Apple’s 10 Billion…eBooks?
Apple iTunes Store Sells 10 Billion Songs
Ten billion. That’s how many songs have been legally downloaded from Apple’s iTunes Store.
This is what that looks like: 10,000,000,000
If it look impressive, that’s because it is. And it is significant because it may represent a small victory in the war over digital piracy. Apple has made it easy and affordable to buy music (something the record industry didn’t do themselves). As a result, people have paid money for stuff that they can easily steal.
If you own an iPod, iPhone or some other Apple device, you know that the Apple iTunes Store is really, really easy to use. Plus, they sell more than just music. You can get movies and TV shows as well.
As the iPad comes out, Apple will begin to roll out ebooks, newspapers, magazines, and other new media content. It’s going to be a broad range of materials, many of which will be purchased by the download. (Currently there is no subscription model.)
From a content perspective, this is a huge opportunity. People have grown used to getting content for free on websites. Few websites have managed to get money out of their visitors. Marvel Digital and Disney Digital have online subscription models, but those are premiere brands with highly exclusive content resources and characters.
As the iPad hits the streets, Apple is going to be working hard to get you to pay for content. Amazon already gets people to pay for ebooks and blogs on the Kindle, so there is a segment of the population prepared to pay for content.
No, don’t get me wrong. I am not looking forward to paying for stuff that I am getting free today, but that’s how it goes. Only so many websites and publishers can survive on the freemium model. Eventually someone is going to have to pay.
Sure, there will always be people who figure out a way to get stuff for free. In fact, many pirates don’t rip DVDs and MP3s because they want the media. They do it because they enjoy the challenge of cracking the code or beating the system. (And DRM doesn’t seem to work.)
With ereaders like the Kindle, Nook, and iPad, publishers are going to have to figure out a way to get people to buy digital books and magazines. Free is not a sustainable business model for most publishers. As the music industry will attest, it’s not going to be easy, but it is possible to get people to pay for media.
Price them right, make them easy to get, and maybe in a few years I’ll be blogging about how there were 10 billion ebooks sold on the Apple store.
LINKS – NOT NECESSARILY ENDORSEMENTS:
- Apple iTunes Store Records 10 Billionth Download, Gives Away $10,000 Gift Card
- 10 Billion Songs Sold by Apple’s iTunes Store
- Simon & Schuster Issues Digital Piracy Policy
- Publishers Fear eBook Piracy, But Shouldn’t
- Piracy, Avid Readers and New Business Models
Buzz, Tweet, ShareThis
ShareThis Logo
With all this talk of Buzzing and Tweeting and Facebooking, it’s easy to overlook the true value of social networks, at least from the perspective of content marketing.
Content marketing can help you effectively articulate your brand story to allow customers to evangelize it. Lots of products rely on evangelists to share messages because a personal recommendation goes a long, long way.
Consider the following scenario: You’re thinking of going to the movies this weekend. So you check the movie listings, and every film is lavished with the typical hyperbole. “Brilliant!” or “Laugh out loud funny!” or “Triumphant!” (Whatever that means.)
You check out the movie reviews, but the reviewers can’t seem to agree on anything, except the names of the stars.
Suddenly your friend sends you a mobile message on Facebook that says, “dude, you have to go see this movie. Ignore the reviews. You will love it!”
Which matters to you most? Is it (a) the review in the newspaper, (b) the ad that proclaims this to be “triumphant!” or (c) the message you got on Facebook?
No big surprise, right? You’re going with the recommendation from your friend, because (theoretically) your friend has little to gain personally or financially from you going to that movie. You trust that your friend knows what you like. Sure, the message may appear in a Tweet or on Facebook or on Google Buzz or whatever, but that’s just the channel. The most important thing is the social context of the recommendation. Content is king, but context makes it relevant.
It’s this social context that makes brand evangelists (and social networks) so valuable to the health of a brand. A recent study revealed that Facebook drives 44% of social sharing.
So if you have a brand, be sure to include social sharing features on your website that allow people to easily evangelize your brand message. Remember, your brand can be something that people go out and purchase…or it can be your own personal self-branding effort (i.e., Brand You). Whatever it is, you need to make it easy for people to share.
Check out the bottom of this post. You’ll see a little widget from ShareThis that will allow you to share my blog. Go ahead and share it with family and friends
Especially if you want to proclaim it “triumphant!” (Whatever that means.)
LINKS – NOT NECESSARILY ENDORSEMENTS:
- Apple and Brand Evangelists
- Email and Social Sharing
- Sharing and ‘Socialgraphics’: Why Marketers Should Be Paying Attention
TV Apps Kickoff – 3 Things You Need to Know
The 2010 Superbowl officially kicked off the Age of TV Apps. The technology has been around for a few years and is already available to many people. But Vizio’s TV app Superbowl commercial was the kickoff heard ’round the world.
So what are TV apps? In a most basic sense, TV apps are like the applications you download for your iPhone. Small, limited-use software that allows you to personalize your hardware.
New stuff that was once only available for your computer — and then for your iPhone — is now available for your television. If you have Direct TV or Verizon FiOS, some of this is already baked into your cable box. Obviously you can get TV apps on the Vizio TV, but also on many Samsung and Sony televisions as well.
You can already use things like Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook on your TV.
Here are three things you should know about TV Apps
1. The technical field is relatively open.
Sure, there are some key players like Yahoo who have already set themselves as leaders, but that can change. Currently, Yahoo controls the application and administers the software development kit (SDK). Note: From our personal experience, Yahoo was somewhat slow in distributing the SDKs to developers. That’s unfortunate because that could irritate programmers who could create an open-source system that could render Yahoo’s TV Apps technology obsolete. If you have the desire to create apps (or even a completely new OS), the time is now. The tech is in place for you to build the next great widget, gadget, social network, or living room app.
2. TV apps will present design challenges.
Weather TV app available through DirectTV
TV apps will face several user interface challenges. The most notable is that most people don’t have a keyboard on their television remote control. Sure, you can pull one up on the screen, but as you can imagine, typing with a little remote-control button is a pretty poor user experience. If you’ve used a Wii remote to create a Mii character, you know how tedious it can be to type out a long name. Designers will clearly make the difference between apps that succeed or fail. The old design rules will need to evolve to take advantage and address the limitations of a 10-foot interface.
3. Content & marketing opportunities will need to evolve.
The iPhone and other smart phones forced content developers and marketers to rethink the way we package messages. Long-form had to give way to shorter, more relevant messages. If not for mobile communications limitations, Twitter would have never gained a foothold in society. Face it, a 140 character message fits better on a cell phone screen than, say, a PowerPoint presentation. People who mastered the Twitter format (including URL shorteners) emerged pretty quickly as masters of the medium. And the marketers quickly caught on with brand messages. That’s a long way of saying that the new language of TV apps is still in flux. If you want to create content or marketing messages for TV apps, try to figure out what works with this new interface.
If you’re already exploring TV apps, congratulations. You’re probably going to have a head start on this unique and exciting new communications channel. I look forward to seeing what you create.
LINKS, NOT NECESSARILY ENDORSEMENTS:
Vizio’s TV App Superbowl Fumble
If you were one of the 106 million people who watched Superbowl XLIV, you may have caught the Vizio TV ad. You know the one…it showcased one of the coolest new technologies called TV Apps.
Google results for the Vizio TV Apps search.
Despite a terrific commercial, Vizio may have fumbled a prime opportunity to capture and convert their audience. The content was great. The message was on target. So what went wrong?
Well, they forgot both their (a) search engine marketing (SEM) campaign and (b) search engine optimization (SEO).
Like many people watching the Superbowl, I saw the commercial and wanted to know more. I didn’t catch the URL on the screen, but I trusted that if I put in “Vizio TV apps,” Google would link to their site.
Nope.
How about “Vizio apps”? No.
Um…”TV apps”? Nope.
Okay, they must be bidding on “Vizio” right? Big nope.
I’ve included a bunch of screen shots of Vizio’s Google search results on Flickr, so you can see who and what is coming up on the search engine results page (SERP) for Google. You can see tweets from people on Twitter who are interested in the Vizio commercial, but the Vizio web page appeared to be down.
Even a day after the Superbowl, there’s no SEM campaign from Vizio trying to capture the traffic and buzz generated by their commercial. And unlike other events, the Superbowl is legendary for people sharing and replaying ads. YouTube has collections of the best ads, which means people will be watching that ad long after it was aired.
In today’s always-on Internet culture, people trust Google, Yahoo, Ask, and Bing to take them to the right site. But that comes at a cost, since sites need to be properly optimized for search engines.
A well-designed SEM campaign needs to be developed and maintained, since your website may not always come up in natural search. Sure, you will come up for your own name, but you may not come up for your category. SEM helps you get your message in front of the right people at the right time. Like, for example, a few minutes after your commercial runs on the Superbowl.
Vizio did a great job of educating the Superbowl viewers about the concept of TV apps. It’s hard to say if they will be able to cement that lead without properly leveraging search traffic on Google.
What should have been a touchdown seems more like a fumble. And you have to wonder if someone else has already intercepted Vizio’s customers.
LINKS – NOT NECESSARILY ENDORSEMENTS
- Ouch! Backlash for Vizio Super Bowl ad
- How to Cram Most of the Web Into One Super Bowl Ad–And Not Sell TVs
- Vizio Internet Apps SuperBowl Ad Showsing Beyonce And David Goes To The Dentist
- Super Bowl 2010: The Best and Worst Commercials
Blog Traffic Tip #2: Know Your Stats
Today’s tip is about knowing your site statistics. But don’t panic, you don’t need to be good with numbers to understand this blog post.
Many people blog for professional reasons. Maybe they want to be considered a thought leader in their field. This kind of self-marketing, personal branding effort is sometimes referred to as Brand You.
If you’re blogging to build a base for Brand You, then you’re going to want to drive enough traffic to make it worth your time and energy. And how can you tell this? Site stats, of course.
Most blog platforms (I use WordPress) come with some sort of free analytics package that allows you to get basic information on visitors to your blog. Click a few buttons, and software will immediately start to track what people are doing on your blog. Neat and easy.
Here are a few things you should be looking for:
- How are people getting to your blog? Is it search engine traffic? Other blogs?
- If you are posting your blog and then tweeting it on Twitter, are people clicking that link?
- What words are people typing into Google and Yahoo to get to your blog?
- What day of the week are they visiting your blog? Time of day?
All of this is accessible in your stats. And — trust me here — it’s not that hard to understand.
If you really start to get into it, you can use a free software package for even more information. I recommend Google’s free Google Analytics software. It’s a bit more challenging to install, but the amount of information you can get is amazing.
Spend a little time looking at your stats. You’d be amazed at what you can learn about your readership and the basic usability of your website and/or blog. Keyword analysis may help you figure out better ways to search engine optimize your site.
Serious websites need professional analysts to understand site statistics. At work, we study the site stats to better understand what content, tools, and resources people use on our websites. This helps us build out future content and plan other digital media initiatives.
You may never want to get to that level of analysis, of course. But just having a basic grasp of your site stats will help you create a better blog experience for your readers.
Now get started. Your stats are waiting for you.
See also: Blog Traffic Tip #1 Be Controversial
iPad – What It Is, What It Isn’t
The Apple iPad has polarized technogeeks, industry professionals, and average consumers. This new electronic device has sparked debates about what it is, what it isn’t and what it should be.
Once again, let’s just break it down and give it a quick analysis.
What iPad Is:
Apple iPad is a consumer entertainment device. It will have built-in multimedia capabilities that will allow you to use it to watch movies, check email, surf the Inter-web, and read short ebooks. It’ll be a pretty nifty device that will also allow you to play certain video games and apps that have already appeared in the iTunes App Store.
That, and maybe a few other things. For about $499 – $899, this limited-use device will give you some entertainment and maybe some other ephemeral enjoyment. Simply put, the iPad is a device marketed to play certain types of content.
But the techno-knows are experiencing some level of angst that the new iPad has not — and probably will not — solve world hunger, peace, or even cancer. (In the first few weeks, however, even the geekiest of guys may find that it attracts chicks. Temporarily.)
Tech experts have been going on and on and on about what the iPad doesn’t do. And for the most part, they’re right. The iPad isn’t a panacea to all problems. (Note: Look up the word “panacea.” It’s a rather cool and satisfying word.)
So I have compiled an additional list of things that the iPad “is not.”
What iPad Isn’t:
- Chick-fil-A sandwich
- Kindle 2
- Panacea to all problems (don’t you wish you looked up that word already?)
- Pair of tube socks
- Toaster oven
- An actual apple
- Device to bend the time-space continuum
- Whipped cream
- Monkey
- 1970 Mercury Cougar
You see? The iPad is something. And it’s also not a lot of other things. Feel better now?
Cheer up. Apple is brilliantly marketing iPad as something that they will manufacture and sell to people who want that something. This may irritate people who feel like the “something” that Apple makes should have been “something else” with some “other somethings” built into the “thing.”
Or “something” like that.
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