Legendary investor and political activist Tim Draper says that instead of getting on the case of Elon Musk, we should be thanking him and other transformational entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs and Travis Kalanick.
Draper also suggests that Elon Musk probably should have just taken Tesla private in order to avoid the myriad of rules and regulations imposed on public companies.
Venture capitalist Tim Draper was interviewed at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal by CNBC:
These Guys Transformed the World, We Should Thank Them
Every time I pull out my iPhone I think thank you, Steve Jobs, this is awesome. Every time I hit the Uber key, I think thank you, Travis, that is so cool. Every time I get in my Tesla I think thank you Elon. These guys have really transformed the world and we should just thank them everywhere we go. And if they are having trouble supporting them. What can we do to help? How can we support you? How can we make you happier? We want to make you happier, look what you have done for us! It’s so cool!
He Probably Should Have Just Taken the Whole Thing Private
Every human in the world has made a mistake. There are so many laws that you have to follow if you are a public company he probably should have just taken the whole thing private. When you are a public company you’ve got to follow so many rules. If you step one little piece out of line you guys in the press are like… oh my gosh, our hero has done something wrong. I think we have got to say, hey look, he’s a human being, he’s doing the best he can. He’s running two amazing huge multi-billion dollar companies that he started. Well, he started one and jumped in very early and saved the other. This guy is awesome, let’s do what we can to support him.
All of Us Should Really Focus on Making SpaceX Successful
I invest in early-stage startups and then I will ride them as long as I feel it’s the right thing to do. Have you driven a Tesla, it’s so much better than any other car out there. And SpaceX, all of us should really focus on making SpaceX successful. If Tesla doesn’t save this earth, he will at least get some of us off the earth so that we can move our species somewhere else. Elon was amazing… we are all going to Mars. People looked at him and said, oh he’s crazy.
But then all of the best engineers in the world said, how would we get there? Then they thought, how would we have human life succeed there? And then, how can we get there faster? All those questions happen with an engineer and so Elon gets the best rocket scientists in the world working for his company and so, of course, it becomes a big success. He’s going to get us closer and closer to Mars and maybe to Alpha Centauri and other places.
About Tim Draper
Tim Draper helps entrepreneurs change the world. Tim Draper helps entrepreneurs drive their visions through funding, education, media, and government reform. He has founded thirty Draper venture funds, Draper University, Bizworld, and two statewide initiatives to improve governance and education.
Internet pioneer Barry Diller says that the Internet revolution is still really young. He also says that this truly radical revolution is right now a very troubled revolution.
Barry Diller, Chairman and Senior Executive of IAC and Expedia, Inc., recently reflected on the relative youthfulness of the Internet and areas which are still ripe for entrepreneurs. IAC owns popular dating platforms such as Tinder and Match.
Below are Barry Diller’s comments made during an interview on Fox Business which you can watch in its entirety below:
The Internet Revolution is Still Really Young
The growth is just part of the revolution. People forget that the internet revolution is still really young, only 22 or 23 years. It took 10-15 years just to get up enough bandwidth to actually have rich media being served through it. We are really at the very earliest stage of this.
Expedia is one of the first companies to kind of colonize travel for the internet 20 years ago. That’s a world where the colonization of all these businesses is just now coming on ‘full line’ where you can do almost everything and almost everything more through digital platforms. So the growth is everywhere.
Fintech is Just Now Going Mainstream
Financial technology, Fintech, is just now really getting into very much mainstream. Big companies are being built for this. For us, it’s home services. Being able to the same thing you do when you want a car, being taken someplace rather than drive yourself, where you have an app and with Uber. Home service, which has been one of the most difficult areas to tame.
It’s the most, essentially, local of everything. It’s where your water heater breaks, your air conditioning doesn’t work, just take it on the emergency or quick service side, and you want help. Now there is an app in Angie Home Services in Home Advisor where literally you do the same thing. You say I need a plumber and it will show you plumbers hovering around, Uberish like service providers, where you will be able to do the full-service of that transaction on your mobile device because it’s there and it’s ready for you.
It’s Really a Platform
That is just now at it’s very earliest stages. It’s just one example where the growth runway is infinite. It’s really a platform. The platform takes consumers over here who have needs and service providers over here who provide services and through technology, it makes a perfect match or at least a good match.
That’s what all of those things are, they are platforms. Once you have a platform then when you say will others be created, well certainly there will be other platforms created, but there won’t be that many because the network effects have to come into play.
Tinder is Now Moving on the Same Track as Match
We’ve been involved in Match almost 20 years I think. We bought Match quite early in the cycle. We found that… you know what, that’s a very good idea. We found this little company in Texas called Match.com which we bought. The thing is when you say it’s just now becoming where people get married, we had over a million marriages ten years ago come from Match.com.
Then the technology moved forward and you have Tinder, which is actually younger in terms of people. People on Match were fairly serious, yes they wanted to date and see what happened on a little one-time date, but they also really wanted relationships. Tinder got younger and earlier stage of pre-relationship, one-time dating or one-time whatever. But now, it is moving on the same track as Match did where real relationships are coming out of Tinder. It’s an alternative to the historic pattern of going to bars or being fixed up. This actually does bring technology into the mix.
This is a Truly Radical Revolution
When you are inside of a revolution, which I was just lucky enough in timing to get into in a very early stage, you don’t realize the effects of what is happening around you. This is a truly radical revolution. Right now it is a very troubled revolution which happens at very early stages.
Part 1 of Barry Diller interview on the Internet Revolution:
Part 2 of Barry Diller interview on the Internet Revolution:
Uber is preparing to launch a new on-demand staffing business ahead of its first initial public offering. Called Uber Works, the new business could show prospective investors that the company can be a strong and lucrative platform for on-demand services.
Uber is banking on the fact that their “on-demand” transportation model was a huge success. The company is also betting that its massive database of contractors can be utilized toserve as temporary staff, like security personnel, waiters, or cooks, for corporate functions and various events.
While Uber Works is targeting people who are not Uber drivers, there’s no denying that the program could also help the company retain its drivers, or “partners,” by providing them with an alternative means of making money.
Some of the ride-hailing company’s drivers are already moonlighting at Uber Eats, the company’s food delivery platform. Aside from the additional income, opting for a staffing job can also break the monotony of driving the whole day.
Sources have reported that the Uber Works project had an initial trial run in Los Angeles before being developed further in Chicago.
There’s no word yet on when Uber Works would be formally launched. However, the company is said to have alreadystarted its recruitment drive. Job ads stating that a Chicago-based special projects team is looking for applicants that have a “strong interest in the on-demand labor space” have already been posted.
Uber Works will reportedly operate in the same vein as Freight and Uber Eats. The former connects shippers with the appropriate truckers. The latest “internal start-up” will fall under the office of Rachel Holt, the present head of Uber’s “new modalities” department. Holt’s division is in charge of the company’s multi-modal transportation drive. Aside from ride-sharing, the department is also expanding into scooters and bike sharing.
On-demand staffing is said to be among the numerous initiatives Holt’s division is studying. However, there’s no guarantee that Uber Works or any of these other projects will become the main business line.
Self-made marketing phenomena Neil Patel says that there is an alternative to buying Google Ads to grow your company. The answer he says is creating a free leader product or service that drive customers to your site for you to later upsell. Patel sees this alternative solution as a less expensive and more sustainable “growth hacking” strategy.
Neil Patel discussed this growth hacking strategy in a recent video:
You Don’t Have to Buy Google Ads to Create a Big Company
Google Ads are continually rising in cost. What if I told you I have a really cool solution that’ll give you a much better ROI in the long run than Google Ads. Today, I’m going to share with you the best alternative to Google Ads. What most people don’t realize is, you don’t have to spend money on Google Ads to create a multibillion-dollar company.
Have you heard of Dropbox? Of course, you have and the chances are it’s on your computer. Did you know that when Dropbox first came out they tried to grow by doing Google advertising? And what they found is, even though they had a product that costs around $5 a month, which is around $60 a year per customer, they were spending roughly $200 to $300 to acquire a customer from Google Ads.
Can you see how those numbers don’t work out? Not only are they spending more to acquire a customer than what they’re paying in the first year, but just because someone’s paying you $5 a month, doesn’t mean that $5 is pure profit either.
How to Leverage a Growth Hacking Strategy
So, what did Dropbox do? They leveraged growth hacking. They figured out a way to get users to come to their site and generate more customers. They did this by creating a free product or a service, and that’s a better alternative to Google Ads. If you look at Dropbox, you look at Slack, even look at Amazon, although Amazon’s not really doing free with Prime buy you get free two-day shipping.
By creating something that’s free or such an amazing offer, think of it as your carrot that you’re dangling, you’re going to get so many people over to your website that then when you upsell them into your paid products or services, it’s so much easier because they’re already using your product or service, you’ve already built that brand loyalty, that connection, that rapport with them. It’s much easier to get that upsell.
It Does Cost a Lot to Offer a Free Product or Service
And here’s what most people don’t understand; they’re like, “Whoa Nellie, if I spent all this money getting people over to my website by having a ‘free’ product or service, it’s going to cost me a lot of money,” and it does. I recently released a tool called Ubersuggest. If you look at Uber suggest, I’m spending $150,000 a month releasing a lot of the features you see in tools like BuzzSumo or SEMrush, for free; 150 grand a month, that’s my cost. My cost isn’t going down, it’s continually rising too.
But you know what, if I had to do paid advertising on Google to get those visitors, my estimation shows that I would be spending a bit more than $600,000. Do you see how giving something away for free that costs me $150,000 a month is much better than spending $600,000 a month on paid ads?
Get Creative with Your Marketing
You do not have to spend money on Google Ads to create a big business, just look at Dropbox. Leverage growth hacking, and then as you have these free tools, these free products, these free services, and it may not be the best ones out there but something that people are used to paying for, what you can do is do things like creating invite flows. Dropbox has it: you want more free space, invite more users. I can do the same thing with Ubersuggest; I don’t, but I can say “Want more free usage? Invite more members.”
You can get creative with your marketing, leverage growth hacking. Just don’t put all your money into Google Ads, and the reason I say that is not because I don’t like Google Ads. Ideally, you should be doing both. But the reason I say this is, the moment you stop Google Ads you don’t have any more traffic.
By creating something that’s free, and it doesn’t have to continually cost a ton of money, like HubSpot, they have this free email signature generator. It doesn’t cost them much money; they only spent a few thousand dollars creating it. They don’t even spend any money maintaining it each and every single month. But they found that it can drive over seven figures worth of revenue to their business per year; not too bad from one free tool.
Foursquare CEO Jeff Glueck said in an interview that “Facebook and Google are not your friends, they’re unreliable partners and are after domination.” He added in a blog post, “That’s why we’re building a company that stands apart from Google and Facebook as the most trusted, independent platform for understanding location.”
Glueck also announced the first close of a new round of $33 million of equity funding led by strategic investors Simon Ventures and Naver Corp. and by Union Square Ventures. He says that the first close of $25 million occurred on Friday and that he anticipates a secondary close of at least $8 million by year’s end.
Jeff Glueck, CEO of Foursquare, spoke about the new funding and how they were going to use it in their quest to “become the location layer of the internet” on CNBC:
Foursquare is Really the Location Layer of the Internet
Foursquare is really the location layer of the Internet. This round led by Simon Ventures is really gonna give us the fuel to continue investing. If you think about the location features on your phone, most of the time they’re powered by Foursquare technology. If you get a Snapchat geofilter, if you type a place into Uber, if you get matched on Tinder to people who like the same places, those are all examples of Foursquare technology at work.
Foursquare Helping Companies Take on the Amazon’s of the World
With this round of financing we’re going to take that into the retail world, into the dining world, and into the general media publishing world to bring location technology to bear. Foursquare helps media companies and brands and apps create location features. The examples of our customers are like Apple and Microsoft the like but 90 percent of commerce still happens in the real world.
For all the attention on Amazon and what Jeff Bezos said, Amazon is just 4 percent of consumer spending. Over 90 percent takes place in the in the real world including grocery, auto, and retail. We want to help those companies prepare to take on the Amazon’s of the world and that’s what we’re doing.
We help marketers reach people based on where they go in the real world, measure whether it leads people into the stores. We help apps be contextually aware so that when you walk into the store if there’s an offer you’re aware.
We Started as a Consumer App so 100% of What We Do is Opt-In
We started as a consumer app, so we think about privacy and enhancing consumer experiences with everything we do, so 100 percent of what we do is consumer opt-in. For instance, a lot of the apps that use us they say would you like to opt into background location to be to be alerted when you’re near a service or a special offer, about 60 or 70 percent of people choose to participate and about 30 to 40 percent don’t.
Everything we do is anonymized or aggregated. For instance, the data goes into a panel of over 25 million phones that we see always on and that creates a kind of Nielsen panel of the real world foot traffic. We were able to, for instance, predict the Chipotle sales famously we’re going to be down 30 percent before they announced their earnings. At an aggregate level, no one’s worried about privacy.
Everything We Do is Designed to Create Value for Users
Everything we do is designed to create value for the users. We’re not helping some flashlight app ask you for your always-on location. What good is that to you? We’re helping pair people in dating based on their favorite places. We’re helping to deliver contextually aware weather alerts for AccuWeather. Hey, you’re at the stadium and rain is about to happen.
All the cases where we make the experiences better the users opt-in because it makes the experience better. In a world where you don’t want to open a lot of apps, you want the app to tap you on the shoulder at the right time to remind you that you have a chance to get 50% off, or there’s a weather alert, or you’re near a friend. All these things are really valuable. Apple already reminds people that you’re opted into location sharing. It’s actually the part of the ad tech ecosystem that is doing shoddy things that we don’t think are best practice in privacy that I think will be heard over time. Why should a location be on for your flashlight app?
We are the independent Switzerland. If you think about Facebook and Google, there are only three companies in the world that can understand when a phone moves out of your pocket moves out of 100 million businesses in over 170 countries, that’s Google, Facebook, and Foursquare. We are the independent option.
Facebook and Google Are Not Your Friends and are After Domination
Our customers, which include folks like Apple and Microsoft and Tencent and Twitter and Snapchat and on and on. They look to us as an independent company. Facebook and Google are not your friends, they’re unreliable partners and are after domination. We are the Switzerland and I do think the location space needs a public independent company at some point that has the wherewithal to invest in pushing location technology.
Aeva is a new startup founded in the backyard of Google’s Mountain View, California headquarters. Co-founders Soroush Salehian and Mina Rezk, who both previously worked on the super secret self-driving car project at Apple called Titan, have announced their first product.
The product is a data collecting box that car manufacturers or third parties such as Uber can attach to cars to capture data to inform autonomous driving systems to make them safer. They say that the Aeva box is “part of the autonomous stack” that can easily be dropped into vehicles.
Soroush Salehian, co-founder of Aeva discussed his companies Aeva box with CNBC:
Aeva is for automobile car manufacturers or companies that are developing ride share autonomous taxis. We are providing this as part of the autonomous stack so that these customers can actually integrate this just like a drop in a placement into their vehicles as they develop their mass production vehicles.
The beauty of this system is that we directly measure the velocity map. We do not take multiple frames to infer each measurement.
When you typically see these kinds of sensors around the vehicles you typically see them with different kinds of boxes. You see maybe one box that is maybe the sensor head or the just a sensing system and then others that is the compute system. They’re usually connected together and typically these boxes are hidden away in a trunk or something like this.
One of the unique things about technologies and the work that we’ve done in the past couple of years is that we have been able to integrate this system into this single compact package while it provides still all the capabilities of these different sensors and outputs into one box.
Mina Rezk, Aeva’s other co-founder describes how the system takes data:
We have our depth map in which the color represents the depth of objects of every of pixel on here. Then we have our reflectivity map in which every pixel represents the reflectivity of each object. We also have our own unique velocity map in which every pixel represents the velocity of these objects.
There is a lot of motion that can easily be picked up whether it’s moving away or coming towards us. It is much harder to pick that up in a depth map because you have to infer multiple frames to understand what is going. However, in the velocity map within one single frame, we can easily know what is moving away and what’s coming towards us.
Congress is set to approve a Federal Aviation Administration bill that authorizes a significant increase in spending for the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST). However, what has brought excitement to astrophysicists and space enthusiasts is the provision on spaceports.
Per SpaceNews, this requires AST to develop a report on spaceport policies, including recommendations on government actions to “support, encourage, promote, and facilitate greater investments in infrastructure at spaceports.”
“The bill creates a category of commercial spaceflight vehicles known as “space support vehicles” that cover parts of launch vehicles systems flying for other purposes, such as training or testing. Such vehicles would include the aircraft used by air-launch systems. The bill allows commercial flights of space support vehicles without the need for a full-fledged airworthiness certificate from the FAA.” – SpaceNews
Renowned astrophysicists, author, and TV host Neil deGrasse Tyson is very excited that the United States is finally getting serious again about space, following the seeming lack of interest by Obama and previous administrations. Many space exploration supporters including Tyson believe this spaceport focus “should have been in progress decades ago”.
Neil deGrasse Tyson spoke to Fox Business News about the spaceport announcement:
In my field, we are overwhelmingly liberal and anti-war. Yet, the entire history of my field goes back to the service of military conquest, hegemony, and empire building. We were the ones who knew how to navigate the night’s sky and how to apply those navigational tools to the earth’s surface, enabling for you to find out what countries you want to conquer or to colonize. There have been astronomers sitting next to explorers right from the beginning.
Just look at GPS, something that started out as a military intended utility has now become a fundamental driver of so many elements of our modern economy from Uber to Tinder. So this relationship is long and deep.
There’s a lot of interesting things going on today with the FAA’s announcement that they want to stimulate and promote spaceports and commercial access to space. That really should have been in progress decades ago. This is important because you need someone to think it through from the beginning so if and when it becomes a thing there has been a lot of intelligent analysis regarding the safety of who’s sending you to space, regarding the safety of who’s down range from whatever is launched, and the safety of your duration in space.
Think of what the FAA has done for us to this day. We have one of the safest aviation records the world has ever seen. You want that to also be true for any activities that occur in space, especially space tourism, which will get you the average person taking these trips rather than just the flyboy macho person who will take the 50 percent risk of dying. You want to turn this into something that people might want to do.
The first trillionaire will be the person who exploits space resources on asteroids, comets, etc…
Twilio’s success is driven by its unique platform business model where its products are provided to developers based on usage. Companies only pay for what they use with no contracts required and they billed based on whatever is the fundamental value driver of the product they are using.
It’s really the continued success of our platform business model. Platform developers can use Twilio to solve a wide variety of problems inside of their companies and how their company communicates with their customers. Whether that’s voice phone calls in a contact center or that’s text message alerts, even real-time video communications and things like Facebook Messenger, you can incorporate all those things using Twilio.
It’s the broad breadth of things that developers can build on top of Twilio coupled with our usage-based pricing model which really aligns our success with our customers’ success, so we get paid when our customers use Twilio more and build things on top of our platform. The combination of the breadth of things you can build as well as the alignment we have with their customers, that’s the platform business model that has worked so well.
Every Company is Getting Reinvented Because of the Power of Software
Uber is one of our largest customers, they represent about four percent of our revenue today, but we have many different companies on our platform. Whether it’s Lyft and other rideshare companies as well as everything from Silicon Valley tech companies to Fortune 500 companies including major banks and insurance companies.
In fact, one of the customers we noted at our Q2 call was U-Haul which is not a company you typically think of as a software company. Every company is getting reinvented because of the power of software. Every company realizes that they too are a digital company now and if your business is U-Haul you have to reinvent yourself with software and when they do the software developers who work at those companies bring Twilio in.
Customer Engagement is the Lifeblood of Every Company
I think that every company regardless of what they do is always investing in their own growth and their customer relationships. So when you think about customer engagement, how a company talks to its customers, that’s a source of growth for every company. That is the lifeblood of every single company.
How you engage with your customers and what they think of those interactions, that is the brand perception and that is the reality of the product delivery.
The Platform Business Model is a Unique Business
We think that our business model, the platform business model, is a unique business. It’s not software as a service, it’s got a lot of different attributes, it’s not traditional on-premise software, it is a new kind of software company. Because of that usage-based model we can sustain a nice expansion rate and nice growth rate.
How Are the Services Measured?
Things like phone calls and text messages and video sessions are measured in gigabytes and our new contact center Twilio Flex is measured in the amount of time the agents spend using it. Each one of our products we break down into the fundamental value driver for our customers and we bill for that and what that does is it aligns our customers’ success with our success very nicely.
What value do you offer your clients? This is a very important question that a lot of companies struggle to answer. It’s also a question that you have to answer quickly, effectively, and clearly. Otherwise, your prospective client will lose interest and move on to the next brand.
So how will you answer this question? You have to develop a solid value proposition in order to address this key concern.
Value Proposition and Its Importance
Value proposition is a complicated principle that can be defined in numerous ways, but it basically boils down to three things:
What your company offers
What users will get from your brand
Why your company is the best choice
If you’re looking for a more precise definition, then value proposition is the promise of benefits that your company will provide to the customer.
Having a clear value proposition is crucial because it helps you toconvey how your product or service solves a problem or how it can be an asset to your target market. After all, how can you convince consumers to pick your brand if you can’t tell them exactly why they should?
How to Refine Your Company’s Value Proposition
While a value proposition sounds pretty straightforward, creating one can take some figuring out. This is because it has to be concise, unique, and compelling to be effective. It also has to be focused on what the user needs; not on what you can offer. Here are some ways you can develop or refine your company’s value proposition:
Know Your Buyer Personas
You can’t create or refine your value proposition if you don’t know who your buyers are. Begin by placing yourself in their shoes. Next, answer key questions like:
What do your buyers require?
What problems do they want to resolve?
What improvements are they looking for?
What do your customers value?
Never guess who your buyer is or what they want. Do market research to get the answers to your questions. Interview your customers, conduct surveys, or organize a focus group.
Know Your Product
Make sure you know your product well. Look at your product from your customer’s viewpoint. You should be able to answer important questions like how the product solves a problem or what hard results does it provide the customer. If you can integrate some verified facts in your answer, so much the better.
Take the case of Unbounce. The software company uses its landing page to boldly call itself “The Conversion Platform for Marketers.” In five words, it says exactly what it does and calls out its target market directly.
It then goes on to clarify its value proposition by positioning itself as ” the easiest way to build and test custom landing pages, website popups and sticky bars.”
Get to Know Your Rivals
No matter how unique you believe your product or service is, there will always be another company offering the same thing. That means you’ll need to distinguish what sets your product apart from the others and how it provides more value than your competitor.
Put All The Information Together
Once you have all the information you need, distill all that data and answer the question – “Why should I purchase this particular product?” Try to give your answer in two to three sentences. It will also help if you start your answer with phrases like “My product is better because” or “I want to purchase this product because.”
Uber is a prime example of a company that was able to successfully leverage its value proposition.
The ride-sharing company has a lot of competitors, but what it did better was to push the value of convenience. Uber subtly highlighted all the reasons why people hate taking a taxi before offering its proposition. Its website copy simply states that a car will come to you with just one tap. It also highlighted key points like the driver knowing where you want to go and the convenience of a cashless transaction.
Conclusion
A strong value proposition is essential for a company’s success. It makes connecting with your target audience easier and also establishes the base where you can build your brand’s sales and marketing strategies. You can easily enhance your value proposition by knowing your buyer personas and brand, using verifiable facts and knowing who your rivals are.
Compared to the larger social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, Snapchat is a bit like The Little Engine That Could. That’s because it’s been underestimated by numerous brands and marketers alike. They dismiss Snapchat as a viable advertising tool because of its reputation for being a purely social platform, used mostly by teenagers and young adults. But the image-sharing app has the potential to generate leads and keep profits rolling in.
In the first quarter of 2018, Snapchat reported 191 million active daily users—that’s a lot of potential customers. One survey also showed that 86 percent of the platform’s users fall into the 13 to 37 age group and more than seven billion videos were viewed on it daily in 2016.
Despite these numbers, businesses are still not overly fond of Snapchat. AClutch and Smart Insights study found that only 21 percent of businesses have Snapchat accounts. Compare that to the 89 percent of companies that are on Facebook, 80 percent on Twitter, and 56 percent on Instagram.
But this means that brands have fewer rivals and more room to maneuver on Snapchat. The platform is also evolving continuously, changing its user interface, featuring Stories for up to 24 hours, and adding eCommerce features. It’s also gaining popularity among older users as the teens who started using Snapchat when it launched in 2011 are becoming working adults.
Savvy marketers know that Snapchat can be a powerful tool for rising above the competition. Here are four tips to help you tap into the benefits of Snapchat:
1. Concentrate on a Younger Audience
Snapchat developer Snap Inc. designed the multimedia messaging app for teenagers. Recent data has shown that the company is doing a great job of keeping their young demographic engaged. A Pew Research Center study revealed that 78 percent of the respondents between 18 to 24-years-old are using the app. Meanwhile, only 45 percent of the same demographic use Twitter.
You can leave your competition in the dust by learning how to catch the attention of younger consumers. While a carefully worded call-to-action can be effective, creating an intriguing story or using entertaining filters in your Snap can exceedingly better.
In 2016, Taco Bell rolled out a comical Snap filter that turned the user’s head into a giant taco. The Cinco de Mayo promotion generated a whopping 224 million views. Now, image how that type of attention could change your business.
2. Launch Products and Push Promos
Snapchat has a high engagement rate. As a matter of fact, it gets almost 4 times higher engagement than Instagram. This makes it a great place to launch your latest products or to push promos. Makeup brand NARS launched their new product line to great success on the platform. The company drummed up excitement by giving followers a quick look at their new line. Snapchat allows you to create short, informal videos that look unpolished but relatable to more users.
3. Collaborate With Influencers
Influencer marketing is a very effective strategy. Companies can draw in a big audience because their content will be viewed by followers of the brand and that of the influencer. It’s a quick way of develop a large following in a short amount of time.
One company who successfully leveraged an influencer’s popularity was Audi. The car manufacturer partnered up with the popular show Pretty Little Liars and quickly amassed 115,000 followers on its Snapchat account.
You can also have an influencer take over your Snapchat account and make posts on your behalf for a specific time frame. For instance, music producer Pharrell once took over one of the Adidas events.
4. Keep Followers Interested Longer
Snapchat is all about drawing people in and engaging them. You’ll have better sales results the longer people stay on your page or account. Other social network platforms keep followers engaged by having them take additional steps, like clicking on a link to send them to another website.
Snapchat keeps followers interested much longer because they have integrated eCommerce features in the app itself. For instance, users can use the app to call people, make dinner reservations, grab an Uber, or explore brands and their locations.
With its impressively high engagement levels, business-friendly features and low competition from other brands, incorporating Snapchat into your marketing strategy could prove to be a worthwhile investment.
Every business should be using YouTube to engage their potential customers and create a sense of authority for their business. The problem is that most people don’t know where to start and don’t know how the YourTube algorithm works, so they serious make mistakes.
Internet marketing expert Neil Patel along with YouTube branding expert Adam LoDolce, founder of Viewership.com, recently provided the answers that every business needs to expertly use YouTube to communicate with their potential customers.
Below are some highlights:
You want to get more traffic from YouTube, there are a few things you need to do. One, check out vidIQ, it’s an amazing tool, it’ll help you out. However, YouTube marketing is not rocket science, similar to SEO. Yes, there are a lot of little components, but if you do them, you can do well.
Include the Right Keywords
The first one is, include the right keywords. Similar to how you do keyword research for SEO, you want to do keyword research for YouTube. Suggested apps are vidIQ, Adwords keyword planner tool and Ubersuggest which pulls from Adwords and Google Suggest and YouTube. If you just do that you will get more recommendations on keywords that will drive more traffic.
Have a Very Appealing Title
Another thing you want to do is have a really appealing title, one that evokes curiosity. Just having the keywords in there isn’t enough. If your title doesn’t evoke curiosity, people aren’t going to click through, play and then continue watching. That’s really the biggest difference between YouTube and Google Search. With Google Search, people are searching for it, whereas on YouTube, most traffic isn’t search traffic, it’s people who click on your videos from browse features and suggested videos.
It has to be really good, I don’t want to say clickbait, but it has to be click-worthy for you to get a lot of traffic. When you watch a video on YouTube they’ll recommend other videos or autoplay other videos from other channels. If your video is really good and somebody is watching it, in the sidebar, somebody may see your video and click on it. But if your title is not appealing they’re not going to really click on it.
You Have to Upload Transcriptions
In addition to that, you have to upload transcriptions. We suggest Rev.com where you can pay a dollar per minute for a transcription. What that does is when you upload it to YouTube it’ll tell them what your content is about. Yes, YouTube can auto-transcribe your content, but it doesn’t hold the same weight versus if you uploaded an SRT file or a transcription, and that’s what Rev.com provides.
Increase Engagement With Advertising
If your a business and want to get your videos in front of a lot of people on YouTube, then you should use advertisement to push those videos in front of people who have liked or commented on previous videos. The reason why this is so effective is that it is going to get much more engagement on the new videos that you produce, and YouTube loves engagement.
YouTube, like Google, is looking at the authority of your channel and engagement feeds this algorithm. If you have a lot of videos that are doing well it boosts the overall authority of your whole channel, and all of your videos will start doing better. The worst thing you can do is have all these videos out there with no likes, no comments, nothing going on.
Key Tips for Producing a Video
One of the biggest things Adam LoDolce taught me (noted Neil Patel) when I was learning about YouTube marketing, was all about how to produce the video. I’m not talking about the editing, I’m talking about your personality and how you create your own video.
The biggest one is how you want your audience to feel. A lot of people think about keyword topics and that’s nice for your research, but ultimately, it’s about how do you want them to feel. Do you want them to be motivated, or do you want them to laugh?
For your business channel, the worst thing you can do is to be very stiff, professional and to just give tactical advice. Loosen up a little bit, have a little fun, make a joke, that’s how you can get engagement with your videos. If you are not having fun recording, I bet you the person watching is not going to have fun.
Your videos need to be a decent length. YouTube’s looking at how long are you keeping people on YouTube! The more you keep them on YouTube, instead of driving them back to your website, the better. Everyone likes putting those captions in videos, like click this link, head back over to my website. That will hurt your YouTube ratings versus just keeping people on YouTube.
Think of it more as a branding channel, and when you are creating a video that doesn’t mean you need to create an hour video, but typically anything about 5 or 6 minutes is good. Any short videos of 2-3 minutes is just going to hurt you versus creating 5-10 minute videos.
Video is the Future
If you are a business and not doing any video, you are missing out. If you can start doing it and start getting more comfortable with it, push your comfort zone and get in front of the camera, you are going to have a competitive advantage out there.
Jonathan Um, Cofounder, and COO of Holler.com, the world’s first online dollar store, recently spoke at Retail (R)Evolution 2018 about how important the supply chain and automation is to his young start-up.
We are on the extreme end of the online spectrum. For us, carrying about 10,000 SKU’s, providing the ultimate digital hunt to our 6 million users, the number one thing we focus on, first, second and third, is supply chain excellence. We take a holistic view of the supply chain, from the way we buy, what we buy, how we source, how we bring it in, how we pay, to the way we fulfill and ship. It was inevitable for a bunch of scrappy guys trying to squeeze every ounce of fat from that supply chain to turn to automation. Not just your run of the mill automation, but robotics.
Speed Isn’t Everything
I think with Amazon out there in the market there is a misconception that speed is everything. You have to deliver next-day, same day, and that’s simply not true. In fact, what rings the most true is free is king. And customers will do amazing things to try to get to free shipping. It is the end all, be all for the extreme value segment. For us, we are very focused on how to deliver free shipping and make our unit economics work. That’s number one. Number two is transparency. Customers want to know what’s going on with their order?
If it’s getting picked, packed–there are actually features in our WMS with HighJump Software where you get a Facebook notification if the order is being picked at that very instant. For the customer, it’s really about not worrying that you have our attention on your order because you receive regular updates. That whole stat about 8 contacts per package is a real cost and that is a reality that we’re living through. Every time we update and add transparency is a win for our business.
Same Day: The Exception for Delivery but Not for Notification
In terms of click to ship, it is same day, that is the expectation. When you place an order on Holler.com, the expectation is that you get a shipping notification the same day. The constraint is that we have a 5-day work schedule, we don’t have a 7-day work schedule, so we need to catch up on Monday and Tuesday very quickly. But that same day ship notification, that is the standard.
Small Start-Ups Must Outsource Automation to be Successful
We are a well-funded company, but we don’t have the capital to deploy traditional automation. You ask us to spend $2 million, $5 million we are just going to say no out of the gate. It’s a non-starter for us. There is no scenario that would payback for us, ever. I don’t know what my order volume is in Q4 five years from now. I can barely tell you five quarters from now. So I cannot put up $5 million, $10 million or $15 million.
We are working with a solution called Invia Robotics. It’s basically a little robot, costs no more than a couple thousand dollars to build, and it’s a pay as you go service. So in the day of Uber and Lyft and Airbnb, why would you pay for your own capX as a small company like us? We pay by the pick, the replenishment tasks, and the inventory tasks. This is a great solution for where we are as a business, doing about 3,000 orders a day and 30,000 lines.
If we were to scale up to 100,000 lines in a couple of years, I’d be totally open to insourcing.
Successful internet entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk recently spoke about how so many people continue to underestimate the amazing power of the internet to change their lives. Don’t miss the part about Facebook and Instagram about half way down below. Hint… this is the part that can literally change your life and your business.
Here are the highlights:
I think that everybody in here is underestimating how special this era is.
Whether you’re a young kid and never knew a non-internet world, whether you’re my age, 42, or above and you understood it because we grew up without it, even the people that can appreciate it because we grew up without it, I don’t think are really understanding that this internet thing is no question the biggest change in the human race, ever. It just is.
All the things we’re thinking about, whether it’s political or social or financial things, they’ve just started. Everything that’s changing has just started.
In my adulthood, not even in my childhood, Best Buy rose and was eliminated because of this environment. I’ll be honest with you, I mean, it’s tough to say but I actually think Target is remarkably vulnerable in an Amazon/Walmart battle world. I actually predict, pretty aggressively, that Target will be bought by either Amazon or Facebook or Apple or Google because I think the internet companies have to buy retail to compete with Amazon.
There’s a real, real disconnect between the reality of what’s happening, all the opportunity.
What I think is happening is this extremism. Much like our social issues where we’re starting to really go in opposite directions. There’s this extremism, yes, there are hundreds of 11-year-olds making a million fucking dollars a year, making slime, selling it on Instagram, yet 99% of people that raise $2 million in capital for their start-up to make the Uber a fucking pizza delivery are going to fail.
I think the thing that’s grounding me is in this ridiculous change in our society, things like 15 years ago, if you dated on the internet and dated somebody you met on the internet, you were weird and a loser and it was taboo, and now every single person dates through the internet and swipes left and right 24/7, or slides into the DM.
Do you know how crazy Uber is as an early investor? Uber’s insane. Uber, or Lyft, or whatever you want, literally, if I stood up here and said guys, in 15 years you’re going to wan your 13-year-old daughter to go into a stranger’s car, because you’re going to think that’s safer than her driving with her friend. Parents actually, and probably correctly, think it’s safer for their 16-year-old daughter to go into strange 40-year-old men cars multiple times a day. I mean it.
But I would have never been able to sell you on that if this was 10 years ago and I’m like, let’s do start-up ideas and I pitched you on that, you would have laughed me out of the room. I know because I laughed the founders of Uber out of the room when they were like, what if everybody could get a limo on their iPhone? I was like, yeah, 1% of rich people. I never saw it playing out the way it did.
I think it’s a very interesting time.
What’s interesting to me about it is as the world’s changing, as people watching video games, more people watch people play video games than watch people play baseball. That’s just real. ABC, NBC, and CBS are finished. They’re done.
Remember when four years ago you had one show on Netflix that you liked but then you watched cable? Now you have Netflix and there’s one show on cable or regular TV. Do you understand when all the sports go to Netflix and Amazon? Amazon has bought the rights to English Premier Football, you know, proper football, soccer shit.
Tennis, Amazon’s going to be bidding for the NFL. Hulu’s going to have hockey. Google and Apple are going to have basketball. You’re never going to turn on two, four, five, or seven. Ever.
In this world, think about nothing we believe in or use, YouTube, the iPhone, Netflix, Facebook, none of that existed 15 years ago. Nothing that our entire society is running on. Everything we run on, guys, almost everybody her remembers the world pre-smartphone. You couldn’t, it’s just five minutes ago that you were like the internet on your phone! We struggle with things.
Parents all the time, when SnapChat blew up three or four years ago, parents were like, Gary, but I don’t want my kid on SnapChat. I’m like, you do know your son has Safari and can type in JizzHut.com, right? You’re worried about the one floozy 13-year-old in the fucking state and the dude’s got porn at his fucking fingertips.
That’s what I think a lot about.
Nobody here has actually quantified what’s really happened here.
For example, there’s a term in start-up land or in the business world called the last mile. It’s this big debate of how we’re all going to get everything delivered to us within an hour. Is it going to be Amazon, is it going to be Uber, is it going to be Postmates?
What I don’t think people understand is 7-11 is actually out of business in the next 15 years because of the last mile. You need deodorant or a fucking 20 ounce Mountain Dew you’re going to press a button and it’s going to be in your fucking house or office in a second.
What I think I’ve done really well in my career by launching a wine business on the internet in 1996 when people told me the internet itself was a fad. Or buying Google Adwords when nobody even knew what a search engine really was. Or when I started a wine show on YouTube in the first six months it existed. Or went all in on social media when everybody shit on social media, I was there.
I remember what everybody thought about Twitter and how stupid it was. Or that Facebook was a college thing. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
We put the past on a pedestal. We demonize the current and the future.
In all these changes, in all of this stuff that is going on, the thing that is most fascinating to me and the thing that I want to talk to you about is that this, doing the right thing and gratitude and honor and all this propaganda that I push, is actually more valuable than ever because let me tell you what the internet’s going to do.
I’ve been saying this for a long time and I feel like people are finally starting to believe me. I had this woman yelling at me over dinner about how this internet thing is scary and it sucks and this and that. And she’s an incredible activist for all women’s rights and all these other things. I’m like, you do understand that your media that you’re putting on a pedestal, the New York Times and NBC, is the reason all this bad stuff was able to happen?
When five or six old white guys control the media, a lot of stuff doesn’t hit daylight. When we control the media it gets a lot harder. Let me give you a news alert. Russia didn’t make you do anything. It didn’t, it didn’t. Meaning, if you’re a good person, a bad person, voted Democrat or Republican, you do you.
I have zero interest in debating politics with anybody these days because everyone’s on tilt. I just want everybody to know, the Russians didn’t hack your fucking brain. You didn’t go in saying I’m going to vote for Hillary, and vote for Donald, or the other way around. That’s not what happened. What happened is, you believe in what you want to believe.
Technology’s exposing us, it’s not changing us. What’s happening, where does this all go? What I want you to do more than anything is understand the following.
It has never been a better time in the human race ever to actually just go all in on you.
We are in a remarkable time. For all the things you may be worried about, left, right, up, down, there has never been a better time to be alive in the human race than right now.
Medicine, life expectancy, poverty, every issue we have, better. The best people to talk about what’s going on in America are 90-year-olds. They shit on everybody. They’re like, she thinks it’s bad? Ah, fuck!
This like 92-year-old woman stopped me in the street, she’s like, keep doing what you’re doing, I’m like, I mean, she looked like 190. I was like, thank you. I got to talk to her for a second and she’s like, by the way, these women, and she’s wrong but it was still funny, these women, fuck, if I didn’t have somebody grab my ass everyday in the office, I was pissed!
I was like, I get it. I was like, don’t say that in public. She’s like, fuck public! I was like, man, 92 is some gangster shit. I’m obsessed with practicality. People think I’m a destructor, I’m practical.
Facebook and Instagram ads are grossly under-priced.
If you go how tonight and Google how to run Instagram story ads, and learn how to do that, and then make a video or picture and run Instagram story ads for whatever you’re trying to do in life, become the mayor here, sell some peanuts, kombucha, get people to sign up for your fucking track team, I don’t care what, An Instagram story ad will work better than anything else you can do if you care about people 15-45. If you care about people 30-75, Facebook works better than anything.
If you sit here tonight and you are not completely fucking pumped completely pumped about your life, it’s up to you to change that.
I can’t implore this audience enough to realize that Facebook and Instagram right now is so remarkably under-priced in its ability to change the outcome of your business, your dreams, your mission. If I could do anything today, it would be to encourage people to go home and Google how to run Facebook ads, how to run Instagram ads, because that will absolutely change your game.
I think about this all the time. The ROI. The ROI of a basketball for LeBron it’s a billion dollars, for me it’s zero. Just because you didn’t have a successful ad campaign on Facebook or Instagram doesn’t mean it doesn’t work, it means you suck.
If you don’t run a successful ad campaign right now on Facebook and Instagram in the way that it’s so under-priced, you actually really suck. Now, here’s the good news. A lot of people run ads that are self-serving. The reason so many things aren’t working for people is that it’s good for you, not for the other person. Nobody wants your $897 bullshit e-book. That’s why your fucking Facebook ad didn’t work. That’s the problem, not Facebook.
I really, really, really want to implore people to understand that I sit here with a lot of business regret because when my dad’s business grew from $3 to $60 million, it should have been from $3 to $250 million. But I didn’t run enough Google ads.
I hit hard on Google when it first popped but I didn’t spend enough because I was a kid and I didn’t realize how special that moment was. That moment went away. Buying the word cabernet and Merlot and pinot grigio and Bordeaux and Napa Valley and wine and wines and wine gifts and this and that, they were five and 10 cents a click. I bought them all and nobody knew what the fuck was happening.
There were millions of people on Google and I got bigger than Haskell’s and Sam’s and Sherry Lehman’s and Wine Club and everybody was confused why. That’s what’s happening right now on Facebook and Instagram.
I’m telling you the fucking truth, I’m giving it to you, and 98% of you will not do anything about it.
We have to understand what’s going on. Why is Toys R Us going out of business? Why are all these things happening? It’s happening because the internet is eating up our society.
Why do we have such big opportunities?
Because everybody here can start a competitor to Coca Cola, which used to take $50 million because you had to buy into Albertson’s and to Safeway and Target and you had to make it and you had to fucking market it on television and now it costs $200,000.
You make something, you slap it on Amazon, 3PL, you run some Instagram influencer ads, and you’re in the game. It’s crazy.
What’s crazy about the internet, unlike what we grew up with whereas if you wanted to open up your store, your dream store, you had to be there so by the time you got home at seven, you couldn’t do that. The fact that you can do this from 7PM to two in the morning until it means something, enough to give you the courage to jump off the other thing, this is just practical.
The dream of being happy and living your life has actually become practical.
You’re sitting on the information but because it wasn’t like that for last 300 years, you can’t wrap your head around it. And because it seems so crazy, the idea of doing it and nothing happens for six months, makes you feel like it wasn’t meant to be and you get out. Because you were built and groomed within a school environment.
The only reason I’m successful is because I got Ds and Fs and I didn’t listen. I mean it. It’s how I see things differently. You need somebody else to have already done it. You need to see the path. I don’t like paths. I need blank slates. This is a blank slate.
I can’t wrap my head around it. That so many people here can build a $50,000 to $500,000 a year business on Amazon just by going on websites in China, buying something, and then relisting it on Amazon. That, my parents and I had dinner in New York and we had this nice dinner and we were coming out and our waitress ran out and grabbed me and said, thank you so much. She said, my fiance was out of a job for 19 months, depressed, doing drugs, saw one of your Instagram videos and a year later on Amazon is making $1.3 million a year. To me, this is fucking nuts.
So I am super excited about the time that we’re living in. I love what’s going on, I love that the big companies are losing, I love that the establishment is in trouble. I love it because I think it’s going to be better. I think we’re all going to be happier. I really do.
When Best Buy goes out of business, I don’t see that as a negativity.
I see that as an opportunity. I love that people are like, oh, Best Buy shouldn’t go out of business. Best Buy put people out of business. Everyone’s like, this is unfair, Walmart, like Target, Target put people out of business.
How are you confused by this? All of a sudden this was the moment to stop capitalism? Because Target’s here? Target put people out of business. Ironically, if you really play out my thesis, the people that are going to put Target out of business are back to the small people.
That is the most interesting shit to me of all time.
This internet thing is big. It’s real big. It’ll be bigger than we all thought. To me, the fact that you’re not doing Facebook or Instagram or YouTube out of a social point of view, to the detriment of your business and happiness and opportunity, is nuts. Because you’re mad that people aren’t talking to each other in real life, you’re leaving opportunity on the table for yourself is not a good idea.
Stripe has just revealed that it will be offering businesses the capacity to make their own credit cards. The online payments company also announced that they will be using Mastercard and Visa as the operating networks for their new service, aptly called “Stripe Issuing.”
The company explained that the service is “an API for creating cards and new business models” and can be utilized to develop a variety of credit cards, both physical and virtual. For instance,Stripe Issuing can be used to create expense cards with customized credit limits for employees and can even be used by new banks to issue credit cards to their customers.
Since its launch in 2010, Stripe has experienced steady growth in the payments sector. Its system has made it easier for businesses like Lyft, Postmates, and Slack to process payments for ride-sharing, food delivery, and team collaboration services, respectively.
Stripe’s Annual Transaction Volume Since 2015
Now Stripe’s new service aims to fill another gap in payment processing. Lachy Groom, the head of Stripe Issuing,explained to Bloomberg that the company has “tackled many of the major problems on accepting payments” but that businesses still have difficulties in moving their money.
Analyst Jordan McKee expounded on the appeal this new service will have on enterprises. He said that developing a customized payment infrastructure is very complicated and expensive, which is why the majority of companies don’t bother with it. However, Stripe offering a “simplicity value proposition” will definitely bring to light new cases that haven’t been considered previously.
Stripe Issuing service may also generate a tidy sum. Not only will it receive a percentage from every payment made on a card, it could also grow its revenue by retaining customers who are looking for a one-stop source to issue and receive payments.
Dozens of companies have reportedly tested the product, although no names have yet been shared. Businesses who are interested in Stripe’s new service can head over to thecompany site to request an invitation.
Microsoft and Red Hat haveannounced their collaboration in offering the first jointly managed OpenShift on Azure, the former’s public cloud. At the Red Hat Summit that opened on Tuesday, the teamup will allow enterprise developers to run container-based applications across on-premises and public clouds.
Red Hat OpenShift, the company’s Kubernetes container application platform, has been identified as the industry’s most comprehensive solution. With its availability on Azure, container management will become easier since it will be a fully managed service by Microsoft and Red Hat.
— Open at Microsoft (@OpenAtMicrosoft) May 8, 2018
So, how does container application platform works? Runtime components, such as files, environment variables, and libraries needed in executing an application, are distributed into so-called containers. They use fewer resources since app containers can share with the host’s operating system in order to run, unlike virtual machines that have their own OS.
Red Hat president Paul Cormier pointed out that several organizations often have a mixture of on-premises and public cloud footprint for their IT operations. Its partnership with Microsoft gives customers the opportunity to tap into an innovative hybrid cloud platform without making major adjustments in their existing operations.
During the summit, Burr Sutter of Red Hat demonstrated how users can load-balance across a hybrid cloud comprised of an on-site rack, Azure in Texas, and Amazon Web Services in Ohio. He showed that the task could be done automatically and in real time using Kubernetes.
As more companies turn to containerized applications as part of the digital transformation, the demand for managed services around containers is also increasing,observed Red Hat vice president Mike Ferris. Red Hat OpenShift on Azure gives enterprises the flexibility to move workloads around and across on- and off-premises, such as the public cloud. Moreover, OpenShift customers no longer need to manage Kubernetes themselves – astrategy that Microsoft has been nudging on.
Other advantages of the collaboration to developers include faster connections with enhanced security under hybrid networking, and access to managed services like Azure Cosmos DB, Azure Machine Learning, and Azure SQL DB. Thanks to available extensive technology platforms, OpenShift customers can now build cloud-native apps and update existing ones. There will be an overarching support for containerized applications, operating systems, infrastructure, and orchestrator.
“Microsoft and Red Hat are aligned in our vision to deliver simplicity, choice, and flexibility to enterprise developers building cloud-native applications,” said Scott Guthrie, Microsoft’s executive vice president for cloud and enterprise. “Today, we’re combining both companies’ leadership in Kubernetes, hybrid cloud, and enterprise operating systems to simplify the complex process of container management, with an industry-first solution on Azure.”
The rollout of the collaboration will happen in two phases, with support for the OpenShift Container Platform and Red Hat Enterprise Linux on Azure. Meanwhile, the jointly developed and managed Red Hat OpenShift on Azure is slated for preview in the coming months.
It seems that Google is seriously eyeing a bigger slice of the workplace communications market. Recently, the company announced that Hangouts Chat is now rolling out to the general public which puts it on a collision course with rival Slack and Microsoft Teams.
Hangouts Chat was first announced in March of 2017 and was previously available as part of an Early Adopter Program. However, the feature is now making its way to all users over the course of seven days starting yesterday.
Google is positioning Hangouts Chat as the perfect tool to handle the communication needs of companies especially those that require team members from different parts of the globe to collaborate. The feature, which can be accessed by all G Suite users,supports 28 languages while each room can even accommodate up to 8,000 members.
Chat also allows plenty of customization options so that companies can tweak the tool to suit their specific needs. For instance, developers may build bots or integrate their services into the feature. The feature is also compatible with Google’s existing ecosystem of partners making it easier for the tool to be integrated with other workplace collaboration apps such as Xero, RingCentral, UberConference, Salesforce, Zenefits, Zoom.ai, Jira, Trello, Wrike, and Kayak.
Of course, Hangouts Chat is very compatible with Google’s own suite of products and workplace tools. From Chat, users can easily start Hangouts Meet video conferences as well as document and file sharing.
The rise of online jobs, as well as teams of workers opting to work remotely, has spawned a new segment of services catering to the collaborative and communication needs of modern day businesses. As a newcomer, Hangouts Chat needs to put more effort to catch up with more established players in the market. At the moment,Microsoft Teams has a 37 percent share of the global market collaboration software while rival Slack has 5 percent share.
It seems that more and more tech companies are starting to monetize their messaging apps to meet the communication needs of businesses. The latest company to go this route is Apple, which recently announced that it will belaunching Business Chat, a feature that was actually unveiled during last year’s Worldwide Developer Conference.
Apple will be releasing anew operating system update this Spring, the iOS 11.3. The company will also introduce a host of new features along with the iOS update, one of which is the Business Chat.
With the Business Chat feature in place,users will be able to talk directly with a company’s business representative via the iMessage app. In addition, the new feature will offer payment capabilities via Apple Pay as well as make appointments if such is applicable to the business.
Apple is preparing to roll out a new feature in iMessage that will allow consumers to chat directly with businesses through Apple’s messaging platform. The feature, called Business Chat, will debut this spring https://t.co/KdEUjWI0Jgpic.twitter.com/ZIGRjnhDIQ
The move seems to signal Apple’s serious intent to enter into the niche. SnapChat made a similar move earlier this month by launching its own WhatsApp Business app.
While many people may not be used to using chats to contact companies, demand for business messaging is increasing. In fact, a Facebook-commissioned Nielsen study concluded that the majority of consumers would actuallyprefer messaging a business than calling their hotline. Based on the survey, 56 percent expressed a preference in using text to contact companies. Furthermore, a total of 67 percent believed that business messaging is going to pick up in the next two years.
However, it will be a big challenge for Apple to make it big in business messaging given its smaller number of users. Facebook Messenger has a head start with around 1.3 billion users using the app with 80 percent of its 65 million businesses users already using the platform to connect with customers.
While WhatsApp may be a bit late in entering the business chat segment, Apple can’t compete in terms of the size of its user base. WhatsApp has around 1.3 billion users worldwide.
Will we finally see an iPhone 8 launch this coming September? That just might be the case as recent reports state that Apple has already picked a date next month to release its newest lineup which could include the highly anticipated smartphone.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Apple has already scheduled a product announcement event on September 12, 2017. Of course, the latest report is welcome news for Apple fans who, for several months now, have been waiting for the tech giant to announce the iPhone 8 release date.
Before you get all excited, here’s a warning. Apple did not actually make the announcement. In the report, WSJ simply stated the latest information came from people who have inside knowledge of Apple’s plans. Without an official statement from the company, this also means that iPhone 8 may not be included in the new products to be unveiled.
But still, one can remain hopeful. In fact, there are several reports stating that Apple will unveil not one but three new iPhone models.
According to eWeek, Apple will launch three new smartphones in the upcoming September 12 event. The report is not certain if one of the three new phones will be the highly anticipated iPhone 8 or if it will even be named as such. One possibility is that the new phones might be labeled as extensions of the iPhone 7 series.
There is one interesting prediction made by eWeek though. According to the publication, one of the new iPhones will be a 10th-anniversary edition to commemorate the September 2007 release of the first iPhone. If correct, consumers can expect the special phone to be a bit more expensive than the regular models.
Meanwhile, Mashable is betting that one of the upcoming phones to be unveiled at Apple’s September 12 event will be the iPhone 8. The publication agrees with eWeek’s report that the tech company will be unveiling three smartphones during the event and has, in fact, named the other two mobile phones as iPhone 7S and iPhone 7S Plus.
While Apple may unveil the iPhone 8 at the event, Mashable warns consumers not to expect the gadget to be available anytime soon. Apple is predicted to delay the availability of the new phone until later this fall to give time for the sales of the latest iPhone 7 models to stabilize.
Aside from smartphones, Apple is also expected to launch newer versions of the Apple Watch. According to Recode, the gadget has been gaining popularity as a fitness tracker, a trend that the company plans to mine with the introduction of new features into the upcoming versions of the wearable. For instance, the new Apple Watch will likely sport a built-in modem to enable users to listen to streamed music, make calls and even use some apps such as Uber.
Companies have to fight tooth and nail to get their message across these days. And while content marketing still has its place, influencer marketing is the new trend, particularly with the ubiquitousness of social media.
The siteRelevance likened influencer marketing to “celebrity endorsement advertising,” when Nicole Kidman could plug Chanel #5 or Leonardo di Caprio could extol the virtues of just about any product in commercials and magazines. Influencer marketing is basically the same thing, except that these days, you use “influencers” and social media.
How Does Influencer Marketing Work?
Influencer marketing basically boils down to three things – get in touch with someone with influence, like a popular blogger, get that person to promote your company in some form, and boost your exposure on social media.
Let’s say there’s a lifestyle maven named Party Pat with about 5,000 people following her on her blog and Instagram. You were able to convince Pat to help promote your online bookstore among her followers. She first blogs about her favorite books and mentions your store as her go-to place for ordering books. She later tweets or posts a photo of the latest book that she acquired and mentions how she easily ordered it from your shop and that it arrived in just one day. Her casual mentioning of your store and her experience could prompt her followers to check out your site as well.
The example might sound simple but it’s actually not. It entails a lot of hard work and preparation. First, you have to find an influencer who’s a good fit for your brand, whether they’re bloggers, YouTubers, writers with regular contributions to popular online sites, or industry experts. Next, you have to reach out and build a rapport with said influencer. Some do this by following the influencer and interacting with him or her while others do it the relatively old-fashioned way and send an email.
If the influencer does respond, you still have to find a way to convince them to promote you. Maybe you can send a sample product or offer to be a guest blogger. Offer compensation is possible but could also be tricky. You have to convince and prove to the influencer that it’s good for them to help you out. This means that if you’re going to guest post, your content should be impeccable. If you’re going to send a sample product, it should be high quality.
3 Tips for Using Influencers
If you are convinced that influencer marketing will help you and your brand, consider the following tips:
Know that the relationship between the brand, the influencer, and the audience must be real.
Influencers have a strong following on social media because they capture their audience’s interest; they have established a relationship with them. Maybe they’re the same age as their audience, have the same interests, or have undergone the same life experiences. This strong relationship with their followers means influencers will only work with a company or brand that they and their audience believe in. For example, an influencer known for her quirky and affordable style of clothes won’t suddenly start campaigning for a high-end shoe brand.
Be ready to play long-term.
Don’t go into influencer marketing thinking that one sponsored post will shore up your business. While a one-time mention by a mega-influencer can make a big difference, it’s a rare, and very expensive, situation. Most of the time, influencer marketing should be looked at as a long-term approach, as you have to slowly build trust among the influencer’s followers. Followers might have to see his favorite influencer trying or mentioning your product several times before they become curious enough to explore and give your brand a try.
Give creative control over to the influencer.
You might have complete control over your marketing strategy when it comes to traditional advertising, but influencer marketing is far from conventional. The goal is for your brand to have a quality engagement with the influencer’s audience. To achieve that, you have to relinquish creative control to the influencer, as they know their audience. They understand the best way to introduce your brand and make their followers receptive to it.
Does Influencer Marketing Work?
There’s some controversy on whether or not influencer marketing really works.Data from a 2016 marketing survey has shown that 94% of those who used this marketing strategy believed it works. However, what the ROI is of influencer marketing is still something of a challenge this year. But there’s no question that this strategy has wide reach, especially with Facebook and Instagram being key platforms for influencer marketing.
Influencer marketing might not be for every company, but there’s no doubting its influence on today’s social media savvy consumers.
The battle between Waymo’s Alphabet and Uber is far from over, despite the former dropping three out of their four patent claims. In their defense, Waymo is saying that they are dropping the claims because it has been agreed upon that Uber will be abandoning the use of LiDAR, the autonomous driving technology in question.
In a statement, Uber has clarified that they are no longer using the technology and have no plans of using it in the near future, Waymo, however, is reserving their right to refile any of the dropped claims if necessary.
The lawsuit between Waymo and Uber over the alleged theft of trade secrets by Anthony Levandowski took a turn https://t.co/dik5RZwvVf
Waymo, Google’s self-driving project that now runs under its own business patent Alphabet, stands by their decision of dropping three out of the four patent infringements in order to streamline their defense and strengthen their case.
The heated court battle stems from the alleged theft of over 14,000 files by then Uber employee Anthony Levandowski shortly after leaving Waymo. Levandowski supposedly used the information he obtained to build his own autonomous trucking company, Otto, which was later purchased by Uber for $680,000,000 in stock.
Uber is firm in saying that they had no prior knowledge that the data on which Otto was based was stolen from the Waymo server. Levandowski may face criminal charges for the alleged theft of data but hasrefused to testify, invoking his right against self-incrimination.
so uber is kinda concerned that the fact that anthony levandowski is pleading the 5th will be taken negatively pic.twitter.com/FN0OWMwMN7
Without Levandowski’s testimony, it may seem like Uber is at a loss for defense, but the company remains confident that the cases filed against them lacks evidence and that the claims are not rooted in facts.
Waymo insists that the focus of the lawsuit does not solely rely on the patent infringement but rather the trade secrets which then Waymo engineer Levandowski stole from their server.
Despite recommendations by Judge William Alsup to drop the entire case, Waymo is persistent in pursuing the claims they made against Uber. The trial date is scheduled in October of this year.
Tesla is still the recognized leader in the autonomous vehicle concept on the strength of its Model S and Model X. But the new partnership between Google’s Waymo and Lyft aims to give Elon Musk a run for his money.
The two Silicon Valley companies have agreed to unify their resources and expertise to commercialize self-driving cars.
A spokesperson for Lyftsaid, “Waymo holds today’s best self-driving technology, and collaborating with them will accelerate our shared vision of improving lives with the world’s best transportation.”
The partnership was also confirmed by a spokesperson for Waymo who remarked, “Lyft’s vision and commitment to improving the way cities move will help Waymo’s self-driving technology reach more people, in more places.”
Waymo may possess the “best technology” since its self-driving cars are already averaging 5,000 miles without any human help, according to a report from the California DMV. In contrast, GM’s Cruise Automation is only averaging in the “hundreds of miles.”
However, Waymo does not have the knowledge on transportation networking to really make the jump between the deployment of its automated cars and mass commercialization. This is where Lyft will come in.
For those who are not familiar with Lyft, it’s similar to Uber but targets ordinary drivers looking to make some extra buck as partners. Customers also pay through the company’s app, but while the tip is already integrated into the final cost for Uber, Lyft asks users to add the tip through its app.
By the end of the year, Lyft will beavailablein 300 key US cities.
But this partnership will be beneficial not just for Google’s Waymo, but Lyft as well. It’s not an accident that people have not heard about Lyft because it comes a distant second to Uber. For instance, the company only has a $5 billion market valuation compared to Uber’s $68 billion.
The problem with ride-sharing networks is their heavy dependence on their partner drivers in order to scale up their business. In fact, drivers—along with the vehicles and fuel—make up 85% of the cost. Uber has the money to invest on a grand scale to cut the difference, a luxury that Lyft does not possess.
One solution is to cut the human drivers and go fully automated, the reportsaid. Instead of sharing the revenues with their human partners, they can quickly recoup their investments by operating an automated fleet.
