Phoning It In on Twitter

Twitter –- the social text service — is all the rage, and while almost 70 percent of Twitterers tweet from their computers (I am not making these words up), the next largest group, about 18 percent, tweet from their phones.

I had sent out a tweet asking people what their favorite Twitter app for the phone was. I received some startling answers. PR woman Judith Lederman (Twitter identity: @judysl) wrote, “I fixed my toilet with Twitter and my cellphone.” Too much information, Judy.

The most enlightening answer came from Mike Volpe, whose company, Hubspot, has a site, Twitter Grader, that determines your ranking on Twitter (I’m squarely in the middle, 74,752 out of 1,516,436).

Mike said he analyzed more than a half-million random tweets to determine the most popular Twitter phone apps. Read more…

Do Video Games Cost Too Much?

Valve’s Gabe Newell gave the keynote address at this year’s Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain (DICE) Summit about the cost of games, the effect of piracy, and how to reach new players. Valve undertook an experiment recently to test how price affected the sales of their popular survival-horror FPS, Left 4 Dead. They Reduced the price by 50% on Steam, which “resulted in a 3000% increase in sales of the game, posting overall sales that beat the title’s original launch performance.” They also tested various other price drops over the holidays, seeing spikes in sales that corresponded well to the size of the discount.

See the full article at Slashdot.

Amazon vs. EBay: Who’s the Online Sales King?

It’s a tale of two online sellers — and two fourth-quarter earnings reports.

When Amazon reported earnings at the end of last month, it showed why it’s about the only recession bright spot in retail, as its investments in the buying experience, customer service and smart fourth-quarter promotions have paid off.

The week prior, eBay told a different story, even though a recession should arguably be its time to shine. It’s lost affiliates and failed to build out a unified experience and direct e-commerce platform. Now, fear some analysts, it may be too late.

Full story Ad Age.

Starbucks 1Q profit down 69 pct, shuts more stores

Starbucks Corp. said nearly 7,000 employees may lose their jobs due to a new round of store closures and cost cuts as it reported Wednesday that its profit dropped 69 percent in its fiscal first quarter.

The company plans to close 300 underperforming stores around the world by the end of the fiscal year in addition to the 600 it already planned to close in the U.S. The company has already closed 384 of those stores.

The additional closures could result in the loss of 6,000 in-store jobs. Starbucks also plans to lay off about 700 non-store employees.

See the full article at Yahoo News.

Band Website Displays Copyright Claim from its Own Label

The above screenshot, taken earlier today, shows a video posted to Death Cab for Cutie’s Official Website. The message is a copyright claim from the band’s own label, Warner Music Group. Yes, you read that correctly.

The explanation is likely simple: the band, or its staff, embedded an unauthorized YouTube version of the music video which was later removed from YouTube…

Read the full article at Mashable