Another report on the effects on marketing due to the (forthcoming) economic situation. Moray MacLennan, IPA President, Chairman Europe M&C Saatchi: “The report certainly reflects the increasing gloom of the past few weeks. There is a clear implication that the economy will slow further. Agencies cannot affect the short term economic outlook, but they can do at least two things; firstly, focus even more closely on cost control and secondly, strive for even more original and innovative solutions so they can buck the trend."

Tags: internet marketing, economic downturn, marketing agencies,

As the iPhone craze has started over here (as in Europe), and they’ve had it for some time in the US, a new white paper from Rubicon Consulting might be of interest. This US company has made a survey on the impact iphone and its new features has on its users. Amongst others, 75 % says that the iPhone has led to more mobile browsing, even though 40 % of them have troubles on displaying some websites.

As other prominent mobile manufacturers have commented the iPhone, they think this could be the breakthrough for the smart phone. That hopefully leads to more possibilities implementing Flash browsers to phones, and more interactive content into your mobile.

Soon hopefully.

Tags: iphone, flash, internet, browsing, smart phone

I read an interesting article over here, about (future) successful communications. It’s about the company’s role within various (social) contexts. What we see today is the growing social media usage, which companies needs to adjust to. To be successful you, in most cases, need to take part of the conversation on the various arenas, you need to be more open in your communications etc. But what we fundamentally need to think is about, the company being more social. As a social subject you still adjust yourself to the context. As it is today, I think that it’s still about – we can say this, in this channel or context.

On the other hand, maybe there isn’t any short cuts, and the process has just started, with the rapid growth of social media usage where companies slowly are (needs to) getting more social.  

Tags: transparency, social media, branding, market communications, yooba

• Average time spent online is up 4% compared to a year ago.
• Biggest increase in social networks and blogging sites.  

                                                                                                                                                          source: nielsen-online

        Now it’s just for you to mix the best ones to your marketing strategies.

Tags: marketing, yooba, internet spending, uk, communication, entertainment, consumer generated media

Flash files can now be found and indexed. - Fantastic!

Update: More info and objectives.

Tags: adobe flash, yooba studio, flash content, google, search, index, seo

Even though we try as hard as we can to enable you access to our service, things are slowing down here at Yooba HQ. Present staff is working as hard as ever, but gradually parts of our developing team and other staff involved, are going for a bit well deserved holiday.

So, where are we right now? The hygiene factors are getting under control; we’ve been able to implement some basic functions that weren’t initially prioritised, but that appeared to be necessary to have added from the start. Bugs are being fixed, tutorials are being written; slowly but surely we’re getting closer to a milestone which is to see content being created in Yooba Studio.

When our service is going public, it also means that we can get into communicating, blogging about the service it self. So far we’ve been touching various surrounding contexts where Yooba will fit, but still we haven’t’ been able to give any concrete proposals that would make our communications (read this blog) really unique. At the end of the day it’s through our service we’re setting our identity, everything we communicate is going to be filtered through Yooba.com – The Service.

We’re very much looking forward to that, this blog amongst others is going to get new perspectives, and I’m positive that we’re going to enable a dialogue which this is very much about.

Tags: yooba studio, social media, yooba.com, dialogue

Google has been voted the highest ranking internet company by the 2007 Harris Interactive Reputation Quotient study. Google now climbs higher than Microsoft, primary due to their workplace environment. The study contains various categories, where Google gets quite high votes in all of those.

Additional findings from the survey are that companies that are taking an active role in managing their reputation are seeing results. These results can be related to the increasing use of blogs and social networking channels. I wonder what the odds for Google might be for next year. I think their successful and fast rise means they need to take an alternative role from their “underdog status” that they’ve been holding for some time.

Tags: online reputation, google, microsoft, social media

One good thing about our platform is that it’s constantly amendable. As a web based service it’s always evolving; the latest upgrades, functions etc. are always included. That gives us very flexible conditions to actually adjust our work to what you might want us to do for you, and that’s the way we like to work.

Right now we’re working on implementing functions that we feel needs to be available until we’re going to be publicly available. Those feelings are very much based on feedback and requests from potential users. It’s not always we can do what someone wants, but listening to your customers is getting more essential as It can give you great data for decision-making.

Two things then; dialogue with your customers should be encouraged – whether you’re Apple or a start up, it’s becoming more and more necessary. And, that’s what we’ve done. Basically we’re going to start focusing on a few cases, working very closely on those and then increasingly starting to open up for more users.

Tags: yooba, innovation, digital, customer feedback, software as a service

Lately we’ve been having some thoughts and discussions on how to reach out to other businesses that primary isn’t involved in content production. By now, you’re probably aware of Yooba’s main capabilities – smart and effective creation of Flash content. We’ve obviously got our target groups in those who practically are involved, and soon can be involved, in content creation.

Curious as we are though, and always looking for new (business) opportunities we’ve been led into different paths. In this particular case the media agencies and the reason for that is partly due to reports about the forthcoming recession and how agencies (and anyone else for that matter) need to adjust, find new business models, to the forthcoming circumstances.

Even though, we’ve had just very brief encounters to a few media agencies, I find it hard to see that the majority of them are going to reach out for new opportunities. Economy is still going well and they’re busy doing what they mainly are there for; buying media space and consulting. So, right now there might not be many reasons to look at new tasks or have a slightest glance “outside the box”. But I sincerely hope that we’ve still got to meet the right consultant who’s actually looking for new business opportunities to meet a possible not-so-straightforward future of a deformed media landscape.  

Tags: yooba, media agencies, business model, consultancy, flash content,

Most developers working with Flash and Flex applications have come across Flash Tracer, a Firefox addon which makes it possible to ouput trace() commands in a panel/window in the browser window. An unvaluable tool which I'm sure many of you uses. Until recently, there hasn't been that many alternatives, but now there are:

Arthropod is an AIR application that lets you log/debug your applications by simply importing one class and using the Arthropod command log() instead of the usual trace().

Another alternative is ThunderBolt AS3 which is a logging extension letting you control the output of your messages in a more flexible way than trace(). For the output, ThunderBolt uses Firebug or the AIR application ThunderBolt AS3 Console.

Both projects are very interesting alternatives, giving you more control of how the messages are formatted. ThunderBolt is open source, hosted on Google Code.

Tags: logging, debug, flash tracer, arthropod, thunderbolt, firebug