Neal's Notes

So your 13-year old son is seemingly spending every waking moment hunched over his Xbox, PS Vita, phone, tablet or (doubtful but some pre-teens and teens still use ‘em) laptop playing one endless video game after another. You’ve morphed into an avatar from his perspective; the video games have become his real world.

What do you do?

Well, if he’s really good, let him play on. eSports has finally reached critical mass and has become a multi-billion dollar business, notes market research firm SuperData Research.

Note the following from a trends brief the company put out last April:

• More than 71 million worldwide watch competitive gaming. In fact, about 14.9 million people tuned in to the 2013 World Series; last year 32 million watched the League of Legends Season 3 World Championship – more than double the audience for our so-called ‘national pastime’!

• The average eSports viewer watches 19 times a month; average session is more than two hours;

• eSports is becoming a revenue driver and marketing vehicle for online game publishers and major brands; former like Riot Games, Wargaming and Valve; examples of latter include Coca-Cola and Intel;

• The International 2013: Dota 2 prize pool was more than $2.8 million; total prize money from all prize pools last year was about $25 million.

As reported by CBS News, companies like Amazon also see such potential in eSports that it paid almost $1 billion for Twitch, a social network that allows users to watch/stream video games live.

“Like sports, you want to watch it live,” said Twitch COO Kevin Lin. “You want to be there when something interesting happens. You want to be there for that moment and share it as a communal experience. It’s very much like being in a crowd, only digitally.”

St. Louis-based Clix, a digital marketing agency, added that even the U.S. government and academic institutions are getting onboard:

“Professional gamers from around the world are being granted work visas similar to professional athletes to compete on American soil; even Robert Morris University (Chicago) has fielded a varsity team to compete in competitions for thousands of dollars in scholarship winnings.”

Market research firm IHS Technology projects consumers will not only spend 6.6 billion hours watching competitive gaming by 2018 (up from 1.3 billion in 2013), but video of eSports will be worth major ka-ching too – about $300 million by 2018.

Michael O’Dell, eSports manager for Team Dignitas, said that live streaming services have been a major factor in the dramatic growth of eSports.

“Twitch especially has made it easy to tune in, with its multi-platform accessibility and low barriers to entry for users on both sides of the streaming spectrum,” said O’Dell.

And Anthony Cornish, marketing director for The Pokémon Company, told MCV (a trade news/community site for professionals working within the UK and international video games market), that the social aspects of streaming will accelerate the industry’s growth.

“The fan communities surrounding all games have been galvanized by social media and online play,” said Cornish. “Larger competitive gaming events are also drawing crowds that fill arenas and capturing online views that rival cable show audiences. Competitive gaming has mass appeal and isn’t as niche as many think.”

To wit, at Valve’s Data 2: The International tournament, more than 10,000 gaming aficionados at sold-out Key Arena in Seattle watched team Newbee rout Vici Gaming three games to one (best of five format). The take: just over $5 million of the more than $10 million in prize money.

So if Junior’s a whiz at League of Legends, Dota 2 and Starcraft II, and is only pulling a high C in algebra, cut him some slack. Those flyin’ fingers and that dazzling hand/eye coordination just might yield large dividends someday.

Last week after a nice lunch with my sister, niece, brother-in-law and cousin, I got corralled into following them into Nordstrom’s in downtown San Francisco. I quickly realized that with only two magazines, a book, and a smartphone, it would be a challenging afternoon.

And once my niece pulled about a half-dozen outfits off a rack and said “I just want to try on a few things,” the situation became untenable. Elevated heart rate. Accelerated pulse. Beads of sweat on forehead. If the store had started playing Slim Whitman songs, my head would have exploded, similar to what happened to the little green Martians in Tim Burton’s campy Mars Attacks.

Quickly gave everyone a hug and said I was dashing out to Ghirardelli’s for a sundae (dark chocolate hot fudge; medical studies have indicated dark chocolate’s good for you, ergo, Ghirardelli’s sundaes are healthy. Bit of twisted logic but effective for assuaging any guilt feelings).

But while scraping away the last nanometer of ice cream, it got me thinking about how technology has radically changed the fashion industry in just a few short years.

“Technology is now completely ingrained in our interaction and relationship with fashion retail,” said Arabella James, a futures consultant at The Future Laboratory. “It’s now part of every shopping moment, from inspiration and production to purchase decision and transaction.”

A few examples:

Forbes recently estimated that 3D printing will be a $3.1 billion industry by 2016; $5.2 billion by 2020. Models have already started wearing 3D-printed couture. And Apparel predicts the day will soon be at hand to see it, buy it, and print it shopping – “a consumer will spot a must-have article of clothing, complete the checkout transaction in seconds, and sit back and watch as their personal 3D printer whips up a custom fitted version right in the comfort of his home.”

And Anish Singh, CTO of Fashion GPS, added that we’ll soon see designers in offices, apartments and garages developing accessory prototypes or implementing full-on production sans middlemen.

“Imagine designers creating scale models of – well – of models wearing the designs they’ve created; how might those scale models be used to popularize and sell fashion? The possibilities are endless. The impacts will be enormous,” said Singh.

News.com.au recently wrote about C&A, a Dutch chain of fashion retail clothing stores that launched a campaign combining online and in-store consumer decision making. Dubbed FashionLike, whenever someone ‘likes’ an item of clothing online at the C&A website, the ‘like’ “gets totaled on a screen embedded in a clothes hanger on the rack in store. Consumers can then decide whether they want the more popular clothes with the larger number of ‘likes’ or opt for the ‘less liked’ pieces.”

And designer Rebecca Minkoff opened two tech savvy stores in New York and San Francisco this month. As reported by Elizabeth Holmes in The Wall Street Journal, each store has a large screen where customers can browse merchandise or request items in specific sizes to try on.

The store also texts shoppers when a fitting room is free and inside the room, a touch screen mirror is available to get more items or ask for assistance.

“Merchandise tags equipped with radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology track which items customers try on, and provide the store with a precise, real-time view of inventory. Meanwhile, employees use iPads to handle shoppers’ requests and check out from anywhere in the store,” said Holmes.

We’ve also seen innumerable stories about wearables – especially watches – over the past 12-18 months. But there have been a few recent developments with other types of wearables that are generating some buzz.

One of these is MICA – My Intelligent Communication Accessory. The $495 intelligent bracelet (announced Nov. 17) not only has precious gems and Ayers snakeskin, but includes two years of AT&T wireless data service provided by Intel. Opening Ceremony, an international retailer, designed the bracelet; it was engineered by Intel. Intel says the accessory will be available next month at Opening Ceremony New York and Los Angeles, select Barneys New York locations, and online at Openingceremony.us and Barneys.com.

And earlier this year, Cuff rolled out a nine-piece line of wearables, including bracelets, necklaces and, for the men, a key chain, all accompanied by the CuffLinc device. The Cuff app alerts people wearers designate as “first responders” when help is needed. Cuff sends an SOS to people you choose, and it doesn’t stop until someone responds. Designated people receive your location, live audio, and other relevant information to get you (or a loved one) any required assistance.

Lastly, renowned international designer Diane von Furstenberg unveiled Made for Glass – a designer collection for Google Glass.

Von Furstenberg best summed up the mind meld of fashion and technology:

“The definition of fashion is ‘l’air du temps,’ –the essence of the time we live in, so it is absolutely normal that it meets technology.”

Quality content. Content marketing. Mobile-friendly content. Ad retargeting.

Scores of pundits and prognosticators awake and arise this time of year from their marketing crypts to make predictions, outline scenarios on what they see as hot digital marketing trends for the upcoming year. And we see a lot of those aforementioned terms – and others – you know what some of them are – year-after-year, being bandied about and re-purposed.

To use some pirate vernacular, “arrrggggghhhhhh!”

All good-intentioned, most impart a lot of useful info-nuggets but it’s easy to get lost in the morass.

So is there anything really interesting that might help drive awareness of products/services, and ultimately sales next year?

Yup.

Internet Retailer recently did a search marketing survey (full results being published in November) from mid-September to mid-October encompassing responses from 95 participants; about two-thirds identified themselves as working for web-only retailers.

Some interesting survey snippets:

• 46.2% reported increased traffic to their e-commerce sites over the past year through natural, or organic search;

• 32.9% generated at least half of their online sales through their paid search and organic search programs combined;

• 40.3% said their search marketing budgets increased over the past year;

• 53.3% said they would increase their pay-per-click search spending next year.

So the fight for top rankings via natural search will continue to gain traction.

Flip side of that, as reported by Lizetta Staplefoote in Entrepreneur Magazine, is that paid placements are not going away. Staplefoote said that changes to the Facebook algorithm in 2013 resulted in a 44% decrease in non-sponsored brand content in users’ newsfeed.

“LinkedIn, Twitter, and even Pinterest now offer sponsored content placements and ads that promise specific reach. The days of free reach are over. If you don’t pay, your followers very likely won’t see anything your doing in the social realm,” said Staplefoote.

Staplefoote added that another ’15 marketing trend to watch is that marketing automation tools will change the way you play. B2B businesses, particularly technology companies, have long paved the way in using marketing automation tools.

“However, many businesses have struggled to integrate their existing tools into a single system to take advantage of all the bells and whistles automation systems offer. For those who have made the leap, according to research from the Aberdeen Group, using marketing automation can increase conversion rates by over 50 percent,” noted Staplefoote.

Lastly, we’re also seeing executive titles morph and/or change. McKinsey & Company predicts there will be a 40 percent projected growth in global data generated per year versus only a five percent grow in global IT spending. And as Big Data continues to have a greater impact on e-commerce, New Jersey-based digital marketing agency Lion Five Studios says the relationship between the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) will become even more important:

“The CIO can no longer work in a vacuum…with IT budgets going outside of IT, the new role of the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) is starting to emerge and this trend will only increase as companies place a strategic emphasis on digital content,” noted the studio.

To quote Arte Johnson, best known for his portrayal of a German soldier on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, “verrrrry interesting.”

Watch any NFL game on Sunday, Monday, Thursday, and you’ll see a bevy of commercials espousing that a given car or truck model is sleek, rough, tough, cool, fuel efficient, family-friendly, sporty, ad nauseum. Adjectives like these are music to a car/truck marketer’s ears.

What you don’t see or hear very often is that hackers continue to pose a threat to all sorts of vehicle models – and even smart charging stations for electronic vehicles (EV) may be vulnerable to hacking. Granted, there haven’t been any major security breakdowns and security professionals say that auto manufacturers are making inroads in improving software security. In fact, Andrew Brown, chief technologist for Delphi Automotive said recently that “quite honestly, the vehicles, systems and components today are quite robust and resistant to cyber-security threats.  But that doesn’t mean it’s 100%.”

Added Ed Adams, a security expert:

“There’s an awful lot of code throughout the entire supply chain, not just with the auto manufacturers, but with the infotainment systems and applications like Sirius and Harmon. The fact of life is that software is flawed.”

Cheryl Dancey Balough and Richard C. Balough, co-founders of Chicago-based Balough Law Offices, LLC, said today’s cars have dozens of electrical control units (ECUs) embedded in the body, doors, dash, roof, trunk, seats, wheels, navigation equipment and entertainment centers.

“This architecture provides almost unlimited gateways for external hacking and infection with malware. Some entry points to a car’s ECUs require a direct, hard-wired connection, while others can be accessed wirelessly, including using Wi-Fi or radio-frequency identification (RFID). Once entry is gained, a hacker can take over all of a car’s computer-controlled systems.”

The Baloughs added that in one recent example, a former employee of an Austin, TX-based auto dealer hacked into the computer system and remotely activated the vehicle immobilization system, triggering the ignition system in 100+ vehicles.

“This anti-theft system had been installed by the dealer as a method of addressing non-payment by customers. While the anti-theft device was connected to the car’s horn and ignition, the hacker didn’t take further control of the car,” they noted.

And at last month’s Black Hat conference, security researchers Chris Valasek and Charlie Miller investigated the ‘hackability’ of two dozen different vehicles.

“We examined how a remote attack might work,” said Valasek. “It really depends on the architecture – if you hack the radio, can you send messages to the brakes or the steering?  And if you can, what can you do with them?”

Both researchers emphasized that their results weren’t definitive assertions about actual vehicle security vulnerabilities – they were flagging potential weaknesses.

One model that ranked near the top of the list was the Infiniti Q50 (ironically, which Valasek owns). As reported by Wired, the car “was a model of insecure architecture.” Wired added that the sports sedan has remote keyless entry, Bluetooth, a cellular connection, wireless tire pressure monitoring and an Infiniti Connection system interfacing with a ‘personal assistant’ app on the driver’s smartphone.

“Within the Q50’s network, those radio and telematic components were directly connected to engine and braking systems. And the sedan’s critical driving systems had computer-controlled features like adaptive cruise control and adaptive steering that a hacker could potentially hijack to physically manipulate the car,” said Wired.

Love those remote door locks? Also at Black Hat, Australian security researcher Silvo Cesare illustrated how easy it is to hack a key fob.  According to Wireless Security Watch, Cesare used a software-defined radio to capture and transmit the wireless signals. All the equipment was off-the-shelf – it took Cesare just a few minutes to unlock his girlfriend’s car.

Got a Leaf, Tesla or other EV? Well, your charging station may be vulnerable too.  At last year’s ‘Hack in the Box’ conference in Amsterdam, security analyst Ofer Shezaf said hackers could gain access to smart EV chargers and obtain access to logins and payments.

Again, there hasn’t been a significant security breach at smart charging stations, but digital news outlet Quartz indicated that other technologies for networking/access are being built into smart charging networks. These include RFID, which allow drivers access to power with a touchless card.

“Like using a default or easily guessed password online, these systems could be broken into with little effort,” says Quartz.   “Some charging systems use cellular data connections or even Wi-Fi to connect to other stations or to be accessed for maintenance, also opening doors for hackers.”

Shezaf added that charging networking providers need to take a closer look at security issues. The technology’s still relatively new, but “this is precisely the time to look at it, before it scales up to whole cities and countries.”

As stated earlier, presently, the threat of hackers seizing control of a ‘smart’ car is still minimal, but Andry Rakotonirainy, a professor at Queensland University in Australia, raised a cautionary red flag.

“A vehicle’s communication security over wireless networks cannot be an afterthought and needs to be considered at the early stages of design and deployment from the hardware, software, user and policy point of view,” he said.

Hopefully car and truck manufacturers will get the message and market with another critically important selling angle – that their vehicles are digitally safe.

Drone proponents prefer using the term Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) or UAS for Unmanned Aerial System (latter term includes the entirety of the flying vehicle and the ground-base communications connection connecting the two). Whatever your preferred verbiage is, drones are poised to become a huge global business and the aerial devices are going to have a significant impact across a wide variety of industries.

Historically, the military has been the biggest user/purchaser of drones; The Wall Street Journal estimated that the U.S. military spent about $3 billion on drone programs in 2012. And many aerospace companies continue to develop highly sophisticated machines that are lightweight and easy to assemble/launch.

Columbus, MS-based Stark Aerospace, for instance, recently rolled out ArrowLite™, a small UAS system that supports the U.S. Army Hunter MQ-5B UAS. It weighs less than 7 lbs. and can be assembled and hand-launched in less than 90 seconds.

Looking beyond the military, commercial drones will soon take on much larger roles for businesses and even for individual consumers. BI Intelligence, a research service from Business Insider, estimates that 12% of an estimated $98 billion in cumulative global spending on aerial drones over the next decade will be for commercial purposes. And the San Jose Mercury-News reported that in 2013, there were 15 venture investment deals in drones worth about $79 million. Key players include Andreeson Horowitz (one example – a $10 million investment they made in Airware, which makes software and systems that control drones) and Google Ventures.

“This technology is an extra tool to help an industry be more effective,” said Gretchen West, executive vice president for the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI). “With precision agriculture, for example, it can take pictures of fields so farmers can identify problems they wouldn’t necessarily see walking through the woods. In law enforcement, you can find a child lost in the woods more easily than walking through a field, particularly if there’s bad weather or treacherous ground”

In fact, AUVSI predicts commercial drones could pump almost $14 billion into the U.S. economy between 2015-2018, and over a 10-year period, create more than 100,000 new jobs, including 34,000 in manufacturing.

But there’s a speed bump right now, at least in the United States. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) hasn’t yet legalized commercial drone usage, although it’s expected this will change sometime next year. Meanwhile, West estimates the U.S. is losing $10 billion annually.

“A lot of countries are allowing for flight, and that puts us at a disadvantage,” said West. “We’re seeing U.S. manufacturers realize they’re developing great products they can’t use here, and they’re looking to overseas to fulfill their business model.”

“This market’s going to be huge,” said Ken Loo, a Sunnyvale, CA mechanical engineer who used a 3D printer to create his own UAV. “The possibilities are endless. I know so many people getting into this field now so that they can pounce once the FAA comes up with its rules.”

But it won’t be easy for the FAA. Michael Blades is an analyst with market research firm Frost & Sullivan; he follows the commercial drone market.

“The airspaces in Australia and Brazil, for instance, aren’t nearly as crowded as ours. And the first time one of these unmanned vehicles accidentally takes down a plane, the FAA will be torn apart. So the rule-making process is tricky, because in a way, the sky is a political battleground,” said Blades.

Companies like Google and Amazon aren’t waiting around. Google’s advanced research lab, Google X, announced last week that it’s developing a system of drones to deliver goods. The Wall Street Journal reported that a five-foot wide single-wing prototype from Google’s Project Wing carried supplies including candy bars, dog treats, cattle vaccines, water and radios to two farmers in Queensland, Australia earlier this month. Amazon introduced drone prototypes last year and has asked the FAA for permission to test them in open U.S. airspace; a decision is pending.

The potential commercial uses are endless. Drones have been used in both the U.S. and Canadian real estate markets for more than a year. Vancity Buzz reported that two Vancouver brothers – Jordan and Russ McNab, use a $3,000 ‘quadcopter’ drone to shoot videos of larger homes and mansions to help move properties for their family real estate business. Every time they use the drone, they have to obtain a special flight operations certificate from Transport Canada.

“There are limitations to how high and how close you can fly to things and people,” said Jordan McNab. “For interior shots, we even need to submit a flight plan for the route the quadcopter will take inside a home.”

Some other innovative uses for the aerial devices:

• Last year a team of engineers in California launched the ‘Burrito Bomber,’ a UAV that uses GPS coordinates to drop burritos by parachute;

• David Bird, a professor of wildlife biology at McGill University in Canada, uses a UAV to count birds and polar bears;

• The University of South Dakota is using a drone to capture appealing outdoor shots to help market its Vermillion campus;

• Dave Anderson, who heads up Dana Point, CA-based Captain Dave’s Whale Watching & Dolphin Safari, uses two video-equipped drones to shoot footage of whales and dolphins off the Pacific coast. His first drone video garnered more than eight million YouTube views and has helped boost business.

We’re just on the cusp of seeing this industry explode. Christian Sanz, founder and CEO of drone startup Skycatch summed it up:

“Far from being insidious, airborne peeping toms, drones can be a boon to a host of businesses, from real estate to mining to energy and beyond. They have the potential to add value to our society.”

Last year a student at New York University threw out an interesting challenge – via a Kickstarter campaign, he offered to divulge 60 days worth of private data gleaned from his digital devices.

He raised $2,733 from 213 backers.

And earlier this year, a research team at the University of Trento in Italy reeled in 60 people and their smart phones to participate in an experiment that recorded various personal details and created a marketplace to sell the data. These included phone calls, apps being used, time spent on them, photographs taken, and users’ locations 24/7.

Each week, as reported by MIT Technology Review, the participants took part in an auction to sell the data, e.g., they might want to sell a specific GPS location or total distance traveled, or locations visited on a given day.

While reporting all results could be the topic of another post, in brief, Jacopo Staiano, who headed up the research team, said there were a few key findings:

•  Location is the most valued category of personally identifiable information;
•  Participants valued their information more highly on days that were unusual compared to typical days;
•  People who traveled more each day tended to value their personal information more highly.

Almost 600 ‘auctions’ were conducted among the participants; about $350 worth of Amazon vouchers were given to study participants to reward them for parting with their data.

Google, Facebook, Yahoo, other company heavyweights have long collected data on users and monetized this store of information.

In fact, way back in 2011 (light years by tech standards), futurologists at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland noted in a report that our personal data has become a new ‘asset class.’

But by divulging certain bits and bytes of personal data, have we digitally sold our souls to these companies?

Evgeny Morozov, writing in the New Republic, said at the very least, we may have sold our autonomy down the river:

“Once we reveal we are entering this process – via a search query, a slip in an e-mail, some random emotional outburst detected by our smart glasses – our autonomy is hijacked, as the alluring messages that pop up on our smart phones seek to shift us in a direction favorable to advertisers and government bureaucrats obsessed with regulating how we eat, exercise, or consumer energy. What makes the new data-heavy personalized advertising so cunning is that it leaves us with the illusion that we can make autonomous choices,” said Morozov.

There are other obvious implications with geo-targeted ads and localized marketing as many smart phone users probably don’t even realize that their location may be tracked.

One example is London’s public bicycle systems.  Users assume their ride is anonymous.  Not!

James Siddle a London software engineer, wrote on his blog, The Variable Tree, that a publicly available Transport for London dataset contains bicycle journey start/end points.

“What may surprise you is that this record includes unique customer identifiers, as well as the location and date/time for the start and end of each journey… it means that someone who has access to the data can extract and analyze the journeys made by individual cyclists within London during that time, and with a little effort, it’s possible to find the actual people who have made the journeys,” said Siddle.

So if you’re a tech-savvy burglar, you could theoretically time your home break-ins around when you’d know that someone would probably be out and about on their bike.

And this is data that is not even up for sale!

And to circle back as a closer to the NYU student example –  my last three online purchases were $11.75 to 123ehost for a domain name renewal for a Florida home I own; $30.40 to Pharmapacks for 10 bars of Neutrogena facial cleansing bar (original formula), and $115.01 to LD Products for various printer cartridges and other office supplies.

Reckon with that small sampling alone there’s a potential goldmine of different verticals for marketers – real estate, cosmetics/pharmaceuticals, office supplies, computer equipment/accessories, ad nauseum.

At any rate, it’s inevitable that more buyer/seller markets for personal data will emerge online – some legit, others probably somewhat nefarious.

The MIT Technology Review put it in perspective:

“One way or another, we are all going to have to think much more carefully about the value of our personal data, whether we are happy to sell it or not and if so, for how much?”

So what’s your opening bid?

Craft breweries have produced scores of award-winning beers over the years and according to the Houston Chronicle, will garner sales over $7 billion nationwide in 2014. But just having a tasty ale or lager is no guarantee these days for long-term business success as the gigantic ad/marketing budgets of the major breweries can drown out craft breweries attempts to snare market share.

“The number of new craft breweries has exploded in the past few years and the market is getting crowded,” said Melani Gordon, who co-founded San Diego-based TapHunter.  The company provides on- and off-premise accounts with time- and money-saving tools that automatically update beverage inventory on social media channels, websites, and print, digital display, and tablet menus. This exposure empowers their customers by helping transform beer, spirits, and cocktail menus into valuable revenue producers.

Gordon said those craft breweries that don’t put some serious thought behind their brand and voice will struggle.

“There’s no magic formula for craft breweries to find consumers so the new breweries need to build a brand and web presence because it’s challenging today to stand out,” added Gordon.  “In addition, there’s a lot of inefficiencies in the retail distribution model, making it even more difficult for a craft brewery to succeed.”

Craft breweries, added Amber Irwin from Denver-based Cirqle Media (a marketing company that works with numerous craft breweries in the U.S.), are also very regional – some may be very popular in a particular state, but don’t ship much beyond its borders.

So these breweries, which by and large operate on small margins, have to go the extra mile (or kilometer) to stand out, not only via a social media presence, but even in the way they raise funds.

Case in point: Tecumseh Brewing Co., a Michigan craft brewery, launched a crowdfunding campaign last year which was, according to MiBiz, the first startup business to mount an intrastate campaign under the Michigan Invests Locally Exemption (MILE) Act, allowing companies based in the state to solicit investments from Michigan-based investors without having to register with federal securities regulators.

The craft brewery’s crowdfunding campaign, noted MiBiz, was, in essence, structured as a revenue sharing offering – when the brewery opens this fall, 7 percent of sales each month pays back the investors until each receives one and a half times their investment. The brewery notched $175K from the crowdfunding campaign; OSB Community Bank provided a $200K loan; friends and family chipped in another $145K.

Tecumseh Brewing also used its Facebook site to corral potential investors to its solicitation listing on localestake.com.

Crowdfunding, noted Tecumseh General Manager Kyle DeWitt, created opportunities for people to get involved in the brewery’s formation from the gitgo.

“They’ll be our customers, and they’ll also have a stake in the business…if we have 120 investors and 90 or 100 of them are from Tecumseh, that’s 90 or 100 customers we’ll always have,” said DeWitt.

Cirqle Media’s Irwin added that viral marketing is huge for small brewers of fine ales.

“Advertising on social media and mobile platforms is inexpensive and targeted to the people that already love their microbrews.  And beer drinking is a social phenomenon so people share information about their favorite beers and recommend them to their friends,” said Irwin.

Irwin said blogs like the South Florida Beer Blog and Beer Therapy help spread the word about craft beer festivals, new brews, even events at local bars.

Websites like Pintly and TapHunter also help people find places carrying their favorite brews when they head out or go to a different city,” said Irwin.  “Untappd is a mobile optimized site that has a mini-Facebook/Foursquare for beer lovers allowing them to check into a bar and say what beer they’re drinking and then connect with other enthusiasts.”

Beer marketing is very competitive – even cutthroat.  Small brewers simply can’t butt heads against multi-billion dollar companies that have enormous TV ad budgets, hence why social media can be an invaluable tool for craft breweries.  Done properly, it integrates into all other aspects of running a brewery and can yield significant dividends long-term without a large cash outlay up front.

A non-binding opinion handed down earlier this month by the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU), the European Union’s highest legal authority, is roiling the business community. While the opinion needs the approval of all 28 EU governments before it can become legally binding, there’s already a lot of online chatter about the potential blowback to businesses operating in the EU.

The case followed complaints in March 2010 from Mario Costeja Gonzalez, a Spanish lawyer, who said that when Google’s search results revealed details on an auction of his repossessed home in a local newspaper (La Vanguardia), it infringed on his privacy rights. CJEU ruled that people have the “right to be forgotten” and can ask Google to remove some sensitive information from Internet search results. Tech companies, noted the Financial Times, fear it may be “the beginning of a broader assault in which Google would be regulated like a utility.” Or to use an oft-used English idiom, it could be “the thin end of the wedge.”

No surprise then that organizations and associations from all walks of life are now weighing with their two bits/bytes. “Individuals may now have the ability to essentially go in with a virtual black marker and redact their names; it will fundamentally change the landscape not only in the field of privacy, but also in the information economy generally,” said Trevor Hughes, president/CEO of the International Association of Privacy Professionals.

And Marc Rotenberg, who heads up the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C., added “it’s going to create additional burdens for Google and other companies – but that’s the cost of doing business if your business involves disseminating information.”

So should the opinion become law, businesses set up in an EU country to provide a service must thus ensure that any processing of personal data for a related service targeted to that country conforms to EU data protection laws – even if that processing takes place elsewhere, noted tech law expert Luke Scanlon of Pinsent Masons, a law firm that also publishes Out-Law.com.

“As businesses look to enable their people to ignore borders and are becoming increasingly dependent on people collaborating together wherever they are located, they may now need to review the extent to which services related to personal data processed in one jurisdiction are, in the words of the court, ‘served by’ services that take place in other jurisdictions to fully understand their legal obligations,” said Scanlon.

Scanlon said the court’s interpretation also raises the issue of whether regulators and local member state courts will view the judgment as “applying simply to the activities of search engines or more broadly to other activities of global businesses occurring within EU jurisdictions that are in some way related to data processing activities taking place outside the EU.”

In the U.S. reported Reuters, California recently passed a state ‘eraser’ law that requires tech companies to remove material posted by a minor – if the user requests it. The law goes into effect next year and will probably face a court challenge. If the EU opinion is eventually implemented, it could create major headaches – both technical and financial – for Google, and other tech behemoths like Facebook.

To use an often used metaphor, it’s all a bit of a sticky wicket.

Lev Grossman, writing in Time, said the CJEU opinion has delivered a clear signal – “we don’t necessarily have to accommodate ourselves to technology; we can demand that technology adapt itself to us. The past isn’t what it used to be. But maybe it should be.”

These days if you sneeze funny, it can go viral – and for CEOs, catching cold may be the least of their worries. The myriad social tools available to CEOs can be a mixed bag.

Take Twitter, for instance. There are numerous content opportunities if properly implemented. But there are caveats. As reported by Louis Bedgian in Benzinga, a financial media outlet, CEOs aren’t infallible – and their words can cause financial tremors.

Marlene Morris Towns, a Georgetown University marketing professor, told Bedgian that in many instances, a CEO’s tweets are often distributed in real-time without being vetted.

“They’re not run through legal and compliance which allows you a lot of flexibility to jump on things as they happen – it also holds you at risk,” said Towns.

Towns added that CEOs “step in it themselves sometime by letting their personal views be known when they shouldn’t necessarily be known. Sometimes that’s their fault, sometimes it’s not. Somebody asks them a question in an interview, they say something off the cuff and next thing you know, it’s on social media.”

To wit, a few years ago, Micky Arison, former CEO of Carnival Corporation who also owns the NBA’s Miami Heat, was fined $500,000 by the NBA for a tweet he posted about negotiations between the league and the player’s union.

But Twitter can be a very effective communications tool for CEOs. Arik Hanson, writing in O’Dwyers, spelled out a number of examples of how Twitter can be implemented by CEOs to benefit their company.

Some of these include:

• Share earnings call information
• Recognize employee wins
• Triage customer issues
• Retweet corporate accounts regularly
• Tweet about other business interests
• Tweet your interests
• Retweet other company employees
• Talk about your community
• Tweet about events you speak or attend

While CEOs are slowly integrating Twitter and other social media platforms into their overall communications strategy, the numbers are still quite low. Wired Investor recently reported that only 30% of executive directors within NASDAQ 100 companies are present and active on social networks.

And a 2013 CEO.com/Domo study of social media usage by CEOs at America’s 500 highest growing companies showed that a significant number of CEOs are still invisible on social media sites. While Twitter participation for CEOs increased about 56% in 2013, the percentage of CEOs from these top 500 companies that actually tweet was only 5.6%.

With some companies the business use case for Twitter can be somewhat murky, with no clear correlation between Twitter followers and sales. So going forward, a few takeaways are best summed up by Forbes’ Susan Adams:

“Given the rise of Twitter and the public’s hunger for instantaneous news, CEOs may want to consider diving into the medium. But they should focus on the quality of their posts, in order to attract serious followers.”

So another Game Developers Conference (GDC) has come and gone – 400 panels, roundtable discussions, lectures, tutorials, 350 exhibitors, 20,000+ attendees.  Seems like every gaming publication and industry analyst swooned and fawned over Project Morpheus, Oculus Rift, Valve’s Steam Controller and how virtual reality in general is poised to take over the gaming universe.

What was also interesting, however, were the findings of a survey conducted before GDC opened its doors for the 28^th time last week, a few emerging gaming industry trends, and one rather dopey game that even its developer said “is a small, broken and stupid game” – yet has now garnered literally millions of views.

The second State of the Industry GDC survey polled more than 2,600 North American game developers who attended last year’s conference.  According to GDC, notable trends “include a preference for the PlayStation 4 platform for console developers, the prevalence of self-funded projects and the changing reliance and relationship with publishers.”

The survey indicated that 20 percent of developers intend to release their next game on Sony’s PlayStation 4, slightly edging out Xbox One’s 17 percent.  Developers also want to do their own thing – 64 percent want to self-publish.  And self-funding is still popular among developers – 52 percent said part of their funding is from their company’s existing coffers; 46 percent said they contribute their own money to launch their projects.  About 11 percent used crowdfunding, up from 4 percent in last year’s survey.

And a couple of interesting trends to watch too.   This year we’ll continue to mark the rise of independent game developers.  Digital Trends reported that both Epic Games and Crytek will make their respective development engines available via a subscription model.  Epic’s engine will cost only $19/month and 5 percent gross revenue from any games released; Crytek’s for a $9.90/month flat fee.

“This unprecedented move allows anyone to craft a game with the same tools as the pros, limited only by imagination and dedication,” noted Digital Trends.

And the publication also stated that the free-to-play model for PC games is fast becoming the dominant financial model for PC games.

“Part of the reason for the shift is the globalization of gaming. China, especially, has emerged as one of the biggest gaming markets on the planet, and the majority of revenue created from gaming in China comes from free-to-play PC games,” added Digital Trends.

The standard pricing model won’t disappear overnight, but, noted Digital Trends, “the momentum is definitely shifting, and as it does, the way people play games may shift with it.”

Lastly, one of the silliest – but most popular games at GDC was Goat Simulator, created by Coffee Stain Studios.  Basically, as reported in Ars Technica, “the more mayhem your goat achieves, the more points you get, and a list of objectives keeps players looking for alternate means of mayhem to keep that score ticking higher and higher.”

The studio isn’t exactly helping sales/marketing efforts with this disclaimer (but then again, the self-flagellation may pique interest):

“Goat Simulator was made in a couple of weeks…in fact, you’re better off not expecting anything at all actually. To be completely honest, it would be best if you’d spend your $10 on a hula hoop, a pile of bricks, or maybe a real-life goat.”

Baaaaaaa…