E-Mail Gets an Instant Makeover

December 20, 2010

E-Mail Gets an Instant Makeover

By MATT RICHTEL

SAN FRANCISCO — Signs you’re an old fogey: You still watch movies on a VCR, listen to vinyl records and shoot photos on film.

And you enjoy using e-mail.

Young people, of course, much prefer online chats and text messages. These have been on the rise for years but are now threatening to eclipse e-mail, much as they have already superseded phone calls.

Major Internet companies like Facebook are responding with message services that are focused on immediate gratification.

The problem with e-mail, young people say, is that it involves a boringly long process of signing into an account, typing out a subject line and then sending a message that might not be received or answered for hours. And sign-offs like “sincerely” — seriously?

Lena Jenny, 17, a high school senior in Cupertino, Calif., said texting was so quick that “I sometimes have an answer before I even shut my phone.” E-mail, she added, is “so lame.”

Facebook is trying to appeal to the Lenas of the world. It is rolling out a revamped messaging service that is intended to feel less like e-mail and more like texting.

The company decided to eliminate the subject line on messages after its research showed that it was most commonly left blank or used for an uninformative “hi” or “yo.”

Facebook also killed the “cc” and “bcc” lines. And hitting the enter key can immediately fire off the message, à la instant messaging, instead of creating a new paragraph. The changes, company executives say, leave behind time-consuming formalities that separate users from what they crave: instant conversation.

“The future of messaging is more real time, more conversational and more casual,” said Andrew Bosworth, director of engineering at Facebook, where he oversees communications tools. “The medium isn’t the message. The message is the message.”

The numbers testify to the trend. The number of total unique visitors in the United States to major e-mail sites like Yahoo and Hotmail is now in steady decline, according to the research company comScore. Such visits peaked in November 2009 and have since slid 6 percent; visits among 12- to 17-year-olds fell around 18 percent. (The only big gainer in the category has been Gmail, up 10 percent from a year ago.)

The slide in e-mail does not reflect a drop in digital communication; people have just gravitated to instant messaging, texting and Facebook (four billion messages daily).

James E. Katz, the director for the Center for Mobile Communications Studies at Rutgers University, said this was not the death of e-mail but more of a downgrade, thanks to greater choice and nuance among communications tools.

“It’s painful for them,” he said of the younger generation and e-mail. “It doesn’t suit their social intensity.”

Some, predictably, turn up their noses at the informality and the abbreviated spellings that are rampant in bite-size, phone-based transmissions. Judith Kallos, who writes a blog and books about e-mail etiquette, complains that the looser, briefer and less grammatical the writing, the less deep the thoughts and emotions behind it.
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Food Network takes 45,000 recipes mobile.

From mobile marketer

November 5, 2010

The Food Network is letting food enthusiasts browse through 45,000 recipes via its applications for Apple’s iPhone, iPod touch and iPad.

Each recipe comes with photos and step-by-step instructions. The In The Kitchen application is available for $1.99 in Apple’s App Store.

“We want to give fans access to their favorite recipes from their favorite Food Network stars – anytime, anywhere,” said Bob Madden, senior vice president and general manager at Food Network.com, New York.

“Users can follow along looking at recipe while they watch TV or look for last minute ideas for dinner in the grocery aisle,” he said. “Mobile is a category we’ve been playing in for a while.

“It only made sense for our brand to tackle recipes as that’s what we’re known for – our vast catalog from some of America’s most well-known chefs needed to be there.”

Food Network is a lifestyle network, Web site and magazine that connects viewers to the power and joy of food.

Food for thought
Users with a Food Network account can access and browse their online recipe box with the ability to add new recipes directly from the application.

In addition, seasonal menus will be updated monthly and Thanksgiving recipes will be featured at launch.

Users can add ingredients from the recipes to a shopping list that they can share with friends via email, Facebook and Twitter.

Users can access the shopping lists offline.

“We’re leveraging all of our resources for this app,” Mr. Madden said. “You’ll see a broad marketing and public relations campaign around In The Kitchen – television ads, snipes, Facebook and Twitter posts, as well as contests, and so on.

“We’re really proud of what we produced,” he said.

Users can search the application

Users can browse recipes

Key features
Other features of the application let users set timers as they work on the recipe without leaving the application and converting measurements.

The company is looking to extend the application to Android devices in mid-November.

“Specifically with the In The Kitchen App, you can expect to see video, offline access to more content, ability to rate and review recipes, plus lots more in future versions,” Mr. Madden said.

“We’re also making select programming available on iTunes,” he said. “Food Network takes the mobile space seriously and wants to give our fans what they want, where they want, when they want it.”

Editorial Assistant Rimma Kats covers media, television, research and social networks. Reach her at rimma@mobilemarketer.com.

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Pizza Hut exec reveals how branded app achieved 2 million downloa

By Giselle Tsirulnik

October 26, 2010

Pizza Hut has been in mobile since 2008

NEW YORK – Taking a brand and bringing it to the mobile market effectively means listening to customer feedback and acting accordingly, said a Pizza Hut executive who presented at the Mobile Shopping Summit.

Pizza Hut’s mobile Web site and iPhone application are not new, but the executive explained that it took a lot of revamping to get the mobile properties where they are today.

“We initially launched our mobile Web site in 2008,” said Baron Concors, chief information and digital officer of Pizza Hut, Dallas. “The mobile site was slow and customers were complaining.

“We have several customer feedback channel and consumers were very vocal on which aspect of the site they did and did not like,” he said. “We then decided to launch an iPhone application.”

Pizza Hut is part of the Yum Brands suite of fast food brands. It is the largest restaurant company in the world, serving more than 25 million customers daily.

Pizza Hut taps Green Tomato for its ordering app

IPhone app
When Pizza Hut began to explore the possibility of an iPhone application, the company knew one thing for sure. It had to make the order process fast and easy.

At first the target audience was those who rarely prepare or consume home-cooked meals. The average age was 24.

Customers were complaining that the purchase process takes too long and that transactions were too hard to complete.

Pizza Hut targets iPhone users

Also a large amount of consumers felt that products were hard to find.

Pizza Hut took all of this into consideration when developing and enhancing its iPhone application.

As a result the company was able to get the experience to be easy for consumers and the application has been downloaded more than 2 million times since launch.

App features
The application uses iPhone and iPod touch features such as the user interface and accelerometer to make ordering menu items while having a fun and customized experience.

The pizza ordering section allows consumers to virtually build their own pizza.

Customers can pinch to select size, drag-and-drop toppings onto the pizza.

If a customer adds too many toppings, the pizza explodes and toppings go flying across the screen with an alert to make their pizza happier with fewer toppings.

The Pizza Hut mobile commerce application is driving sales in a major way. Last year the company announced $1 million in sales just via the application.

Digital strategy
Pizza Hut's digital strategy is to offer multiple digital ordering channels.

Mr. Concors suggested that brand be bold and take calculated risks when it comes to their digital strategy.

“Engage customers on their terms,” Mr. Concors said.

Pizza Hut’s ecommerce framework relies on delivering online orders to 6,000-plus stores.

“Currently we have no scalability concerns because our current ecommerce operations handle large traffic events,” Mr. Concors said.

“Additionally, there is no training required at stores when adding new online channels,” he said.

Development
Pizza Hut concentrated on quality assurance with the launch of its iPhone application.

Testing requires additional steps to compile and load the application on iPhone. Integration testing was important as well.

As for deployment, Mr. Concors said brands need to register as an iTunes developer early, since it takes some time.

“Thoroughly test before submitting to Apple review,” Mr. Concors said. “Rework cycles are costly.”

Spreading the word
Pizza Hut did quite a lot of marketing to promote its application and gain 2 million downloads.

Mr. Concors suggests that brands use all existing media to promote their application and mobile Web destinations.

Pizza Hut used its PC Web site, YouTube, Facebook, the App Store rankings and Twitter to promote the application.

Apple was pretty impressed by the application. The company included the Pizza Hut application in its television commercial.

“Pay attention to bloggers, professional reviews as well as iTunes comments,” Mr. Concors said. “The first release of an app is generally accepted as not perfect.

“But brands must aggressively fix identified issues and introduce new functions,” he said. “Apps are for loyalists and mobile Web is for customer acquisition."

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