Groupon CEO Andrew Mason came up with a great idea the other day that has nothing to do with daily deals. Mason, who' was ousted after his company reported poor results in the fourth quarter, tweeted a proposal that would have profound implications for anyone struggling to reach Inbox Zero nirvana:

As Business Insider has subsequently reported, a software engineer at the company took the challenge and wrote a script to apply the 50-words-and-under limit to Gmail.

When compared to Twitter's 140-character limit, this is actually quite generous. Since that quota evens out to about 25 words, you would now have double the amount to say in an email than what you might tweet. As Twitter users well know, crafting tweets can be tricky, but you can pretty much get across whatever you need to say. With 50 words, you would have no excuse.

Enforcing discipline would improve the content of most emails. There's a timeworn case to be made that shorter is better. For instance, Mark Twain once apologized for writing a long letter because he didn't have time to write a short one. Shakespeare also opined (via Polonius in Hamlet) that "brevity is the soul of wit." In addition, you would also automatically screen out a lot of spam and, for us journalists, press releases. Just like in Twitter, if a company wanted to alert you about a press release, they could send a sentence with a link, rather than the whole enchilada.

Despite the evidence, though, not everyone is convinced this is a good idea. Susan Etlinger, an analyst with the Altimeter Group, says that a 50-word limit is "solving the wrong problem." In her view, the issue with emails isn't their length but their sheer number. "You have to mentally triage — read and respond, ignore — that takes a lot of mental energy," she says. She also thinks that unless there was an industry-wide agreement on a 50-word length, adherence to the restriction would be spotty at best.

Joshua Lyman, an independent tech consultant, says that forcing shorter emails might lead to a "chat-like environment" where you'd get three emails instead of one. "It could certainly not help," he says. Lyman says that a word limit would, however, "make people think about their emails."

Despite the potential downsides, I think a word limit is worth a try. Email has become a scourge. Apps like Mailbox are a step in the right direction, but we need to do the equivalent of wiring our jaws shut at this point. A diet of 50 words or less will keep our inboxes lean and mean, especially if we've already set up a filter for those bloated missives from Groupon.

Image courtesy of Flickr, TechCrunch






























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Advertising has  evolved rapidly over the last century.


Before the advent of radio and television all you had was the printed advertisement. Ads appeared in newspapers and magazines.

Direct mail emerged and many companies leveraged their brand with brochures and leaflets dropped straight into the letterboxes of houses across cities and suburbs.

The madmen of Madison avenue became more creative when television allowed them to beam ideas and images into mullions of homes via a 30 second ad spot.

Today television advertising is still strong but  print advertising is rapidly shrinking and has now been surpassed by digital. It is estimated that digital online advertising could reach 30-50% of all advertising spend in the next ten years.

With so much of our media consumption being conducted via computers, tablets and smart phones, that may even be a conservative number.

Facebook Ads are the New Kid on the Block

Digital Advertising has for the past 15 years been dominated by the the ever present display banner ads. Flashing, twirling and in your face ads. It is estimated that several hundred billion of these appear every month on computer screens. The “Google Display Network” is one of the big kids on this global block.

In the last few years the new kid on the block has arrived and their name is “Facebook”.

Facebook advertising started cheaply and low key. In recent times the costs have increased significantly by 40% plus and the number of ads that crowd the page have  increased significantly. Facebook is attempting to  monetize its 1 billion users.

It now needs to keep its public shareholders happy.

Is the Google Ad Network More Effective?

Google earns 95% of its money from advertising. The Google Display Network” is 20% of this income mix.  Facebook also generates most of its revenue from advertising, but does “new” mean “better”?

A recent study by Wordstream had a close look at the reach and effectiveness of each and the results were surprising.

• Facebook has a huge reach of nearly 1 billion users with 1 trillion page views per month
• Facebook reaches 51% of the world’s internet users
• Google reaches 90% of all internet users with its online assets including YouTube, Blogger and Gmail
• Google serves up 180 billion “Ad” impressions per month
• Facebook revenues in Q1, 2012 were $1.06 billion
• Google’s Display Network generated $2.9 billion

The study revealed though that there was huge difference in effectiveness.

• Facebook  ads receive a “Click Through Rate” (CTR) of 0.051% in the USA
• CTR for Google ads is an average of 0.4%

This is almost 10 times higher than a Facebook ad!

Below in the infographic are many other measurements that look at key elements such as targeting options, formats, mobile and the life of an ad on Facebook.


Infographic Source: © WordStream

What About You?

Which has been effective for your advertising campaigns? Have you tried Facebook ads?

Have you been advertising on the Google Display network? Did it work for you? Would you do it again?

Look forward to hearing your stories.





































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If you enjoy video chatting over Gmail the way you’ve been doing it since 2008, better wave your last goodbyes to your buddy list.

Starting Monday, and continuing over the next few weeks, Google is going to be replacing Gmail video chat with Google+ Hangouts. “Unlike the old video chat, which was based on peer-to-peer technology, Hangouts utilize the power of Google’s network to deliver higher reliability and enhanced quality,” reads the explanatory blog post written by the Gmail team.

“You’ll be able to chat with all the same people you did before — and, in fact, with Hangouts you’ll now be able to reach them not only when they are using Gmail, but also if they are on Google+ in the browser or on their Android or iOS devices.”

The search giant is eager to promote the use of its social network, and has in the past attempted to blur the lines between users of Gmail, Google Maps and other Google services. If you’re logged into any of them, the company says, you’re logged into Google+.

Nefarious network-boosting purposes aside, Google Hangouts is clearly a superior technology. In our experience, Gmail video chat had a tendency to stutter and occasionally quit — a quality shared in the past with iChat video, but not with Apple’s Facetime, Skype or Google Hangouts.

Hangouts also scales a lot better, making it much easier to add new people to the meeting. Audio is spectacularly good at long range. It’s likely the best choice for a company looking for a free alternative to Cisco Telepresence, for example.

And then there’s the feature that the Gmail team hints at in its blog — the ability to add moustaches, beards, halos and other personal decorations — not to mention cat and dog masks — which will appear to follow you throughout the chat.

Are you sad to see Gmail video chat go, or excited to see how Hangouts can boost your Gmail experience? Let us know in the comments.



































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Yahoo Mail-subscribing-households use 11% more electricity per year than Gmail households, a recent study by Opower found. That adds up to nearly a whole extra month of electricity, about an extra $110 per year.


“It’s as if, relative to the average Yahoo household, the average Gmailer is strictly hang-drying their laundry, forgoing high-definition TV, and hand-washing their dishes with cold water for a year,” Opower writes in its’ blog.


So what makes for this drastic disparity in energy usage? Opower — a research company that unpacks and analyzes energy data to present to everyday consumers in an actionable way — found that the problem is one of “correlation not causation.” Meaning that the email domains aren’t driving the issue of energy usage. Instead, discrepancies are related to the core demographics of each site’s users.

“Yahoo subscribers tend to live in suburbs, be in longterm relationships, have a family,” says Barry Fischer, a head writer and a research for Opower. “Those types of lifestyle characteristics carry with them greater energy needs compared to Gmail household. [Gmailers] are found more in urban areas, are younger and are single.”

Ultimately, Opower found that even though Yahoo users live in larger residences than Gmail users, Yahoo subscribers need more electricity per square foot than Gmail users.

Opower matched up 2011 electricity rates with more than 1.5 million email addresses over 23 states to draw their conclusions — focusing on Gmail and Yahoo specifically because they were the top two email service providers of those surveyed, Fischer told Mashable.

Though Opower only analyzed 2011 data, Fischer says he believes similar patterns of higher Yahoo energy usage would have been found in previous years.

But Yahoo users can’t simply cut down on electricity charges now by signing up for a Gmail account. It’s all about lifestyle adjustments to cut back on overall energy costs, Opower says.
See more about the differences in Yahoo and Gmail users’ energy spending in the infographics below. Tell us how you cut down on energy costs in your home in the comments:









































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