A look at the best of the Google Apps Marketplace in 2010

A look at the best of the Google Apps Marketplace in 2010

Closing out 2010, we are excited to offer over 250 installable applications in the Google Apps Marketplace that work seamlessly with Google Apps. The Apps Marketplace has grown rapidly, now with over 4 million users with at least one Marketplace app installed on their domains.



With Google Apps and the Apps Marketplace, you can finally go 100% web with your business, realizing greater functionality and flexibility at a lower cost. For example, you can manage your entire sales cycle anywhere you have access to a browser – send marketing and lead generation emails through MailChimp, manage and track responses with Zoho CRM and even close the sale with an e-signature from EchoSign.



Every month on App Tuesday, we aim to give you a break from patching your systems by introducing even more apps to help you move to the cloud. To wrap up the year, we wanted to give you a recap of what's been big in the Marketplace, the top categories and apps of the year as well as a preview of 2011.



Top Installed Categories

1. Project Management - with over 30 project management apps, businesses can find applications that address key project needs including cross-functional collaboration, task list management, and time tracking.
   
   Top 3 installed: Manymoon,

The latest insights & trends from Google Internet Stats

The latest insights & trends from Google Internet Stats: "

Here is the latest round-up of some of the most recent stats added to our Google Internet Stats site:

Global Trends

• By the end of 2010, there will be 2 billion internet users worldwide. There were only 361 million Internet users in 2000, in the entire world. To put that into perspective, that’s barely two-thirds of the size of Facebook today.
  (International Telecommunications Union, October 2010)
  
  

• Worldwide Internet traffic has grown by 62% in 2010. The regions experiencing the fastest year on year growth were Eastern Europe and India/South Asia, where average traffic growth exceeded 100%, and the Middle East, where traffic rose just under 100%.
  (TeleGeography's Global Internet Geography, October 2010)
  
  
  
• More than 1 in 5 people in the developing world are online.
  (International Telecommuncations Union, October 2010)

Digital Youth

• 1 in 5 children in the UK say that they have gone without food or sleep to stay online.
  (London School of Economics and Political Science, November 2010)
  
  
• A quarter of 7-10s agree they would be 'lost' without the internet, rising to 46% of 11-14s. Over 90% of each group have internet access at home and the majority also use the internet at school.
  (Youth TGI, November 2010)
  
  
• 25% of young people aged 11-14 purchase clothes online, 23% purchase video games, 21% purchase DVDs, 20% purchase CDs and 18% purchase music downloads.
  (Youth TGI, November 2010)

eCommerce

• Over 2/3 of UK consumers aged 14 and older—roughly 26 million people—bought goods, travel or other services online at least once per month in 2010.
  (eMarketer, November 2010)
  
  
• The number of Brits making online purchases is expected to increase to 32.5 million by 2014.
  (Verdict Research, September 2010)
  
  
• This Christmas, it is predicted that £6.4 billion will be spent online, up from £5.5 billion in December 2009.
  (IMRG, October 2010)

YouTube

• Every minute, 35 hours worth of content is uploaded to YouTube.
  (YouTube Blog, November 2010)
  
  
• Nearly 9 out of 10 UK internet users have used YouTube.
  (Entertainment Media Research, November 2010)
  
  
• Of YouTube Mobile Users, 70% use the mobile site at least once a day.
  (Google, November 2010)
  
  

For these and many more new stats and online trends, visit Google Internet Stats.


Posted by Selina Rennie, Agency Team

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Introducing the New Profile

Introducing the New Profile: "

Today I'm excited to introduce you to some improvements we've made to the Facebook profile, so now it's even easier for you to tell your story and learn about your friends.

A New Introduction

The profile begins with a quick overview of basic information such as where you're from, where you went to school, and where you work—the kinds of conversation starters you share with people you've just met or exchange with old friends as you get reacquainted.

And since there's often no better way to learn about a person than through photos, the profile now includes a row of recently tagged photos of you. In my case, my profile features pics from my engagement and wedding, two of my life's most recent and happiest moments.

Featured Friends

You can now highlight the friends who are important to you, such as your family, best friends or teammates. Create new groups of friends, or feature existing friends lists. I opted to feature my Ultimate Frisbee teammates, giving the rest of my friends a way to learn more about that part of my life.

New Experiences

The profile also gives you new ways to share your interests and activities. You can list the projects you worked on at your job, classes you took in school, your favorite musicians and sports teams, and more. You can also share your life philosophy by connecting to the religions, political affiliations, and people you follow and admire. All your interests and experiences are now represented with images, making your entire profile a more compelling visual experience.

Personally, I opted to add this profile project to my work history at Facebook, and I tagged the people who worked on it with me. I also added 'Ultimate Frisbee' as one of the sports I play and included a description of my team's victories at the USA Ultimate National Championships and World Championships.

Improved Photos and Friends Pages

Thanks to the cool new 'infinite scroll' feature, it's now much faster and more fun to browse all your photos. The Friends page now allows you to quickly find the people you're looking for: just search by name, hometown, school or a number of other dimensions. I met a ton of new Ultimate players at Nationals, and the new profile has made it so much easier to locate and learn about them.

We're really excited about the new profile. We're rolling it out gradually and plan to get it to everyone by early next year. You can upgrade immediately or learn more about the new features on this page: www.facebook.com/about/profile.



Josh Wiseman, a Facebook engineer, is reassuring his wife Kelly that the wedding was more exciting than any Ultimate Frisbee tournament.

"

Measure how customers interact with your ads

Measure how customers interact with your ads: "

New AdWords features such as Product ads, Sitelinks and Click-to-call allow you to create more interactive ads. Product ads and Sitelinks help customers find the most relevant pages on your website and Click-to-call allows customers to call your business directly from the search results.

As ads become more interactive, you might want to know how they'll impact your business's key metrics like clicks, click-through-rates and, most importantly, conversions.

To help answer this question, we’ve added a new report to your AdWords account that allows you to measure the performance of each click type you’re using. You can think of a click type as how your customers interact with your ads. Did they click on the headline, a sitelink, or some other aspect of your ad?

You can access the new click type report in the Campaign, Ad groups or Keywords tabs. Select “Segment” then “Click type.”

click for full size image

With this added data, you’ll now have the ability to compare performance of each click type side by side. If certain click types perform well for your business, you may want to consider expanding them to other campaigns. Comparing click types by campaign, ad group or keyword will also highlight areas that need work.

Given the success we’ve seen searchers and businesses have with more interactive features in ads, you can expect to see more of these types of features in the future. With the new click type report in AdWords you can measure the impact of these new features and continue to get the most out of your ads.

Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

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