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Facebook buys Microsoft ad technology platform

In a bid to improve its advertisement revenue, the social networking giant Facebook has confirmed that is has decided to cut a deal with Microsoft to buy the rights of its advertising technology. The software is said to be the best available technology in detecting the effectiveness factor of the online advertisements. This announcement from Facebook is being seen as an attempt to strengthen its status against Google Inc in the online advertisement industry. Lately Facebook saw some downfalls in the advertisement sector as some of the top players pulled off their advertisements from Facebook due to its ineffectiveness. Equipped with latest technology, the social networking giant is now expected to take long strides to make an impact in the online advertisement industry.

Strategic Management

Strategic Management and Exploitation

Strategic management is a tool widely used in corporate world to tap in all the potential and scale new heights. By studying strategic management of various companies it can be understood why some firms outperform others while selling the same product in the same market to the same customers in the same price range.  A properly strategically managed company is expected to outrun its competitors and that is why very high stress is laid on strategic management in today’s competitive market.

Strategic management works in five simple steps. The first step is obviously to develop a mission or a target. Without a well-defined goal the whole strategic management thing is pointless. Next step covers setting objectives. It is important to mark the small objectives. When all these small objectives are completed smartly they lead to the achievement of the primary goal. The third step deals with the principal strategy to complete the objectives. It is vital to understand the methods by which the objectives can be completed. The fourth step in related to practical world and includes implementation of the strategy which has been prepared. The last step is feedback and error correction. It checks if the results are in accordance with the expectation. If not, the mistakes are pointed out and corrected. The correction keeps going on till the desired result is obtained.

While strategic management is being adopted more extensively day by day, it is under constant allegation of exploiting the workers and ignoring their well-being. It is actually true up to a certain limit. The employees are given a task and expected to complete it quickly even though the task may involve considerable work for a quality completion. Many times the employees have to overlook their social and family life so that they can complete the job assigned to them within the time provided. Living under the constant threat of getting fired, sleepless nights are becoming more usual. The firms are interested only in the output and the well-being of the employees is unfortunately being ignored.

The firms cannot be totally blamed for the exploitation of their employees. In this era of stiff competition many trained professionals are actually ready to work with hostile schedules to get a handsome pay. If a certain firm goes easy on its employees and does not try to tap the full potential of its employees, it will be under a consistent threat of being outrun by its competitors. Unless and until all the firms decide to go easy on their employees, the strategic management will continue to try to tap in more and more from the workers. It is not very likely that all the firms will decide to give their employees some berating space out of the blue. The truth is that strategic management is a necessary evil for the corporate world and will continue to haunt the employees. Unless and until the workers all round the world show a strong unity and force the companies to reduce the work pressure or the governments over the entire world implement strong measures to protect the interests of the workers, it is likely that the current working scenario will continue to exisit.

Latest Update on Apple v/s Google Lawsuit

Samsung planning to add iPhone5 to US lawsuit against Apple

The whole world witnessed the collision of two electronic giants Samsung and Apple in which Apple won the $1 billion lawsuit. The event was hot cake news in the entire world. The decision made Samsung stocks suffer a significant loss as well.  But now Samsung Electronics planes to bounce back with including iPhone5 in its lawsuit against Apple Inc. The official statement of the company reads: 

"Samsung anticipates that it will file, in the near future, a motion to amend its infringement contentions to add the iPhone 5 as an accused product. On September 12, 2012, Apple announced that it will release the iPhone 5 on September 21, 2012. Based on information currently available, Samsung expects that the iPhone 5 will infringe the asserted Samsung patents-in-suit in the same way as the other accused iPhone models. Samsung plans to file a motion to amend its infringement contentions to address the iPhone 5 as soon as it has had a reasonable opportunity to analyze the device."

Samsung believes that Apple could be using at least 8 of its patent technology. It will be interesting to see how the trial goes. Meanwhile Apple has already booked two million orders for its new iPhone5 in the first 24 hours. Although the reviews about iPhone5 are a bit disappointing. Except for the larger screen size and the light weight, there is not much "new" in the new iPhone. Still the US based electronic giant is enjoying its status value and has booked a huge number of orders. 

Many experts have already pointed out that Samsung has a potential to sweep Apple out of the marker and if South Korean firms wins the lawsuit, it will be a tremendous blow to Apple.

Android Vs iPhone

            Android Vs iPhone       

 

Apple had the largest share of market of smart phones until android became open source and major companies like Samsung started launching its products as a competitor to iphone.  Android has since dismantled iphone from its top ranking and is growing exponentially every quarter, as for the second quarter of 2012 iOS accounted for 18.8 percent of global Smartphone operating system market whereas Android shot up to a massive 64.1 percent of Smartphone operating system market share in the period.  Following are some points regarding the same.

·       Open Source Vs Propriety

                  

Andriod backed by Google,  is an open source platform where as iOS developed by Apple is closed and propriety.  While being open source means having advantage of fast development and bug fixes but it also means that independent developers tweak it according to needs. Thus there is no standardization.

IOs on the other hand are thoroughly beta tested and bug-fixed before coming to market. Thus such systems have few bugs and it is tailored to hardware specifications thereby running smoothly.

·        Price range and hardware specifications

                 

While android phones and tablets have prices starting from low end range to high range and thus reaching a larger market whereas iphone has fixed prices and thus limiting its reach. Though android phones do so by compromising the hardware specs which are sometimes bare minimal but iphone maintains the same hardware as their platforms are hardware tailored.

·        Features and design

               

Android is open to be marketed by any company.  Thus it comes in many designs, screen sizes and resolutions. So, people obviously have many choices according to their budget, but iOs are marketed by apple solely for their products makings the choices limited.  But apple overcomes this hurdle by having elegant design.  Android phones have many features like Bluetooth which iphone lacks moreover iphone lacks widget feature which android systems support which adds to music and social networking experience.

·        Apps and games

             

Apple has the largest online appstore  but Google’s  app store  is also catching up fast with most of  popular iphone games like Doodle jump, Fruit Ninja, Air Control etc. are already being ported to Android . Gaming giants like EA Sports is already developing their major game like NFS Shift to Android.  Gaming experience though is better on iphone which has far better touch screen response  but  Android  is not very behind with the version 4 coming out which is said to have excellent response.

     ·        Carrier choices And network providers

                            

Iphone usually is locked to networks and hence you have limited choices whereas android phones have no such issue as getting a micro-sim .  Android phones have different manufactures and are rarely network locked thereby giving its user freedom of choosing any network of his choice.

·        Connectivity and other features

             

The iphone lacks Bluetooth which has been major obstacle for people  sharing media and pictures, this has been done in order to reduce piracy but  Android beats apple in this feature.  Both can be connected through Wi-Fi and 3g. The iphone also lacks the support for Flash which is supported by inbuilt browsers in Android thus viewing flash websites on iPhone is not possible.

·        Conclusion

Though Android’s market share has been increasing tremendously but it is still lags to iPhone in high end smart phone market. While android gives you power of open source iphone still remains  a choice of its own class due its elegance...

SEO Writing Dynamics

SEO writing: Don’t just fill in the keywords

The term SEO writing keeps surfacing here and there pretty often. The net is flooded with the SEO service providers’ advertisements and it really strikes me that it has to be a booming business and believe me people it actually is. For those who are not familiar with the term SEO writing, it is basically an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. Well that doesn’t explain it, does it? When you use your search engine like Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. the websites matching with the keyword get lined up. The ranking of the search list is of great importance and this is where the SEO firms shoot in. The purpose of the SEO firms is to use the keywords with a high density and write articles for their client’s website in such a fashion that the website gets lined up in the top search results. The SEO firms charge a good sum for this job and by now the smart people would have guessed the reason as well. The obvious answer is that if website gets the top rank in the search list it is likely to experience a huge traffic which means great business. People generally click only a few top search results. So if your website is resting down somewhere it will unfortunately attract very less clicks.

SEO Firms: How do they do it?

Well the SEO firms have a very completive environment and they have to provide their best services to get their client’s website on the top. How they do it? The answer to it is that they write many articles on all possible keywords and attach it to the client’s website. So when a keyword search matches with the website’s content the website gets listed in the top ranks due to high keyword density. A popular myth is that number of clicks it the most important factor in your website’s reputation. Of course the number of views matter but if the landing page i.e. the page to which the user views after clicking the search result (in most of the cases not the home page) is just spammed with keyword unnecessarily the user will migrate to other pages there by increasing the bounce rate.

Bounce Rate and its significance

The bounce rate is defined as the percentage of single clicking users i.e. the percentage of users that leave your website after viewing the landing page. Clearly the websites work a lot on their home pages. But interestingly most of the times the user won’t even view your home page if he/she is turned off by the landing page. So what needs to be insured is that the landing page containing the SEO article not only is rich in keyword but also has nice content and is properly organized otherwise all the resources used up in designing the website and hiring the SEO firms will prove to be a total waste for your company. Luckily, the reputed SEO firms are well aware of this fact and do a proper research in order to make the landing page keyword as well as content rich so that the audience gets interested in your website and dig deeper resulting in booming business. You don’t want the bounce rate of your website to be high.  But you can’t convince all your viewers to stick to your website. Around 50% bounce rate is assumed to be descent. In order to minimize the bounce rate you can use the following tips

• Not only the home page but all the pages should be clear, relevant and satisfactory as far as content is concerned and properly organized because you never know which one will be the landing page.
• Easy navigation.
• Advertisements must not be spammed. Pop ups are a big turn off.
• Usage of plug-ins to boost the loading speed is also effective because you don’t want your audience to leave the page even before it is loaded.

If the bounce rate of your website is less than 40% you can be sure that the content of your web pages is satisfactory and your SEO firm has done a good job.

Guidelines for hiring a good SEO firm

As the market if flooded with SEO service providers, it is difficult to select a firm which actually complies with its promises. Here are some useful tips that are useful in selecting a descent SEO firm

• Ask them for a sample
• Dig up a little about the website’s reputation and experience
• Check on the ease of communication
•  Beware of promises like “#1 rank in search list or money back” because although SEO firms help your website get a good rank it is practically impossible to promise the top spot.
• Try to understand the company’s SEO strategies.
• Keep an eye on the backdoor links in the article. If they do not interest you don’t hesitate to get them striped off.
•  My personal advice is to straightaway reject any firm claiming “special relationship” whit search engines.

SEO writing is definitely helping many companies expand their business exponentially. It is an ideal tool to promote your business. It is a good idea to hire a reputed firm to help your website climb up the search list. But make sure that you understand the search engines guidelines else you will see your website sinking down  the search list even without understanding why.

Bounce Rate

Introduction

New era internet world is flooded with countless number of websites and web pages. If you use Google or any other search engine to search a particular key word or key phrase, you will get relevant results (SEO i.e. Search Engine Optimized writing affects the results of the webpages displayed by the search engine). Then you generally click one of the first few web pages. Once after the website is loaded you will seek the content you want. If you get the relevant information you are likely to stick with the website and dig deeper into it. In case you don’t find the proper content you will leave the page and try some other website. This is the phenomenon where the term “Bounce Rate” originates from. Bounce Rate is a term related to web traffic analysis and is defined as the ratio of total number of website visits with just one click to the total number of website visits.

What is the significance of Bounce Rate?

Bounce rate of a website gives information about the performance and quality of content of the website. If the bounce rate of a website is high, it means that most of the users visiting the page flee away to different websites after seeing the landing page and do not opt to open other web pages of that particular website.  If a website has a bounce rate of 50%, it means that the content of the website is satisfactory and one in every two users sticks to that website.  If the bounce rate of a website is more than 65%, it means that the website is really good and the contents provided are very relevant and satisfactory. On the other hand if the bounce rate of a website is less than 35%, some serious reformation needs to be done.  It is very obvious that every website owner will want the bounce rate to be as low as possible. It is certainly not possible to keep all the visitors interested in a website but still low bounce rate is what a website owner aspires for. The average bounce rate differs according to the type of the web page. For example, in case of blog pages the bounce ratio is high because blogs are many times not interrelated and once the users have viewed the contents of a blog page the migrate to other pages because other blogs of the same page may be uninteresting or out of context for the user. In case of websites for product selling the hit ratio is low because of the obvious reason that if you want to buy a product you will want to check out the whole range of that particular product thereby clicking more links on the page.

Reasons of high Bounce Rate

Once a user opens a web page he/she can migrate to other websites by

·        Opening different websites by clicking their links

·        Choosing to close the window/tab of that particular page

·        Using “back” button

·        Typing a different website address (URL)

There can be many reasons due to which a user switches to different websites, the most obvious one being poor content of the web page. If the users don’t find any relevant material they will obviously leave the page at once. One more thing to be kept in mind is that all the pages of a website must be satisfactory because in many cases the user will land on page other than the homepage and if the landing page is not satisfactory the user will bounce to other website. In this case your homepage won’t even come into picture. If your web page takes too long to open the visitors may opt to go for another page without even seeing the contents.  If the landing web page is spammed with advertisements and pop-ups, it is likely to create a negative impression on the user.

How to bring Bounce Rate down

It is pretty evident that a website owner will like to keep the bounce rate as low as possible. In order to do that it must be ensured that the contents of the web pages are clear, relevant and satisfactory. All the web pages must be equally worked on because anyone of them can be the landing page. Proper and easy navigation should be provided with responsive layout and ads must not exceed a standard limit. Some plug-ins can be used to boost the loading of the web pages.

Summary

Google analytics bounce rate data is a key parameter in determining the performance of a website. The website owners will obviously want to keep the bounce rate down so that all the resources that have been invested during creation of their web pages don’t go waste.

Why Do We DREAM?

Dreams have always been a very fascinating subject for the scientists and researchers. Despite so many researches and studies we still don’t know why and how we dream. Although there are many theories explaining dreams, nothing can still be said with surety. It is a very baffling thought that we still know very less about something which is an integral part of our life, well most of us at least.  Some people claim that they don’t dream or dream very rarely but I find that very weird because I dream a lot… a lot really. While we remember a few dreams most of the dreams hide back into the mysterious places they come from. Dreams have always puzzled me. So, I try to recollect all the dreams I have during my sleep. Obviously I can’t recall all of them but some I do. Sometimes I randomly remember my dreams during my daytime even though I don’t try to recall them. My dreams could be about anything.. sometimes good sometimes bad and sometimes horrible.

Now the important question is "Do dreams make any sense?". Well I have a log of the dreams I have had during my sleep of a long time and I have always tried to find some pattern or pick any probable message during my dream as if I am in a movie with some unknown superpowers and if I could crack them I would be able to predict the future! Well sadly that was not the case. Sometimes I feel strongly about an important or disastrous incident to take place on a specific date but it has never happened till now.  Despite all my attempts I reached to the conclusion that dreams definitely don't carry any messages.

So dreams are totally useless and random? Actually not. Well I have observed that many a times I dream about things I fear from. For instance I have fear of height and I have numerous dreams of falling or about to fall from a cliff or a tall building but luckily enough I wake up just before crashing and experiencing a hell of pain. In the dreams I obviously try to save myself giving an indication that dreams prepare us for fight-or-flight moments. Many other such dreams experienced by people include being chased, drowning, fighting an enemy, being publicly naked, sinking in a quicksand etc. I feel the decisions we make during our dreams from a limited set available during such intense moments are very likely to be taken by us if unfortunately, we happen to be in that spot and we get trained for that moment.

Another theory about dreams say that dreams channelize our emotions and leads to mental stability.

If something significant happens with you and you think about it a lot, there is a high probability that you will dream about it. If you are worried about something you may dream about it. For instance if  you are very tensed about an upcoming exam you may dream about writing an exam. Dreams may also be related to your strong desires. If you have a huge crush on someone you may dream about being on a date with him/her or you may dream being married with the same person and having a family.

Our dreams can also be in response to external stimulus. If you are feeling cold/hot or you hear something from a distant music system it may reflect in your dream. Of course, there is another theory to explain dreams that they are totally random and mean nothing.

Can we understand dreams? Can we intemperate our dreams dreams? For that we need to believe that dreams actually mean something. I like to believe they do. Researches are being carried out extensively but nothing solid has surfaced yet indicating that our dream is a complex masterpiece. I can't believe something so complex and such an integral part of our life means nothing. I think our brain has something very sophisticated for us to still explore. So next time you go to sleep think once about the amazing capabilities of your brain.

We are all splendid artists. The dreams we have are beautiful imaginations of our brain.

Sweet dreams artists..  :)