Digital Download 7-07-08

BABY BOOMERS EMBRACING SOCIAL MEDIA

Some advertisers may believe the web (from online video to social networking) is the ideal playground for the young adult consumer but there has been emerging data that supports the theory that senior citizens are also internet savvy, if not more so, in this realm. According to the AARP and the Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, 42% of American citizens over the age of 50 check the Web for news daily or several times a day, compared to just 18% of users under 20. Also, there’s a reported increase of this demographic using the Internet for fun and interaction. When it comes to social media, 70% of consumers age 50 and up said that their online community was "very" or "extremely" important to them. In contrast, just about half of all social network members under age 20 said the same. "Baby boomers are the most socially educated population ever," said Davis, a self-defined Boomer. "They may read the paper, or even go on the Web to get their information, but they're constantly networking with people to verify and expand their knowledge, and that's something we're seeing reflected in their activity on our site."

TOP BRANDS LEVERAGE HANDS-FREE CELL PHONE LAWS

LG Mobile, Ford Motor Co. and Microsoft are a few of the big brands that are using hands-free marketing and advertising campaigns to encourage consumers to stop talking and texting while driving. Their promotions give away everything from free handsets to advice, and are aimed at driving good will during a time when lost jobs and rising fuel and foods costs are curbing personal budgets. LG Mobile gave away more than 1,000 LG Bluetooth headsets last Thursday at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. Experts were on hand to help consumers pair headsets with mobile phones. LG reached out to wireless bloggers to build buzz for the promotion and sent wireless headsets to local TV and radio station traffic reporters. After July 1, Headsets.com will send consumers a free headset if they are cited for driving while talking or texting on a cell phone. A study released earlier this month from ABI Research estimates that 2.4 billion Bluetooth-enabled devices will ship worldwide by 2013. More than half are cellular handsets and a quarter are wireless headsets.

HOTS NEWS AND HOT BLOGS

There was a lot of anger in the blogosphere last week over The Associated Press’s assertion that some blogs were infringing its copyright by publishing excerpts of its articles. Jim Kennedy, an Associated Press vice president, said that the news agency now feels its demand was heavy-handed and was rethinking its policies. The current seven blog posts in question emerged on the Drudge Retort and contained short excerpts of A.P. articles. Last week, the A.P. demanded that the Drudge Retort remove the posts because they violated its copyright. Mr. Kennedy now says the news agency plans to create new guidelines for how blogs can use its material, after discussions with representatives of blogging groups and others. Mr. Kennedy said the association hadn’t withdrawn its copyright complaint and even small parts of articles and headlines are valuable and should be protected. In reaction to what Mr. Kennedy said, Michael Arrington declared on TechCrunch: “So here’s our new policy on A.P. stories: they don’t exist.” Jeff Jarvis, on BuzzMachine, wrote: “Back off, A.P. Because we won’t.” More important, the A.P. could well offer bloggers a safe harbor to use its content under certain circumstances without asserting a claim that every use beyond that line is copyright infringement.

WINNING CONSUMER BUY-IN FOR BEHAVIORAL TARGETING

Behaviorally targeted advertising, which is expected to grow 60% by 2112, holds the promise of relevant advertising and greater revenues from ad inventory. But consumers are sensitive both to their behavior being tracked online and to the constant influx of marketing messages beamed at them. One way of directly addressing consumer concerns is by making ad targeting truly opt-in rather than opt-out. And for consumers to sign on, marketers will need to offer clear trade-offs, including access to valued media such as movies and prime TV shows, marketing messages that speak directly to the individual's current needs, and downloads and discounts.

OBAMA'S SOCIAL NETWORKING SUCCESS

The New York Times reports that social networks like MySpace and Facebook have helped Obama's campaign revolutionize the use of the Web as a campaign fundraising tool, as Obama raised more than two million donations of less than $200 each with the help of Chris Hughes who was one of the original founders of Facebook.

 The center of that movement has been My.BarackObama.com, an interactive community site for his supporters. As the candidate himself said in a statement, "One of my fundamental beliefs from my days as a community organizer is that real change comes from the bottom up, and there's no more powerful tool for grass-roots organizing than the Internet." Peter Daou, NY Senator Hillary Clinton's Internet director, recently described Obama's online reach as "amazing," adding that, "their use of social networks will guide the way for future campaigns." Learning from this case study, team Obama is now applying the same strategies to win the general election, but this time, The Times notes, they will need to expand beyond young, Internet-savvy supporters to reach the general public.

CRAIGSLIST STILL CLASSIFIED AS THE BEST

As print newspapers' classifieds ad sales drop, more money for auto, real estate, jobs, and garage sale ads grow online. Craigslist still remains at the top of online classifieds. Analysts who follow Web classifieds closely agree the space is in flux. Even Wal-Mart has gotten in the free listings game, and Microsoft recently shut down their version, Windows Live Expo. While most listings on Craigslist are free, the site charges for some real estate listings. "I think they have not known exactly how to position that product," said Sterling of Google. Now, the company seems to be focused on using it as a service for individuals, small businesses, and firms with large listings feeds such as Cars.com and CareerBuilder to post ads or upload data that can then be found on Google's main search site. While Craigslist clearly leads as a destination for all sorts of classifieds, from collectibles to casual encounters, some think a new entry could attract lots of users without necessarily competing with Craigslist. One of the primary reasons for Craigslist's success is its communal sensibility; regular users feel a connection to the site and its other visitors.

GOOGLE TO TURN OVER YOUTUBE USER DATA

A federal judge has ordered Google to turn over information on YouTube users to Viacom as part of the media conglomerate's $1 billion copyright infringement suit against Google. The information will include the Internet protocol addresses and viewing history of YouTube visitors, raising concerns among privacy advocates that the information could be used to identify individual users. The two companies have both said they would take steps to prevent the information from being made public, and Viacom said it would not use the data to target individual users for copyright violation.

Digital Download 6/16/08

MSN AND YAHOO ARE OFFICIALLY OVER

Yahoo signed an agreement with Google just hours after its very last talk with MSN this past Thursday . With Yahoo’s finally farewell to negotiations with MSN, Google comes out on top (as usual) with the 10 year agreement that will have Yahoo serving its search ads on its portal. This means big bucks in the future for Google who could gain up to $1 billion from the ad pack. What does this mean for advertiser? The positives include a more convenient and manageable search campaign as well as access to a much larger search-ad inventory. The downsides include higher bidding prices, antitrust questions and one less option for marketers to choose another search provider.

DADS CAN GET SOCIAL WITH THEIR KIDS TOO

Just in time for Father’s Day, the new beta social network for dads called Odadeo was announced last week. It’s currently in private beta mode and it serves to help patriarchs keep in touch with their children, get parenting tips from fellow dads, and build blogs about their kids with photo and video sharing capabilities. Stef Lewandowski is one of the service’s founders and believe Odadeo is a great social channel for parents, specifically fathers, to communicate and connect closer with their children as well as other families who may share the same interests and hobbies.

HAVE ONLINE GUIDE, WILL TRAVEL

A new beta site called TravelMuse will sure to be plenty of competition for Travelocity, Expedia and TripAdvisor. It’s a new online portal that blends travel planning tools with quality editorial content topped off with a weekly theme or destination. TravelMuse is a one stop destination for reviews, trip planning and travel booking service. This site is perfect for those travelers who are not sure of where to go and like to see where others have enjoyed recent travels and what recommendations are popular. This goes for product purchases as well as global journeys. They present new feature destinations on a routine basis, plus the requisite tips, tricks, and specials like book reviews and ecotourist picks. In addition, TravelMuse users can transfer bookmarklets to their browsers to collect third-party data to keep in one cloud-based location. This option can prove very convenient if one’s itinerary becomes rather elaborate.

PLURK IS RUFFLING TWITTER’S FEATHERS

Plurk is another new microblogging site that has seen plenty of traffic in the past month due to Twitter’s constant problems and errors. Plurk offers a very similar service to Twitter, but throws in a curve ball with its horizontal timeline of updates, extended freedom of conversation, and “karma” points for avid users. It’s similarity to Twitter attracts Twitter users, it’s unique layout intrigues those who are looking for something “different,” and now, third party applications will promote widespread activity. The experience is similar to reading comments on FriendFeed, however, the layout of the site only creates unnecessary confusion. Regardless, many internet users (mostly Twitter fanatics) have visited Plurk enough to quadruple the site’s number of visits this month.

LEAVE YOUR MARK WITH RETAGGR

Welcome the new way to pass on your business card. Retaggr is a new site that lets you compile all your online activities into one interactive profile. The result is a virtual business card that acts as a widget wherever your name appears on blogs or other Retaggr-enabled sites. You can use Retaggr to let people see your photo, twitter status, a link to your blog, and links to other social sites like Facebook. You can add any web widget to your Profile Card including Gtalk, Flickr, Youtube, Tumblr and more. What’s great about Retaggr is that it acts as the ultimate business card 2.0 for internet users who want to let people know who they are on the web as well as expand their personal brand. Likewise, Retaggr works as an ideal tool for bloggers who want their community of readers to get to know each other and participate more frequently. Names now become links that expand the Profile Card widget and showcase each owner’s virtual information without ever having to leave the site. Plus, blogs and sites that use Retaggr also get the photo tagging functionality which is similar to Facebook and Flickr, but takes it further by letting you see the names and Profile Cards of people in a picture all at one time.

Digital Download 6/2/08

WORD OF MOUTH MARKETING IS BECOMING MORE MEASURABLE

The IAB Leadership Forum on User-Generated Content & Social Media held in New York on June 2 included an intimate workshop with Jon Gibs, VP of Media Analytics of Nielsen Online and Jeffrey Graham, Executive Director, Customer Insights of The New York Times on the subject of quantifying brand influence in consumer-generated media, specifically in the social space. Using the previous NYTimes project as a case study, Neilsen’s BuzzMetric tool measured 70 million blogs, 6 billion comments and their corresponding sentiments and impact, 48 million inbound links and 19 million unique visitors from January to February in 2007. Statistics show NYT.com far exceeds brand influence level suggested by audience size. Findings also show the blogs that link to NYT business coverage are influential, independent and wealthy. The demographics reveal the average is male from ages 25-49, self employed and make around six figures in income.

CELL PHONES REVEAL WE’RE CREATURES OF HABIT



A new research study done by an undisclosed European mobile service provider along with Dr. Marta C. Gonzalez and Cesar A. Hidalgo using sensitive location-tracking data from random cell phones in Europe has revealed interesting results of human behavior. The study shows that most people don’t go far away from their home, they frequent the same locations and they exhibit similar patterns whether they travel long or short distances. Researchers believe studies like these could help open new doors in disease tracking, urban planning or emergency planning. They also made sure to exclude and scramble any individual identifying information that could personally be misused. 100,000 randomly chosen cell phone users were tracked via calls, texts and cell tower proximity for the study.

THIRD PLACE IS A PRETTY GOOD PLACE TO BE

According to the latest Hitwise report, MyYearbook.com is the third-largest and fastest growing social network in the U.S right now. MyYearbook was founded by two high school students and has grown over 426% over the past year in the market space. In contrast, Facebook and Myspace both have declined over the past six months in regards to growth. Still, the two social giants beat out MyYearbook with internet visits, 74% and 15% respectively. MyYearbook, however, wins over on site stickiness with an average time of 32:54 compared to Myspace’s 29:54 and Facebook’s 20:52.

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 5/12/08

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."

This Week's Digital Download

Nokia Losing Hold On Teens

In a recent report of the Global Habbo Youth Survey 2008, Nokia has lost some of its popularity among teens to Samsung and Sony Ericsson since 2006 when Habbo conducted its last youth survey. The statistics also show 71% of teens are using their mobile phone as a portal mp3 player, 88% regularly communicate via SMS, 70% are using them to take photos and short videos, 64% play games and over a quarter surf the web on their mobile phones.

Your Mom Uses Myspace

Contrary to what most marketers have been saying about Myspace and the social network’s future and significance in the social space, the April 2008 comScore reports had some surprising results. 60% of the Facebook audience visits Myspace, 58% of YouTube and 39% of LinkedIn follow suit. An interesting fact found is while 60% of Facebook users visit Myspace, only 30% of the MySpace audience visits Facebook. Other findings show MySpace reaches 36% of all Moms 25+up online and they spend an average of 3.2 hours on the site and visit about 18 times each month.

Flickr Video Is Here!

Flickr Video officially launched April 8 and currently only Pro members can upload videos but everyone can view them. Flickr will only allow 150MB or smaller individual files (roughly 90 secs worth of video). You have the option to upload longer videos, but Flickr will only play it until the 90 sec mark before going back to the start. Pro users can upload as many as they like and now there’s an advanced search that lets you select which type of content you want.

Social Media Is a Customer Service Channel

Last week, the Society for New Communications Research released a new study on “Exploring the Link Between Customer Care and Brand Reputation in the Age of Social Media”. More than 300 consumers surveyed agreed that search engines are the most valuable online tools for this research. 81% believe that blogs, online rating systems and discussion forums can give consumers a greater voice regarding customer care and 59.1% of respondents use social media to “vent” about a customer care experience among other other findings. Dell and Amazon were cited as the top companies to utilize the online social spaces for customer care. One remarkable observation is the “growing group of highly desirable consumers using social media to research companies: 25- to 55-years old, college-educated, earning $100,000+ – a very powerful group in terms of buying behavior,” said Dr. Ganim Nora Barnes, senior fellow, Society for New Communications Research. “This research should serve as a wake-up call to companies: listen, respond, and improve.”

Starbucks Shows Up in the Social Scene

Last week, the McDonald's of coffee retailers announced the launch of their web 2.0 program called My Starbucks Idea. It's basically a social networking site for Starbucks consumers to comment and suggest ideas for the company on its services as well as vote for other commenters' ideas. Every idea gets points based on votes. Consumers can keep score of the votes online and then can visit Starbuck's new blog Ideas in Action to check and see if the company is actually doing something about them.

It's actually a pretty smart move on Starbucks behalf since it has never really listened to online conversations before according to John Moore, a former Starbucks marketer. Some have criticized that it may be a little too late for Starbucks to rebrand itself while others debate the value of branded blogs and social networks for company advocacy.

Regardless of how late Starbucks may be to the social networking game, their attempt is noteworthy and is already on the track to making positive changes towards its services and customer satisfaction. Just yesterday, Brad Stevens wrote about implementing a frequency discount as part of the Starbucks Card Rewards program which includes free refills on brewed coffee, complimentary customization and two hours of complimentary wi-fi.

Here's a side observation. Since last week Tuesday, March 18th during the time My Starbucks Idea launched, which is exactly one week from today, the "top all-time voted idea" about a punch card system received 388 total comments and 30590 points. The idea is currently **Under Review** by the Starbucks corporate staff. How exciting it is to see a corporate giant give personal and reinforcing daily feedback to the people who matter most: its customers and employees. They're engaging in the space where their demographic spends most of their time and what better opportunity than to welcome them into your store with free limited wi-fi access! If Starbucks wasn't listening before, they're certainly listening now. Cheers, Starbucks!

Facebook Going Far (Out There)

Forget Beacon. Gay polling, med checking and puberty tracking are only a few of the anticipated, hot new application concepts from Facebook for 2008. Is there any one else left in the world who doesn't think this is just a bit creepy and too much? According to the new article in AdAge this week, Facebook followers are sure to love these new applications. Personally, this makes me nervous about my privacy and makes 1984 look like a children's book. It feels a little too close for my comfort. This surely is the "All About Me" century.

Sharing & Caring

A new social networking site called Caring.com launched this week. This site is targeted and dedicated to those who are taking care of their elderly parents. The founder Andy Cohen who hails from Quicken, states that "there are 34 million adults in the U.S. providing care for someone 50 or older, and a third of those are long-distance caregivers". To add to the noble idea, Mr. Cohen's inspiration came from caring for his own mother who had developed lung cancer.

This unique concept sets itself apart from the stereotypes of social networking whereins the information shared is related to healthcare, elderly care and family values. It seems to fill the void in the market outside the usual digital realm of entertainment and consumer spending.


* summary of article: http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=122051