7 e Innovations 2008

By Vikram Bhat

bhatvikram@yahoo.com

Obama: Digital Change Agent

• Barack Obama this year became true Digital Change Agent.

• Raising a healthy chunk of his nearly $1 billion in campaign contributions online.

• Obama attracted more than 1.7 million contributors, with 93 percent of $2.9 million in online donations coming in by way of increments of less than $100.

• Social-networking technology in particular -- played a critical role in marshalling support for Obama's historic election.

• Millions of cell phone numbers were send targeted notices of personal appearances and to organize networks of volunteers.

• "My BO" became a robust social network that helped supporters to self-organize. Even on Twitter.

• While marketers have struggled to fully harness Web 2.0 technology, Obama continues to prove its power.

Hulu Holds Ground

• Hulu, the joint video-streaming venture of NBC and

Fox, is one of the great innovations of 2008.

• The groundbreaking online video model succeeded in

Ad-supported streaming television shows and movies

delivering popular programming.

• As Web video content flourishes, consumers continue

to be drawn to Hulu's professional content (including

not only repurposed TV shows but feature films) and

top-quality video, which also is distributed via partner

sites like Yahoo and MSN.

• Google's YouTube, with its much greater audience,

remains pretty much the domain player.

iPhone Redefines Mobile

• 2008, the iPhone phenomenon did create a shift in the mindset of the Consumer -- from "Why would I want to surf the Web on my crappy phone?" to "I can do that? I want one now!"

• Now touch screen has become the default design choice among models ranging from Google's G1 and Samsung's Instinct to the BlackBerry Storm.

• Then there are the many iPhone games and applications that have launched everything from a New York Times app to the Social Gaming Network's iBowl.

• It's now clear that the mobile medium is going to get there, and that advertisers are going to have a real canvas to play on in the near future.

HuffPo: The Political News Site

• The 2008 presidential campaign delivered a bonanza for

digital purveyors of news.

• The three-year-old newspaper/blog hybrid into the

mainstream, forcing every media player to rethink its business

model while making celebrity soap boxing cool.

• As the race for the White House sizzled, HuffPo's traffic

soared by a mind-blowing 474 percent versus a year earlier,

to 4.5 million unique users, per comScore. The best news of

all for the site: It is terrifically positioned to thrive post-

election, having expanded its purview beyond its core political

bent.

• The Huffington Post has launched sports and green content

as well as a local Chicago edition.

• Its innovative Big News Pages feature -- whereby editors

instantly create news sections around the hot topic of the

moment -- runs the gamut, from channels.

Zuckerberg: The Popular Boy

• CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s ad strategy has changed the face of

media,

• Its move in May of last year to open the social-networking

service to outside developers proved remarkably farsighted

and influential.

• It spread like a virus in 2008, as MySpace quarreled with

widget makers about building business off its audience,

Facebook embraced the outside help.

• The rationale was simple but revolutionary: The surest way

to build out services is to have an outside army of

developers do it.

• To date, 400,000 developers have introduced some 52,000

apps-and Facebook, not coincidentally, has exploded,

expanding its user base to 130 million worldwide.

• That not only led MySpace to embrace outside developers

but also paved the way for Apple to open the iPhone

platform.

Twitter- What are you doing

• Short-messaging service's simple concept, “what you're doing right now” has

become synonymous with common talk of the GenNext.

• Common-talk bulletins are broadcast daily by the six million registered users of

the two-and-a-half-year-old service.

• A single update does not in itself mean much but taken with hundreds, even

thousands of them, those little messages can come together to paint a rich

portrait.

• Twitter nailed something that's fundamental to the Web: Keep it simple. Twitter's

simple "What are you doing?" query and 140-character message limit are

arguably its strengths.

• Twitter also proved that the most successful Web applications are flexible and

open. Twitter's designers never envisioned that consumers would use the service

to communicate with one another, but users refashioned it as such, employing the

prefix "@+user name" to direct replies.

• Twitter while letting outside developers build apps, further bolstering Twitter's

popularity. "Tweeting" may not be for everyone, but it's clearly onto something:

The 25-person company recently turned down a $500 million acquisition offer from

Facebook

Wal-Mart: In Store Digital Network

• Wal-Mart this year rollout of its in-store digital network, the Wal-

Mart Smart Network. Powered by Internet Protocol Television,

content, ads and merchandising can be monitored and controlled

down to a single screen.

• It represented a new paradigm, offering a level of precision

targeting never before seen.

• The Wal-Mart net creates a dynamic, interactive dialogue between

marketer and consumer. The network also is a real throwback in

terms of customer service, taking shoppers back to a time when

the store clerk knew every item and could help the customer make

informed decisions on the spot.

• The network is the result of two years and $10 million in research

aimed at the optimal content and placement of screens for

engaging consumers at the point-of-purchase.