(* Source: Steve O'Hear *)

Steve says...

Location-based social networking could soon go mainstream with today’s news that Nokia, the world’s leading mobile cellphone manufacturer, has acquired Berlin-based Plazes.

Founded in 2005, Plazes lets “friends” update each other about what they are doing when and where, resulting in a Twitter-like activity stream but with integrated geo-tagging. Users can then subscribe to any of their friends’ activity streams or to groups of friends, as well as to specific locations known as “Plazes”. Updates can be done either on Plazes.com or by mobile phone (via text messaging) or using a number of third-party applications that utilize the Plazes’ publicly available API.

Now that Nokia has acquired the service, “if all goes well” we can expect Plazes to be “made available to millions of Nokia customers both online and on millions of mobile devices”, according to the official Plazes blog

A few key takeaways from the announcement…

• It’s more evidence that Nokia is moving away from being purely a hardware manufacturer into a fully-fledged Web service company, with it’s consumer-facing Ovi brand.
• Nokia is placing a massive bet on Location-based Services. The company now includes GPS functionality in almost all of its most recent handsets, and has been bundling its own mapping software (based on a previous acquisition of Gate5, another Berlin-based startup). Additionally, Nokia is in the process of acquiring NAVTEQ, the world’s largest data mapping company.
• Plazes is still on track to release a native iPhone client, suggesting that Nokia understands the importance of network effects over platform exclusivity. No location-based social network will be able to go mainstream if it is limited to friends who use a particular handset or platform.

Moving forward, it’s clear that mobile, combined with location, represent the next social networking frontier. As evidence, Google’s Android developer contest is littered with location-based social applications, and the official iPhone SDK has already given birth to a number of location-aware social networking apps. What’s not clear yet, however, is whether the eventual winners will be established social networking services such as Facebook or Twitter that add location-based functionality or newer or specialized entrants who build in location and mobile from the get-go.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Brad King via Marketing Shift *) 

Brad says... 

I was having a drink last week with a friend of mine who comes from a traditional marketing background and she was explaining how she'd come up with the marketing logo for her company.

She spent a great of time discussing what the image portrayed and why people would associate it with her company. It was quite compelling; however, I told her I disagreed. Her brand was her URL first and what people said about the functionality of the website second (they are Web company).

Now, there's lots of reasons why the icon is important (syndication, for instance), but ultimately, the success of her company is going to come down to two things: how easy is it for people to find you through Google and how are you going to communicate with those people in the blogosphere who are engaged in your product.

It's impossible for her -- or other companies -- to control the marketing message. The people will decide. The most important area she should focus on: tapping into the conversation and becoming a partner with her clients.

It's a never-ending job; however, the game industry has the right model. They hire community managers who attend to, seed, answer to and advocate for the people who are using their products. They are known entities, actual people speaking in plain language.

Of course, not every product will have a community, but that doesn't meant that you can't build communities around lifestyles associated with a product (although in her case, the community should form rather easily).

Posted by brian tiong at 09:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Mike Masnick *)

Mike reports... 

We wrote about Metallica's latest foray online, where it's attempting to build a community around its latest music. Given Metallica's history of attacking Napster all the way back in 2000, we expected there to be some pushback, but what was really stunning was how many of the comments were from people (many of whom had been big fans of the band) still pissed off about Metallica's actions, and refusing to have anything to do with the band. We weren't the only ones to notice. Wired had a story on Metallica's efforts and discovered exactly the same thing. The vast majority of the comments were vehemently negative. Clearly, Metallica really tarnished its reputation by its actions eight years ago, and it's still paying for it.

This brings up a good point, that we've mentioned in the past in the comments, but not so clearly in a post. A person, organization, band or company's reputation is an important "scarce" good -- and once damaged, it's quite difficult (though not impossible) to rebuild the shattered goodwill. When talking about what would happen in a world without copyright, for example, people often say "but in a world without copyright, couldn't someone just copy your own creation and pretend they were their own." The answer is yes, but they do so at the risk to their own reputation. If the news comes out that the person/organization/band/whatever was taking others' works and not giving credit where it was due, that would harm their reputation. And, as Metallica is learning, a tainted reputation can have serious long-term impact.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

 (* Source: Servant of Chaos *)

But while the consumer landscape has undergone a profound change, it is easy to see why business is slow to move -- for no matter how advanced we are in our "home life", evidence of a leakage from home to profession is minute. Take for example, the humble wiki. How many of you heard of a wiki? How many of you have you have used one? How many have set one up? Who has read something on Wikipedia?

Now I am guessing that many of my blog's readers would raise their hand at at least one of the previous questions. But now ask yourself, does this apply at work? Extend the same question to blogs. Does your company have a blog? Are you involved in it? If not, why not? What are the barriers preventing you?

More here 

Posted by brian tiong at 09:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Financial Times *) 

Andrew says... 

Apple is in discussions with the big music companies about a radical new business model that would give customers free access to its entire iTunes music library in exchange for paying a premium for its iPod and iPhone devices.

The “all you can eat” model, a replica of Nokia’s “comes with music” deal with Universal Music last December, could provide the struggling recorded music industry with a much-needed fillip, and drive demand for a new generation of Apple’s hardware.

More here 

Posted by brian tiong at 09:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

 (* Source: Techcrunch *)

Michael says... 

Yahoo Buzz, a Digg-like service that launched on February 25, is now nearly three weeks old. We asked Yahoo to share some of the data from those first two weeks.

The big benefit for publishers is that top Buzz stories are linked from the Yahoo home page, which turns a firehose of traffic onto a story. When those stories hit the home page there’s a good chance that the linked site will have a record day in traffic. Yahoo says they’ve sent 16 million visitors to outside sites in those first two weeks, and they’ve gathered data from some of the linked partners:

• Salon got so excited about a February 28 link from the Yahoo home page to this story that they issued a press release - they had 1 million unique visitors that day, the most ever to the 12 year old site.
• US Magazine was linked from Yahoo on February 27, and had the second highest traffic day ever. 32% of visits that day came from the Yahoo home page.
• Huffington Post reported 800,000 unique visitors from a Yahoo-linked story
• Smoking Gun, Portfolio.com, Dallas Morning News and Imaginova all reported significant traffic increases after links from the Yahoo home page.
• Sugar, Inc. sites have had nearly 1.8 million unique visitors sent from five different Buzz stories on the Yahoo home page

More here 

Posted by brian tiong at 03:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Mike Jones *) 

Mike says...

People online are seeking new ways to connect and be social. To meet that growing need, a new wave of social media sites have germinated explicitly to provide tools and platforms that facilitate sharing in all its facets and forms. The recent popularity of online social networks gives testimony to our most primitive desire to belong, as we congregate around the things we are most passionate about.

Savvy marketers are beginning to see this evolution of Internet users, from passive consumers into brand influencers and ambassadors who are not to be underestimated.

Many brands are wary of exposing themselves on social media sites, but as anyone who's been involved in social media for more than five minutes knows, they're too late. Their brands are already exposed, and the community is talking about them, whether they choose to get involved or not. Rather than trying to avoid the conversation, brand marketers need to create a strategy to engage online influencers and social media users who have the power to make or break their brand.

Here are seven social marketing tactics to help your brand "get social" and join the conversation:

1. Boost the Fun Factor – Find out what social sites your customers and influencers frequent, and help them accomplish something new there. This does not mean inserting your brand as a social media billboard. It may mean offering an application that entertains or informs, or starting and growing a community based around your customers' areas of interest. Caveat: Start it, facilitate it, but don't try to control it.

2. See the Forest and the Trees – Pay attention to the smaller, niche social network sites, where people are gathering around their areas of interest and hobbies. Brand opportunities around these newer micro-social sites will increase as they begin competing and winning attention from the large, noisy social sites.

3. Widgets are Welcome – Incorporate a widget into your next online marketing program. Widgets are portable applets that appear on blogs, Web sites, and social networking sites. These self-contained applications allow page owners to personalize their sites quickly and easily. At the same time, widgets allow you to engage your audience with compelling content while also strategically and subtly branding your company or product.

4. Conversation is King – If you develop an application for use in social networks, or if you build a custom network, enable seamless conversations using the tools that users are familiar with. Promoting text conversation among participants is one thing, but also facilitating conversations using video and audio can help boost interactivity and brand resonance. Also give them a way to connect back to you by subscribing to a custom feed and giving them direct access to someone internally.

5. Engage – Find something that appeals to customers at an experiential level. Once upon a time, you built it and they came. Nowadays, they won't show up unless you effectively engage them. Show your customers that you thought about them at a human level and not as simply "users." This will impact every approach you take and will force the personalization for target demographics regardless of the tools you use to reach them.

6. Research and Listen – What is appealing to the people you want to reach? The only way to learn about their preferences and what they will or won't embrace is to monitor their activity, as well as the culture of the community you wish to reach and create. By observing, you'll uncover not only the ideas to build or deploy relevant tools, services or campaigns, but also the methods and strategies for creating genuine excitement and participation.

7. Don't Go It Alone – Making the wrong move in the social media space can do more damage than not participating at all. Look to technology, marketing, and strategic business partners to create an effective and appropriate presence on the social web.

Remember that your brand influencers are online to connect with people who care about the things they care about. They are there to make meaning, not to be broadcast to. They are there to participate and create, not to be advertised to. The more your brand can assist people in connecting with others online to create or share something new, the more favorably you will be received in these new and influential social circles.

Posted by brian tiong at 01:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Joshua Levine *) 

I'm been recently thinking about my past year in social media and realised that I've been pretty focused on the B2C part of social media related projects.  This week begins my quest in observing more about the B2B side of the equation.  Have a read on what Joshua has to say.

Joshua says... 

Wikis, blogs and social networking – once exclusively the Internet playground for techies, kids, and assorted enthusiasts – are being adopted by corporations at an explosive rate.

The race is on to embrace the power of the web to harness collective intelligence and sell products in new ways.

For anyone needing proof that Web 2.0 is big business, just look at Microsoft's battle with Google for an equity stake in Facebook, one of the leading social networking sites. Microsoft now owns 1.6% of Facebook after making a $240 million investment, marking a $15 billion valuation for the high-traffic website.

The Race Is On

ChangeWave Research recently completed a benchmark survey on Web 2.0, which confirms the explosion in Web 2.0 usage. Our survey of 2,081 companies shows a huge percentage not only believe in the benefits of collaborative Web 2.0 tools but are rapidly moving to implement them in a wide variety of ways.

Key findings include:

• One-in-four respondents (24%) say their company already uses Web 2.0 social software. Another 8% say they’ll begin using it in the next 12 months.

• Focusing on specific web technologies, we found that Wikis (20%), Blogs (18%), and Social Networking (15%) are attracting the most attention.

• Surprisingly, while current users find Wikis to be most beneficial to their company, future users think Blogs (26%) and Social Networks (21%) will be most beneficial.

All told, two-in-five respondents (39%) report their company is very or somewhat willing to use Web 2.0 social software for business purposes.

But why are companies so hot on using Web 2.0?

The top two reasons given by current users are both internally oriented:

• To improve internal employee collaboration
• To increase internal efficiency and productivity

However, a wholesale transformation is occurring between current and future corporate users in terms of why they’re making use of Web 2.0 software. While current users are more ‘internally oriented’ in their usage, future ones will be far more ‘externally oriented.’ Here are the top reasons given by future corporate Web 2.0 users:

• To improve internal employee collaboration
• To improve external customer service and support
• To increase external brand awareness and loyalty
• To increase external sales of products and services

Read more here 

Posted by brian tiong at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Servant of Chaos *) 

I been recently thinking a little (maybe a lot) on the future of marketing and I guess, like Gavin been focus on the big picture.  Maybe a little micro focus will not hurt... read on, I suspect Gavin is thinking in the right direction and would love to hear his comments in the week coming on his new blog topic series -- entitled The Future of Your Brand Is ...

Gavin says...

At the end of 2007 and in the early part of 2008 I watched as a series of predictions hit the web. Some of these posts and articles predicted the end of this or that, or the beginning of something else. Some looked at trends, others at opportunities. Sometimes the focus was observational. And while I don't normally go in for trend analysis, I felt a strange sort of pressure to come up with my own list of predictions. I began stewing on it ... and it became worse with every new, additional post that I saw on trends. But then I realised that the only expectations were my own. I felt released. And now a good two months into the year, the focus on the future has been forgotten -- we are, everyday, seeking to define and create it with our words, actions and ideas. We are thinking on the fly, strategically doing and jumping in feet first. If anything, 2008 is more of the same ... more blogging, more social media, more connections and ideas, more conferences and meetups. I don't know if it IS faster that 2007, but it feels it.

I came to the realisation that when it came to insight I needed a little more focus, not less -- I needed to zero in, not fly at 10,000 feet.

Out of the haze I settled upon two meta-trends -- the trends of trends:

 

• Micro-transformations -- Micro-transformations refer to the miniaturising of consumer behaviours into ever smaller discrete steps. This fragmentation of direct experience is driving a range of sub-trends that are, in turn, being facilitated by economic, technical and social changes.

• Infatuations -- In a globalised world, our infatuations are taking on new dimensions. No longer is infatuation one-way, but it is bi-directional … what we love now returns that love in an equally idealised form.

 

More here 

Posted by brian tiong at 01:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

 (* Source: PSFK *) 

Christine Huang says... 

Nokia’s online music store was open for business in Germany, the second country to welcome the largest cellphone maker’s virtual media shop (the first was launched in the UK in November). Nokia plans on rolling out their iTunes competitor in nine more countries by mid-2008, charging 1 euro ($1.52) per song, rivaling iTunes .99 euro/track rate.

Along with Nokia’s Ovi internet services (which offer its mobile users access to SNSes like MySpace, Flickr, and Facebook as well as the Nokia Music Store, Nokia Maps, and N-Gage games) the music store is is the first large-scale move by a cellphone producer in the realm of online content offerings. Next on the list are France, Italy, Spain, as well as Singapore and Australia by third quarter 2008, with further expansions planned for Asia and Europe through the end of the year.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Mashables *) 

I got sent this by my friend Simon last week and thought nothing of it and sent it on to a couple fo friends (you know who you are little elfs).  It just shows that creative 'avatar yourself' content is still pretty compelling & viral in this web1.0 email space and with a little contribution from web2.0.  Wonder how it will be like next year when virtual worlds take more stage space.  Elf Youself 3.0? Can't wait... maybe.

 
OfficeMax got it right last year when they launched the Elf Yourself campaign during the holiday season. The site that lets you turn yourself into a dancing elf was a big hit, and OfficeMax has brought it back for an encore this year. Hitwise reports that Elf Yourself has become the top-ranked site in the Humor category, and has held its ranking for the last three weeks. An 89% increase in traffic took place for the week ending December 8, 2007, from the prior week.

What’s interesting is the demographic that’s found this site to be most amusing. Thanks to the viral nature of email, and office workers being the target demographic, 62% of the traffic to Elf Yourself for the week ending December 8 came from web-based email services and the majority of the site’s visitors were aged 55 and over.

Looks like plenty of employees are staying on task while working in the office this holiday season. If your employees are going to waste time on the web, wouldn’t you want it to be for a dancing elf? Get in the holiday spirit! Is this the ultimate viral marketing campaign? The quick (once you get past the initial load time) and easy custom options make for high user engagement, and you even get OfficeMax coupons and promos when you’re done.

So what’s with the viral essence of email marketing? It still works beautifully, when you’ve got a compelling piece of content. The easiest way to share things with friends (email) has tapped 62% of the incoming traffic for Elf Yourself, with 35% coming from Yahoo alone. 19% hails from Windows Live, while MySpace and Facebook lent 5% and 2% respectively. Is this promising for Yahoo or Google, considering their evolving hopes for Inbox 2.0? It sure doesn’t hurt.

But what about OfficeMax? Does this type of marketing convert into good customers? This is the second year that OfficeMax has rolled out the Elf Yourself campaign, so it must be doing some good. Others have taken to this concept for temporary promos as well–SimpsonizeMe, for instance. Even YouTube is hoping to get a viral boost out of the holiday season, with templated sending options for video clips. See here for more holiday fun.

Posted by brian tiong at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Kristen Nicole *) 

We haven’t seen Nike get too heavily involved with online virtual “avatar hubs”, but its latest campaign gets pretty wrapped up in Zwinky, taking a few star athletes along for the ride. A new challenge launched by IAC’s Zwinky and Nike invites users to engage in the site in order to get their chance to meet a star athlete, a la Zwinky avatar.

The Field Reporter challenge requires the user to know a thing or two about a particular star athlete, which includes Maria Sharpova, Kobe Bryant, Serena Williams, LeBron James and Abbey Wambach. If you pass the first round of questions, then you’ll still need to solve the clues that will lead you to your star athlete. Find them, and then cart them off to a virtual press release in your stretch Hummer, where you’ll also get the opportunity to ask them a question. It looks like you only get one shot to ask something of your star athlete, so make it good. You’ll also get some Nike gear to take home.

Seeing virtual events or brand marketing inside virtual worlds is nothing new–the trend grew quite rampant earlier this year with th sudden growth of Second Life. What often differs in these smaller, temporary campaigns, is the level of integration for the users. Depending on the brand, the type of campaign, and the long-term goals for that brand, we’ll see different levels of integration into the virtual world. The Nike campaign doesn’t seem to be looking for a virtual way to market its products for long-term use on Zwinky, though this wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Kristen Nicole *) 

Coca Cola has apparently found it useful to market itself in virtual worlds. Having made its claim in Second Life through various promotions, the beverages company has moved on to There.com. CC Metro is the island Coke has created in this virtual world, where avatars can hang out. There’s a virtual movie theater for viewing short films (this seems to be very popular in virtual worlds), a diner, and shopping stores where you can use your Coke Rewards points to redeem items for your avatar to don on themselves or in their homes.

The island, shaped like a Coke bottle, is one example of a more integrated marketing solution for a brand within a virtual world. It also highlights the usability of other virtual worlds outside of the dominating Second Life. What stands out for this particular marketing campaign is the attempt at subtlety, which greatly differs from Coke’s Second Life promotion which invited users to design a vending machine. Cosmo is another brand that’s found There.com to be a viable virtual world for targeting teens.

But is there anything in particular that makes one virtual world better than another, and will these brands eventually launch larger campaigns that can reach across several virtual worlds at once? Cruxy has created one tool that will work in multiple virtual worlds, making it easier for distribution purposes to have an offering in more than one community.

And as I mentioned before, showing movies in virtual worlds is becoming more popular–this is a far easier format to offer across virtual worlds and Sony has even bought into it, as it’s invested in Gaia. It doesn’t seem like virtual worlds are dying off anytime soon, with Wells Fargo even launching its own, so we’re sure to see more creative implementations of advertising on this front.

[image via nytimes]

Posted by brian tiong at 12:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Mashable *) 

Kristen says... 

Molson

It’s a sadly funny situation, seeing a brewery try to get hip with an online photo contest on Facebook. I can only assume that Molson didn’t happen to notice that Facebook is a breeding ground for drunken party pictures pouring in from campuses across the world. Needless to say, the photo contest ended up looking more like a promotion for binge drinking, and the brewer pulled the plug on that one after being contacted by an Xavier University administrator. Surprise, surprise.

Lesson Learned for Molson

So what can we all take away from Molson’s mistakes?

Don’t hold a college party photo contest (especially on Facebook!) if you’re a brewery. Go sponsor a cab company instead.

Just because it’s a social network and your daughter spends too much time on it doesn’t mean it’s the best place for you to advertise. This leads us to the next takeaway…

Get an online marketing specialist. If you can afford one, then it’s likely you’re too far removed from social networking to understand it anyway. So just spend money to hire experts to do online marketing for you. It’s like a dog walker, only way better for you.

Don’t hold a college party photo contest if you’re a brewery!

Got any other takeaways from Molson’s mess up? Share some more “duh” moments in the comments. This is a layup for all you trollers out there.

[via globe and mail]

Posted by brian tiong at 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: TechCrunch *)

The Singapore government in their attempts to be 'cool' has struck out again.  Who is responsible for this idea should be given a job in PR because it is just like a firecracker that just went off in yor hand. I could not watch the video... See if you can.

Michael Arrington says...

I couldn’t not post this. The Singapore Media Development Authority made this video to sex up the Singapore tech scene a little. I’d say they definitely succeeded - there’s nothing as cool as middle aged men in suits rapping. Dan, dude, you’ve got to get on this immediately and make it go viral.

I would have paid good money to have done a cameo in this video.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Jeremiah Owyang, insight from Charlene Li and Shar VanBoskirk *)

Executive Summary
Both Facebook and MySpace have launched profile and network targeted advertising and marketing products. As they both use member interests and the communities which they are part of, trust continues to become key in adoption as information is passed along the network. The sheer size of MySpace’s member base, as well as the thriving local business membership will lead to success. Facebook, which brings a unique solution evolves advertisements to endorsements and encourages members to subscribe to a brand in what we are calling “Fan-Sumers” (an evolution of the consumer). As consumers share their affinities, brands can advertise using trusted social relationships.

(Left Graph: Consumers trust their friends and acquaintances far more than any other sources –Report: Leveraging User-Generated Content, 2007)

Trust is and will continue to be one of the most important attributes in the decision making process.

Communities form online, trust develops
How we get information continues to evolve as communities form online organized by individuals with similar interests. Just like in real life, we identify our interests, and are often influenced by opinions and experiences of trusted peers in our communities. For many, social networking sites embody these relationships and influence how trusted decisions are made.

[Brands can now self-serve a targeted marketing and advertising campaign within the already thriving MySpace community]

Webmaster not needed: MySpace profile for businesses
Small businesses can continue to build their online profile on MySpace (many of them already have), but now, because of their familiarity with self-marketing (restaurant, nightclub, and other local businesses and their customers) on Myspace.

Self-service ads remove middle man
When friction is removed, efficiency is created. With MySpace’s “Self-Service” ad network small businesese can target ads across a variety of affinities (over 300) and deploy ads on users’ profile pages. These ads, which should (by theory) be relevant and contextual to a user who has self-populated their profile page will have these ads displayed.

Advertising balance required in already busy MySpace
With marketers already with a strong presence in MySpace this could continue to erode away at early adopter “cool kids” from embracing MySpace. But as cycles have shown, where communities form, marketers follow.

User experience continues to be free-form
These ads, which will conform to IAB advertising standards (sizes) will give advertisers the freedom to create the ads in the style accustomed to the network. Yes, expect more blinking text.

To watch: OpenSocial
As OpenSocial starts to be deployed across MySpace and other partners, expect profile ads to be tied to widgets and vice versa; a fabric of links. I’ve already outlined How to explain OpenSocial to your executives.

Inaccurate user profiles could result in mis-targeting of ads
We know that many members do not make their profiles accurate which could yield inconsistencies in how and where ads are displayed. While MySpace has assured they’re accounting for rogue outliers, expect some inefficiencies in advertisements.

Our Call: Sheer mass will yield success
We think this to be a win for MySpace, given their great reach, there are millions of users with active profiles, and there’s also plenty of inventory as many small and local businesses that are present will be comfortable deploying ads where their community already exists.

More here 

Posted by brian tiong at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source: Jeremiah Owyang *)

Some insights and analysis from the Forrester team of Jeremiah, Charlene & Shar VanBoskirk.

Jeremiah says...

Going beyond just profile matching of advertisements, Facebook allows consumers to self-identify with brands and becoming fans. In turn, brands can use these “Fan-Sumers” as endorsers to their own trusted networks, resulting in trusted word-of-mouth. Brands can also self-manage their own campaigns, and there’s some unique opportunities for eCommerce widgets or applications to be part of this formula.

[Using Facebook, consumers will publicly endorse brands, resulting in the birth of the “Fan-Sumer”, causing efficient word-of-mouth marketing in their trusted network]

There are three major components to today’s announcement, they include the following:

1) Facebook Pages: Brands get their own profile
For the first time, businesses will legitimately be able to setup profile pages, much like MySpace’s business profiles feature. Next, Facebook members will add these brands as ‘fans’ (much like friends) and this will produce a connection between the parties. Members will self-identify with brands in what we are calling “Fan-Sumers”. Furthermore, this service, called “Beacon” gives third parties the ability to share information on the newsfeed and provides lots of unique opportunities. Sponsored groups will start to evolve into this new form brand profile as this system gets adopted.

2) SocialAds: Endorsements at the friend level lead to eCommerce
Once a member has indicated they are a fan of a brand, that brand can choose to purchase SocialAds (from Facebook Sales or via a self-service platform). A unique endorsement of a product or brand will now appear on that individuals news feed or banner or skyscraper ads. Advertisers can purchase social ads target by profile demographics and profiles, as well as by activities done in Facebook. Payment is an auction-based system available to marketers via both CPM and CPC pricing.

3) Use “Insight” for control and flexibility
This self-service dashboard called Insight gives the marketer detailed knowledge how their advertising campaign is working on Facebook. It’s expected that advertisers will have flexibility, control over the type of ads they deploy, in what quantity, and the demographics they want to target.

A likely scenario:
Shauna, who enjoys Revlon products, indicates she’s a fan of the brand and becomes a Fan-Sumer. Marketers at Revlon can then purchase SocialAds, which will then display on Shauna’s newsfeed or on ads on her profile. If Shauna purchases Revlon makeup from Amazon, her newsfeed could indicate an eCommerce links recommending it to her 100 trusted friends, resulting in further sales.

[The traditional marketing funnel as we know it is distorted; endorsements are now passed from trusted customers to prospects, not direct from the brands themselves]

Implications for Facebook:

Members have more control over ads
Facebook users can opt to turn off social ads, and friends of that user can ‘dial down’ endorsements they see using preferences. We believe that Facebook is attempting to respect the rights of users by giving control to members to ‘opt-in’ to become a Fan-Sumer.

Quest for Fans will cause brands to beg
Since social ads only work if a member has indicated they are a fan, brands will be working to earn and buy fans to accept them as members. Expect a lot of noise to be generated from this activity as brands run campaigns to encourage members to add them as fans through discussion boards, banner ads, and special offers.

Hard to qualify a “business”
Facebook is limiting these features to ‘real’ businesses and organizations. Expect an entire team to be crawling and dealing with this qualifying the issue. As recent member accounts have been disabled from Facebook, expect businesses and organizations to encounter same issues.

Limited ad supply to raise prices
Because Facebook members will see only two social ads per day, we expect the supply of ads to be in scarce supply and thus raising prices and not matching the value. This could shift ad buying to large brands who have experience buying and managing search and direct response ads.

Our Call: Brand affinity leads to community endorsements and more trusted marketing.
We see this as a win for Facebook, this highly targeted system isn’t just about web advertising but about brand affinity and hooks into what’s really important, trusted endorsements from people in a network. This truly is the next generation of advertising. Facebook tells us that the worst case it will be 2 times click through rate over the performance of (existing is 4-26%)

Experiment: Because of the control and flexibility, we recommend to brands that are currently on either of these social networks to experiment and test.

Learn how to efficiently manage your campaigns. There’s clearly a trend towards self-service, which provides efficiencies for both businesses and the platforms.

To know: Marketing has changed, advertising is no longer a sole-solution. Marketers must also learn how to be part of communities, engage with them, and be part of the conversation.

To know: Marketing is now distributed, brands must embrace communities where they currently exist, rather than solely driving them to their corporate website.

[While traditional search advertisers like Google and Yahoo match by keyword, My Space and Facebook match on something far more powerful: people and their relationships]

Posted by brian tiong at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : David Radd

Hang out and rock out online

Harmonix and MTV Games today revealed the details for Rockband.com. The site will launch on November 20 simultaneously with the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game and will feature band pages, classifieds, leaderboards, blogs, forums and more. San Francisco-based Mekanism was tapped to build the social networking site.

"Rockband .com blurs the lines between fantasy and reality," said Melissa Macaulay, Producer of Rockband.com, Harmonix. "The site allows you to hype your in-game band's accomplishments, while providing a forum to meet other real-life people and potential band mates who share your musical tastes."

"We see Rockband.com as a true extension of the Rock Band world. It will be an awesome way to meet new people who have similar musical tastes," said Josh Randall, Creative Director for Harmonix. "With Rockband.com players will be able to come together and express themselves in a collaborative manner, which is what playing music is all about."

"We are designing Rockband.com as an online home for your band, and as a creative platform for living out your rock and roll fantasy," said Pete Caban, partner at SF-based digital studio Mekanism. "The b ands and rockers that you can create in Rock Band are insanely unique, and it's going to be fascinating to watch this community come to life."

Posted by brian tiong at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : Newsweek *)

Brian Braiker says :

Photo illustration: Newsweek.com; photos: istockphoto.com

 

Fighting for members, MySpace tries to outcool Facebook

Do you Facebook or MySpace? Increasingly, membership in one social network does not necessarily rule out the appeal of belonging to the other. Of course, each company wants you visit their site more often than the other (if not exclusively)—all the more reason to differentiate. To that end, MySpace, the 800-pound News Corp.—owned gorilla, made three major announcements this week—two of which served to underscore a deepening fundamental difference in philosophy from its closest rival, Facebook. "MySpace is Hollywood and Facebook is Silicon Valley," says David Card, a senior analyst for Jupiter Research. Or you could put it this way: MySpace is glam; Facebook is geek. Not that there's anything wrong with either.

MySpace announced Tuesday that it has forged a splashy licensing agreement with Sony BMG—the world's second largest label—for access to streaming videos, music and other content. The partnership calls for the social-networking giant and the music studio to share advertising revenue. And in a bid to conquer the social-networking world beyond U.S. borders, MySpace will soon be offering its 110 million active monthly users free voice chats via a new partnership with Skype (220 million strong, mostly outside of the States). In a new service called MySpace IM with Skype, the Internet phone company will enhance the MySpace instant messaging service with new free VoIP capabilities starting November. (The companies will split the revenue, but specifics of the arrangement were not disclosed.)

These moves stand in direct contrast to Facebook, which instead of teaming with major media players to build services for its network of 47 million active users, allows third-party developers to build applications. A staggering 6,000 applications have been built for Facebook just this year. "We are not a media company," Mark Zuckerberg, the wunderkind brains behind Facebook, announced at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco this week. Analysts are inclined to agree. "I think there's a core philosophical difference, but [it's] the same revenue engine at the end," says Jupiter's Card. That engine, of course, is advertising. But with its Skype and Sony BMG announcements, original programming and hosting concert tours, MySpace seems to be morphing into an entertainment portal where everyone is in your extended network (and a potential audience member).

More here 

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(* Source : Reuters *)

 Yinka Adegoke says :

NEW YORK (Reuters) - News Corp's MySpace has reached a licensing deal with Sony BMG Music Entertainment to stream music videos from its artists, who include Britney Spears, Beyonce Knowles and Bruce Springsteen.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(* Source : NYTimes *)

Louise Story says :

Rob Bennett for The New York Times

Joggers in the Nike Running Club in Manhattan last month. Nike is spending more of its advertising dollars on services for consumers like workout advice, online communities and races.

Since April, Mr. Saenz, 53, has been running with a Nike+, a small sensor in his running shoes that tracks his progress on an Apple iPod he carries. After each run near his home in Louisville, Ky., he docks the iPod into his computer and posts details of his run on the Nike+ Web site. There, he has made friends with other runners around the world who post running routes, meet up in the real world and encourage one another on the site.

Nike’s famous swoosh is there all along. For Nike, this is advertising.

“It’s a very different way to connect with consumers,” says Trevor Edwards, Nike’s corporate vice president for global brand and category management. “People are coming into it on average three times a week. So we’re not having to go to them.”

The success of Nike+ is bad news for the traditional media companies that have long made money from Nike’s television commercials and glossy magazine ads.

Last year, Nike spent just 33 percent of its $678 million United States advertising budget on ads with television networks and other traditional media companies. That’s down from 55 percent 10 years ago, according to the trade publication Advertising Age.

“We’re not in the business of keeping the media companies alive,” Mr. Edwards says he tells many media executives. “We’re in the business of connecting with consumers.”

Mr. Edwards may be more blunt than most. But many large marketers are taking huge chunks of money out of their budgets for traditional media and using the funds to develop new, more direct interactions with consumers — not only on the Internet, but also through in-person events.

Adventurous companies like Nike have been experimenting with these alternatives since the 1990s. But now, even the most conventional marketers are making these alternatives a permanent — and ever bigger — part of their advertising budgets.

Last year, Johnson & Johnson decided to boycott the so-called upfronts, an annual event when advertisers get together with television executives to negotiate for commercial time. In August, General Motors said that 2008 would be the last year for its longtime sponsorship of the Olympics. In May, A. G. Lafley, the chief executive of Procter & Gamble, told financial analysts that the company would spend less on traditional media and more on its Web site, in-store advertising and promotional events.

“If you step back and look at our mix across most of the major brands,” Mr. Lafley said, “it is clearly shifting.”

More here 

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(* Source: Larry Gentille *)

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(* Source: online.wsj.com *)

Peter Sanders says :

For the first time, Bugs Bunny and dozens of his animated companions at Time Warner Inc.'s Warner Bros. unit will be housed together on a single interactive Internet portal.

The new Web site, dubbed T-Works, for "Toon Works," is scheduled to go live in April. Warner Bros.' stable of animation divisions includes Looney Tunes, Hanna-Barbera and DC Comics. It will feature all the studio's key animated characters -- from the famous bunny, Sylvester the Cat, Scooby Doo and the Flintstones to comic-book heroes, such as Batman, from the DC Comics division.

It is the latest effort by a major Hollywood studio to control distribution of its content while simultaneously playing catch-up to established social-networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook and virtual worlds like Second Life.

"T-Works fits perfectly with our overall digital strategy of creating original content online, as well as developing compelling consumer destinations," Bruce Rosenblum, president of Warner Bros.' Television Group, said in a statement.

The ad-supported site will be free to consumers. Users will be able to watch classic cartoons and original animated programming designed specifically for distribution on the site; create virtual worlds using cartoon characters as their online identities, or avatars; and customize their online identities on their own computers and on social-networking sites. They can also digitally alter cartoon characters to their liking and play online games based on the animated characters.

The site is Warner Bros.' latest effort to put elements of its vast catalog of content onto the Web. Officials of the Burbank, Calif., studio say T-Works will compete directly with Walt Disney Co. and Club Penguin, a social-networking site aimed at children that Disney bought last month.

Last year, in partnership with sister Time Warner unit AOL, Warner Bros. provided classic TV shows on the new In2TV site. That site has since largely been eclipsed by the major television networks, which now offer newer programming through various online sites. Rival studio Sony Pictures Entertainment, a unit of Sony Corp., earlier this summer revamped Crackle, its video-sharing Web site.

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(* Source: Sonja Scharrer *)

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(* Source: Rey Peralta *)

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 (* Source: Robert Levine *)

EMusic, the nation’s second-largest online music seller after Apple’s iTunes, plans to announce a deal with AT&T today that will allow people to buy songs from independent labels through their cellphones, without the need to go through a personal computer.

Several services, including those run by Sprint and