Eurostat Figures

A very good free source of Industry Information about different European countries.

This is a 448 page document which is likely to be of relevance to Web 2.0 applications as well as many other topics.

Eurostat uses NACE codes, rather than SIC codes which are familiar from the FAME database.

Nonetheless, free-text searching for a particular industry seems to work quite well.

I tried it out for steel, plastics, and tourism and was encouraged by the results.


http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/product_details/publication?p_product_code=KS-BW-07-001

10 Advantages of Social Media for Business

From a recent article on MediaTel Neil Perkin assesses some of the main benefits. For more detail visit his blog

http://neilperkin.typepad.com/

I hope that I've not misrepresented him here.

1. Fans, even virtual ones, have made a commitment. You have found out who they are...

2. Engaged users ( fans/friends ) care more than searchers

3. Those who interact are advocates ( they tell their mates ? )

4. Search engine weight is improved by having lots of fans.

5. You've found loads of people..now you can target them

6. Interacting with your customers is easier.

7. Different marketing strategies can now be employed

( I got puzzled here about what these might be )

8. Advertising through social media sites will become ever-

more important.

9. Real time feedback ( see no.6 presumably )

10. Your audience awaits ( everyone is on Facebook already )

Perkin, N (2010) Social Media : maximise your business's potential accessed via MediaTel [online] http://library.beds.ac.uk/ on March 23rd 2010

MediaTel

Although we've recently had problems accessing MediaTel, it's an excellent source for finding Web 2.0 Business applications.

There's some interesting news today ( March 19th ) about Twitter becoming increasingly integrated with other social networking sites.

MediaTel now fully operational. Access, as always through the library catalogue, and it should recognise our IP address

Books are the future

If the internet's so important then why is one of the most popular services dedicated to selling books ( Amazon ) ?

This was the opinion of Ian Stevenson at this weeks free UCL lecture Do books have a future ?

For a list of excellent ( and free ) lectures at University College London see :

www.ucl.ac.uk/lhl

The rise of transactional advertising

This guest post on Telecrunch is authored by Alex Rampell, the founder and CEO of TrialPay.
He says
"The marriage of brand advertising and free content is facing peremptory annulment. There is no shortage of punditry around “the death of the media company” and whether it is a just dessert or a societal travesty. But that’s looking at it from the media company and consumer viewpoint – what do advertisers think about all of this? Where is online advertising headed and what does that mean for free content?"
This has implications for branding : take a look at the full article here.

Getting the most out of Twitter

Getting the most out of Twitter by C.C>Miller is a short article from New York Times.

"Twitter users write 50 million messages a day. For the holdouts, here are a few ways to make Twitter work for you.

A CUSTOM NEWS FEED By the time Bridget Baker, who works in public relations in Seattle, checks Google Reader while eating lunch at her desk, she has already read most of the articles in her feed because she saw them on Twitter."

More Web 2.0 Integration

This time Twitter and Yahoo ! Users can broadcast tweets while online ( this follows a similar tie-up with Facebook in December. Exact terms of the deal are unclear except that Yahoo ! are keen to get hold of all those social netwwork users...

Watch this space for more deals

( as reported in the Financial Times, 24th Feb - Yahoo tie up with Twitter deepens )

Nectar Points

Another example of advertisers using web 2.0

Nectar and Yahoo ! join forces.

Shoppers can choose to have their historical data stored online. 2000 have already opted-in to the scheme. Sainsburys are then able to target these users...

( Reported Daily Telegraph, 13th February 2010, p13 )