Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

The Earth's rotation is slowing down, and we're just going to have to deal with it, ok?

...The changes add up—on average, the Earth’s rotation slows by two-thousandths of a second a day—which is why, since the first leap second in 1972, the world’s timekeepers at the International Earth Rotation Service in France add a "leap second" to the year every so often. The world’s 26th leap second ever will be added this year, on June 30, 2015, when the second hand of the clock will essentially strike midnight twice.

According to The Telegraph, this poses major hassles for software and computing companies that rely on precise time keeping. Usually, systems around the world stay in sync with each other using a system called the Network Time Protocol, which is programmed to stay within a few milliseconds of Coordinated Universal Time—the official scientific time for the world as measured by atomic clocks. But the protocol doesn’t deal well with leap seconds. The last leap second in 2012, for example, caused sites like Mozilla, Yelp, and Reddit to crash and problems with Linux operating systems—like a mini-version of the Y2K bug....

Welcome to 2014, a brand new year to look forward to and you know what this means, another list about tech companies. This time we look at another batch West Coast startups that we believe could be big news in the next twelve months. The names on this list are not constrained to just Silicon Valley — they can be based in any part of the region, including Seattle, Portland, and Los Angeles.

Practically every day, a new company sprouts up to tackle one of countless problems and while some hold promise, it’s impossible for us to list them all. We’ve tried to focus on the few that cover a variety of industries, including those that are doing something really cool, whether it’s in healthcare, 3D motion control, enterprise computing, or even those focused on behind-the-scenes services.

Here are our picks for 2014, presented in no particular order. These aren’t all necessarily brand new companies, but ones we think will make a significant breakthroughs in 2014. If you want to look at our list from 2013, you can view it here....

For people who want to see an Internet at least partly liberated from the grip of rapacious, government-connected telecommunications giants, Guifi is one of the most hopeful developments to date.

Its core values, ownership, and operations are testament to the idea that you and I, and our communities, can — and should — control how we communicate.

For the tens of thousands of people using it, some at no charge, Guifi operates as well as Time Warner Cable does for New Yorkers (and maybe better).

Guifi exists because a technically savvy local man, Ramon Roca, got tired of waiting for Telefonica, the Spanish telecom giant, to provide Internet access to the people of his community. He had a personal need for access. But he had a powerful second motive as well: “to help my neighbors.”

Guifi started with a single wifi node in 2004. Today there are more than 30,000 working nodes, including some fiber connections, with thousands more in the planning stages....

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Time recently ran a piece with the headline, “Chat Bots Are Back And They’re About To Take Over.” Really?

Evan Wray: You better believe it! There’s a popular report by Activate stating that mobile messaging apps have been the fastest growing online sector within the social landscape over the past five years, with 2.5 billion registered users today and an additional 1.1 billion new users expected by 2018 — totaling 3.6 billion users.

Couple that with the sophistication of today’s chat bot — or artificial intelligence technology. This is an environment in which audience engagement can flourish — and should not be ignored by marketers. The future mobile experience where commerce, services, and communications are all completed in a contextual intelligent chat thread within messaging apps — instead of through a clunky combination of mobile sites and apps — is becoming closer and closer to a present-day reality.

Just five years ago the world was a very different place. In 2010, the iPad had just made its debut, Kickstarter was introducing a new form of venture capitalism that would change the face of fundraising and Square was letting vendors of any size accept payment with a swipe of a card on a mobile device. And we haven’t looked back.

The next five years will no doubt unleash products and services that we have yet to imagine. But as we progress, what will we leave behind? Here are a handful of things we use today that likely will either be gone completely or on their last breath, disrupted by new innovations, technology and methods....

Of course, with a staggering amount of technology available to marketers (1,876 vendors as of Scott Brinker’s latest count,) and Gartner’s predictions that the CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO by 2017, it comes as no surprise that managing this technology took it’s place as a major responsibility in the survey.

What may come as a surprise is the sudden emergence of “understanding buyers” to a top responsibility in 2016, especially compared to the top duties reported today. Respondents said brand and positioning, lead generation, and brand communications were their top three leading responsibilities as of November 2014, the time of the survey.

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This is a wasted opportunity. Many marketers have reported rapid and significant ROI from adopting these tools; but first, they had to convince higher-ups to make the up-front investment. So, in the interest of helping clear that path, I am suggesting a Marketing Technology Starter Kit: the seven programs that every company’s marketing team should have access to, at a minimum, to grow leads, opportunities, and revenue.

These programs are essentially an online form of direct marketing. Traditionally the two most important factors in the success of direct marketing campaigns have been the list — getting the materials in front of the right audience — and the offer – offering them something that they will value and act on.

And direct marketers have been measuring and optimizing to improve results for decades, in a way that even David Ogilvy admired. In my Starter Kit you’ll see repeatedly how marketing technologies help you get in front of the right audience at the right time with the right offer.Here’s my list of seven technologies that are table stakes for today’s marketer....

What are the baseline tech skills every entrepreneur should have before starting up? Here's a helpful checklist as a starting point for every small business entrepreneur.

The next shiny new thing in social media isn't necessarily a slam dunk.... Looking at Vine, there are some trends indicating that the Twitter-owned product has established itself as a worthwhile endeavor for communicators.

 

Unruly recently conducted a study using 10 million Vine submissions as its data set and determined the following:

- An average of 5 Tweets per second contain a Vine link.

- 4% of the top 100 tracked Vines is branded content.

- Weekends are the most popular time to share Vines.

- According to Unruly co-founder, Matt Cook, vines that evoke emotional response are shared most frequently.

 

On the flip side, Facebook has demonstrated how a new social-media product can land with a veritable thud. The company’s Home app has been described as a “flop,” and many are describing the smartphone home screen app as “too intrusive” and “pushy.”... 

...After one day, my online presence was still out of action. Frustrating. Out of contact. And challenging because the technical solutions were far beyond my skills. I went to bed Friday night with no idea how long I’d be incommunicado and when or if my problem would be solved.

 

The next morning an 8:00 AM e-mail made my day. Bluehost tech support advised my site was now up and running again.

 

In less than 48 hours they had recovered and restored my websites and blog. That’s service! And that’s why they’ve been my web hosting provider since 2001.

 

The backup restored the blog to one week earlier. All that was lost were three blog posts, easily reposted, and a small number of PR Library archive articles.