Karim's posterous

Karim's posterous

Karim  //  Karim Gargum is a London-based online marketing consultant. Mostly using this blog to post thoughts on digital marketing from the perspective of an ex 9-5 marketing man.

 
Jan 13 / 9:51am

Why I Believe Quora.com Will Be Big

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For the past week I've been playing around with Quora.com, the social networking site de jour. Quora's allows users to post and answer questions using an easy-to-use and very well socially-integrated website. Although I've only been using it a short while, I'm convinced this service will be big. Here are my key reasons:

  1. Quality - I'm not quite sure how they'll manage to maintain quality, but Quora is a far cry from the troll ravaged world of Yahoo Answers. Many leading industry (mostly technology/social media/internet) commentators and playmakers have joined the site and are already answering fascinating questions. 
  2. Bigger Questions - Some people have pointed out that other mediums are much more efficient than Quora at delivering the right answers quickly. That my be so, but I don't think that's what Quora is about necessarily.  At least not yet. While you might have a much more binary question in mind when searching google, wikipedia or yahoo answers, a lot of the questions I've seen on Quora are more in depth opening not suitable to be answered with a single response but, rather, generating an entire debate. 
  3. Interactivity - With Google/Wikipedia there's no interaction. With Quora.com both asker and answerer have profiles, and the ability to follow each other. This opens up the possibility of developing relationships and connections between users.
  4. Self promotion - When assessing Quora.com we need to look at the flipside of the questions, the answers and the people answering them. Quora.com provides a more appropriate environment (as compared to Yahoo Answers) for savvy technologists, and marketers to raise their profile by answering questions. 

What do you think? Have I missed anything, maybe you don't agree with me. I'd love to hear your thoughts. 

 
Oct 21 / 5:20am

Mac OS X Lion - The dumb blond of operating systems?

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Firstly, I'd like to start by saying I don't wish to offend blonds, lions or dumb people. However, as I watched through yesterday's demo of the next iteration of the Apple Mac operating system (Mac OS X Lion), mixed in with my geekish excitement, I couldn't help but feel a little uneasy. Seeing the same functionality found in my iPhone on a full-size Mac, it felt in someway that the Apple Mac was losing a piece of its soul, devolving, and dumbing-down to the level of a pimped out iPod/Mobile phone hybrid.

According to Apple, the key difference between the upcoming Lion and the current Snow leopard operating systems will be Lion's adoption of some functionality from the iPhone/iPad operating system, iOS. This will include the ability to display your 'apps' in a launch screen and use gestures on your mouse to slide though the various pages of apps you have installed (just like on your iPhone). It'll also include a 'mac' app store (this will actually be available on the current mac snow leopard operating system within 90 days) and the ability to run full screen apps. In fact, it seems some iPhone/iPad game developers have already prepared Mac versions of their applications. 

In summary, Apple strategy is to bring the proven, popular technology from their mobile device software 'back to the mac'. Personally I think that this is a great, computers should be much easier to use and the huge popularity of the iPad demonstrates that there's a market for this. But with the iPad, there was a safe distinction. Nobody could every seriously consider an iPad an actual 'personal computer'. A computer-lite sure, but not a real desktop computer.

 My Mac desktop is a real computer, it's my base-station, where I have the software I want to use set up exactly how I want to use it. I can install any type of software I want, doesn't have to be approved by Apple, I can tweak the settings, I can use it to make calls (via skype) and I can even set up a Windows operating system to use all the software available to Windows users. Honestly, I don't want to install crappy games that involve catapulting birds or guiding silly little planes into land, I want to install real games like Starcraft 2. Finger painting on my iPad might be a fun way to kill some time, but a serious graphic designer is always gonna go for Photoshop. Sure, nobody is gonna force me to install something I don't want and great games/programs will still be available. But will we be able to avoid the thrall of a mac app store? Seeing the way the iTunes store has come to dominate the way we buy music and the popularity of the iPhone/iPad app stores I'm doubtful.

Also, with Apple removing optical drives from it's MacBook air, is the launch of the Mac App store a signal for similar things to come for the Mac proper? I'm not saying we still should be using DVDs/CDs to install software, but with the removal of these options and the hastened launch of the Mac app store, Apple will significantly tighten it's grip on the way we use our computers. This argument of tyrannical Apple control over the iPhone/iPod/iPad environment has obviously been raised before. Personally I never cared that much because I saw these devices for what they were, at best email/surfing/music tools NOT pc's. But when Apple starts to make moves towards taking the same approach towards my Mac, I get worried. Mac OS X Lion might make the Mac a lot easier for my Grandma to use, but advanced to expert, power users might find this approach a bit too stifling. This could be great for sales in the short run, but it might make for the final straw that will disenchant Apples core of fans for good. 
 
Oct 5 / 2:23am

Where Have I Seen That Name Before?

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Wasn't 'Spector' the name of the evil international organisation in the James Bond movies? Have they moved their activities online?

 
Sep 30 / 11:37am

Groupon Disappoints Biz Partners

One of the online business sensations of 2010 has been Groupon, a 'group' buying website that offers discounts for various purchases if enough people sign up for the offer. For example, if 1,000 people sign up they will get X% off a spa treatment.

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The real genius of the service is this group aspect that encourages users to spread offers to friends and family via email and social networks, driving more users to the website and fueling viral growth. Interestingly, a recently release report covered by Ty McMahan on the Wall Street Journal, seemed to indicate a relatively low level of satisfaction with groupon business partners. 40% indicated they wouldn't run any further promotions on Groupon and one business owner in Portland, USA in particular claims his Groupon promotion almost ruined his business. According to Ty McMahan, other key findings of the report were:

- Among the service businesses, restaurants fared the worst and salons and spas were the most successful.

- Businesses with unprofitable promotions reported low rates of spending by Groupon users beyond the deal’s face value and low rates of return to the business again at full price.

- Respondents indicated they had largely negative perceptions of Groupon’s competitors.

As a brief user of the UK version of the service, which sends you emails every day with new offers, I found offers too spa/beauty treatment-focused and frankly too frequent. There's a name for unsolicited, ill-suited sales emails that are sent to your inbox (hint, it's a kind of canned meat). It would be interesting to see some sort of usage stats for the service as my gut feeling is there's a big attrition rate as many users get offer-fatigue. 

In any case, Groupon has been massively successful and spawned countless imitators, creating a business model that's bound to be with us for the long run. It'll be interesting to watch competitors try to refine and enhance this model going forward. 
 
Jul 1 / 5:43am

Why O2 Botched the iPhone 4 Launch

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As a long standing (pun intended) O2 iphone customer, I was disappointed with how they handled the launch of the iPhone 4, and I think they missed a key opportunity to create some great social buzz about their brand and service. 

Instead of forcing people to line up at a handful of O2 shops mostly located in London, they could have preselected a list of appropriate clients and sent them a special 'golden' ticket giving them priority to purchase Apple's new wondertoy. Better yet, they could have actually sent them the iPhone 4 itself (In terms of selecting this list, anyone with a basic ability to manipulate client data could have compiled it). 

Mathematically speaking, the same number of customers would have ended up with the new iPhone 4, but they would have been spared the need to queue for 4 hours. Also this would have avoided frustrating all those clients that lined up but didn't get the iPhone, and made for a much calmer launch period for their staff. On the whole this would have created a better outcome. This is especially apparent when we consider the added goodwill and delight this would have created amongst those clients that were pre-selected for the phone. 

In current marketing climate, what your clients tweet/blog/facebook about you is important, especially for a mobile phone company like O2. Sure O2 might have scored some extra PR from news stories showing long lines of miserable iPhone devotees, but they also frustrated a lot of clients in the process. Instead O2 could have delighted an important chunk for their clientele  and generated a lot of valuable positive buzz. Unfortunately they botched it!
 
Jun 28 / 3:26pm

Let's Cut the Bullshit

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Ever noticed that there's a significant amount of bullshit around? Seriously, you look at a property to rent or buy and each one is described as 'amazing'. Go search for a job and each role is described as career-defining and exciting. Go to almost any corporate website and they describe themselves as world leaders providing amazing products. Oh and my personal favourite, every single film that's released is rated at least 4/5 and billed as 'awesome' and a 'masterpiece'. Come on, seriously? Let's cut the bullshit people, who the hell are we kidding? 

  

 
Jun 18 / 9:43am

O2 Reserves Initial iPhone Consignment for Existing Clients

Gotta say that in a world of 'new customer only' promotions and offers, I think o2 have done the right thing in giving existing clients top priority for the new iPhone 4. Can't wait to get my hands on one!

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Jun 18 / 4:18am

Promoted Tweets Popping Up on Twitter

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Although Twitter, announced their new advertising program 'Promoted Tweets' back in April, I've only really noticed ads popping up now and quite sporadically, I'm sure they're probably still testing the system and it'll most likely be a long time before they implement a Google/Facebook style DIY advertising tool for the average user. Have you spotted any promoted tweets yet?

 
Jun 7 / 5:11pm

o2 to extend iPhone 4 special offer to existing UK clients

According to their Twitter stream, o2 will be allowing existing clients still under contract to upgrade to the upcoming iPhone 4:

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Good news as far as this blogger is concerned, I 100% plan to upgrade come June 24th. 
 
Jun 3 / 10:17am

Google Leverages Search to Push Android

Google announced a new mobile search feature yesterday:

As of today, if you go to Google.com on your iPhone or Android-powered device and search for an app, we’ll show special links and content at the top of the search results. You can tap these links to go directly to the app’s Android Market or iPhone App Store page. 

Although iPhone Apps will be featured this is a powerful weapon Google can wield in its growing war with Apple. Going forward it'd be interesting to see how they treat searches for apps that have both iPhone and Android versions. But since Google controls these searches then could theoretically direct people exclusively to Android apps.