IBM Smarter Cities
Data is the new black. Apparently. So the clever bods at Ol Big Blue have been trying to find ways of articulating how the intelligent management can help make our lives better. And I think they have done a nice job here.

Nikon Festival
Nikon is running a competition to get more pepole using their cameras. Or phones. Or whichever particular devices that they use to create videos. Anyway, the idea here is that you upload a lovely video (maximum length 140 seconds) and then use Twitter to get people voting on what a great video it is (see what they have done there?) The winner gets £25K. It’s a simple idea, simply presented that relies on two things to be successful: greed and our desire to be recognised. I think it could work.

Monster tie in with Microsoft
I was seaching the Office website for interesting plug-ons and add-ons and noticed that Monster seems to have created a tie in with Microsoft to get people who are using Office to create their resumes to upload them to Monster. One of those very simple ideas that’s a win-win for both Microsoft (who get value-added content) and Monster (who get access to a much broader audience). Why didn’t we think of that?

Easy Tweets (https://easytweets.com/)
Our folks in the States Facebooked about this.I haven’t had time to explore it fully, but from what I understand it seems to be a tool that allows our clients to control multiple twitter accounts, but also to track their brand reputation. If any of you get a chance, I’d love to know what you (or your clients) think.

Steve Jobs demonstrates the Apple Macintosh in 1984
“Insanely great.” Oh how far we have come…

Recently, there have been efforts by the competition to raise the game by focusing on improving the product quality: Yahoo! upgraded its search algorithms to make its results more accurate than Google and Microsoft recently released a replacement to their engine, called Bing. However, nothing seems to have dented Google’s dominance.

So, after a long and arduous courtship, a deal has recently been announced between Microsoft and Yahoo! As it is something that I’m sure our clients will be interested in, I thought to outline the basics of the deal:
•    Bing will become the search engine used by both Microsoft and Yahoo.
•    Microsoft AdCenter will become the single search advertising platform.
•    Yahoo will focus on media, marketing services, and sales.

What does each party stand to gain?
Whilst Yahoo’s share fell slightly after the deal was announced, Microsoft’s has remained stable and the industry seems to feel that this is a positive move for both companies: Bing usage has been growing at an average of 25% per week, but this has primarily been at the expense of Yahoo Search and it is yet to dent Google’s market share. The deal will instantly provide Bing with almost 30% of US internet queries and save Yahoo $200 million in search engine technology development costs. Advertising prospects for the combined systems should also improve. Yahoo and Microsoft both offer effective search advertising platforms, but advertisers often choose Google because it receives significantly more traffic.

Will it work?
The link up will not be easy and both companies expect scrutiny from the US Department of Justice. The Google-Yahoo advertising alliance failed in November 2008 partly because of DoJ opposition. Ironically, Microsoft was the biggest and loudest complainer about that deal.

Also, tech mergers have a history of failure: jobs are bound to be shed from both companies and the cultural amalgamation aspect always proves to be difficult for such firms (perhaps they need our help on developing and implementing an Employer Brand?) However, this is a ‘partnership’ not a merger, so perhaps this is just me being cynical. Verdict? The jury remains open: keep watching this space.