New Beginnings…

Moving forward

I recently hinted about starting a new job and wanted to take a minute to elaborate and let everyone know what I am up to.

2010 ended with my tenure finishing at Synergy Advertising in different Marketing roles for Digital Media & Publications, and although I have left Synergy for a new opportunity, I have nothing but amazing memories and accomplishments to boast during my tenure. I learned a lot during the time I spent there and found my niche within this industry, made great friends and developed professional contacts. There are many things about Synergy that I will miss, but am excited to move on to my new role and what I view as the next chapter in my life.

It has been a month now in my new position, as Digital Marketing Specialist at a stealth digital startup with new projects. I cannot reveal much yet about the company or service, but will in the coming weeks and let everyone in on what I am up to. What I can say is that I am very excited to be a part of a new innovative venture, backed by a large private group, with a growing staff of talented technology people. I am confident that when we launch, we will impress the web world, create value for consumers and improve the lives of our subscribers. Stay tuned and I promise to share more soon.

Getting to know you better.

THIS POST IS INSPIRED FROM A SIMILAR POST I READ AT OLIVIER BLANCHARD’S BLOG

The infamous James Lipton, host of “Inside the Actor’s Studio” BRAVO television program, asks his guests a few questions at the end of the show. If he were to interview a Marketing or Business professional, here how what he’d probably ask.

Now being a Marketing person myself, if I were to answer Mr.Lipton’s questions, this is how I would go:

What is your favorite marketing/business
-  Profit

What is your least favorite marketing/business word?
-  Bottleneck / Impossible

What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally about marketing/business?
-  Ideas that turn in to creative solutions to problems/opportunities, helps make people’s life better.

What turns you off about marketing/business?
-  Not the business, but people rather who don’t quite get what marketing actually is in the present age.

What’s your favorite curse word when you see really bad marketing?
-  OMG you gotta be kiddin me!

What sound or noise do marketers/business people make that you love?
-  The constant tapping of fingers on the table, bang of the table when an idea is conceived

What sound or noise do marketers/business people make that you hate?
-  Cheap copy and stupid messages.

What profession other than marketing should marketers attempt – to become better at marketing?
-  Marketers haven’t left any profession untended!

What profession should marketers never try?
-  Finance, Number crunching, Statistics

If marketing heaven exists, what would God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
-  “Finally you’re here. My heaven feels so complete now”

Facebook is web’s ultimate TimeDrain – Thanks Zuckerberg!

The Facebook Globe

The average U.S. Internet user spends more time on Facebook than on Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Microsoft, Wikipedia, and Amazon combined. Think about that for a moment.

New numbers released by Nielsen today confirm what we’ve known for a while: Facebook () is the web’s #1 time sink. What’s more interesting though is just how much more time we spend on the world’s largest social network today than we did 6 months ago.

Back in June 2009, Nielsen estimated that the average U.S. user spent 4 hours and 39 minutes on Facebook per month. That’s about 9.3 minutes per day in a 30 day month. In August, that number rose to 5 hours and 46 minutes, or 11.5 minutes per day.

In January 2010 though, the amount of time the average person spent on Facebook jumped to over 7 hours. Each American Facebook user spent an average of 421 minutes on Facebook per month, which amounts to over 14 minutes per day. Even if you lump together the time spent on Google () (1:23), Yahoo (2:09), YouTube () (1:02), Microsoft/Bing () (1:35) Wikipedia () (0:15), and Amazon (0:22), it still doesn’t beat Facebook.

Ethics in Journalism.. Some common practices every journalist should follow

Society of Professional Journalists

Seek Truth and Report It
Journalists should be honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information.

Journalists should:

— Test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error. Deliberate distortion is never permissible.
— Diligently seek out subjects of news stories to give them the opportunity to respond to allegations of wrongdoing.
— Identify sources whenever feasible. The public is entitled to as much information as possible on sources’ reliability.
— Always question sources’ motives before promising anonymity. Clarify conditions attached to any promise made in exchange for information. Keep promises.
— Make certain that headlines, news teases and promotional material, photos, video, audio, graphics, sound bites and quotations do not misrepresent. They should not oversimplify or highlight incidents out of context.
— Never distort the content of news photos or video. Image enhancement for technical clarity is always permissible. Label montages and photo illustrations.
— Avoid misleading re-enactments or staged news events. If re-enactment is necessary to tell a story, label it.
— Avoid undercover or other surreptitious methods of gathering information except when traditional open methods will not yield information vital to the public.

Yahoo! ready to attack Twitter on the Microblogging warfront

After closing the social network platform SpotM, Yahoo has launched Meme, in English, to take on microblogging site Twitter. The company had launched this service in Spanish and Portuguese languages earlier this month.

Meme is currently in an invite-only mode, similar to few microblogging services like Tumblr, Twitter, Pownce and others. After creating the account, users get a blank blog for micro-sharing text, images, music, videos or mash up of all these things.

It also offers the facility to add new friends by searching the internet, which is quite similar to Tumblr and Twitter.

The company’s previous efforts to capitalize on the social networking domain kept failing in spite of repeated attempts. The recently launched ‘Know Your Mojo’ also failed along with the Indian social network, SpotM, which was closed down less than a year after its launch. Well Yahoo has a reputation of not being consistent with its products, they disappear and the accounts close down.

Saad Khan’s death – Inside scoop

The death of Saad khan has slowly made its way to the mainstream media. I have been hearing that GEO and Dawn have recently covered it. Meanwhile there has been a lot of discussion,heated debates,questions and grief over the incident on twitter and Facebook. The news was first brought up by Farrukh Ahmed, his message on twitter made the most impact it read:

@Farrukhahmed: is thinkng while we sleep, some1 is lying in a casket in a foreign land waitng 2 return only 2 B put away 6 feet undr. RIP Saad Khan

@Farrukhahmed: 2 all blaggers: need your help in raising voice against a miserably organized game show arranged by unilever which took the life of a good friend. unilever is refusing to disclose the details / video footage of the event. pls RT

Today am trying to do my part in highlighting the freak accident that took Saad’s life. Saad a champion swimmer,a banker, and most importantly a 32 year old father of four has left behind a widow and a grieving family. One can only imagine the condition of his friends and families, their never ending questions that have only met silence so far. Saad was participant in a reality show commissioned by Unilever and mind share, two multinational giants, who still have not been able to elaborate the circumstances in which the tragic accident took place.

Here is what we know:

Photo Courtesy- Paksatire

Unilever Reality show kills father of 4!!

A very sad sad tale indeed

In their quest to produce a western copy of thrilling and adventurous reality show, Poor and substandard arrangements have become the reason of the killing of a young man Saad Khan. According to the news circulating around and the word of mouth. I got this information from a colleague who knows the victim.

Saad Khan lost his life in the recording of the show when the host Amina Sheikh (Mrs Mohib Mirza and a known actress) gave an under water challenge to him. TSaad lost his control and shouted for help but the lame safety and lifeline measures failed to rescue him from the deep water and the young man, the father of four had to suffer.

The blame goes straight to the producers of the show, apparently who are Unilever and their agency – Mindshare (Mr. Taher A Khan’s property, TV1 as well) for hiring such a sub standard team and the cheap arrangements that became the cause of his death. For now, the mainstream media has rejected to air any such news as they get a fair amount of advertising business from Unilever. And spokespersons of these two companies have been shamelessly calling the incident a mere accident.

Mansoor Khan, the cousin of the victim demands that “ALL CONCERNED PEOPLE OF UNILEVER & MINDSHARE MUST BE PUT BEHIND BARS.”

Mansoor doesn’t want you people to boycott Unilever Products, all he wants is that the culprits who gambled with the life of the participant must be brought to the court of justice.

1 out of your 5 emails doesn’t reach you!

If you’re reading this blog, the chances are pretty good that you’ve signed up for one or more email alerts, e-newsletters, or automated updates over the years. Plus, if you work inside almost any part of the media industry, the odds are also good that you or your company sends out bulk emails.

And if you’re by any chance a blogger (like me ), you’d be hard put to build an audience if you didn’t at least try the F&F approach via email now and again.

A new report from Return Path indicates that not as many of those email alerts may be reaching your intended audience as you might have expected. Based on 500,000 email-based campaigns in the first half of 2009, the company said more than one in every five — 20.7 percent –of the consumer emails never made it to the intended recipient.

B2B emails performed even worse, with 27.6 percent undelivered.

Spam or junk filters were not a significant factor, causing only 3.3 percent of the failures, but a surprising 17.4 percent of the emails were not delivered at all. The report notes that this contrasts to what marketers are normally told, which is that the percentage “delivered” ranges from 95 to 98 percent.

The differential is whether “delivered” means the message reached the email-host as compared to whether the host passed it through to the intended recipient’s in-box. Factors that affect this include how each email provider rates the sender’s reputation, as well as a mix of other, proprietary filter settings.

Yahoo! – Microsoft 10 Year Deal! Part -2

Microsoft Wins, Yahoo Folds, Google Still Reigns in Search Game

Microsoft gave Yahoo bare minimum terms in their new 10-year partnership: a fortified combined search engine off of which it can sell and retain advertising revenues, and a possible exit strategy down the road.  Either way Microsoft wins.

The long-anticipated search and advertising pact announced today did not include the favorable terms — primarily billions in upfront revenue guarantees– expected by disappointed Yahoo investors, who initially drove the company’s stock down 12 percent.

YHOO 14.32 -0.28 (-1.92% ) Intraday | 3 Month | 6 Month | 1 Year

Quotes delayed at least 20 mins.

Whether by design or coincidence, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer played his cards well over the companies’ tumultuous three-year negotiations. Yahoo initially rejected a $47.5 billion buyout offer from Microsoft in 2008 as well as a proposed search partnership with a $1 billion upfront payout last year — both under the leadership of former CEO Jerry Yang.

By comparison, the pact finally approved by new Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Yahoo board members (including five percent activist shareholder Carl Icahn) is modest, complex and unlikely to create meteoric value. It’s almost as if there is another shoe to drop in the Microsoft-Yahoo two-step.

At best, Yahoo will realize $500 million in annual operating profit and is guaranteed only 88 percent of ad sales from its affiliated and owned search business in the first five years. Yahoo will see $275 million in cost savings and $200 million less in capital expenditures annually once the companies’ businesses are fully integrated in about two years. Weak advertising and shaky initiatives will depress 2009 operating cash flow 10 percent and drive down revenues 13 percent, analysts estimate.

Yahoo – Microsoft 10 year Deal!

PART – 1

Microsoft and Yahoo have reached an agreement on a 10-year search deal. The agreement which will allow both companies to focus on their core strengths: Microsoft’s Bing will become the default search engine on Yahoo.com, and Yahoo will eventually take over the ad inventory on all Bing search results, eliminating complexity for advertisers (and internal overhead).

The Department of Justice still needs to sign off on the deal, but executives of Microsoft and Yahoo are reportedly confident that will ultimately happen. The agreement will probably take months to finalize, but since Google currently claims 65 percent of U.S. searches (which i will agree), and Yahoo and Microsoft 19.6 and 8.4 percent, respectively, the sooner they can start to catch up, the better.

From Microsoft’s press release, the key terms of the agreement: