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."

Digital Download 5/5/08

Hope you all enjoyed the spectacular weather we had this weekend.
Here’s this week’s digital download and don’t forget to have a cerveza in honor of Cinco De Mayo!

WHAT IS YAHOO TO DO NOW?



For those who have been keeping up with the Microsoft/Yahoo saga, shocking news came last Saturday when Microsoft announced its bid withdrawal. Apparently Microsoft’s increased offer of $33 per share wasn’t good enough for Yahoo’s $37 per share minimum. Some experts have speculated that this is just another one of Microsoft's tactics to have Yahoo eventually come crawling back. Others say, Yahoo is now scrambling to make a deal with Google despite its weakened negotiation leverage. The backlash of the weekend news has Yahoo shares trading around $23 this morning which equates to about $14 billion that was left on the table. The progress of social and digital media is largely influenced upon Yahoo’s future.

GROW YOUR AUDIENCE WITH MOBILE INTERNET


According to a new cross-platform Internet measurement Nielsen report, Mobile Internet extends the audience reach of many leading Internet sites by an average of 13% over home PC traffic alone. The particular categories of weather and entertainment can have a greater, extended reach. Take AccuWeather.com for example: the site received a 43% audience lift from mobile Internet users. “The data demonstrate that the mobile Internet can not only increase the frequency of visits to a web site, but also grow the overall size of the pie,” said Jeff Herrmann, vice president of Mobile Media for Nielsen Mobile. “Publishers can now monetize their total cross-platform audience, and advertisers will better understand the efficiency and incremental value of mobile Web traffic.”

BRINGING MIXTAPES BACK TO MUSIC LOVERS


Bring back the spirit of the 80’s with that mixtape madness and make your own personalized compilations to share and compare your music taste. This time around, you can do it all online. Muxtape is a free service which allows any user to upload songs in order to create a sharable, online digital 'mix tape.' The mixes aren’t embeddable, but the links can be shared with anyone, and muxtapes are available for public access. The only downsides to this service are that users aren’t allowed to upload multiple songs from the same album, artist, or songs they don’t have permission to let Muxtape use. Are there legal issues involved? Kinda. In using muxtape’s service, you’re acknowledging that muxtape has permission to use the songs you upload. And, you can only create one muxtape.

YOONO, YOUR SOCIAL NETWORK AGGREGATOR


Yoono, a social bookmarking tool which already boasts 1 million users, is coming out of private beta and offering only a few invites to the public. Yoono acts as a browser add-on that lets you chat and share items with friends instantly, offers recommendations as you browse the web and enables you to update your status across various networks and bookmark items. Yoono has a sophisticated capability that allows users to dig down into his or her friends’ content across networks and stream content. Yoono’s widget compiles all updates from Twitter, Facebook, Piczo, Flickr, and Friendfeed, and displays them in a scrollable list. The most useful is “Discoveries”, a widget that analyzes the pages you visit and presents a number of relevant tags and related sites, along with a list of Yoono users who share similar interests. “Web Notes” acts as a collaboration tool that lets you drag images, text, and video into the side bar for future reference or sharing with friends.

AP BRINGS LOCAL NEWS TO IPHONES



Today, the Associated Press launched location-targeted mobile news for the iPhone. Several big news corporations are on board with the new AP service that promises to deliver local news from participating member newspapers and national and international news which will be organized by zip code. AP’s global product development director, Jeffrey Litvack says the Mobile News Network would offer easier access to local news stories than Google or Yahoo’s mobile news services.

Wow, Microsoft Walks Away

I was blown away from yesterday's news of the status of Microsoft/Yahoo's bidding war. I have been predicting over the past few months that Yahoo would put aside its pride and see the benefits of a merge with Microsoft and succumb to its offer. Apparently, even after Microsoft raised its bid to $33 a share (which in itself was not was predicted) Yahoo's CEO Yang wouldn't accept less than $37. Come on, does $4/share make that much of a deal breaker? I guess it does enough for Yahoo to stubbornly hold ground and Microsoft to pout and withdraw its bid.

Some experts have speculated that this is just another one of Microsoft's tactics to have Yahoo eventually come crawling back. Others say, Yahoo is now scrambling to make a deal with Google despite its weakened negotiation leverage. The shareholders are fuming mad since most were more than happy to settle for Microsoft's $33/share offer. What is the fate of Yahoo? Whatever they decide to do, there's little chance they'll have the opportunity again to be in a respectful power of position as a major competitor.

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.”

Google's Gold Goes Strong Despite Economy Woes

Google just reported their Q1 earnings this week and despite investors' lowered expectations and ComScore reports on slowing paid clicks, the numbers were pleasantly surprising and better than expected with a 31% growth ($3.1 billion) compared to last year. Google also attributed 52% of its Q1 revenue to its international outreach. Following close behind the recent report, Google stock rose to $500 a share.

Google's good news only goes to show that the internet industry is not going to suffer the blows of a certain recession. CEO Eric Schmidt states "Our position is we're well positioned, if economics change, to continue to do well because we're so targeted and targeted advertising does well in pretty much most scenarios."

Since their acquisition of DoubleClick, the global internet advertising solutions giant, Google has no doubt it will become the world's biggest display provider and believes that 90% of its daily impressions are eligible for display ads.

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. 

In Our Hour of Darkness

Today celebrates Earth Hour across the globe in respect to people's growing interests and concerns for the climate crisis. Created by the WWF (World Wildlife Fund) in 2007, Syndey, Australia was the first city to participate in the event. Now only a year later, several countries and thousands of cities worldwide will turn off their lights tonight at 8pm (their local time) to support the cause.

Google changed the layout color of their front page to black early last night to show their support for Earth Hour. Their quote "We've turned the lights out. Now it's your turn - Earth Hour" takes viewers to the WWF event's homepage. This is another memorable move by Google that will bring awareness and new participants to an important cause. The creators of Earth Hour know that by millions of people turning their lights off for one hour for one day is not going to cause an impact on carbon emissions, however their global efforts will bring about worldwide support and an educated following to fight for climate change for the world's future.

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!