Sometimes, it feels like marketing is the hype of the millenium.  Or a decade at least.  There are marketeers, marketing divisions, online marketing, marketing this and marketing that.  But what the heck is this marketing thing after all?  Can we have it in simple terms?

Well, either I don’t understand a lot (and I don’t claim that I do), or I haven’t met with the right marketing people, or both, or something else, but what I am thinking is that marketing on its own is nothing.  Nada.  Not at all.

Before you eat me and my old shoes, let me explain.  Marketing is that thing that supposedely helps the product (or service for that matter) reach the customer.  Or the other way around.  And then maybe even convince the customer that he is actually satisfied by what he got.  Or maybe I am way off already.

Anyway.  To do that (connect the customer with the product or service), marketing people need to know three things.  First is the product or service - the destination.  Second is the customer - the source.  And third is, well, marketing - the path or possible pathes between the two.  Am I even remotely right ono this?  If I am, then let me tell you something - this doesn’t work.  How about that, eh?

Marketing on its own doesn’t work for exactly the same reasons that MIS doesn’t work.  MIS is this gray area between Information Technology and Business Administration.  It’s supposed to help them communicate with each other.  But because MIS never (or almost never, or extremely rarely) truly understands both the business side and the technical side, it only makes things worse.  Instead of having two languages - one very technical with lots of terminology and precise definitions, and another one business - with lots of money and people-related processes - the company now has to speak three languages, with the third one being a weird dialect combined and distored from the other two.

The product and the customer are like two magnets.  When connecting them, they will either be of opposite polarity and will hurry towards each other and live happily ever after, or they will resist each other as much as they can.  Is it possible to bring two magnets of the same polarity to each other?  Yes.  If the magnets are small and you hands are strong, you can pull them together.  That’s marketing for you.  Let it go and both magnets would be much happier.  And if they were of the different polarity?  Guess what?  You don’t need much force to put them together.

Back from the abstract world.  I think marketing makes sense on the secondary level.  That is, everyone should have a bit of marketing knowledge - from sysadmins and programmers to accountants and managers.  But marketing shouldn’t stand on its own.  In fact, if marketing is taught to everyone, then it can be that common language for everyone to help to understand each other.  The one that MIS so miserably failed to be.

Those who are at the top, they want to grow, increase, make more and better.  Those are down below, actually doing things, really know how to make things better or faster.  The problem is that they can’t communicate with each other usually.  So what they need is a little help in this area.  Not someone else who neither understands what is possible or not or how big or fast things can go.

That’s about it, minus a few disclaimers.

Disclaimer #1: all my knowledge of marketing came from working at or talking with people who are working at small or medium companies, the majority of which deal with information and technology.

Disclaimer #2: I was thrown off balance by a some marketing types recently.

Disclaimer #3: I had a few pints of a lovely Guiness draught before I typed this whole post in.

Quintura blog has this nice post with some statistics of Russian online shoppers - how often they buy, what they buy, and how they pay.  As any other bit of statistics, it’s rather interesting.  However, I think there is more to it than the article covers.  Here are my random thoughts in a bullet list format.

• “85% of Russian Internet users shop online”.  It would be extremely interesting to see at least some approximation of country population to its Internet users.  According to Wikipedia, Russian population is about 142,000,000 people.  How many of these are online?  According to some resources, such as, for example, Public Opinion Foundation Database, it’s somewhere between 18% and 25%.  And then again, it’s depends a lot on where you are looking at.  Moscow and surrounding areas have a much higher Intenret penetration than Central and Eastern Russia.  Moscow can have as much as 56% of its population online, while less than 20% of the Urals and the Siberia population are connected.
• “The Russian e-commerce market has doubled to $3.2 billion in 2007″. Sounds huge, doesn’t it.  But let’s see. I’ll pick 28,000,000 people or 25% of connected population as per Public Opinion Foundation Database for the calculations.  85% of these are shopping online.  That’s about 23,800,000 people.  $3.2 billion market devided equally between all those people comes down to $135.  So, the market is huge, rather because there are so many people around, as opposed to how much those people buy. If you need more numbers to explain you the situation, have a look at the state of the Russian economy at Wikipedia.
• “However, it’s yet to become a habit because only 16% of users shop online once a month”. Sounds like the other 84% shop less than once a month.  Why?  Maybe because it isn’t so easy to find a few people to batch into a single order.  Or maybe they just don’t have time to, between the two jobs or something.
• “Most of the shoppers or 70% paid for online goods in cash upon delivery while only 12% of responders used bank cards in online transactions and another 10% used online payment systems”.  Internationally recognized credit cards, like Visa or MasterCard, are probably either expensive to have or difficult to get or both.  Personally, I don’t have much experience in this area, but I’ve heard a few of my Russian friends complaining about the state of the banking system in the country.  Also, there is another thing to remember - language.  I don’t have any numbers at hand, but I’d say that people who can at least read and understand at least one foreign language are a minority in Russia.  With no credit card and foreign language knowledge, most of the purchasing activity would stay within the country.
• “The most popular shopping items included books (51% of responders), computers (43%), home appliances (42%), software (31%), movies (26%), beauty products (25%), and music (23%)”.  It looks like the majority of Russian online shoppers are rather young, tech-savvy people.
• All of the above make it sound like a lot of marketing opportunities - large number of people, who are roughly in the same age group, with somewhat poor geographic distribution and limited access to credit cards… And with that, it’s interesting to see at the advertising channels.  TV, radio, Internet itself.  And then, which Russian sites with some sort of ad campaigns are the most visited?

Feel free to throw in your thoughts and more numbers via comments.

Imagine my surprise when I looked at “Top Recommendations” area of my Google Reader today and found … my own blog over there.

Yes, I know that these recommendations are based on the feeds that I read.  But still!  Is it the time to celebrate the recommendations technology, which recommended me to me over a gadzillion of other blogs?  Or maybe this is a day of Ultimate Technological Silliness, when Google, a search company that forgets nothing, somehow arrived to the conclusion that I might not be reading my own blog?  These questions remind me of a “half-empty or half-full glass of water“.  I guess a lot depends on the personal perspective…

Yesterday was a somewhat slow day, so I spent some time on the housekeeping of my Firefox browser.  Somehow I managed to accumulate a lot of extensions, themes, plugins, bookmarks, bookmarklets, and what not.  It felt like a good time to clean the mess up a bit.

I spent about two hours going through the list of all installed pieces, upgrading outdated versions, changing old solutions to the modern alternatives, getting new tools, and so on.   I have to say that after that effort my Firefox works faster, and it suits me better now.  One of the biggest changes from my previous setup became the use of Tab Kit extension.  Among its many features, it has the one that I’ve been passively looking for for a long time now - tab bar on the right side, instead of top, but not as a part of the sidebar, and with a tree view.  Combined with Aging Tabs extension, the result is exactly the way I wanted it.

(it is better in real life than it is on the screenshot)

Now when I open links from the site in the new tabs, these new tabs are organized in a tree like structure.  Tabs that I haven’t yet visited are highlighted in green.  Current tab is highlighted in blue, as usual.  And the rest of the tabs are coloured in different shades of grey, depending on how long ago I last viewed them.  Also, because the tab bar is separate from the sidebar, I can get an additional panel on demand, with an application that I need the most at the moment, without sacrificing my precious tabs.

And just in case you are wondering which other extensions I am using, continue reading for the list of all extensions, which was generated by one of the extensions on that list.

Application: Firefox 3.0.1 (2008071615)

Operating System: Linux (x86-gcc3)

Total number of items: 42

• Adblock Filterset.G Updater 0.3.1.3Synchronizes Adblock with Filterset.G
• Adblock Plus 0.7.5.5Ads were yesterday!
• Aging Tabs 0.7.1Makes unused tabs fade with age and highlights the selected tab.
• All-in-One Sidebar 0.7.6Sidebar control with award-winning user experience!
• Better Flickr 0.3A compilation of useful Greasemonkey scripts for Flickr. All scripts copyright their original authors. Click on the script homepage in the Help tab for more information.
• Better GCal 0.3Enhances Google Calendar with a compilation of user scripts and styles. All scripts copyright their original authors. Click on the script homepage in the Help tab for more information.
• Better Gmail 2 0.6.1Enhances Gmail with a compilation of user scripts and styles. All scripts copyright their original authors. Click on the script homepage in the Help tab for more information.
• Better GReader 0.3Enhances Google Reader with a compilation of user scripts and styles.
• Callout 0.3.2.1Notification Services for Javascript
• CustomizeGoogle 0.75Enhance Google search results and remove ads and spam.
• CyberSearch 0.9.10Adds advanced Google Search capabilities to the Firefox 3 address bar.
• Delicious Bookmarks 2.0.95Access your bookmarks wherever you go and keep them organized no matter how many you have.
• Download Statusbar 0.9.6.3View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar
• Dummy Lipsum 2.3.0Generate “Lorem Ipsum” dummy text.
• Extended Copy Menu 1.5Provides the option to copy selection as plain text or html.
• Extended Statusbar 1.2.8A Statusbar with Speed, Percentage, Time and loaded size (like Opera’s one)
• Extension List Dumper 1.14.1Dumps a list of the installed extensions.
• Find In Tabs 0.3.1.1Searches for text in all tabs.
• Firebug 1.1.0b12Web Development Evolved.
• Firefox Showcase 0.9.4.9Easily locate any tab you’ve opened in Firefox.
• FirePHP 0.1.1Firebug Extension for AJAX Development
• Flagfox 3.2.8Displays a flag depicting the location of the current server
• Flashblock 1.5.6Replaces Flash objects with a button you can click to view them.
• FoxClocks 2.4.91Displays local times around the world in the statusbar/toolbar. Supports virtually all time zones.
• Gmail Manager 0.5.5Gmail accounts management and new mail notifications.
• Google Gears 0.4.15.0These are the gears that power the tubes!
• Google Toolbar for Firefox 3.1.20080605LTake the power of Google with you anywhere on the Web!
• GUtil! 2.3.2Google® Utilities in your Firefox Menu and Toolbar
• IMDb Preview 0.5Preview movie & actor posters when hovering over their IMDb links.
• Linkification 1.3.5Converts text links into genuine, clickable links.
• Pencil 1.0.3Sketching, simplified
• Session Manager 0.6.1.13Saves and restores the state of all windows.
• Tab Kit 0.4.3Tab grouping, multi-rows, tree view, and other tweaks.
• Tabs Open Relative 0.3.3Tabs open to the right of the current one.
• TimeTracker 1.2.4Track the time you spend browsing.
• TwitKit 1.1An extension that adds a Twitter sidebar to your browsing experience!
• TwitterFox 1.6.1This extension lets you know twitter statuses.
• Update Notifier 0.1.5.4Notifies you when updates are available for your extensions and themes.
• URL Link 2.02.2Allow navigation to broken/unlinked URLs
• View Dependencies 0.3.3.0Adds a tab listing dependencies and their sizes in the Page Info window.
• Web Developer 1.1.6Adds a menu and a toolbar with various web developer tools.
• YSlow 0.9.5b2Make your pages faster with Yahoo!’s performance lint tool.

Via this CyberNet News post I got to Zoomii.com.  There is a saying about all new being well forgotten old.  And that’s exactly what Zoomii.com is about.

There is something magical about walking through a bookshop - touching books, flipping pages.  Especially, when you don’t know exactly what are you looking for.  Amazon has sort of taken it away.  You get in, get your stuff, maybe grab something that is recommended nearby, and leave.   Zoomii.com combines the best of both worlds.  You can still get stuff from Amazon shop at Amazon prices, but instead of visiting a rather cumbersome interface of their site, you can browse through a familiar bookshelf area.

The combination of a good design with intuitive interface makes it almost a “Wow!” site fo me.  It took me exactly three seconds to figure out how to use it.  And even if I wasn’t tech savvy, there is a little friendly popup that appears when entering the site, which tells briefly how to navigate around.  The control panel on the left is small, and has only the things that I care about - navigation, category selector, and information about my cart.  Brilliant.

The only thing that I wish Zoomii.com had that it doesn’t have (or at least I couldn’t find) is the option of choosing which Amazon shop to buy from.  If I could buy directly from Amazon.co.uk, it would be a 10 of 10 web site.  Hope, they will add this option later.

Sites like this should be taught to web designers and developers.  This is how the web should be - clean, simple, efficient, and intuitive.

Scobleizer believes in longer videos:

Advertisers also will pay a lot higher rates for those long-form ads.

Why?

Because someone who’ll watch a 30-minute video is HIGHLY ENGAGED. They are far more likely to become a customer than someone who just watches a two-minute entertaining video.

I think that “video” is too broad for this topic.  To consider only educational and entertainment videos, I see a huge difference.  I don’t believe that entertainment videos will become longer.   Entertainment is a sort of thing that doesn’t have to go either deep or long.  Thus it doesn’t need large chunks of time.  Educational video is a totally other story.  While there are many “howto” type of videos, many topics require more than 5 minutes to explain.  Take Google Tech Talks for example.  They are pretty popular and each one takes about an hour.

There is also this factor of production costs.  It’s much harder to create 60 minutes of high quality (and I don’t mean pixels or bytes) video material, than 10 minutes.  Or 5.  Filmmakers know that.  And the audience knows that.   While less and less filmmakers will risk it, and more and more of those who do risk it will produce crapy long videos, the audience will learn the benefit of a short video and will be more inclined into choosing shorter formats.

However, since I am not at all involved in any video production or distrubtion, I might be totally wrong on this.  Judging purely from my own experience.  And my own experience mostly comes from YouTube and Google Video.

I’ve recently enjoyed the “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” movie.  However there was one particular scene which sticks out.  It was the moment when Indiana yet again avoided his certain death, this time by hiding in the kitchen fridge.  He was supposed to die of a nuclear explosion, but the fridge saved his hat.

Impossible?  Of course.  But there was something more to this.  Something that bothered me for the last few days.  Something that I could not find the words to express.

It turns out, I am not the only one.  There was a hot discussion at IMDB forums, and at other places that have crowds of movie watchers and reviews.  And apparently, a new term was born - “nuke the fridge“.

This is also a nice example to illustrate how the world changes with the Internet.  Lots and lots of people talk about lots and lots of things.  24×7.  Non-stop.  That generates lots of ideas, sub-cultures, products, and services.  And, in tern, lots and lots of money for people who dig it.  Nice.

Here is something useful I learned today.  Until recently I’ve been using Firefox 3 beta 5.  It was working fine for me after I found all replacements and upgrades for all the extensions that I need.  One of those extensions was CompactMenu (not giving a link for now).  This extension replaces the whole main menu (File, Edit, View, etc) with a single icon.  You can place this icon anywhere on your toolbars and when you click it, you’ll get a drop down with your main menu items.  Huge space saver.

Yesterday, I upgraded my Firefox to the latest and greatest stable version 3.  The update came as an official package from Fedora updates.  However, once I fired up the new Firefox, it notified me that CompactMenu was not compatible with this version and so it was disabled.  Can you guess where I ended up?

Exactly.  No menu and no way to get to the menu.  I tried uninstalling the extension, intalling another version of it, unintalling it again, cleaning up options in about:config, customizing the toolbars, and so on and so forth.  Nothing worked.  And so I Googled.

It turns out that Firefox has something called a “safe mode“.  All you need to do to get to it is start firefox with “–safe-mode” parameter.  Once it comes up, you’ll see the window as on the screenshot above.  One of the optios is “Reset toolbars and controls“.  It works wonders.  I got all the toolbars to their default state, and with View -> Toolbars -> Customize I could easily get them to the state I want.

How well are you familiar with YouTube celebrities - Numa Numa, the Star Wars kid, leave Britney alone, Coke and Mentos, etc?  If you missed any, of if you want to refresh your memory, here are they all on one page.  The first clip is a music video “Pork and Beans” by Weezer band.  After that, each and every one of them in a separate, original video.  Loads of fun!

There are things that are as obvious as daylight.  There are things that I need to research and think over to understand.  And there are things that feel like I’ll never understand.  Wakoopa is one of them.

I first heard about Wakoopa back in April when I was in Amsterdam, at The Next Web 2008 Conference.  Wakoopa is a European social network that unites people who want to share the information about software they use.  If you are one of them, all you need to do is register at the network and download client software to install on your computer.  Once you are done, Wakoopa will track which software you use and how (often).  It will then upload these information to the social network, where you will be able to find other people who use the same software (advice? shared experience?) as well as other software that people similar to you use (expanding horizons?).

The booth of Wakoopa startup was one of the busiest at the conference.  And the company went through a few investment rounds, one of which I just read about in The Next Web blog.

And I still don’t get it.

First of all, I have the feeling that software moves to the web.  Not all of it and not as fast as I’d like it to, but the future seems to be pretty much web-based.  Secondly, those people who are technically literate enough to find, download, and install Wakoopa, are, I belive, literate enough to figure out their issues with current software and find similar software if need be, using nothing by Google and IRC.  Thirdly, there is this evergrowing privacy concern, that itches every time words “tracking” and “sharing” are used. Fourthly, there is the question of licensed software vs. pirated software, which needs to be addressed by way too many Windows users (primary target for Wakoopa software and social network).  Fifthly, there are likely to be quite a few conflicts between people at work and corporate sysadmins. Sixthly, …

With all that, I can still see that there will be a few people here and there who would probably like to participate in this experiement.  But, the thing that I don’t quite understand is how this experiment became so large.  I mean, there are millions of investment, thousands of users, and lots and lots of hype.  I don’t get it.  Anyone care to explain? Or guess maybe?

P.S.: Not that I am jelous of Wakoopa or anything.  They are doing something that apparently has a lot of demand, so I wish the best of luck to them.