Recently, Twitter introduced a new tool, called custom timelines, to make collecting and sharing tweets easier. Custom timelines was reported on New York Times social page Bits Blog, explaining that the tool is very straightforward and allows users to drag their favourite or most interesting tweets into a custom list. This new tool is what Twitter has been missing for a long time; Twitter has not upgraded for a while and users are looking for something new and exciting. Custom timeline is exactly what Twitter needs to thrive and compete in the competitive social media market.

The timeline has its own page and is public, allowing anyone to read your interesting or favourite tweets without the chaos of searching through the billions of other tweets. It is time efficient as the tweets are easily found and more practical because it allows users to organize tweets. Often Twitter can be confusing and almost frustrating to use. Yes, everyone has 140 characters but that does not help many users. Do we reply to people who don’t follow us, what is the difference between retweeting and favouriting? These questions, which should seem simple, actually cause many problems for users who create a Twitter account; it often turns users away because they are not sure how to use it. Hopefully by introducing this new tool it will be a step in the right direction to help clarify and simplify the chaos and confusion of Twitter—but the question still remains on how popular it will actually be.

This particular blog was especially interesting because it explained what Twitter is trying to do in order to improve its tools that allow users to easily share and collect tweets. By doing so, Twitter will continue to be a strong competitor within the social media market. It gave me an insight showcasing what companies need to do to stay on top.

Sources:

Bits Blog

Mashable

Twitter Image

           Chip Wilson, founder, chairmen and the biggest shareholder of Lululemon is lucky that Lululemon is his company or he would have been fired after his interview claiming that Lululemon pants are not for every sized women. Lululemon has been having problems with see through pants and poor material. Wilson made a mistake blaming his customer’s body shape for the error instead of blaming it on his own manufacturing line. He did apologize for his inappropriate comment however; there are still many furious customers that say they will never purchase another Lululemon item again. Though Wilson’s unfortunate use of words will affect his company with prolonging negative media exposure, it is unfortunate that this negative feedback overrides all the good Lululemon has done in the community—but that’s just how it goes in society today.

However, Lululemon is not the only company that wants the ideal customer wearing their product, Abercrombie was also accused of only hiring good looking people and claimed they would rather burn their clothes than give them to poor people. Both Lululemon and Abercrombie have made a disastrous and foolish mistake that will take a little more than an apology to win back their customers.

Sources:

CBC News

Global News

Elite Daily

        Zappos, an online shoe company, is a successful company that is well known mainly for having the most unique core values. Zappos runs their company very differently from other organizations; it creates a fun, creative and open-minded work environment. Zappos is the best when it comes to customer service especially their toll free number answered by real employees—not machines. The organization cares for their workers by providing free food everyday, free fitness centers, benefit plans etc. Zappos also has a unique hiring system where they offer employees money to leave because they only want committed and passionate employees.

Clearly, Zappos is doing something right with the unique way they run their business. Many other organizations should follow Zappos as a way to further improve their companies overall success and core values; oddly enough, some other companies don’t even know their own core values! Zappos proves giving benefits to their employees and providing WOW customer service will create more passionate hardworking employees and returning customers, which may be costly in the short run but will absolutely benefit in the long run.  Zappos is a company that seems to have it all figured out, and if you are not yet looking in to how they run their business you should be!

Sources:

Aol Jobs

Zappos

CNN Money

       Guerilla Marketing is a creative, fun, unique, high energy marketing technique that does a great job capturing consumer’s attention. Guerilla Marketing is becoming more mainstream, widely seen on the web. Not only do smaller companies use it but also more established ones like Red Bull and Coke who are fond of the new marketing technique. Red Bull is the industry leader in guerilla marketing; in a Red Bull video Felix Baumgartner set a high record for the highest skydiving jump, this video attracted a huge amount of much deserved attention.

A lot of companies are putting these videos on YouTube so they will go viral: an inexpensive and brilliant marketing strategy.  Prankvertising is another non-traditional strategy that creates social buzz around the product and leaves a great lasting impression. An example is when LG Ultra HD TV in an ad used a TV to portray an outside view of the city and during the interview the world appears to be coming to an end when in reality it is only on TV. These new strategies may now turn boring commercials that we love to fast forward into interesting and funny commercials that we might even go as far as replaying over and over again.

Sources:

Universe Today

Wikipedia

Entrepreneur

Creative Guerilla Marketing: Red Bull

Olivia Boon Tze Chuin’s discusses in her blog the privacy concerns of Snapchat and the ethical issues raised. However, I do not believe Snapchat is the issue; people using this app should be more aware of what photos they are sending.  Living in this century with booming amounts of new technology we should know by now that once a picture is uploaded on any site or within any app it is always out there and no longer belongs to us. As discussed in her blog, the pictures on Snapchat can only be shown for a maximum of 10 seconds however; everyone has the option to screenshot the photo. Snapchat users are well aware of screen shotting pictures on Snapchat and the app even notifies the user if the receiver saved the photo. Therefor there is no excuse to assume that the photo will disappear forever. It is obvious that Snapchat owns every picture that is ever sent, just like how Facebook owns every photo that is uploaded, Instagram owns every photo that is added, and the list goes on. The other ethical issue discussed in her blog is how stalkers could easily retrieve photos and post them on the Internet. Yes, this could happen but that is the risk of using all social media apps and websites: users need to be responsible. Even if Snapchat guarantees the photos will be deleted forever, users should know that this situation is not realistic under social media circumstances. Though it is easy to blame Snapchat for our ignorance, we have nobody to blame but ourselves: be cautious of photos you send, you never know who might end up with them.

Images:

Pinterest

        As no buyers stepped up to buy Blackberry, a new strategy—likely the last strategy— is to bring in John Chen. Chen has had experience turning around tech companies like Sybase, selling it eventually to SAP for $6 billion. Chen will receive a yearly compensation of a $3 million salary plus a restricted share bonus worth about $100 million dollars when he signed the deal on Monday November 3rd. If the shares go up to $20 his compensation will be worth approximately $250 million.

On the surface it may seem like a lot of money—and it is— however, if he is successful, Blackberry shareholders will be happy to pay him the $250million. With a current market cap of approximately $3.4 billion Blackberry’s market cap will grow to $10.3 billion if Chen can move the the share price to $20 per share. Paying Chen the $250 million may not be a bad investment because at $20 a share Blackberry will be worth an additional $7 billion! This is a huge gamble but at this stage it is Blackberry’s last chance to survive in the market and hopefully they will be successful for the sake of the shareholders that have invested into Blackberry.

Sources:

Financial Post

What Talking

In Megan Barnabe’s Blog, I would like to add that it is not only the retailer who should be accountable it should also be the consumer. As consumers we demand that retailers offer us the lowest price possible. So what do the retailers do in response, they look for the cheapest possible place in the world where wages are the lowest. Usually the lowest wages entail that the working conditionsare also extremely poor.

Retailers are constantly looking to cut costs and if they can find a cheaper place then will move. What needs to be done in addition to retailers signing agreements with their manufacturer is retailers need to market to consumers that they are producing clothing that is made in the third world that meets an ethical standard. Consumers then need to buy into the ethical standard and be prepared to pay a little more for their clothing. A number of retailers have done this with coffee beans and have found that customers are willing to pay a little more for ethically grown coffee beans. Until consumers are willing to pay more for ethically produced products unfortunately these working conditions will not improve.

Picture Source: Plastics Today

Mutual Funds are touted as being a great way for people to invest in stocks in order to diversify risk.  The Fund Manager buys stocks in a variety of industries or markets depending on the funds mandate and bundles them up to sell them as mutual funds to investors. Investors buy them hoping to get a good return at the same time diversifying their risks and fund managers take a fee.   This sounds like an ideal situation but many of these funds do not outperform the market; the fees that investors have to pay are sometimes greater than the return.[1] I think a simple solution for small investors in this situation is to invest in Electronically Trade Funds (ETF’s).  Basically, the EFT’s are made up of the same stocks that make up the different stock markets (ie. Dow TSX or NASDAQ).  This way you know what your return is-it is the same as the overall market less the fee-which is much less than fees from mutual funds. Ok you may not have as many options to invest in ETF’s compared to mutual funds, and ETF’s cannot outperform the market as some funds do, but I believe most small investors should go with the ETF’s.

There has been a host of news on Blackberry lately, starting with it possibly being a takeover target to it fighting for its survival. One of its largest shareholders, Farifax Financial, made an offer to buy and other vulture funds are looking at Blackberry which in the last quarter lost  $1 billion [1] and laid off 5,000 employees [2].  To compete with its competitors (IPhone and Samsung smartphones) Blackberry launched the new Z. However, it was not popular; I tried out a new Z for a month and there was no comparison to the IPhone, which caused me to switch and no longer be a proud blackberry owner. However; I was not the only person making the switch; a few years ago, just before making the switch, I noticed the number of my bbm contacts significantly and rapidly dropping. People were switching to the new Iphone too, so when I read that Blackberry may not survive or is in dire straits I was not surprised. I saw that coming years ago with the exodus from Blackberry. What upset me the most however, was that I should have bought Apples shares back then which have now rose from $302 to $496 in the last three years. To benefit greater, I should have also shorted Blackberry, which dropped from $60 to $8.20.  It’s a shame Blackberry may not survive, but a regret for me that I did not see the opportunity to invest.

Image