Category: Percolate

Twitter E-Commerce Platform Leaks

Posted on by Lab Team

Twitter has been making noise about an e-commerce solution for some time now, and if reports are to be believed, the microblogging site is close to finalizing the details of the platform. Primarily, Twitter is working to close a deal with Stripe, which would be an ideal back-end solution for making Twitter-based purchases. From a Front-End perspective, Twitter is in discussions with several e-commerce outlets to arrange purchase through feeds. And according to code found on Fancy.com – which points to mock-ups of a potential Twitter Commerce solution – Twitter is looking for Twitter Commerce tweets to appear within users’ streams, much like Promoted Tweets that advertise products, in addition to working within the Discover section to tailor content to users’ wants and follows. At that point, Twitter would prompt you to enter your credit card information, and handle the purchase from there. 

It’s all part of Twitter’s plan to add revenue streams as quickly as possible in light of its IPO. In order to sustain its initial success the company now must worry about erasing the common conception that it is a non-profitable startup, and adding new sources of revenue quickly – and effectively – is one powerful way of doing just that. Whether users take to it, however, will be the most important question facing Twitter’s user experience team as they try to make the platform not only user-friendly, but readily accessible. 

Pebble Launches iOS App Store

Posted on by Lab Team

Pebble, far and away the leading smart watch player at present, announced its highly anticipated iOS app store that features 1,000 apps and watch faces that can be found and downloaded with an iPhone. The Android version is still forthcoming, and Pebble says it will be available int he near future. The app store gives users a more intuitive software experience, much like Google Play or Apple’s App store. The addition of the Pebble Steel at CES this year demands such an interface, and with the app store users now have a software experience that matches the hardware. Pebble does seem to be making the most of its head start, and the more they do the more they become the wearable device to beat. 

Super Bowl: No Blackout, Yet Another Twitter Record

Posted on by Lab Team

Last year’s Super Bowl set the record for tweets, with 24.1 million tweets out on the social network over the course of the game. Many attributed that to the infamous blackout, and the several real-time marketing campaigns that ensued. However, that hypothesis seems to be undone as Super Bowl XLVIII generated 24.9 million tweets, while no culturally significant “event” occurred during the game. The highest peak was Percy Harvin’s 87-yard kickoff return in the third quarter, which generated 381,605 Tweets Per Minute; another high point was the halftime show. Another trend: ads featuring hashtags. This year, 58% of all ads during the game had affiliated hashtags, up from 50% last year. The data on advertisement engagement is still out, but it’s clear that Twitter remains the number one social network for the Super Bowl, and is indeed solidifying its position. 

Apple Testing Smartwatch Power Solutions

Posted on by Lab Team

As hardware companies begin to jump onto the smartwatch trend, it’s only a matter of time until Apple launches its own.  Consistent with Apple’s traditional emphasis on elevated product design, it appears the hardware giant has begun tackling a major pain point of wearable tech: power.  A new report from the New York Times reveals that wireless induction charging, and methods for incorporating solar panels into displays, are in the testing phase for eventual inclusion in an Apple wearable.  These technologies are unlikely to be included in an Apple smartwatch, should it be released later this year, but they address a major concern for wearable tech, and could make widespread adoption of smartwatches a closer reality upon their implementation.

Brands Who Release Super Bowl Ads Early Win Big

Posted on by Lab Team

The Super Bowl is still fresh in the minds of advertisers as they slowly determine the returns on their advertising dollars.  The reach of an ad doesn’t stop at the end of the game, though, and online views have become increasingly important to the overall success of a campaign.  Analytics firm Visible Measures looked at online “True Reach” statistics for every Super Bowl campaign since 2010 and found that advertisers who released their ads online before the game saw far greater reach than those who didn’t. Budweiser’s “Puppy Love” commercial from this year’s bowl had already received 26.7 million views before the game, and its final reach is expected to be much higher.

Blackberry Now 0% Of Market Share

Posted on by Lab Team

In addition to Apple, Android, and Window’s Phone market share numbers, we’ve now had the chance to take a look at where Blackberry falls in the grand scheme of things. Unfortunately for Blackberry, the numbers confirm what we’ve known to he true for some time: Blackberry now accounts for 0.0% of market share of smartphone activations in the United States. It’s not at all surprising, considering the numbers they’ve put up for the past few years, but it’s yet another nail in the coffin for the company. It’s unclear if it’s at all possible to recover from this, but if they do it will need to be a miracle at this point. 

Does The Super Bowl Mark The Start Of 4K Adoption?

Posted on by Lab Team

It’s easy to herald this the age of 4K after CES this month, but like 3D TV before it, it’s going to come down to whether or not there’s actual content in 4K that makes a genuine difference for users. So this Super Bowl, Fox is aiming to get ahead of 4K by showcasing its 4K camera capabilities. The stream for TV will be in 720p resolution, but at the big game there will be four 4K cameras that will help capture images in what Fox is calling “Super Zoom” – essentially, they’ll zoom in 720p to get hi-res zoom. The idea, for next season, is to get 8K cameras so that when they zoom and stream regularly it will be in 4K, so Fox is in essence preparing this resolution trick to be scaled up. It means that 4K might actually make a difference to sports fans in the near future, and as sports are a big driver of hi-res TV sales, the TV manufacturers who put money into 4K designs will be happy to hear about Fox’s utilization of the technology.

Google Sells Motorola To Lenovo

Posted on by Lab Team

In a major turnaround, Google is selling Motorola to Lenovo for $2.91 billion, in a mixture of cash and stock. Lenovo plans to use Motorola to gain a major foothold in the American market, an arena that it’s struggling to break into. That said, Lenovo is certainly a company on the rise, having shipped 45 million smartphones in 2013, a 90% year-over-year growth. Google is framing the move as a way to craft a better Android ecosystem for all devices, not just Motorola, while holding on to Motorola’s Advanced Technology and Projects group. The move seems to take the more ‘basic’ handset business – which has been hemorrhaging money since acquired – and dumps the load on others while Google gets to work with the higher-end patents and technology. For Lenovo, it’s very much in line with its past moves, such as purchasing ThinkPad from IBM in 2005. So while Lenovo gets the handsets, Google gets to keep all the patents and high-tech research. A win-win? We’ll just have to see.  

Android Smartphones Make Up 79% Of The Market

Posted on by Lab Team

As smartphone shipments continue to trend upwards, Strategy Analytics released some new figures about their sales and adoption. Primarily speaking, global shipments of smartphones globally reached 290.2 million in 2013, up 34% year over year. Android phones reached a 78.4% global share in the fourth quarter, with a 78.9% share across the market for the year. Apple’s iOS dropped to 17.6%, and only had 15.5% of market share for the year. Windows Phone took third, with a 3.2% fourth quarter and a 3.6% share for the year. So although it sometimes might feel like iPhones dominate the market, it’s important to take the data at face value: Androids continue to control the market, and in terms of mobile are the operating system of choice. 

Super Bowl & Social Media

Posted on by Lab Team

As we’ve already seen with the Sherman incident, social media and the Super Bowl go hand in hand. As agencies think strategically about how to leverage that data, CrowdTap has just released a survey about social media users during the big game: the majority of viewers are going to record impressions on social media before, during, and after the game. 61% of those surveyed said that they’ll share ads on social media as well, and 41.2% said that they’ll be on social media the whole game. The social media of choice? Facebook: 55.8% say they’ll be primarily on the social network site. Most importantly: 59.1% say they’re interested in brands, while 46.8% say that brands they like will make announcements. Though it’s unlikely that advertisers will take these statistics into account this year, they point to a wide margin for success in getting campaigns to broad audiences quickly through digital means. The companies who leverage this potent interest will ultimately be the ones who come out successful.