These are very useful tools for companies to use, when they come to a very difficult (rare) situation of their life cycle. Only some companies over the years have been using these kind of tools and this is because it is very difficult for one to be in a position like this. If your company needs these kind of tools, it actually means that

1. Your company is very successful
2. Your products are already everywhere (and every time)
3. You are in Forbes lists (in most cases)
4. You are a billionaire (of course)

But the worst part is that:

5. Your customers have been accidentally tought from you, to expect more and more great products in smaller period times. This leads mathematically to a marketing “boomerang style” collapse.

The cool part is that when these pr or marketing tools are used, no one can recognize them. We all just see some facts happening that for some people are even funny but for most of us are mostly disappointing.

Most people is disappointed because this is a process that you have to correct your mistake, and teach back all your customers to slow down their expectations on you. This seems dump but in fact it is saving your company and sometimes the whole industry.

So the next time Apple will stop an annual conference or announces Beatles new album instead of cloud iTunes or AppleTV app store, be aware that you are expecting too much from them, and they are a little bit of scared to death not to be able to serve you sometime in the future.

Just think about this (Especially you Filip!).

Happy New Year!!!

Trully there are five and a half billion people only a few years (maybe months) away from their first smartphone, which in most cases will also be their first computer (many countries actually), and their first Internet device (too many people). This will eventyally give them access to knowledge and bring them closer to real ideas and the freedom to choose (leaders, believes even breakfast).

Happy new year to all of us!

P.S. Quiz: Where are Morgan Stanley’s Internet Trends?

Our word is really changing considering all these new funcy ideas that come out every day for free or with the cost of a Caramel Macchiato ($4.99)! No more prices with 5-6 digits for software that needs updates sooner that you think.

Are all these accessible to anyone? No. You have to own a “smart” device. But no worries. These devices will come down to a Caramel Macchiato soon, or we will get up there to them.

Take a look a Wold Lens video:

Already many people are saying that Twitter is a new IRC and there is no future at all. Thousands of followers with no meaning. Is anybody out there watching each tweet? Of course no. Everybody wants others to do that.

But I am just thinking the results, if Twitter decides one day to make money from a product like this:

“Upgrade now to a premium Twitter account for just $5.99/month and enjoy tweets up to 150 characters!” WOW!

Are you sure this day is far away?

You can see two of the most interesting examples here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linked_Data

http://www.wolframalpha.com/ (It actually extracts knowledge from data on the web in real time.  Pretty cool.)

Travel agents… gone.
Stock brokers… gone.
Real estate brokers… in trouble. Photographer’s agents, too.
Literary agents?

The problem with being a helpful, efficient but largely anonymous middleman is pretty obvious. Someone can come along who is cheaper, faster and more efficient. And that someone might be the customer aided by a computer.

The airlines don’t want to pay travel agents, because the travel agents were making more money on each flight than they were. Some house sellers hesitate to pay real estate brokers because they don’t believe the 6% payment is an opportunity, they see it as a tax. Investors abandoned full service stock brokers because trading stocks directly is faster and more accurate than using the phone.

Read the full article here (Seth Dodin’s Blog).

This video (Greek one) is a part of eMTI 2008 event in Crete, Greece where some Marketeers and Google people tried to give hoteliers an idea of what a hotel could do to sell more rooms with the minimum cost, using Google AdWords or other online tools.

But are these services suggested from companies that are using revenues for their payrolls?

I have seen companies encouraging customers to buy services that they don’t need just because their “internet consultant” makes more revenue from the specific services (as a reseller) than from other ones. Someone can say this is the meaning of selling. I just can’t understand it.

The revenue implications is a fundamental issue for the new economy and the big key of success of companies that are making 20% or more on internet sales.

I am predicting that the right services are going to win “internet consultants” at the end. Hoteliers and other company owners will prefer the wining formula rather than keeping their horses out of the market.

Online success is not about complicated technology, but it’s about asking the right question. Of course you have to get the right answer as well.

But the big power of such services is in my point of view the ability to mashup the world or the world that a user cares of. This means that each one has the freedom to choose who wants to twit and you can twit him/her. It’s not like Facebook or Myspace that you can end up with 1,000 friends but still not even know half of them. With such services you can choose information channel and Social Impact transparently. Ok this could event work with RSS, but it’s not really user generated and for sure it’s not personal. At least not all the time.

I strongly believe that “personal” user generated information about social “real” information is what the future of information will be. Something tells me that there will be more services that could mashup more targeted info to the right person at the right time.

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So it is more important to stay focused on revenue than web page statistics. Statistics has to do with internet strategy and a web consultant would do a great job on this. I would rather go for a few visits with a good result than many daily visits with no sales.

Targeting is much more difficult than it seems.  That’s why not every web site is a successful one.

Don’t you think?

Not all services and products are so bad under this situation. Specifically in the tourist industry hoteliers must find solutions to spend less money and have more reservations. The answer is the INTERNET. And by this I do not mean just cooperating with online travel agents, but also publish your business to as much as many sources you can. And what is the best choice at this time? Of course Priceline and its company Booking.com with a great success in the industry for the last years. With almost 10% down cheaper commissions against Expedia, Booking.com is one of the few companies that shows growth in Q4 2008 and this is not just luck.

These kind of services have motivated hoteliers to take action and finally understand that can gain more reservations with just a few hours of personal work.

This of course impacted the profit of Priceline itself.