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Author Alasdair White
Over the last thirty years, there have been three major recessions in the US and UK and these either contributed to or were caused by global recessionary trends. The economists, with their definitions, indicate that in each case the recession lasted two years but just about every businessman I have spoken to feels that the definition is too limiting and that, in reality, while the economy may well have climbed out of recession in two years, company performance has taken nearly twice as long to recover. Take this last recession as an example: ‘technically’ it started in the last quarter of 2007 and lasted until the first quarter of 2009, but the European and US economies started their collapse in mid-2007 and are still underperforming and are a long way short of what was being achieved in the first half of that year. This recession might be ‘technically’ over but its legacy is likely to be with us for five years or more!
This recovery trend, which ranges from flat to very slowly rising, means that many businesses that are not diversified will be facing extreme difficulties and will be eating into capital reserves just to stay afloat – and if their reserves are not big enough and they cannot switch markets, then Read the rest of this entry »
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Author Alasdair White
Has it been a ‘game changing’ development in the social media firmament or merely the release of another ‘me too’ social networking program? This is the question that should, I think, be in our minds as we consider the release at the end of June of Google Plus (or Google+).
On the face of it, it is just another ‘me too’ program to join the plethora of similar programs already available and which are discussed in a Wikipedia article. There has been an immediate ‘rush to judgment’ by the technology journalists and so far the reaction has been a case of ‘not bad, some good developments, but is it really different’ – in fact, is it other than a redundant derivative of Facebook and Twitter. In the UK, Dan Grabham of TechRadar posted his take on the msn tech & gadgets blog while Greg Sterling of Search Engine Land provided a US view. In the mean time, Paul Anthony enthused on the Webdistortion blog that “Google have nailed it when they realised that Facebook’s weakness was privacy” – but they might have nailed it as the problem but have they provided a real solution.
Other than a different approach to how and with whom you can share your online posts and an ability to interact with other Google products, what does Google+ bring to Google in terms of competitive advantage? Read the rest of this entry »
Author Alasdair White