Holiday Greetings To All Our Readers
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, December 24th, 2007
Here’s to prosperity for you and yours for 2008!
We’ll be taking a little break over the holidays – blog you in the New Year!
Archive for December, 2007
Facebook Over Populated Hoax – The Aftermath
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, December 21st, 2007
The other day I posted the Facebook hoax Funwall message and wanted to follow up on the aftermath. There’s been a lot of discussion about this hoax in the blogosphere and turns out that my mentioning it brought many new visitors to this blog (welcome!). The message was indeed a hoax (as if that wasn’t obvious). Apparently it was created by 2 girls with bad grammar and nothing better to do with their time (get a life ladies). There’s talk that they will be cast out of the network (Social Network purgatory if you will….). But you have to give it to them for creating a viral meme. Word of the hoax spread quickly and Facebook itself reacted on its blog by outlining how they communicate with users in the event that they need to do so.Here’s an excerpt:”We will never use any of the following methods to tell you information, or ask for you to take an action:
Since Facebook is becoming the SN of choice for business users the prevalence of messages like these will simply put off this new audience so its good to see Facebook react proactively and professionally to counter.
Social Networking Friend Strategies
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, December 20th, 2007
How to manage your Facebook friends is something everyone should consider when joining a social network. Marc Cuban the Blog Maverick and owner of the Dallas Mavericks had a good post last week pointing out how he adds Facebook friends. He gets almost 100 requests to add new “friends” daily and given the number of friends he has he recently hit the 5k friend limit and had to start weeding. Here is how he does it:
“The first layer has my real friends. Those people who who I have actually met in real life and who I enjoy keeping in touch with. FB provides a great way to keep up with things with them via pictures, notifications, etc.
The 2nd layer is people who I have tangential connections to. They may just live in Dallas Fort Worth. They may be self proclaimed Mavs or MMA or movie fans, or in groups I’m in. For whatever reason there is something about them that I could connect to.
The 3rd layer is emerging as a very unique and interesting network in FB. Its what I will call “The Power Layer.” These are people who in whatever industry they are in , retain some level of power. Having them as FB friends, although very simple and non committal, gives me some level of access to them, and them to me. These are people that if they sent me a FB mail, i would certainly read and respond to , and I think they would do the same.”
I myself have different strategies for different social networks. I choose to network in Facebook and add friends only if they fall into the following criteria:
a) I know them in the real world (friends, colleagues, business associates, former co workers, school mates etc),
OR
b) They are people with a shared professional interest (in my case its Internet and Social Marketing).
By controlling the friends I add I can manage the feedback, network with a trusted community and avoid letting FB suck up too much of my time.
Now MySpace is another story altogether. You could say I am a MySpace slut: I’ll make friends with anyone (until they spam me at which point they are swiftly deleted)- but thats a story for another blog article on another day (and I have a business reason for doing so).
What is your Facebook friend strategy?
Facebook Over Populated?
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, December 19th, 2007
I recently received a Facebook Funwall post claiming to be from Mark Zukkerberg regarding the over population of Facebook. I thought I would forward it so you could get a good laugh at the grammatical errors and typos (its attached below). As my friend Jamie pointed out, Facebook has other ways to track whether you are using your profile regularly and this is probably a hoax to slow down the system not to mention that they “kindly ask for donations” – aye right! Here it is:
Attention all Facebook members.
Facebook is recently becoming very overpopulated,
There have been many members complaining that Facebook
is becoming very slow.Record shows that the reason is
that there are too many non-active Facebook members
And on the other side too many new Facebook members.
We will be sending this messages around to see if the
Members are active or not,If you’re active please send
to other users using Copy+Paste to show that you are active
Those who do not send this message within 2 weeks,
The user will be deleted without hesitation to create more space,
If Facebook is still overpopulated we kindly ask for donations but until then send this message to all your friends and make sure you send
this message to show me that your active and not deleted.
Webkinz On-line Ad Strategy Backfires
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, December 17th, 2007
If you have kids you’ve no doubt heard about the Webkinz craze that has been sweeping elementary schools. Webkinz are stuffed animals that come with a free one year subscription to the Webkinz web site where kids can play games and interact with their toy on-line. The offering has been hugely successful but Ganz may have overstepped the mark by announcing their intentions to use the site to as an advertising revenue stream.
An article in the New York times last week stirred up the controversy and The Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood quickly activated a viral machine that went into overdrive to ensure that schools were informed. At my children’s school alone every parent was e-mailed with a warning notifying them of Webkinz use of Ads and encouraging parents to “Tell Ganz: Stop Advertising on Webkinz”.
There’s an opportunity here in our Web 2.0 world for Ganz to respond to the criticism in a positive way by outlining the types of ads that will and will not be allowed for example but alas to date the parent’s section of the site still has no reference to the issues. From a parent’s perspective this lack of ownership is disgruntling especially given that many feel they have already been manipulated into buying the toys not to mention letting their kids use an ad free site site that decides to change course. I for one will be closely monitoring my childrens’ Webkinz forays and assessing whether the ads are appropriate. If they aren’t I can foresee a lot of sad faces around here….
Effective Wiki Implementation
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, December 14th, 2007
Thinking of using wikis to effectively collaborate and increase productivity? There’s a great article in e-week’s insight section giving 25 valuable tips that you should consider when deploying wikis in your organization. These include: making it easy for users to use and to personalize; setting the ground rules early to ensure users know how to participate; rewarding frequent use and activity.
Social Media Marketing Playbook
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, December 11th, 2007
Always leading edge, Capulet Communications have done it again with the release of their new e-book Getting To First Base: A Social Media Marketing Playbook. I found the link to this little gem in my inbox this morning and I am looking forward to some excellent holiday reading as it promises tactics to drive more traffic, increase on-line visibility and viral effect, develop blogger relationships and market your offering effectively on Facebook. I’m already looking forward to the full length book.
New Media Marketing Olympic Style
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, December 10th, 2007
In a little over 2 years Vancouver will host the 2010 Winter Olympics. To celebrate this, you will be seeing a regular post discussing new media innovations from the Olympic world as seen from our independent audience perspective – after all, the Olympics is a worldwide marketing juggernaut we can all learn from.
There has been much debate in Vancouver about the 2010 Olympic mascots unveiled last week. Sumi, Qatchi and Miga are already active on the VANOC Internet Site looking for you to join in the Olympic celebration with games and quizzes to keep you enthralled. I would include images of the mascots but the Olympic committee has very strict rules as to who can use them so you’ll just have to check them out for yourself. Why don’t you see which one of the mascots you are most like when you are at it?
Whether or not these strict rules impact their viral marketing potential remains to be seen but the Olympic games has one of the most recognizable brands in the world – they cannot be faulted in their efforts to protect that.
Top 20 Social Networks
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, December 06th, 2007
Wondering about social networks? With the help of ComScore I’ve put together a list of some of the most popular sites in North America so that you can check them out for yourself.
MySpace - one of the largest
Facebook – one of the fastest growing in Canada for both business and personal SN.
Classmates – connect with old school friends
Windows Live Spaces – Microsoft’s offering
AOL Hometown – blog centric
Reunion – reconnect with old friends
Club Penguin – for kids big and small
LinkedIn – professional networking
YouTube – watch and share videos
AOL People Connection – chats and forums
Buzznet – pop culture
Friendster – make friends and find old ones
Hi5 - connect with other shiny faced people
Orkut – Googlearific
Xanga - weblogs
Flickr – photo sharing network
Live Journal – blog to your hearts content
Tagged – fancy a game of tag?
Bebo – entertainment slant
Delic.ious – share bookmarks
This is by no means a complete list (there are thousands of them out there) but will give you a feel for what social networking is all about. Let us know if you are active on sites that aren’t listed so we can share them with our community.
Blog Links
Written by Mhairi Petrovic, December 04th, 2007
One of the best ways to drive more traffic to your blog is to have as many incoming links as possible. I found this great post at Hubspot that provides a list of blog directories you can easily submit your blog to as well as useful links to other related information and resources.
