Super Brands

Each year BusinessWeek ranks the top 100 Global Brands and reports them in July. This year’s results yielded a repeat in the top positions and an upset just below.

BusinessWeek uses Interbrand to determine the global brand rankings: “Interbrand takes many ingredients into account when ranking the value of the Best Global Brands. Even to qualify for the list, each brand must derive at least a third of its earnings outside its home country, be recognizable outside of its base of customers, and have publicly available marketing and financial data.”

According to BusinessWeek, the top three global brands for 2007 are repeat winners from 2006: Coca-cola is #1, Microsoft and IBM are #2 and #3.

Other movers and shakers: the golden arches stepped over Mickey when McDonalds jumped one position to #8 and Disney fell one to #9. Tech kings increased their global repute: Google vaulted four positions to #20. Apple leapfrogged six other brands to #33. Starbucks jumped three to #88.

Why is brand power important to companies and individuals? A growing global brand equates to increased future earnings and growth in stockholder value.

Super Brand Builders at Ziggs

In the same vein, the power of your personal brand can raise or lower your current and future value in relation to your competition. As you build your own professional brand during the course of your career, the value you bring to your daily team and your yearly initiatives can grow.

Some of the best brand builders at Ziggs are the individuals who have created the most comprehensive profile for themselves and then in some cases, even positioned their profile on top of every search engine (a Ziggs service called WebPro). Congratulations to these super brand builders at Ziggs: Krishna De, Doug McCready, Yvonne LaRose and Kevin Abt.

Designing for Web 2.0

Designing for a web 2.0 company takes patience and an understanding of user behavior - how the user will interact with the site. In this web 2.0 world, designers and developers now have access to technologies that can improve a site’s look and function more dramatically than ever before. For example, AJAX, a development technique, makes a webpage more responsive to the user. It can give the user better navigation or the ability to drag and drop information across a webpage with ease. However, the problem with new technologies, like AJAX, is that many designers and developers overuse them, inserting them where they’re not needed. Crowding a new web 2.0 site with these components leads to a lousy user experience that will only drive visitors away. So, to all fellow designers and developers, choose your 2.0 design components wisely, because mediocre or overwhelming UI's just won’t cut it in a web 2.0 world today.

Feedback on the Ziggs website is always welcome at rkelleher@ziggs.com.

Ryan Kelleher

Graphic Designer, Ziggs

Interning at Ziggs

On today's Web, amateur bloggers command publishing space alongside our most seasoned writers; citizen shoppers join the ranks of Consumer Reports; and classmates create friend groups with the scope and influence of master networkers. Interning at Ziggs has allowed me to experience a striking offline parallel to the culture of the new Web in which amateurs are immediately granted an all access pass to participate on a meaningful level with top professionals. I joined Ziggs while the company was in the midst of launching the Ziggs Hub. The culture of transparency and across-the-board participation that rules the Web was immediately palpable when I was offered a seat at the table at company planning meetings and encouraged to digest and contribute to new business and marketing developments.

I have been using social media for many years, but soon into my internship at Ziggs I realized how much I still had to learn. The biggest challenge was learning the language - the tech code: spider, bug, beta, tag, devweb, CPM, CTR, VOIP, Vlog, build, track, RSS, FTP. It is a language of acronyms and applications and, as a self-proclaimed non-techie, I was not prepared. At my first morning meeting with the team, I could understand about half of what everyone was saying. Ziggs has offered me a crash course in what is happening on the Web where techies have taken over the social spheres of average users and are gradually infiltrating IT jargon into daily communications between friends.

I have never been an intensely out-of-the box thrill seeker, but the Web today still feels like the wild west of the business world. It remains a relatively new, unexplored territory where room for innovation driven by instinct is as much written into business plans as traditional strategy and Six Sigma metrics. While my classmates are on a morning Starbucks run for colleagues at a traditional, vertically structured company, at Ziggs I always need to be totally plugged into the site, exploring new functionality, ready to adapt at the drop of new code for our point releases. As a young professional, this open-source, nimble-enough-to-innovate-everyday pace at Ziggs is refreshing and keeps me on my toes.

Amanda Mooney, Ziggs Intern-at-Large

Ziggs Release 2.2

We have just released some great new features and enhancements to Ziggs that we’re really excited about. Here’s a brief overview of what's new:


My Hub
The Ziggs Hub is where you can get a snapshot of information around your messages, groups, and activities. This section will continue to expand as we integrate more features. Here are some key features in this release of your new Hub:

• View your private messages
• View the most recent messages across all of your groups
• See who’s online within your groups
• See who’s birthday or anniversary is coming up (don’t forget to update your birthday or anniversary in your Profile)
• Know the completion status of your Ziggs Profile with the new Profile status meter

Private Messaging / Inbox
You now have your own private message inbox at Ziggs. You can send someone a private message by clicking on the mail icon next to their listing. When you receive a message from someone, you will be notified by email that there is a message for you. This is a great way for you to consolidate all of your communication with other Ziggs members.

Group Message Board & Polls
When you share a group, you and your members can create topics and have ongoing discussions within the context of your groups. Another group feature is Polls - this allows you to poll everyone in your group and keep track of the votes. You can even have a discussion around your Poll. Features of Group Message Board & Polls:

• Create as many topics & discussions as you want.
• Attach images and files to discussions, which other group members can download or view.
• The group owner can moderate topics within a discussion or poll. Set other members as moderators or make them read-only.
• Get notified when someone posts something new to a discussion or poll.

Invite Multiple People from your Email Distribution Lists
You can now easily invite people to all of your groups at Ziggs by clicking the “Invite People” link in your group header. This will allow you to send out an invite from your email using your email’s contact or distribution lists. This is a great way for you to quickly get a group together on Ziggs with minimal effort.

Apply a Starbucks Gift to your own Starbucks Card
This is a very cool feature we’ve just added. When someone sends you a Starbuck gift, you now have the ability to instantly apply it to your existing Starbucks card, rather than wait to have a new card mailed out to you. I love this new program because by applying a few new gifts to my current Starbucks card on file at Ziggs, I’ve already chalked up $40 in coffee gifts this week! Talk about instant gratification.


We love your feedback. Please keep it coming. You can reach me at skelleher@ziggs.com.


-- Sean