Emerge Inc. Blog

Twitter is something I admittedly never saw coming. When I did see it, I never saw it reaching the heights that it has. I wasn’t sure that little 140 character messages would satisfy people, but boy was I wrong.

I find myself using Twitter a lot to search, especially current events and products I’m interested in. More often than not, I find myself with more information than I imagined I would ever find.

One of the other things I love is finding companies who are using the technology in an interesting fashion. Enter Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream from San Francisco, California. With an ever changing menu of flavors offered, they would tweet their loyal customers what flavors they’d have, among other tweets, and do it in a style of “ice cream with attitude.”

The article I found this information lists six great recommendations for those starting to use Twitter as well.

• First of all, listen
• Do not be boring
• A live version of a FAQ
• Create a focus group
• Soapbox for thinkers
• Starting small is fine

This all comes from a great article with even more great stories from the New York Times. Click here to read the full article.

The World Cup made its month long appearance this Summer to record interest here in the United States. While soccer has never caught on entirely here, it still is considered “The World’s Game.” With ESPN paying a lot of money ($100 million for English speaking rights through 2014), they tried to take full advantage by offering the games not just on television, but online and on mobile devices. Now to watch online, you did need to have an Internet Service Provider that had an agreement for their service and to watch on your mobile device, you needed to pay a fee for their App. In total, nearly 8.5 million unique users (7.4 million online over 1 million by mobile) accessed the World Cup streams during the tournament They consumed 17.2 million hours of coverage.

The only comparable sporting event to try this was CBS during the March Madness tournament. This past year, they streamed 11.7 million hours of coverage, a 36% growth from the previous year. With their success and ESPN’s success during the World Cup, it will be interesting to see how the networks begin to utilize the online medium more and more to bring users new content.

I’ve had my Verizon HTC Incredible, an Android device, for just over 2 months. In that time, it’s really changed the way I utilize the Internet and how I find information I need. It’s made it much simpler to consume information and gives me a new ability to find what I am searching for.

Below are a few ways I’ve been using my phone and some thoughts on how you might take advantage of the fast growing market.

Directions

I use an App that gives me turn-by-turn directions directly from Google. The great thing about this App, I don’t always need to know the address. If I know I’m going to a specific restaurant, I can speak or type the name and city, and it searches for the address automatically. It then gives me directions from wherever I am at that moment.

How to Take Advantage: Always make sure your public information is accurate in search engines, directories, and anywhere else you have it listed. Manage your Google or Yahoo directory listings to maximize the information people can quickly see about you. Be aware of the ways people are finding information out about you.

Surfing the Web

Depending on where I am, I’ll find myself searching websites to find information on something I’m searching for or just to keep up with what is going on. This has gotten easier on Smart Phones as Mobile Websites have become more popular. Mobile Websites will utilize the phone’s technology, which helps to enhance the user’s experience.

How to Take Advantage: Speak with your Web Developer to see if your website is optimized for a Mobile Site. See if it makes sense for you to have one set-up. Smart phones are getting better at reading full websites, but for your organization it might be best to have an optimized version for your potential users.

Search

The way I search on my phone is much different than on a regular computer. Searching on a desktop/laptop computer gives me time to go through multiple pages to find the best piece of information for my search. On my phone, I always gravitate to the first few listings of my search. I don’t dig as deep for the information so I look for the quality at the top.

How to Take Advantage: Search Engine Optimization. It’s a term you’ve probably heard but may not know what it means. In a nutshell, it focuses on getting the Search Engines (Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc.) to rank you higher on their list during relevant searches. Speak to your Web Development team about putting a SEO plan together that makes sense for you in the long run.

As the technology continues to evolve and grow even more popular, people will consume more and more information on their phones than ever before.