Fullrun is an acclaimed subscription information service for marketers, PRs and media professionals who work in, and around, the technology industry.
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Oh, and the graphic? That'll be The Flackenhacks, which we staged with The World's Leading a short while ago. It was fun.
Below, you'll find a small selection of recent stories that we've released into the wild. We hope you enjoy your stay.
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Peter Kirwan | Fullrun
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Wednesday 2 April 2008
US CIOs experience "come to Jesus" moment
Oracle's Q1 results showed that sales of new applications to US CIOs have stopped growing. Database sales were on target, however. According to the Wall Street Journal's Ben Worthen, this means:
(Wall Street Journal | Free access)
More from the Journal: a survey of 400 IT "early adopters" in US companies by RBC Capital Markets suggests that CIOs are spending less on software, hardware and services.
The speed with which CIOs are cutting expenditure is described as "severe" by Marc Harris, RBC’s co-head of global research.
He tells the Journal: "It’s clear there’s been a 'come to Jesus' moment for tech spending across corporate America.”
(Wall Street Journal | Free access)
Every March, Cisco usually pays its staff an advance on their annual bonus (the latter can range from anywhere between 4% and 60% of salary). This year, Valleywag informs us, the advances have been cut in half. . .
Elsewhere, Fortune suggests that the company has told some managers to limit travel expenses and use up accumulated holiday time.
In a presentation on 4 March, John Chambers, Cisco's chief executive, told investors that the downturn could last for between two and five quarters.
On the consumer side of the house, Samsung Electronics is now aiming for a 10% revenue gain this year, down from its earlier 15% forecast.
Downturns always produce winners. One of them may well turn out to be 3, which boosted subscribers by 20% during 2H07.
The mobile operator, which does business in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Australia and Hong Kong, plies its trade among geeks and price-conscious consumers. During the next year or two, these could prove to be productive niches . . .
(Valleywag | Free access)
(Wall Street Journal | Paid subscription)
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Tuesday 1 April 2008
Tech departments aren’t balking at trying to improve the software they already own. But they’re holding off on the large software projects that take months or years to complete. They just don’t seem to have the budget for it, even though the whole point of these systems is to increase productivity and ultimately cut costs.The point is fairly obvious: big long-term investments are being placed on hold, but small(er) enhancements -- particularly critical infrastructure projects -- still stand a chance of being approved.
(Wall Street Journal | Free access)
More from the Journal: a survey of 400 IT "early adopters" in US companies by RBC Capital Markets suggests that CIOs are spending less on software, hardware and services.
The speed with which CIOs are cutting expenditure is described as "severe" by Marc Harris, RBC’s co-head of global research.
He tells the Journal: "It’s clear there’s been a 'come to Jesus' moment for tech spending across corporate America.”
(Wall Street Journal | Free access)
Every March, Cisco usually pays its staff an advance on their annual bonus (the latter can range from anywhere between 4% and 60% of salary). This year, Valleywag informs us, the advances have been cut in half. . .
Elsewhere, Fortune suggests that the company has told some managers to limit travel expenses and use up accumulated holiday time.
In a presentation on 4 March, John Chambers, Cisco's chief executive, told investors that the downturn could last for between two and five quarters.
On the consumer side of the house, Samsung Electronics is now aiming for a 10% revenue gain this year, down from its earlier 15% forecast.
Downturns always produce winners. One of them may well turn out to be 3, which boosted subscribers by 20% during 2H07.
The mobile operator, which does business in the UK, Ireland, Italy, Australia and Hong Kong, plies its trade among geeks and price-conscious consumers. During the next year or two, these could prove to be productive niches . . .
(Valleywag | Free access)
(Wall Street Journal | Paid subscription)
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Tuesday 1 April 2008
Publish 2: Online news aggregation for journalists
Q: What differentiates this from Google News?
Publish 2 appears to be the brainchild of blogger Scott Karp. Jeff Jarvis, the New York journalism professor and blog-based controversialist, is on the board.
By the looks of it, there's more than aggregation involved, too: some social network flavours appear to be in the mix as well.
Question is: How on earth will Publish 2 prevent PRs from gaming its system? When you register to become part of the service, all you need to do is tick the box that sits next to a simple "declaration" ("Journalism is my primary occupation.")
This particular moral bar hasn't been set too high. . .
(Paid Content | Free access)
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Wednesday 5 March 2008
"An online news aggregation platform, designed to empower the world’s journalists to discover, organize, and rank the most important news—to benefit their own reporting, their newsrooms, and all news consumers on the web."A: Dunno. But the founders of Publish2 have just picked up $2.75m in VC funding, so they must be doing something right.
Publish 2 appears to be the brainchild of blogger Scott Karp. Jeff Jarvis, the New York journalism professor and blog-based controversialist, is on the board.
By the looks of it, there's more than aggregation involved, too: some social network flavours appear to be in the mix as well.
Question is: How on earth will Publish 2 prevent PRs from gaming its system? When you register to become part of the service, all you need to do is tick the box that sits next to a simple "declaration" ("Journalism is my primary occupation.")
This particular moral bar hasn't been set too high. . .
(Paid Content | Free access)
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Wednesday 5 March 2008
Facebook: Are "fat bastards" a turn-off?
Business Week suggests that social networks are experiencing serious problems when it comes to generating ad revenues. The average amount of time a user spends on MySpace has declined by 14% during the past four months, according to Comscore.
Furthermore, it's emerging that social networking sites offer horrendous response rates -- as low as four click throughs per 10,000 impressions (or viewers). Out on the world wide web, common-or-garden banner ads receive 20 clicks per 10,000 views.
Google currently holds a contract to sell ads on MySpace. The suggestion is that Google is losing money on that contract. . .
(Business Week | Free access)
Bad news for Blake Chandlee, commercial director of Facebook UK and quite possibly the nation's most fashionable ad sales man.
The number of Britons visiting Facebook fell for the first time in January, according to Nielsen Online. The month's count of unique users was 8.5m, down 5% from the 8.9m uniques recorded in December.
Hey ho: that's still up by a modest 712% from January 2007.
(The Economist | Free access)
The marketing press, which has reported upon the opening of Facebook's London office right down to the number of cuff buttons on Mr Chandlee's jackets, was all over the Nielsen numbers like a rash.
Is Facebook losing momentum? asked Marketing today.
The answer: Er, dunno. But what Gareth Jones's analysis lacked in terms of bold claims, it more than made up for with sheer quotability.
Jones induced Mark Ritson, ad manager at O2, to have his say. Happily, Ritson didn’t hold back:
(Brand Republic | Free access)
John Paczkowski of All Things Digital knows what's going on. The URL on his story about declining UK Facebook visitors contains the neologism: "Friendsterbook".
For those who need to know, Friendster was once the future of social networking. In 2003, Google tried to buy the company for $30m, but was turned down.
Then along came MySpace, which left Friendster gasping in its vapour trail. In 2006, Friendster's VC backers "recapitalized" the company in a deal that reputedly valued it at a fraction of what had been offered by Google.
(All Things D | Free access)
Ah no, says Chris Williams at The Register. This year's Facebook craze is a bit like. . . what happened after the death of Diana.
(The Register | Free access)
Ritson, it transpires, is himself a fat bastard -- the kind of middle-aged dad whose appearance at a trendy bar in the East End signals the venue's imminent demise.
In a lengthy column for Marketing, he suggests that Facebook now counts the CIA, McDonald's, Newsnight and Fabreze as members -- alongside an army of US mothers who are issuing "horrifying" invitations to their university-age offspring.
Facebook is going to hell in a hand basket, he suggests.
The problem isn’t the presence of all those fat bastards, suggests Rory Cellan-Jones, the Beeb's tech correspondent. It's their increasing absence that's damaging Facebook's numbers.
Cellan-Jones is probably correct about this. Pointing out that Facebook caught the attention of medialand in Spring 2007, he suggests that this was the point at which a large number of older users joined the site.
During 2007, the oldies "decided that if the kids were finding it impossible to run their lives without Facebook, it must be worth trying".
Now the phenomenon is unwinding. The fat bastards are walking away from Facebook, fed up with the "ceaseless vampire-biting, hugging, poking and other daft aspects of the increasingly cluttered and annoying site".
(BBC News Online | Free access)
Facebook is not charmed by Nielsen's numbers. Blake Chandlee & Co. have sent some "statistics" to Media Week. Exclusively, you understand. . .
These numbers show 7.7m "active users" in December, and 8.3m in January.
Oh, and in the space of eight weeks, the number of UK advertisers active on Facebook has risen from 200 to 2,000.
This huge spike in business reminds us of an old trick beloved of sales folk. What's missing from Chandlee's figures, of course, is any indication of how many of these 2,000 advertisers are running global campaigns -- booked overseas -- that just happen to include a UK element.
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Furthermore, it's emerging that social networking sites offer horrendous response rates -- as low as four click throughs per 10,000 impressions (or viewers). Out on the world wide web, common-or-garden banner ads receive 20 clicks per 10,000 views.
Google currently holds a contract to sell ads on MySpace. The suggestion is that Google is losing money on that contract. . .
(Business Week | Free access)
Bad news for Blake Chandlee, commercial director of Facebook UK and quite possibly the nation's most fashionable ad sales man.
The number of Britons visiting Facebook fell for the first time in January, according to Nielsen Online. The month's count of unique users was 8.5m, down 5% from the 8.9m uniques recorded in December.
Hey ho: that's still up by a modest 712% from January 2007.
(The Economist | Free access)
The marketing press, which has reported upon the opening of Facebook's London office right down to the number of cuff buttons on Mr Chandlee's jackets, was all over the Nielsen numbers like a rash.
Is Facebook losing momentum? asked Marketing today.
The answer: Er, dunno. But what Gareth Jones's analysis lacked in terms of bold claims, it more than made up for with sheer quotability.
Jones induced Mark Ritson, ad manager at O2, to have his say. Happily, Ritson didn’t hold back:
Facebook has benefited from the "digital lemming" brands setting up sponsored groups for the sake of it. Brands need to take a more intelligent approach to social networking.Although Ritson is too polite to say it, the "digital lemmings" to whom he refers include Orange, which has taken to Facebook with great enthusiasm.
(Brand Republic | Free access)
John Paczkowski of All Things Digital knows what's going on. The URL on his story about declining UK Facebook visitors contains the neologism: "Friendsterbook".
For those who need to know, Friendster was once the future of social networking. In 2003, Google tried to buy the company for $30m, but was turned down.
Then along came MySpace, which left Friendster gasping in its vapour trail. In 2006, Friendster's VC backers "recapitalized" the company in a deal that reputedly valued it at a fraction of what had been offered by Google.
(All Things D | Free access)
Ah no, says Chris Williams at The Register. This year's Facebook craze is a bit like. . . what happened after the death of Diana.
(The Register | Free access)
Ritson, it transpires, is himself a fat bastard -- the kind of middle-aged dad whose appearance at a trendy bar in the East End signals the venue's imminent demise.
In a lengthy column for Marketing, he suggests that Facebook now counts the CIA, McDonald's, Newsnight and Fabreze as members -- alongside an army of US mothers who are issuing "horrifying" invitations to their university-age offspring.
Facebook is going to hell in a hand basket, he suggests.
It should have hired a proper marketer to ensure that the wrong members didn't ruin its brand. Unfortunately, it is now too late: the fat bastards are drinking at the bar.(Brand Republic | Free access)
It is too late for the site to do anything now other than sit back and pray that next month's user data turns upward.
Fortunately for Facebook every major religion has also joined its site so it can aim its online prayers at everyone from the Mormons to the Jehovah's Witnesses. God knows it will need the help.
The problem isn’t the presence of all those fat bastards, suggests Rory Cellan-Jones, the Beeb's tech correspondent. It's their increasing absence that's damaging Facebook's numbers.
Cellan-Jones is probably correct about this. Pointing out that Facebook caught the attention of medialand in Spring 2007, he suggests that this was the point at which a large number of older users joined the site.
During 2007, the oldies "decided that if the kids were finding it impossible to run their lives without Facebook, it must be worth trying".
Now the phenomenon is unwinding. The fat bastards are walking away from Facebook, fed up with the "ceaseless vampire-biting, hugging, poking and other daft aspects of the increasingly cluttered and annoying site".
(BBC News Online | Free access)
Facebook is not charmed by Nielsen's numbers. Blake Chandlee & Co. have sent some "statistics" to Media Week. Exclusively, you understand. . .
These numbers show 7.7m "active users" in December, and 8.3m in January.
Oh, and in the space of eight weeks, the number of UK advertisers active on Facebook has risen from 200 to 2,000.
This huge spike in business reminds us of an old trick beloved of sales folk. What's missing from Chandlee's figures, of course, is any indication of how many of these 2,000 advertisers are running global campaigns -- booked overseas -- that just happen to include a UK element.
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