Last Thursday Twitter launched a new video sharing service called Vine.
Mentions of it started to trickle into my twitter feed over the weekend, but since yesterday I’ve been seeing #vineapp everywhere – so I thought it was time to take a look.
I’ve played with it for about 10 minutes so far and my first reaction is that it’s a lot like Instagram, but with videos.
You download the free app – at the moment it’s only available on Apple devices (but I’m sure it will roll out soon to android and windows).
The videos are six seconds in length and on a constant loop.
You can follow users, like videos, and share them to twitter and FB – in the same way as Instagram.
From a business marketing point of view; I think this will become very popular, very quickly, which means for now at least, it should be incorporated into your social media plan.
Although, I wouldn’t rush into it. The videos need to be innovative so that people will actually watch and share your content, otherwise it will be a huge waste of your time.
I would suggest having a good look through at the things that are being posted and ask yourself:
what is being liked?
which users are being followed?
what is the message that you want to get across?
how you can incorporate that message into a 6 second video?
In today’s highly competitive global environment, companies are looking for opportunities to minimize costs, increase efficiencies and gain competitive advantage. Business leaders across all industries are focused on IT as a way to accomplish these goals. The use of emerging, disruptive technologies such as context-aware mobile apps and enterprise social networking along with the proliferation of public and private cloud is commanding organizations to assess and manage the impact these technologies may have on their business. Leaders are required to understand, prioritize and apply these new technologies within the context of their overall business goals.
PwC recently completed the 5th Annual Digital IQ Survey. The survey is designed to assess how well companies understand the value of technology and weave IT into the fabric of their organization. For the first time, the Digital IQ survey was conducted globally and included participation from more than 1,100 respondents. Detailed below are the Top 10 Technology Trends for Business that emerged from the survey. Click on any trend to get a brief point of view from PwC’s leaders in these areas.
Read about the 2013 Top 10 Technology Trends for Business please click the link.
Spar has announced it is to include Amazon Lockers in a number of stores, allowing customers to retrieve Amazon parcels at a local Spar store. The Lockers are currently located in nine Spar stores with further Lockers planned to be added in the future.
The initiative lets Amazon customers choose their Locker option and location when ordering online. They then receive a secure pick-up code via email which they use to open the Locker and retrieve their parcel.
Spar UKretail development controller Barry Wallis said: “This is a highly innovative move from Spar UK, showing our commitment to launching the latest technologies that provide the best possible convenience to shoppers.
“Online sales are growing with more than half of the UK population now shopping online. In recent months, we have introduced mobile phone charging units, free WiFi and mobile marketing apps instore for our customers. This is the next step in making our stores even more service-friendly.”
Looking at the information below truly highlights what big businesses are looking at in terms of their technology. It has been recognised for many years that forward thinking businesses have adopted certain technology and increased market share, customer satisfaction or any number of other important business metrics.
The term CEO is usually associated with businesses of a certain size who have the money, people and often the products that enables them to fully benefit from adopting technologies, thus enabling them to, often dominate their chosen markets.
Business Intelligence has always been relatively expensive, difficult to install and has a significant ongoing cost that has seen smaller mid-market players shy away from even attempting to use it. This is where the sales pitch enters for Bi24, C24s leading business intelligence solution that has all the strengths of a traditional solution but has been developed for today’s market.
Most companies we work with have a number of locations, numerous sales staff on the road and a number of large clients that are expecting more and more from the relationship. Key business differentiation is notoriously hard to create, and usually it is replicated quite quickly, so these businesses are building on their client relationships, retention strategies and increasing client spend.
Addressing these areas are where we have seen a tremendous growth in the use of our flagship business intelligence tool Bi24. The beauty of the solution is:
- It is easy to install
- It can interrogate multiple data sources simultaneously
- It is based on a cost per user per month
- The solution is non cubed and is based on Google type technology
- The pricing has been created so that all employees can benefit from making accurate decisions
- It is agile and information can be delivered to mobile devices and tablets
If you would like to see the solution in action please visit http://www.c24.co.uk or call us it will be worth the chance….
C24 have seen a significant uptake of our Bi24 business intelligence solution over the last year. The solution has been applauded for it ease of use and the speed of installation.
The following is a comment from a recent research document that highlights the strengths of the solution:
“Business intelligence (BI) technology holds out much promise, but experience would tend to indicate that it can be difficult to use, requiring specialist skills and imposing considerable latency between need and information delivery. Bi24 addresses these issues for many business needs and the ease-of-use has to be seen to be appreciated. The technology is built on the well regarded Luceneopen software search technology and because of this most things are possible. While Bi24 does not give much profile to unstructured data search, a great deal of functionality is delivered out-of-the-box so that email and documents can be incorporated into search and analytic’s functionality. The key to understanding the power of Bi24 is that it provides a search approach to BI.”
“What this means on a day-to-day level is that business users can formulate their own analytical and search needs with ease. This is a highly pragmatic, but in no way compromised BI tool and we would recommend that organisations of all sizes should look at the offering.”
To prove the point the below image is of the daughter of a BI lead who is using the Venn elements of the solution for her homework
Fred Balboni, Global Leader, Business Analytics and Optimization, speaking to the need of infusing analytics throughout the organization and how IT and LOB executives are changing partnership models to bring this to reality. In the panel discussion, JP Morgan Chase shared how they are using analytics to mine information from the “new” customer who is banking via mobile channels and Thompson Reuters described the role that analytics plays in their customer centricity by creating upsell and cross-sell opportunities externally and greatly reducing the cost of ownership internally.
Today we released our eighth annual forecast of key trends that will shape or significantly impact consumer mindset and behavior in the near future.
In this year’s report, new technology continues to take center stage, as we see major shifts tied to warp-speed developments in mobile, social and data technologies. Many of our trends reflect how businesses are driving, leveraging or counteracting technology’s omnipresence in our lives, and how consumers are responding to its pull.
We’ll see everyday objects become smarter as technology gets embedded into everything from eyeglasses to socks to bikes, helping us to measure, navigate and augment the world. At the same time, our smartphones will become de facto fingerprints as they evolve into wallets, keys, health consultants and more—our identity all in one place. Also, thanks largely to advances in mobile technology, almost anything—from bus shelters to print magazines—has the ability to be transformed into a retail channel. As a result, we’ll see shopping shift from an activity that takes place in physical stores or online to a value exchange that can play out in multiple new and novel ways.
Our forecast also puts a spotlight on health, with two separate trends examining the rising awareness around the impact of stress and happiness on well-being and how businesses are addressing it.
For more on our “10 Trends for 2013,” see the Executive Summary below. The full report—in which we cover each trend in detail, highlighting what’s driving the shift, how it’s manifesting and what it means for brands—is available here.
Lee Duffield presenting best/innovative use of technology
As mentioned in a earlier post C24 had pleasure in supporting one of our business partners at the Football Business Awards 2012 held at Chelsea’s Football Club. The event was a great success with over 500 guests attending and football clubs from across the globe having a presence.
In the picture Lee Duffield (C24) second from the left is seen with Sky Sports Vicky Gomersall and the winners Teamer.
Posted by david ricketts 
