Category Archives: Online
Digital Efficiencies and Recruiting
Written on February 1, 2013 at 3:02 pm, by Inferential Focus
In 2012, the 500 member in-house recruiting staff at General Electric filled most of GE’s 25,000 openings, helped by LinkedIn and BranchOut. About 10 percent of the positions filled were executive and senior professional positions formerly filled by executive recruiting companies such as Heidrick & Struggles, Korn/Ferry and Spencer Stuart. The GE team completed most Continue Reading »
Postal Service Gets With the Times
Written on November 30, 2012 at 2:42 pm, by Inferential Focus
Starting December 12, the U.S. Postal Service will begin a test of same day delivery service for online shoppers residing in San Francisco – with additional plans to expand this program next year into Boston, New York and Chicago. Could such an offering eventually become the moneymaker the Postal Service needs to replace the Continue Reading »
Mailboxes and General Stores: What Year is This?
Written on November 19, 2012 at 7:00 am, by Inferential Focus
Are mailboxes and general stores new/old solutions for contemporary service? For one, the mailbox is answering the call for delivery of online purchases. Amazon is now teaming up with Staples, Radio Shack, 7-Eleven and Albertsons for its Amazon Locker Service. The physical retailers will install Amazon lockers in their stores, allowing customers to buy from Continue Reading »
Faking It
Written on October 19, 2012 at 2:56 pm, by Inferential Focus
“Trust. But verify.” That was President Ronald Reagan’s perspective on international diplomacy. Increasingly, that is advice all individuals, all the time, need to apply. On Amazon.com, for instance, roughly 80 percent of all reviews are four stars or higher, a positive perspective that defies human nature. Yelp!, which knows that fake reviews undermine its Continue Reading »
Streaming the Falling
Written on October 17, 2012 at 4:11 pm, by Inferential Focus
When skydiver Felix Baumgartner fell from near space – about 23 miles above the earth’s surface – he became the first free-falling human to break the sound barrier. However, that may not have been the only record set. At the peak of the YouTube coverage of the event, there were approximately 8 million concurrent Continue Reading »
It’s All About Me
Written on October 8, 2012 at 6:48 pm, by Inferential Focus
Stop smoking and talk about yourself? Lose weight by talking about yourself? Quit Alcoholics Anonymous and, right, talk about yourself. What is happening here? Between 30 and 40 percent of everyday conversation consists of people talking about themselves. For online social media, that figure jumps to 80 percent. Evidently, without our counterparts in Continue Reading »
Bigger is No Longer Better
Written on September 4, 2012 at 6:01 pm, by Inferential Focus
Is “too big to fail” in retailing becoming “too big is failing”? For the past few years, we have written about the ways in which consumers have gained control over their shopping experience, and one of the results of that control is the beginning of the end of the big-box era (see, “The Consumer Continue Reading »
Data Is Valuable, But Don’t Expect Anything For It.
Written on July 26, 2012 at 3:45 pm, by Inferential Focus
Personal, a website that launched last November, encourages members to upload information (ranging from the trivial to the sensitive, including items such as student loan records, medical prescriptions and retirement accounts) into a “vault” and then grant access to other people or companies as they choose. Later this year, Personal plans to add a marketplace Continue Reading »
Fact or Fiction?
Written on July 10, 2012 at 7:00 am, by ifblogadmin
Thor/Forge Books, Macmillian’s science-fiction division, will soon be the first mainstream publisher to open an e-book store. It will also become the first major house to strip its e-books of anti-piracy software (DRM), allowing books to be read on any e-reading device and shared with friends. Thor’s move comes on the heels of the March Continue Reading »
Making a Move in Distribution
Written on May 25, 2012 at 6:12 pm, by ifblogadmin
New Jersey’s Governor Chris Christie announced that Amazon will build two large distribution centers, each about one million square feet, in New Jersey. The crux of Christie’s announcement was that the state will now be able to collect sales tax from Amazon on all goods sold in the state. While the focus of the Continue Reading »
