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Now Apple in the Anti-trust Crosshairs?

Written on May 3, 2010 by admin

With Google and Apple butting heads and locking horns at every corner these days one place neither of them want to be seen is in front of federal regulators full of anti-trust concerns. Google is getting very used to this kind of scrutiny but Apple seems to keep its nose clean as it relates to this kind of activity. That is until very recently.

A report from the New York Post tells us

After years of being the little guy who used Washington to fend off Goliaths like Microsoft, Apple CEO Steve Jobs is about to learn what life is like when the shoe’s on the other foot.

According to a person familiar with the matter, the Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission are locked in negotiations over which of the watchdogs will begin an antitrust inquiry into Apple’s new policy of requiring software developers who devise applications for devices such as the iPhone and iPad to use only Apple’s programming tools.

Regulators, this person said, are days away from making a decision about which agency will launch the inquiry. It will focus on whether the policy, which took effect last month, kills competition by forcing programmers to choose between developing apps that can run only on Apple gizmos or come up with apps that are platform neutral, and can be used on a variety of operating systems, such as those from rivals Google, Microsoft and Research In Motion.

Now Apple gets a taste of Washington. It seems these days that it wouldn’t be the Internet space if there wasn’t some rumor of government concern over just how much of the world companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft plan to take over. I guess if any of us were surprised by this that may be even more telling because wild success in the business world (when achieved ethically of course) seems to be a bad thing these days. Maybe building the better mousetrap isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?

The inquiry does not mean that there will be a full-blown investigation ever. The inquiry process is the first step in determining whether there is a real anti-trust issue at hand or not. Either way, Apple is now being viewed with the big boys rather the quirky outsider with a dedicated but contained following of “Apple-ites”. Those days are long gone with the mass-market appeal of their most recent offerings. As a result the money they have is something that no one can ignore.

However, thanks to the popularity of the iPod and iPhone, Apple is having a tough time continuing to play the role of David fighting against Goliath. Indeed, its market cap of $237.6 billion exceeds that of the world’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart, whose market cap is $201.7 billion.

Well, when you put it in those terms it’s hard to see how Apple will ever stay off of anyone’s radar for the foreseeable future. Market cap that exceeds Wal-Mart? Of course, if Steve Jobs keeps lobbing verbal grenades over the wall at the likes of Adobe it won’t help matters either but it looks like there is a “Steve will be Steve!” thing happening here. These things didn’t seem to happen when he was on his health sabbatical did they?

Tags: a-mobile-phone ,a-result-the ,business ,coast-guard ,deepwater-horizon ,google ,iphone ,marketing

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Social Media and Content Discovery: A Growing Relationship

Written on October 6, 2009 by admin

Filed Under: marketing

While the commercial Internet age is in its teens according to linear age it has some difficulty focusing. Just when users are getting used to a world that is search engine centric there comes along the social web or social media or social networking or social (insert your word here) to truly change how people make sense of the sheer volume of data on the Internet. This change or movement toward the social web is happening at an ever increasing rate and creates opportunities as well as difficulties for those who are trying to harness this power for business.

Nielsen reports at its blog in a post from Jon Gibbs, VP Media Analytics

In the beginning there were ISPs, which then gave way to portals ― aggregators of content and links ― which then led to the rise of “search” as the dominant form of Internet navigation or, how we get to where we we’re going on the web. However, as with most forms of evolution, change is constant, and over the past two years search navigation has appeared to shift to social media.

We continue to see that social media has not only changed the way consumers communicate and gather on the Web, but also impacted content discovery and navigation in a big way. But how? Is social media taking the place of portals and search as the hub of online navigation?

Nielsen goes on to categorize people as either ‘searchers’ who primarily get their data from search engines, ‘portalists’ who use a portal site to access data and ‘socializers’ who use, you guessed it, social media to get their information. As this last group grows there could be some significant implications moving forward for everyone who is using the Internet for business.

As a result the socializer group actually feels that there is too much information on the Internet. Much more so than those who simply use search engines. Think about it. A search engine user takes it on faith (the vast majority of the time) that the entire Internet for a keyword or key phrase is boiled down to just 10 best results. Of course, if they only take their online sophistication that far then the Internet does appear to be easy to manage. Socializers, on the other hand, spend a lot more time online and hear / see a lot more than regular Internet users. It can become very noisy very quickly.

So how do they manage this? Through their online social network of buddies, of course. At this point, now the real recommendations and buying decisions are happening based on what other people, not an impersonal engine says. Hopefully, they are giving actual experience to help their online connections make more informed purchasing decisions. That’s the theory at least. Take a look at the significant differences in how socializers and searchers use various formats for information. Why Wikipedia is even part of the discussion baffles me but what do I know?

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So what are you? Searcher? Portalist? Socializer? A little of all of them. Will social media displace search engines as a primary source of information in the near future? What does it mean to you TODAY as an Internet marketer? Share your thoughts and let’s learn from each other.