REPOST: On Cyber Monday, Pinterest More Than Tripled The Revenue Sent To Online Retailers

TechCrunch reports that Pinterest, despite just recently opening up to advertisers, proved its capability to drive web sales by more than tripling the revenue of online retailers on Cyber Monday.

Image source: TechCrunch.com

As Pinterest opens its doors to advertisers, retailers have been carefully monitoring the service’s ability to drive traffic to their sites, and more importantly, increase conversions that impact their bottom lines.

Over the Black Friday/Cyber Monday shopping holidays, Pinterest delivered on this promise – or so claims a new report from marketing and analytics provider firm Piqora. The company found that Pinterest doubled the revenue sent to retailers on Black Friday, and more than tripled the revenue (up by 3.6x) on Cyber Monday, when compared with the 30-day average preceding the Thanksgiving holiday.

And since the after-Thanksgiving sales began a little early this year, it’s also worth noting that Pinterest drove two times the revenue on turkey day as well.

According to Piqora CEO Sharad Verma, whose company helps retailers and other brands market themselves across the “visual web” on sites like Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr, what the Black Friday/Cyber Monday figures show is that Pinterest users aren’t just “pinning for the sake of pinning.”

That discounts a widely held assumption that users on the site have been saving items they found there in a more “aspirational” manner, rather than a practical one. Or to put it more simply, there was concern that a Pinterest save didn’t indicate buying intent.

Says Verma, that’s not so. “[Pinterest users] are pinning to buy and they are going to Pinterest to look for products to buy. They thought of Pinterest as a destination for their holiday shopping circuit,” he explains. “That never happened with F-commerce or Twitter, else we would have known it by now.”

However, though revenue sent to retailers via Pinterest increased over these recent, lucrative shopping days, traffic across the site remained flat. This is because users on Cyber Monday and the like are more in “buying” mode, and less in “collecting or discovery” mode, so the overall clicks on pins and outbound traffic didn’t see any meaningful jump.

But though there were not more clicks, the clicks Pinterest delivered those days were more profitable. “We know that Pinners pin before they buy, and they click on their past pins when they are ready to buy them,” Verma says. “A bulk of those purchases (from self pins) happen between the second day of pinning and four weeks,” he notes.

For retailers, that means those who had optimized their websites for pinning ahead of the Black Friday/Cyber Monday benefitted the most. The higher the share of pins they offered, the larger their Pinterest catalogs, the more the clicks. And, apparently, the more revenue as a result.

For this latest report, Piqora also took the time to study the top tags and images across the site during the Black Friday/Cyber Monday shopping days to determine what exactly people were pinning and buying. Not too surprisingly, given the season, the answer was simply “boots and coats.”

Though the findings are a bit self-serving given Piqora’s interest in helping companies market themselves on Pinterest and elsewhere, its data holds up against reports from others which also previously found Pinterest capable of driving more social media traffic and revenue than Facebook or Twitter. Large retailers are abundant on the site, and though they may not discuss their exact numbers, many have been shown to be very bullish on the benefits of being on Pinterest.

For instance, Nordstrom embraced Pinterest so fully that it’s testing popular Pinterest items on floor displays, and armed sales staff with iPads which contain an internal app showing the most pinned merchandise. Meanwhile, Lowe’s director of social media, Brad Walters, said in an interview earlier this year that the company would consider Pinterest’s advertising platform.

Though Pinterest is a young site, has raised a massive amount of funding which values the business at $3.8 billion, and is only now launching its own advertising platform, the company has momentum among online retailers. According to Internet Retailers’ October study, 59.5% of respondents said they would increase use of Pinterest this holiday season compared with last year. For comparison’s sake, 54.8% said the same about Facebook, and 32.6% said so for Twitter. In addition, 78% of the retailers in the site’s 2013 Top 500 Guide are active on Pinterest.

Mitch Berman is the brains behind Zen Digital Fund, a technology and digital marketing company. Visit this Facebook page for more discussion on the future of digital marketing.

REPOST: Patent wars: Tech giants sue Samsung and Google

The mobile phone patent war thickens as Rockstar Consortium, an alliance of Apple, Microsoft, Blackberry, Ericsson, and Sony, has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Google, Samsung, and other smartphones that run the Google Android operating system. BBC News has the full report. 

Image Source: bbc.co.uk

 

A group of tech giants known as the Rockstar Consortium is suing Google, Samsung, HTC and others over alleged mobile phone patent infringements.

Rockstar, jointly owned by Apple, Microsoft, Blackberry, Ericsson and Sony, is targeting manufacturers of phones that run the rival Google Android operating system.

Rockstar spent $4.5bn (£2.8bn) buying thousands of Nortel patents after the telecoms giant went bankrupt in 2009.

Google lost out in the bidding war.

The Rockstar lawsuit claims Google has infringed seven patents relating to the way internet search terms match up with relevant advertising.

Dominance

The move is just the latest in a number of mobile device patent cases being fought across the world, as technology behemoths fight for dominance of the lucrative smartphone, tablet and games console markets.

Google's Android has been doing particularly well, largely thanks to the success of Samsung's Galaxy range of smartphones.

Android devices accounted for 81.3% of smartphone shipments in the third quarter of 2013, according to research firm Strategy Analytics, compared with 13.4% for Apple iOS and 4.1% for Windows Phone.

This week, Nokia, whose mobile devices division is being bought by Microsoft, won a patent victory over HTC that could see the Taiwanese company's HTC One smartphone being banned from import into the UK.

And earlier in October, Samsung offered to stop taking rivals to court over alleged patent infringements for a period of five years, after European Union authorities said the South Korean company's litigious actions were stifling competition.

Samsung faced a potential £11.3bn ($18.3bn) fine if found guilty of breaching European anti-trust laws.

Google's Motorola Mobility, which the search giant bought for $12.5bn, has also been accused of similar anti-competitive behaviour.

Samsung and Apple are currently slugging it out in the courts of more than 10 countries across Europe.

Cross-licensing

But some senior technology experts believes the legal conflict is bad for consumers.

In an interview with the BBC's Click programme to be broadcast on Saturday, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak says: "There are good things I see on Samsung phones that I wish were in my iPhone; I wish Apple would use them, and could use them, and I don't know if Samsung would stop us.

"I wish everybody just did a lot of cross-licensing and sharing the good technology; all our products would be better, we'd go further.

"I do kind of wish they were more compatible."

But the Rockstar Consortium's legal action suggests such a rapprochement in the global patent wars is still a long way off.

Mitch Berman is a digital evangelist who runs Zen Digital Fund, a dynamic organization focusing on the creation of the innovative "digital" consumer. Read this blog to learn more about his work in the digital media.

REPOST: How to build an effective social marketing strategy

Businesses act according to a strategy they believe would get them a better position in the market.  Forbes contributor Greg Satell provides tips in building an effective social marketing strategy for the digital age:

In the 20th century, nearly every marketing problem had one solution—the 30 second TV ad.  If you had a product to sell, you could reach everybody you needed to with a powerful, highly polished message in a very short period of time.

Yet marketing in the digital age is different.  Building awareness is no longer sufficient.  In fact, it may even benefit your competitors more than it does your brand because once consumers react to your message, they will be retargeted using digital methods.

So the basic function of marketing promotion has changed.  It is no longer enough to simply grab attention, you need to be able to hold attention and that’s where social strategy comes in.  The age of catchy slogans and massive ad campaigns is over.  Brands in the 20th century need to become more like publishers and strategy needs to follow from that.

Brands like Harley Davidson built strong communities long before social media even existed. Image Source: www.forbes.com

Clarifying The Mission

Content strategy has become a popular specialty in marketing lately.  The problem is that very few content strategists actually know what they’re talking about.  They tend to approach content as if it was just a longer version of an ad and therefore double the usual amount of psychobabble about the “consumer mindset.”

In truth, a publisher’s first loyalty is not to the consumer, but to the editorial mission.  That doesn’t mean you should ignore consumers, trends or anything else that’s going on.  What it does mean is that great publications stand for something.

Apple stands for design.  Harley Davidson stands for friendship and camaraderie.  Red Bull stands for an extreme lifestyle.  These brands successfully engage consumers because the brand’s mission supersedes whatever they happen to be selling at any given time.

So the first thing you need to do to create a successful social strategy is figure out what you stand for.

Identifying Analogues

There is probably no greater peril in marketing than the misplaced compulsion to be original. Originality, after all, is not a virtue in and of itself, but only has value if it’s meaningful.  Try to be different for difference’s sake and you’ll accomplish nothing more than being weird.  That might thrill the guys in the office, but it will fail in the marketplace.

So the best way to start formulating a social strategy is to identify others who share your mission.  What are they doing?  What succeeds and what doesn’t?  What can we add?  What can we subtract?  There’s no reason to try to reinvent the wheel.

When I was a professional publisher, we would insist on 3-5 analogues for any development or editorial brief and we found that practice absolutely essential.  It not only helped us adopt best practices and avoid poor ones, it also helped everyone visualize exactly what we were trying to accomplish.

Focusing on Structure

Law and Order was one of the most successful TV shows in history.  Running for 20 seasons, it not only ruled the ratings, but was a critical success as well.

Regular viewers of the show became familiar with its strict structure.  First, a crime, then an investigation leading to an arrest and prosecution.  Somewhere along the way a snag would be hit, creating tension that would drive the story. You could almost set your watch by it.

Every successful content product has a clearly defined structure.  TV shows have plot formulas, radio stations have clocks, magazines have brand bibles and web sites have usability rules.  These are strictly followed.

While this may seem boring in concept, creating a clear structure is absolutely crucial in practice.  Any cognitive energy your audience uses up trying to navigate your content lessens the amount of energy they can spend on what you’re trying to tell them.  A standard format is also helpful in setting the constraints under which creativity thrives.

A legendary editor once told me that a great content product delivers two things: consistency and surprise.  I think the same is true with social marketing.  You should set expectations, but also feel free to break the rules now an then.  However, without consistency, there can be no surprise, you just make a mess.

Create A Community (Not An Audience)

Up till now, I’ve focused mainly on content.  That’s deliberate, because without compelling content that informs, excites and inspires, social marketing doesn’t have a chance.  It simply will not be effective.  However, the mark of a great social marketing program is that it builds more than an audience—it builds a community.

This is where things often go wildly, wildly wrong because social marketersmistakenly equate the strength of their community with the size of their following.  They establish fans on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks as a key performance indicator and then blast them with brand messages.

The truth is that the strength of your community has much less to do with how consumers are connected to you than how they are connected to each other. That’s how great social brands, like Apple, Harley and eBay built devoted followings long before anyone even heard of social media.

The bottom line is that we are now in a post-promotional age where brand messages are only half the battle.  To build a great brand today you need to build great brand experiences and the best way to do that is to build a community around shared values with content that holds attention.

Mitch Berman, founder of ZillionTV Corporation, currently works as a principal at Blend Digital, where he provides marketing strategies for privately-held and public companies that include IP-based digital entertainment, consumer marketing and branding, 2nd screen social TV, content licensing, connected devices, digital media business development and distribution, social and mobile media marketing.  Check this Facebook for more information on Mitch Berman.

Closing the gap in digital skills through training

Image Source: communitelligence.com

The digital world is growing at a pace where the skills of available manpower fall short of functional IT knowledge that could leverage big business solutions. Digital companies are set up with very particular industry focus. Hence, for young professionals actively seeking employment, there’s so much to learn and too few resources for them to be completely competent in IT areas such as persnickety analytics and big data management --- all worth billions of dollars when translated to consumer insight, market research, product designs, etc. The urgent issue is there – the need for more digitally skilled professionals, yet the real solution to the problem remains elusive.

Image Source: actionplan.gc.ca

However, IBM’s Anjul Bhambhri remarks that the viable solution to the digital skills gap might just be underplayed. In his article, Bhambhri writes how the industry could meet the challenge through company-sponsored training which is a key to improving both data skills set and employability. Training professionals with insufficient skills is still the best way for companies to have their existing workforce adjust to new sophistications in IT, and to redefine its data skills demand in terms of who they need and the skills they’re actually looking for. Training is also crucial in organizations that prefer versatile individuals who could work across diverse IT tasks.

Image Source: irishexaminer.com

 
Resolving the digital skills gap begins at a grassroots level – in school. Modifying the curriculum to accommodate vocational tech programs calls for renewed partnerships among schools, communities, and organizations which will direct future professionals to firsthand data science applications and equip them with on-the-job skills to cut through the robust world of big data.


Mitch Berman of Zen Digital Fund harnesses creative talents in the digital world as part of his commitment to ignite the creation of innovative "digital" consumer. Visit this Facebook page for more insightful analyses of the digital culture.

REPOST: The cult of 'Arrested Development'

"Arrested Development" hardly made waves in its day despite much critical acclaim.  It has recently been set for a rerun though, proving that in television, if you have the right amount of luck and popularity, you cannot stay out of the limelight for very long.  Find out more from this CNN article.

(CNN) -- Seven years after its finale, one of the greatest cult hits in television history is making a return. "Arrested Development" lasted three season during its initial run on FOX, with critical acclaim but dismal ratings.

Since its final episode aired in February 2006, a little thing called Netflix ushered in a new way of watching television. In doing so, the comedy found a massive following who kicked themselves for missing the dysfunctional antics of the Family Bluth before it received the dreaded "canceled" sentencing from prime-time television.

In a rare move, the Emmy-winning comedy is making a return, with 15 new episodes with the original cast and crew in tow. After a reported bidding war among outlets, Netflix won the rights to the fourth season everyone hoped for, but no one saw coming. After numerous false starts and scheduling conflicts, series creator Mitch Hurwitz was finally able to work in time for his entire clan to continue the saga of the least redeemable family in Orange County.

CNN recently caught up with the cast to discuss the new episodes, and star Jason Bateman appeared overjoyed at their family reunion.

"There really aren't a lot of shows that get to come back together, at least under these circumstances, where it's not a desperate retread and no one's really done much since the show went off the air. This was a celebratory gathering, a lot of good news, and we knew that we were being included in this effort that Netflix is making to change the way television is brought to people. We're just fortunate to be a part of that."

"Arrested" is the latest in Netflix's recent foray into producing original content, and marks a new way for people to enjoy television. For those who missed the show during its original run, Netflix made it possible to watch the entire series in one sitting. The increase in popularity for streaming and subscription services has created a culture of television binge-watching. Many fans of "Arrested Development" have never seen the show any other way, and on May 26, these same fans will have 15 new half-hours for their viewing pleasure. Portia de Rossi, aka Lindsay Bluth, admits to being a victim of binge-watching herself.

"I find it really frustrating to have to wait a week to watch a show, and I'm just so used to seeing things back to back when I want to see them. I think what Mitch has done with 'Arrested' for Netflix is even more brilliant because he's used that format and created something brand new within it."

With the abundance of reality series taking over both prime-time lineups and Nielsen ratings over the last decade, more and more people have begun turning to cable and premium networks to get their scripted television fix. Netflix is hoping to take a bite out of that population tuning away from the "Big Five" broadcast networks. In fact, these original series are even eligible for Primetime Emmy awards thanks to a recent rule change allowing broadband programming to be nominated alongside any broadcast, cable or premium network show.

Will the magic that has kept the original 53 episodes as must-see television a decade since the show's debut still be there? The cast believe so and if this upcoming season is a success, don't expect this to be the last you see of Never Nudes, Cornballers, and frozen banana stands. Bateman is quick to point out that Season 4 is the first arc in a new story.

"It's a three-act story that was too big to put in a feature, so we put the first act in these episodes and a movie would be acts two and three."

That's right, the long-rumored film version of the series is still in the works. The stars of "Arrested Development" may have to keep their characters within arm's reach in the coming future. They said they reveled at the chance to jump back into the shoes of their Bluth personae, and Jessica Walter had no trouble slipping into boozy matriarch Lucille.

"How bad does this make me seem? It's not that difficult. I hope I'm not like her! But when you play something for three seasons like we did, it's sort of like bike riding: You never forget. As soon as I saw the script and saw the people the first day we were all together in that dysfunctional crazy family, it all came back."

Season 4 features an interesting twist on the show's successful formula. To make the most of the limited time scheduled with the entire cast at once, each episode of the new installment focuses on a different member of the Bluth family. For de Rossi, it was the few scenes the ensemble got to shoot together that made her feel back at home.

"Once I was reunited with my cast on the set of Lucille's penthouse, that was that moment where it all just kind of clicked, for all of us. Because it wasn't just me and Lindsay and what she was like; it was how she related to everybody else and her place in the family. That was really awesome and that was when it all came rushing back."

With the release just a week away, will fans both old and new turn out to get a new slice of afternoon delight? De Rossi believes everyone will walk away satisfied.

"It's going to feel the same as it did. I was surprised how similar it looked and felt, and although we are all older, somehow it all worked."

Mitch Berman was instrumental in the launching of the wildly popular ZillionTV.  Catch insights on business and the television industry by following this Twitter page.

REPOST: A Comedy Show That Comes via a Hashtag

In this report, Amy Chozick digs deeper into the #ComedyFest event, a joint effort by Comedy Central and Twitter hinged on strengthening audience engagement using the power of comedic genres and multi-platform entertainment.

Image Source: nytimes.com

 
















Next week, Comedy Central will host a five-day comedy festival that includes a lineup of legends like Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner alongside popular young comics like Amy Schumer and the director Paul Feig.

But there will be no smoky comedy clubs. No lone microphones and stools positioned on stage. No two-drink minimum.

The festival will take place almost entirely on Twitter, with comedians posting video snippets of routines and round tables and posting jokes using the hashtag #ComedyFest.

The partnership between Comedy Central, a cable cannel owned by Viacom, and Twitter represents the evolving relationship between television and social media. Twitter is often incorporated into programming with viewers using the site as a second screen while watching live television. But slowly, Twitter is becoming an outlet on which to watch video.

In January, Twitter introduced Vine, a video-sharing service that lets users post six-second clips — brevity that matches Twitter’s model of 140-character messages.

On Tuesday, as part of the festival, the comedian Steve Agee will host a “Vine Dining” party, telling stories in six-second videos. The cast of HBO’s “Veep” shares “vines” from the set, as does the cast of ABC’s hit “Scandal.” A&E puts 30-second videos of “Duck Dynasty” on Twitter and the entire third season of Fox’s “Raising Hope” had its debut on the site.

“It’s not just hashtags appearing on your TV screen, but TV content appearing in your Twitter feed,” said Debra Aho Williamson, a social media analyst at eMarketer.

For Comedy Central, the Twitter partnership is a small part of a larger strategy to become a branded entertainment company that does not rely just on nightly television viewing. In a changing media landscape, the channel’s series like “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” and “South Park,” and their young, mostly male audiences, have led the shift to online video viewing.

As early as next month, Comedy Central will introduce a free, ad-supported app, called CC: Stand-Up. Designed to look and feel like a cable channel devoted to stand-up, the app will offer videos of comedians performing routines.

A recommendation algorithm (similar to the one used by Amazon) will allow users to discover new comedians. If you watched Jeff Ross, for example, a web of other comics would pop up based on routines with similar topics (like mass transit), style (like dark humor) or other relationships (both like marshmallows).

“One of these days we will be ambivalent about where people watch Comedy Central,” said Steve Grimes, the channel’s senior vice president for programming and multiplatform strategy.

At least for now Viacom makes the vast majority of its revenue from cable subscribers who watch television the old-fashioned way and the advertisers who pay to reach them there. The company must adapt to the changing ways viewers watch video, but they must also preserve profits.

Last year, Nickelodeon’s ratings dropped, partly because shows like “Dora the Explorer” and “SpongeBob SquarePants” had been too readily available on streaming platforms like Netflix.

Nickelodeon’s predicament has served as a cautionary tale for Comedy Central as it extends its programming onto other devices. Comedy Central’s total prime-time audience has fallen to a nightly average of 816,000 viewers in the current season to date, from 1.1 million in 2008, according to Nielsen.

Of those viewers, 258,000 are men ages 18 to 34, a demographic that disproportionately uses social media while watching television. In a study conducted by Nielsen in September and titled “How Chatter Matters in TV Viewing,” 54 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds said they had started watching a TV show because of Facebook, and 21 percent credited Twitter.

Fred Graver, head of TV at Twitter, said partnering with Comedy Central and others was not about turning the service into a television distribution platform, but developing deeper relationships with programmers that eventually lead to more people joining Twitter. The relationship, he said, can be mutually beneficial.

“What we spend a lot of time talking to networks and show runners about is, What do you put onto Twitter that will get people to change the channel or alert them to another way of enjoying the show?” Mr. Graver said.

For now, Comedy Central looks at the Twitter partnership as a marketing strategy. In the future, the channel could work with a sponsor to bring in ad revenue. “It’s the same way we’d market our comedy through a billboard a few years ago,” said Michele Ganeless, president of Comedy Central.

Ms. Ganeless has overseen Comedy Central’s push into other expansions of the brand, including consumer products like DVDs, T-shirts and coffee mugs related to its shows and comedians.

Comedians have been particularly ahead of the curve in embracing new ways to distribute stand-up acts that used to rely on cable television. Last year, Louis C.K. sold a “Live at the Beacon Theater” special directly through his Web site and made $1 million in under two weeks. That partly inspired Comedy Central to develop a Web site that lets comedians sell their stand-up specials directly to consumers (with the channel getting a cut). Customers can buy a stand-up special starting at $5 and stream it onto their television screens or mobile devices.

It remains to be seen how all these add-ons will ultimately affect Comedy Central’s audience and, in turn, its revenue.

“I don’t think anybody is moving forward in the TV business or the brand business without finding ways to develop a true dialogue with consumers,” said Doug Herzog, president of Viacom Entertainment Group, which includes Comedy Central, Spike and TV Land. “What we’re still discovering and what will take a while is what exactly does that mean and what exactly does it add up to and how do you quantify it?”

On Monday, Twitter will live stream the only #ComedyFest event that will take place with an actual audience, at the Paley Center for Media in Los Angeles. The panel discussion will include Mr. Brooks, Mr. Reiner and Judd Apatow, who will be the host. Mr. Reiner and Mr. Apatow will try to persuade the technology-averse Mr. Brooks to join Twitter. He has previously resisted, telling friends that it could not possibly capture his “impish” quality.

Mr. Reiner has more than 20,400 Twitter followers. During the Oscars this year, he posted, “I was so excited to discover I was not in the in memoriam!”

In an interview, Mr. Reiner took a break from writing a book, “I Just Remembered,” (“because it’s about all the things I forgot to put in the first book”) to discuss social media and comedy. Of Mr. Brooks, his longtime friend and partner in “The 2,000 Year Old Man” comedy skit, Mr. Reiner said: “We’ll see if we can get the old man to talk” on Twitter.

Mitch Berman, founder of ZillionTV Corporation, is a specialist in digital consumer innovation and multi-platform entertainment. Visit this Facebook page to know more  about the latest trends in consumer technology and social media.

Televisions: The original social media

When television sets first became commercially available, they quickly turned into the family bonding tool. With only one set per household, families would gather around their TV sets to watch evening programs after dinner, then discuss what they had seen with each other and with friends at school or in the workplace the next day. Whole communities would sometimes gather at one home for weekend games and cheer the town’s team over barbeque and chatter.

Image Source: centralmediasystems.com

The humble television inspired conversation, reactions, and true socializing.

In this day and age, spoken conversations have been widely replaced by what the digital companies are calling social media. Going by the traditional definition of the word, “social” media must, first and foremost, get people to socialize. In that respect, modern social media is, in fact, anti-social media, because it constrains people to their computers or mobile phones and forces them to interact virtually via platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Image Source: vivax.com

While this form of interaction can still be considered socializing, it does not manifest the term in its traditional form. If anything, it causes users to stay away from reality and tangible socializing, and forces them to ignore the people they are physically with in order to communicate with those who are in a virtual world.

Image Source: regmedia.co.uk

The Internet has become a popular alternative for watching shows and movies, but TV is still the main channel for filmed media. Like this Facebook page for Mitch Berman, founder of ZillionTV, to learn more about the merging of TV and Internet media in the information age.

REPOST: Gates, Zuckerberg, Other Tech Icons Promote Youth Coding in New Film

Are the founders of Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter appearing on film?  The New York Times reports that a nonprofit org is featuring the tech giants in a short film on youth programming.


A new nonprofit seeking to rally interest among children, parents and schools in computer programming is getting help from some big guns in the tech industry, including the founders of Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter.

Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey of Twitter and Square are among the tech icons appearing in a short movie being released Tuesday by Code.org, the new nonprofit that wants to make programming classes more widely available in schools.

Video source: Youtube.com

The organization, founded by Hadi Partovi, a tech entrepreneur and startup adviser and investor, is part of an intensifying effort among technology companies to address a serious shortfall in programming talent. Few schools offer programming classes. Code.org is encouraging people to sign a petition on its Web site stating that every student should have an opportunity to learn to code, and to use that response to advocate for greater availability of computer science classes in schools.

Many of the luminaries in the movie describe their first crude programming efforts and attempt to demystify the discipline by comparing it to other interests that students more commonly pursue. “It’s really not unlike playing an instrument or playing a sport,” Drew Houston, the chief executive and cofounder of Dropbox, says in the movie. “It starts out being very intimidating but you kind of get the hang of it over time.”

Mr. Partovi went outside nerd circles to add cachet to programming. The movie features the professional basketball player Chris Bosh of the Miami Heat, who took programming classes as a student, and Will.i.am, the music producer and Black Eyed Peas frontman. “Here we are, 2013, we all depend on technology to communicate, to bank, and none of us know how to read and write code,” Will.i.am says in the film. “It’s important for these kids, right now, starting at 8 years old, to read and write code.”

Code.org also secured endorsements for youth programming from a much broader group of celebrities from politics, business and education, including Bill Clinton, Eric Schmidt of Google, Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers and the theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking.

Mr. Partovi said Microsoft has provided financial support to show the film in Regal movie theaters as an advertisement for a week starting this Friday. Mr. Zuckerberg will promote it to his Facebook followers and Google will feature it on YouTube, Mr. Partovi said.

This Facebook page for Mitch Berman, principal at Blend Digital and founder of ZillionTV Corporation, links to more news and information on digital marketing, social media, apps, and more.

Content is king: Digital trends to watch out for this year

Before 2012 ended, Adobe, in partnership with Econsultancy, surveyed over 700 digital professionals to determine which challenges and opportunities 2013 will bring to the table.

Image source: copyblogger.com

The results of the study showed that 2013 will be the year of content.

The continued emergence of content marketing as a standalone discipline was shown to be the single most significant digital marketing trend. The findings showed that 38 percent of agencies and 39 percent of companies rated content marketing as their top priority in digital marketing, and 52 percent of marketers said that targeting and personalizing content is a key factor in their digital strategy for 2013. “Great content” will also be spread through social channels and will be consumed everywhere.

Image source: power-marketing.com

Other points raised by the study include the following:

• The respondents have listed social media engagement lower down their list of priorities, compared to a year ago.
• Industry professionals see mobile optimization as the most exciting digital marketing trend opportunity for 2013.
• 2013 also calls for the rise of the “Pi-shaped marketers.” To meet the demands of omnichannel customers, these marketers must be creative (can understand brands and storytelling) and analytical (data-driven, and can use analytics to optimize).
• The study states that the marketing tasks for 2013 are as follows: (1) creating engaging, consistent content on multiple platforms, (2) joining online and offline data, and (3) measuring with greater accuracy and optimizing accordingly.

Image source: econsultancy.com

To sum up the survey, Adobe and Econsultancy believe that inspired content and informed algorithms are the keys to digital marketing success in 2013.

Mitch Berman specializes in creating innovative B2B and digital consumer products and services. He is a principal at Blend Digital and the founder of ZillionTV Corporation. This Twitter page provides more information about his work.