Facebook has acquired Instagram, an app which allows people to put their photos through filters and make them look pleasantly antiquey, like a Polaroid, for the bargain price of one billion dollars. This is despite Instagram never having made a penny, and having no advertising model in place.

This begs the question: what is the value to Facebook?

Could it be the technology? Unlikely. Could it be to make money through introducing advertising? Possibly, although $1billion is a lot of advertising, and would take a long time to recoup! Could it be to reduce the competition? Quite likely - Instagram was Facebook’s largest photosharing rival.

However, one thing which stands out above everything else is the Instagram user base; currently standing at approximately 40 million users.

Despite Mark Zuckerberg suggesting that Facebook isn’t going to do anything with the users, I would suggest that with the increasing competition from Pinterest, this is a strategic move to ensure Facebook gets its hands on the lion’s share of the photo-sharing market.

What if Facebook were thinking of creating a Pinterest rival, either through Instagram or by promoting it to Instagram users. That $1bn is starting to stack up...

What we would do if we had one billion dollars:

“I would muscle my way into the upper class party scene and find a way to get my claws into Prince Harry, then marry him and become a princess!” Stacy

“Buy a nice little tropical island and set up the perfect night club and probably do lots of stuff that is scandalous and most likely illegal” Jon

“I would buy lots of old houses and put William Morris wallpaper and stained glass windows up everywhere, and start a Pre-Raphaelite revolution” Corinne

"I would set up a sustainable fund to educate the youth of a number of poor countries. The focus would be on basic utilities – irrigation, water purification, energy generation, communication" Paul

I’m sure I’m not alone in my penchant for dystopian sci-fi novels. Or maybe I am. Either way, one thing I’ve been thinking about since reading Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart is our increasing dependence on technology to get us through everyday life. I can’t help wishing I could fast-forward and take a peek at what life will be like in ten or twenty years time, post-iPhone, post-Facebook, and post-data protection...

SSTLS aims to do just that. The kind of world the author envisions already sounds familiar – could he be joining the ranks of Huxley and Orwell by being ahead of his time? See if you agree - some of his predictions are below.

1. The iPhone becomes another limb

You won’t be able to live without your ‘Apparat’

We’re already heavily dependent on our phones for our social lives, but at what point will they become pivotal to our existence? Will people who don’t wear one be ostracised from society, even penalised? A pebble-shaped pendant that hangs from the neck is what our smartphones could one day become. There’s one point in the novel where New York comes to a standstill and all technology becomes unavailable. The effect this has on people’s psyches is telling – what would happen in a world where we could no longer connect to people through instant messenger? Or shop for stuff online?

2. What data protection?

We’ll be able to view data on anyone, anywhere, at any time

For anyone who already thinks Facebook’s ability to know everything about us is getting creepy, Shteyngart’s world goes one step further. Statistics on our lives, bodies and movements will be easily accessible to all. There is a great scene where Lenny does a few quick searches on his love interest, Eunice, on his flight home, and ends up finding out everything from how much her sister weighs to her credit card transactions and her childhood traumas. Will the internet be the new Big Brother?

3. Social media goes public

Everything you do will be rated, reviewed, and commented on

Ever looked at someone across a crowded room and wanted to know all about them? Socialising and social networking will merge. Rating people in real-time and commenting on their clothes, shoes, and friends might sound shallow, but it could be a fast approaching reality. The prediction is that social networking will become instant and open to all – you’ll be able to point your ‘Apparat’ device at anyone and rate their ‘hotness’, as well as message anyone you see on the street.

4. Citizen journalism multiplies

Everyone around you will be ‘Media’

Ok, so this one’s already kind of true. But picture the scene: you’re at a gathering with your friends and none of you are actually conversing with each other. Why? Because you’re all streaming your own live TV shows to your respective followers. Whether it’s ranting about relationships, or commenting live on the latest current affairs, we’ll all be part of the army of Media types (note the capitalisation) aptly satirised in Shteyngart’s novel. If and when this occurs, media will become something of a free for all, with little credibility – something where everyone streams for the benefit of their own sponsors, and where money is the only object.

5. We’ll forget how to read

Books will become smelly relics of the past

In SSTLS, anyone who reads a book is met with revulsion – books are seen as smelly, pre-historic things, often referred to as historical artefacts. In the book, Eunice has a degree in ‘Images and Assertiveness’, yet she admits that she has never learned to read. Instead, she and her generation only know how to ‘scan’ the endless streams of data they consume – a symptom of the already rapid decline of the print medium. We already see commuters glued to their Kindles and news apps, how long before this impacts on our relationship with literature? Only time will tell.

Other predictions in the cybersphere

While these predictions may sound a little grim, there are some other, more uplifting conversations elsewhere. Predictions for the future of online marketing include:

• Ads that track our eye movements and change according to what content we read
•  ‘Advertainment’ – advertisements which tell the user a story that unfolds in episodes
• Automated search – your phone or tablet will know so much about you that it will search itself spontaneously, knowing exactly what information you need at any given time

For more, check out this blog post by a Google insider.

Could you live without your smartphone? What will be the next thing we just 'can't live without'? All you need is your future goggles and a good old dystopian sci-fi novel to find out...

At atom42 we like to make sure we're making use of all the high quality resources available to us. Online tools such as AdGooroo, AdInsight and Crazy Egg come in very handy for the work we do, for example.

Content tools can be a little more complex, since a robot will read and process text in a very different way to a human brain. One example of this phenomenon is Grammarly, a content checking tool which markets itself as 'an automated proofreader and your personal grammar coach'.

I tried the basic version of Grammarly, which asks you to paste a section of text into a box for it to check for problems. Annoyingly, the two hour free trial of the advanced version asks users for credit card details, so I decided against it. I'm really glad I did....

Using the tool

It was interesting that Grammarly did a plagiarism check. However, those who work in content will know that it's also quite straightforward to paste a section of copy into Google on 'exact match' to check for duplicates. Grammarly also found huge numbers of mistakes in everything but it wouldn't explain what they were unless you signed up and gave credit card details.

I got fed up of seeing so many alleged mistakes on various internet pages, including the ones I'd written, without it letting me see what they were. So I chose two of my favourite classic novels (below) and checked their first pages on Grammarly - I reasoned that if the tool found fault with these works of art then it was not going to be a terribly useful service for me.

Hemingway and Suskind: 'weak'

Grammarly's opinion of both Ernest Hemingway's 'The Old Man and the Sea' and Patrick Suskind's 'Perfume' was a dismissive: 'weak, needs revision', with Hemingway's classic receiving a particularly dismal overall score of 42/100.

But there's still hope: fortunately for Hemingway, the tool generated a number of 'vocabulary enhancement suggestions' for the text.

Keeping the pulse in proofreading

In conclusion, it's one thing making use of the tools on Word to check spelling and grammar, it's quite another asking a robot for an overall 'score' on your text and expecting it's detailed critique to really help assess the value of the writing to a human being - we're much too complex for that.

atom had a few things on its mind when making the case for attending ad:tech this year. Would it be worthwhile? Would we learn anything new? And how many USB sticks could we grab?

For those who haven't heard of it, ad:tech London is an annual conference aimed at the online marketing sector that bundles together a supplier exhibition and seminars by leading players in the marketplace, along with a strategic conference by keynote speakers.

We attended on the first day and got there for it opening to maximise our chances on all of the above. Having avoided the long queue with our ebadges, there was already quite a buzz from the attendees and stallholders and there was lots to see and do. With over 170 exhibitors and 100+ seminars, it was going to be a struggle to squeeze them all in.

The ad:tech turnout

After getting our bearings, we could see that all the usual products were on show, from display, email, affiliates and social. One of the largest presences was in the mobile sector, with lots of exhibitors trying to stand out from the crowd with their mobile display platforms.  Tracking and analysis also had good visibility with 23 companies trying to convince us we need more than Google Analytics.

Mobile aside, the “next big thing” seemed to come from display via RTB (Real Time Bidding) and re-targeting products. The latter promised more focused targeting of display ads down to product level, resulting in significant increases in CTR. Each supplier seemed to have their own unique algorithm to achieve this, but it presumably only becomes effective with huge volumes, thereby limiting its usefulness to large volume retail sites.

There were a couple of new players to the UK market who had already established themselves overseas, from the USA to India. We managed to have a chat to quite a few of these and will hopefully be able to get some good deals with them as a result!

A worthwhile trip

Overall, the early start and attending on the first day was definitely worthwhile as it was very busy, quite noisy and everyone was feeling fresh and ready to do some business. It was definitely a very useful and engaging conference.

A few new contacts were made along the way, with plenty of interesting propositions to integrate into our future online acquisition strategies. Unfortunately, for the rest of the office, free USB sticks were in very short supply!

Google Analytics is a free web Analytics product which helps you analyse the activity of users who reach your website. You can find out where they’re coming from, how long they’re staying on your site, what keywords they’re using to get there, whether they’re buying, whether they’re using a smart phone, if they’re returning later, etc, etc. In Google’s own words; 'Google Analytics makes it easy to turn page views into profits and, from our point of view, is an invaluable tool when it comes to optimising online marketing activity'. But with so much data available, how do you find what you are looking for? Here are my top ten tips for Analytics success:

1. Set up Alerts

With so much data at your disposal, it’s easy for any mistakes or improvements to be missed or overlooked. The alert feature (found in the intelligence section) lets you specify certain events you want to be notified about. For example, I might want to be alerted if the conversion rate from my ecommerce site drops below 2% (suggesting something could be wrong with the payment process), or if organic traffic reaches a record high level (suggesting a new high position in the SERPS). With the ability to receive alerts via email or text alerts (only in the US), this tool ensures you will always be on top of your accounts.

2. Set up Advanced Segments

One main flaw of the old Analytics interface was that it didn’t allow you to compare trends for two types of traffic at the same time. Yes, I could filter keyword traffic looking just at brand using the ‘contains’ function, but what if I wanted to compare that to unbranded traffic in one graph? What if I wanted to look at my Yahoo! Display traffic against Facebook traffic for the last 6 months? The only way to do this was by exporting each variable separately and manually creating a graph in Excel. With advanced segments, however, you can specify a source/medium/keyword parameter and then compare multiple segments in one graph. GA also allows you to share these segments with other users (good for consistency) and copy across multiple profiles.

 3. Create Custom Reports to give you what you want quickly

Want to look at total clicks and conversions for each medium in one report? Not an easy task without the custom report feature. An under-rated tool but possibly the one that I use most often, Custom Reports allows you to, well, customise your reports to show only the metrics and dimensions you need. You can even segment your data by time of day to look at hourly clicks/conversions, which can inform any day parting strategies. One major flaw in the custom reporting feature is that you can only see aggregated data for one specified time period – not broken down by day / week within that period (for anyone who has used this feature, you know what I mean!).

4.  Exclude your own site usage

If you spend all day looking at your website, chances are you will be skewing all the site usage metrics - increasing time on site etc. Exclude your IP address in your account settings to make sure your Analytics data is only reflecting actual users, not you!

5.  Interrogate the data

So you are looking at time spent on site for your ecommerce site and you see that it has suddenly increased in the last week. Good, right? Users are engaging more with your site, right? Not necessarily! An increased time on site could mean that users are struggling to find what they are looking for or are clicking aroun aimlessly. Always think about your stats in context and don’t just assume that a line going up is a good thing!

6.  Link with your AdWords account

Being able to see your impression/cost/CTR data in the same interface as time spent on site/pages per visit/bounce rate is highly valuable when trying to optimise your PPC activity. This is why we always recommend our clients link their AdWords accounts to Analytics.

7. Personalise your Dashboard

Many people don’t realise that the dashboard in Google Analytics is fully customisable, allowing a user to see their most important reports on their welcome screen. To add a new graph/report, simply navigate to it as you would normally, then, above the graph, you will see an ‘add to dashboard’ button. Clicking that will make sure you can see that report immediately in the dashboard next time you log in. Each module on the dashboard also contains a handy link, allowing you to view the full report in its usual place, which can be moved around so that more important information can be displayed without scrolling down.

8. Use Google Annotations

You’re running historic reports and you see that your traffic doubled on a specific date three months ago and your immediate question is: ‘why?’ It’s difficult to remember what action at that time led to such a dramatic increase without a significant amount of digging in old emails or change history reports. The Annotations feature allows you to place a comment next to specific dates outlining anything that happened that may have an effect on results which you may need to refer to later.

9. Set up Goals

It might sound obvious, but how can you work out what is working and what isn’t without setting up accurate goals in Analytics? These need to be tested and sanity checked before being taken as gospel, (for example, ensuring the final step is on a confirmation/thank you page, not on the contact us page). Combining goal set up with a goal funnel (which outlines the steps on the way to the goal) will enable you to see where you are losing traffic along the way. You will be surprised how much difference tweaking each step can make to your overall results!

10. Track everything & be consistent!

If I could give you one piece of advice for total Analytics success (it’s like some geeky version of Baz Lurhmann’s ‘sunscreen’), then it would be this – track everything and be consistent with the way you do it! Make sure every link in email communication, every click tag on display creatives, every PPC ad, every voucher code listing and every directory submission has tracking parameters appended to their destination URL. Unfortunately, Google hasn’t quite worked out how to differentiate between upper and lower case and will track ‘google’ and ‘Google’ as different sources, so consistency is also key for making sure you have data you can rely on – as a rule I always use lower case - saves confusion!

In summary, Google Analytics is an invaluable tool for analysing your site’s traffic levels and quality. By using all of the features Google offers, you should successfully be able to navigate your way through the reams of data to find what’s most important to you right now. I said right now.....Go!

“Hi, my name is Kate and I’m addicted to my smartphone”

Our very own Kate Prior isn’t alone. Having invested in a brand spanking new iPhone just before Christmas, the number of hours I’ve spent Facebooking/checking emails/searching/YouTubing/gaming is probably into the millions... Ironically the number of minutes spent actually calling anyone is probably only about five. My point, and the point of this article, isn’t to inform you that I don’t any friends; rather that smart phones are taking over OUR LIVES. But, you probably knew that already. In fact you’re probably reading this on your smart phone right now.

125 years of Angry Birds is played EVERY DAY

Did you know that there are 1 billion mobile internet users globally; they account for 23% of all time spent accessing the web? These people are browsing, using applications (including a lot of Angry Birds), emailing, watching videos and buying. 40% of all tweets are from mobiles. If this doesn’t tell you the importance of mobile Internet use then I recommend you put down your dialup modem, leave your house for five minutes and look around. Or alternatively take a trip on the London Underground – where I imagine 124.9 of the aforementioned Angry Bird years are played out.

But what does this mean to the everyday marketer?

I’m not here just to ramble about mobile use in general - this is atom42’s blog after all. The thing you need to disseminate is that there are a lot of people going online from their mobiles, and of course from products such as the iPad. As marketers, we need to use this to our advantage. After all, a lot of people aren’t yet realising the size of the mobile market, meaning that at this relatively early time, there’s a lot of opportunity to be had. If you own an online shop, consider that since June 2010 there has been a 600% growth in online mobile sales.

However, it’s important if you do set up specific mobile channels, that you track them effectively. You might consider managing them separately to your usual campaigns; to better see the return on your investment.

But don’t do it for the sake of it!

So yes, there’s a lot of opportunity. But to stress, this isn’t to say you should immediately speak to your development team and create an app, a mobile site and redirect all traffic from anything other than a desktop PC to them.

No, the important thing is to think about it carefully. Does your business suit the mobile environment? Are people searching for your brand, your services, or your products on the move already? In fact, are people already reaching your business from smartphones?

You might consider using an Analytics web package to investigate the traffic to your site, and use tools such as the Google Keyword Tool to see trends in the market.

The last thing you want is to rush into a decision and end up with a forgettable experience and a large invoice, or worse, end up being plastered over the internet for your incompetence.

Mobile marketing naturally doesn’t suit every business. Make sure you know it suits yours.

The future of the smartphone online experience

Currently 85% of all new mobile handsets are able to access the Internet...

Mobile advertising spend is set to grow 781% in the UK - and up to 1024% in Europe - by 2015...

Even secure services such as accessing financial details will be done by over 1 billion people by 2015...

The growth of mobile certainly isn’t finished yet, in fact we’re just starting to touch on the exciting new possibilities that it has to offer. Personally I think the next explosion will be the purchasing of products through mobiles. It’s only a matter of time before you’ll be able to wander past a shop window, point your phone at an item of clothing, and immediately be taken to a purchase screen for the item.

Think Shazam for clothes.

It’s all very exciting...

The beginning of 2011 has been one of the most tumultuous periods in recent history for the Middle East, with countries across the region - from Tunisia and Egypt to Yemen and Libya, experiencing political unrest and violence as people take to the streets in demonstration against unpopular incumbent regimes. The history and politics of the area is not something I pretend to fully understand, so I’ll keep this post about the simple but effective piece of innovation that these hard times have brought about, namely Speak2tweet.

Speak2tweet (@speak2tweet), is a joint endeavour between Google, Twitter and SayNow – a company recently acquired by Google which specialises in merging voice technology with social media. It was launched on the 31st of January with the intention of helping the people of Egypt stay connected with each other and the outside world after the Egyptian government shut down internet access in an attempt to disrupt protesters. The service is essentially a voicemail service that allows the distribution of messages via Twitter, allowing people in the affected areas to post and listen to messages without the need for internet access.

So how does it work?

Users simply ring one of three freephone numbers and leave a short voicemail. A link to the voicemail is then posted on Twitter’s designated speak2tweet page with hashtags automatically added to indicate the message’s country of origin. People without internet access can listen to messages by dialling the same numbers. At the time of writing, @speak2tweet had already logged over 2,500 tweets.
 
Soon after the service was launched, the sites Alive in Egypt, and later, Alive in Libya were set up to translate Arabic voicemails into English and transcribe them, giving people around the world an up-to-date account of what’s happening in the Middle East. 

Simple concepts in a high tech environment

Speak2Tweet proves that simple, intuitive innovations are often the ones that gain traction in the online world, much like Twitter itself did back in 2006. The microblogging site’s original concept of sharing 140 character updates with friends was brilliantly simple, arguably one of the reasons it’s been so successful and now has around 200 million users worldwide. 

In my opinion, Google have created an uncomplicated, effective solution in Speak2tweet, and anything that can help people stay in touch and share information under the very difficult circumstances in the Middle East is a good thing.

It seems this time, the search giant that doesn’t always seem to live by their mantra of ‘Don’t be Evil’, deserves a pat on the back.

Facebook has added yet another dimension to its social offering with the introduction of Facebook Deals in the U.K. The model, a clear imitation of the Foursquare concept, is a location-based service which encourages users to check into places or businesses such as shops, restaurants and bars, often offering discounts for those who do. Every check-in generates a wall post which is distributed to friends’ newsfeeds - in Facebook terms that’s generally 300+ people.

Facebook has segmented their Deals into four groups to cater for different customers and businesses:
-    Individual Deals
-    Friends Deals – to be redeemed by a group of people
-    Loyalty Deals – offers based on frequency of check-ins
-    Charity Deals – the business donates money to a charity for each check-in

Will Facebook Deals influence the retail market in the U.K.?
Following the mediocre success of Foursquare the immediate response from many people would be “no”, but Foursquare is no Facebook. The social networking giant has a large and dedicated user base, strong finances and a highly valued brand. Most businesses would welcome an association with Facebook. In just two weeks, we have already seen a number of UK brands jumping on the Deal bandwagon. O2, Alton Towers, Starbucks, YO! Sushi and Debenhams are some of the first retailers to roll out first offers via Facebook Deals, and are so far sticking to the individual Deals, with Alton Towers offering free entry to all customers who check in this Friday and YO! Sushi giving free meals to the first 1,000 customers to check in.

A good indicator for Facebook Deals is the ‘not unless there’s a discount’ mentality which has swept the UK over the last couple of years. Before stepping out for lunch it’s become part of people’s routine check whether there are any meal deals on Vouchercodes or Groupon. Facebook Deals will take this one step further. By showing users where they can get their nearest discounted lunch, coffee or cocktail, not only will local businesses benefit by attracting customers which may have otherwise passed them by, but they’ll also generate powerful social media marketing with a built in brand advocate.

What hurdles will Facebook Deals face?
It might be a great concept (thanks Foursquare!) but it hasn’t been all plain sailing for Facebook Deals. It’s an issue that’s come up time and time again for Facebook, with practically every new feature they launch. Can you guess what it is yet? Yep, privacy. You might assume people would be uncomfortable about disclosing their location in real-time over a social network but it seems not, leading to fears about making it easy for stalkers and burglars when people have declared their location as being away from home.

What’s in Facebook Deals for businesses?
Only the most powerful of all types of marketing – word of mouth. Facebook could not have put it more aptly when they said “The wisdom of friends has taken over from the wisdom of crowds”.  Facebook Deals offers businesses a great opportunity to expand brand awareness via social media, helping them to acquire new customers and enrich their relationships with existing ones. As an added bonus, Facebook Deals will provide businesses with any information which the user has chosen to share on their profile, improving targeting for the future. 

Sounds too good to be true? It probably is. Naturally it will be the larger brands who can afford to give the biggest discounts, therefore capturing the most new customers, but it’s not all doom and gloom. Since the service is free it will also provide a platform for smaller businesses to experiment with mobile and realise the potential of the mobile market.

What’s in Facebook Deals for Facebook?
Facebook are expanding their business model to enter more profitable fields becoming a merchant for retailers, starting big with brands such as Amazon and ASOS. Although Facebook claim that motive behind the launch of Deals was to give customers the total user experience, recent photos of Mark Zuckerberg with dollar signs for eyes suggest otherwise. In addition to knowing demographic information of customers, Facebook's database will expand to include their whereabouts and preferred shopping habits, increasing the value of the already $11.5 billion dollar company.

The things we can do nowadays... We can scan a barcode whilst out and about and the item will be added to our online shopping basket. Instantly compare the price of a book in Waterstones to see if we can get it cheaper online. Access an array of military satellites to triangulate our exact position and plot a route from our current location to our desired destination on a map. View a complete report of our exercise routine online, after our workout.

More and more, the line between the online world and the real world are blurring. How long will it be before we can no longer tell the difference between the two?

The Tesco Effect

That woman from Cold Feet and that bloke out of the Full Monty have been banging the Tesco drum on our TV screens for a while now. Recently though, it’s all become quite hi-tech.

You’ve probably seen the TV ad - They go about their daily business, scanning barcodes of the things they’re running out of with their Smartphones to automatically add them to their Tesco shopping basket. I never thought I’d say this about Tesco, but that is way cool! I’ll probably become a Tesco online customer just so I can use the app and feel all futuristic... (although I hope Ocado follow suit – I like my groceries to have an expiry date longer than 2 days in the future).

As a relatively simple piece of open-source technology, surely it won’t be long before other online stores bring out their own app to bring this functionality to the masses - I’d be very surprised if Amazon don’t weigh in with their own app pretty soon. From giving an online goliath such as Amazon access to high-street impulse buying to high street stores improving the chances of converting a shopper at a later date, the impact of this could be significant.

Price Comparison

Of course, Tesco have attracted me to a closed shop at the moment. But, this same technology lends itself nicely to an open market. I quite often wander into my local Waterstones, flick through a book and then scan the barcode to see if I can get it cheaper online (not that I usually end up being patient enough to visit a site, make an online transaction and wait for the book to be delivered, but it’s nice to be able to compare the price).

I have another app on my iPhone that is able to read text using my camera screen and instantly translate it into another language, which made me think.. “perhaps we won’t need barcodes to compare prices in the future...”. If I’m buying a car, maybe I can just photograph the registration number, or even just take a photo of the vehicle to see if I can get the same car cheaper elsewhere. The possibilities are endless.

Map my Ride

When I make the 4-mile journey to or from work on foot, I love logging into a website that will tell me my route, how many calories I’ve burned, what my pace was and all the other data that doesn’t mean much to me to but looks cool on the screen.

Effectively, I’m using a web analytics package to track the effectiveness of my exercise, just as I use one to track the online marketing activity I run on a daily basis. I wonder what other aspects of my life I could use analytics on?

Could it help me stick to my financial budget? Could it help me ensure I call my parents often enough to stop them worrying that I might have died during the last week, but not so often that it becomes irritating? Could it remind me that I bought that exact bouquet of flowers for my girlfriend last year and suggest a suitable alternative based upon her previous feedback?

Where is it all leading...

Whilst I’m eventually hoping for an Iron Man-style visor with HUD hooked up to my own ultra-secure database, and cybernetic microchips that can give me instant knowledge of Kung Fu as soon as I plug them in, but I’m guessing we won’t see anything like that soon.

Still, the Smartphone, and the technology it is built upon, appears to be steadily integrating the online world with the real world. As online marketers, this is a trend we cannot ignore.

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