Digital Download 5/27/08

IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT BLOGS ANYMORE

BusinessWeek posted an article this morning in retrospect to its 2005 story "Blogs Will Change Your Business.” They’ve come to the self-realization that today’s business world is beyond blogs which are just one of the do-it-yourself tools out there on the net. Social connectors like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are changing the dynamics of companies around the world. Millions of companies are engaging with customers, befriending rivals and clicking through pictures of coworkers and friends. Top executives are playing the social field like Sun Microsystems’ CEO Jonathan I. Schwartz who has his own blog. IBM set up its own social network for employees, Beehive which boasts over 30,000 employees. A Dell employee who goes by “Ggroovin” tells BusinessWeek that Dell's service on Twitter has brought in half a million dollars of new orders in the past year. Some even use Twitter to find job potentials. "The new résumé is 140 characters," tweets 23-year-old Amanda Mooney, who just landed a job in PR. Major investors and corporations have been focused on the profit potential of social sites; they promise relationships in return of companies’ investments. Even MySpace is struggling to figure out the financials. And there's no guarantee that Web masses will stay loyal for the long haul. Sophisticated social metrics are still in the works and hopefully we’ll hit the jackpot while the space is hot.

STARBUCKS IS GETTING STEAMED OVER NEW LOGO

Remember last week’s section on the evolving scandal over Starbucks’ resurrection of its old logo? Well, a recent post in Ad Age had reported the company’s attempt at a redesign in reaction to the controversy online buzz. Company executives first planned to release the old logo nationwide as part of its 35th anniversary but they limited its release to the Northwest. It didn’t matter because one Washington school district banned Starbucks coffee cups during the limited-time offer unless students concealed the mermaid’s breasts with a cup holder. The logo redesign has been recently under fire by a Christian organization with just 3,000 members whom took issue with what they saw as sexual connotations. Earlier this month, the group and its media-savvy leader got news outlets flocking for a piece of the action. "If you make a comment about the Starbucks logo, it goes all over the news. It's a fascinating phenomenon," said Mark Dice, a 30-year-old Wisconsin native who leads the Resistance Manifesto. The organization's home page lists the founder's many media appearances, including "The O'Reilly Factor," the London Telegraph and Pakistan's Daily Times. Mr. Dice said the response has been overwhelming. He said he's gotten his share of hate mail, but has also managed to expand his mailing list, and participation in his online forum is up. "We've made points on various issues but nothing has gotten the exposure of this," Mr. Dice said. "This one took off and went viral." Adding to the frustration at Starbucks is the widespread misperception that the logo change is permanent; the Pike Place cups will only be in circulation for a few more weeks.

FACEBOOK IS GETTING A FACE LIFT



Big changes for Facebook are planned to push out next month. The most important component reveals that user profiles on the service will evolve from the current and often cluttered page into four tabbed sub-pages highlighting the feed, info, photos and applications. Users will have more control over their feeds and what information their friends see about them. The info tab will contain all the data typically found on Facebook pages today like the user’s education and location. The photo tab will have a portfolio of images. Finally, programs created by third-party developers since last summer and installed by users are relegated to a fourth “application boxes” tab and will generally become less visible. But Facebook executives said there will be new opportunities for some developers who create the best applications to get their programs mentioned prominently on feed pages, and to entice users to create custom tabbed pages devoted to their programs. The changes come as Facebook aims to simplify its user pages in response to the criticism of it being a bit too visually chaotic as well as indications that its growth might be tailing off. According to a recent report from Nielsen Online, 22.4 million users visited Facebook in April, down from 24.9 million in March. Overall year-over-year growth slowed to 56% from last year’s 98% growth rate.

LEARN A NEW LANGUAGE THROUGH A NEW SOCIAL SITE

Palabea just announced today that it’s now open to the public after spending several months as a limited-access resource. Palabea is essentially a social networking site with the intentions of bringing different cultures and languages of the world together where people can interact while teaching and influencing each another. Everything here is a platform and everything is social. Users can upload most anything relevant to a modern learning experience such as documents, videos, podcasts and pictures. It even has a visually appealing layout that makes it fun for members of all ages. There’s even a place to hold virtual classrooms. Want to connect with particular site members? You can. Want to take your language learning to another level and consult with language specialists and schools? You can do that, too. Anyone is welcome from the casual and curious visitors to the serious pursuers. Palabea has also established partnerships with several companies, including Deutsche Welle, Cafe Babel, Babylon, and TANDEM Fundazioa. BBC Learning English will soon be adding resources as well.

FROM HOME BREWING TO BEER TWITTERING

Here’s something fun and halfway relevant: a Mashable article highlighted 13 online tools for beer lovers alike. A few listed sites include: AllAboutBeer.com which is based on the same-named magazine and hosts details on beer locators, guides and articles; Beer100.com which has info on home brewing, calorie counts of major brands and links to bar webcams; BeerInfo.us is a customized Google search engine bringing you all the info there is to know on beer; BeerSuggest.com helps you locate beer related events, rate and tag beers and breweries; Chugd.com is a social network for the beer drinkers who can create a profile, tag & rate beers and find beer related events and post photos from parties; Coastr.com is similar but let’s you review those places and give them a rating; and last but not least, Foamee.com, a Twitter tool to help you keep track of whom you recommend a beer or coffee to, and vice-versa.

Digital Download 5/19/08

SOCIAL MEDIA CHANGING AND SHAPING PR AND ITS PRACTICES

A recent article written by Donald K. Wright, Ph.D., APR, Fellow PRSA, Professor of Public Relations, College of Communication, Boston University and Michelle D. Hinson, M.A.,Director of Development, Institute for Public Relations, University of Florida reports on a three-year-long international survey of public relations practitioners examining the impact blogs and other social media are having on public relations practice. Findings show these new media are dramatically changing public relations. Results indicate blogs and social media have enhanced what happens in public relations and that social media and traditional mainstream media complement each other. The study also finds the emergence of blogs and social media have changed the way their organizations communicate, especially to external audiences. It also reports blogs and social media have made communications more instantaneous by encouraging organizations to respond more quickly to criticism.

WHEN YOU THINK OF A BRAND, WHAT COMES TO MIND FIRST?

Brandtags.net is an interesting online tool that is a collective experiment in brand perception. All tags are generated by anonymous people and do not reflect the opinions of the site owner. The basic idea of this site is that a brand exists entirely in people's heads. Therefore, whatever it is they say a brand is, it is what it is. I found the comparison tags between The New York Times and Wall Street Journal very interesting (liberal vs conservative) as well as how many people say “Catherine” (aka Catherine Zeta Jones) for T-Mobile. Speaking of brand perception, what do you think about the hype around the new Starbucks logo?


WE WANT TO BE PORTAL, BUT NOT TOO PORTAL

Businessweek released an article today on where internet portals such as Google and Yahoo collide with social networks like Facebook and Myspace. Apparently just days after Google’s Friend Connect trial run began on May 12 (a new tool that would let Web sites add a host of new social networking features), Facebook "suspended" their access saying it violated privacy terms in its user agreement. Though Facebook says it has "reached out to Google several times about this issue" to work out a solution, the decision shadows the growing tensions and blurring lines between social networks and traditional web portals, both of which are angling to capitalize on the presumed advertising riches that will come from social media. For MySpace and Facebook, "all of this openness is a big gamble," says Debbie Williamson, an industry analyst at eMarketer. "It's a big gamble on who is going to control this user info and the bulk of the ad revenues”. Yet it's a wager both companies appear willing to make with their impressive revenue growth beginning to slow. If a site ceases to be a popular destination for users, it can still maintain a hold on them by bringing their valuable contact information and personal preferences to other sites—in the social network's branded package.


MOTIVEQUEST HELPS MINI SALES WITH WEB BUZZ



The Online Promoter Score, developed by researchers at Northwestern University is a new metric offered by MotiveQuest. The tool can correlated the relationship between marketing and online brand advocacy to sales by measuring the net frequency of people recommending a brand online. A 16-month test of the metric helped BMW discover the connection between online buzz and retail traffic and helped Mini revamp its media-relations philosophy. Since MotiveQuest launched in 2003, it has been gaining ground in the online brand-monitoring space populated by rivals such as Nielsen Buzzmetrics and Cymfony. MotiveQuest works with a list of marketers that includes Citibank and Nike in addition to BMW Mini. Mini and MotiveQuest collected data from nearly 30 million online conversations about the Mini brand and its competitors on blogs, social networks; and sites such as Yahoo Autos and MSN Autos from January 2006 until April 2007. Trudy Hardy, manager of Mini marketing, said the results prompted Mini to take a different approach to online partners and prominent bloggers. "We treat bloggers like press [now]," she said. "We'll invite them to test-drive cars first and have asked one to be the official podcaster of our events." While Ms. Hardy said the metric doesn't "tie back directly" to sales, it correlates web traffic and online conversations to actual retail traffic.


GOOGLE OPENS UP THE DOORS TO ITS CONTENT NETWORK



Today, the Google Blog announced the search giant will now be accepting third-party advertising tags on its content network in North America. This will empower advertisers to work with approved third parties to serve and track display ads, including rich media ads, across the Google content network through AdWords, giving them more options, flexibility and control over their campaigns. This will now enable advertisers and agencies the ability to serve ads and measure performance through these certified third parties: advertiser ad servers such as DoubleClick (DFA) and Mediaplex; rich media agencies like DoubleClick, Interpolls, PointRoll and Unicast; as well as research firms such as Dynamic Logic, IAG Research, InsightExpress and Factor TG. Advertisers and agencies will now be able to manage their Google content network campaigns with the same systems they use for other online campaigns, which is helpful for determining the effectiveness of their online advertising mix. For publishers on the network, this program offers a way to expand their advertiser base and enable advertisers to better understand the value of their inventory, with the goal of increasing their overall revenue.

Digital Download 5/12/08

Hope you guys had a great Mother's day weekend. Without further ado, here's this week's digital download.

SOCIAL STYLES OF THE RICH AND FAMOUS

An article in last week’s Forbes listed five exclusive social networking sites that were upcoming in the world of elitists. "It's taken a while for wealthy consumers to start using networking sites, mostly due to privacy issues and concerns," says Milton Pedraza, CEO of the Luxury Institute, a New York-based research company that focuses on high-net-worth individuals. "But now they want to leverage all those social-networking advantages.” The social networking sites listed were aSmallWorld, Diamond Lounge, Squa.re, Quintessentially and LuxuryRatings.com. Your membership depends on who you know and, in one case, how much you are willing to pay. An interesting finding reported by Luxury Institute was that Participation levels for the wealthy in leading social networks were 16% for MySpace, 13% for LinkedIn and 11% for Facebook.

WIMAX GETS $500 MILLION BACKING FROM GOOGLE

Google is serious about mobile wireless broadband. So much so, it announced a $500 million contribution to the new Clearwire-Sprint WiMax business last week. Of course, Google has its own best interests in mind since this investment ensures that the resulting broadband network is as open as possible and accepts Android handsets and devices. Rumors say Google will most likely be the default search engine on devices connected to the network. Google hopes the network will expand advanced high speed wireless Internet access in the U.S, allow consumers to utilize any lawful applications, content and devices without blocking, degrading or impairing Internet traffic and engage in reasonable and competitively-neutral network management. These are exciting times prefacing a new wireless era!

SOCIAL MEDIA POWER IN 48 HOUR ACTION

Andrew (Andy) Sauter, also known as the author of smoexpert.com, shows us an example of how with only an hour of work on a Saturday morning, a zero dollar budget and a 56K modem, he made international news within 48 hours. The subject? A Clinton Obama gun mailer. Thanks to all the social channel players who made it possible: Flickr, Digg, Reddit, Technorati and YouTube; CNN and NewsWeek picked up the buzz and took a mundane negative mailer and made it an international sensation. A mailer, which was probably only meant to be viewed by maybe forty to fifty thousand people, reached millions on an international level. This is just one example out of millions of the power of social media optimization.

SEE WHO’S SPORTING THE LATEST BRANDS AT COOLSPOTTERS

Coolspotters is a newly launched site that focuses on celebrities and the products they wear in various photos. It allows users to track stars, products, brands, TV shows, movies, places and events and encourages them to talk about and purchase those items shown. The idea of the site is to show connections between people and things. These connections are called “spots” (i.e. “I spotted that”), and show details on the item. If something is incorrect, users can change or remove it, and add new people and things. Coolspotters is the first collaborative site that gets users to do most of the work where it’s essentially a structured data wiki. The end result is a ton of highly structured, highly valuable information. Users can search, find and purchase related things all in one celebrity-filled hot spot.

MYSPACE MAKES FRIENDS WITH TWITTER

Myspace decided to jump on the Twitter bandwagon and announced an added profile-sharing function (called Data Availability) which will enable users to update both profiles at the same time. The new service allows MySpace users to indicate whether they would like to make information in their MySpace profile visible on other sites such as eBay, Yahoo and Photobucket too. MySpace said it would like to expand it to other partners who might be interested as well. It seems Myspace is trying to become a social network aggregator itself and following the idea behind the likes of Digsby and Yoono. When asked on a conference call whether Facebook would eventually become involved in the program, MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe said "This project is open to any site out there that wants to work with us. We're happy to work with Facebook if they want to join up with us on this project."

Yahoo's Up To Serve: Part 2

In my previous post of "Yahoo's Up to Serve" a couple of months ago, I predicted Yahoo would eventually succumb to Microsoft's bid. In an email from Microsoft's CEO to Yahoo's Board of Directors yesterday, it seems apparent that match point is near. There is no mention of a bid increase or a proposed Yahoo board slate. Yahoo is supposed to release their Q1 earnings in the next two weeks and there's some buzz that a negotiation might be made prior to their announcement. Other commenters say this is Microsoft's way of saving face prior to the cancellation of the deal. Either way, be on the look out for major changes within the next coming weeks that will rock the digital media industry.