Starbucks vs Panera Bread : Free WiFi Makes A Difference

I am an avid coffee drinker, I love it and need it many times to get me going. My favorite coffee shop has been Starbucks for a long time, I love their variety of coffee drinks, as do millions of other coffee drinkers. I also love the fact that I can take my laptop or a good book and sit in Starbucks, relax drink coffee and work on my computer. For years Starbucks has been charging for WiFi access and although I was unhappy about this, I put up with it because of their good coffee.

But recently a hybrid coffee shop Panera Bread has been growing in popularity, opening more locations around the United States. Panera has a variety of coffee drinks and also offers good food. Their setting is very relaxing and clean, they are also very spacious. Panera Bread also gives free unlimited WiFi. I first discovered Panera while on vacation in Florida, I loved the food and setting, but there was no Paneras where I lived. About a year after that a Panera opened in my neighborhood. I found myself going there a lot for the food and I was loving their free WiFi. I decided one day to give their coffee a try, and it was pretty good.

The question came to mind, why should I go to Starbucks? Panera offered more food a long with free WiFi and more space than the local Starbucks. Now it just seemed that all Starbucks had to offer was coffee which costs more than Paneras. As time progressed I soon found myself in Panera Bread than in Starbucks. The free WiFi was definitely a great reason to choose Panera over Starbucks. WiFi access is not expensive and is worth the cost since the customer visiting your store will make purchases, I don't understand Starbucks need to charge for WiFi access. Even McDonalds and smaller coffee shops offer Free WiFi.

I have chosen my favorite coffee shop and it is Panera Bread, I occasionally visit Starbucks but not to stay, just to get coffee on the go.

What is the Future of Twitter?

Twitter is the place to be right now on the web, it is one of the web's most used social networking sites. The site has been rapidly growing and has become mainstream, with users spanning from celebrities, political figures, musicians, corporate America, and gurus from the financial and technology sectors. It's truly amazing where common folk can interact with their idols, favorite actors, musicians and people of interest who would commonly not be accessible. It's also a great place to meet new people and build your network as an individual or business.

There is no doubt that Twitter is a social media success, but will Twitter survive to see another two years? The company has not been making money in the past few years since it's launch and had no active revenue stream for a long time. It was actually losing money as it paid for servers, bandwidth, maintenance, and phone SMS charges to send out tweets via mobile phones. Twitter has been surviving on investor money, these investors are venture capitalists (VCs). VCs are companies where wealthy individuals or organizations can bring their money together to help fund companies who are starting up. But this allows investors to gain partial ownership and a cut of the profits that Twitter earns. Twitter has collected $155 million in investment money.

Twitter could have easily slapped Ads on their homepage and have advertisers bid for spots as the site has millions of users. But they have not done that, which shows that twitter doesn't want to use the cliche way of web monetization. However, Twitter in October 2009 made a deal with Google and Microsoft where it made its content available to the two search engines, Google and Bing. The deal is worth a total of $25 Million dollars, 15 Million from Google and 10 Million from Bing. This is very good for Twitter as search engines love fresh content, and Twitter puts out new content every day. If Twitter can now get Yahoo to give them another $10 - $15 Million dollars, they will be doing okay.

Some other possible ways of creating a revenue stream for Twitter is charging for premium services such as access to certain premium keyword searches. Charging for features like auto responders or auto reply to certain keyword tweets. Another possibility is charging to have internal tweets between companies and premium groups. There are many options that Twitter has to make money, as they have the popularity, traffic, and users to generate lots of money. But what will they compromise by trying to make more money. Twitter in it's current simplicity definitely works and changing or adding things might turn users off.
Whatever Twitter decides to do, they better make sure they tweet about it :) ....

Does YouTube need a Government Bailout?

YouTube has yet to be profitable for Google, the video site which was bought by Google for $1.65 Billion is still struggling to make money. YouTube's revenue is mostly from Advertising, but with it's growth comes millions of dollars in server and bandwidth costs per year. Google has been sustaining the site with it's profit from other sectors of the company.

YouTube has recently increased Ad placements in it's layout and in videos. YouTube has also been pushing it's "Partner Program", where it shares Advertising revenue with Partners who are able to bring in high volume of views, comments, and subscriptions. Partners such as Fred, ShayTards, Philip Defranco, iJustine and many others are making a living from doing videos on YouTube.

The problem with this is, it might force YouTube to become like a television network where commercials will have to be placed in videos. Many channels on YouTube already have car commercials and many product commercials in their video already. When you click on the video to look at it, you are met with a commercial then taken to the actual video. I would hate to see YouTube go in this direction. The videos which feature television type ads are not well received by YouTube viewers, many leave comments of disgust and annoyance because of the Ads. And usually when big companies like YouTube and Google do something, the rest of the Internet follows.

While I want YouTube to be successful and not go down the drain, I think they need to find a different approach to making money. A great way for them to make money is by selling movies and music in a store created on their site. Kind of an iTunes Store, where users can purchase movies and music at their leisure. iTunes has done very well in this area and YouTube can easily capitalize on the millions of viewers from around the world who visit their site. Links for the purchase of movies and music can be placed very discretely at the bottom of videos that have related content.

YouTube's revenue has increased in the past year but I think they will do very well if they start selling movies and music from their site. What do you think of YouTube's Advertising and Future?

Google Buzz Stings Twitter and Facebook

Google points it's stinger at Twitter and Facebook. Earlier today Google released Buzz, its new all in one social media stream conglomerate. Buzz is built into Gmail and will appear in and around the area where your Inbox is located. It will feed from your contacts already in your Gmail account and will bring a stream of status updates, pictures, links, and videos from your friends.

This allows you to keep up with your contacts in the space of an email Inbox, which all email users are familiar with. Buzz will suggest friends, posts and conversations for you which you will have the option to accept or ignore. There is talk on the web that Google Buzz will replace FriendFeed,as similar site, but I don't think that will happen.

The days of email are not dead, but they are threatened by faster media updates like Twitter or Facebook. I believe Google recognized this and decided to bring those media outlets to the email realm. I await the response of Twitter and Facebook on Google Buzz.. Visit your Gmail account to start playing with Buzz...
What do you think of Google Buzz?

How Lady Gaga Can Make You Money

Have you ever seen the Ads that appear on YouTube music videos saying "buy ringtone" or "download mp3"?, the Ads usually give you an option of buying from iTunes or AmazonMp3. Well did you know YouTube is making money every time someone clicks those links and buys the song or ringtone... yep YouTube is making a killing off those mp3 and ringtone sales. YouTube had record sales in summer 2009 because of the "JK Wedding Entrance Dance", many viewers purchased the song "Forever" by Chris Brown through YouTube's Ad in the video.

But did know you can also make money the same way, by posting content related to a musician, song, or music that is currently popular. By simply doing a song cover, a parody of music video, or anything else that relates to the song or artist can enable you to make money by selling the songs mp3, ringtone, and any merchandise related to the artist.

For example, Lady Gaga is very popular right now, hers songs are at the top of charts and playing on radio all the time. On YouTube her music videos have millions of hit, many YouTube users have already gained views and popularity for putting up Lady Gaga related content. This works not just for Lady Gaga but any musician who is very popular right now, it could be Beyonce, Kesha, Eminem, Black Eyed Peas.... you get the idea. You simply pick up on the momentum that is already started by the song or artist, capitalize on the popularity.

You say, how do I sell the mp3s, ringtones, and merchandise? Simple, you become an affiliate with Amazon, iTunes, ringtone sites and any other online store that sells items related to the artist. This process is not hard at all, many companies make it very simply to sign up and to start promoting their products. After you become and affiliate, you will get access to promotion banners, links, widgets, etc to promote with. All you have to do is simply make videos relating to a song or artist, publish on YouTube, and in the description of the video place the affiliate links to the mp3, ringtone, or merchandise. You can also set up a blog or website where you have these links posted and place it in the video description.

YouTube has a feature called annotations where you can place a text box in the video, you can use this feature to alert the viewer of the links and products in the description area. Once your video starts getting views and you have everything in place, you will start getting clicks and eventually sales. This is a great way to make extra money and a get paid for things you might already be doing. If you are already a YouTube user and have videos of song covers, parodies, or a skit relating to something popular, you can implement this method and make some money. This method can be used not only for music, but for movies, tv shows, or anything that is viral at the moment.

Here are links to sites where you can be come an affiliate and get access to products:

Amazon - https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/

iTunes - http://www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/

Google Uses Parisian Love Ad For Super Bowl Commercial

The Google Ad that was shown during the Super Bowl is confirmed as Parisian Love. The hyped Google Ad ran during the Third Quarter of the Super Bowl. Google's Chairman Eric Schmidt tweeted on Saturday February 6th : "Can't wait to watch the Superbowl tomorrow. Be sure to watch the ads in the 3rd quarter (someone said 'Hell has indeed frozen over.'). Many Google enthusiasts and fans were waiting in much anticipation to see what Google's Ad would be about. The Ad, Parisian Love, is about "An American finds love in Paris".

It seems Google is going mainstream, not that they need to, because the Internet revolves around them. But as Google embarks in different products and services, they need a different approach and need to make themselves more marketable to become a household name for other things besides search engine.

I was expecting a Google Nexus Ad, but I think Parisian Love worked well. The Ad is clever and amazingly well done, many people have said they like it a lot. The Ad shows a lot of maturity and is very different from other Ads which push sexuality and other controversial things to get their point across in the Super Bowl Commercial realm. Nice Job Google!

Lost had me Lost - Season 6 Premiere

I don't know about you, but Lost season 6 premiere sure had me Lost. The first two episodes were very confusing as the story line kept alternating between the two realities created by the bomb exploding. It made sense but there was no explanation or conclusion to the what was going on.

The first reality is the real time, where the Losties were taken back in time to when the hatch was blown up, which occurred in the earlier seasons. The second reality is where the oceanic flight never crashed and the plane landed safely in LA. I kept trying to figure out how the writers are going to tie the two realities together. I think in the reality where the plane never crashed, somehow they will all end up going back to the island. How that will happen, I do not know, but maybe somehow the two realities will merge.

There are few things that are revealed in the first Lost Episodes of season 6 :

- John Locke is being impersonated by the smoke monster who is also Jacob's nemesis.

- Jacob is centuries old and he is one who brings people to the island.

- Ben is tricked by the smoke monster into killing Jacob, He realizes this when he sees Locke's dead body.

- Juliet tells Sawyer that the Blowing up the Bomb worked, it did change things.

Jacob and his Nemesis (the smoke monster) can be typed to God and the Devil, and they have been at odds for a long time. They can't kill each other and that is why Jacob's nemesis tricks Ben into killing Jacob.

I can't wait for the next episode to see how things will play out and how the two realities will end.