2.2m Dominicans online.56% have cellphones.

Santo Domingo - A total of 2.2 million Dominicans, or 23.8 percent of the population, have access to Internet, a report from the National Commission for the Society of Information and Knowledge (CNSIC) says.“As of October 31 this year suppliers of the service reported a total of 287,168 accounts in its different connection modalities,” the report said, which means a growth of 69.4 percent during the first 10 months of 2007. It also explains that for of each 100 Dominicans 3.2 have an Internet account and these accounts offer a total of 2.2 million Dominicans the opportunity to access.Additionally, the report revealed that of each 100 Dominicans 56 have cell phones; a service which he said has grown 10.3 percent in 10 months.

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TOP 5 Digital Marketing Trends Caribbean Brands can’t ignore

By Ingrid Riley

 

The Web has become a dynamic place, the Mobile Phone the third screen many are moving to conquer, both are core elements of any digital marketing strategy, necessary tools that Caribbean brands must be quick to understand and leverage. I’ve tapped 5 trends I believe will influence how budgets and time are spent in 2008, well by the smart and forward-thinking anyway.

1. Mobile - Everybody’s got one.

In Jamaica mobile phone penetration is 94%, which presents a fresh opportunity for marketers to connect with customers anywhere, anytime, anyphone for brand awareness, loyalty programmes and to increase sales. There are over 2 million Jamaicans texting, are you connecting with them?

Mobile marketing is direct, personal, immediate and cost effective compared to the traditional TV and radio marketing budgets. As long as marketers don’t spam, by creating an opt in database gathered online, at events via sign up forms, mobile marketing may be the missing link in personalized communications. Companies can start off by making special offers, giving deals, sending information, bill reminders, daily menus and there’s so much more.
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Text Messaging celebrates 15th Birthday

In December 1992, Airwide Solutions was responsible for delivering the first ever SMS. The message, delivered on the Vodafone network, said ‘Merry Christmas”and the man who sent it was Neil Papworth, who still working as an engineer for Airwide today.This innovation has surely grown a culture and a business globally. In fact, US-based Gartner, estimated that 935billion text messages were sent to and from mobile phones in 2005 and an estimated 2.3 trillion messages will be sent by 2010. Total global revenues from text messaging is forecasted to grow to US$72.5 bln in 2010 from US$39.5 bln in 2005.

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Our Christmas Online Shopping Picks

It’s Christmas and we all want to know where to buy what online that’s uniquely Caribbean. For some that means sauces, jams, jellies and coffee and for others, it’s anything but. We scoured about 100 quality Caribbean shopping sites to give our picks for this season.

BEST IDEA FOR A SITE-Islandgems.com – This is a site where you can buy gemstone jewelry. While it only has a passable site design, it makes up for it in its range of quality product offering and information rich pages that helps the consumer to make choices.

BEST CUSTOMER BUYING EXPERIENCE-Banyancreations.com – A little bit over a year online, the site offers gourmet candles with names such as Caribbean vibes, coco pineapple and island dreams in addition to bath and body care products from the boutique manufacturing company. - www.island1stop.com – One of the better sites to shop for the jams, jellies, sauces,jerk seasonings and coffee. Easy to use, design is pretty good, well laid out….good shopping experience.- camarosacoffee.com - of all the coffee selling sites out of the Caribbean, this is the best designed site we’ve come across that gets the coffee buying customer. Well laid out, information rich and ease of use makes it a pretty decent buying experience.

MOST UNIQUE PRODUCTS-Sprawltees.com – this site is the home of one of the most web savvy t-shirt sellers out of Jamaica. They get online branding and it helps that they have a unique range of quality Jamaican t-shirts. -www.flyasiclothing.com- We liked this site because while its range is not extensive, it’s smart in its offering.- Ethiopiantaste.com – African Caribbean and rasta merchandise. Need we say more.- www.islegifts.com- In addition to the usual sauces,jams and jellies, it adds art and paintings, home and garden stuff, sculptures and carvings, Jamaican games like dominoes gift. Well designed site clearly understanding how an online shopping site must appeal to the online buyer.

 

BEST GROCERY SHOPPING-Buygracefoods.com - Buygracefoods.com is a partnership between Grace, Kennedy & Company Ltd. and Tortuga Imports Ltd., operators of the Tortuga Rums website. Smart, smart, smart. Talk about going after the Jamaican and Caribbean Diaspora market where the Grace brand is super strong.- Superplusfoodstore.com- This site offers comprehensive product offerings and great prices just like its brick and mortar stores, but man does the site suck in terms of design. Another place where the Jamaican Diaspora can shop for their relatives back home.

BEST AUCTION SITE Jamdeal.com

BEEN THERE DONE THAT- Caribbean Connoisseur- From cigars, blue mountain coffee, hot sauces, jerk seasonings, rum cakes, perfumes, reggae merchandise and much more, all with a Caribbean flair. This is how they’ve pitched their site for years. they definitely are enjoying longevity in the market, but we suggest an update of site design for the new year.- Starfishoils.com – Get your oils, candles, incense products from this company that’s been selling its Jamaican and Caribbean products online for years and they are still at it.

NEW KID ON THE BLOCK-Yaadsale.com – a serious contender in the mini Amazon type shop here for all things Jamaican kind of site.What do you think? Tell us your picks.

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My week at PubCon 2007 Review

by Sandor Panton

Intro: Pubcon is an annual (and sometimes twice-annual) conference and networking event for Internet professionals (particularly Search Engine Optimization Specialists and Affiliate Marketers). This time around, it was December 4-7 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada.

PUBCON 2007 Review
=========================
Day 1 - Tuesday, December 4

Pubcon got off to a slowish start, with Craig Newmark (Founder of Craigslist.Com) delivering a somewhat boring Keynote Address. Quite a few people (including myself) left mid-way or before the end of his presentation.
Then it was on to a full day of presentation sessions. There were five separate tracks of these sessions to choose from:

Track 1 - Social Media
Track 2 - Linking & WebmasterWorld
Track 3 - SEO: Organic Search
Track 4 - SEM: Search Marketing
Track 5 - Advertising
There were a total of five sessions for each track, two before lunch and three after lunch. Before lunch, I stuck to the Social Media track sessions, namely “Social Marketing 101: The Playing Field” and “Monetizing Social Media Traffic”. Social Marketing 101 was very useful and the presenters (particularly Rand Fishkin of Seomoz.Org) excellent presentations with lots of useful information and tips. The second session about Monetizing Social Media Traffic was a bit disappointing, as none of the Presenters really delivered enough specifics about how you can actually monetize this type of traffic.

After lunch, I stuck to the Linking and WebmasterWorld track, where the specific sessions were “Link Building Campaigns & Strategies”, “Link Baiting: 96 Different Strategies” and “Link Buying”. The Link Baiting session was particularly useful and interesting, with Todd Malicoat (stuntdubl.com) offering some great tips and ways to create link bait. In the Link Building session, Roger Monti (martinibuster.com) presented some interesting ideas on linking strategies to gain links to your site from .gov and .edu domains.
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HYPE TV launches a gamers TV show -The HQ

Jamaica- HYPE! TV which was the Caribbean’s first 24 hr music driven entertainment channel launched a gamers show called The HQ. The Cable TV station brands The HQ as a “video game review programme that is presented with stunning visuals, excellent scripted material and content centered around video gaming and related topics. ”

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Buy Caribbean Event Tickets Online at islandstubs.com

 

 Island Stubs.com is a Jamaican based company that offers event goers a safe,secure place online to buy tickets for their favourite Caribbean events. It also allows event planners and promoters to sell their own tickets online as well. IslandStubs.com brands itself as an end-to-end online event ticketing service.

 ”We are very excited to finally bring this much needed service to the Caribbean. Online ticketing has become an international phenomenon; spawning a lot of innovation and business development,” said Noelle Nicolls, Director of Planning and Development. The company which officially launches on December 18, has already snagged marquis event Air Jamaica Jazz and Blues Festival 2008 and will be selling their tickets online.

Islandstubs.com is powered by software from the eight year old US-based company In Ticketing (www.inticketing.com) They are a full service ticket provider for events worldwide and offers online ticketing, venue and box office ticketing, and onsite event solutions including check-in and gate scanning of all tickets for quick entry. 

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Trinidad’s Allyuh.com launches local search

Trinidad-Trinidad’s Allyuh.com unveiled a completely redesigned version of its website. Allyuh now includes powerful new search technology with unique new features that gives access to local search results, faster. With the new version of Allyuh.com, you can get the most relevant and customized information you need on Trinidad and Tobago from the best range of content available online.

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Antilles.com domain name on sale for US$188,000. The owners tells why.

 

The owner of the domain name is Michael Minasian. And this is his rationale for the valuation of his domain.

I came upon the ANTILLES.COM domain name more than a decade ago. At the time, my firm did some work for the Bonaire Tourism Organization and, given the web was just coming into presence, I thought they would appreciate having a good internet address. At the time (1995, I think), one could snag just about any domain name without difficulty. However, they saw no need for it and I just paid the nominal fee on it for several years.

When I had an engineer turn it up on one of our servers, I was quite surprised to see instantaneous traffic of more than 100 hits/day, 60% of which came from EU countries. Further scrutiny revealed that the name “antilles” was being sought intuitively by folks looking for information on the West Indies. We have never advertised the site in any way, yet continue to see 1,000-1,500 unique hits per month. Moreover, the term “Antilles” is searched with similar frequency to the term “Caribbean“. If the website were to be commercially developed and advertised on the major search engines, the traffic would increase to hundreds of thousands or millions of monthly hits. Considering that the revenue from these potential consumers involves plane flights, hotels, car rental, recreation, gambling, real estate, etc., the present price at under $200k is a bargain bordering on a steal - a fraction of the cost of a beachfront condo.
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Jamaican Jokes the Caribbean’s first Facebook App

Jamaican Jokes late last week became the Caribbean’s first Facebook App. The app pitch to facebook users is “Get yuh belly full of laughs with a random Jamaican joke on your profile page every day. Warning … for big people only!”. Jamaican Jokes also has a facebook group and a website.

It was created by Sandor Panton who’s the founder of Top5Jamaica.com, the most comprehensive search directory of Jamaican sites anywhere on the Internet. He also owns and operates an extensive network of Jamaican, Caribbean and International websites and blogs across various industries/topics including sport, humor, entertainment and healthcare. Sandor is widely considered the region’s premier expert on the Internet, domain services, and the monetization of sites.

Update: jamaicanjokes seems not to be the first Caribbean Facebook app. The Trinidadians were first. Simply Intense media had created VoteTnT, a virtual facebook election for the November national elections. You could add the application to cast your vote for the Government of Trinidad & Tobago. It tracked the votes gathers them everyday to display on your Facebook profile. It was added over 2000 times and has over 1000 votes cast to date, according to the report on Allyuh.com.

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