Social Media Users Tend To Be More Loyal

Social media place customers in the center of the attention. This interesting study social media users are 83% more likely to be loyal customers.

• 20% of shoppers coming to the e-commerce site from one of the retailer`s social presences, including those on Ravelry and Flickr as well as its own blog, buy merchandise.
• Social media users are 83% more likely to be very loyal to the brand compared with those shoppers who don`t use social media.

It shows up the link between the use of social media and customer experience, that drives to purchase. Social media proves it is a customer relationship management (CRM) tool. Examples and case studies of social media used to enhance both customer service and experience are springing up. The time is now to take action.

Shopping Centers To Reinvent Their Trade

On May, 13, I have attended a conference in Paris about new technologies in the shopping centers, organized by DMC. The purpose was to explore the use of new technologies to enhance the attractivity of shopping centers, whereas Internet is challenging their leadership. Many different use could be thought, especially to provide a greater customer experience, or to ease the buying process.

A lot of questions and topics have been raised, and will probably been used for further posts. But what clearly stood out, wad the necessity for the shopping center trade to change.

If shopping centers corporation core activity has been since the beginning to lend stores to businesses, and to create the visitors flow needed to help retails, the competition has become much more intense. A lot of possibilities are ahead of them.

But what is for sure is that shopping centers now need to create added value to improve customer experience, in order to remain attractive.

Shopping centers aren't dead, but they need to create more added value for retailers, and that goes through customer experience enhancement.

May Customer Loyalty Be A Bad Thing?

CRM programs aim most of the time to create customer loyalty, in order to increase the benefits/customers. In fact, customer loyalty, in a stable market, has been thought as one of the only way to seek growth, as winning marketshares over competition might be costly.

Businessweek explains us that customer loyalty can be a bad thing at some point, especially in the b-to-b market. Indeed, in order to establish a strong relationship, companies provide to its more loyal customers extra services and better promotions than the average ones. And this fact is more percievable in this economic downturn.

" In this down economy, customers in both B-to-B and B-to-C settings are naturally much more sensitive to economic issues. Furthermore, companies in B-to-B relationships are often more reliant on their vendor partners to help them shoulder this burden. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, and we as managers need to recognize that our job is to meet our customers' needs if we are to deserve their loyalty.

But the simple solution to improving customer loyalty in a down market is to offer price deals. In fact, firms that track their customer loyalty can be guaranteed that loyalty scores will increase with each substantial decrease in price all things being equal.

But that's a bad loyalty strategy. No, this doesn't mean we should not find ways to be more efficient so that we can pass cost savings on to our customers. But price-driven loyalty is always the lowest form of loyalty. It means that we aren't offering differentiated value to our customers."

Studies must be undertaken in order to see if customer relationship management efforts, in terms of extra services provided, remains profitable, compare to other customers which would not qualify for these types of programs. Customer loyalty of course must be managed, but in fact, it is not really customer loyalty that might be bad, but more the bid you could give them.

Direct Marketing Campaigns To Recruit Customers With Twitter

Tracy Cote explains on the DM News website how a direct marketing agency can use Twitter as an recruiting tool. A lot of marketing professionals are seeking for ways to leverage Twitter to generate business. Even myself has discussed a lot about the topic for the past year. Hence I have explained how Twitter could be used to address coupons and promotions.

How To Use Twitter As A Recruiting Tool
This article aims to define some rules for direct marketing agencies to use Twitter as a new medium for recruiting. Here are the steps of the article:

1. Obvisouly, create a Twitter account for the company
2. Master the art of Twitter, meaning 140 characters headlines. It is tough to keep it simple, but in marketing, the simpler the better (which is actually pretty hard)
3. Use the Twitter search capacities to find out prospects. Now that Twitter has pretty good search engine, you'll be able to target the right customers.

That remains pretty raw...

Twitter For Customer Service
This is an interesting article, because actually, I have never really considered Twitter as a recruiting tool. I see many companies which created Twitter account in order to be followed by users, to propose their services. But I am really wondering if such a technique is efficient. In my opinion, Twitter is a great way to interact with your customers, but more adapted to a loyalty program, or a retail traffic tool, more than a recruiting tool.

By that, I mean I don't see users buying from a company because of a Twitter campaign, but more people following a brand they already know and that they are probably already buyers, to get discounts or be aware of any news and events. Actually Twitter is already used by many companies as a customer service tool.

Twitter Is A New Medium
What is for sure is that Twitter, Facebook status updates, and the other kinds of micro blogging are new media that companies need to deal with, thanks to a community management strategy. What this article underline, is that as a new medium is springing up, some new ways to use it as a marketing tool will appear. Will Twitter become a direct marketing tool to recruit customers? I doubt, but the question must be asked, and probably some further research need to be established.

Getting Social Media Into CRM

Social CRM
There are very few initiatives so far to integrate social media data into CRM (customer relationship management) database. In fact, it is very difficult to incorporate it on a technical point of view. In terms of customer relationship management strategy, it is crucial to integrate a community management approach, and consider social media as a new medium of interraction with customers.

How to integrate social media into CRM
The data contained into social media is complex. We probably need a semantic approach to get data used for CRM purpose. Moreover, social media contains lots of data in natural language, we need Natural Language Processing to help us extract meaningful data from them. One aspect that's gaining prominence is Sentiment Analysis that detects the sentiment of the person towards a product/service and thus can provide the info to the CRM system.

I've found this very interesting article. It explains that an ideal system would contain a blend of all three systems :

• Semantic
• Sentiment analysis & other NLP techniques
• Direct data mapping

I believe this article shows well the issues CRM software will have to face to incorporate the social media data, and the keys for such an enterprise.

Will Customer Service Be A Victim Of The Crisis?

In such an economical downturn, I understand companies are looking for budget cuts. Even though many studies incentive companies to keep investing in marketing to gain market shares and keep the business running, I advocate more visibility on the return on investment is necessary.

Now, my own opinion is that a CRM strategy properly defined is a key success to go through a crisis. A proper CRM strategies could ease the purchase via financing offers. Also, a great CRM can help companies

A recent article on destination CRM exposes some companies are considering cutting budgets dedicated to customer services to enhance productivity. I just believe this is totally a wrong idea. Customers have limited their spending budgets. Probably a reorganization of those kind of departments could bring some synergies and ways to cut the costs, but customer service is a key to reassure customers and trigger the purchase.

Retails Reached The Bottom, Ready For Recession

The KPMG/Synovate Retail Think Tank (RTT) is establishing a report quarter after quarter to measure the health of retailers in the UK. You can access to the full report right here. Retails have suffered a lot those past months mainly since household spending budgets has been restricted with the crisis.

However, this article explains that retails have kept costs under control, allowing them to face the crisis with a more positive mindset. I have published recently a post about the 5 rules for retailing in recession and it seems they are fore sure the keys for retails to go through the economical downturn.

Is Twitter Going Mainstream?

Twitter is probably the hottest web 2.0 service of the moment. If the social medium was only known by a few geek that were telling to the world most of the time not very interesting things, there is a big buzz springing up.

Some Hollywood stars now own their Twitter accounts: Hugh Jackman (Hugh Jackman Giving $100K to Charity via Twitter), Oprah Winfrey (Will Twitter See an “Oprah Effect”?) or Ashton Kutcher (How Oprah and Ashton have forever changed Twitter). Also, Twitter made the headlines of the NBA couple of weeks ago, for different reasons.



Now you can see some ads promoting Twitter accounts like above. And below, some major mobile phone service talking about Twitter use.



Now Twitter counts 14 million users, which is actually not that much compared to Facebook. Fred Cavazza thinks it sounds like a new Second Life kind of hype. I believe we are just seeing Twitter coming out of the geeks' sphere, and it is going mainstream. Now more and more people are using and defining the use of the serice. I just believe that Twitter might be a mainstream service and we'll talk more and more about that in the next few weeks. Actually, if you are a frenquent reader of this blog, you have probably noticed that Twitter has become a recurrent topic. I think it will remain so.

Wall Mart Leads The Way For Retailers Online

Laurence Faguer alerted me on her blog about Wall Mart activities online. As Wall Mart is dominating the retailing industry, they are about to dominate the Internet too.
That was pretty nice to this article because couple of weeks ago I was wondering if Wall Mart was a web 2.0 adept. What is remarkable, is that Wall Mart built its online presence whereas none of his competitors realy master this medium. Therefore, Wall Mart is way in advance compare to competition.

Wall Mart took many different initiatives online:

• Wall Mart launched its own classifieds list online service
• A blogger community for mothers: Eleven moms. "ElevenMoms, a mommy-blogger network that's already doubled to 22 bloggers and is still growing, also has become a conduit for programs from P&G's Pantene and Unilever's Suave."
• Soundcheck: an online music store
• A Microsite for the DVD release of Twilight, which led to a preorder record for the online store.

The Brand Reputation Challenge
Now one of the biggest challenge for Wall Mart is to manage its brand reputation. They have already had a lot of problems in the past dealing with their image, with different controversy emerging. New social media, and trendy service Twitter enable consumers to spread the word easilly on a large scale.

A Twitter search on "Walmart OR Wal-Mart" yields three or four new tweets every minute, many none too flattering. Walmart accepts this as part of the territory. "We do not see ourselves as trying to control what happens," Ms. Young said. You can't control what people say about you on the web, but you can be a good listener.

"The organic nature of the web means that when you are the world's largest retailer, people will talk," said Wanda Young, senior director-digital marketing at Walmart. "And we're OK with that. We believe the hallmark of a really great brand is that you are relevant. And part of the way you do that is listening to what your customers have to say."

I believe there is a lot to be done by retailers online. Grocery products might not be emotional for customers, but because grocery retails welcome frequently (once a week) its customers, they are a socialization vector, and are one of the core place of customer relationship management (of course for retailers but also for suppliers). Great example on how the leading retailer Wall Mart has used these new social media and Internet to create added value and enhance its customer relationship management strategy.

French Entrepreneurs Struggling

More and more French entrepreneurs decide to migrate to the Silicon Valley. One of the main reason is the problems French entrepreneurs have with French regulations, that is not adapted to light structures (especially wages).

Failure is not tolerated in French business culture as it is in the U.S., Lescent-Giles says, and both the legal and social consequences of bankruptcy are much more dire in France. The government dominates the economy, and the business elite is almost exclusively recruited from the elite schools, the Grandes écoles.

For having lived in the Silicon Valley for a year, I must acknowledged there are many French people there, who created their own companies. That is pretty sad to see this talent exported out of France, because there are a lot of great ideas coming from French entrepreneurs. The Divx format has been created by a French engineer, Loic Lemeur is doing a great job with Seesmic, and a lot of big companies in the Valley are seeking for French engineers, considered as among the best in the world.

I believe the situation got better here, but there is still a lot of room for improvement. entre

New Evidences On Loyalty Programs Efficiency

New evidences have been found on loyalty programs efficiency. According to this new search, properly managed loyalty programs lead retailers to improve repeat customers orders by more than 20%. Customer relationship management (CRM) strategies aim to retain customers in order to generate repeated purchases, and therefore loyalty programs efforts are on the same pages. In a down economy as we are in right now, it is important to work on your best customers as there are fewer new business oportunities.

here is the article below.


Loyalty Programs Improve Bottom Line
Aberdeen Group research confirms the importance of well-run loyalty programs.

MINNEAPOLIS (April 17, 2009) - New research conducted by Aberdeen Group once again demonstrates the importance of well-planned and well-executed loyalty programs to the financial success of retail companies. The best retailers improved repeat customer orders by 21.8 percent. Best companies increased net profits 50 percent more than their peers.

The entire report – “Cutting Edge Customer Loyalty: Retail Best Practices for Acquiring, Retaining, and Re-engaging Customers” – is available free of charge on line at Complimentary Report from Aberdeen Group.

“We believe that having the capability to build relationships with customers is a critical driver of success in today’s tough business environment,” said Luc Bondar, vice president, Loyalty, Carlson Marketing. “We sponsored the report because we believe in its core message.”

During the first quarter of 2009, Aberdeen surveyed 165 retailers to discover key customer loyalty attributes in that sector.

The best companies were defined as the top 20 percent with the best financial performance. Year over year they generally increased the average sale by 19 percent, increased customer retention by 16 percent, and decreased customer attrition by 5 percent.

Key findings include:
• Ninety percent of the best companies indicated successful results from their loyalty programs compared to less than a third of other companies.
• Best companies’ compound annual growth rate is 96 percent greater than their peers (2003-2008 data).
• Best companies are 1.8 times more likely than the bottom 30 percent of companies to develop customer behavior-based promotions (that drive improved loyalty).
• Best companies are five times more likely to be tracking, storing and analyzing customer data … and creating promotions capitalizing on insights derived from the analysis.
• Best companies are 70 percent more likely to develop multi-tiered rewards plans for their most profitable customers.

While the study has different recommendations for companies at different levels of success, it recommends that for companies to achieve the “Best in Class” status, they should:
• Create a customer loyalty roadmap including multi-tier programs for the most profitable customers
• Apply rules-based and point-of-sale/service integrated customer loyalty systems
• Conduct customer wallet share and market basket analyses
• Measure the net profit margin impact of customer loyalty programs
• Upgrade loyalty infrastructure on an annual basis.

“Everyone knows that it is easier to retain customers than it is to acquire new ones,” said Bondar. “And in these tough economic times, it’s more important than ever to build relationships with your valuable customers.”

Green Marketing Controversy

Since the early age of marketing development people have expressed controversy. Marketers are sometimes assimilated to liars, because their goal is to make things shiny, even when sometimes they are not. However, marketing must remain ethic if it is willing to be efficient. Because at some points, you can't fool customers, especially nowadays with all this information running around the web.

It seems that a controversy is raising around green marketing. A new article I've found explain that A new report released last week by consulting firm TerraChoice Environmental Marketing found that just 2% of the self-proclaimed “green” products on shelves in big box stores across North America live up to their sustainable claims. As not much regulation rules the green label on products some marketers probably took advantage out of it.

Environmental concerns is probably one of the main social trend for the next few years, and green products will be a great source of revenues. But companies need to be ethical on that one. If they label products to be green, they must be, because if not, consumer won't catch up with that trend.

Social Media Return On Investment (ROI)

How could you define a social media ROI? How can a company analyse the return on investment of its social media strategy?

Safia Ouaissa is a community manager and exposes on her blog how she measures her social media ROI. For more information about Safia, here is her LinkedIn profile.

Quantitative Data	Observational Data	Comparative Data
Website traffic Number of page visited Time Spent on the ste Number of comments, or interactions Number of pertinent search results in search engines Number of brand quotes in posts Number of active members in the community Engagement rate (brand ambassador) Ration between positive and negative comments	Quality of interaction between members Search results’quality Social networks conversation Presence on the Internet Members and visitors’ feedback Articles published on Twitter and Digg Like Collaborative tools provided to the community Consumer insights	Online PR VS Adword campaigns Community management VS renting a data base Buzz marketing VS traditional advertising cost

Her vision is interesting, because she actually listed the different indicators you could use to estimate the performance of community management. I invite you to follow Safia's blog (in French).

Facebook Rejects Funding

In the current crisis, a lot of start up are struggling and dying because they don't have access to funds. Nevertheless, Facebook have recently rejected a funding offer worth $4 billion. The Palo Alto firm considers it doesn't need at the moment funding.

This news might seem a little bit strange, but actually it does make sense. Facebook is counting around 200 to 250 million users at the moment and is still counting as the platform is constantly growing fast.

"Facebook made under $300 million last year, was a little shy of breaking even, and at first expected to make towards $400 million in revenue this year. But the company said in late March — incidentally at the time that chief financial officer Gideon Yu left the company — that it was beating projections by 70 percent. I’ve confirmed that this run rate has the company possibly breaking half a billion in revenue by the end of the year."

Facebook seems to adapt to this current economic situation, and is eager to develop its revenues more than searching for new funds, as Facebook'operational staff has probably reached its normal size.

Great Outlook About Interactive Marketing

Found on Jacques Froissant's blog, Here is a great presentation about interactive marketing. It explains the great shift happening right now in the media landscape, with the Internet medium growing fast while TV and radios get less audience.

There are some great data and stats about the use of social media, and examples on how to use it. Also, I am totally agree with the 3.0 vision, the future of interactive marketing, with the use of mobile devices. I have talked a lot lately about that topic, but mobile media will become huge especially while using the web 2.0 capabilities.

Promotions 2.0 - The Future of Interactive Marketing

View more presentations from David Griffith.

Social Media Landscape

Fred Cavazza has been for years one of the main Internet expert in France. He's providing us on his blog with a great analysis of the Social Media Landscape. As you can see it below, this is a very complex mapping as there is a lot of service/competition in the market. Thus, this is a good division by usage. It is good sometimes to see the bigger pictures to see how social media is evolving. Here is the article of Fred Herein.

Social Media Landscape (redux)

The large size version is here : Social Media Landscape (redux).

Four Main Usages

The various tools and services displayed on this landscape are listed bellow.

1. Expressing tools allow users to express themselves, discuss and aggregate their social life:

• Publicatin tools like blogs ( Blogger, Typepad, Wordpress), wikis ( Wikipedia, Wetpaint, Wikia), microblogs ( Twitter, Tumblr, Identica), citizen news ( Digg, Newsvine, AgoraVox) and livecast ( JustinTV, Ustream, BlogTV) ;
• Discussion tools like forums ( phpBB, Phorum) and video forum ( Seesmic), instant messengers ( Y! Messenger, Live Messenger, Meebo, eBuddy), comments services ( IntenseDebate, Cocomment, Disqus, BackType) and 3D chats ( IMVU, Habbo, WeeWorld, vSide) ;
• Aggregation tools ( FriendFeed, SocialThing, LifeSteam, Profilactic, Plurk...).

2. Sharing tools allow users to publish and share content:

• Content sharing for videos ( YouTube, DailyMotion, Vimeo), pictures ( FlickR, SmugMug, Picasa, Fotolog), music and playlists ( Last.fm, iLike, Deezer), links ( Delicious, Magnolia, Reddit) and documents ( Slideshare, Scrib, Slideo) ;
• Product sharing with recommendations platforms ( Crowdstorm, ThisNext, StyleHive), collaborative feedback platforms ( FeedBack 2.0, UserVoice, GetSatisfaction) or swaping platforms ( LibraryThing, Shelfari, SwapTree) ;
• Place sharing with tools based on local adresses ( BrighKite, Loopt, Whrrl, Moximity), on events ( Upcoming, Zvents, EventFul, Socializr) and on trips ( TripWolf, TripSay, Driftr, Dopplr).

3. Networking tools allow users to search, connect and interact with each other's:

• Search networks allowing users to find ex-classmates ( Classmates, MyYearBook, Alumni) or persons ( MyLife) ;
• Niche networks ( Boompa, Dogster, PatientsLikeMe, Footbo) ;
• BtoB networks ( LinkedIn, Plaxo, Xing, Viadeo) ;
• Mobile networks ( Groovr, MocoSpace, ItsMy, Zannel) ;
• Tools to build an online network ( Ning, KickApps, CrowdVine, CollectiveX).

4. Playing services that now integrate strong social features:

• Casual games portals ( Pogo, Cafe, Doof, Kongregate, PlayFirst, PopCap, BigFish, Prizee) ;
• Social games portals ( Zynga, SGN, ThreeRings, PlayFish, CasualCafe, ChallengeGames) ;
• MMORPGs ( World of Warcraft, EverQuest, Lord of the Rings Online, EVE Online, Lineage, Dofus, Runescape) ;
• MMOs ( Drift City, Kart Rider, Maple Story, Audition, Combat Arms, Quake Live) ;
• Casual MMOs ( Puzzle Pirates, Club Penguin, Neopets, Gaia Online, SmallWorlds, OurWorld).

From Social Networks to social Platform

At the center of this landscape we will find former social networks, which have evolved to progressively integrate more and more functionalities and morphed themselves into social platforms. The notion of 'platform' is particularly relevant since those network have the ability to host applications (mostly the one you find on the four main usages).

We can split social platforms into two groups: The First Generation which have been existing since more then 5 years and gather between 50 and 200 millions of users ( Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, Bebo, Orkut, Skyrock, Hi5, Windows Live...) and The New Wave of social players which have a similar offering and a fast growing audience (between 20 and 50 millions users - Netlog, Imeem, Piczo, Lexode, Hyves, Buzznet, Xanga, Zorpia...).

I won't enter in the debate to foresight which platform will grow faster or which will appeal the most to youth audience but I anticipate a rough competition for Facebook which is stile experiencing cash flow problem by sticking to the advertising model while those new social players have integrated micro-transactions and premium membership in their business model.

Google and Yahoo! are still absent from the social scene (wait, maybe not...)

You will also notice in this landscape the discretion of Google and Yahoo! which are 'only' represented by services that did not managed to break through the social scene (while being strong references, Blogger, YouTube, FlickR cannot be considered has dominant social platforms). Let's be honest: MySpace and Facebook decently steal the spotlight from Google and Yahoo!.

Wait... maybe not if you consider Google as a being in a much more favorable situation with lower-level services like Gmail (one needs an email to register Facebook, right?) or Google Maps (can you count the number of social services relying on Google mapping tool?). Add to this there current cash situation and it leaves them plenty of time to sharpen their social strategy (Maybe by buying Twitter or FriendFeed, or booth!).

The same is true for Yahoo! which can rely on a massive user base (still outnumbering Facebook's one) and essential social bricks like Delicious, Yahoo! Pipes, MyBlogLog and the promising Fire Eagle.

Did I mention Microsoft? Yes, Microsoft, those guys behind Hotmail, MSN and Windows Live. Ignoring them would be a big mistake and Mark Z. was more than happy to welcome them in FB's capital.

From this pint of view, I expect a very thought battle around authentication services ( Facebook Connect, Google Accounts...) allowing social platforms to exist outside of their boundaries and to export their members' social graph. Big players like Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft have to emphasis their legitimacy as historical web players to keep control over their users.

I strongly recommend you to pay attention to those different services (yes, there is a life outside Facebook) and I shall meet you next year for a third version!

Microsoft and Google Fight For Twitter's Search Engine

Microsoft and Google are becoming the best enemies lately. We all know that Google is way ahead in terms of advertising revenues from its search engine, which is driving Microsoft to seek for a partnership with Yahoo. Google got onto Microsoft's market when developing some Powerpoint and Word-like softwares. They even got into the mobile business, where Microsoft is also struggling to stay in the competition.

Now, Twitter, one of the most trendy social media, has recently launched a search engine to look through Tweets. However, Twitter engineers don't have the Google's nor Microsoft's expertise, and both companies are fighting to provide a new advanced search engine.

This article is even thinking about a bid for Twitter, but I don't think we are going towards this. I'd rather think that Google and Microsoft could develop specific search engines to help Twitter users find interesting tweets. Now if Google and Microsoft are working on a search engine, that could be pretty bad for Twitter. Indeed, one of the most blossoming business in the Internet is advertising coming through search engines. Google might get a huge potential business out of Twitter's hands if so. Since Twitter is still struggling to get a business model... Nevertheless, Microsoft could get back in the social media competition if it succeed in creating a great search engine for Twitter, because I don't see them getting near Google's one...

@the_gman, thanks for sharing the info!

Mobile Marketing: M Couponing To Become More Popular

Marketers are seeking for more efficient marketing techniques and it might benefit to marketing campaigns using mobile phones. Mobile marketing could benefit to customer relationship management (CRM) programs, because they could allow you to reach customers on one of their most personal device.
Advantages of M coupons
M couponing provides great analytics capabilities as you can measure numbers of contact reached, number of messages read, and number of coupons used (thanks to a track code). That sort of looks like emailing capacities. M coupons owns also the great advantage that the customer has it on his phone, meaning it has it on him at all time, allowing him to use it whenever he wants, and hence it doesn't need to be printed.




Juniper Research forecasts for 2010 an increase of the use of mobile coupons of 30%.

Some techniques still need to be improved to raise the advantages of the coupons, especially couponing while visiting the retail (thanks to geolocalisation). But their are some other concerns that can be raised by the use of mobile marketing. As mobile phone is so personnal, the intrusion issues will eventually appear. That is the reason why I believe mobile marketing hasn't been able to spring up yet as it was supposed to. The crisis turns marketer to seek for new medium with a high return on investment and limited budgets. Therefore, I think mobile coupons will get more comon for 2010.

Thoughts About Mobile Marketing

Work is still under progress about mobile marketing. Even though everybody is agree on the fact that marketing on mobile devices will probably one of the hottest trend in a near future, there is still room for innovation. Christopher Carfi exposes his view on the subject in this article.

Christopher is an expert in customer relationship management (CRM), and is pointing out interesting things. First of all, he's discussing about how marketers approach mobile marketing.

Here are couple of great examples of mobile marketing given by the article:
Lake Tahoe’s Heavenly Mountain resort is using mobile to provide its customers research information with up-to-the-minute webcams and video from the mountain, as well as condition, traffic, and pricing information (http://www.skiheavenly.com/mobile).

Domain registrar Network Solutions created a mobile shopping guide for holiday season “Black Friday” sales (http://www.bffeed.com).

Cable giant Comcast is using services such as Twitter, which has an inherent mobile component, to support customers using its “@comcastcares” presence (http://twitter.com/comcastcares).

Online community giant BlogHer has created mobile pocket guides for both connection and conversation for everything from politics to parenting to personal finance (http://tinyurl.com/bhpolitics).

Mobile marketing is still new and fresh, and there is a lot to be done with it. Great article.

Twitter Funny Video

Found on Loic Lemeur's blog. This is a very funny cartoon which criticizes Twitter. I believe this is refreshing to see that as there is a lot of buzz around Twitter, and no one seems to really be able to take advantage out of it. Enjoy it.