Cashing Out: Week of December 26th – 31st 2011 in Online Marketing News
Under pressure, GoDaddy changes stance on SOPA
What a difference a few days makes.
Last week, ReveNews reported on GoDaddy’s change of stance regarding SOPA, following a warning that Cheezburger would move its domains away from GoDaddy if the company didn’t withdraw its support for the controversial bill.
But even so, the domain registrar “is still facing the backlash from its initial position,” reports Mashable. After one Reddit user, SelfProdigy, declared December 29 “Dump GoDaddy Day,” the idea quickly began circulating in the Reddit community. And, according to Mashable, following GoDaddy’s initial declaration of support, the site lost an estimated 20,000 accounts.
By necessity, GoDaddy has had to go even further to appease internet users. Rather than simply withdrawing their support for SOPA – a statement that TechCrunch called “ambiguous” in any case – the company sent a press email from CEO Warren Adelman December 29, just in time for the proposed boycott, clarifying that, in fact, GoDaddy opposes SOPA.
And though the statement, as quoted by TechCrunch, claims “Go Daddy opposes SOPA because the legislation has not fulfilled its basic requirement to build a consensus among stake-holders in the technology and Internet communities,” it also includes contradictory statements that suggest the reversal has more to do with keeping customers.
“We have observed a spike in domain name transfers, which are running above normal rates and which we attribute to GoDaddy’s prior support for SOPA, which was reversed [...] Our company regrets the loss of any of our customers, who remain our highest priority, and we hope to repair those relationships and win back their business over time,” writes Adelman.
Verizon drops plans for $2 convenience fee
A leaked Verizon document posted December 28 on Droid-Life and later confirmed by Phonescoop had consumers in an uproar over a planned $2 “convenience fee” that would apply “both over the phone and online for your monthly bill transaction.”
The fee, scheduled to take effect January 15, had TechCrunch asking “is Verizon joking?” noting that the fee wouldn’t be convenient to anyone except Verizon itself: “You’d think that processing online payments would actually be more convenient for Big Red than processing paper payments.”
Consumers took the news equally badly, ”flood[ing] Twitter with denunciations of the company, setting up online petitions and vowing to use paper to cost the company more money than it would raise through the new fee,” the New York Times reported.
But, in light of criticism from the media, opposition from consumers, and perhaps most importantly, the involvement of the FCC, Verizon has reversed its decision. Mashable reported:
“FCC officials would not comment on the exact nature of their investigation but did say in an email shortly before Verizon backed out of the fee plan, ‘On behalf of American consumers, we’re concerned about Verizon’s actions and are looking into the matter,’”
So, in a December 30 statement, the company assured customers that “At Verizon, we take great care to listen to our customers,” and that, as such, “Verizon Wireless has decided it will not institute the fee for online or telephone single payments that was announced earlier this week.”
Mashable looks back on the year’s biggest ecommerce leaders
December 30, Mashable posted an op-ed piece outlining what author Erica Swallow has deemed “2011′s Biggest Winners and Losers in Ecommerce.”
Amazon won the top spot among Swallow’s winners, thanks to the raging popularity of the Kindle Fire, milestones like Amazon Deals and the ad-supported Kindle with Special Offers, and acquisitions like The Book Depository and LOVEFiLM.
The second biggest winner, according to the piece, is Apple, which “set a new record for Mac sales in Q4 of 2011, having sold 4.89 million units.”
Apple is followed by Walmart, whose “social strategy is going in the right direction,” and Gilt Groupe, which this year introduced Gilt Taste, relaunched Gilt Home, and launched a new men’s retail site.
Among the losers, Swallows names Barnes and Noble, HP, Netflix, and Sony.
Competitors concerned over Google’s flight-finding feature
Google’s recent placement of its new flight-search service at the top of search results has competitors making accusations of antitrust, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported December 27.
Ever since the flight search feature launched in September, Google has been in direct competition with travel aggregators like Expedia, Orbitz, Kayak and Priceline. But since earlier this month, results for these sites “now appear lower on the page — unless those companies pay to be part of the advertisements that precedes search results,” says Mashable.
“Last year, Google faced antitrust scrutiny from the Justice Department over its plans to acquire ITA Software Inc., the flight-data company that powers Google’s new tool and some of its competitors.” wrote the WSJ.
And though Google subsequently agreed to make travel data available to competing companies, as well as to “build tools that drive more traffic to airline and online travel agency sites,” the WSJ reports that “competitors say that Google is now violating the spirit of that commitment.”
Google has been increasingly treading a fine line between search engine and market competitor – one that competing businesses are less than comfortable with.
As quoted by the WSJ, Kayak CMO Robert Birge argued that, as Google has already exhibited an “explicit policy to intercept general search queries with their products [...] their argument that they’re not engaging in anticompetitive practices doesn’t hold up to basic logic.”
Meanwhile, Google VP and founder of ITA Jeremy Wertheimer said at a November conference that Google would provide booking links to online travel agencies but that “the airlines told us that they would not give us [travel data],” if they Google did so. “We’ll keep knocking on that door to see if things change,” he added.
Twitter may triple ad dollars in 2012
According to a December 28 article from Mashable, we can expect “bigger and more ads” from Twitter in the coming year.
The article cited a September eMarketer report which predicted Twitter would triple its ad dollars during 2012, estimating that Twitter’s worldwide ad revenues will approach $400 million by 2013.
And there’s good reason to believe such projections, says Mashable. Noting that the introduction of Promoted tweets, Promoted Trends and Promoted Accounts have met with few complaints from Twitter users, the article only predicts more growth on Twitter’s horizon:
“Now that the Twitter ad machine is up and running, the company is looking to expand its footprint [...] With the company clearly on a growing path, the obvious question is whether an IPO is in the near future.”
However, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has been careful not to encourage such speculation:
“We can stay private and grow the business the way we want, as long as we want,” The Mercury News quoted him as saying earlier this month. “We never think about or talk about when we want to go public.”
According to Mashable, a booming Twitter ad business would be threatened by a few complications. However, the article asserts that, though unlikely, they aren’t impossible.
For one, “Twitter seems to be on a tear at the moment, but alas, things change. Though it seems unlikely, there’s a chance Twitter could jump the shark or experience a Netflix-like fall from grace,” says Mashable.
Another possibility is the acquisition of Twitter by another web giant, like Google or a post-IPO Facebook. It may be hard to believe but Mashable reminds us that it could happen: “Crazy, you say? Remember that YouTube was once a separate company as well.”
Amazon and Apple deliver customer satisfaction, Netflix misses
December 28, customer experience analytics company ForeSee released its annual Holiday E-Retail Satisfaction Index. The study of customer satisfaction among online retailers found Amazon at the top of list, for the second year in a row.
“E-retailers have consistently upped their game since we first started measuring holiday satisfaction in 2005,” said ForeSee President and CEO Larry Freed, ”but Amazon is still the 800-pound gorilla of retail, and it just keeps getting better.” Following not far behind Amazon were Avon, JC Penney, QVC, and Apple.
But the study also included some losers. Unsurprisingly, Netflix was among them, having lost in customer satisfaction since last year, probably due to its unpopular price-hike and the splitting off of its DVD rental service, albeit briefly, to Qwikster. “Netflix saw scores drop in every single element of the website that ForeSee measures, including site content, site functionality, merchandise, and prices,” the release reads.
In a statement cited by Mashable, Freed said that “customer satisfaction is predictive, which means that Netflix’s financial woes may be just beginning.”
Aside from Netflix, JC Penny and The Gap suffered the largest decline in customer satisfaction.
Better late than never: Nike starts Tweeting
It seems odd that it’s only happening now, but Nike finally launched its first Twitter account December 29. Though the company didn’t explain why it waited so long to do so, Heidi Burgett, a spokesperson for Nike told Mashable that the timing is good right now as “ it’s close to New Year’s.”
Nonetheless, it appears that arriving fashionably late to the Twitter party won’t be a problem for Nike. Within one day of launching the account, Nike already had more followers than competitor Adidas and, at the time of writing, has 27,612.
Moreover, there are some big names among those followers, including pro athletes Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, and Steve Nash.
This week in studies, reports, and rumors
• Samsung top OEM, Google top platform for mobile subscriber market share
December 29, comScore released a new study of the key trends in the US mobile phone industry.
Based on a three month average ending this past November, the report found Samsung leading OEMs in subscriber market share with around 25 percent of the market, while Google’s Android topped the list for smartphone platform market share, with 46.9 percent (up 3.1 percentage points since August.)
Anther point of interest in the study was the fact that one third of mobile subscribers are accessing social networks on a mobile device.
• Apple rumored to unveil two new iPads in January
TechCrunch this week picked up a new rumor first written about on DigiTimes, concerning the possible release of two new next-generation iPads in January. DigiTimes had previously reported on the possibility of a new 7.85 inch version of the iPad, but the latest speculation is that Apple will be releasing two QXGA resolution, retina-style iPads intended for mid- and high-end markets.
