June 16, 2013 in News
The distressing images of the TV chef show her apparently being grabbed round the throat by her billionaire husband during a row at Scott’s in Mayfair.
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Shocking pictures of Nigella Lawson ‘being choked’ by husband Charles Saatchi in restaurant spark…
June 16, 2013 in News
Ian Brady and Myra Hindley took photographs as mementos of their killing sprees. A documentary claims that these pictures are grave markers and could end decades of mystery as to where Keith Bennett is buried.
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Moors murders: Chilling image of killer Brady just 40 miles from where Moors Murders detectives…
June 16, 2013 in News
A Yellow Duckmarine tourist boat sank in Liverpool ‘like a lead balloon’ this afternoon, leaving 31 passengers stranded in the freezing cold water while they awaited rescue from the emergency services.
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Tourist terror as amphibious duck bus carrying 31 people sinks in Liverpool’s Albert Dock for the…
June 16, 2013 in News
Editor’s note: Jonah Berger is a marketing professor at the Wharton School and author of the New York Times bestseller Contagious: Why Things Catch On. Follow him on Twitter @j1berger.
Why do some companies, products and services get more word of mouth than others? It’s not luck. There’s a science behind it. Social media gurus always preach that no one talks about boring products or boring ideas. So you would think that more interesting products and brands get talked about more. Surprisingly, novel things get brought up more than mundane ones.
Startups live and die by word of mouth. Whether it’s a new website, a revolutionary recruiting service, or B2B play, consumer awareness is always low at the beginning. No one realizes you exist, so you have to get the word out. But most new ventures don’t have a big advertising budget. They have to grow organically: Get existing customers or fans bringing in new ones — one at a time.
Why, then, do some companies, products and ideas get talked about more readily than others? People often think getting word of mouth is like capturing lightning in a bottle. You have to get lucky. The market has to be just right. Or you need the right combination of three or four indescribable qualities that combine in some inexplicable way to create magic.
That’s a great theory. Except it’s completely wrong.
There’s a science behind word of mouth. It’s not random and it’s not luck why people talk about some things rather than others. Just like behavioral economists have studied why people make certain choices, or statisticians have pulled out insights about human behavior from “Big Data,” researchers have been hard at work analyzing the human behavior behind our decisions to talk and share.
In one recent investigation, for example, my colleague and I looked at word-of-mouth data on almost 10,000 products and brands from Coca-Cola and Walmart to small startups. Everything from technology companies to services, from B2B to consumer package goods. In another project, we analyzed the virality of almost 7,000 pieces of online content. Everything from politics and international news to funny pieces, sports, and style.
But the focus of these studies wasn’t just documenting which products get talked about more, or what types of online content go viral. Rather, it was about understanding the motivations behind those outcomes: the underlying human behavior that drives some things to get talked about more than others and some things to go viral; how different emotions (e.g. sadness versus anger) shape what people share; how communicating online versus offline impacts whether people talk about what is top-of-mind; the psychology of talk; the science of social transmission.
Take Triggers. Disney is more interesting than Cheerios. It’s a really engaging emotional experience. But the problem is that people aren’t triggered to think about it very often. Sure, people talk a lot about the brand right after they go to one of the theme parks, but unless they’re reminded to think about that experience in the weeks and months that follow, they don’t keep bringing it up.
Cheerios is less interesting, but people eat breakfast once a day, 365 days a year. Even if they don’t buy Cheerios, they still see it once a week when they wheel their grocery cart through the cereal aisle. This makes Cheerios more top of mind more often, increasing the chances it gets mentioned. A product or idea might be really interesting, but if people aren’t triggered to think about it, they’ll never bring it up. Top-of-mind means tip-of-tongue.
Triggers are only one of the key word of mouth drivers my colleagues and I uncovered in our research. Again and again, I’ve seen the same six principles driving what people talk about and share. These six principles can be arranged in an acronym (STEPPS: Social Currency, Triggers, Emotion, Public, Practical Value, and Stories).
Social Currency. Just like the car we drive and the clothes we wear, the things we say affect how people see us. So the more something makes someone look good, the more likely they’ll be to pass it on.
Triggers. If something is top-of-mind it will be tip-of-the-tongue. Just like peanut butter reminds us of jelly, the more we’re triggered to think about a product or idea, the more we’ll talk about it
Emotion. when we care, we share. Whether positive (excitement or humor) or negative (anger or anxiety), high arousal emotions drive us to share.
Public. People tend to imitate others. But as the phrase “monkey see, monkey do” attests, the easier it is to see what someone is doing, the easier it is to imitate. Public observability drives imitation (e.g. iPod’s white headphones).
Practical Value. People don’t just want to look good, they also want to help others. So more useful equals more shared. Think articles about 10 ways to raise capital or five key negotiating tips.
Stories. No one wants to seem like a walking advertisement, but they will talk about something if it’s part of a broader narrative. So build a “Trojan horse” story, a message that carries your brand along for the ride.
These six principles comprise a formula for getting more word of mouth. They’re a recipe for crafting contagious content and for getting more people talking about any product or idea.
Will following this formula guarantee a viral hit? No. But it will increase the batting average. No one hits a home run every time, but by understanding the science of hitting, people can raise their average by hitting more singles, doubles and even home runs.
The same is true with word of mouth. By understanding the science behind why people talk and share, companies and organizations can get more word of mouth for their products and ideas and help those products and ideas catch on along the way.
[Image via Shutterstock]
June 16, 2013 in News
Tony Blair has warned Labour leader Ed Miliband not to resort to the ‘politics of anger’ by seeking to inflict ever-increasing taxes on the wealthy.
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Taxing the rich even more ‘won’t change society’, says Blair as he defends rise of the super…
June 16, 2013 in News
Thrustmaster seems a little late to the party and a generation too slow, but better late with something than never with nothing, right? Well, the Madcatz subsidiary had two brand new audio accessories to showcase for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation during this year’s E3 convention.
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June 16, 2013 in News
Invitations to a party in London’s West End have been sent to all Labour MPs who voted for David in the 2010 party leadership contest, but MPs who backed the younger sibling claim they have been left off the list.
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New Miliband feud as retiring David ‘bans’ Ed’s pals from his farewell Champagne bash
June 15, 2013 in News
By the end of his or her childhood, a British boy or girl is much more likely to have a TV set in the bedroom than a father at home, writes PETER HITCHENS.
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The £49bn bill we pay for children who can’t celebrate Father’s Day: The devastating financial -…
June 15, 2013 in News
Voters will now be asked if the UK should ‘be’ in the EU, rather than ‘remain’ in the EU. The referendum is due to be held by the end of 2017.
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EU Referendum: ‘Quit Europe’ vote more likely after Cameron agrees to change referendum question
June 15, 2013 in News
Hampton Creek Foods, a food tech startup backed by Khosla Ventures and Founders Fund, is getting ready to expand beyond its initial product Beyond Eggs — though it’s not leaving eggs behind entirely.
The company recently released the YouTube video embedded below, which gives a brief glimpse of its upcoming scrambled egg replacer. And founder/CEO Josh Tetrick told me that he just got off-stage at TEDxEdmonton, where he gave the full demo.
Hampton Creek’s larger mission is to move the world away from animal-based foods by developing replacements that are cheaper, healthier, and tastier. Its first product, Beyond Eggs, is supposed to replace eggs in baked goods and other food products (the cookies with Beyond Eggs that I tasted earlier this year were delicious). Tetrick told me that the response to Beyond Eggs’ launch in February has been better than expected, with “more of an interest in the mission/purpose of our work than we anticipated.”
But Beyond Eggs doesn’t replace eggs as a standalone food. That’s what the scrambled egg product is supposed to accomplish. In Tetrick’s words, it’s “the whole damn thing – not an element in other food products.” And he’s hoping to start selling it in the next six months.
“We’re just using one plant to make it happen… and this one plant has awesome coagulation, texture, and springiness properties,” he added.
In a preview video for his TEDxEdmonton demo, Tetrick also offered some thoughts on the broader vision:
We think the food industry will change quite a bit. It will become a lot more humane, a lot healthier, and a lot more sustainable. And right now I think the big problem is that our food system is incredibly broken. And it’s broken because of its devasting impacts to our environment (greenhouse gas emissions), its devastating impacts to our health (rising rates of diabetes and heart disease), and its awful, almost bizarre brutality to animals.
Hampton Creek has raised a total of $4.5 million from Khosla, Founders Fund, Kat Taylor, and the Collaborative Fund.
June 15, 2013 in News
A diplomatic protection officer and a middle-aged woman have been arrested over the alleged ‘Plebgate’ plot to discredit former Tory Minister Andrew Mitchell, pictured.
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Downing Street PC and woman arrested over Plebgate and after quizzing 800 officers over eight…
June 15, 2013 in News
Telereal Trillium has a £3.2 billion contract to manage buildings for the Department for Work and Pensions but it funnellled £163million of post-tax profits to the tax haven British Virgin Islands.
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Embarrassment for Government as it emerges contractor sends £163million to offshore tax haven
June 15, 2013 in News
Increasingly popular Facebook pages rating the sexual performance of under-age teenagers have been condemned as bullying, but Facebook says it is doing all it can to close them down.
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Scandal of the Facebook pages rating sexual performance of boys and girls as young as 12-years-old
June 15, 2013 in News
MPs have agreed plans to hire out the Houses of Parliament to Hollywood film studios. The move would allow action blockbusters and period dramas to be filmed inside for the first time.
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Lights, camera… order! Parliament set to open its doors to Hollywood in bid to raise cash for…
June 15, 2013 in News
June 15, 2013 in News
June 15, 2013 in News
June 15, 2013 in News
June 15, 2013 in News
A group of daring archaeologists uncovered, Mahendraparvata, a lost 1,200-year-old city on a misty Cambodian mountain by hacking through the thick jungle, strewn with live land mines.
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Lost medieval city found in Cambodia using revolutionary scanning technology and Indiana…
June 15, 2013 in News
The criminal past of hotelier Paul Williams, 56, pictured, was exposed via anonymous emails and posters plastered across Port Isaac, Cornwall, where TV show Doc Martin is set.
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Doc Martin town in uproar after hotel boss exposed as conman by anonymous neighbour who went…
June 15, 2013 in News
Tristan O’Tierney, a co-founder at payment company Square, announced via tweet that yesterday was his last day at the company.
O’Tierney is less well-known than his co-founders, particularly the company’s CEO Jack Dorsey, but according to his LinkedIn profile (where he describes himself as an iOS engineer), his accomplishments include building the original iPhone app, as well as being a “large contributor” to its first iPad app, the first Pay with Square product, and the Register app.
In a Quora post (answering the question, “Why does Square have so many co-founders?”) O’Tierney writes that he joined with Dorsey and co-founder Jim McKelvey in January 2009. (His prior experience includes working as an iPhone programmer at Tapulous.) Apparently, in those early days the trio worked on Square in Dorsey’s apartment, and Dorsey had to flip up his Murphy bed every morning to make room for his co-founders.
In his tweet, O’Tierney says he’s not sure what’s next, “except for a bit of traveling!” In a tweet directed at The Next Web’s Jon Russell, he added, “I left on good terms. I just want to do something different. Square’s still in a lot of brilliant hands!”
I’ve emailed O’Tierney and Square for comment, and I’ll update this post if I hear back.
Tristan O’Tierney, Square’s Co-Founder And Early iOS Engineer, Leaves For Destinations Unknown
June 15, 2013 in News
The EgyptAir plane landed at the airport earlier and was immediately met by a convoy of police vehicles. Armed police officers were pictured on the runway as the plane landed.
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Jet bound for New York is diverted to Glasgow Airport escorted by fighter jets after passenger…
June 15, 2013 in News
Why are so many app icons blue? The obvious answer is that so many tech brands contain blue in their logo or elsewhere in their tradedress. But why? What’s with the love of the blue tones people? I ask because the number of blue icons on my phone has reached a kind of tipping point where I’m often firing up the wrong app because I reach for the (wrong) blue one. And then I’m heading to Glide rather than Rdio, or the App Store not Dropbox, or Skype not Shazam.
I don’t normally arrange this blue collection on a single page but curious about how much of the stuff is hanging around on my homescreen I created a colour-co-ordinated arrangement (left) which serves to emphasise that it’s both big name apps, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and newer-comers like Glide and Rdio going for blue. Many of Apple’s native apps (in iOS 6) also rock similar blues, be it Safari, the weather app, stocks, the mail app and so on.
Initially this ‘blue period’ homescreen made finding apps even more confusing but I found that amalgamating all the blue tones actually tends to normalise them, making it easier for their distinct symbols and signs to stand out. So I’m tempted to stick with it. In the mean time, I’m still intrigued as to why tech companies are so hot on blue?
It’s possible there’s some deliberate mimicry going on, on the part of some startups. In seeking to establish their services, they want the user to think about other established tech services they know and love so they feel more confident about using a (similarly blue-coloured) alternative. Thinking of the likes of Skype for messaging and Facebook for social, say. In other words startups are hoping a resonating shade of blue will help them build a strong brand too.
Or they might be hoping to accidentally pass their app off as another the user is used to using; a sort of social engineering of where the user sticks their fingertip to steal taps meant for other apps. That’s risky, since the user didn’t meant to click on your app so may just get annoyed and delete it. Still, a swathe of startups clearly think it can’t harm if they project a similar visual aura to other established apps and services. It’s like the old adage ‘no one ever got fired for buying Microsoft’. Apparently no app icons ever offended by being painted blue.
There are other colour factors to consider too. Various colour preference surveys put blue on top, as the most popular shade for men and women globally. It’s certainly not a Marmite shade that polarises opinion — with so many natural instances of blue (sky, sea, flora) keeping things tranquil. Blue also apparently travels well, being more culturally neutral than certain other colours. Or so the theory goes. Colour theory also says that dark blue shades generate a feeling of reliability and stability (Facebook does have trust issues, after all), while lighter blues are apparently relaxing and calming (Apple’s native iOS 6 apps seem to fall into this category), or uplifting and energising depending on how bright the shade is (the bright blues of Skype and Shazam, say, or Twitter’s bird logo).
It’s notable that even when some tech brands’ logos don’t actually have that much blue in them, their app icon can often make blue tones far more prominent (like Glide’s icon for instance, right). Meanwhile Twitter, which has its trademark bright blue bird online, switches to a white bird silhouette on a more muted and steady looking blue background for its current iOS app icon. Perhaps the relationship between a mobile device and its user necessitates an extra injection of trust, being as these gadgets are so personal. Therefore developers reach for more muted blue tones when designing their app’s phone icon.
Apple’s iOS 7 redesign ushers in a new, more neon-colour palette which deliberately ramps up the energy level of the native apps’ colour tones. (You could say they’ve been turned up to Ive.) Apps that were a relatively relaxing shade of blue before now positively pop out — with undertones of teal green/turquoise creeping in. The result is definitely uplifting in the sense that the apps appear to float against the background (a parallax effect Apple is encouraging via other features in its redesign, such as translucent layers and subtle shading effects as you move the phone).
The new look iOS also replaces the blue undercoat on toggle switches with green, and paints some native apps a new shade (like the stocks app now a fittingly bleak shade of black rather than a calming mid-blue), to further highlight how Apple is creeping away from its old mid-blue comfort zone. At a glance, there’s definitely a greater colour range to how Apple is painting the iOS 7 icons, and a lot less blue jackets than there are in iOS 6.
Cupertino has been under pressure to refresh the iOS interface, thanks in part to the accelerated speed with which Google has been driving Android’s look and feel forward. iOS is also now a six-year+ old OS, with more new-look competition crowding in than ever before, whether it’s Windows Phone or BlackBerry 10. One way for Apple to create an impression of change — without having to do radical restructuring which might upset its existing user-base – is a new lick of paint. The iOS 7 palette, including its blues, is certainly far more energetic than the old one — and that’s likely aimed at generating a feeling of renewal, without having to shift too much core furniture and functionality.
The other issue is that perhaps Apple has realised its old favourite blues are becoming a bit stale/invisible because they’ve been so widely adopted. The new iOS 7 palette repaints the goal-posts in more rainbow tones in the short term but, ultimately, app makers will likely fall in step by tweaking their own app shades to harmonise with Apple’s neon brights. So their mid-blues will probably also get dialled up and/or tinged turquoise and green. And before you know it the colour spectrum of apps on the homescreen could be falling in step again.
Whether Apple stepping away from blue will help other developers to kick the coat off their own apps remains to be seen. Apple’s influence will count for something but there’s no reason to think the human eye’s long-term love affair with blue tones is about to be overthrown, no matter how idealistically psychedelic Jony Ive’s redesign.
Blue Apps Are All Around But Blue Tones Get Less Of A Role In iOS 7′s Psychedelic Redesign
June 15, 2013 in News
Moore, who did not draw up a will, died from a heart attack in February 2011 aged 58 after an alcohol binge. His girlfriend Petra Nioduschewski, 37, battled in vain to resuscitate him in their room at a luxury hotel in Spain.
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Thin Lizzy star Gary Moore left none of his £2m estate to girlfriend who fought to save him as he…
June 15, 2013 in News
Rachida Sobhi’s bid to become a WPC was turned down when it was revealed she had a criminal record for stealing from a previous employer, but she claims that her amnesia has caused her to forget her crime, and no other aspect of her life.
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Thief sues police for refusing to make her a WPC… and claims amnesia made her forget her…
June 15, 2013 in News
Microsoft will soon take over the entire computer department inside hundreds of Best Buy stores in North America, after announcing plans for all-new ‘Windows Stores’, eWeek reports.
The plans call for Windows Stores to showcase Microsoft hardware and software in 500 U.S. stores and 100 in Canada. The stores will launch beginning in late June through September, according to a blog post on the company’s website.
On the Windows website, Chris Capossela, Microsoft’s Chief Marketing Officer, outlined what customers could expect:
Well, unlike a lot of store-within-a-store concepts, this will actually be a department-level takeover within Best Buy stores. And they will be massive in size, up to 2,200 square feet in some locations. The other unique thing about the Windows Store is the people. There will be an additional 1,200 staff on hand to provide a great customer experience, whether it’s choosing the right PC or showing consumers how to stream Xbox music through their Surface. Finally, the online experience should be fantastic. We’ll have a full online Windows Store experience that will mirror the in-store look-and-feel and offer a full range of Microsoft products, even those from other places in the Best Buy store.
The stores will feature an “innovation table” to highlight the latest technologies in the front, a Surface area and showcase tables to show off PCs, tablets, and laptops, and a back wall for Microsoft software and accessories.
Windows stores will give Microsoft another channel to reach consumers apart from their 68 already established, standalone Microsoft storesin North America.
“The Windows Store at Best Buy is really just another great opportunity to reach customers in more places and give them choice in their technology-buying experience,” Capossela said in an interview on the Windows website. “We’ve taken learnings from the Microsoft Store into the Windows Store at Best Buy, and we ultimately feel this is another great channel to offer a superior experience for the millions of customers who rely on Best Buy to purchase their PCs.”
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Microsoft Plans To Build ‘Windows Stores’ Inside Hundreds Of Best Buys (MSFTBBY)
June 15, 2013 in News
President Mohammed Morsi demands that Hezbollah leave Syria, where Iranian-backed Shiite militia have been fighting alongside Assad forcses
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Egypt cuts ties with Syria amid mounting hard-line Sunni pressure
June 15, 2013 in News
Kim Kardashian is a mom. The thirty-two-year-old reality star gave birth to a baby girl at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles this morning, and by all accounts, both mother and child seem to be doing very well, which is especially great news since the newborn arrived about five weeks earlier than doctors predicted.
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June 15, 2013 in News
Rupert Murdoch pulled out of hosting an event for one of his oldest friends two days before the divorce was announced. A source said ‘people were talking about nothing else.’
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Murdoch divorce: Wendi Deng is ‘totally blindsided’ as Murdoch plots a quiet divorce sparking…
June 15, 2013 in News
Editor’s note: Chris Moore is a partner at Redpoint Ventures where he focuses on making investments in consumer Internet, online marketing and SaaS companies. Follow him on his blog and Twitter @Moorski.
This year alone, there is an $11.4 billion mobile advertising opportunity, which means there is tremendous upside for nimble and innovative startups with disruptive mobile-first models. As we saw from Facebook last year, the company was able to turn around and actually make something of its mobile business – a business that didn’t exist at the time of IPO. However, despite the potential of the market, and Facebook’s early success, we’re still a long way from realizing the promise of the mobile medium.
When looking at the opportunity, it’s clear there are a few core challenges that need to be addressed quickly in this nascent market. The startups that address these challenges first will be the companies to watch.
In many ways, we’re at the same juncture with mobile advertising as we were with the desktop web circa 1996-97. At that time we were limited by basic ad-serving capabilities, browser cookies to track visits and boring, static display ads. Search keyword advertising, the most compelling ad format and targeting method the web has seen, was only in its infancy (at Goto.com, which eventually became Overture) at the time.
Right now, the two most obvious hurdles to overcome are what smart companies are focusing on: developing a reliable and privacy-safe method for user targeting across apps, and developing smartphone native ad formats.
Cross-App User Targeting. On the traditional desktop web, browser cookies became a reasonably reliable and standardized method for recognizing and storing attributes of any given user in between visits to a site. Today roughly 80 percent of online ads leverage cookies or some other form of a user-targeting mechanism.
In the mobile app world, an analogous, reliable and standardized mechanism has not yet emerged across either iOS or Android, and until it does, relevance-based targeting will be less effective in the mobile environment and remain a giant missed opportunity for advertisers. Currently there isn’t a robust way to track users across applications after Apple deprecated UDID as a targeting mechanism. In order for cross-app user targeting to be fully realized, the tracking of users in a privacy-focused environment must be solved.
Smartphone Native Ad Formats. The first ad formats utilized on smartphones were borrowed from the web. As a result, users are inadvertently clicking on too-small-to-read banner ads, thus ensuring annoyed users. Instead of a fluid and seamless experience, users are pulled out of their task at hand and brought to un-optimized web landing pages in the mobile browser.
The only way mobile ad monetization will flourish is when smartphone native ad formats that enhance the immediate app experience are developed. The good news is that we’re starting to see a few promising native smartphone format candidates with notifications and Facebook’s Sponsored Stories. There is still plenty of room for innovation, as these formats aren’t 100 percent where they need to be. Users and marketers alike can’t wait for some savvy startup to develop innovative and reliable ad formats that fit within the app experience and engage the user without disrupting the task at hand.
Once the dilemmas of cross app user targeting and smartphone native ad formats are solved, there are some very promising areas within the mobile environment that are poised for the taking:
Online-to-Online Ad Tech Providers. The ad-tech player who can get the ambient context digital wallet and in-app context right for the Walmarts and Coca-Colas of the world will be a really big deal. There will be several winners in this area, each focused on a particular vertical of offline-to-online.
Cost-Per-Lead Advertising. Yes, cost-per-lead advertising. The web performance stepchild to cost-per-click could emerge as a first-call citizen in the smartphone medium. Why? Well, the medium happens to be attached to a phone, and guess what leads perform the best: phone calls. The smartphone promises to connect this intent to buy to a live person more seamlessly than any other medium to date. This will lead to higher conversion rates and thus higher monetization rates. Inadco, a Redpoint portfolio company that started in the web CPL space, is one startup helping these advertisers take advantage of the mobile phone.
Ambient Context and User Analytics Providers. The fundamental problem of user targeting and analytics within the mobile world must be solved. This solution will come from a clever startup, not the underlying platform players Apple and Google. Just as Omniture emerged to be an important platform company in web analytics, there will also be similar companies built within the smartphone medium. Native mobile app analytics companies like Flurry are promising, as are the emerging players in audience targeting like BlueKai (a Redpoint portfolio company).
While we are a far way from identifying the smartphone equivalent of paid search, it will absolutely exist (it has to) and it will leverage ambient targeting, the digital wallet and smartphone native formats that interrupt but don’t disrupt the user from the task at hand.
The market is big and the current players are just starting to crop up, which means the challenge is for the taking. The next two years will undoubtedly be exciting years to see it all unfold – not only to see who the winners will be, but also to see the innovations that make it happen.
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