Google Android Now Completely Open Source And Free!

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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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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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...



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Airlines Finally Agree To Travel Agents On Transaction Fee

Over the last few months, many high-profile meetings had taken place between Indian travel agents associations (TAAI and TAFI) and the Airlines (Air India, Jet Airways and Kingfisher), on the issue of zero-commission regime set by the airlines. The travel agents had argued that customers wouldn't agree to pay a separate transaction fee resulting in loss for the agent. After the latest round of meeting, the airlines have finally agreed to reflect the Transaction Fee on air tickets.

Both TAAI and TAFI are awaiting feedback from their members on this issue. Only after receiving agreement from both the associations the airlines will implement the same. However, this inclusion will be applicable only from November 1 to December 31, 2009.

According to reports, once implemented, the travel agents would charge a Transaction Fee of Rs 350 per ticket on domestic Economy Class, Rs 500 per ticket on domestic Business Class, Rs 2,500 per Economy Class booklet and Rs 3,500 per Business Class booklet.
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Why Does Matt Cutts Rank On Google Minus Google?

Google Minus Google(GMG) is a new search service, which promises to search with Google (Custom Search) without getting results from Google sites such as Knol, Blogger and YouTube.

It's a relief for people (there are many - 3000 visitors to GMG on Day ONE!) who hate a Google search result page lining up Google properties one after another - as if other sites aren't good enough.



I started with a search for keyword "google" itself ;-) and found no results from Google properties(wow!) - but hey, they ranked Matt Cutts blog! For me and many others in search marketing, Matt Cutts is 'the face' of Google.

So, why shouldn't Google Minus Google cut Matt Cutts as well from their search results. What do you think? Let me know on the poll.

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