Want to catch up with what happened in the digital world this week? Our weekly cheat sheet will fill you in on everything you missed while you were scrambling to meet deadlines and put out fires.
Read about the Microsoft Surface tablet, XBox Music streaming service, digital advertising’s increasing relevance, the creative way a New York restaurant is utilizing Instagram, and more!
1. Microsoft Surface Tablet
On Tuesday, Microsoft made its new series of Surface tablets available for pre-order. Currently, Microsoft is offering a 32 GB version – which has already sold out – for $499 and a 64 GB version for $699. This week, we also received word that Best Buy will be selling their own Android tablet next month for around $250. According to the Pew Research Center, 25 percent of American adults own a tablet, which is a sharp increase from the 4 percent in 2010. Expect that number to increase even more rapidly next year as more competitors enter the market and the cost of owning a tablet continues to decrease.
2. Xbox Music is a new music streaming service
This has been a busy week for Microsoft. In addition to Surface, Microsoft also launched a new music streaming service, simply called Xbox Music. Initially, Xbox Music will be available only to Xbox 360, Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and Windows RT users. Xbox Music aims to compete with both Spotify and iTunes, offering users the ability to stream a limited number of songs for free, pay a monthly fee of $9.99 to stream an unlimited number of songs, and purchase individual songs.
3. Digital advertising will eclipse print advertising
The amount of money spent on digital advertising continues to increase every year, as the amount of money spent on print advertising continues to decline. While it is not close to the amount of money spent on television advertising, digital advertising is on track to generate more than $37 billion in revenue, compared to $34.3 billion by print advertising. In this election year, 12% of political campaign budgets will be spent on digital media. That is a 616% increase from 2008.
4. Restaurant creates a crowd-source menu on Instagram
A restaurant in New York has devised a creative way to engage its customers through Instagram. After noticing the prevalence of customers taking photos of their food and uploading them to Instagram, the Comodo restaurant in New York created an official hashtag for restaurant-goers to use. While other places might give you snide looks for photographing your meal, Comodo waiters actually encourage customers to take photos and tag them with #ComodoMenu when sharing to Instagram. The Instagram menu not only provides an honest look at the food, but it is also helpful for customers who want to know what other people have ordered.
5. Placecast ShopAlerts lets shoppers link their credit cards to deals
Placecast ShopAlerts is a white-label service that allows businesses to send location-based offers to consumers on their mobile phones. When a person is within a certain distance of a retailer, they will receive a text alert with information regarding a sale, a discount, or just general information. ShopAlerts’ newest feature will now let users claim offers using their credit or debit card. The only thing a user needs to do to claim an offer is swipe their card at checkout, and a credit for the discount will appear on their next statement. Unlike other services, ShopAlerts is able to use real-time location, consumer preferences, and spending history to target consumers.
Image source: Google Images
