Hawaiian Airlines shares some thoughts on the Bing-Yahoo Search Alliance with DMNews. “As we see increases in efficiency and spot growth opportunities, we will consider shifting our budget toward the Alliance,” says Reid Ichiki, Senior Manager of Internet Marketing at Hawaiian Airlines. Click the link below to read the full article.
According to a survey conducted by ISACA, 63% of people say they shop online during the holiday season from their workplace computers. For Cyber Monday an estimated $3,000 in productivity per employee is lost from online holiday shopping at work. Google would have known this when they decided to purchase Like.com technology and launch their own fashion site, Boutiques.com, just in time for the holidays. The $1.9 billion in the headline for this article isn’t true; the site just launched today. However, it would not be surprising to see something like it in the future.
Below are highlights from the Boutiques.com beta shopping experience.
What They Got Right:
Celebrity hosted boutiques will sell merchandise, period.
Key partnerships with elite fashion designers give the site credibility.
The look and feel fits with the industry standard for high fashion.
Where They Could Improve:
The personalized boutique survey is lengthy and the payoff didn’t match the effort.
Colors were not as well executed as this article says. For example, “jewel tones” could not be matched (see below).
The site is very complex and you can easily lose track of your goal.
Overall, Google gets a B+ for their first major effort in the fashion world. With a few tweaks and lots of data, it has the potential to be a game changer in online shopping.
The Halloween shipping deadline is rapidly approaching. Have you figured out what you will be this year?
The idea behind a great costume is that it should be recognizable, but not so obvious that you are constantly bumping into other people who quite possibly ‘wore it better.’ US Weekly helps narrow down a few costume ideas in their latest edition. The problem is, how do I know which is the best bet?
I decided to turn to Google Insights for help. The first suggestion from US Weekly was Kim Kardashian. It was obvious from Google Insights that this is not a popular costume idea, so while it might be unique, there’s a good chance nobody will know what I am; unacceptable. Lady Gaga is wildly popular for Halloween this year. However, I’m sure someone will achieve the meat dress look better than I can and the logistics are less than ideal. Snooki is on the radar, but not overblown like Lady Gaga. This could work. Now if I could just remember where I put my Bumpit…
It seems like every few years Americans adopt and overuse some new word. Some go out of style, while others stick around — probably because what they refer to doesn’t go away and the word seems impossible to replace (e.g. “hippie”). The current overused term is “hipster.” It seems to have replaced “metrosexual,” which has mercifully gone away.
We’re not the only ones tired of “hipster.” Gawker recently polled its users in an attempt to replace it with something more palatable. The results were a bit disappointing: The plurality vote came in at only 34%, for “fauxhemian.”
Google Trends suggests that “hipster” has neared its peak and has nowhere to go but down:
Google Insights identifies these hipster-related blogs as Rising searchers:
It’s been a few weeks since Microsoft announced that Bing would start integrating Foursquare into Bing Maps. Avid Foursquare users know that sharing and consuming location-based data with your friends can be a helpful, if not fun, way to explore cities. When Microsoft announced the new integration, we immediately wondered if this meant that users would be more apt to use Bing Maps and if there was an advertising opportunity for local businesses. The Razorfish search team weighed in and the response is pretty split as to whether this integration will prove beneficial to Microsoft and local businesses (although more are optimistic).
