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Social Media: Getting your Twitter engagement right

Two brands that I've been following on Twitter recently and that have surprised me with their engagement are Muji Indonesia and UGGAustralia. Both not only push out the messages but they also actively engage with people like me, fans and potential ambassadors of their brands.

No surprise that Muji in Indonesia are active on Twitter; Indonesia is one of the largest markets for the social media tool outside of the US. They do the usual corporate thing and announce their sales and product releases but the big difference is when you respond to their tweets they actually respond back. I feel like I am having a conversation with them.

UGGAustralia (ironically not an Australian company, but based in the US), monitor all mentions of their products in the twitter-sphere but also respond and engage with customers, not with the usual single response but at least 2-3 times, developing a real conversation with fans. At least that's how I feel when I engage with them and isn't that the most important thing?  

Amazon rolls out Amazon Cloud Drive. Just an integrated Skydrive but I am not understimating them

Amazon entered the competitive, yet currently confusing, consumer cloud service business. It's an okay initial attempt at consumer media cloud services but I can't say that it's really going to change the world. Especially with the pricing structure they've put together.

Being a huge fan of the Kindle, I've witnessed how they continually iterate on their products to improve them and differentiate themselves from their competition. I would call this a sub-par initial launch of their cloud service but I am by no means underestimating them from making a success from this service.

More than 20 of the World's top 50 cities will be in Asia by 2025. Start packing to move east

McKinsey Global Institute recently released their latest Global Urban Economic Report which forecasts the shift in economic development and wealth over the next 15 years. One of the most obvious insights is that 20 of the top 50 cities will be located in Asia but there are more interesting highlights in the report that impact the region and, in particular, Southeast Asia. One insight in particular may leave you scratching your head not only in trying to figure out how to meet the demands of those markets but also trying to place those markets on a map.

Google quietly rolls out recipe search feature. Refine search needs, well, refinement

The monolith that is Google quietly rolled out another enhancement to its search engine and one that I'm particularly interested in, recipe search. Amanda Hesser's guest post at Tech Crunch gives a great rundown of the feature and contends that the service is leading America down the wrong path to better domestic cooking. She notes upfront that over a billion searches a month on Google are recipe-related, and consequently significantly influences what and how America chooses to cook. Her arguments on SEO-friendly cooking sites and the 'battle between the quick-and-easy faction and the cooking-matters group' aside, I do find the service a little too fact-based and not very helpful in finding the recipe I really want. Search by preparation time seems a little misleading as Ms. Hesser points out and a quick use of the filter by calories feature doesn't seem to be well verified making the service potentially dangerous. 

Netflix continues building out its content warchest, nears deal with Miramax

As someone who has to manage online video content these kind of deals continue to interest me. And within this space Netflix has become the dark horse that all players from content owners to distributors to platform monopolists, should watch and pretty much take a page out of their playbook on how to run a business or service their customers. In the lead-up to a digital battle between owners, operators and, eventually, consumers the original DVD rental business is making some smart deals that could lead to some potentially valuable alliances.

HBO Asia pays tribute to Hulu but without the content

HBO Asia recently launched their redesigned website onto the region and visually it's quite appealing. You don't have to browse around too far to see where they took their inspiration from. Design-wise it's a pretty good homage to Hulu, albeit dark rather than light, with it's large hi-res image top and centre of the page, clean san-serif fonts and grid of thumbnails. But that's where the comparison ends. 

Three ways to improve an already great Amazon Kindle service

I'm a big fan of the Amazon Kindle and, more importantly, it's service and business model. The latest 7" Graphite 3G+Wi-Fi version was nothing short of an epiphany and having it backed up with a ground-breaking FREE 3G service still boggles my mind. I already envagelise the heck out of the Amazon Kindle service but here are three ways to improve the service that would make me push it as a religous movement;

1. Ability to send already-bought books within app. It's great I can read my books on any number of mobile devices and platforms you can think of. Keeping them all in sync is a bit of a misnomer though; I have to send an already-purchased book from the website. It would be great if I coulddo that straight from the app.
2. Improved web-site account/ book management UI. I'm sure I'm not the only guy who has a huge book list. Managing this list, your subscriptions and files is getting a lit more cumbersome to do now on a web page with no real indication which books are present on which devices. I'm not saying mimick the iTunes interface but a more fluid and intuitive interface with a status on what books are on which apps would be a great addition.
3. Better internationally-sensitive pricing. This is probably the hardest one as I recognise Amazon is playing a little fast and loose with their international usage guidelines where they could be more like Apple or Hulu and tighten up their usage restrictions. But $5.95 a month for international roaming for something as small (file size-wise) as subscriptions seems a little rich.