopolist or oligopolist they control a large chunk of the bookmarking market, I cannot bypass their service and will keep on using it in spite of their lack of consideration or communication. Wasn’t that what the social web claims to be about?

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Posted in Consumer Culture Customer Satisfaction Everyday Guerilla Marketing Networks Resources Social Social Media Social Media Technology news social by Job Folbert. No Comments

Build Your Own Online StoreeCommerce Manager

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