In a surpise move on the eve of T-mobile's G1 release, Google and the Open Handset Alliance has released the complete Android platform source code as open source. In a release (see here), they have announced the availability of the Android platform source code to everyone, for free, under the new Android Open Source Project.
As they put it here - "Android is not a single piece of hardware; it's a complete, end-to-end software platform that can be adapted to work on any number of hardware configurations." It means if you got the money to build the hardware, you can actually build and launch a mobile phone with the Android software.
As with any open source project, now anyone can contribute to further development of Android - remember how Linux became what it is today!
For downloading Android - go here
For developing Android apps - go here
As the Android team asks, "What will you do with Android?"
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Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Monday, October 20, 2008
Case Study: Twitter As A Marketing Tool - It Works!
How good is Twitter as a marketing tool? There are many theories for and against, which we'll conveniently miss for this post.
I did a small test by creating a twitter channel for our site selling London Hotels(no names here please). The channel was updated weekly once with a tweet about hottest hotel deals in London with no email or SEO promotions. The traffic(however small) came from within regular twitterers. While it's still early days(less than 2 months), the Google Analytics stats has surprised me with the engagement figures.
Average Time on Site:
Visitors from the Twitter channel spent 20% more time on the site compared to normal visitors.
Bounce Rate:
Bounce rates were 40% less than normal visitors!
Pages/Visit:
Page seen per visit were 79% more than normal visitors to the site.
And, how about conversions or bookings?
As I said, this was just a small test to check how good Twitter is as a marketing channel. What we learnt is Twitter users who came to the site engaged much better than normal visitors from search/referrals. Of course, this is just the first month, we'll wait for higher traffic in the coming months to confirm this finding.
Happy Twittering till then ;-)
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I did a small test by creating a twitter channel for our site selling London Hotels(no names here please). The channel was updated weekly once with a tweet about hottest hotel deals in London with no email or SEO promotions. The traffic(however small) came from within regular twitterers. While it's still early days(less than 2 months), the Google Analytics stats has surprised me with the engagement figures.
Average Time on Site:
Visitors from the Twitter channel spent 20% more time on the site compared to normal visitors.
Bounce Rate:
Bounce rates were 40% less than normal visitors!
Pages/Visit:
Page seen per visit were 79% more than normal visitors to the site.
And, how about conversions or bookings?
As I said, this was just a small test to check how good Twitter is as a marketing channel. What we learnt is Twitter users who came to the site engaged much better than normal visitors from search/referrals. Of course, this is just the first month, we'll wait for higher traffic in the coming months to confirm this finding.
Happy Twittering till then ;-)
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Monday, October 13, 2008
Is Travel Industry Downturn For Real? Here's Some Proof
In Jan 2008 Reuters reported - "Travelport CEO sees no major travel slowdown." Well, nine months down the line, it's turnaround time - the travel industry is feeling the effects of economic downturn. Airlines traffic is down, hotel occupancy has declined and corporates are renegotiating their existing deals.
I wanted to check if Google searches display a similar trend. And, you bet - it does. In fact, you can easily notice the down trend for past 4 years.
Here are some screenshots from Google trends for major travel keywords:
Keyword: travel, tours
Keyword: hotel, hotels
Keyword: holiday, holidays
Keyword: vacation, vacations
Keyword: timeshare
With the internet penetration and the number of Google users growing every year in leaps and bounds, the decline in these keywords displays a trend to take note of. Combine this with the actual booking data - the real picture would emerge. Does anyone know where to find broad industry data on travel bookings?
UPDATE(18/12/2008): Thanks for the comments. As @Anonymous and @art wanted - I found the trend for hotel brand keywords for 3 big names - Hilton, Holiday Inn & Marriot - sadly, it's the same trend. See the screenshot below...
...
I wanted to check if Google searches display a similar trend. And, you bet - it does. In fact, you can easily notice the down trend for past 4 years.
Here are some screenshots from Google trends for major travel keywords:
Keyword: travel, tours
Keyword: hotel, hotels
Keyword: holiday, holidays
Keyword: vacation, vacations
Keyword: timeshare
With the internet penetration and the number of Google users growing every year in leaps and bounds, the decline in these keywords displays a trend to take note of. Combine this with the actual booking data - the real picture would emerge. Does anyone know where to find broad industry data on travel bookings?
UPDATE(18/12/2008): Thanks for the comments. As @Anonymous and @art wanted - I found the trend for hotel brand keywords for 3 big names - Hilton, Holiday Inn & Marriot - sadly, it's the same trend. See the screenshot below...
...
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