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

Earls Court, London.

Tags: yooba studio, internet world, marketing

The engagement word has had a bit of a buzz for some time. And according to the audience’s new (behaviour) patterns and the changing media landscape, the meaning of the word needs to be taken critically if you want to communicate your brand or messages in relevant ways. An objective definition is needed(?).

In our context it’s about, both physical and emotional engagement. Audiences voluntarily participating in creating content for you, distributing your content, actively doing something with your content is for us an engaging act, and included in those actions are emotional engagement as synergies. Just impressions aren’t enough.

This isn’t my attempt to define the word and I’m doing a quite pragmatic description, but what I’d like is a less ambiguous use of the term. Or do we actually need a more specific declaration of the term? As with many subjects it might be about who you’re talking to!?

Tags: marketing, consumer engagement, branding, communication

European Online Advertising spending is getting closer to US numbers. New IAB-Europe report.

Tags: iab, online advertising

I was attending the on AIR Tour Europe in Stockholm with one of my colleagues in the begining of the week. Mike Chambers, Ryan Stewart, and the rest of the gang of Adobe AIR talked about developing for their new cross-plaform runtime. Very interesting and releaxed happening. Of course we got some nice swag too, including a t-shirt, a print of Actionscript Reference and O'Reilly's pocket guide "Adobe AIR for JavaScript Developers" to mention a few. The stickers we got I put on one of our Guitar Hero controllers; nice red touch.

Tags: on air, air, stockholm, flash, flex, guitar hero, mike chambers, ryan stewart

I read some articles here and here. They're very interesting and I don't want to put myself in a critical perspective to them. I’d rather extend the issue and put the question into other perspective(s).

Basically, the issue is about brand building and long term value in the digital marketing era. The risks that may occur is that brands are looking for short term solutions that still, isn't going to sell the product or service. Again, I’m not going to relate to these texts, they have some good points. But the question is how to build an authentic brand in today’s fragmented world of advertising and (media) consumption?  

Looking at the various applications that we're likely to see (lots) more of; I think they're necessary. The majority of them aren’t going to produce long term values for your brand. But well crafted they could just do that, I think it’s a matter of finding the right projects that could support your brand. It’s also about the mix of your marcom’s; soon the web is going to be the hub for your communications, of which the various applications needs to be part of. Till then I’ll believe that the short term, and occasionally “meaningless” widgets are going to be refined and we need some forward thinking and strategies to make them fit into the overall strategies.  

Tags: widget, application, marketing, brand building, value, yooba, adweek,