Business and Society 2.0

Generally speaking there is a believe that most people does not use the Yellow Pages printed books and otherwise prefer to use some sort of electronic information search. However a marketing research conducted by LinkDirect (1) and mentioned by Peter Rand that "only one every 1.000 UK consumers has opted out of home delivery of printed directories" (2). Rand cited the "results of a delivery conducted in Gloucestershire in 2008, after an opt-out campaign undertaken in the area by an environmental group" (2) showed that only 0,24% has opted for not receiving the directory. The study also demonstrates that of these 0,24% opt outs, 18% were older people and 17% younger people, more or less the same percentage, which is against our previous ideas that only older people wants the printed books and youngers only use Internet. Middle age people with high income rates 14% of opting out for receiving the printed book, gives an indication that age is not really a diferentiator

A new book is now available-Buyology in Brief, by Martin Lindstrom. A quick summary extracted from http://www.moneyweb.co.za/mw/view/mw/en/page1 Does sex sell? What do religion and ritual have in common with successful brands? How successful is product placement? Does subliminal advertising really influence our behavior? Based on the largest neuromarketing study ever conducted, Buyology separates the truths from the lies about why we buy, revealing how marketers and advertisers truly capture our attention, our loyalty, and our dollars. Buyology unveils the results of marketing guru Martin Lindstrom's pioneering three-year, $7 million dollar study that used the latest in brain scan technology to peer into the minds of over 2,000 people from around the world. The shocking results will reveal why so much of what we thought we knew about why we buy is wrong. Buyology rewrites the rules of marketing and advertising. In 1957, when a market researcher named James Vicary claimed that a lig

Not just the Internet usage is growing, but also it is expected that most of the world population will be connected and comunicate with the aid of some mobile device. Future publishing can take this trend as an opportunity, developing contents that could take advantage of these technologies. For the moment, screen dimensions difficult the visualization of large contents of data like we have in newspapers, magazines or the Yellow Pages ads. Few mobile devices support now Flash and the replication of some web contents are not visible. However, there are a number of companies like Goss RSVP(1), Upcode(2), Scanbuy(3) and Snaptell(4) that allow mobile users to connect what they see in a print page to a mobile browser. As the trend on mobile devices is going in the direction of using full HTML and support technologies like Flash and video, publishers can take the opportunity to better intersect their print pages to the "online" environment. The print page is still a tactile and emo

I read a paper from Frank Buytendijk, concerning the concept of Enterprise 2.0. It offers his vision on the way companies are managed. Here is is vision, in a summary way, extracted from his blog: " Many have applied the Web 2.0 definition to the enterprise. They believe that Enterprise 2.0 simply means using Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis, blogs, mash-ups, and gadgets within the organization. Or does it? IT architects are quick to point out that such technologies can only work if they are based on a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and supported by a solid middleware layer. But to serve what business purpose? Tenured IT professionals will quickly see many parallels between the Enterprise 2.0 enthusiasm and the knowledge management hype of the 1990s that—worthwhile as it was—never made it into the main stage. So what is different today? Drawing on our diverse backgrounds in customer relationship management, enterprise content management, enterprise performance management, a

There are advancements in the printing technolgy. Last Graph Expo 2008 (Drupa) showed some interesting developments. The HP Inkjet Web Press , is one on them. We can see from the HP site (1) some of the features. The HP Inkjet Web Press represents a new product category for HP in the commercial printing marketplace. Specifically targeting high-volume production operations, the HP Inkjet Web Press establishes a unique combination of width, productivity, print economics, and print quality at high speed. Taking our design guidance directly from high volume printers, HP is delivering a Press with a 762mm web that runs up to 122 meters per minute. Width and linear speed comprise the two key elements of productivity, and the HP Inkjet Web Press equation delivers up to 2,600 full color impressions per minute. Additionally, our wider platform will enable printers to bring the benefits of digital to new areas. Book signatures, full sized newspaper broadsheets, and a variety of multi-up formats

In spite of some signals on print jobs growth, like the "Economist, which is growing in circulation by an average of 5.6%" (1), in general, according to the study Digital Printing Directions, printing workload is decreasing and in 2020 is expecteed to be 70% of 1995 volumes (2). This Digital Printing Direction study, from Frank Romano, found there is a trend for shorter runs and faster turnaround times. 45% of jobs are short run and time sensitive while 19% are long runs and not time sensitive. In 2000 the number of print jobs produced in a week was 18% and is expected to decrease to 13% by 2020, while the number of jobs produced in a day or less was 15% in 2000 and is expected to reach 20% by 2020. Frank Romano´s study shows also that in 2000, offset printing technology was 80% of the printing revenue while digital printing only accounted for 5%. In 2020 this will turn to less than 30% and digital printing to growth up to 40%. The trend is also to move from one colour, to fu

Paper Industry is changing towards a "new generation" of paper grades, pulp and paper manufacturing technologies. It is a fact, the trend of paper consumption in the world is going down. Print volumes went down since 1995 almost 20%, by the use of Internet and other digital media. Between 1995 and 2020 the worldwide print volumes are expected to decrease by about 30% (1). This general trend does not tell what is going in the industry and what are the expectations for the future. Newspaper Publishers have probably experienced the competitiveness of the media industry and the change of consumer habits using much more information available online. However, some publishers presented strong operations like Prisa Group, the owners of El País, the spanish newspaper that has increased circulation the last years. According to Pedro Garcia Guillén, General Manager of El País (2), "the circulation and number of readers has grown last years, in spite of competition from newspapers a