Obama Online, 50 Mbps, Online Econonmic Woes & Facebook Verified Apps

November 18, 2008 | By Marc Porcelli | No Comments »

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The Marketing of a President by John Quelch | Harvard Business Review. “When the book is written on this election, it should not be titled The Making of a President but The Marketing of a President. Barack Obama’s campaign is a case study in marketing excellence.” Of similar interest, but with more of an online spin readers will be interested in McCain Camp Spent Fraction of Obama’s Online Ad Budget. Here is an expert from the article; “The McCain campaign spent just over $1.5 million on Web media, according to data representing campaign 2008 expenditures into September. Obama’s campaign spent around $8 million in ‘08 as of October. ”

President Elect Obama will also continue to utilize the internet via weekly YouTube video posts. The Washington Post ran an article about it today, “The YouTube Presidency.” Each weekly post will be about four minutes in length.

Comcast’s 50 Mbps service comes to OR, WA next month by Josh Lowensohn |cNet.com. “Starting next month, subscribers of Comcast’s cable Internet service in Oregon and southwestern Washington state will be getting their connections switched over to “wideband.” The upgraded service, which was announced late last month doubles the speed of residential and business connections as well as offering two faster, more expensive plans that bring the maximum download speed to 22 and 50 Mbps respectively.” It’s going to get very interesting for online business models as the size of the pipe continues to grow and end users are able to download at faster and faster speeds. The Netflix and Blockbusters of the world are anxiously anticipating its arrival.

On the note of faster download speeds, Microsoft opened the Microsoft Store online last week (domestically), The Death Of Packaged Software: Microsoft Store Opens On The Web For U.S. Shoppers. Clearly they are going more direct to the end user increasingly profitability, but also ease of use. I like the model and am sure we’ll see a lot more of it. It’s definitely not new, but can now be quantified as mainstream.

I couldn’t forget to mention the economy! There are a few different articles that caught my attention, Ad Woes Infect the Net and Crisis Hits Tech Sector With Layoffs as Sales Slump; which focuses more on Sun’s layoffs. Online Ad Growth Grinds To A Halt focuses on Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL.

Here is the latest tech scorecard of all the layoffs to date. A “must read” for those who have been following the carnage in the auto sector is “Death of Detroit Would Wallop Ad World.”

Today Facebook rolled out their verified Apps program so perhaps their business model is looking a bit brighter. Facebook says “…developers must pay a $375 to ‘cover some of the operational costs of the program’. If every application applied, that would be $18 million in incremental revenue to Facebook. Our guess is half or more will apply.”