Posts by author:

John Jorgensen

No Business Model? Dell Has Made $1 Million from Twitter

by John Jorgensen on December 16, 2008

A post by InternetNews reveals that Dell has made $1 million in sales directly from sending product alerts to people following Dell’s Twitter account.
This news comes at the same time that Twitter is in the process of hiring a product manager to head up the task of monetizing the micro-blogging service.
We reported earlier on Twitter CEO Evan Williams’ statement that he doesn’t want to raise any money in ‘09, going further to promise the service will turn on a revenue stream in Q1 of the new year. He was so confident that in November the company turned down a $500-million-in-Facebook-stock acquisition bid.
Dell has shown that even without a business model, Twitter is being put to commercial use quite successfully. Twitter just has to figure out how to get a piece of the pie.
Even if a business model doesn’t arrive tomorrow, you can bet that a service that companies are deriving real value from won’t go away anytime soon.
I’m personally waiting for spam to hit Twitter hard. There are lot of affiliate marketing opportunities on the service that have not been exploited yet and it won’t be pretty.

by John Jorgensen on December 10, 2008

The Dark Knight Blu-ray release is the first Blu-ray disc that supports special online features, otherwise known as BD-Live.
Blu-ray 2.0 player required. Hint: PS3 would be a good choice.
Launch the BD-Live feature on the disc and you’re prompted to create an account with Warner Brothers. The first part of the registration takes place on the disc, with the second portion requiring you to click a link that WB sends to your email.
The actual BD-Live features are available online via your computer. The main feature? User recorded commentary.
Warner Brothers allows you to stream the movie via the ‘net while recording your own video/audio commentary as it plays via webcam/mic. You can browse through the library of everyone else’s recorded commentary (kind of cool and random yet mainly pointless), in addition to a “Featured Commentary” list of hand-picked recordings by Warner Brothers. On the list: Paul Levitz, creator of DC Comics, and Jerry Robinson, the alleged creator of the Joker.
Other BD-Live features include some extra videos talking about the film’s soundtrack and a few animated comics. Nothing that couldn’t be found on a normal DVD. Oh, and you can send an ‘e-vite’ inviting your friends to watch the film “with” you on their own separate computers. Sweeeet.
User-recorded commentary is the only real offering here. Cool? Yeah. A little underwhelming? Yep. The only tracks anyone wants to hear are those by the pros. Put em on the DVD.

by John Jorgensen on December 9, 2008

zune_phone_large

Microsoft is rumored to be premiering their elusive Zune phone at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on January 7th.
See our previous post about a possible Zune phone, and our update to that post with reasons why a Zune phone doesn’t make sense (Microsoft would be competing against all its own Windows Mobile licensees).
Reason why there could be a Zune phone: Windows Mobile licensing revenue is a drop in the bucket for Microsoft ($300 million out of MSFT’s $70 billion total revenue predicted for ‘09) , who in the end might just not give a f*ck about leaving their mobile OS partners behind while chasing the $4 billion+ revenue Apple generated with the iPhone last quarter.
If Vegas gave odds on this one, what would your bet be?

by John Jorgensen on December 9, 2008

apple

According to a report submitted to AppleInsider by French technology site ElectronLibre, Apple may be poised to drop DRM from all major label tracks on iTunes today (Sony, Universal, and Warner — EMI already went DRM free in April ‘07).
In what amounts to a giant “f*ck you” to the United States, the report also claims Apple will run a “12 Days of iTunes” promotion that lets users in Germany, France and UK download “unlimited” tracks for a limited time after Christmas. This would be the biggest giveaway in iTunes’s history.
Will the major labels really give up DRM, effectively surrendering their long and arduous fight against their own customers? Will iTunes actually allow unlimited downloads to a select few countries while leaving their homeland out in the cold? Will little Timmy be able to raise enough money with his lemonade stand to save Christmas? Stay tuned, folks.

AI, Mashable, A whole bunch of others

by John Jorgensen on December 8, 2008

Citibank’s Mark Mahaney went to a SEM conference and execs gave him a nervous outlook for search marketing’s future in Q1 of ‘09: “We sensed specific nervousness about the Q1 outlook and the possibility that Q1 could actually be the real inflection point quarter–i.e. the first negative sequential growth quarter ever for Search.”
To paraphrase Mark Cuban: “Advertising is always one of the first things to be cut and it’s almost always a mistake.” Especially when it comes to search marketing, which traditionally has the highest ROI.
I see a decline in search marketing from companies who are using it simply for branding purposes, but for performance-based marketing I see search continuing to grow.
Out of all forms of advertising, search draws the straightest path to cost-per-conversion, the holy grail of advertising metrics. If your performance-based search marketing is positive ROI there’s no good reason to cut it.