Snowcrashing

App Store Users: The Good, The Bad and The Quitters.

Posted on 28. Sep, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

Another App Store Day is on us. With lots of numbers to dive into.

According to Apple’s official press release, 2 billion apps have been downloaded in just over a year. Itunes took 6 years to sell 8.5 billion songs.
But….
-$0.99 is not $0.00.
-Buying a song is a conscious act- you really want it, you want to listen to it over time, you want it on your Ipod. Apps are an impulse driven “purchase”.
-Many apps come with the price tag $0, which makes the impulse of downloading even more irresistible.

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Mobile Augmented Reality- Week In Review.

Posted on 27. Sep, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

Mobile Augmented Reality is still in its infancy, but it is clear that it is creating a radically new way to organize and interact with information. ”In the future, we see augmented reality as a component of any kind of digital media interaction,” said Mobilizy’s co-CEO, Alexander Igelsboeck, at the EmTech@MIT session.

New AR apps have been released this week. Here’s a selection.

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Remember Facebook Before Its Platform? Here Comes Oneforty For Twitter.

Posted on 24. Sep, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

They say that personalization is coming to the 2010 web, in the form of filters and recommendations, to help user discover relevant data.

They also say that the vast majority of Twitter users are clueless. And Twitter’s efforts to engage and educate them through the Suggest User List (SUL) and the tiny ads of Twitter apps haven’t done much so far. TV celebs and the likes seem to only drag with them a few millions of rather inactive “viewers”….Neither could Twitter implement Facebook Connect to educate users through their Facebook tweetering friends…

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Getting Ready For Digital Advertising 2010

Posted on 24. Sep, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

According to a forecast from ad firm GroupM, the Internet will account for 15% of global ad spending in 2010, hitting $65bn annually, as advertisers continue to shift their budget from traditional media to digital

• 6% of it will go to Mobile which is expected to experience the biggest increase (+19%) as mobile apps continue to spread;
• 43% will be allocated to search, which continues its steady growth;
• 34% should be the share of display ads, the only sector who might see a decrease of -1%

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The Ifashion Revolution

Posted on 23. Sep, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

The fashion industry is under-going radical changes. For better or for worse, it’s a matter of personal opinions. It used to be an elitist world, accessible only through glossy magazines acting as influential gatekeepers. The impact of the digital economy couldn’t be more disruptive. Instant access to fashion shows means a flat democratic ecosystem is being built, where everybody can watch a runaway event on its PC; online shopping aggregators and blogging have made consumers savvier and in charge of their own style; lower costs of distribution have made designers less dependent on the runaways laws. You can buy online collections exclusively  designed for eBay, shop smarter for high-end fashion brands on Gilt, watch the fashion week in real-time.

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What Location Service Are You?

Posted on 19. Sep, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

Why would you want to share your location? There are many answers to this question and mostly it depends on the situation and the personality.

1) The Socialite. If what you’re looking for is a twist in your social life, Loopt offers a few options: you can meet up with your Facebook and Twitter friends, find new Yelp hot spots, or go for a blind date with someone who matches your profile (Loopt Mix). The location service, which was once featured by Apple in its Iphone TV commercials, is not the only one in the category. Whrrl, with a recently revamped 2.0 version repurposed around your social “stories”, and BrightKite are close competitors. But what makes Loopt different is that it is now the only Iphone app that can run in the background. Which means that it will notify you if anything noteworthy is going on, without your checking in. Loopt’s other advantage is that it supports many platforms and has a deep integration with a few carriers.

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Challenging Dunbar: Gist.

Posted on 19. Sep, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

A known principle in the social relationship science is the Dunbar’s number.  Dunbar was a British anthropologist who theorized that, because of our cognitive limits, we can maintain only a limited number of relationships, in which we really know who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person. The number after which you become socially numb (or dumb) was identified to be 150.

In our hyper-connected society, even the most socially inept has a network bigger than 150 “contacts”. But keeping up with all of them is becoming a nightmare and a challenge for businesses where each contact has a very measurable dollar value.

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What Are You Telling Me?

Posted on 16. Sep, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

Sometimes companies are forthcoming about their plans and products.  Think of the new Ipod Nano and of Steve Jobs words. “We’ve seen video explode in the last few years,” he said, showing a picture of a Flip video camera. “Here’s one, a very popular one, four gigabytes of memory, $149, and this market has really exploded, and we want to get in on this.”  Plain and simple.

Other times, companies speak in riddles. So you know that, when you’re using their service, you’re contributing to the making of something different than what you’ve been told. And in the near future, you might find yourself in a totally different reality.

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A Freemium Mobile World?

Posted on 13. Sep, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

With 75,000 apps in the App Store, how do you convince a user to buy your paid app? The magic word seems to be Freemium.

Who says so?

First it was Admob in its July mobile metrics report. The mobile ad network run a survey on about 1,200 users of the Apple App Store and Android Market and found that the top reason for purchasing an app was that users had liked the free version.

What conversions are we talking about?

According to a recent Mobclix’s study:

-Apps with a lite version will sell 2 or 3 times more.

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App Buzz: Enjoy The Bad News With Puma Index!

Posted on 11. Sep, 2009 by Antonella Stellacci.

Earlier this week, Chetan Sharma blogged on GigaOM about the limits of the current mobile advertising ecosystem.Sharma is right: mobile advertising is stuck to banner ads with “Click here to download” call-to-actions. Tracking technologies are still  behind.

In this caveman scenario, mobile apps have been a game-changer. Context-aware, personalized apps are opening up a whole new world of possibilities for advertisers to engage with consumers in effective new ways.

Brands who had been turned down by the device and industry limitations, are rushing to develop their own apps. We’re still at the very early stages of the phenomenon, with most apps looking just about the same. But there are exceptions and one of them is generating a lot of buzz, the Puma Index.

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