Nicholas Cifuentes
Feel free to contact me at nicholas.cifuentes@gmail.com
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Articles by Nicholas Cifuentes
August 05, 2010
The Pew Research Center recently fielded a study focused on the future of social relations. The research study revolved around one statement:
"In 2020, when I look at the big picture and consider my personal friendships, marriage and other relationships, I see that the internet has mostly been a positive force on my social world. And this will only grow more true in the future."
In the end, 85% of the surveyed audience agreed with the statement, while 14% took to the other direction and saw the internet as mostly being a negative force within their social world.
August 05, 2010
The Pharma battle has been one of the more entertaining enigmas surrounding social media within the past several years, and without question, still very much unsolved. When carefully thought out - it´s one simple question - how should Pharma marketers approach social media?
Since the dawn of social media marketing (used loosely), Pharma brands have found social media - nerve-wracking - nervous to dive head-in to large social media programs.
August 05, 2010
In a just-released Forrester research report, it said that most marketers should refrain from location-based services, citing that just a mere 4% of the US online adults have ever checked in on the "location game." And only 1% update these services more than once a week.
The study revealed some interesting statistics, as it looked at a large number of location-based sites, including popular players such as Foursquare, Gowalla, MyTown and Loopt. And to add to the study, a whopping 84% of respondents said they had no idea or were not even familiar enough with such types of apps. This study comes at an interesting time, since 2010 was marked the year of location-based services, igniting fires under social media marketers - all trying to integrate location-based strategies into their marketing programs.
December 22, 2008
Social Media Map.
Late last week, our team at Overdrive Interactive released the first version of the Social Media Map. This map is designed to help marketers and random people alike view the components of the social media landscape and determine how it can be best leveraged for their marketing or personal branding needs.
"We know how complex and overwhelming the social media landscape can be," said Harry Gold, CEO of Overdrive Interactive. "We wanted to map it all out, so that marketing professionals can use it as a guide to what we believe are the most important social media tools out there. The power of social media is growing exponentially by the day, and now is the time to harness it."
December 06, 2008
Mobile Media.
It seems so long ago – the first time you purchased a cell phone. Do you remember that day? Maybe you remember graduating from that phone to a bulky PDA or clunky smartphone…and then it came. The iPhone. One day out of the blue – a mobile phone you can use not only for phone calls, ...
December 07, 2008
movolu.
This new advertising network is built for the mobile platform - the application is quite simple. Movolu leverages location information to enhance the mobile experience and connect businesses with customers in their area.
Because many local businesses feel threatened by technology, the ecommerce ends up favoring larger brands and most likely could weaken their own in-store sales. In response, Movolu created a preformance-based advertising campaigns that directly result in sales for local businesses.
November 11, 2008
Twitter.
What if there was a business tool that existed, which could allow companies to listen in on discussions about how people are using their products, analyze what people are saying about them, and could allow allow that company to respond to that "person" directly.
It´s a tool that...
November 10, 2008
Influencers.
Yes, you…the man in the corner of Starbucks sipping your vanilla late. You, the young blonde typing away to the world, using your ´content´ to help unite others. You, the young man with a camera strapped to your head, broadcasting to the world your every moving moment. You, the brand.
You, I, and the other 10 percent of social media website users are the so called influencers. A new study by Rubicon Consulting reveals that those who dominate social media conversations are most likely to influence their peers. The study confirms that 80 - 90 percent of user-generated content is produced by less than 10 percent of users.
November 10, 2008
Bad economic news seems to be everywhere. Stories of banking crises, bailouts, rising unemployment, plummeting securities and housing prices, rising inflation, rising gas and food prices, recession, depression, and the end of prosperity have all become ubiquitous over the past couple of months. The bottom and the subsequent rebound are nowhere to be seen. Now take a deep breath, exhale, and relax. At the time this column was written, I was on a flight from San Diego to Austin packed with business travelers. Oil and other commodity prices have fallen back in recent months after reaching record highs. There are signs that credit markets are beginning to function again. Insofar as pundits cannot oversell the good times (remember Dow 36,000?), pundits cannot resist the temptation to oversell doom and gloom (remember predictions last summer that oil would reach $500 a barrel?). An October 26, 2008 article in the New York Times entitled "Forecasters Race to Call the Bottom to the Market", explains this phenomenon in greater detail.
November 10, 2008
Yammer.
So what is all this Yammer-ing about? After coming across a NY Times article posted Monday that spoke about one of my favorite websites Twitter, and another similar modeled website called Yammer, the question came up - microblogging for business? Yes, I know many people have asked this before, but when combining that question & the topic of non-existent ´dollar-generating business models´ - what is the outlook?
I cam across Yammer last month when I noticed they won the TechCrunch50, and after reading about them in depth more yesterday - a very interesting point arose - the Twitter for the business world - could it really work?
Yammer, a service that mimics Twitter, but charges from the outset…(applaud). Sort of, Yammer is aimed at the corporate customers, and already has 60,000 users. And they aim to answer the key question, "What are you working on?" Their goal is to make offices more productive through updates on company events and work-related questions that will not clog e-mail boxes with mass mailings.
November 10, 2008
With the economy in such a wonderful state of mind these days (wink), it seems their might be some bad news for digital advertisers. According to a PubMatic report released this week, the price advertisers are willing to pay for ad space online is down 27 percent this year.
PubMatic tracked the sale of display ads through ad networks on Websites in more than 20 different topic areas, and saw that ads on social networks fetched the smallest price per thousand eyeballs - 21 cents. This is down 22 percent from the second quarter. Ads on sports sites were the next lowest at 25 cents, followed by ads prices on entertainment sites, which saw the steepest drop, to 33 cents.
November 10, 2008
Immigration Solutions has been recently inundated in regard to questions pertaining to cap exempt H-1B employment from its clients and readership. As a result of this, we´ve decided to address your questions with the writing of this article. We trust that you will find it useful and informative.
Are you an employer or staffing company searching for a way to solve the H-1B cap (quota) problem? At the present time, due to quota limitations and more demand than supply, you are restricted to filing in early April for H-1B visas for your critical H-1B professional employees who, if they win an H-1B visa in the lottery, can not start employment until the following October 1st, at the earliest. This unavailability and timing problem makes it very difficult to plan for the employment of H-1B workers.
October 08, 2008
The national elections in November 2008 will result in a new President. In addition, all of the seats in the House of Representatives and one-third of the seats in the Senate will be contested. The focus is understandably on the race for President. However, the elections in the House of Representatives and the Senate are just as important, if not more so, when considering the controversial issue of immigration. As a general constitutional principle, neither the President nor the Congress can create new laws on their own. Each needs the other in order for new laws involving controversial issues to be enacted.
October 08, 2008
There is new kid in school, his name is CampusLIVE, and wants to act as every college kid´s 24/7 RA (Resident Assistant) by providing all the information you need to know as a student on campus.
The new social community website aggregates information a college kid needs to know. Besides the usual, like weather, there are customized news feeds (CNN, Boston Globe, Philly.com, Fox News, MSNBC, and even Playboy, and much more), customized search feeds; that include Google, YouTube, Wikipedia, Amazon, Flickr, Technorati and much more. In addition, each school´s page has ´quick links´ that feature necessary housing and health information, local public transportation schedules, dining services, registrar information, library, academic calendars and more.
October 08, 2008
The following comments have recently been heard from healthcare facilities and staffing agencies:
"We have put our nurse recruitment program and all immigration filings for nurses on hold until retrogression lifts."
"We can't do anything to get the nurses into the United States until retrogression lifts."
"We just don't want to spend money recruiting nurses and filing their immigration cases until retrogression lifts and we can see some results."
With the current unavailability of the EB-3 immigrant visa quota for nurses through September 30, 2008 and with an expected quota cutoff date of 2006 to be re-established at the start of the next fiscal year on October 1st, these comments are certainly understandable. However, these comments are the result of certain misconceptions and are counterproductive.