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First Impressions of Google +

Friday, July 15th, 2011

Remember your first day of school? Remember how you didn’t know anyone there, and weren’t sure where you were meant to going and what you were meant to be doing?

That lost and baffled feeling is similar to what you get when you first enter any new social networking site, and was certainly what came to my mind when I set up a profile on Google +, the new social network aiming to challenge the well-established dominance of Facebook and Twitter.

Features of Google +

On first inspection, the look of the Google + site is quite neat. Lots of white, quite minimalist – all very Ikea. The layout seems a bit unfocused though, and it takes a bit of time to get to grips with all the options you are presented with.

There is ‘Circles’, the control panel for your contacts, separated into groups according to their relationship to you (i.e. friends, acquaintances, relatives, work colleagues). Google hopes this will better replicate the actual experience of communicating in real life. For example, there are some things you might want to share with your close friends, but not with your parents, and Google + allows you to decide for each post you make which circles will be allowed to see it.

Currently Google + is available to a small number of people on an invite only basis, so my circles are looking a little empty right now, but will hopefully fill out a bit when it gets a general release!

There is also ‘Sparks’, which seems to be kind of a news feed based on your interests. Initial impressions are that it’s (to put it politely) a bit rubbish - I entered ‘copywriting’ and ‘music news’ as two of my interests, and it gave me a seemingly quite random list of articles and news stories related to these categories (One was for a country music festival taking place in Ohio this weekend. Thanks for that, Google!)

Finally, there’s the Hangouts option. It’s a video chat feature that allows you to invite a number of people from your circles into a group video conversation via webcams. This would have been a great little USP were it not for the fact that Facebook, not wanting to be beaten to the punch, announced a tie-in deal with Skype last week, enabling them to offer video chat as an extension to the existing (and very popular) Facebook Chat.

Marketing Potential and SEO Impact

From a marketing perspective, it’s difficult to know at the moment to what degree businesses will be able to utilise Google + to market their brand. The site is still in the testing stage, and Google has warned businesses not to start using it yet until it’s ready. What is clear already is that Google have decided to give an awful lot of influence on its search results to recommendations made by other people in your circles.

I did a search for ‘phone insurance’ (an extremely competitive search term) during the week, and found that a client of ours, iProtect Insurance, was showing on the very first page of my results (usually it would be expected to be around page five). The reason for this incredibly high ranking was that it has been shared by someone in my circles via the Google +1 feature.

If Google + starts to really take off, I can see this becoming a hugely important aspect of SEO in the near future. Getting a recommendation from an influential and popular Google + user could become extremely valuable to companies, and we may see marketers actively courting and incentivising users to endorse their site with +1s.

Will it take off though? Google + definitely signals a big shift in the way Google operates and wants to be seen. Up until now it has measured its success largely by its ability to get people on and off of its site as quickly and efficiently as possible, striving to shave even milliseconds off the amount of time it takes to do a search and get to the results you are looking for. Now Google is hoping to persuade us to stay put, to hang around and spend some time building up our circles. Are people going to respond well to this?

To go back to my statement at the beginning of the article, starting up on a new social network can be daunting, confusing and can initially require quite a bit of work. Whether or not people decide that commitment is worth it will depend ultimately on whether they see Google + as genuinely providing something more than Facebook and Twitter are already currently offering them.

If you fancy giving it a whirl and would like an invite, send us your email address and we’ll give you your golden ticket invite to the Google + network. Contact us at info@keymultimedia.co.uk and let us know how you get on!

Chris Redhead

Tags: google, google plus, Social Media, social networking
Posted in General, Social Media | No Comments »

New Media Age’s Online Marketing Show

Friday, July 1st, 2011

Every once in a while, the Key Multimedia team manages to drag ourselves, bleary eyed and squinting, away from our office computer screens and out into the world outside. One such occasion arose this week, when we travelled up to London for New Media Age’s Online Marketing Show

This was a two day exhibition event in Earls Court, with experts in online marketing and web technology sharing advice and ideas on the latest developments online and how to best make use of them.

One of the real highlights of the show was a presentation by Matt Britten, MD of Google UK, who gleefully laid out Google’s vision of where the web is taking us, and the myriad opportunities arising from this process of evolution.

Fast and Happy – The Importance of Speed

Britten’s first point was of the crucial importance of speed – as proof he provided the incredible statistic that Amazon experiences an average 1% drop in sales traffic if their website runs just 100 miliseconds slower than usual.

Online shoppers in 2011 hate waiting for pages to load, and the smallest time margins can mean the difference between a customer completing their transaction or giving up and abandoning their cart. This kind of information is simply not being heeded by many online retailers who think gaudy, all-singing, all-dancing Flash-based websites with tons of features are the best way to attract customers.

Also demonstrated were some of Google’s latest innovations in the mobile sphere. Google have been working on making synching between a PC and phone much easier and more intuitive, meaning that with Google Chrome you can now send data from your PC browser to your mobile with one click of an icon.

Snap it, Tap it, Type it, Say it…

As for the future, Google see online search as becoming far more than just typing in words in their search bar. They’ve already pioneered voice search (say “weather” into Google’s Nexus S smartphone and it will pull up a page displaying the forecast for your local area), and have now introduced a tool called Google Goggles. Terrible name, but the idea behind it is a fascinating one.

Take a photo on your phone of something in front of you, and Goggles tool will try to identify what it is, and more importantly for Google, tell you where you can buy it. Britten demonstrated this by taking a photo of a front cover of a book using the Goggles tool – it was immediately able to tell us what it was, and pulled up a link to the Amazon page for that book. Amazing!

Social Search

Another interesting part of the exhibition was a discussion panel with one of the heads of Microsoft Advertising and other search engine experts.

They all emphasised how search engines (taking their cues from social media) have become much more personalised and dynamic in recent years, so that now no two people will see exactly the same search results even when using an identical set of search terms.

This of course presents a challenge for SEO companies, which will probably require a shift towards a more precise, targeted approach in future rather than just trying to optimise for everyone in a general way.

Another key point raised was the different weighting the various search engines ascribed to social media networks – the guy from Microsoft (in a roundabout way) confirmed that Bing is more heavily influenced by Facebook, while Google gives more emphasis to Twitter - a useful insight for anyone launching a new social media campaign!

What really emerged overall from the event was that the web marketing industry finds itself in a really interesting place at the moment – faced with very rapid change in some areas, such as the vastly increasing use of mobile online, and continuity in others, like the continuing importance of good quality content as the pillar upon which any commercial website or online marketing campaign stands.

Chris Redhead

Tags: google, online marketing show, search engines, Social Media
Posted in General, Online Marketing | No Comments »

Social Buzz Monitoring

Friday, May 20th, 2011

Whether you like it or not, your industry, your products and most likely your business itself is being talked about online. Today’s consumers constantly share opinions, reviews, questions and ideas about what they spend their money on, and its up to you whether to see that as an opportunity or a threat.

This online chatter around a topic or a brand is called the social buzz.

What is Social Buzz Monitoring?

Put simply, Social buzz monitoring is the process of identifying where your brand is being discussed online, and by whom.

Like focus groups and surveys, social buzz monitoring allows you to canvas opinions and collect data from consumers and influencers that may be useful to your business. The trends and conversations that buzz monitoring uncovers may have an influence on your approach and the way you plan your strategy for the future.

Some experts will tell you that social buzz monitoring is far superior to traditional survey exercises, as people will usually tend to be more candid when sharing thoughts online with their friends and peers (although not always!).

As well as being great for listening, buzz monitoring also offers opportunities to reach out and engage with consumers, meaning you can respond with help and advice, and hopefully drive sales.

Monitoring Tools

Many of you will be familiar with Google Alerts. This is an example of a free monitoring tool, and though useful for beginners, it is a very basic option compared to some of the other more sophisticated tools out there.

If you want to take a step up from what Google Alerts can offer you, there are paid monitoring tools which are offered by companies like Brandwatch, Attentio and Radian6, who will normally charge you a large monthly fee for use of their monitoring dashboard.

Our own service lies somewhere in between these two options - we are capable of far more sophisticated monitoring than you can get from a free service such as Google Alerts, but without the premium price charged by the paid monitoring dashboards.

So how do monitoring tools work? Basically, monitoring tools allow you to monitor select keywords such as the name of your business, meaning that whenever your brand is mentioned in blogs, news, discussion forums, social networks etc you will get a notification.

You can also take it a step further, and look at other key words and phrases that are related to your business or your industry.

Most newcomers to buzz monitoring will find the data they are given overwhelming and often largely irrelevant, like a fisherman who casts his net and keeps pulling out old boots and bits of junk instead of tasty fish.

The key to successful buzz monitoring is being able to hone your results so your net is not cast too wide, and you are only pulling in the stuff that is of genuine use to you. It is also all about being current and being able to spot buzz as it happens, so you can react and respond instantly.

Benefits of Social Buzz Monitoring

Used effectively, social buzz monitoring should help you to answer some of the following questions:

Are people talking about your brand?

Buzz monitoring gives you a sense of how much people are talking about your brand. Even if you are a small business and there may not be that much buzz around you, there almost certainly will be chatter about your industry that could be very useful to tap into. What are the needs and problems of customers in your industry? What are they looking for?

Who is talking about you?

Buzz monitoring is a great way to locate your market – for example, are your customers mostly Facebook users, or are they more often to be found on Twitter and LinkedIn? Pinpointing your customers in this way will allow you to target your marketing (both online and offline) more effectively.

You may also be able to identify key influencers in your industry – those bloggers, tweeters and others whose opinions are influential to other people. Identifying and engaging with these influencers could assist you greatly in spreading message about your brand.

What are they saying – is it positive/negative?

Even negative comments about your brand can be useful, as it may allow you to spot problems you might not otherwise have identified or been told about. You can even engage with your unhappy customers who are complaining about a disappointing product or service and offer to put things right, or at least put across your own side of the story.

Are online consumers looking for your products/services?

One of the huge benefits of social buzz monitoring is its ability to generate ‘hot leads’, by notifying you when someone is asking about or looking for a product or service that you can provide. You can then reach out to this individual and offer your advice and assistance, and perhaps generate a sale. Even if you don’t get a sale, you have benefitted your brand image tremendously by listening and offering to help a consumer.

How to Start Monitoring

Used properly, social buzz monitoring can be extremely valuable, whether for gauging consumer opinion, providing customer service or pushing sales.

As a business, you have the option of choosing an online marketing agency to do your social buzz monitoring for you, or you can have a go at doing it yourself by purchasing your own dashboard from the likes of Radian6.

However, as is the case with many things, having the expertise to know what to do is equally important as having the best tools to do it with. Just as a chef can have everything he needs for a delicious roast lamb dinner but can still end up with a soggy undercooked kebab if he doesn’t know what he’s doing, effective social buzz monitoring relies on more than just having the best, most expensive dashboard – it requires the knowledge of how use it and respond to the data it produces.

If you would like to know more about how social buzz monitoring could help your business, why not give us a call on 01305 755609, or drop us an email at info@keymultimedia.co.uk

Chris Redhead

Tags: facebook, google alerts, linkedin, social buzz monitoring, Social Media, twitter
Posted in General, Social Media | 1 Comment »

The Week in Web News

Friday, May 13th, 2011

It’s been a busy week in the online world – there have been good ideas, bad ideas and more jostling for power and backstabbing than an episode of the Apprentice.

The big story this week was the revelation that Facebook secretly hired a PR company to smear Google. They hoped to get stories into newspapers and blogs claiming that Google was breaching privacy laws and gathering excessive amounts of data on its unsuspecting users.

Facebook were hoping to do this all on the sly, but when the PR company, Burston-Marsteller, approached bloggers with the stories they were challenged on the information, and admitted that Facebook had put them up to it.

To some degree Google expects these kind of attacks – you don’t get to be one of the biggest, most profitable businesses in the world without making a few enemies, and it’s safe to assume that for every one of these smear stories where the perpetrator gets uncovered, there are several more that don’t.

However, when companies like Google find themselves being attacked and smeared from all sides, it means they have to spend a lot of their time putting out fires and defending themselves, and less time focusing on the more important task of finding new ventures and evolving their business.

Microsoft Wins Battle for Skype

Some would say that being forced to adopt a defensive posture because of smears and criticisms was the biggest problem which plagued Microsoft throughout the previous decade, and has now caused them to lose their leading position in recent years. Microsoft’s big news this week was their acquisition of Skype, the online video phone service. Several other companies, including Facebook, were said to be interested in the purchase, but Microsoft secured it with a deal thought to be worth around £5 billion.

Like many of the internet companies which are being traded for sky-high prices at the moment, Skype doesn’t actually make itself an awful lot of money (it actually made a loss last year). It is massively popular – it has around 660 million users worldwide, but these users don’t spend very much on it, and the challenge for Microsoft is how monetize this huge customer base.

One option would be to integrate it into other services – Skype used to be owned by eBay, who bought it in 2005 with a plan to integrate it into their online marketplace, hoping this would allow buyers and sellers to talk to each other more efficiently via internet phone. It didn’t catch on with eBay users, but Microsoft could try something similar – for example by finding a way to integrate the technology into MSN Messenger, or even Xbox Live?

Apple is Top Banana

It’s been a relatively quiet week for Apple, but it still managed to make the news this week by topping the list of the world’s most valuable brands in the Brandz annual top 100 global brand power list. This is the first time Apple has topped the list, beating off competition from the likes of McDonalds, Google, Coca Cola and IBM.

So what does this all mean? For me, this week’s news all comes down to the crucial importance of brand image.

You could put so much of Apple’s success down to the way it has built itself a fantastic image, becoming known internationally as a company which consistently makes desirable products people love. Consumers associate the Apple brand with stylish design and superb user experience, and this gives Apple an enormous advantage over some of its less glamorous competitors.

Google has an equally positive brand image – its mantra – ‘don’t be evil ’, reflects its values and reputation for ethical business practices. The Burston-Marsteller smear campaign this week was presumably Facebook trying to bring to the limelight a darker side of Google’s business, and hoping to cast some doubt on their ‘nice guy’ image.

Microsoft, meanwhile, has serious brand trouble. Compared to Apple and Google, Microsoft is in danger of becoming perceived as an uncool brand, associated largely with joyless suits who give dreary powerpoint presentations in offices and go to sleep at night dreaming of spreadsheets.

Microsoft has taken a major punt by paying so much for Skype, but it is part of a new generation of thrusting young internet companies, and Microsoft may be hoping that by bringing Skype into their fold a bit of that cool will rub off on them.

Chris Redhead

Tags: Apple, eBay, facebook, google, Microsoft, Skype, twitter
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The Gadget Show Exhibition at the Birmingham NEC

Tuesday, April 19th, 2011

Key Multimedia had a day out at the Gadget Show Exhibition in Birmingham last Thursday, and as I sift through the countless leaflets, flyers and free pens that accumulated in my bag over the day, I thought I’d share a few thoughts on the event.

The Gadget Show Exhibition was a four day event transforming Birmingham’s eerily vast, expansive NEC building into a huge showcase for the latest gadgets and technology from top household name brands and lesser known companies.

The big thing that dominated the exhibition this year was 3D technology – in the form of Nintendo’s new 3DS console and a variety of the latest 3D TVs. The entertainment industry’s plan seems to be to try to transition 3D from cinemas into homes, and with the 3DS the first example of the technology becoming available without the need for a slightly silly-looking pair of dark
glasses, you may see it begin to make the leap from gimmick to essential in the next couple of years.

Another major part of the exhibition was tablets – Apple appear to have another golden goose on their hands with the iPad, and rival companies like Samsung and Acer have been quick to jump in to the market with imitation tablet computers. A lot of the stalls also offered products designed to deal with
the limitations of tablets, such as USB keyboards and adjustable stands, so we may well see tablets start to bite into the laptop market in the near future.

As for other trends we noticed at the exhibition, we were slightly bemused by the proliferation of William and Kate themed iPhone cases and laptop bags – does anyone really want to cover their stylish £500 phone with a piece of Union Jack-coloured plastic displaying the grinning faces of the royal couple? Apparently they do…

While we were largely very impressed by all the new stuff, we all still enjoyed the walk through history of computers and video games, which had a different section showcasing the technology from each decade since the 1970s, including the ZX Spectrum, Speak and Spell, and Etch-a-Sketch.

You can’t help but feel a fondness for these relics from a simpler era – when computer keyboards still made that satisfying clickity-click noise they make in movies, and Pong was everyone’s idea of advanced video gaming.

Our day concluded with the Gadget Show Live show itself, a fun and engaging performance which involved the presenters of the Channel 5 show larking about on stage with gadgets, riding around on tiny bikes, and performing pop songs with autotune, LED costumes, giant robots and coloured wigs. All good stuff,
and an enjoyable way to end a thoroughly good day out for the Key Multimedia team.

Chris Redhead

Tags: Gadget show, iPad, tablet computers, technology
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Google Brings +1 to the Social Media Party

Friday, April 8th, 2011

Well, this is exciting. Google has announced one of its biggest forays yet into the social sphere with its new +1 tool. +1 will take the form of a clickable button which will appear on web pages and will allow users to recommend sites and share their recommendations with friends and contacts.

Watch Google’s explanation of the service here:

If it all sounds familiar, that’s because Facebook has been doing the same thing for a while now with its ‘like’ button, which is becoming an increasingly common sight on third party websites across the net. There’s also the Twitter ‘retweet’ button, which offers an almost identical service for Twitter users.

So it’s a classic me-too product from Google. Is this a sign that the great innovator is now resorting to playing catch-up with its more genuinely edgy, boundary-pushing, and social media-savvy rivals?

Google’s Social Woes

When companies get really big (and Google is certainly that), there is always a tendency for them to take their eye of the ball, and this allows the younger, hungrier rival companies to take advantage.

The social element of the web in particular has been a real Achilles heel for Google in recent years, and its high-profile stumbles have opened the door for other companies to steam ahead and steal a march in the social media arena.

Last year Google launched Buzz, the much-derided social network meant to challenge the hegemony of Twitter and Facebook. The service was a massive flop, seeing a very poor uptake by users and ending up being quietly shelved by Google not long after.

Despite all the many great achievements of Google, there remains a suspicion that Google doesn’t really ‘get’ social media. It could be partly the culture of the corporation, which was founded by engineers who made Google such a success in the field of search through a winning combination of logic, problem-solving and scientific efficiency.

Unfortunately, this no-nonsense approach doesn’t always apply to the social side of the web, which to some degree is all about the nonsense! It’s not just about creating the best algorithms, it’s about interaction between human beings, and therefore requires a humanistic approach which Google has sometimes been lacking.

Google are hoping that is what this new +1 tool will help to provide. It’s a way to personalise searches and ensure your search results are relevant to you and your friends. And despite their patchy track record with social, we think there’s every reason to expect that Google’s +1 will be a success.

Probably the biggest single factor that sunk Buzz was that people didn’t have time to commit to using another social network, with the important part of the market already largely nailed down by Twitter and Facebook. Google +1, on the other hand, requires only one click, so users probably won’t be put off from the service because of time constraints or ‘social networking fatigue’.

From a business perspective, the real impact of the +1 service could be when the +1s start to influence Google’s search rankings. In the near future, we are likely to see that sites with the most social recommendations will begin to be rewarded with more visibility in search results, and of course, given that +1 is Google’s own feature, you can fully expect that +1s will be given more weight in terms of influencing the Google rankings than Facebook ‘likes’ and other rival services.

If you would like to know some more about utilising social tools and boosting your search engine rankings, call us for a chat on 01305 775609

Chris Redhead
SEO Copywriter

Tags: facebook, google, google +1, social tools, twitter
Posted in General, Social Media, Tools | 1 Comment »

The Rise and Rise of Social Media

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011

Another day, another story about the growth of social media. We are constantly being told about the increasing influence of social media in the world – last month there was the story of the Egyptian man who named his child ‘Facebook’ in gratitude to the role that social networking played in his country’s recent democratic revolution - what better example of how ubiquitous these sites are becoming in our lives?

However, amidst all the hype it can be hard to get the facts and work out just how big social media really is. I was therefore interested to see this week Econsultancy.com putting together a set of statistics on user numbers of various social media platforms, and comparing them with the same figures from a year ago. The results are absolutely astonishing.

Social Media Usage Stats

According to their statistics, twelve months ago Twitter had 75m user accounts. It now claims to have 175m users worldwide. The average number of tweets written per day is now 95m, up 250% from the 27m a year ago.

Professional-orientated networking site LinkedIn has also seen its user numbers increase greatly in the last year. It is now up to 100m users, up 100% from the 50m who were using the site a year ago.

Meanwhile, Facebook’s membership has grown from 350m to an unbelievable 640m in the space of just one year. Given that the world’s population is thought to be around 7 billion, that’s not far off 10% of the entire world using Facebook!

When you read these kinds of statistics, it’s incredible to think there are many people out there who still think of sites like Facebook and Twitter as “just another passing fad” that everyone will get fed up with before too long.

It’s clear from the stats that social media is here to stay. When you look at Facebook’s over half a billion strong membership, it seems beyond doubt that it is now far too big to disappear any time soon.

The example always cited by the social media naysayers is Myspace, once the biggest, most active social network on the web, now the online equivalent of a ghost town. However, the important thing to remember with Myspace is that the reason its millions of users (myself included) abandoned the site was not because they had lost interest in social networking, but because there were other sites (namely Facebook and Twitter) ready to migrate to which did the same kind of thing, but better.

So if you accept that social media is with us for the foreseeable future, the question for businesses is how do you take advantage of it?

Putting the ‘Social’ in Social Media

As well as the huge numbers of users, one of the great things about social media from a business perspective is that people who use these sites (particularly Facebook) give away a great deal of insight into their personal behaviours, likes, dislikes etc. This provides businesses with a unique opportunity to target their marketing towards certain types of customers in a much more effective way than is possible with traditional forms of advertising.

However, the caveat here is that social media users don’t always respond well to direct advertising, so if you just blunder in firing off ads in all directions, you are likely to simply be ignored.
Instead, probably the best way to approach marketing on social media sites is to use them as they are intended – by engaging with people, and building relationships and communities around your brand.

It’s not just about selling – social media gives you the opportunity to put a personal face on your company, and show your fun and interesting side. Building a community takes time, but if done properly, it can improve your brand image, increase awareness and hopefully give a boost to your sales.

So if you’re not already making use of social media, there has never been a better time to start. We don’t recommend you name your child after Facebook, but we do encourage you to take full advantage of it as a tool to really reach out to your customers and show them what you’re all about!

If you’re interested in finding out how social media could benefit your business, why not give us a call on 01305 755609

Chris Redhead

Tags: facebook, linkedin, Social Media, twitter
Posted in General, Social Media | No Comments »

Browser Wars: Firefox 4 Storms Ahead of Internet Explorer 9

Thursday, March 24th, 2011

There were raised eyebrows all round in the Key Multimedia office this week when we heard about the incredible number of downloads of Mozilla’s new Firefox 4. Amazingly, it has been downloaded twice as many times in its first 24 hours as Internet Explorer 9 managed on its release day a week ago.

Released on Tuesday, the Firefox browser clocked up an incredible 4.7 million downloads in a day, dwarfing the 2.35 million first day downloads for IE9, which had previously seemed like a very good haul for the Microsoft boys.

As of Thursday, Firefox 4 has been downloaded an astonishing 14 million times worldwide. Wow!

A major draw for downloaders of Firefox 4 is its new JavaScript engine. This allows it to render websites six times faster than the engine previously used in Firefox 3.x.

It’ll come as a big setback for Microsoft, who have seen their market share dwindle in recent years as more and more competitors have arrived on the scene to grab their own slice of internet browser pie. As recently as 2008, Internet Explorer had as much as 80% of the worldwide market share. So what happened?

How Mozilla Outfoxed Microsoft in the Internet Browser Royal Rumble

For years, Internet Explorer was the undisputed heavyweight champion of web browsing. With the raw power of the Microsoft brand and resources behind it, it ruled the web browsing ring like Mike Tyson in his heyday, crushing any challengers to its title with sheer brute strength.

Mozilla arrived on the scene like a young Muhammad Ali – it may not have had the punching power of the Microsoft giant, but it stepped into the ring brimming with confidence, and was far more versatile, willing to duck and dive and try new all sorts of new avenues and approaches.

What made Firefox so attractive was that many users felt Internet Explorer had gone a bit stale - it was slow and clunky at a time when users wanted faster and more flexible. Firefox offered browsing that was safer, more stable and most importantly, faster.

The striking thing about Mozilla is that it is a non profit organisation, relying on thousands of volunteers from around the world to supplement the work of just a couple of hundred paid employees. The corporation claims its goal is not making money, but enriching people’s experience of using the internet by “encouraging choice, innovation and opportunity online”.

Firefox has taken hold particularly well in parts of Europe, particularly in the old Eastern Bloc. A reason for this is that many of these nations were a bit late to the internet party, so they did not have the same hardwired brand loyalty to Microsoft that many of us in the West had after years of virtual Microsoft monopoly.

In December of last year, Firebox reached 38.11% of European market share, supplanting Internet Explorer as Europe’s most popular web browser for the very first time.

What Next For Mozilla?

Despite their success, this is no time for Mozilla to rest on their laurels. Let’s not forget that Internet Explorer is still comfortably the market leader with around 56% of market share worldwide, and it is unlikely to be knocked off its perch any time soon. Meanwhile, Firefox must also contend with Google’s Chrome browser, which has been doggedly snapping at its heels for a couple of years now.

All this competition is surely healthy in terms of these rival companies constantly innovating and striving to have to the best product, and ultimately this is all to the benefit of us internet users.

Of course, a big question for the future is how the growth of mobile internet use will affect internet browsers. As smartphones become ever more popular and everyone gets increasingly used to accessing the internet through apps, will web browsers cease to have such a crucial role in internet use?

Chris Redhead

Tags: Firefox, Internet Explorer, Mozilla
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From Stockholm to Windermere

Tuesday, October 19th, 2010

Well what a crazy few days…..
It all started last Wednesday with a mad dash up to London heathrow and a short stay at the Holiday Inn M4 in order to cath an early flight to Stockholm.

Up before dawn and down to Terminal 3 - great things these self-service check-in desks!

Met up with Ros Pritchard - the Director General of the British Holiday Homes & Parks Association (BH&HPA) and then a short flight to Stockholm.

Stockholm - old town

We have been working with the BH&HPA for nearly two years now - consulting on various IT and web projects as well as writing for the bi-monthly journal for Holiday Park owners.

Earlier on in the year, Ros asked me if I would like to write the Internet Strategy for EFCO&HPA - the European Holiday Parks Association that is made up of 23 European Asscoaitions and around 25,000 campsites and holiday parks.

Wow - what a task - three months hard work consulting with Association members across Europe and then pulling a Strategy together that would see EFCO&HPA take it’s website presence into 2011.

The Stockholm visit was the culmination of the Strategy and my chance to present the paper to the Board.

After a whistle stop tour around old town Stockholm I was introduced to the Board members and then we enjoyed a great evening out - starting with the legendary Ice Bar and then a great dinner in the atrium of Stockholm’s National Museum - I don’t know how Lars managed to arrange that one - but it was superb.

Friday arrived and I was on - a 2 hour presentation of the project findings and introducing the Strategy. All went very well - me just rembering to slow down between each slide whilst Linda translated into French.

Well, the presentation couldn’t have gone better. Lots of great feedback and enthusiasm for taking things forward. There is a lot of work ahead for the Association and it’s members but with a domain like www.campingeurope.com under its belt it is off to a good start.

Fun at the Best of British Holiday Parks Conference

I don’t think my suitcase had a chance to recover much on Saturady before it was off up the motorway to Windermere in the Lake District for the Best of British Holiday Parks General Meeting.

I had been asked to present a session on Online Marketing and Social Media and how it was impacting on holiday parks. These guys are already switched on as respresented in the conference room were 50 of the top 5 star holiday parks in the UK.

The session went brilliantly and everyone was feeling pretty “geared up” for taking on Facebook and Twitter. What I wasn’t quite expecting was one young lady who was sat in the front row who had gotten herself so enthused - she jumped up out of her seat and proceeded to run around the conference room.

Never happended to me before - but what a great self-expression from someone that just couldn’t sit still long enough to want to get involved with Social Media!!

Anyway, back to work with a bump now and catching up with the multitude of emails!

Posted in General, Online Marketing, Tools, Web Analytics | No Comments »