The past several weeks have presented a sense of upheaval to Apple, Inc. On Oct. 5, Apple founder, CEO, and key innovator Steve Jobs passed away from pancreatic cancer. The previous day, recently-appointed CEO Tim Cook revealed the iPhone 4S to lukewarm reception. But perhaps critics of the new iPhone are a bit too hasty.
At Pittsburgh website design and interactive marketing company, Blue Archer, we believe the iPhone 4S has the potential to change Internet marketing again. Here's why:
- Search results count more than ever: The iPhone 4S showcases Siri, a voice-recognition software using natural language processing to crawl search engines in response to user commands. Two of Siri's major partners are Google and Bing, which means that a prominent search engine ranking is more important now than ever.
- Siri shows where search is headed: Siri crawls other sites on the Web, too, depending on what the user commands it to do. For example, a request for a restaurant reservation returns Yelp ratings and reviews, sorted by proximity and user-submitted rating. Internet marketers, take note: Siri's partner sites like Yelp, StubHub, and WolframAlpha, a computational knowledge engine and development community can boost a business's profile on the World Wide Web with participation.
- Multimedia sharing just got slicker: The new camera and video are optimized for high-quality shooting. If your interactive or website marketing strategy includes user-generated photography and videos, you'll be proud to post the ones you get from the iPhone 4S. Users will be able to enhance photos and remove red eye with a few swipes, and share high-quality videos that look great on the big screen.
- iOS 5 integrates data with a tap: iCloud comes free with the new, standard iPhone 4S operating system, iOS 5, which enables users to sync data across Apple devices. iOS 5 also features Twitter integration - enabling you to share video, audio, photos, links, news, and more - across multiple iPhone applications with all of your contacts. For now, it appears that Twitter will get extra attention from Apple loyalists, and could continue to grow as an Internet marketing tool.
How do you think the iPhone 4S will change the interactive marketing landscape? What other changes in interactive marketing do you foresee over the next year as mobile continues to evolve?