Organisations Find Enormous Potential in Web 2.0 to Influence & Predict Consumer Behaviour

The use of Web 2.0 has now been channelised by the top companies and consumer oriented organisations to predict the customer behaviour and buying decisions. The various social media web sites and platforms that include blogs, discussion forums, social networking sites like Orkut and Facebook etc. have provided the common public, the consumers a platform to voice their opinion and reach to people in different corners of the world. They can now share their experiences and opinions, both positive and negative about various products and services.

Major organisations are waking up to the power of the consumer voices heard over the various forms of Web 2.0 platforms which have tremendous potential to shape the opinions and buying decisions of other consumers and also their brand loyalties, purchase decisions and their own brand advocacy.

According to the recent survey by Aberdeen, a Harte-Hanks Company (NYSE: HHS), Best-in-Class organizations are over 680% more likely than Laggards to improve their ability to predict customer behavior through the use of social media monitoring and analysis tools.

Microsoft Bid Yahoo to Establish Foothold in the Mobile Ad Market

In order to attain a bigger share in the mobile market, Microsoft is reportedly bidding US$44.6 billion for Yahoo. Though Microsoft itself is a big company it is difficult for it to reach out to the advertising genre, whereas with a 500 million global monthly user estimate, it is easier for Yahoo to approach the mobile advertising market.

Though Microsoft executives directly refuse to discuss the mobile advertising opportunities and the Yahoo deal, news also floats that they have also began discussions and possibilities with different carriers including Sprint Nextel.

Mobile advertising is not a rage currently amidst advertisers, in a few years time it shall be an exciting market for all of them who wish to reach out and expand their target audience manifold. With several location based technologies and the latest GPS that is being introduced in the mobile technology, it is going to become so much easier to target customers and to learn about their proximity to buy goods.

Microsoft AdCenter Labs Showcases Cutting Edge Digital Advertising Innovations

At its 4^th Annual Demo fest, Microsoft Corp. revealed a series of next generation digital advertising technologies on tuesday, 5^th February 2008. This fest is known for propounding Microsoft adCenter Labs' latest leading edge technologies and developments. This year, the event showcased the latest advances and algorithms in content analysis and computer vision for video and images, speech recognition for contextual video ads, and advanced marketing intelligence that enable enhanced audience insight and better targeting capabilities for advertisers.

According to Tarek Najm, technical guy in Microsoft, "We believe the technical advances and intelligence we are creating at adCenter Labs can change the game of online advertising. Solutions to today's challenges must be capable of handling and understanding the complexity of vast amounts of data. To address that challenge, we are developing advertising algorithms that can anticipate and understand consumer behavior faster than the speed of thought, so that we can help advertisers create more efficient and relevant user experiences."

Security and Compliance Services for Emails at Office, by Google

Google is now set to use its Postinin acquisition to provide security features for any e-mail system. The company is about to launch many new security applications that are already part of the Google Apps platform. These products are targeted at the organisations that are not using Gmail or other Web hosted applications from Google, like Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Talk, and Start Page .

These products are powered by Postinin and act as message filtering with spam and malware filter and this is available to you at $3 per user every year. For $12 per user per year, you can get message filtering services along with improvised virus detection content policy management, and other support to stop e-mail data leaks. And for $25 per year per user, you would get message discovery, which increases one year of message data archiving, retention, and discovery to assist companies comply with legal and government regulatory compliance requirements.

According to Sundar Raghavan, a product marketing manager for Google, this is specially useful to those organisations and executives who are anxious about employees downloading copyrighted content, such as MP3 files, at work and leaking confidential information through e-mails.

AOL Bags Buy.at to Boost Advertising Operations

On Tuesday, AOL has declared that it has bought buy.at as per its strategy to boost its Internet advertising operations. Time Warner Inc.'s AOL did not reveal the financial terms of the purchase. For those who are not aware of buy.at, it is a network in which those who are putting up their advertisements need to pay the member Web publishers only when a visitor comes to the site and takes the action as desired by the advertisement.

Soon after the first quarter financial report by Time Warner, AOL announced its purchase, which is the fifth purchase in 12 months. This urgency of such declaration and strategies by AOL has been fuelled by the surprise announcement by Microsoft of its offer to buy Yahoo for $31 per share, last Friday. As per Wall Street Analysts, the Time Warner strategies and plans have a possibility of creation of 84% ownership of Time Warner Cable.

Trademarks Simplified: What Are They and Why Do We Need Them?

So you have a business and you have a logo, a name and a slogan that you want your clients to associate with your organisation, but have you ever thought of protecting it? You may have thought about it – how to refrain your competitors from using the same logo or name, especially if you are successful in your industry. What you are actually thinking about is called 'trademark'.

For those of you, who have already registered trademarks for your organisation, this is just a review. But for those who are not yet clear with the concept of trademarks or do not understand the trademark laws or not sure whether you can use trademarks or not, here is my attempt to clear the air.

What are trademarks? Let's get down to the very basics. Trademark is any thing that you want people to associate with your product or service. It can be a word, a phrase, a slogan, a sound, a musical interlude, a symbol, a logo, a design, your domain name, your website designs, your packaging or dressing, the uniform of your sales staff or anything that helps people remember your products or services.

Trademark laws are laws that protect your trademarks – slogan, logo, domain name or designs – as your intellectual property, somewhat like copyright and patent. You can have trademarks for your commercial ventures, but you can not have trademarks for your non-commercial or personal ventures.

You might have a product based business or you may have a service based one – you can protect all your intellectual properties with trademark laws. For products, you have the 'Product Marks' and for services, you have the 'Service Marks'.

The main idea behind having your intellectual property protected with trademark laws is to protect your competitors to steal your property and promote their businesses under the banner of your slogans or logos. It is also to protect your organisation from frauds like selling bad quality products or providing unsatisfactory services with the name of your organisation. This can bring a bad name to you and your business without even being responsible for it.

Increasing Frustrated Netizens of China Plan to Break the Wall

The restrictions on a wide range of web sites in China is facing resentment from a growing number of netizens in the country. Web sites like Flickr, YouTube, Wikipedia and MySpace are not accessible to the Chinese masses due to internet censorship rules of the land. China's censors have also blocked sites like Blogspot etc. which is growing concern amongst the people there.

According to one of the increasing population of netizens in China, Mr. Zhu Nan, “Officials in our country claimed that Internet censorship is done according to the law. If so, why not let people know about this legal project, and why, instead, ban the Web sites that publicize and examine those legal policies? If you’re determined to do this, you shouldn’t be afraid of criticism.”

Recently, the censorship on usage of internet in China has been further tightened and sites are said to have been blacked out, even those which had no discernible political content. This is resulting into a backlash from people, including those who never had any interest in politics.