Mark Kolier’s Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’

Andrew Mason of Groupon www.Groupon.com has received admiring and quizzical looks from people when he turned down Google’s offer of $ 6 billion for Groupon last month. It was a bold move in the style of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s rebuff toward Microsoft for $ 15 billion in 2007. I bet Steve Ballmer now wishes Microsoft had offered three times as much.

Just this morning http://nyti.ms/ghA4dQ it was reported that Groupon is pushing ahead with an IPO perhaps valued by as much as $ 15 billion. Another fast growing online couponing site Living Social www.livingsocial.com , is also considering an IPO. Living social is said to be earning $ 500 million annually already. Living Social CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy has taken a $ 175 million investment from Amazon.com http://bit.ly/gyI73v . Clearly going local is going loco.

The concept of online couponing is simple. A business offers say $ 30 off on a $ 60 purchase of goods or services (or in the case of a restaurant food and beverage). Customers print out the coupon and present it when they purchase.

Have you tried using either Groupon or Living Social? The deals come into your email daily and there is a reserve on how many people have to take the deal in order for it to become a reality. I don’t have figures on how many deals are not consummated due to lack of interest but I am aware that once the deals reach the amount needed to become reality as many as 20-30% of purchased coupons go unused.

Online couponing works for Groupon and Living Social. And it works for some but not all companies. There have been complaints from local businesses like restaurants and nail salons that the online coupon deals are not generating much new business. How they are measuring is uncertain, however it must be obvious to these store owners that new customers are not storming their doors.

One important thing about couponing, the customer experience still has to be a good one. Otherwise, like any customer experience (discounted or not), they will not return because receiving a discount on something that’s not all that good is of little value to just about everyone.

Our agency team is experimenting in using online couponing for our clients. We look at it as a way to reach people who have no familiarity or experience with the brand so while we expect some transactional volume, the opportunity to buy some rather inexpensive branding is seemingly worthwhile. I will report back on results as we gather them in a future post.

How about you – do you get the daily emails from either Groupon or Living Social? Have you redeemed any coupons and found a new place? Or revisited an old one?

Every year in January the CES takes place in Las Vegas. This year there is buzz about tablet PCs (more than 50 will be on display), television apps, 3D TV apps and accessories, computer printers (HP apparently has a really cool one coming out), and new payment cards just to name a few. If you want to read a longer article on what’s in store CNET has a nice one – http://bit.ly/gKs0aY. Consumer Reports has a short video that does a nice job of previewing what will be introduced beginning today – http://bit.ly/gMXZ2W

I’ve never been to the CES although I have been to Vegas more than a dozen times (most of those times were before I was 22) but only once was business a part of the program. Las Vegas in January is far from any kind of tropical destination with temperatures in the 50’s during the day and 30’s at night. But hey – it’s Vegas baby right?

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has made the CES into a platform for unleashing new products. This year is likely to be no different. Ironically the keynote speech is to be made by Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer. Last year 126,000 people attended the 2010 CES – the number of attendees is poised to increase to 140,000 this year. I can only imagine what it must be like to try to get a room in Las Vegas which still is coming back from the devastating 2008 recession.

Americans and citizens of the world are continuing their love affair with technology. The CES plays right into that as it often sets the tone for what will be the hot tech products of the year. There are some (intentionally) badly kept secrets regarding releases of new products (i.e. Verizon’s iPhone), but also hopefully a few surprise announcements that will be intriguing.

I will have Bloomberg TV’s feed on for the next few days in the hope of catching news as it happens and hopefully to get a better sense of the overall atmosphere. And yes I am seriously thinking about attending the 2012 CES show just to do it one time. After all – hey it’s Vegas baby!

Are you going to the CES this year and if you are not, why not and would you like to?

An interesting story in this past Saturday’s NY Times – http://nyti.ms/b2RQFQ discussed the revamping of AOL’s website to give a greater emphasis to news created by AOL’s staff as well as original video clips. This appears to me that it could be a good idea – had it happened three years ago.

AOL’s CEO Tim Armstrong touted that AOL is,”still a very desirable place to advertise – very high household income, and more women than men”. All I could think was – so they’re old. In many cases very old. I don’t know the statistics but it’s hard to imagine very many people under the age of 35 that use AOL for anything else than an email address.

The article goes on to note that since January 2010, the number of unique visitors to AOL’s home page has declined 27 percent. Revenue during the first half of this year is down 25%. So it’s happening right now that AOL is becoming more irrelevant with each passing day.

And is it really any surprise? With the online world taking on a truly global focus how does AMERICA ONLINE fit in with a world view? Is there any way that anyone outside the United States would ever use AOL? That’s not true of Google, or Yahoo or even Microsoft’s home page. They have users from all over the globe. Somehow AOL in French or Chinese does not really work does it?

The new design will also move video near the top of the page – WOW – revolutionary! Clips will include a series called – “You’ve Got”. Is that like “You’ve Got Mail”? The 1998 hit movie starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan? That was 12 years ago folks – and I hate to break it to AOL but things have changed in the online world just a bit over the past 12 years.

Maybe I am missing something big here. After all AOL’s revenue was $ 1.24 billion in the first six months even if it was down 25%. But comments that Mr. Armstrong made like blaming AOL’s shrinking (maybe shriveling would be a better word?) dial-up access (Dial-up??? Are you kidding?) is responsible for the declines. Ya think?

With AOL’s first overhaul of the home page since 2008, Mr. Armstrong went on to say that the philosophy behind the page was to inform visitors while also entertaining them. The focus will shift during the day from being news-oriented in the morning to a focus on lifestyle in the afternoon. I guess he’s not too concerned about the evening and night’s since most of the users are fast asleep by 9PM.

Finally the article notes Mr. Armstrong commenting “We are basically trying to make sure that our users are prepared for the day and they don’t get caught with their pants off.” If that were to happen it would likely only be because they forgot to put them on in the first place.

Ok all you AOL lovers out there – let me have it. Speak up now – it’s your turn.

I heard a radio spot yesterday from Barracuda Networks. Their offer is to help companies make their workers more productive by blocking/firewalling them from websites and social networks that (as the ad infers) detract from employee productivity and company profits. Their ‘solution’ is to have companies employ their product as a step on the road to productivity. It’s a blatant scare tactic and the barracuda is a pretty scary looking fish after all.

It’s nearly a certainty that there are some business owners and/or managers that will consider this approach as a salve for some of their business problems. I’m not one of them in any way. Walling off employee access to certain websites and social networking is simply a terrible idea.

The idea of restricting access during the workday in order to ‘get people back to work’ will quite possibly have the opposite effect. Pretty soon companies that take that tack will ask employees to leave their mobile devices at the door when they come to work. After all many people now can adroitly access the web and social networks from their iPhone or other smart phone. Take away the websites and social media check-ins and employees will spend more time trying to find a way around it. So exactly how will that approach make things better?

Companies that restrict internet access are telling their employees – ‘We don’t trust you’. “We don’t respect your ability to make appropriate choices on how you spend your time during the work day.” And what kind of bright young minds would be interested in joining a company that approaches its business in that manner?

I’m not so naïve that I think employees always act in the most productive manner every minute of the work day. But is that really the goal of an employer? No I don’t wish that members of our team spend 3 hours a day on Facebook, LinkedIn or looking for a job on Monster or Career Builder, (apparently we had one that did that while here). But I ask those companies that think restricted access is a good idea – do your employees receive and respond to emails before and after the workday? On weekends? For many companies including ours the answer is an unequivocal yes. Granted our company is a smaller one with less than 25 people. But even if we were the size of, oh say Microsoft or Wal-mart, would the restriction of access to the web create a better and more productive working environment?

My take is if you cannot count on having smart, motivated people on your team who know the difference between what is appropriate and what is not, then you have the wrong team in place. It can sometimes be the job of managers to teach employees the difference if they don’t know it already. But forbidding access and censoring sites sounds a bit China like to me.

I wouldn’t want to be a part of a company like that – would you?