Actress Whoopi Goldberg, LA Lakers coach Phil Jackson, and motorcycle guru/TV personality Jesse James: who would have thought anything could bring such different and bold personalities together in one TV commercial. T-Mobile did just that with the launch of its T-Mobile MyTouch campaign, focusing on how the MyTouch can be customized for any individual or personality. The T-Mobile My Touch is the second Google Android phone T-Mobile has launched; this device is the sequel to its original Android release, the T-Mobile G1.

Like the G1 launch, T-Mobile gave favor to existing Customers with its MyTouch launch. On July 8th T-Mobile released the MyTouch to existing Customers, but it wasn’t until August 5th that the MyTouch was released to everyone. This differed from the G1 launch in that Customers were not simply pre- registering (paying for the phone, but receiving it on the day it was made available to everyone), but truly ordering the phone (paying for it and receiving it immediately). So how did interest in the MyTouch launch fare compared to interest in the G1 around its launch?

• T-Mobile drove nearly all traffic from on site ads and banner ads to the microsites around the time of launch. T-MobileG1.com saw 1.15M visitors in October 2008 (launch month). T-MobileMyTouch.com saw 531K visitors in July (Customer launch month) and 544K visitors in August 2009 (general population launch month). Though the spike seen the week of the G1 launch was certainly influenced by a G1 link being displayed on the Google.com homepage, it’s clear overall interest in the MyTouch around launch generally paled in comparison to interest in the G1 around launch
• Traffic to T-MobileMyTouch.com was highest after the release of the celebrity filled television commercial, indicating T-Mobile held off on a media blitz around the MyTouch until after it was released
• Though interest in the MyTouch is less than the G1, it has attracted more consistent interest. Even at 7 weeks post launch, interest in the MyTouch has not fallen off from prelaunch interest, while interest in the G1 had fallen off sharply from levels seen prior to launch

Interest, of course, is only half the story. To truly understand how the MyTouch launch fared against the G1 launch, we’d have to look at the impact on Upgrades and Gross Add Orders around the time of the launches.

These charts are looking at the volume of Customer Gross Add Orders (Those adding a line to their account), Prospect Gross Add Orders (Shoppers purchasing a phone and plan), and Upgrades (Existing Customers purchasing a new phone for an existing line of service) for the months surrounding each device’s launch. Compete was able to attribute many of the increases seen in the charts to the phone launches as orders typically increased dramatically beginning the day of each launch (including the Customer specific MyTouch launch in July)

• Though the MyTouch was released to all shoppers in August, Customers were able upgrade to the MyTouch in July – driving the increase in Upgrades
• Though interest in the MyTouch around launch time was significantly less than interest in the G1 around its launch, the effect on sales appears similar. Order volumes were higher with the G1 launch, but T-Mobile experienced a 103% increase in upgrades in July 2009 compared to a 20% increase in upgrades in October 2008. This not only indicates a larger impact on Upgrades with the MyTouch launch (as compared to the G1 launch), but also points to the success of T-Mobile’s “Customer First” approach. Not only did both T-Mobile launches lead to increases in Upgrades, but the MyTouch launch also likely drove increases in Customer satisfaction as Customers enjoyed a period of exclusivity
• The G1 launch definitely appears to have had a larger impact on Prospect Gross Add orders than the MyTouch launch, likely due to less offline fanfare than was seen with the G1

One thing that we haven’t discussed in detail is the fundamental differences between the two launches. The media blitz around the G1, prior to launch, was intense as Google was also pushing its first Android device. Beyond local market campaigns (skydivers in SF for example), publicity around the MyTouch prior to launch was concentrated online. As seen in the first chart, it wasn’t until after the launch that Whoopi Goldberg, Phil Jackson, and Jesse James came together for the commercial. This is a different approach than we’ve seen in the past from Carrier’s launching marquee devices, and it will be very interesting to see if this strategy leads to sustained interest and sales in the MyTouch into the holiday season.

Over the next two years, I could save $721 in cell phone bills if I switched to a 1000 anytime minute individual T-Mobile plan plus 300 text messages and unlimited web.

That’s according to BillShrink.com, a site that tells you which wireless carrier could save you money when you enter information about your cell phone usage, what you are paying, and where you use the phone. The site offers a similar service for saving money on credit card bills, as well as helping users find the cheapest gas. To give you a better sense of what the BillShrink.com results look like, I’ve included a screenshot of my top result.

BillShrink.com has recently been given a lot of publicity due to its relationship with the wireless carrier T-Mobile, as T-Mobile consistently - though not always- comes up as the best value for a wireless shopper. Billshrink.com is prominently featured in T-Mobile’s new online and TV ad campaign (alongside Catherine Zeta-Jones) that encourages anyone and everyone to use Billshrink.com to see which service and plan will save them the most money while providing them with ample coverage.

So how has this relationship affected T-Mobile and BillShrink.com? Is it a mutually beneficial relationship, or is one side reaping more benefits? We can start by looking at traffic to BillShrink.com over the past year.

• From this chart we can see that T-Mobile appears to have had a large impact on traffic to BillShrink.com. Though T-Mobile started including links on its site for BillShrink.com in March, it’s clear the largest impact occurred when it began its broader campaign in May.
• In addition to an increase in traffic, we can further tell this relationship with T-Mobile has impacted Billshrink.com as 43% of visitors to Billshrink.com used the Wireless Plan area of the site in May, compared to only 22% using the wireless area in March.

Looking at data on Compete.com, we found that the T-Mobile campaign seems to be giving Billshrink.com a significant boost: the carrier accounted for 12.8% of all referrals to BillShrink.com, and was the destination site for 7.4% of all visitors to BillShrink.com.

All this data certainly tells me that the T-Mobile relationship has benefited BillShrink.com. T-Mobile, however, is the one that went out on a limb by telling consumers to check this site and see which carrier will save them the most money. So has this campaign benefited T-Mobile too? To get a sense of the impact, we looked at how many T-Mobile shoppers are also visiting BIllShrink.com.

This chart is looking at the volume of T-Mobile.com visitors also visiting BillShrink.com, represented by the blue bars and mapped to the right axis. The diamonds represent the % of overall T-Mobile.com traffic that also used BillShrink.com in the given month, and is mapped to the right axis. So what does this chart show us?

• Since the relationship began, there has been an increase in T-Mobile.com visitors also using BillShrink.com, shown by the blue bars. Unfortunately for T-Mobile, even with a 211% M-O-M increase in the volume of visitors visiting both sites in May, this still represents less than 2% of overall traffic, shown by the diamonds.
• Breaking this down a little further, we found that 49% of the T-Mobile.com visitors also using BillShrink.com in May were T-Mobile Customers, which is likely not the target group T-Mobile is hoping will use BillShrink.com.

To further investigate the impact on T-Mobile, I also took a look at how many of the T-Mobile.com visitors also using BillShrink.com went on to purchase within the same month (either a phone and plan or an upgrade) on T-Mobile.com. The results were negligible, indicating sending T-Mobile shoppers to BillShrink.com has not yet had an impact on shoppers purchasing on T-Mobile.com.

So it seems as though this relationship is mainly benefiting only one side, but there is an important additional factor we should not ignore. I’ve been in three T-Mobile retail stores lately, and all of them have computers set up for shoppers to use BillShrink.com (though we should note we cannot track activity on BillShrink.com from T-Mobile stores). I imagine this is a very powerful tool for T-Mobile Sales reps, as it is hard for a shopper to argue that they need to continue to shop when BillShrink.com is showing them T-Mobile will save them the most money. I have a hunch that BillShrink.com is actually having a larger impact on offline sales than we’ve seen online so far.

This campaign only truly began in May, so in the coming months we will be watching to see if it starts to have a bigger impact on T-Mobile.com sales. Still, T-Mobile’s use of Billshrink.com in its campaign was creative, and in the long run will likely benefit the carrier as T-Mobile continues to promote it heavily and more shoppers continue to use BillShrink.com. T-Mobile has found a way to promote its value and its growing coverage area while using an independent company to validate its claims.

So, now that I know I could save $700 over the next two years by switching to T-Mobile, am I going to? To be honest, I replaced my 1st generation iPhone with the 3rd generation iPhone last Friday. For me, more went into my wireless phone and plan purchase decision than just the cost.

BillShrink.com may not have convinced me to switch, but I have no doubt that for many wireless shoppers finding the best value is the most important thing in their wireless phone and plan decision, and BillShrink.com will likely help them in that decision.

Twitter may be relatively new in the social networking field, but with big leaps in traffic and visits and nearly 8,000,000 visitors to the website in February, it’s certainly making a splash. With a recent site redesign that gives users easy access to information about what users are talking about and the ability to search public posts (or “tweets”), Twitter could become a barometer for what’s hot in current events and on the web.

Twitter’s big draw is allowing users to “micro blog” by publicizing what they are up to or what’s on their minds (in 140 characters or less) to the people who follow their updates. On March 5th, Twitter began testing a search box in the navigation, as well as a link for “Twitter Trends” that tells you which topics are most talked about on Twitter right now.

Twitter Trends looks at what’s being talked about right now—in the case of this screenshot, what was being talked about on March 11th at about 11 a.m. Although this is interesting to track, I wanted to take a look at what people were actively looking for using Twitter Search, a feature launched in July 2008.

Prior to March 5th, the Search function could only be accessed by typing “search.twitter.com” into the browser, or by clicking a link at the very bottom of the page on the Twitter site. Still, popularity of this feature has been climbing steadily over the last few months, as shown in the chart below.

Those using the search function tend to be more interested in what’s hot in the technological and marketing world than the current events-oriented topics that show up in Twitter Trends. The table below shows the top search terms Twitter users have searched on since search began in July 2008.

Though Obama and iPhone make the list, the top 10 terms are dominated by individuals, companies, and unique websites that are not household names.

• Sleep.fm is a social alarm clock that allows people to set their own alarms for whatever they may need.
• Chris Knight is CEO of ezinearticles, which is a popular website on which authors can publish articles and email newsletter publishers can search a database of articles for their newsletter. Ezinearticles.com also, of course, allows anyone to go to the site and read articles of interest to them.
• TheSixtyOne is a website for music lovers, designed to allow musicians to upload their music and have thousands of listeners rate their songs.
• Gary Vaynerchuk (GaryVee) is the Director of Operations at Wine Library in Springfield, NJ, and has his own video blog in which he tastes and reviews wines.
• AJ Vaynerchuk (AJV) is the co founder (along with GaryVee) of PleaseDressMe, a t-shirt search engine which also features a t-shirt of the day.
• FollowFriday is a Twitter tag (denoted by the “#”) which users can employ to promote other Twitterers by including “#followfriday” in their tweets with “the name of Twitter users [they would] like others to follow.”

So what do all these top search terms have in common? They all use twitter aggressively as part of their marketing strategy. Twitter has helped connect these people and companies to a broader audience, creating buzz and curiosity about who and what they are.

The most searched top ten list is likely to change, however, if this testing of search in the navigation goes well and we see a full roll out. When a larger audience uses the search feature, we will begin to get a better picture of what interests the masses. This is definitely something I will explore after a couple of months of broader usage.

Until then, I’ll use Twitter Trends to keep track of what people are talking about—which, as of right now (Thursday March 12th), are #unleash, Willis Tower, #sxsw, Google Voice, and Ellen.

A few weeks ago, I logged on to Facebook to see if any of my friends had dared to challenge me in another game of word twist. As was expected, due to my unprecedented dominance in the game, no one had. What was not expected, however, was an inconspicuous link at the top of the page telling me to try the “New” Facebook. So, I decided to check it out.

This “New” Facebook had an entirely different layout, putting many elements of friends’ Profiles on various tabs and allowing for greater control of what your friends see on your profile. In my opinion, the change was an upgrade. Gone were the days of needing to scroll past super pokes, ninja and pirate fights, graffiti, aquariums, and the latest roshombo matches to write on the walls of friends who don’t seem to know how to click “no” to application invites. In general, things felt cleaner and easier to use. Not everybody sees it the way I do though. When I showed it to my boyfriend, he was appalled at the changes. He had gotten used to Facebook’s layout and did not want to go through the hassle of learning a new layout and figuring out how to do what he wants to do on Facebook. Luckily for him, Facebook was kind enough to put a link at the top of the “New” Facebook allowing you to go back to the “old” Facebook experience. He eagerly went back to the familiar styles he has come to love. Facebook is clearly being cautious with this release, providing links to allow users to give feedback and input prior to the full release. A friend who signed up for Facebook last week was even introduced to the “old” Facebook, rather than pushed to the new, indicating Facebook is not ready to make the new site the standard. The “beta” testing style of this release made me curious as to how many Facebook users have decided to check out the “New” Facebook since its rollout.

Since it’s rollout, the “New” Facebook has progressively attracted more visitors as the weeks of summer roll by. As of the week of August 10th, more than half of all Facebook users have at least checked out the new site. By the week of August 17th, that visitor count had topped 60% of all Facebook users. Because Facebook has slowly rolled out this new site, inviting more and more people to check out the “New” Facebook each week, this chart only tells us half the story. It is also important to look at how many users checked out the “New” facebook and then decided to go back to the old style in the same session.

Facebook users using the “New” Facebook are slowly trending towards only using it, rather than clicking to go back to the old. This has leveled off in the last couple of weeks, holding steady at about 40% of Facebook users checking out the new site deciding to click back to the old. Having 60% of users continue on to use the new site is good news for Facebook, as it indicates users are beginning to come around to the new style. It is clear that Facebook has learned and grown from its last major new release. For those of you that don’t recall, in Sept. 2006 Facebook suddenly unveiled its “mini feed”which shocked and scared off many of its users with its openess and seemingly invasion of privacy. This time around, Facebook is letting its users get accostomed to the new style at their own pace, as well as allowing them to provide feedback regarding the new design. Hopefully for Facebook, this will result in more satisfied users, while –in my opinion–providing users with a cleaner, more streamlined Facebook experience.

I was playing around with the fancy new chat feature in Facebook a couple nights ago, and started talking to my college buddy from a few years back. Soon I was chatting with my boyfriend’s mom, and eventually started talking to my 11 year-old cousin. I started to realize just how clear it’s become that Facebook is no longer just for college kids. In fact, social networking is beginning to spread to the population regardless of age. As detailed in the recent Compete webinar on Segment-Driven Marketing, 92% of marketing professionals say their company uses segmentation to manage their online advertising and /or search marketing. Judging by the amount of ads for hip, cool prepaid phones, trendy clothing and “hot shoes,” I’d say companies see Facebook and other social networking sites as the perfect place to target that “young adult” audience. With people of every demographic beginning to use these sites, is this really a smart way to spend their ad budgets?

I made use of Compete’s Behavior Match product to find out. I know from discussions with our clients that wireless carriers specifically are very interested in the young adult segment, so I thought I’d do some analysis on the young adults we’ve seen shopping carrier sites. I created a segment of “Young Adult Wireless Prospects”, defined as anyone from 18-34 who were seen visiting a wireless carrier site (but not seen as acting like a customer of that site), and looked at which sites they over-index on as compared to the internet population as a whole.

*Read as: Young Adult Wireless Prospects are 1.5x more likely to visit Facebook than the average internet user.

While Young Adult Wireless Prospects do over-index on Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube it is not by a staggering amount, as on average Young Adult Wireless Prospects only visit the big social networking sites 1.4 times as often as the general internet population. One can’t deny that getting your message and name out to the millions of people visiting these sites is an impressive thing (though expensive), but in terms of segment-based marketing strategies, I think the wireless companies may be missing the mark.

There is another category of sites Young Adult Wireless Prospects over-index on; Computer and Website Personalization sites appear high and often on the Behavior Match indexing report. Specifically, Young Adult Wireless Prospects over-index on sites designed to help you make your MySpace page or Facebook profile “cooler.”

Personalization sites for the social networking sites generally have a higher concentration of the Young Adult Wireless Prospect crowd than the social networking sites themselves (and are also all ad-supported). But would these consumers be susceptible to marketing messages? Are they engaged on these sites?

This chart is looking at the number of visits each domain sees on a monthly basis. Visits are a good way to measure if a site is seeing enough repeat visitors to make advertising on the site effective. We can see that Freeweblayouts.net and Freepagegraphics.com see a lot of repeat visitors, with around 4 million and 3 million visits a month, respectively. Imikimi.com isn’t far behind with about 1.5 million visits and the rest are tight around the 500,000 mark. It appears as though these sites are more than just a one-stop shop for their users.

So what does all this mean? Major websites will always be a good place to advertise, but when it comes to behaviorally segmenting Young Adult Wireless Prospects, there could be a more efficient way to go about it. Within the category of Computer and Website Personalization sites alone, there are a few sites that receive over a million users a month and on which Young Adult Wireless Prospects are 3.5X more likely to visit than the internet population in general. Messaging on these sites could be a perfect way to efficiently target a key segment in the wireless industry, while still getting the message out to millions of people.

Lately, I seem to be getting more invites to view a Google document (rather than a Word document). I guess I’m not surprised though. It has been just over a year since Google Docs and Spreadsheets was officially released, and it has been just under a year since Microsoft released Office 2007. As many know, Office 2007 includes a whole new interface that is unfamiliar, and potentially frustrating, to the veteran Office user. Google Docs and Spreadsheets have also undergone changes, with a major user interface overhaul in June and the release of Google Presentation in September. After receiving my 4th invitation to view a Google document in 2 weeks, I decided to take a look at traffic to Google Docs and Spreadsheets, since its bundled release in October 2006*. The chart below depicts overall traffic to Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and includes the break down of those that viewed a document and those that viewed a spreadsheet.

This chart shows us three things.

1. The user interface overhaul and subsequent intense marketing in June seems to have ignited traffic to Google Docs and Spreadsheets.
2. Usage of Google Docs is consistently comparable with usage of Google Spreadsheets.
3. In its first full year, Google Docs and Spreadsheets has seen an 84% year-over-year increase.

After looking at the traffic, I wanted to go a little deeper in analysis. Another measure of a site’s success is the average stay on that site, defined as time spent per visit (in minutes).

Here we see that while traffic to Google Docs and Spreadsheets may be comparable, Google Spreadsheets originally saw much higher attention than Google Docs. Attention evened out when traffic increased in June, suggesting that people are not only viewing both Google documents and Google spreadsheets, but are equally engaged with each. Increased engagement indicates that people intend to continue to use these applications, and they are not novelties.

I expect this trend to continue, and the growth of Google Docs and Spreadsheets to be substantial. Google Docs and Spreadsheets are free and easy to use. In addition, they offer online sharing and collaboration, which is becoming a complete necessity in today’s workplace. The more people share links to their documents, the more people will be exposed to Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Google doesn’t have to do much, as Docs and Spreadsheets are viral by nature and should continue to spread. Google can move on to saving the world (such as with this project), while users continue to spread the news about a possible alternative to Office 2007.

*Google Spreadsheets was released in June 2006, but then bundled with the Google Documents release in September.