Pizza Hut expects 50 percent of its U.S. orders to come from mobile phone users in the near future. In preparation, the pizza chain – which launched web ordering via SMS, mobile web and an iPhone app in 2009 – will soon be unveiling apps for the iPad and Android mobile operating system.
Pizza Hut was one of the first U.S. pizza chains to offer SMS, mobile web and iPhone ordering options. The company’s ‘Total Mobile Access’ service lets consumers text an order to the short code 749488 and then receive a text to confirm their order. Consumers can also order pizzas via Pizza Hut’s mobile-friendly website or its iPhone application.
So you’ve started an Internet business and you’re working around the clock trying to make a buck. It’s hard. Progress is slow. And everyone seems to think you’re crazy for leaving (or planning to leave) that safe job in order to be an entrepreneur. (Sometimes even you think you’re crazy…) Well, for all those reasons and more… it’s time to celebrate.
That’s right: celebrate. I don’t necessarily mean you throw a party or take a vacation. Especially if money is tight. You might, instead, celebrate by treating yourself to a movie with a loved one. Or by getting a massage. Or by going out for dinner. Or just by taking an afternoon off and going for a walk.
Whatever you do, just do something for yourself – something YOU enjoy – in recognition of your entrepreneurial efforts.
Interactive magazines and newspapers are expected to attract $3 billion in subscription revenues by 2014, according to research from Oliver Wyman.
After accounting for the potential cannibalization of print subscriptions, Oliver Wyman says the publishing industry could realize $1.3 billion in incremental subscription sales from interactive periodicals.
Is it possible to get too many back-links, or to get them too fast, so that the search engines demote or drop your site from their rankings?
According to AdGooroo’s Chief Link Evangelist, Eric Ward, there is no such thing as having too many back-links or getting them too fast… as long as the search engines regard the number of inbound links you have, and the pace you get them, as NATURAL.
Seth Godin, marketing guru, New York Times bestselling author and founder of Squidoo, says he won’t publish books via traditional publishing anymore.
Godin, who has had more than 12 books published by a traditional publishing house, has told Jeff Rivera, that while he ‘likes the people’ he can no longer abide:
“the long wait, the filters, the big push at launch, the nudging to get people to go to a store they don’t usually visit to buy something they don’t usually buy, to get them to pay for an idea in a form that’s hard to spread … I really don’t think the process is worth the effort that it now takes to make it work.”
More than one in five Americans – 64 million people – play games on their mobile devices at least once per month, and the number is set to rise. eMarketer predicts the number of U.S. mobile gamers to reach 94.9 million by 2014.
This 94.9 million figure excludes the number of mobile users who play games that are pre-installed on their phones. While it includes feature phone users, eMarketer expects smartphone users to ultimately account for most mobile gamers. comScore data indicates that smartphone gamers already make up 42 percent of all mobile game players.
Google is testing dynamic search results – search results that update as you type – with a small number of Google search engine users.
Check out the video below to see Rob Ousbey’s footage of how Google is dynamically displaying search results based on what Rob types into the search query field. TechCrunch has obtained confirmation from Google that the video is real.
A U.S. district court has ordered Central Coast Nutraceuticals, Inc. – the Internet marketers behind various acai berry supplements, ‘colon cleansers,’ and other products – to temporarily halt Internet sales, pending an investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
The FTC, which is seeking to permanently shut down Central Coast Nutraceuticals, Inc. (CCN), alleges that CCN has scammed consumers out of $30 million or more in 2009 alone through deceptive advertising and unfair billing practices.
comScore, Inc’s July 2010 online video site rankings show that 8 in 10 American Internet users (84.9 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience) watch online videos, each averaging 14.7 hours per month.
The July 2010 comScore Video Metrix data shows that 178 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content during the month. Google sites (primarily its site, YouTube) was the most popular online video destination with 143.2 million unique viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 55.1 million viewers and Facebook.com with 46.6 million viewers.
Google has introduced ‘Enhanced CPC’ to its Google Adwords paid search product. Enhanced CPC automatically adjusts the maximum you’re willing to bid on a given keyword, based on how likely your ad will convert i.e. elicit a click-through.
Enhanced CPC looks at your campaign’s historical conversion tracking data to automatically adjust your Max CPC bid based on the probability of your ad converting into a click. As a result, you should get more conversions, whilst maintaining or reducing your overall cost-per-acquisition (CPA). You should also end up spending less time manually adjusting your Max CPC bids.
