Thursday, 31 December 2009
Wednesday, 30 December 2009
Top 15 Tech Events of the Decade
From elusive Y2K bugs and unemployed sock puppets to rapidly shrinking laptops and rapidly growing clouds, here's a look at the last ten years in technology.
For the ten-year span that started in 2000, turbulence was the name of the game in high tech. Fortunes were made and lost, everyday users took control of the reins, and technology-watching became a spectator sport. It was a chaotic time, but it was seldom dull. Here, then, is a look at the decade that was: the highlights and lowlights, the booms and busts, the fizzles and sizzles.
1. Y2K Fizzles: 2000 started not with a bang but with a whimper. Dire predictions of computer systems going haywire, mass power outages, travel disruptions, and maybe even a run on squirrel jerky simply didn't happen, as the Year 2000 Problem turned out to be more hiccup than heartbreak. Did all the Y2K-bug-squishing task forces save us from disaster? Or was the whole affair not quite as dire as advertised? We may never know for sure. So let's raise a glass and offer a New Year's toast to one of life's eternal mysteries.
2. Dot-Bomb and the Death of the Build-It-and-They-Will-Come Business Model: In the late 1990s, the stock market--fueled by investment in high tech--was on a roll, new tech companies were launching every day, and even Alan Greenspan's talk of "irrational exuberance" couldn't dim our enthusiasm. Venture capitalists were pouring money into shaky new Websites. The sites scaled up as quickly as possible, even without a demonstrated revenue stream or business model. By mid-2000, the dot-com bubble had burst, taking the economy and many people's livelihoods with it. Boo.com, Pets.com, Webvan: It was fun while it lasted.
3. Google Wins: What started as a search engine has morphed into an all-encompassing ecosystem that touches--and in many respects dominates--the online universe. By the early years of this millennium, Google (armed with its proprietary, all-knowing algorithm) had already lapped the competition. The launch of Google AdWords (2001) and Google News (2002) set the stage for a massively successful public offering in 2004. Then the G-men really started pouring it on, with a string of cloud-based productivity boosters such as Gmail, Google Maps, Picasa, Google Apps, Desktop Search, Google Earth, and more. With the addition of YouTube in 2006, the Android platform in 2007, and Google Voice and Google Chrome OS in 2009, the company doesn't have that much territory left to conquer. For 2010, I suggest buying naming rights to the country and changing it to the United States of Google. That has a nice ring to it.
4. Social Media Surges: Remember Friendster, the social network introduced in 2002? Piles of people signed up, invited friends to join, and then spent the next year figuring out what to do there. MySpace also had its day, only to be supplanted by Facebook, which crossed the 300 million user threshold earlier this year. With all the "friending" going on out there, is it possible that Facebook et al. have made the world a friendlier place? Probably not. According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, "unfriend" was 2009's word of the year.
5. Apple's Great Comeback: When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, prospects were bleak. What a difference a decade makes. With the introduction of the iPod in 2001, Macs running on Intel processors in 2006, the industry-defining iPhone in 2007, and the iPhone App Store juggernaut in 2008, Apple has become a force to be reckoned with, while Jobs has been hailed as the conquering hero in a black turtleneck.
6. The User Takes Control: When Time tabbed "You" as the Person of the Year in 2006, they were clearly on to something. Bloggers, citizen journalists, everyday experts, and anyone with a cell-phone camera put a hurt on the top-down model of information dispersal. For a while, this potent mix of user-created content, high interactivity between sites, and rich user interfaces was dubbed "Web 2.0." The term eventually lost steam; the activities it described did not. From Digg, Flickr, Wikipedia, and Yelp to protestors tweeting the political unrest in Iran, the "wisdom of crowds" was the "aha!" experience of the decade.
7. Vista Lays an Egg: Microsoft doesn't do modest well. So when the engineers in Redmond began prepping the successor to Windows XP, the sky was the limit. Five years in the making, Windows Vista sported a fresh approach to security, lots of neat innovations under the hood, and a slick new interface. The company proclaimed it "the most significant product launch in Microsoft Corp.'s history." Unfortunately, many users absolutely loathed it. A rash of incompatibilities, sluggish performance, and constant nagging from the User Account Control feature earned Vista a spot atop our list of the Biggest Tech Disappointments of 2007. Microsoft's redemption seems to have arrived about three years later, with the release of Windows 7.
8. The Wonder of Wii: Yes, you could argue that it's just a game console, and as such, a long shot to crash the "top tech events of the decade" list. But when the Nintendo Wii came out in 2006, it introduced a new and entirely intuitive way of interacting with technology. Want to play Wii golf? Grab your Wii controller, take a swing, and watch the virtual ball soar toward the green. The family-friendly Wii represents the greatest advance in input devices since the mouse. So long, carpal tunnel syndrome; hello, Wii elbow.
9. Mobile Mayhem: This may be hard to believe, but back in 2000, not everyone had a mobile phone. And people who did have them used them to make phone calls! How quaint. The BlackBerry--an e-mail device that was a terrible phone--was a business breakthrough in the first years of the century. Category-expanding consumer devices like the Sidekick and smartphones such as the Palm Treo followed. And now, with the iPhone 3GS and the Droid, we've graduated to carrying around full-scale computers in our pockets.
10. Entertainment Everywhere: Television, movie theaters, CDs, DVDs, and books are so 20th century. Now we want our fun and we want it now, wherever we happen to be. Think Hulu, iTunes, streaming video, Tivo, and YouTube on iPods, Kindles, Slingboxes, smartphones, and more. Even high-flying Netflix--which walloped the competition by offering unlimited DVD rentals by mail--had to tinker with its business model and add a streaming option. The music industry may have managed to shut down peer-to-peer file-swapping site Napster early on and sue a bunch of college students and grandmas over illegal music downloads. But ultimately it failed to stop the bleeding, and by 2008 the RIAA had discontinued its highly unpopular lawsuits. Instant gratification isn't just a wish anymore--it's a consumer mandate.
11. Skype Talks the Talk: Back in the day, telecommunications was an expensive proposition, a serious line item in any company's budget. Now, the cost of long-distance communication is fast approaching zero, thanks to VoIP, which routes calls over IP networks. On the business side, VoIP has been around for some time, ultimately leading to game changers like call-center outsourcing. Consumers, though, had to wait until 2003, when the beta of Skype was released, allowing folks to make free phone calls, via Internet, to anywhere on the planet. Thank you, Skype, for setting the table. Now Google is going to eat your lunch.
12. Cybercrime Meets Organized Crime: It's inevitable--once there's real money for the taking, the amateurs get pushed out and the pros move in. In the 2000s, organized criminals--real bad guys as opposed to boastful hackers looking to impress their friends--came up with brilliant online schemes to steal your cash. According to several sources, by the end of the decade, most of the major corporate data breaches were directly attributable to organized crime. Web development used to be just for smart folks; now it's for wiseguys.
13. Into the Cloud: As Web-based applications began to behave more and more like honest-to-desktop programs (thanks to clever software development technologies like Ajax), classic boxed software began to feel old hat. In the middle of the decade, all the talk was about "software as a service" (SaaS), in which a third party would host a business application on a server that subscribers could access, on demand, over the Internet. In 2008 or so, the sexier-sounding term "cloud computing"--the infrastructure that allows software to be delivered to businesses and consumers from servers residing on the Internet--came along and kicked the old acronym to the curb. For consumers, Google Apps are probably the best known cloud-based offerings. But Amazon is a big player in cloud services, and Microsoft has a cloud-based version of Office on tap for 2010. So what's the future of software? In a word, cloudy.
14. Netbooks Take Off: Initially dismissed as dumbed-down laptops, over the last two years small-form-factor netbooks have taken the computing world by storm. Asus kicked off the trend with its alphabetically challenged Eee PC in 2008. A slew of models from Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and others followed. So did consumers, who showed a willingness to plunk down a few hundred dollars even as the economy tanked. The netbook trend may be short-lived, though: Conventional laptops keep getting smaller and cheaper, meaning that today's "netbook" will probably be tomorrow's plain old "laptop."
15. Megamerger Mania: It's the way of the world--big fish eat small fish. Starting in mid-decade, though, things really started to resemble an all-you-can-eat buffet, as HP, Oracle, and other hungry tech gourmands gobbled up everything in sight. Notable items on the menu: Compaq (by HP, 2001), JD Edwards (PeopleSoft, 2003), VMWare (EMC, 2003), Peoplesoft (Oracle, 2004), Siebel (Oracle, 2005), RSA (EMC, 2006), YouTube (Google, 2006), DoubleClick (Google, 2007), Hyperion (Oracle, 2007), WebEx (Cisco, 2007), BEA (Oracle, 2008), Cognos (IBM, 2008), EDS (HP, 2008), MySQL (Sun, 2008), and 3Com (HP, 2009). And as we close out this year, Sun is positioning itself as a featured entrée, about to be scarfed up by Oracle. Bon appétit!
For the ten-year span that started in 2000, turbulence was the name of the game in high tech. Fortunes were made and lost, everyday users took control of the reins, and technology-watching became a spectator sport. It was a chaotic time, but it was seldom dull. Here, then, is a look at the decade that was: the highlights and lowlights, the booms and busts, the fizzles and sizzles.
1. Y2K Fizzles: 2000 started not with a bang but with a whimper. Dire predictions of computer systems going haywire, mass power outages, travel disruptions, and maybe even a run on squirrel jerky simply didn't happen, as the Year 2000 Problem turned out to be more hiccup than heartbreak. Did all the Y2K-bug-squishing task forces save us from disaster? Or was the whole affair not quite as dire as advertised? We may never know for sure. So let's raise a glass and offer a New Year's toast to one of life's eternal mysteries.
2. Dot-Bomb and the Death of the Build-It-and-They-Will-Come Business Model: In the late 1990s, the stock market--fueled by investment in high tech--was on a roll, new tech companies were launching every day, and even Alan Greenspan's talk of "irrational exuberance" couldn't dim our enthusiasm. Venture capitalists were pouring money into shaky new Websites. The sites scaled up as quickly as possible, even without a demonstrated revenue stream or business model. By mid-2000, the dot-com bubble had burst, taking the economy and many people's livelihoods with it. Boo.com, Pets.com, Webvan: It was fun while it lasted.
3. Google Wins: What started as a search engine has morphed into an all-encompassing ecosystem that touches--and in many respects dominates--the online universe. By the early years of this millennium, Google (armed with its proprietary, all-knowing algorithm) had already lapped the competition. The launch of Google AdWords (2001) and Google News (2002) set the stage for a massively successful public offering in 2004. Then the G-men really started pouring it on, with a string of cloud-based productivity boosters such as Gmail, Google Maps, Picasa, Google Apps, Desktop Search, Google Earth, and more. With the addition of YouTube in 2006, the Android platform in 2007, and Google Voice and Google Chrome OS in 2009, the company doesn't have that much territory left to conquer. For 2010, I suggest buying naming rights to the country and changing it to the United States of Google. That has a nice ring to it.
4. Social Media Surges: Remember Friendster, the social network introduced in 2002? Piles of people signed up, invited friends to join, and then spent the next year figuring out what to do there. MySpace also had its day, only to be supplanted by Facebook, which crossed the 300 million user threshold earlier this year. With all the "friending" going on out there, is it possible that Facebook et al. have made the world a friendlier place? Probably not. According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, "unfriend" was 2009's word of the year.
5. Apple's Great Comeback: When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, prospects were bleak. What a difference a decade makes. With the introduction of the iPod in 2001, Macs running on Intel processors in 2006, the industry-defining iPhone in 2007, and the iPhone App Store juggernaut in 2008, Apple has become a force to be reckoned with, while Jobs has been hailed as the conquering hero in a black turtleneck.
6. The User Takes Control: When Time tabbed "You" as the Person of the Year in 2006, they were clearly on to something. Bloggers, citizen journalists, everyday experts, and anyone with a cell-phone camera put a hurt on the top-down model of information dispersal. For a while, this potent mix of user-created content, high interactivity between sites, and rich user interfaces was dubbed "Web 2.0." The term eventually lost steam; the activities it described did not. From Digg, Flickr, Wikipedia, and Yelp to protestors tweeting the political unrest in Iran, the "wisdom of crowds" was the "aha!" experience of the decade.
7. Vista Lays an Egg: Microsoft doesn't do modest well. So when the engineers in Redmond began prepping the successor to Windows XP, the sky was the limit. Five years in the making, Windows Vista sported a fresh approach to security, lots of neat innovations under the hood, and a slick new interface. The company proclaimed it "the most significant product launch in Microsoft Corp.'s history." Unfortunately, many users absolutely loathed it. A rash of incompatibilities, sluggish performance, and constant nagging from the User Account Control feature earned Vista a spot atop our list of the Biggest Tech Disappointments of 2007. Microsoft's redemption seems to have arrived about three years later, with the release of Windows 7.
8. The Wonder of Wii: Yes, you could argue that it's just a game console, and as such, a long shot to crash the "top tech events of the decade" list. But when the Nintendo Wii came out in 2006, it introduced a new and entirely intuitive way of interacting with technology. Want to play Wii golf? Grab your Wii controller, take a swing, and watch the virtual ball soar toward the green. The family-friendly Wii represents the greatest advance in input devices since the mouse. So long, carpal tunnel syndrome; hello, Wii elbow.
9. Mobile Mayhem: This may be hard to believe, but back in 2000, not everyone had a mobile phone. And people who did have them used them to make phone calls! How quaint. The BlackBerry--an e-mail device that was a terrible phone--was a business breakthrough in the first years of the century. Category-expanding consumer devices like the Sidekick and smartphones such as the Palm Treo followed. And now, with the iPhone 3GS and the Droid, we've graduated to carrying around full-scale computers in our pockets.
10. Entertainment Everywhere: Television, movie theaters, CDs, DVDs, and books are so 20th century. Now we want our fun and we want it now, wherever we happen to be. Think Hulu, iTunes, streaming video, Tivo, and YouTube on iPods, Kindles, Slingboxes, smartphones, and more. Even high-flying Netflix--which walloped the competition by offering unlimited DVD rentals by mail--had to tinker with its business model and add a streaming option. The music industry may have managed to shut down peer-to-peer file-swapping site Napster early on and sue a bunch of college students and grandmas over illegal music downloads. But ultimately it failed to stop the bleeding, and by 2008 the RIAA had discontinued its highly unpopular lawsuits. Instant gratification isn't just a wish anymore--it's a consumer mandate.
11. Skype Talks the Talk: Back in the day, telecommunications was an expensive proposition, a serious line item in any company's budget. Now, the cost of long-distance communication is fast approaching zero, thanks to VoIP, which routes calls over IP networks. On the business side, VoIP has been around for some time, ultimately leading to game changers like call-center outsourcing. Consumers, though, had to wait until 2003, when the beta of Skype was released, allowing folks to make free phone calls, via Internet, to anywhere on the planet. Thank you, Skype, for setting the table. Now Google is going to eat your lunch.
12. Cybercrime Meets Organized Crime: It's inevitable--once there's real money for the taking, the amateurs get pushed out and the pros move in. In the 2000s, organized criminals--real bad guys as opposed to boastful hackers looking to impress their friends--came up with brilliant online schemes to steal your cash. According to several sources, by the end of the decade, most of the major corporate data breaches were directly attributable to organized crime. Web development used to be just for smart folks; now it's for wiseguys.
13. Into the Cloud: As Web-based applications began to behave more and more like honest-to-desktop programs (thanks to clever software development technologies like Ajax), classic boxed software began to feel old hat. In the middle of the decade, all the talk was about "software as a service" (SaaS), in which a third party would host a business application on a server that subscribers could access, on demand, over the Internet. In 2008 or so, the sexier-sounding term "cloud computing"--the infrastructure that allows software to be delivered to businesses and consumers from servers residing on the Internet--came along and kicked the old acronym to the curb. For consumers, Google Apps are probably the best known cloud-based offerings. But Amazon is a big player in cloud services, and Microsoft has a cloud-based version of Office on tap for 2010. So what's the future of software? In a word, cloudy.
14. Netbooks Take Off: Initially dismissed as dumbed-down laptops, over the last two years small-form-factor netbooks have taken the computing world by storm. Asus kicked off the trend with its alphabetically challenged Eee PC in 2008. A slew of models from Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and others followed. So did consumers, who showed a willingness to plunk down a few hundred dollars even as the economy tanked. The netbook trend may be short-lived, though: Conventional laptops keep getting smaller and cheaper, meaning that today's "netbook" will probably be tomorrow's plain old "laptop."
15. Megamerger Mania: It's the way of the world--big fish eat small fish. Starting in mid-decade, though, things really started to resemble an all-you-can-eat buffet, as HP, Oracle, and other hungry tech gourmands gobbled up everything in sight. Notable items on the menu: Compaq (by HP, 2001), JD Edwards (PeopleSoft, 2003), VMWare (EMC, 2003), Peoplesoft (Oracle, 2004), Siebel (Oracle, 2005), RSA (EMC, 2006), YouTube (Google, 2006), DoubleClick (Google, 2007), Hyperion (Oracle, 2007), WebEx (Cisco, 2007), BEA (Oracle, 2008), Cognos (IBM, 2008), EDS (HP, 2008), MySQL (Sun, 2008), and 3Com (HP, 2009). And as we close out this year, Sun is positioning itself as a featured entrée, about to be scarfed up by Oracle. Bon appétit!
Wednesday, 23 December 2009
Is Windows 7 the last major chapter in the Windows story?
By the time Windows 7's adoption and replacement cycle is finished, the market will have shifted considerably, leaving Microsoft at a disadvantage
Microsoft Windows 7 may represent the last ever, large in-mass upgrade of the Windows client environment and define the line where the desktop PC was no longer the center of the end-user universe, according to IDC.
"We have come to the conclusion that Windows 7 represents a really important demarcation line in the evolution of client devices," says Al Gillen, who helped co-author a list of year-end predictions from IDC. "We think Windows 7 is going to be the last really big refresh, in-mass, of the Windows client environment as we have known it for the last decade plus."
Gillen said the Windows 7 adoption and replacement cycle will go on for the next five to seven years, but during that cycle "the industry is going to look quite a bit different and I would have to argue that the next really big release of Windows will launch into a world that is a lot less centralized around the PC than it is today."
Gillen is not predicting the death of Windows, however. In fact, he predicts Windows 7 will be a great product and a huge success for Microsoft. "I see it being hugely successful; the problem is that it is going to be hugely successful in a market space where the customer preferences are going to move away from that model totally."
He says a good analogy is the television. "The television market has been mature for a long time. We've stopped replacing televisions every time a new one came along, and the television is no longer the center of the universe in the living room."
He adds that the market for Windows operating systems won't go away. "It is just going to be one of a multitude of options," he said. "Because this transition will begin with augmentation and won't significantly displace PCs in the short term, this is a trend that will play out literally for the next decade (or longer)."
Gillen said Microsoft won the battle in the PC market and owns the desktop, "but all these devices are going to come along that Microsoft does not own, which creates a whole new battle field," Gillen said. He said the transition will fuel the rise of virtualized and cloud-based software and "in the process, help break the dependency on fat clients and full local processing."
And he predicts those devices will mostly run on open source, Linux-based, and non-Windows software whether they be smartphones, thin clients or browser based devices.
Microsoft has not been successful to date in the mobile or device markets, especially against the likes of Android, iPhone, and Palm's webOS.
Microsoft has a working realization of its coming challenges that is expressed in its Azure cloud platform and three-screens-and-a-cloud strategies.
"There are changing dynamics and demographics that are going to shift the world as we know it and the world we live in," Gillen said.
The world for corporate IT, Gillen noted, also will feel the shift. "Because none of these platforms will be individually dominant across multiple devices, enterprises will be challenged to decide how to support users that bring personal/consumer-driven devices into their organizations," he said.
This story, "Is Windows 7 the last major chapter in Windows story?," was originally published at NetworkWorld.com
Microsoft Windows 7 may represent the last ever, large in-mass upgrade of the Windows client environment and define the line where the desktop PC was no longer the center of the end-user universe, according to IDC.
"We have come to the conclusion that Windows 7 represents a really important demarcation line in the evolution of client devices," says Al Gillen, who helped co-author a list of year-end predictions from IDC. "We think Windows 7 is going to be the last really big refresh, in-mass, of the Windows client environment as we have known it for the last decade plus."
Gillen said the Windows 7 adoption and replacement cycle will go on for the next five to seven years, but during that cycle "the industry is going to look quite a bit different and I would have to argue that the next really big release of Windows will launch into a world that is a lot less centralized around the PC than it is today."
Gillen is not predicting the death of Windows, however. In fact, he predicts Windows 7 will be a great product and a huge success for Microsoft. "I see it being hugely successful; the problem is that it is going to be hugely successful in a market space where the customer preferences are going to move away from that model totally."
He says a good analogy is the television. "The television market has been mature for a long time. We've stopped replacing televisions every time a new one came along, and the television is no longer the center of the universe in the living room."
He adds that the market for Windows operating systems won't go away. "It is just going to be one of a multitude of options," he said. "Because this transition will begin with augmentation and won't significantly displace PCs in the short term, this is a trend that will play out literally for the next decade (or longer)."
Gillen said Microsoft won the battle in the PC market and owns the desktop, "but all these devices are going to come along that Microsoft does not own, which creates a whole new battle field," Gillen said. He said the transition will fuel the rise of virtualized and cloud-based software and "in the process, help break the dependency on fat clients and full local processing."
And he predicts those devices will mostly run on open source, Linux-based, and non-Windows software whether they be smartphones, thin clients or browser based devices.
Microsoft has not been successful to date in the mobile or device markets, especially against the likes of Android, iPhone, and Palm's webOS.
Microsoft has a working realization of its coming challenges that is expressed in its Azure cloud platform and three-screens-and-a-cloud strategies.
"There are changing dynamics and demographics that are going to shift the world as we know it and the world we live in," Gillen said.
The world for corporate IT, Gillen noted, also will feel the shift. "Because none of these platforms will be individually dominant across multiple devices, enterprises will be challenged to decide how to support users that bring personal/consumer-driven devices into their organizations," he said.
This story, "Is Windows 7 the last major chapter in Windows story?," was originally published at NetworkWorld.com
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
It's the End of the Year - 'Clean Slate'
Since most businesses wind down, or go on hiatus, during the last week of the year, we have a rare opportunity to catch up on neglected tasks. On the second to last day of the year, I always "Clean Slate "
Here’s a quick guide to some items you might want to 'Clean Slate':
Overhaul Your Email - I wouldn't suggest that you try to respond to all the emails in your inbox, since that's something you probably spend some time on anyway. Instead, focus on how to optimize your inbox better. Can you set up new filters and folders so you can limit what hits your inbox and distracts you from other things? Do you have a bunch of newsletters and alerts you've been meaning to unsubscribe from? Is there a bunch of junk that can be banished to a "read later" folder to make way for the more important correspondence?
Perform Computer Housecleaning - Is your computer desktop littered with so many icons that it's impossible to tell what's what? Time to clean house! Reorganize, prioritize, delete, and move what needs to go elsewhere so you don't feel overwhelmed every time you minimize a window.
Order Stray Business Cards & Contacts - Need to file away new contacts you've made recently (or not so recently)? Haven’t yet followed up with people you said you'd be in touch with? Now is the time to plow through the backlog.
Finish Drafts - If you blog, you might have any number of unfinished blog posts waiting in your queue for completion. Take a couple of hours to focus on getting those posts across the finish line – or to decide that the post should be put to the pasture.
Sell Your Junk - If you're at all like me, you have at least three items taking up space in your house that you've been meaning to sell on eBay but never got around to it. Take some photos, post that stuff up, and get some cash while making more room in your domicile.
Thank People - It's the end of the year, a good time to reflect. Taking some time to write notes to colleagues, close friends, and loved ones to share thanks and appreciations can be healthy and moving for both you and the people you reach out to.
After all, it's not all about business and productivity, right? Maybe you can use your 'Clean Slate' Day to simply reflect on your life and how you can achieve a better balance.
Here’s a quick guide to some items you might want to 'Clean Slate':
Overhaul Your Email - I wouldn't suggest that you try to respond to all the emails in your inbox, since that's something you probably spend some time on anyway. Instead, focus on how to optimize your inbox better. Can you set up new filters and folders so you can limit what hits your inbox and distracts you from other things? Do you have a bunch of newsletters and alerts you've been meaning to unsubscribe from? Is there a bunch of junk that can be banished to a "read later" folder to make way for the more important correspondence?
Perform Computer Housecleaning - Is your computer desktop littered with so many icons that it's impossible to tell what's what? Time to clean house! Reorganize, prioritize, delete, and move what needs to go elsewhere so you don't feel overwhelmed every time you minimize a window.
Order Stray Business Cards & Contacts - Need to file away new contacts you've made recently (or not so recently)? Haven’t yet followed up with people you said you'd be in touch with? Now is the time to plow through the backlog.
Finish Drafts - If you blog, you might have any number of unfinished blog posts waiting in your queue for completion. Take a couple of hours to focus on getting those posts across the finish line – or to decide that the post should be put to the pasture.
Sell Your Junk - If you're at all like me, you have at least three items taking up space in your house that you've been meaning to sell on eBay but never got around to it. Take some photos, post that stuff up, and get some cash while making more room in your domicile.
Thank People - It's the end of the year, a good time to reflect. Taking some time to write notes to colleagues, close friends, and loved ones to share thanks and appreciations can be healthy and moving for both you and the people you reach out to.
After all, it's not all about business and productivity, right? Maybe you can use your 'Clean Slate' Day to simply reflect on your life and how you can achieve a better balance.
5 Ways to Grow Your Local Business with Social Media
Let’s face it; most small businesses do the bulk of their business locally. So, the thought of gaining access to Facebook’s 300 trillion users (may be more by now) isn’t that relevant or useful.
However, if those local businesses could use the some of the new powerful online tools and platforms to gain access to the 200-300 social media users in their town, now that might just make some sense.
There are many ways to filter, sort, aggregate and otherwise take advantage of social media tools that can specifically benefit even the smallest neighborhood oriented business.
Below are five things any local business can do to get more business using social media tools
1) Start a Local Group Online
Most social network platforms offer some form of group creation. Any member has the ability to start a group around a niche or pretty much any topic – including a local topic. Sites such as Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn and Slideshare all allow members to create and manage groups.
For example here’s a local independent merchant group in Austin, TX using a Flickr Group to promote it’s “Keep Austin Weird” slogan.
This Boston Networking Group on LinkedIn was founded by Jeff Popin, owner of BostonEventGuide.com. With over 3,000 members, there’s a pretty good bet this group serves as a conduit for Popin’s main business locally.
2) Find and Network with Local Bloggers
Using tools such as Placeblogger, outside.in, Bloglines you can locate bloggers in your community that might have an interest in writing about your business or industry or actively linking to your blog.
Networking with relevant bloggers locally, commenting on their blog posts, and maybe even contributing a post is a great way to create additional local exposure. Don’t forget to seek out and add blogs from traditional media publications locally as well. Most radio, TV and news journalists have been asked to write a blog as part of their job, these can be great local social media contacts if you take the time to build relationships though their blogs.
3) Hold Meetups and Tweetups
Using a social media tool like MeetUp, you create and promote local events and tap the user base of MeetUp to create additional awareness about your seminars, product demonstrations, open houses, and grand openings.
Here a home remodeler in Encinitas, CA is offering a workshop on green remodeling through MeetUP.
TweetUps, a gathering of people in a community using Twitter, have become very popular ways to meet others locally that believe in the power of social media. That alone can be enough common ground to network on. Search locally for the term TweetUp and don’t be surprised to find one schedule in your community.
The online social media network Biznik allows members to join its online platform, but belong to a local community and promote in-person local events on the site.
4) Find local leads
Finding local prospects or potential strategic partners on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter is pretty simple through the use of the powerful search interfaces built into all. Simply searching by City is a great way to find other people using social media in your community. A service such as Twellowhood or LocalTweeps may aid in your search to find other businesses in your community using Twitter.
Many smart marketers are also employing some of the advanced features of Twitter Search to find people locally and filter their tweets to turn up leads. An auto body shop might set-up searches for people talking about being in an accident and reach out to them with advice for what to do to get the best quote. A computer network service provider can use advanced search to find people locally complaining about their network being down.
Naked Pizza in New Orleans uses Twitter to publish exclusive offers
to followers and attributes a significant rise in business using to this tactic.
Cupcakes on Wheels, a Los Angeles mobile cupcake business, tweets its location throughout the day so followers can find its signature brown vans.
Facebook’s Ad Targeting is also another great way to reach only local prospects on the Facebook platform. One of the targeting criteria is geography, so you can create ads that promote your web site or Facebook Fan page that are only shown to people in the geographic region you choose
5) Enhance Local Search Results
No matter how you put social media to use to create engagement locally, simply creating profiles on dozens of social media sites and linking those sites with local keyword content back to your main web site will help your site do better when people search locally. Creating very brand and local optimized profiles on sites like YouTube, Flickr and Slideshare will help with overall links to your site. Creating and enhancing local profiles on Google Maps, Yahoo and Bing Local will help you show up higher in the local results.
Finally, don’t forget to get active with the social review sites like Yelp! and Insider Pages. Ask, and even teach, your local customers hot to write reviews about your business. Currently Google Maps and Bing Local add these reviews to their local profile database too.
Using the technology and ability to access large groups of social media users locally has become a proven small business marketing tactic and is a great way to further enhance the face-to-face relationship building you already do.
Image credit: gloom
John Jantsch is a marketing and digital technology coach, award winning social media publisher and author of Duct Tape Marketing.
Adapted from: http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/marketing/article/5-ways-to-grow-your-local-business-with-social-media-john-jantsch
However, if those local businesses could use the some of the new powerful online tools and platforms to gain access to the 200-300 social media users in their town, now that might just make some sense.
There are many ways to filter, sort, aggregate and otherwise take advantage of social media tools that can specifically benefit even the smallest neighborhood oriented business.
Below are five things any local business can do to get more business using social media tools
1) Start a Local Group Online
Most social network platforms offer some form of group creation. Any member has the ability to start a group around a niche or pretty much any topic – including a local topic. Sites such as Flickr, Facebook, LinkedIn and Slideshare all allow members to create and manage groups.
For example here’s a local independent merchant group in Austin, TX using a Flickr Group to promote it’s “Keep Austin Weird” slogan.
This Boston Networking Group on LinkedIn was founded by Jeff Popin, owner of BostonEventGuide.com. With over 3,000 members, there’s a pretty good bet this group serves as a conduit for Popin’s main business locally.
2) Find and Network with Local Bloggers
Using tools such as Placeblogger, outside.in, Bloglines you can locate bloggers in your community that might have an interest in writing about your business or industry or actively linking to your blog.
Networking with relevant bloggers locally, commenting on their blog posts, and maybe even contributing a post is a great way to create additional local exposure. Don’t forget to seek out and add blogs from traditional media publications locally as well. Most radio, TV and news journalists have been asked to write a blog as part of their job, these can be great local social media contacts if you take the time to build relationships though their blogs.
3) Hold Meetups and Tweetups
Using a social media tool like MeetUp, you create and promote local events and tap the user base of MeetUp to create additional awareness about your seminars, product demonstrations, open houses, and grand openings.
Here a home remodeler in Encinitas, CA is offering a workshop on green remodeling through MeetUP.
TweetUps, a gathering of people in a community using Twitter, have become very popular ways to meet others locally that believe in the power of social media. That alone can be enough common ground to network on. Search locally for the term TweetUp and don’t be surprised to find one schedule in your community.
The online social media network Biznik allows members to join its online platform, but belong to a local community and promote in-person local events on the site.
4) Find local leads
Finding local prospects or potential strategic partners on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter is pretty simple through the use of the powerful search interfaces built into all. Simply searching by City is a great way to find other people using social media in your community. A service such as Twellowhood or LocalTweeps may aid in your search to find other businesses in your community using Twitter.
Many smart marketers are also employing some of the advanced features of Twitter Search to find people locally and filter their tweets to turn up leads. An auto body shop might set-up searches for people talking about being in an accident and reach out to them with advice for what to do to get the best quote. A computer network service provider can use advanced search to find people locally complaining about their network being down.
Naked Pizza in New Orleans uses Twitter to publish exclusive offers
to followers and attributes a significant rise in business using to this tactic.
Cupcakes on Wheels, a Los Angeles mobile cupcake business, tweets its location throughout the day so followers can find its signature brown vans.
Facebook’s Ad Targeting is also another great way to reach only local prospects on the Facebook platform. One of the targeting criteria is geography, so you can create ads that promote your web site or Facebook Fan page that are only shown to people in the geographic region you choose
5) Enhance Local Search Results
No matter how you put social media to use to create engagement locally, simply creating profiles on dozens of social media sites and linking those sites with local keyword content back to your main web site will help your site do better when people search locally. Creating very brand and local optimized profiles on sites like YouTube, Flickr and Slideshare will help with overall links to your site. Creating and enhancing local profiles on Google Maps, Yahoo and Bing Local will help you show up higher in the local results.
Finally, don’t forget to get active with the social review sites like Yelp! and Insider Pages. Ask, and even teach, your local customers hot to write reviews about your business. Currently Google Maps and Bing Local add these reviews to their local profile database too.
Using the technology and ability to access large groups of social media users locally has become a proven small business marketing tactic and is a great way to further enhance the face-to-face relationship building you already do.
Image credit: gloom
John Jantsch is a marketing and digital technology coach, award winning social media publisher and author of Duct Tape Marketing.
Adapted from: http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/marketing/article/5-ways-to-grow-your-local-business-with-social-media-john-jantsch
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Where have the TCA been?
The TCA's Keith Warburton and Adam Harris together with Chairman Robert French have been busy meeting members last week at the CRN and Intel roadshows, and this week at IT Channel Vision, and we've been delighted both with the support given to us by these sponsors, and the fact that we were able to support them at their events.Robert and Adam are at the CompTIA conference as well this week.
We made lots of new friends and gained new members, and you'll be hearing about some of them in the next TCA newsletter. Educational / networking events like these are really important - just ask the successful resellers who attend them about how beneficial they are.
Keith also attended the Parliament and the Internet conference last week and will be providing a separate write up about that in the newsletter in a few days time - Martha Lane-Fox looks to be the ideal person to head the new Digital Inclusion initiative.
We are currently speaking with other major vendors and aim to support one of them in their roadshow in November and December, meeting as many of our members as possible at multiple venues. We aim to have information on that for you in a couple of days.
If you want to make sure we hear your views on any issues that impact your business please contact us - you can find all the directors' contact details at www.tcauk.org
Adam Harris
Technology Channel Association
We made lots of new friends and gained new members, and you'll be hearing about some of them in the next TCA newsletter. Educational / networking events like these are really important - just ask the successful resellers who attend them about how beneficial they are.
Keith also attended the Parliament and the Internet conference last week and will be providing a separate write up about that in the newsletter in a few days time - Martha Lane-Fox looks to be the ideal person to head the new Digital Inclusion initiative.
We are currently speaking with other major vendors and aim to support one of them in their roadshow in November and December, meeting as many of our members as possible at multiple venues. We aim to have information on that for you in a couple of days.
If you want to make sure we hear your views on any issues that impact your business please contact us - you can find all the directors' contact details at www.tcauk.org
Adam Harris
Technology Channel Association
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