Filed under: Bad news, Products and services, Consumer experience, Yahoo! (YHOO), Marketing and advertising, News Corp’B’ (NWS)

According to a report by Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO), more music listeners search for information about music acts on Wikipedia than they do on News Corp.’s (NYSE: NWS) MySpace site, which features media from the acts. Wikipedia is also outpacing “official band websites” as well. The difference may well be the ease of navigating a Wiki page over a MySpace page and the free, uncopyrighted content that can be offered in a Wiki. Jay Walsh, the communications manager for Wikipedia cited this exact scenario, stating that the website wasn’t preparing to add any music content, staying with “content [listeners] can use and enjoy without worrying about violating any copyrights.”

From personal experience, I see how this scenario is accurate. More often than not, a Wikipedia page is just simpler and easier to navigate since it does not require a long loading time (this might not be a major issue for some internet users though) due to a big quantity of media-related content. The pages also always seem to have better information about what albums are available and what reviews have said about those albums. MySpace pages may not feature these aspects (although some do), but more often than not it just feels hard to navigate a page because of the layout and the ads that are on the site.

Fortunately, the revelation that more fans may scour a Wikipedia page for information about a band is not as damaging to MySpace as might be believed. Both sites do exactly what they’re intended to do. At the end of the day, the MySpace page and the content provided is designed to sell the music and the band. The Wikipedia page might result in that action, but it isn’t the purpose of the page. Information about the band can be used for more than easy consumption, as it might point to a longer trajectory of how the music or the band developed style or other attributes.

As I stated, Wikipedia might be more easily navigable, but MySpace has its purpose as well and it should not suffer any detraction because fans like to gain information about the band from another site. After all, at one time or another complaints were leveled at a variety of different venues because the trade magazines no longer controlled what information was available. Why should record labels control every aspect anyway? Free content sites still contribute to the end result at some point, and they are free.

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Filed under: Consumer experience, Competitive strategy, General Motors (GM), Marketing and advertising, Toyota Motor Corp. (TM)

With people in Japan showing less and less interest for cars, Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM) is exploring more efficient methods to increase sales in its strong competition with rival General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM) for the title of the world’s largest automaker. The attempt to boost sales has become even more difficult as, according Toyota officials, young people like spending their money on laptops or mobile phones than a automobile that could be easily replaced by public transportation.

In an attempt to reach younger people and lift vehicle sales, Toyota is opening a new mall located in Yokohama, southwest of Tokyo. The new Tressa mall is pretty much like any other malls, with 220 stores and restaurants like cafes, clothing stores and even gym or games centers where people enjoy spending their time. However, in the new mall space, Toyota showrooms take center stage, placing at people’s disposal a massive variety of old and new cars models.

One thing that Toyota is aware of, and trying to improve upon, is that in Japan showrooms and TV advertising are not efficient any more in attracting people’s interest for buying automobiles. The new mall is aimed at accomplishing Toyota’s plan of global domination by providing “opportunities for people to come in contact with cars.”

For the moment, is unclear if Toyota’s plan will be successful. In addition, the Japanese automaker is showing concerns about its global sales target for this year, which was set at 9.85 million. The company is blaming both the weakening U.S. economy and higher raw material prices. In the United States, car demand has been declining, hurt by the tight credit crisis, tumbling dollar and surging crude prices that put pressure on consumer spending.

With the current market conditions, Japanese car makers are facing a tough environment as the yen has been rising against the dollar. But with this new strategy and Toyota’s ambitious plans to defeat the competition, it could be just a matter of time before it gets back people’s interest for its automobile models.

Eliza Popescu is a financial writer for the online investment advisory service Investor’s Observer.

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Filed under: Products and services, Wal-Mart (WMT), Marketing and advertising, Target Corp. (TGT)

Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT) will soon start having its meat vendors label their products as having been treated with carbon monoxide. In general, treating fresh meat with carbon monoxide makes meat appear fresh to the shopper, much like treatment with sodium nitrite does. Both products, however, are really not something you want to ingest into your body. The only problem is that labeling laws don’t really require this information to be highlighted on meat labels.

So, Target wants to be more truthful with its customers. Remember, it’s Target’s product you’re buying — not Hormel’s or Cargill’s. Although those two companies are the main meat vendors, the last stop is Target’s shelves. Target made a very good decision. Empowering customers with information is something that retailers superior wake up to. Your competitor will if you won’t.

The new labeling will read “Color is not an accurate indicator of freshness. Refer to use or freeze by date.” Just like food coloring is used to spruce up pre-packaged and processed foods, the inclusion of carbon monoxide in fresh meats (well, not that fresh) is something many customers want to know about. Next up, we’ll see if Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (NYSE: WMT) responds to Target’s initiative and requires the same labeling changes from its pre-packaged meat vendors.

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Filed under: Utilities, Productivity, Freeware

Fireworks, parades, unicorns made of ice cream, pleasant leprechauns doing amusing jigs; these things are fun. Backing up files is not. If you disagree with this you may be a loser. Check that, you’re a loser. Or a network admin. Wait, that should read AND a network admin. Boring network geeks aside, backing up files is important. Much like prostate exams. Important, but painful. If you’re not backing up files at home, here’s a free tool that you can use to get on board the fun bus.

AutoVer is about as straight forward as it gets. Simple to install and use, and does everything you’ll need it to do. Plus some advanced features sure to keep the die-hards interested, such as version controlling. It’s obviously not really something you’d want to use in a huge scale work environment, but if you’re to forgetful/lazy/narcoleptic to manually back up files on your home personal, it’s worth a look at. Once you have it set up, it runs pretty well on it’s own, and handles errors smoothly. It doesn’t explode if your back up drive fails, or any of that fun stuff, and works with flash drives and the like. And the price is perfect. Mmmmfree.

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