Promoting Manila

The 500-year old city of Manila in the Philippines is one of the cheapest and most entertaining cities to visit in this part of the world. Your first day can start with a visit to the historic Spanish fortress city of Fort Santiago in Intramuros along with the majestic 16th century Manila Cathedral. Just a few minutes away, take a stroll on the city's most popular landmark - the Rizal Park.

The National Museum is next to get a glimpse of local culture and history. Then, just half an hour's ride south is Villa Escudera, a rustic sugar plantation where you can savor a sumptuous buffet of native delicacies while wading in the waters near a waterfall. You can end your day with a majestic view of the Manila sunset right from your hotel.

On day two, shopping for the best bargains is your next fun activity at the Quiapo and Divisoria districts. Then, before leaving, get a taste of local fast food from Jollibee and know why it has trumped McDonald's as the number one fast food chain in the country.

Zynga shows the way for online marketing

If there's one company who turned the social networking phenomenon of the 21st century into a milking cow, it has to be Zynga. The San Francisco-based social gaming company has leveraged the social reach of Facebook along with the market reach of Android and the iPhone to become a $1.1 billion company from developing online games. Its most popular games such as FarmVille and CitiVille, along with ChefVille and the recent Zynga Poker are played by an estimated 265 million online social gamers as of January 2013. Roughly 80% of its revenues comes from Facebook.

Real world problems + Marketing Lessons

But not all is well with Zynga. After it started trading on NASDAQ in December 2011 with an IPO of $10 per share, Zynga's share prices has plummeted to reach $2 per share in 2012. It appears that investors have become cautious about the company's shaky business model as its revenues failed to meet analyst forecasts as early as the 2nd quarter of 2012.

So what went wrong and what marketing lessons From Zynga can we get from this? Firstly, it now appears that social gaming has a fluid and short retention factor where casual gamers soon lose interest in the games. Players on its Farmville have been diminishing by the millions every month. Studies have shown that social games retain only 38% of their users after a month and 14% before the 6th month. This makes it important for a social gaming company like Zynga to introduce new games without let-up. Indeed, Zynga's strategy has been to put more game titles to catch those leaving older games. The company has become a Pacman gobbling up small social game developers. Unfortunately, investors are not impressed. While newer and presumably more exciting social game titles can promise more markets, Zynga is actually just moving their social from one title to another and it has yet to impress investors that its market value is well worth investing into.

But perhaps the most serious problem is that Zynga does not own its main distribution channel - Facebook. Not owning the platform that its customers use to play its games has put Zynga at a long-term disadvantage. It's at the mercy of the social network leader. The tumultuous relationship between Zynga and Facebook is well known. No one knows what will happen to Zynga once its contract with Facebook expires a month from now. It may be a bit late in the game that Zynga has made a gaming presence with other social network sites like Google+. Spreading its online gaming muscle across more social network sites is something it should have done earlier. As it is, Zynga has put almost all its proverbial eggs in one basket. That's like getting only one store to sell your products.

Opening the road from online gaming to gambling

One area where Zynga has made significant repercussion is in the online gambling world. Zynga's 's Poker may just be a game where you buy loads of fake money with real money online. But this has caught the attention of serious online gambling kingpins who have been struggling for years to get more people to gamble online. 30 million online poker gamers each month is not something they can overlook. What was Zynga doing that they were not doing? It's social media. Online gamblers have failed to capitalize on a ready market. If and when the US Congress finally gets its act together for a comprehensive online iGambling law, it only takes Zynga to replace its Poker game's fake money with real one to become the king of the hill in online gambling.

The ultimate lesson: Social Media Marketing = Market Success

From its inception in 2007, Zynga achieved its status as the #1 online gaming company in so short a time thanks to Facebook and the power that social networking has in creating the proverbial market reach and brand awareness advertisers have been eternally pinning for. On hindsight, Facebook users can remember how annoying those FarmVille solicitation incessantly appearing in news feeds and posts. But the annoying truth is, it worked extremely well for Zynga. It didn't take long to say "let me see what this Farmville is about" and you clicked the ads. After that, you were hooked to the game.

Hitching an unknown product to a rising star confirms what just about everyone know but rarely practices. It is more widely used in politics. At a time when Facebook was just in its infancy from a 2004 launch, Zynga latched its future on what it saw was a promising sunrise business in cyberspace. The period saw the golden age of social networking when advertising was free and going viral for any advertising message on a massive scale was fast and easy.

Zynga took advantage of this and entered into a preferential symbiotic relationship with Facebook that gave them first hand information on how best to make their online games fit into the evolving Facebook technology. It a;lso allowed them to exploit the emerging social media distribution circuit. This effectively created a barrier to future entrants in online social games. The rest, as they say, is history.

A lot has been said extolling the value of social networking that went from a mere campus trend into the global phenomenon that has defined 21st century online landscape. More significantly, social networking has spawned a new way to market new products and services in what is now called Social Media Marketing. Zynga's market success is about social media marketing. Consider what they did with it

Engage in ruthless customer acquisition

Apart from an extensive and purposive campaign right within Facebook pages as well as emails, Zynga maximized every advertising opportunity to create online gaming awareness and develop interest among Facebook users. Never mind that it was easy and free and Zynga took advantage of it. The social network allowed Zynga to harness your own friends and relatives on the network to interest you in their games. Once hooked, you become an advertising mouthpiece on the social network. Imagine this multiplied across Facebook that now has almost a billion users on the planet.

Retain your customer

To a large extent, Zynga was able to stem the slide in player interest for any one game with incentives. They offered free this or that gaming element that extended the gaming delight beyond boredom. CitiVille, for instance, offered the player free batteries and new buildings to get you to the next gaming level via email prompts. And if you missed to play for a long time, you get email notifications with even more freebies.

But what stood out was Zynga's customer relationship management by opening up communication between Zynga's game developers and its game players. This ensured that the games got constantly better with enhancements the players themselves want. Nothing could be more customer-driven that this. In fact, after a short time from their launches, what started as bare games are now among the best online games with their rich features sourced from their own players.

Conclusion

The company does have its problems and challenges, but what company does not? The more successful one is, the more problems confront it. But social media marketing can make like a bit easier for many companies struggling to get a share of the market. From a small online gaming company in 2007, to the biggest by 2010, Zynga has shown the way in social media marketing.

Zynga makes the most of fickle markets

A business that thrives on fads patronized by a fickle-minded market won't last long; not unless the business continues to fan the flames of interest to make the fad become a defining character of 21st century online gaming. That's basically what Zynga has done quite successfully since it started out in 2007.

After its first online game FarmVille that ushered in a novel dimension in social networking community, a succession of delightful online games that you can only play on the Facebook platform followed like Citiville, ChefsVille, Texas HoldEm Poker, Farmville2 and Bubble Safari, just to mention a few. From a virtual unknown, Zynga as of 2011 has become a $1.1 Billion online gaming company and growing, with more than 45 million daily active users with 265 million monthly active users - all that in just 4 years. Here are a few business lessons from Zynga that new companies can learn.

Lesson 1: Innovation and business expansion

In an effort to be everything to everyone, the Zynga business model cave in to the gaming needs of just about every market segment that now populates the social networking landscape. In order to keep social gamers happy, it has been the business strategy of the company to bring out ever so new and exciting games while indulging in a shopping spree to buy out small start-ups in online games development. It bought out Challenge Games and XPD games and launched FrontierVille. It expanded into Europe with the purchase of Dextrose Labs to become Zynga Germany, then bought Newtoy, Inc. All these were acquired in 2010 alone and by the end of that year, it had released CitiVille which surpassed Farmville as Zynga's most popular game at that time with more than 16 million active gamers playing it each day.

Lesson 2: But don't spread the business too thinly

While expansion is the next logical move after a successful showing in a market, it pays to be more cautious so that the business expands without spreading its resources too thinly. Sustaining business growth through acquisitions can be beneficial if the acquired companies contributed to the buttomline, However, Zynga has yet to show profitability after all the software developers it had acquired in 2010. Developers under its umbrella are always in constant communication with their players while, while laudable as a strategy to keep customers happy, have also stretched Zynga's resources too thinly in maintaining and enhancing these games. As of 2011, Zynga has about 2450 employees and growing. Sooner or later, at the rate it has lost market capitalization from a $10 per share high in 2011 to just $2 today, it would not be surprising for the company to shed some extra fat to remain agile in the market with more focus on the games that really matter to its markets.

Lesson 3: Focus on the potentially lucrative revenue source

There are clear indications that Zynga is narrowing its focus on high growth industries which includes mobile gaming but with more emphasis on its proven winning titles. The mobile business is a natural extension of the social networking phenomenon that has opened up mobile gaming opportunities for its winning game titles. If Zynga succeeds on growing its current games to the iOS and Android platforms using new revenue earning models, it is poised to see even higher business prospects for 2013 and beyond.

Lesson 4: Always be on the look for potential new business model

Zynga's Poker (formerly Texas HoldEm Poker)may be just another social online game, but it has the potential to create a new business horizon for Zynga. The game currently requires players to buy fake money using real money transacted online to extend the game's thrills. Once the US Congress passes its iGambling bill, it would only take Zynga to start using real money for its Poker game and overnight, the game enters the online gambling business that has been plagued with legal problems for its iGambling business. Zynga already announced in October 2012 a business partnership with an international gambling firm, Bwin Party Digital Entertainment, to start an online real-money gaming service in 2013 with the world's first online FarmVille-based slots game using real money. The alliance promises new and more lucrative revenue streams for Zynga.

Lesson 5: Hitch the business to a rising star

In 2007, Zynga made a fateful business decision to stake its future with then rising star Facebook. Only three years old at the time, Facebook was seeing significant fanbase growth by the millions every month ending up with its first 100 million users by end of 2008. Zynga saw the promise of social networking as Facebook provided the platform and the mechanism to spread the word about its games without incurring the usual advertising dollars. More importantly, there was the potential of ads going viral on a massive scale that could reach millions of potential gamers fast and easy. Zynga entered into a mutually beneficial business relationship with Facebook that enabled the fledgling online gamer to have first line access to technical information that allowed their online games to have the seamless fit with the evolving Facebook platform while giving them exclusive social media distribution. Indeed, if a business can find something like a rising star that can provide a unique competitive edge as what Facebook did to Zynga, such a star can shortcut the road to success with ease.

Lesson 6: Leverage on innovative technology

New technology is not enough; it's how you harness it to create a business advantage that matters. Zynga harnessed the cloud computing technology that was just starting in its early years. No one at Zynga knows beforehand that a new game would be successful, like CitiVille. when it was launched in 2010, so that investing on the server farms to support an optimistic capacity projection could easily go to waste. Knowing such unpredictability, Zynga used Amazon's EC2 cloud computing infrastructure as a rented service, paying only for the capacity used in newly launched games. Once it reached a predictable volume growth, Zynga brought the successful game in-house using its private cloud computing architecture. Had CitiVille flopped, Zynga could easily decommission the rented cloud computing service, and no investment would be wasted.

Conclusion

Once last word in these business lessons from Zynga is the fact is that Zynga faces uncertain future by putting all its eggs into one basket, as it were. In an attempt to correct this, Zynga has started diversifying its social networking presence with Google+ and other social networks. This may be a title late in coming. By the end of March this year, its contract with Facebook ends. Unless Zynga plans to renew this partnership, it could lose 80% of its revenue streams.

Anderson Silva could be the best MMA fighter in the world today

Fighters come and go in the eight weight divisions of the US-based Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) series, the world's largest mixed martial arts (MMA) event held annually in Las Vegas, Nevada since 1993. Of all the fighters across its weight divisions, only one holds the record for the most wins and the longest reign as world champion. This is Anderson Silva - the current UFC title holder in the middleweight division. The 37-year old Brazilian mixed martial artist made his debut at the UFC Fight Night 5 on June 28, 2006 and since then had won 12 consecutive fights and 10 title defenses. Various publications such as Sherdog, Yahoo! Sports and ESPN have ranked him as the #1 middleweight mixed martial artist in the world, pound for pound. His exploits earned him the reputation as the greatest mixed martial artist of all time. No less than UFC head honcho Dana White agrees.

Early career

Born in April 14, 1975 as a middle child of 4 in a poor family in Curtiba, Brazil, Anderson Silva has shown a natural flair for martial arts right from his humble beginnings as a Jiu-Jitsu trained 12 year old kid who subsequently trained in Tae Kwon Do and finally mastering Muay Thai by age 16. He got his black belt in Tae Kwon Do when he was 18, followed by a yellow rope in Capoeira while establishing himself as a professional boxer. In 1997, he made his professional debut in the Brazilian ring in he welterweight class. After suffering his first loss to Luiz Azeredo by decision, he went on to win 9 consecutive wins 6 of which were won by TKO or submission. In 2001, he started earning his world class reputation as the only man to end the 20-win reign of Hayato Sakurai by unanimous decision to win the Shooto Middleweight title in Japan.

The following year, Anderson Silva entered the Pride Fighting Championships with three initial wins before suffering a demotivating setback against Daiju Taksa. He left Pride with a decisive win against Jeremy Horn in 2004. Three months later saw his debut in the Cage Rage events in England with a win against noted striker Lee Murray. His return to Pride in December of that year saw another humbling loss to Rya Chonan that finally cost his participation in the Pride fights. Nevertheless, his determination to succeed showed in defending his Cage Rage title with successive wins against Matt Lindland., Mike Can Arsdale and Tony Fryklund.

Decisive Wins at the UFC

In June of 2006, after a disqualification loss to Yushin Okami in Rumble on the Rock in Hawaii for which he felt cheated, Anderson Silva made his debut at the UFC Ultimate Fight Night 5 where he ended the 5-win streak of Ultimate Fighter Chris Leben. The fight ended 49 seconds into the first round and showed Silva's excellent fighting form with an 85% striking accuracy. It was October 14th of that year that saw Silva earn his UFC Middleweight crown after a TKO win against UFC middleweight champion Rich Franklin in the first round. His first title defense win against Travis Lutter became a non-title bout after Lutter failed to make it to the 185lb weight limit. The rest as they say is history. Anderson Silva cemented his reputation winning 10 title defenses against Nate Marquardt and Ruck Franklin in 2007, Dan Henderson and Patrick Cote in2008, Thales Leites in 2009, Demian Maia and Chael Sonnen in 2010, Vitor Belfort and Yushin Okami in 2012, and again Chael Sonnen in 2012.

Being the greatest MMA fighter in the UFC events is matched by Silva's private life as a happy family man with three sons and two daughters whom he loves so much. He had earlier planned on retiring when he reached 35 in 2010 but his contract with UFC required him to get into 6 more fights before retiring.

Fighting style of the greatest MMA of all time

With a high striking accuracy, powerful Muay Thai, counterstrike ability, concentration, and knockout power, Anderson Silva is considered to be the best MMA fighter whose main strength lies in technical precession, flawless transition and movement, and effective jabs. He has submitted famous grapplers that included Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt Travis Lutter and Olympic wrestlers Chael Sonnen and Dan Henderson. Silva has made a profound and lasting legacy on various UFC records that includes: Most all-time knockdowns at 17, highest strike accuracy at 67.8%, all-time winning percentage at 100%, longest all-time winning streak at 16, most number of fight victories at 11, most number of title defenses at 10 and the longest reigning champ in terms of days at 2,315 as of 2012. He could still break some of these records before he retires. When he does, the world of MMA fighting will have to wait for another with the same determined zeal to win, and fighting prowess of an Anderson Silva to match his record.

Obama's housing relief plans for veterans and servicemen

In his state of the union address last March 2012, President Obama announced a 2-step housing assistance aimed at helping war veterans and active US military servicemen acquire a home for their families amidst the current economic stagnancy. This is a concretization of his blueprint for rebuilding the nation with a call to action for his administration to support the recovery of the local housing market.

What the Housing Relief promises to do

At the heart of Obama's housing relief program is a two-step process his administration is implementing to help responsible homeowners, specifically service members and veterans, to avoid foreclosures and retain their homes. The process also aims to help those whose homes have been unfairly foreclosed or denied lower interests on their mortgages, as well as communities adversely impacted by the housing crisis. The relief is expected to benefit thousands of men in uniform and veterans and comes after a historic $25 billion housing settlements the Federal government entered into with the Attorneys General from 49 states completed in February this year.

The First Step

This involves providing relief to servicemen and veterans that already started with the $25 billion settlement. Under this step, the administration is expected to conduct the following:

• Review foreclosures suffered by servicemen and veterans dating back to 2006 and overseen by the DoJ's Civil Rights Division and those found wrongly foreclosed will be compensated with $116,785 plus an amount equal to the minimum of the lost home equity plus interests, or the amount stipulated under the Servicemember Civil Relief Act (SCRA) for violations resulting from a review by banking regulators;
• Review the files of service members dating back to 2008 and refund money lost because they were wrongfully denied the opportunity to reduce their mortgage payments through lower interest rates or wrongfully charged with interests higher than 6% on their mortgage in violation of SCRA. Those charged above the 6% ceiling will be entitled to a refund equal to no less than 4 times the amount charged.
• Provide financial relief to servicemen forced to sell their property for amounts less than their outstanding mortgage balances resulting from a Permanent Change in Station (PCS). The Homeowners' Assistance Program (HAP) of the Department of Defense stipulates that servicemembers forced to sell their homes at a loss due to PCS may be compensated for any loss in the sale. Under Obama's housing relief, the government will provide deficiency waivers and short sale agreements to similarly situated servicemembers but are not eligible for HAP. The implication here is that the benefits of HAP will be extended to servicemembers who acquired property between July 1, 2006 and December 31, 2008, or who received a PCS after October 1, 2010.
• Provide the Veterans Housing Benefit Program Fund with $10 million dollars through which the Department of Veterans Affairs can guarantee loans to eligible veterans on favorable terms for veterans; and.
• Support servicemen who had served in harm's way or are receiving Hostile Fire/Imminent Danger Pay with certain protections against foreclosures as allowed under the SCRA. The law prohibits the foreclosure of active duty servicemen's home without getting a court order provided their mortgages were secured prior to be being assigned on active duty. The relief program extends foreclosure protection to all servicemen regardless of the date mortgage was secured and who received the Hostile Fire/Imminent Danger pay and were stationed outside of their domicile within 9 months of a foreclosure notice

The Second Step

This involves reducing fees for borrowers wanting to refinance their existing mortgages. The Federal Housing Authority (FHA) would normally charge 1% of loan balances upfront plus 1.19% annually for insuring refinanced mortgages. FHA will cut its processing fees to 0.01% upfront for refinancing federally insured mortgages plus half of 1.19% (0.55%) every year on the refinance mortgage. Some 2-3 million mortgage holders could benefit from savings of around a thousand dollars annually through refinancing which they would not otherwise get under the current FHA fee structure. A typical FHA mortgage owner who wants to refinance a $175,000 outstanding balance on his mortgage can realize about $1,010 in monthly savings in monthly loan insurance payments.

A success or failure?

Quite apart from the election period that saw much of the energies of the incumbent president and his administration sapped during the campaign period, there has been little progress on many of the promised programs outlined in Obama's SOTU last March 2012. That included his housing relief for the military, and much of his overall relief to the general homeowners refinancing their mortgage failed to gain momentum. Congress has not moved at all to legislate the needed bill that would have allowed more homeowners to benefit from lower interest in refinancing their mortgages. On the other hand, newly-appointed New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was able to bring two major banks to court - Bear Stearns and Credit Suisse, as part of Obama's SOTU promise to investigate abusive lending practices that have led to the current housing crisis. Now that he has been re-elected, it would appear that his housing relief program that would revitalize the housing markets will need more executive action than legislative fiat to get it going.

It is interesting to note that 6 months down the road, the official blogsite of the VA does not even mention Obama's two-step housing relief that is supposed to pump in $10 million into its coffers to guarantee low interest loans to eligible veterans. Instead, it credits the late President Roosevelt who signed the 1944 GI Bill into law that enabled veterans to have lo interest loans when purchasing their homes.

Conclusion

Obama's two-step housing relief for military servicemen and veterans remain promising for those who have suffered unjust foreclosures, hikes in interest rates, and those forced to sell their devalued homes dues to PCS issued during the country's worst housing crisis. It may be too early to tell if the program has achieved its objectives as the benefits promised may not be readily noticed until after the overall housing market slump, along with the nation's economy, has improved. With his 2nd term in the White House, Obama has the least four years of his presidency to prove that he can muster the will and the support from Congress to undertake the needed measures encouraging lenders to keep lending at low interest rates and slowly rebuilding consumer confidence towards achieving some sense of normalcy in the housing markets. It may come too slow for many, but this is certainly better than getting worse.