strategy - ReadWriteWeb http://www.readwriteweb.com/feeds/tag/strategy en Copyright 2012 Richard MacManus readwriteweb@gmail.com Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:30:00 -0800 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/?v=4.35-en http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Big Question (Answered): "Would You Buy an Inferior Tablet, Over an iPad, If It Was Priced at Less Than $200?" big-question-150.pngThis weekend, many people elected to buy a tablet that runs software whose future is uncertain. Its fire sale price seemed to tip the scales. But we wondered if that was a flash in the pan. Is it something most of you would do, typically, or was this just a reaction to a one-time sale. If some tablet manufacturer tried this as a business model, would people buy their inferior product over the market leader? So, rather than continue to ruminate on this, we asked you, "Would you buy an inferior tablet, over an iPad, if it was priced at less than $200?".

You answered and we culled your responses from Twitter, the original post and Facebook, and used Storify to present it all back to you. If you have additional responses, please leave them in the comments.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/big_question_answered_would_you_buy_an_inferior_ta.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/big_question_answered_would_you_buy_an_inferior_ta.php Apple Tue, 23 Aug 2011 13:30:13 -0800 Robyn Tippins
Hitwise: Twitter Drives Traffic to Blogs and Social Networks, But Not to Retail Sites twitter_logo_Jan_09.pngAccording to the latest data from Hitwise, Twitter sends most of its traffic to Google, Facebook, TwitPic, and MySpace. Overall, Twitter sends about 1 in 5 users to social networks and another 1 in 5 to entertainment sites like Twitpic, YouTube, or Flickr. Even though some people think that Twitter is just a 'poor man's email system,' Twitter's clickstream profile is very different from that of most email services.

]]> There are a number of interesting results in Hitwise's study. Among others, Hitwise notes that a higher share of downstream clicks from Twitter.com go to blogs and personal websites than from search sites, social networks, or email services. A larger number of Twitter users are also being sent to news and media sites, which points towards Twitter's growing role as a medium for sharing and breaking news stories.

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twitter_downstream2.pngAnother interesting fact about the downstream clicks from Twitter is that very few users go from Twitter.com to retail, business, or finance sites.

Here are a few other interesting findings:

  • after visiting Twitter.com, more users visit Etsy.com, the marketplace for buying all things handmade, than Amazon
  • in terms of downstream clicks, CNN.com is the most popular news service on Twitter
  • Yahoo Mail gets more downstream clicks than Gmail or Windows Live Mail

One caveat about this data that Hitwise does not mention, however, is that a large number of Twitter users never even visit Twitter.com because they use more fully-featured desktop or mobile clients like Twhirl, TweetDeck, or Tweetie. Hitwise obviously doesn't have access to this data, but it would be interesting to see if those Twitter users who use a Twitter client exhibit a different behavior compared to those who use the web site.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hitwise_twitter_downstream_traffic.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hitwise_twitter_downstream_traffic.php News Thu, 12 Mar 2009 10:30:14 -0800 Frederic Lardinois
Hulu Could Bring The Social Graph to Millions Red hot TV and movie site Hulu has added a major new feature this morning on the one year anniversary of the site. Logged in users are now able to securely pull in their list of contacts from Facebook, Google, MySpace, MSN and Yahoo. The company calls it "Hulu Friends." Though some skeptics have questioned the impact of social video watching, this kind of move is exactly what we've been hoping all sites around the web would do.

Identity providers are now making it easy for 3rd party content sites to turn content consumption into a social activity. From real-time conversation to recommendations, there's a whole lot of potential here. That said, we do have some concerns about Hulu's implementation.

]]> Hulu's addition of our social networking contacts, their profile information and in some cases their activities, collectively referred to as the "social graph," is important for a number of reasons. There is so much user data available online and so much network effect left untapped that this kind of move seems like a no-brainer to us.

It's notable as well that Hulu didn't build its own social network from scratch. That would have been a waste of resources. Instead it is leveraging already established social networks elsewhere.

The most important consequence of the announcement may be that the OAuth protocol used to securely access social networking data without requesting a user's password is now being placed in front of millions more people than it has been before. That's good news.

Concerns About Hulu Friends

On the other hand, it's sad that the OpenID community remains small enough to be left out in the cold by Hulu. In theory the site should be able to add an OpenID login button to its list and pull in standard Friend of a Friend data from any identity provider at all.

Barb Dybwad at Obsessable wonders whether Hulu Friends is actually a reason for Hulu to be less "friendly" with other social video platforms that want to play Hulu content in their communities - specifically Boxee.

Finally, we're concerned that Hulu Friends isn't being featured very prominently on the site. It takes a few too many clicks to get to the friend syncing page on Hulu. We're not seeing Hulu activity pushed out to social network activity streams, either. In fact, it looks like Hulu is using the legacy Facebook API, not the fancy new Facebook Connect. Is the company being overly cautious about Hulu Friends? If they are, its limited adoption could become a self fulfilling prophecy.

All in all, though, we feel positive about Hulu Friends. We hope the company innovates on top of the idea and makes more moves towards integration with the open web.

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hulu_friends_impact.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hulu_friends_impact.php NYT Thu, 12 Mar 2009 10:13:37 -0800 Marshall Kirkpatrick
Obama's Social Media Advantage, Act II Barack ObamaMuch has been said about the masterful use of social media by the Obama campaign. The people working for the President-Elect were by far the more active - and the more savvy - of the two US Presidential candidates in terms of understanding and effectively employing social media as a way of engaging and motivating voters. Regardless of your political leanings, the numbers speak for themselves.

But was it just a means to an end? Or is this personal engagement - embracing social media as a new way of communicating with the masses - something we should expect Obama to use throughout his presidency?

]]> If change.gov - the new site for the President-Elect - is any indication, the second act of Obama's social media strategy may have even more impact on the United States than the impressive - and historic - first act.

Given the rich history of politicians using a variety of means to attain office and - upon election - rapidly changing their respective tunes, the end of the campaign and the beginning of presidency held with it a certain amount of trepidation. Would the people's candidate - one who had been engaged and engaging - suddenly revert to the guise and personality of the classic politician?

Despite the overwhelming prevalence of "hope," an air of political cynicism - one formed by decades, if not centuries of experience - still festered below the surface. But that cynicism may have been dealt another blow. And the Obama campaign may have found another way to continue the conversation that they started.

With the launch of change.gov, Obama appears to be staying the course. He's not avoiding the conversation; he's embracing it. And while there's not much to the change.gov site currently, it's the fragments that tell the story. And it's a story of a continued commitment to interact with the people on a very personal basis:

"The story of the campaign and this historic moment has been your story. It is about the great things we can do when we come together around a common purpose. The story of bringing this country together as a healed and united nation will be led by President-Elect Obama, but written by you. The millions of you who built this campaign from the ground up, and echoed your call for the change you wanted to see implemented by the Obama Administration - this process of setting up that new government is about you."

As part of continuing that story, the Obama organization is asking the people of the US to share their stories and to share their goals.

In short, Obama has begun crowdsourcing the political agenda. And when it comes right down to it, isn't that what democracy is supposed to be about anyway? A government of the people, by the people, for the people?

A few weeks ago when Gartner hypothesized that "social networks will complement, and may replace, some government functions," it seemed almost laughable. But today, in the wake of what has occurred this week, it seems all the more accurate and attainable.

The Obama organization continues to turn the political machine on its ear and continues to shake the conventional wisdom of "political strategy." If change.gov is any indication, the use of social media appears to have been much more than a gimmick for Obama. It appears to have truly been a means of embracing change.

Whatever happens next, it will be incredibly interesting to see how this next act plays out. And what acts - or actions - follow.

(Photo credit Joe Crimmings Photography. Used under Creative Commons.)

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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/obamas_social_media_advantage.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/obamas_social_media_advantage.php Politics Thu, 06 Nov 2008 23:53:41 -0800 Rick Turoczy
PlanHQ Wants to Make Achieving Business Plans Easier planhq_logo.pngPlanHQ is a web based business plan tool that wants to help small and medium businesses to more effectively manage their teams, financials, and, most importantly, their projects. While it has obvious similarities to the popular project management tool Basecamp, PlanHQ's approach is quite distinct from Basecamp's and invites its users to keep an eye on the bigger picture goals.

]]> One aspect of PlanHQ we noticed throughout the application is that the design is minimalist, but also very flexible, which makes it not only easy to use almost all of the functionality of PlanHQ right from the beginning, but it also takes away a lot of the apprehension that quite a few people might have when using a serious business planning tool like this.

Getting Started

After signing up, you will be greeted with the currently empty dashboard, which gives you a few shortcuts to start customizing your plan with your company logo, invite your team members, and create your first goal.

As you customize your plan, you also get the option to set a default currency for your financial information. The default currencies are Dollars, Euros, Yen, and Pounds, but you can also change this to any other currency you might need.

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Setting Goals

You goals can only fall into three categories: Solutions, Marketing and Sales, or Organization. While this simplicity makes sure that you do not unnecessarily complicate things by starting to micro-manage your goals, some companies might find this too limiting. On the other hand, as the folks at Organized Wisdom point out, PlanHQ is not so much a project management tool, but "an action management tool."

Correction: You can actually create your own categories, though this function is a bit hidden and can only be found in the settings menu. The folks at PlanHQ assured as that they were going to make this more obvious and add more links to these customization options in a couple of spots throughout the site.

planhq_progress.pngThe overall process of creating a goal is quite simple and asks you to define your goal, the importance of that goal, the team members responsible for achieving it, and, optionally, you can also send a message about the goal to your team and board members. Of course, you can also set the deadline for your goal here.

As is typical in this kind of application, once a goal is created, other users can comment on it and add attachment to it as well.

As you add more goals, you can then later reschedule them, mark them as done etc. PlanHQ will keep track of this and will gently remind you if you start falling behind at some point.

As PlanHQ's founder Tim Norton told us, some customers also use the goals feature as a bug tracking tool, with the advantage that all team members can easily keep an eye on the development instead of the developers working only in the silo of their own system.

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Financials

The 'Financials' section of PlanHQ follows the same guidelines as the goal setting section, in that it tries to keep things simple, but without dumbing down the process. You can add information about your budget and actual expenses here and based on this, PlanHQ creates a number of graphs and general statistics indicating if you are on your path to profitability yet. It's important to note that PlanHQ here is trying to give you a general overview of your financials and that it is not a complete financial planning tool.

What was missing here, we thought, was the ability to import or export any of this data. However, we have heard from PlanHQ that they are planning on adding the ability to import and export spreadsheet in the near future and that they are especially considering some form of integration with the spreadsheet component in Google Docs.

Cost

PlanHQ offers a three month free trial for RWW readers, but after that, you will have to sign up for a paid plan. PlanHQ offers three different plans, ranging from $9 a month for a plan with 3 team members and 10 active goals, to the 'Small' plan for $24 a month and 15 active goals, up to the 'Pro' plan, which offers an unlimited number of team members as goals. Both the 'Small' as well as the 'Pro' plan include the ability to set private goals and connect through a secure SSL connection.

What About Basecamp?

Basecamp, at first sight, would be the closest direct competitor to PlanHQ (even the URLs are similar, after all). But even though they share a lot of functionality (to-dos, writeboard, milestones, etc., PlanHQ is more focused on teams and achieving goals. During our tests, it seemed that using PlanHQ would make it easier to focus on the big picture, while Basecamp seemed to invite more micro-managing.

Signing Up

PlanHQ is giving our readers a special deal: while you would normally only get a 30 day free trial, signing up through this link will get your thee months of free service.


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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/planhq_execute_your_business_p.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/planhq_execute_your_business_p.php Product Reviews Fri, 22 Aug 2008 15:52:06 -0800 Frederic Lardinois