consumer

YouTube-YouTube is finally letting brands use apps to customize their specific channels.  What this means is that the simplicity of using YouTube is about to become less so than normal.

Which means that now brands can populate their YouTube feeds with storefronts, surveys, banners, photo galleries and what ever else they can muster up to clutter up the front page of their channel.

Which means for me that the moment I have to slow down to figure out a simple process for a channel, I’m usually gone.  I want my experience to be pretty upfront and simple to the eye and brain.  What I don’t want are so many menus and submenus and popups and ads on pictures that detract from my experience.

But I presume that will be changing.  Now how many brands actually take up this process has yet to be seen, but I’m sure some will go overboard!

As it is, YouTube sucks down the environment with 4 billion views a day, and host millions upon millions of videos.  So I fully expect it to get jazzed up pretty quickly as brands create their own identities.

I’ve tried to keep my YT channel pretty simple, but as I am finding out, even hosting videos yourself isn’t as clear cut as it all seems.

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Facebook Logo from SimplyZestyA quick report over on The Huffington Post says that when an eCommerce site has a Facebook “like” button placed next to products that might be deemed embarrassing or personal, customers shy away from the products.

A study by the “University of Miami School of Business Administration, Empirica Research and StyleCaster Media Group,” (Seriously? Look, S.H.I.E.L.D. shortened their moniker!) indicated that when “like” buttons were near sensitive purchase options, customers were 25% less willing to buy.

The problem?

When the study rats fessed as to why they veered away from pages with ‘like’ and ‘tweet’ buttons is because they had concerns they being watched, and purchase choices were modified on the fly.

OH…

On the flipside, if a person was proud of what they were purchasing, there was a 25% increase in the probability of using the page with the social buttons.

The recommendation was for businesses to pull buttons from their ‘questionable’ product pages. Questionable being not necessarily what you might think, since products like Clearasil were noted.

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Can You Blame Them?

All this time, we’ve been very aware that whatever we do in regards to Facebook is tracked, monitored and shared.

The games you sign up for access your info AND the info of those who you are friends with.  It’s part of how the platform can be free for consumers to use.

But with everything you do shared on the network, I get the concerns.  Heck, one day I ‘liked’ the Victoria’s Secret page and I got pummeled by my female associates asking how my wife felt about that… it was brutal, and non-stop for most of the day.

And yes, that made me very paranoid from that point on about what I ‘liked.’

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’123 Greetings’ Spam Their Users, Just Like Dish Network Does

March 12, 2012

I don’t know about you, but if, what looks like a reputable organization sends out some wild spam or has their staff spam website comment fields, I’d think twice

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McDonald’s Chicken McBites Product Review – Not Impressive [Consumer]

February 10, 2012

Normally when a fast food chain puts out a new product, they put their best foot forward at first. Usually. In this case, if this is McDonald’s best foot….

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A Cool Redirect for Scraped Image Content: Stop Hotlinking

February 9, 2012

I got tired of sites hotlinking to my images and killing my bandwidth. So I blocked the hotlinkers! Find out what I did…

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Silk Has a Hit with Their “Fruit & Protein” Drink! [Consumer]

February 7, 2012

The other day I tried a new product called SILK Fruit & Protein drink and wow, I think I found my new breakfast drink!

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Beware The Email Onslaught When Signing Up For GoFobo [Consumer]

January 26, 2012

I received an unwanted email the other day from a persistent website that, despite checking off no to email notices, I seem to get more than I need!

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The Ukraine is Poisoning & Incinerating Thousands of Stray Dogs

January 20, 2012

The 2013 UEFA European Football (Soccer) Championships will be co-hosted by Ukraine and in anticipation of hosting the event, they’re cleaning the stray animals.

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The 2012 Super Bowl Commercial Hype Is About To Commence!

January 17, 2012

The 46th annual Super Bowl will be taking place on Sunday, Feb 5th, 2012, culminating the 2011 NFL season. That’s all fine and such, but are you ready for the TV ads…

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TITLE NINE Gives The Customer an Awesome Consumer Experience

January 16, 2012

After visiting a TITLE NINE store in Palo Alto, CA, I had such a good experience that I felt compelled to write up this consumer experience review…

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Contraband Led the Pack of Top-10 Movies At the Box Office Last Weekend

January 16, 2012

Last weekend consumers put the 3 new movies in the top-4 spots amongst the top-10 movies at the box office last weekend, with CONTRABAND leading the way…

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A Winter Spare the Air Day Alert Around The Corner, But Who Cares?

January 11, 2012

Over the 2011 holidays, we had several Winter Spare the Air alerts. All of them on critical days when friends and family would have loved to have had a fireplace going…

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Do 3D Movies Still Have A Place In The Marketplace For You?

January 7, 2012

The 3D movie seems to be here to stay, no matter what we say. Do you think 3D movies are worth it to you? Will you be testing the waters or seeing them regularly?

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Did You Know You Can or Have To Set Your Garmin 305 To Record Splits? [Consumer]

January 3, 2012

Setting Splits on Your Garmin Forerunner 305… it doesn’t come out of the box recording splits automatically, but did you know it can be set to record splits?

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Plastic Bag Ban in San Jose, And Now Costumers Get Charged for Paper Bags

January 2, 2012

The plastic bag ban went into effect as 2012 started. But now stores are charging consumers for the only option provided by the stores. Getting double charged seems rank…

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Netflix Won’t Let Customers Clear Their Viewing History. Why Is That?

January 2, 2012

Netflix users have been asking since at least 2007, for the ability to clear or hide their “recent viewed” queue. And yet there are still no options for this?

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Consumer Product Recalls: Pampered Chef, Baby Strollers, Holiday Decorations

January 1, 2012

Check out some of the latest CONSUMER PRODUCT RECALLS for things like heaters, baby strollers, holiday decorations and a few other items. Play it safe…

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Twitter, Facebook or RSS Feed? Which Is Best for You? [Consumer]

December 28, 2011

After a bit of frustration with how some run their ancillary feeds, I find myself dropping all but their RSS feeds. It’s more about the lack of professionalism in the…

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