What Hit and What Missed in 2007

What's the end of a year without a best and worst of round up? With only a few working days to go we invite you to take a break, reflect on the past 12 months and look forward to 2008.

THE HITS

1. Facebook – created by a Harvard dropout, it was valued at $6M in July 2007. On 25th October 2007 Microsoft paid $240m (£117m) for a 1.6% stake in the hugely popular social networking site. Valuing facebook at $15Bn…..he should have stayed at Harvard and finished his degree!

2. Widgets! – Websites will never be the same again and companies are having to re-think their online strategy. Rather than attracting people to their websites, they are fighting for space on your home page. Sites such as iGoogle and Page Flakes will become more commonplace.

3. Targeted Rich Media – Oh they are good. Specialist design agencies are coming into their own and creating interactive marketing which can be spookily accurate, at the quality of video streaming and extremely viral. We like this one www.getthemessage.net

4. Wii – making gaming more energetic and for the whole family. Every household should have one….maybe two.

5. Propellernet – Doubled in size in Rocketeers and turnover, thanks to our much loved clients.

And what about those Misses eh? Keeping it to five wasn’t easy but we shouldn’t be too hard on people.  Without companies going striving to move forward we wouldn’t be here today. So here they are...

THE MISSES

1. Facebook – created by a Harvard dropout and probably responsible for reducing the efficiency of the UK’s working population by at least 20%. That’s one whole day in a working week. Is he trying to make us all dropouts?!

2. Convergence – Mobiles, PDAs, Blackberries, laptops, 3G, WAP, GPRS, WiFi – forcing you into the habit of checking email at ridiculous times of the day and when you’re on holiday. Sometimes, just sometimes wouldn’t it be nice not to be contactable!

3. No more Harry Potter books – the final book was released in July 2007 and sold 11 million copies in the first 24 hours of being on sale. No more Harry Potter escapism, but we can look forward to the films. For those of you who don’t know how it ended, only Harry or Voldemort can……we wouldn’t do that to anyone!

4. Wasted Marketing Spend – a number of major organisations spent millions of pounds on flawed acquisition and conversion strategies to attract new customers. If only offline marketing and online marketing departments would converge and communicate, a lot of money and effort could be saved and better results could be achieved.

5. High Calibre Search Consultants – they are missing and there just isn't enough. We at Propellernet have brought on board the best but it’s been a real challenge and we’re the experts. If you are searching for one, then good luck – they’re tough to find. You could consider appointing a credible Search Agency, as this should mean they have a Team of experts managing your search strategy, all of whom have strong relationships with the search engines. If you are a search consultant in such a position, congratulations – it’s a good time to be a search marketer and we look forward to working with you.’