Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing Todd Sieling an interaction designer and web strategist with a focus on social web application development, based in Vancouver BC. Todd is perhaps best known as a founder of Ma.gnolia, the popular social bookmarking site. He talks about how Ma.gnolia came to be, ways the technology can be used and has a big announcement about Ma.gnolia.
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.
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….
Right now there’s so many exciting developments in new media, marketing and on the Internet in general, that its becoming quite a task to decide which makes me the most cheerful. November saw Google announce Open Social and Facebook enter the Internet advertising market with SocialAds, the XO was launched as was Kindle which lead me discover my first reason:
Askville by Amazon is a neat application, you can ask the community any question about any topic and with any luck the community comes up with satisfactory answers. I always have questions so I expect I’ll be using it a lot.
Docstoc - has a wide range of business templates and documents available to share. There’s some debate about the quality of some of the documents therein but the concept is great especially for small businesses.
Zoho - I Stumbled upon this on-line solution aimed at providing everything from word processing and spreadsheets to CRM and project management.
Kijiji- I like Craigslist and use it regularly to good effect so I was pleased to find this Canadian alternative.
Following the launch of our Out-Smarts Facebook page last week, I was asked by Christine at Bluelime Media to write a blog post for their blog about setting up a Facebook business page. For step by step directions on how to do so you can read the post by clicking here.
Out-Smarts has a business profile in Facebook and within a day of creating our page we have 7 fans! We’re testing the waters to see how we can use this profile to share our knowledge and expertise; to collaborate with interested parties and to assess if Social Ads is a viable Internet advertising tool. Become a fan and check up on our progress or submit to our discussions - the current one being innovative corporate blog uses.
This week the buzz in the social networking arena has surrounded Google’s OpenSocial announcement on Friday and the upcoming announcement expected from Facebook tomorrow. It seems that right now it pays to be social.
Google’s entry into the social networking arena with OpenSocial was fanfared on Friday. OpenSocial is a collaboration between Google and major SN players like LinkedIn, MySpace and Ning to facilitate building social networking apps and to encourage third party participation. The idea is that through application standardisation the development of social networking applications and add-ins will be easier and a shared API will lead to ease of deployment across different SN applications.
Facebook in turn is taking a run at Google on the Internet advertising front. With a big announcement expected from Facebook today rumours are circulating that the company intends to use data collected from user profiles to offer ads highly specific to interests and needs a la AdSense. Considering the personal data that Facebook has collected and the fact that Facebook is considered to be more authentic (profiles in Facebook are more true to real life than say MySpace), its really no surprise that the company is looking to harness this.
From a user perspective these developments can only be positive. The easier it is for companies to implement social networking technology, both on their web sites and Intranets, the better for enhanced communication, community and customer service. The integration of social networks will mean less time in the login and learning process for people like myself who use these networks as valuable business development tools. These, together with the ability to advertise to a highly targeted audience are all positive steps in the evolution of the social networking space.
I was going to keep this one for our Reasons to be Cheerful post for October but its too good to wait. I am always looking for examples on the web of innovative companies that are using Web 2.0 and its collaborative capabilities in really innovative ways. I came across an example of a web site that really does this well called Threadless. This T shirt design company that truly engages clients online by:
Threadless uses Web 2.0 to market its offering very effectively - go take a look and be inspired!
Last night was the third Third Tuesday to be held in Vancouver and again the event brought a great crowd of new media savvy people. Unfortunately, the guest speaker was in absentia but it gave us the opportunity to share experiences. One of the attendees was a local writer Monica Hamburg who has a great piece on viral marketing “How to Catch the Bug - A Crash Course on Viral Marketing”. It is really informative and gives some excellent examples of campaigns that have taken off in cyberspace.
As you may well know, back in June I was excited to participate in the mini book expo for bloggers.
I signed up and was sent the audio book Guerrilla PR Wired by David Levine. After the set back of discovering that the Iofy chip only worked on my MAC and not my iPod or phone as I had hoped, it took me some time to actually listen (after all, when I am at my desk I am usually working and its hard to find desk time to listen too!). Unfortunately, you can’t just stop the narrative wherever you like to review or recap which was a problem when the application crashed and I had to start again at the beginning of a chapter.
The narrative itself is easy to listen to and well laid out but I am not the target audience for this type of publication. The intended reader is a business person who is a beginner when it come to using the Internet - you know, one of those people that look like a dear caught in the headlights at the mere mention of the web marketing and for those people I would highly recommend it.
However, I did find some gems in the book pertaining to PR that will help Out-Smarts plan, set up and maintain a PR campaign. The book includes great tips on writing a PR piece (layout and format) and how to approach promoting them to the right publications and people. It covers guidance on your website design to support your campaign; learning how to understand the “media gatekeeper”; tactics to get your website publicized; strategies to help you continue to attract attention without becoming stale or overpowering as well as how to follow up on and maintain success; pitfalls you should be aware of and how to deal with negative P.R.. I did learn a thing or 2 about PR but overall this wasn’t the best publication for me. Thanks to the mini book expo for allowing us to participate though.
