It may not be the most exciting part of the technology industry, but government is increasingly using the internet to communicate and interact with citizens.

In some cases, use of the internet is becoming a requirement as agencies are required to be a part of ‘open government’ initiatives.

When it comes to government activity online, where is all the action? A new report from GovDelivery, a digital communications solutions provider focused on government, three subjects accounted for over half of all online requests from citizens in 2011: health, business and jobs.

Interaction with citizens is often related to information requests. So it’s no surprise that the IRS, USA.gov, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration saw individual email and social media updates being shared the most by recipients. The agencies producing the greatest amount of email and social media-based sharing overall were the Department of Defense, IRS and FoodSafety.gov.

According to GovDelivery, its clients saw an average increase in the number of digital subscribers of 20%. The greatest third of performers saw subscriber numbers increase by an average of 85%.

It seems likely that such growth will continue. The demand for information is seemingly unlimited. As GovDelivery CEO Scott Burns notes, “Federal agencies are seeing unprecedented demand from the public for direct communications on everything from national emergencies to targeted programs.” What is limited is money. Significantly reduced budgets should motivate government agencies to increase their use of the internet and digital communications tools to disseminate information and serve constituents.

To be successful, however, agencies can’t exactly skimp on effort. Increasingly, those they serve will expect enjoyable, efficient experiences, meaning government agencies will be expected to employ digital tools just as well as the private sector.

Music is arguably one of the most popular things in the world (who doesn’t listen to music), but it isn’t exactly easy being a musician. That’s particularly true for indie artists who don’t have huge audiences and major record label backing.

The pains of the music industry, coupled with its overall sexiness as a business, have made the music space one of the most popular for startups.

One of the latest entrants hoping to be a panacea for indie musicians: Monkeybars. Targeting music, as well as films, books and art, Monkeybars thinks it has found the magic formula for using social networks to sell content.

Its concept: give indie artists the ability to sell their wares directly, and reward their fans when they recommend that content to friends. As Monkeybars’ CEO Tom Thimot sees it, “Right now, friends are constantly recommending content through social
networks, but they are not getting anything for it, while the
artists—from the popular to the undiscovered—continue to hand over large
percentages of their worth to third parties in order to have their
voices heard.”

Monkeybars biggest differentiator is that its reward is cash, not points that can later be used to redeem a physical or digital reward. Monkeybars calls those types of rewards “antiquated and meaningless.”

The big question, of course, is could something like this work? To be sure, although Monkeybars is billing itself as “the first e- and m-commerce platform that enables artists to monetize
and distribute content directly while rewarding their fans for sharing
and recommending it” the general concept isn’t exactly new.

There are numerous challenges. A big one: getting consumers to pony up for content. It isn’t always easy, and someone who has just discovered your music may not become a fan or customer immediately. There’s also the challenge of making sure that recommendations don’t lose their appeal because they’re effectively paid for. After all, there’s a huge difference between introducing a friend to a great musician and introducing a friend to a great musician through what amounts to an affiliate link.

From this perspective, it’s worth considering that new models for content distribution are warranted in the age of social networking, and there may be room for an affiliate-like model, but there will be a lot of artists and fans to whom the model doesn’t appeal.

Parts of the internet will go black tomorrow. From Wikipedia and Reddit to the Cheezburger network and Major League Gaming, numerous highly-trafficked web properties say they’ll shut down to protest the SOPA legislation that would make the internet far less free in the name of fighting piracy.

Even Google is going to be making a statement using its homepage.

The blackouts are going on despite the fact that SOPA is effectively dead — for the time being.

Facing increasingly visible criticism and anger over SOPA’s heavy-handed approach to protecting Big Content, it became more and more difficult for members of Congress to stand by the legislation.

Clearly recognizing how unpopular SOPA was, U.S. President Barack Obama finally came out and said he would not support it.

SOPA was flawed in a seemingly countless number of ways. Perhaps most fundamentally, it was based on the flawed premise that piracy is a problem that is so big it requires a significant restructuring of the internet as we know it.

As Tim O’Reilly observed, “There’s no question in my mind that piracy exists, that people around the world are enjoying creative content without paying for it, and even that some criminals are profiting by redistributing it. But is there actual economic harm?“

He goes on:

In my experience at O’Reilly, the losses due to piracy are far outweighed by the benefits of the free flow of information, which makes the world richer, and develops new markets for legitimate content.

Most of the people who are downloading unauthorized copies of O’Reilly books would never have paid us for them anyway; meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of others are buying content from us, many of them in countries that we were never able to do business with when our products were not available in digital form.

Julian Sanchez adds a broader perspective in a must-read piece, explaining in some detail why the numbers Big Content throws around regarding the economic costs of piracy cannot be legitimate by any stretch of the imagination.

These numbers are, for lack of a better word, completely “bogus”.

Of course, none of this means that piracy should be ignored. Intellectual property is important, and it’s in our interest to have an honest discussion about IP rights.

But tearing down the internet, treating all individuals as presumptive criminals and turning government into the police force for Hollywood is not the way to protect intellectual property. Fortunately, with SOPA shelved, we can all breathe a sign of relief.

The big question now: for how long?

Big Content is not going to back down, and government bureaucrats aren’t going to abandon their lust for more power. Greater regulation of the internet is something both groups will push for, even if it doesn’t come in the form of SOPA.

Knowing this, tomorrow’s blackouts are a good thing. They serve as a reminder that there’s still a war here, even if one battle has been won.

Unfortunately, future battles may not be so easy. Ironically, the biggest challenge to winning these battles may prove to be the tech community itself. That’s because while it has done an admirable job fighting SOPA, prominent members of it are at the same time calling for more government regulation.

Google integrating its own social network into the SERPs? We can’t have that! Letting the private companies which build the infrastructure of the internet decide how to manage that infrastructure? We need network neutrality laws to stop that!

Of course, we don’t.

If the tech community doesn’t stop inviting government to effectively police the internet, and beg it to grant itself the legal powers to do so, there probably won’t be another SOPA to protest.

Instead, those who want to restrict the internet and control the free flow of information will do so by crafting insidious legislation some of SOPA’s biggest opponents support.

CBS Outdoor, one of the largest out-of-home media companies in North
America, has launched a redesigned, mobile-friendly site in Canada to
advertise how to advertise with them.

The new site includes an interactive web mapping program alongside its
mobile capabilities to help companies find out more about local teams
and what advertising opportunities are already in their area.

“What better way to connect the power of Outdoor with our highly mobile world than with a mobile website?” said Michele Erskine, CBS Outdoor Director of Marketing.

When you access cbsoutdoor.ca on your mobile in Canada, it uses geolocation to redirect you to the CBS Outdoor office closest to you. There you can explore a photo gallery of local outdoor advertising campaigns, contact the closest CBS Outdoor team or access information on other areas of the business including media, research, creative, real estate and production.

The feature that may be most pertinent to those interested in outdoor advertising, is the interactive mapping tool developed with Bing maps. The US version of the site also has a general coverage map that displays bus routes and rail/subway lines and stations.

 
The map allows you to select an area, type of advertising and size of advertising to see what media options are available to you and the market you’re looking to target. Some selections will also include a small thumbnail image so you can see the location and the advertising that has been there previously. It also shows you the direction the advertising will face so you can formulate what audience and what time of day you want consumers to see it.

The improvement to lead generation and customer experience seems to be the focus for this redesign. You can easily select units you’re interested in advertising on via the interactive website and save them on a map to send to the sales team. Actually most things you do lead to the sales team, but it’s so subtle you don’t notice.

It will be interesting to see what percent sales increases off the back of this. It’s a simple and interactive way to get tailored lead generation from clients who are already have an inkling of what they want from outdoor advertising. It’s a step ahead of their competitors, though with nearly 550,000 outdoor media displays in the US alone, CBS Outdoor already dominate the market. This digital offering, free of the customary pie charts and bar graphs, can only widen the gap.

Foursquare has added an ‘Explore’ function to its
website, which effectively turns its billions of check-ins into a social search engine.

Data from 1.5bn check-ins is now available in the form of local recommendations when users search for a service in a particular
town via their computer.

The Explore function has been available on Foursquare’s mobile app since March.

In a blog post the company said simply that this was designed to “help us personalise recommendations for you.”

It’s not just personalised, it’s specific. Search for ‘pool table,’ or ‘guacamole’; ‘deep dish,’ or ‘thin crust.’ Because not all bars, Mexican restaurants, or pizza joints are created equal, and we want to make sure you find what you’re craving.”

The tool allows users to refine searches based on four options; ‘I haven’t been to yet’, ‘I have been to before’, ‘My friends have been to’ and ‘Have Foursquare specials’.

Recommendations then appear on a map of your chosen location as shown below.

By adding this additional functionality Foursquare is stepping away from the gaming model and providing users with a more tangible service.

This is a clever way of using the company’s wealth of data, and if this tool encourages more people to sign-up – at last count it had 15m users – this search function will continue to become more comprehensive.

Foursquare can also now position itself more strongly as a travel tool, since planning your next trip to Paris would be much easier if you have your friends’ suggestions in one place, available from one search engine.

It also opens up new areas for monetisation through the sale of premium listings, or through sponsored social content similar to the news feed ads launched by Facebook this week.

Social search seems to be a huge area of growth for 2012, based on the assumption that people are more interested in their friends’ likes and dislikes than generic search results.

Though we’ve been hearing about the power of this for years, we’re now seeing people truly invest in this as a function – most recently seend in the changes Google announced this week that incorporate social content from Google+ into search results.

The 2011 holiday shopping season was a banner year for online retail, which broke numerous records. Savvy retailers can pat themselves on the back; the best have become incredibly adept at enticing consumers and delivering a great customer experience.

But they’ll probably also want to thank their spend on search according to a new report by IgnitionOne, which found that significant increases in this area for Q4 boosted impressions, clicks and transactions.

According to IgnitionOne, it saw a 14% increase in search spend in Europe, which translated to a 22% increase in clicks and 19% increase in clickthroughs.

The numbers were even more impressive in the US, where retailers specifically boosted their search spend by 26% in Q4. That produced a 42% jump in impressions, a 42% boost in clicks and a 67% increase in transactions.

IgnitionOne’s Chris Evans pointed out the obvious implication that despite increasing spend levels, search spending is also getting more efficient.

With increasing transactions per pound spent; essentially brands are getting more bang for their buck.”

The ability of search spend to drive meaningful action jives with Baynote’s recent Annual Holiday Online Shopping Experience Survey, which found that, despite the hype around social and mobile, search is still one of the two biggest drivers of sales.

But IgnitionOne’s study does raise the interesting question of how retailers will gain from mobile search ads in the future.

It observed a 317% year-over-year increase in mobile search ad impressions last year, and saw 24% of all search ad spend on Black Friday going to mobile.

With this in mind, it will be interesting to see whether mobile search ads are soon just as important to retailers are web search ads.

Audi has created a new Foursquare badge with the support of the US Ski Team, which it has sponsored since 2007.

Fans of the luxury car that follow Audi on Foursquare and check-in to ski resorts this winter will unlock the exclusive ‘Audi Winter Ride’ badge, which gives them 20% off all items in the Audi collection. 

Top skiers including Olympians Lindsey Vonn and Andrew Weibrecht will be contributing Foursquare tips on the best skiing destinations in America. 

Most of the tips focus on the slopes themselves, including this from Vonn:

Want a challenge? Try skiing Forever in Sun Up Bowl. Non-stop if your thighs can handle it.

Hopefully, the tips will branch out to cover local places to go and enjoy a night out after a hard day of skiing. Those truly interested in this campaign will certainly want to know where Olympians hang out in their downtime.

So far the Audi team has posted 7 tips (mostly in Vail, CO). If this continues, and more great content is added throughout the ski season (and not just “My favorite resort is Vail” type tips), Audi could see continued traction from followers on Foursquare. The company isn’t exactly new to using social media for big campaigns either, so it does know what’s expected.

Its recent Twitter contest gave $25,000 to charity alongside luxury prizes to the winners, and last April saw the company’s first foray into using Foursquare with the launch of a new interactive billboard in Times Square which incorporated check-ins and tweets.

This campaign is niche but perfectly aimed at the type of customer Audi want to reach. If you can afford to ski all over America this winter, you can probably afford an Audi. Or at least with the discount off Audi accessories, you can pretend you do.

Community is a word used all too often in the social marketing world, but what does it mean exactly?

What are the different kinds of community that companies are building or assisting online, and how do they contribute to business goals?

We discuss the answers with DJ Waldow, the author of Econsultancy’s new series of reports on the topic.

The first report, Starting a Community, is available now to Bronze members and above.

First, can you describe what “community building” means?

Sure, but first, let me be clear about what I mean when I say “online community.”

Essentially, an online community is the 2012 version of a chat room or forum of the late 20th century. Social networking sites like the Big Four (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+) are today’s main online communities.

They are places where people gather, virtually, to share ideas, gather information, and voice their opinion around a common topic. Community building is the process of growing, developing, and nurturing these virtual gathering places.

In this first part, we get introduced to some of the benefits of building a community. What would you say is the most common goal?

As you’ll read in the Starting a Community report,the benefits of community building are plentiful.

If I had to pick the most common goal of building a community, it would have to be engaging with current customers by providing a place to offer support and customer service.

Online communities can foster an environment for your customers to bond with each other, to share ideas and experiences, to sing your praises, and to commiserate over what they do not like.

Ideally, this turns your customers into advocates.

You’ve talked about customer engagement, but what about more directly revenue related activities?

As I said, there are many benefits of building a strong online community. Lead generation can certainly be another positive outcome.

We’ll go into more detail on how to leverage your community for feedback, support, and of course sales, in a future report.

Suffice to say, a well-run online community can definitely be used to increase leads and…dare I say, sell!

What’s the number one way in which companies stumble in the early days of community building?

The biggest “stumble” early on is usually is the result of community moderators (administrators) trying to keep too much control.

It’s one thing to moderate and keep the community on track, ensure there are no personal attacks, etc. However, there is a fine line between being involved and being overbearing.

Once the community members feel like the administrator has taken over, the online community is in a risky place, one that can be seen as self-serving.

Remember, the community is not about you, it’s all about the members.

Taking a look ahead, what does the rest of this series on community building cover?

In future reports, we’ll be digging into ways to engage, grow, and leverage your community.

Specifically, we’ll share some tips and tricks to carry on conversations across multiple platforms, discuss how email marketing can be the digital glue of online communities, and detail how to use your community to gather feedback, offer support, and sell!

Tell us about your experience with community building…

Well, first off, I’m a very social person by nature. I think that’s one of the keys to community building / social media participation in general.

You have to like (love!) people. I mean, online communities are all about people, so if you don’t love people, well … you get the point.

Prior to starting out on my own, I held the title of Director of Community for Blue Sky Factory, an Email Service Provider. In the capacity of Director of Community, I was in charge of all of our social media efforts including building, growing, nurturing, and selling to our online communities.

Google maintained its dominance of the search market in December, hoovering up 91.7% of all searches in the UK.

Statistics from Experian Hitwise also reveal that YouTube also had a bumper month, accounting for 25% of visits to social networking sites.

Experian Hitwise Market research analyst James Murray said that there were record levels of internet traffic at Christmas, with 2.18bn visits going to online retailers in December, a year-on-year increase of 4.8%.

Retailers were relying more on search traffic in 2011, with 43% of all visits coming from a search engine – and for every ten visits to retailers from search, nine were from Google during this critical period.”

He said getting the right blend of traffic from social media, affiliates and other traffic sources is essential, but with search being so dominant at these key times, it is more important than ever for marketers to optimise both paid & organic campaigns.

Among social networks, YouTube saw a 1.4% increase in traffic in November, while Facebook’s traffic dropped 1.3% to 51.3% of visits in December.

The year-on-year decline is even greater, with Facebook’s share of visits to social networking sites dropping by 7%.

Traffic to YouTube rose from 417m visits in December 2010 to 606m visits in December 2011– a 45% increase year-on-year. 

This 45% growth in website visits to YouTube resulted in a 7% increase in YouTube’s market share of visits in Experian’s social networks and forums category, increasing from nearly 18% to 25% of all social visits.

It is now the third most visited website in the UK after Google and Facebook and the second biggest social network in the UK. 

Murray said: “In 2012 we’re expecting video to be even more influential as a marketing channel, and marketers will have to adapt their strategies to incorporate a multichannel approach in order to secure customers both on and offline.”

As part of the launch of a new fragrance called Anarchy, Axe is to use Facebook to create a graphic novel that fans will help to write.

A far cry from its usual – and often controversial – creative, the brand is for the first time launching a scent for women as well as men, and hopes that this campaign will appeal to both genders.

The first of two commercials created by the London office of BBH appeared on Axe’s Facebook page yesterday, ahead of a global rollout to various TV channels in over 60 countries.

Anarchy: The Graphic Novel, went live today. Created by digital agency Razorfish and Aspen Comics – it is written by Scott Lobdell, a previous author of X-Men comics and three major DC Comics titles.

The plot will follow the exploits of the ‘Anarchy Girls’ as they unleash chaos around the world. In an interactive twist, fans will be able to direct the characters, plot and outcome of the story.

But appealing to women could be difficult. Axe and its UK counterpart, Lynx, have until now promoted the brands with campaigns agressively targeted at a male demographic.

Not only that, but will this send a confusing message to an already well-defined audience?

David Vinjamuri, author of Accidental Branding and an adjunct professor of marketing at New York University told New York Times that historically a teenage boy would look at Axe’s advertising and see: “the girl that you want and the guy that you are”.

What was brilliant about Axe is they said make the girl hunt you based on your smell.”

However, he warned that when when you start talking to those outside of your core audience, you lose credibility. “The moment you start talking to girls, you lose credibility with teenage boys.”

As a creative idea, Axe’s use of Facebook is interesting. The graphic novel market has been enjoying a renaissance for perhaps the past decade, thanks in large part to Hollywood’s continuing love affair with an array of superhero characters. 

However, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. It’s unlikely that one campaign involving women will put young men off the scent of Axe – or Lynx.  But in an attempt to innovate and diversify, sometimes you can lose sight of the strength of what you’ve already got.

The International Consumer Electronics Show, or CES as it’s widely referred to as, begins tomorrow.

While it may be losing its “clout”, it’s still one of the biggest venues for companies to launch their new products at – and CES 2012 will be no different.

A lot has been made of the dozens of ultrabook launches that are expected to occur, but there’s plenty of activity in the tablet space as well:

• Lenovo is launching a 10-inch tablet, the IdeaTab S2, with a detachable keyboard which will ostensibly compete with Asus’ Transformer.
• Acer is unveiling an Android Ice Cream Sandwich tablet that will reportedly have a true 1080p display and HDMI out port.
• Vizio, perhaps best known for its televisions, is entering the computing space and launching, amongst other things, a 10-inch tablet.
• Toshiba’s CES announcements will include a new tablet that it promises will be the thinnest and lightest 10.1-inch tablet on the market.

The implication from these product launches is clear: PC manufacturers aren’t giving up entirely on the PC and they are embracing ultrabooks, but they’re increasingly going all-in on post-PC devices, namely tablets, too.

Yes, early attempts to compete with Apple’s iPad, such as RIM’s playbook, showed the risks of being too early to enter an important, but still nascent, market.

The big question, of course, is which companies will succeed. As we’ve seen from the success of Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes & Nobles’ NOOK tablets, price matters. Many of the new tablets expected at CES certainly won’t be priced at under $200, so it’s unclear just how successful many of them will be if they’re effectively competing against the iPad. It’s also worth considering that Apple, Amazon and Barnes & Noble also offer strong content ecosystems; vanilla Android-based devices may not have the same perceived cachet in the content category.

One thing is for sure, however: as more and
more companies build decent tablets, and add interesting if not
innovative features, there can be little doubt that a growing
number of consumers are going to be tablet owners in 2012.

Which they’ll own is something Apple and PC manufacturers will be duking it out to determine.

The mobile web is here. If you are yet to put a strategy in place to develop your mobile presence in order to meet a growing consumer demand, now is the time to act.

I’ve identified the key areas to remember when organising your mobile strategy.

We recently released a research report that revealed almost a third of UK consumers have made a purchase using a mobile website in the last twelve months, and 26% having done so using a mobile app.

The findings also highlighted that 25% of online consumers said they would try a competitor if the mobile website was not working, while 64% said they’d only give a mobile website an average of three chances to work before moving on.

Therefore it’s vital that you meet the challenges faced by consumers or risk losing them to a competitor; below we’ve outlined the key areas to consider in order to ensure your mobile strategy is up to scratch.

Firstly, your online content needs to be repurposed to fit the mobile channel. For example, lengthy descriptions should be avoided, customer typing should be kept to a minimum and user testing for login processes is key.

Using the location of the customer can also add value to the user experience when used in conjunction with personalisation, enabling a retailer to add information about a specific store for example.

Be aware of what happens when you drive traffic to your site, then you can optimise the correct content to reduce bounce back rates. Analytics tools are a great way to see where your customers are coming from, and you can combine this with your personalisation activity to serve the user what they want and need.

With the number of mobile users and apps rapidly increasing, it’s important to consider and use the different devices in the best possible way. Tablet and mobile devices display content very differently, and are used by customers at different places and times.

This could potentially completely alter what information they may be looking for; therefore the content should automatically be repurposed to fit the scenario according to the device.

It’s important to start small rather than attempting to do everything at once, and then to refine your strategy over time. We’ve put together an infographic that clearly shows the findings of our research, and will help you see why the key areas we’ve highlighted above are important.

Toyota has launched the social media arm of its recent Outsmart Life campaign for the Yaris, with rapper Gadget. 

Consumers can have their own personalised video created for them by Gadget and Slick, the puppet which was featured in a previous Toyota Yaris campaign. 

The campaign aims to engage a younger target audience, and ties in with its Gadget Guy and other ads for the Yaris. 

Submissions from the public on their daily annoyances will be taken via the Twitter hashtag #outsmartlive and Toyota’s Facebook page. 

From 12 January, Gadget and Slick will write, perform and film a personalised response to the best answers that will be sent to the entrant and added to Facebook and Youtube. 

According to Lisa Fielden, Brand and Digital Marketing Manager at Toyota:

The ‘Gadget Guy’ TV creative has been a big hit for the all new Yaris, and has made an impact in the conversations of our target audience. The shout out campaign takes this a step further, giving them a great piece of content that is both fun and sharable, while reinforcing the clever and pioneering features of the all new Yaris.

The window for going public is open for today’s most attractive technology and digital media companies, even if Wall Street has been relatively cool to new tech issues.

Yesterday, mobile ad network operator Millennial Media announced that it is joining the IPO fray, filing its S-1 in the U.S. to go public.

According to that S-1, the company hasn’t yet generated a profit but is
growing rapidly, seeing revenues of $70m through the first three
quarters of 2011, up from $6.2m total in 2008.

On the surface, that growth, although impressive, wouldn’t appear to
make Millennial Media an appealing IPO prospect. After all, other tech
companies that have gone public recently had greater revenues and higher
rates of growth, but the market hasn’t necessarily treated them very
well following their debuts.

Millennial Media, of course, is in a market few argue is going away any
time soon, and that could make all the difference.

The company is
serving 40bn mobile ads each month, making it one of the largest mobile
ad networks in terms of ads served — perhaps even the biggest by some
counts.

Thanks to its size, it’s a hard network for marketers to pass
up. Even if they’re intrigued by Apple and iAd, for instance, marketers currently
have to buy from the largest players like Millennial Media to reach big
audiences across multiple mobile platforms.

With the mobile advertising market growing rapidly, and some making
bullish (if not crazy) predictions about where it could be in just a few
short years, there’s a decent chance Millennial Media could be more
intriguing to Wall Street than companies like Groupon and Zynga, even if
it isn’t yet profitable.

Amazon’s Kindle Fire was one of the hottest consumer electronics products this holiday shopping season. It was so hot, in fact, that according to investment bank Morgan Keegan, Amazon’s new tablet may have displaced as many as 2m iPad sales.

And the Kindle Fire has company. Barnes & Noble’s NOOK Color and NOOK Tablet devices are selling well, prompting speculation that the bookseller may spin off its NOOK unit after missing its sales targets.

The Kindle Fire and NOOK tablets are all built on custom versions of Google’s Android operating system, raising the question: why doesn’t Google build a tablet? After all, it’s not new to hardware, having built a mobile phone and netbook-like device.

According to DigiTimes, that’s precisely what Google may be planning to do. It reports:

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt has recently revealed that the company plans to launch a high quality tablet PC within the next six months, but since he did not provide any further detail about the device, it has left many players to believe that Google will copy its strategy from Nexus smartphone to help expanding Android tablet PC’s market share.

DigiTime’s sources say that the launch of this new tablet would come in either March or April, sport Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and have a price below $199.

An Ice Cream Sandwich tablet cheaper than the Kindle Fire would certainly be intriguing, but would it sell? Perhaps not as well as Google would like.

The reason: the success of the Kindle Fire and NOOK tablets has very little to do with hardware. Yes, the hardware has to be decent. But the reason consumers are buying these tablets is that they’re channels for accessing attractive content ecosystems.

Google, of course, does play in the content space, but it’s not clear that the company would be able to build a content-centric experience like Amazon and Barnes & Noble have. It also doesn’t have a content brand; Amazon and Barnes & Noble do.

From this perspective, a Google tablet, no matter the price, may be a tough sell. It could also theoretically harm Android long-term. In the mobile space, the company’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility already has other smartphone manufacturers worried.

And for good reason: it’s somewhat awkward to be building your phones on top of software produced by the owner of one of your biggest hardware competitors.

By jumping into the tablet game in a big way in an effort to compete directly with another Android-based device, Google could create a similar situation.