Just as the New York Times prepares to start charging for their carefully fact-checked content The Huffington Post goes and make their case for them. The Huffington Post published a piece by Jeffrey Hoffman headlined “Could The 2010 World Cup Be A Disaster In the Making?” (Posted: January 14, 2010 09:15 AM), thought better of it, and then pulled it from its website to the apparent surprise of the author. It can still be accessed at this URL but does not appear on a public list of stories attributed to Hoffman.
Category archives: Tech
Internet reaching 10% of South Africans
The number of South African Internet users has passed the 5-million mark for the first time, finally breaking through the 10% mark in Internet penetration for the country. This is the key finding of the Internet Access in South Africa 2010 study conducted by World Wide Worx.
No more Amatomu (for now)
Stories we are following today: My Branded Life [mandylives.com] King James‘ Alex van Tonder talks about so called “social media gurus”, women in advertising, those incoherent 5fm ads and the dodgy boys club. Germany to GM, re: Opel: SCREW YOU! [thedailymaverick.co.za] Economy minister Rainer Bruederle told GM CEO Fritz Henderson that “General Motors should basically …
MTN birthday no celebration
MTN has been told off by the Advertising Standards Committee following complaints lodged against a major promotion and competition celebrating its 15th birthday. Hopefully the ruling will serve to deter unscrupulous cellular providers from taking consumers for a ride with ludicrously priced competitions. MTN, instead of celebrating 15 years in existence, just underscored how far it is removed from consumers, and how little they offer us to celebrate.
Sidestepping interconnect fees, South Africans show innovation
The South African cellular market reached a milestone of 50-milion connections at the end of 2008 – but only 68% of these represented individual users.
Hit a home run online
What are the key ingredients to online marketing success? We explore some case studies.
The disintermediation of GSM operators
The disintermediation of GSM operators: Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) are at serious risk of losing revenue to disruptive startups in the next 12 to 24 months.
The History Channel issues cease and desist to bloggers
MarkLives received a cease and desist letter from AETN, parent company of The History Channel, demanding we remove advertising material for The History Channel from this site. For the record, the campaign in question was submitted by Multichoice agency Ogilvy Johannesburg, along with the information in the copy still below to MarkLives.com who published it in good faith.
As budgets dry up online looks up
Despite the global financial slowdown – as nice a way of saying ‘global recession’ as anybody and CNN has been able to come up with – at least one marketing medium will expand its share of the revenue pie, even as others prepare to face cutbacks and closures.
After online ad revenue grew 24% in 2006, 27% in 2007 and 32% in 2008, World Wide Worx researcher Arthur Goldstuck predicts it will grow 32% in 2009. This will see revenue jump from R319 million in 2008 to R419 million this year.
The big 10and5 logo debate
Our friends over at 10and5.com managed to spark a lively online debate, pulling 68 comments in less than 24 hours, on the design for their new logo – before closing (sorry toning down) the discussion. We are green with envy (not necessarily about the logo though – we think ours is fab).