Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

image credit: [AndreaA] (Flickr)

It's hard to believe that the social network space as we know it is today is only a few years old. The summer of 2006 saw MySpace claim the spot as the #1 social network, and a new rival, Facebook, opened their doors to anyone with a valid e-mail address. Over the past 2 years, the two networks have seen some major ups and downs. Facebook, an underdog favorite at the time, was applauded by the web community for opening up their platform and allowing the development of applications. But not that long after came the controversy of Beacon and various other privacy concerns. MySpace, meanwhile, has seen user outrage over everything from reliability and spam to security and child safety.

Although reports vary, most measurements suggest the number of people who visit Facebook and especially MySpace has leveled off over the past few months, possibly even declined. But despite the warning signs of "social network fatigue" early this year, the newswires in the social world and corporate social media plans for 2008 have still centered their efforts around the two industry giants. So the real question is, should they?

Of the $920 million spent this year to advertise on social networks in 2007, 8.2 percent went to niche sites. That is expected to grow to 10 percent in 2008. Niche is big! There are over 300,000 niche networks on Ning alone. We have niche networks being used as tools in the 2008 election. And networks, such as LinkedIn (career) and imeem (music), are growing so quickly that it seems strange to even call them "niche".

Clearly, there is a growing case for the success of niche social. However, how much user base and marketer dollars will it attract? Let's examine the benefits of niche social networks versus niches in big social networks for both the user and the marketer.

image credit: guardian.co.uk
What's Been Happening This Week...

Is Corporate Social Media The Wave of The Future?
Going 180 degrees from last week, Mashable asks, "Could corporations be the real push behind social media?" The article does not deny that corporate adoption has been slow, but states that once the economics of social media is proven that practice will snowball.

I guess companies better start reading the twelve best practices for online customer communities now rather than later. Every list like this is starting to sound the same, repeating the same social best practices: join the conversation, community first, forget traditional metrics. But I found this quote about collaborating rather than marketing insightful:

"Customer communities tend to project customer influence and demands deeper into an organization and create more sustained contact. And the reverse is also true, with the result being outcomes which don't appear so much as marketing but as cooperation, mutual brainstorming, and co-development of ideas and outcomes."

Speaking of collaborative communities...

This will be a fun one to start out Friday.

"It's Mad Men meets nerds... I found this group of slides from a 1975 IBM presentation that are quite amazing. I love the typefaces, layout and '70 corporate patina. I think this would make a great presentation today. Plus, they use the term 'online' everywhere."
Shane Ginsberg

http://www.squareamerica.com/ib.htm

I don't know what's funnier: the needless pointing to large keywords like "decision" and "database" (precursor to the tag cloud?) or that this all apparently takes place aboard the spaceship from 2001.

Flip Video has recently become synonymous with social video. The ease and cost of flip cameras have enabled bloggers to become vloggers, companies to turn events into social content without blowing their budget, and community managers to more easily create engaging conversations between members and brands. People have even done side by side tests with HD cameras versus flip cameras on YouTube to see which is better at storytelling through video.

To bring it full circle and just for some popcorn Friday fun, here is a viral video from Circuit City promoting the social nature of a flip camera on YouTube. I got the chance to chat with Bill Rattner, from Circuit City, about the motivations behind the video:

"Circuit City would never run something like this on a broadcast medium but for YouTube, it's perfect! We don't want to be just another clueless company that posts their commercial on YouTube. Somewhere between Ridley Scott and the Star Wars Kid lies the great opportunity for storytellers. It's kind of the philosophy that ad agencies used to have back in the day. You know, entertain and inform. Those two seem to have gotten separated somewhere along the way."

With the accessibility of simple camera equipment, intuitive editing software, and a hugely popular broadcast medium, the power for entertainment lies in the hands of the consumer. The smart brands know that they need to play in that space or get out of the game.

Thanks to Adam Turinas for submitting the video.

Marta Strickland

image credit: VentureBeat

We were talking about ThreeMinds on a conference call, as a matter of fact, when the door started to rattle.

"Whoa."

The conversation stopped on the line. Some high-ranking Organics from every office were on the call. And here I was in Los Angeles, realizing the mute button wasn't on.

But beyond the conference call foul, I was beginning to focus more on the fact that the ground was swaying underneath my feet... like standing on a pontoon's deck as a wave goes underneath.

"I think...I'm pretty sure we're having an Earthquake."

Silence on the other end. I noticed my Michigan State Spartan Christmas ornament was swaying fairly violently on the desk.

"This is breaking news! You're getting this live!"

As a good, born and bred Midwesterner, I was on some level concerned that I had derailed the conversation. But my heart was pounding. Truth be told, I was happy to be in the middle of some potential news. Soon enough, the phone beeped and I saw it was my wife calling from her office Downtown. And then I knew, LA has just put itself into the news cycle for at least a few hours.

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Marriage proposals, whether simple or elaborate, are always something that people strive to be unique. Luckily, the world of web 2.0 has opened up some new doors for people to be the first in history to propose via a new medium. First we had the Twitter proposal (followed up by a YouTube divorce). Next was a proposal via Reddit, a social news website, where the fiance-to-be could rate the proposal up or down, along with the rest of the world. And now we have a proposal via Google StreetView.

Michael explains more on his website:

"My name is Michael Weiss-Malik, and I work for Google. I don't work on the Street View team, but I interact with them pretty regularly. They decided to coordinate a pre-announced Street View run outside Google's Mountain View offices, with the idea that Googlers could line up along the street and appear in the imagery. So I put together my "Proposal 2.0" billboard and showed up, hoping that it'd be readily visible. And it was!"

Marta Strickland

image credit: kristylopez, Flickr

A study of 30 billion electronic conversations among 180 million people from around the world, researchers have concluded that any two people on average are distanced by just 6.6 degrees of separation, meaning that they could be linked by a string of seven or fewer acquaintances. The database covered all of the MS Messenger IM network in June 2006, or roughly half the world's instant-messaging traffic at that time, researchers said.

Check out the article at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/01/AR2008080103718_pf.html

While on the one hand this is easy to smile at - it is also quite profound and I wonder if it applies to more than just people - for example how about web links - is every web page separated by no more than six links... I always thought the answer to life the universe and everything was 42 - well maybe its 6, and then again 4+2 = 6!!!

Baron Conway

Heekya: Wikipedia for Stories from DavidAdewumi on Vimeo.

Earlier this year, Penguin Books launched a high-concept web site called, We Tell Stories. The site challenged six authors to remake six classic books in a more web-native and engaging format. The results included a Google Maps mashup, line by line live "storycasting", and a scattered story told across several blogs and Twitter.

While the results were quite engaging, the project missed on out on exploring storytelling as it relates to the social web. With the prevalence of user generated content, wikis and crowdsourcing, it feels like it is only a matter of time before the storytelling medium becomes more collaborative. But, sites have had mixed success in bringing this trend forward.

Back in 2006, Showtime's The L Word partnered with FanLib and held an exquisite-corpse-like contest in which fans submitted scenes each week and voted on which was the best. The best scene was added to a growing script week after week until it was finished. Since then, though, FanLib has closed down.

This week Heekya launched an effort to attempt to bring "social storytelling" back to the mainstream. The site allows the web community as a whole to add multiple perspectives and content on the telling of a given story or event. Although currently in private "alpha", the video demo of the site gives you an idea of just how compelling such an effort, if successful, could be.

Marta Strickland

We all know the robot takeover is imminent, right? And while robots can be incredibly creepy (or adorable in the case of WALL-E), there are some tasks that they are just going to be better at: chess, exploring other planets, and various household chores. But we are going to have to draw the line somewhere, and my line is draw at food and wine-tasting.

"Spanish scientists say they have developed a portable 'electronic tongue' that can rapidly identify a wine's vintage and grape variety. Designed to maintain quality control in the vineyard, the device consists of six sensors that detect substances characteristic of a certain wine variety, the researchers said. Components such as acid, sugar and alcohol can be measured and from those parameters it can determine the age and variety of the wine." United Press International

The electric tongue or the e-tongue is nothing new. The Washington Post wrote an article earlier this year about how the newest e-tongue and e-nose technologies are rivaling the human physical counterparts. The USDA is even experimenting with robot meat tasters to grade steaks.

Robots may never be able to produce the elegant, ridiculous prose of the nation's top wine writers, like Robert Parker's "the wine is like a towering skyscraper in the mouth". But, one has to question whether giving robots a sense of taste really works to our advantage. For your consideration:

"When a reporter's hand was placed against the robot's taste sensor, it was identified as prosciutto. A cameraman was mistaken for bacon." MSNBC

I guess you are what you eat?

Marta Strickland

image credit: YUKI.N

It's been another big week to talk about social media. It's just something in the air. Maybe it's the Olympics and all the social media campaigns and general chatter surrounding such a huge event. Or maybe it is this startling (and questionable) statistic that half of ALL US adults use social media.

It's big, and it's only going to get bigger, but there are many challenges ahead, including excessive online clutter, lack of standards, and no solid framework around social media measurement.

What's Been Happening This Week...

The Always-On Brand
Despite the challenge of "excessive online noise", lifestreaming and brandstreaming are only growing in strength. Twitter is seeing an astounding rate of Olympic "tweets" (tagged #080808): there is one message every 0.5 seconds!!!

And it's not just Twitter... while Twitter has stayed the #1 microblogging site despite frequent outages, FriendFeed and Plaxo Pulse have see a rapid rise in recent months. But beyond those "early adopter" platforms, lifestreaming has also come into play on more mainstream social networks like Facebook.

Increasingly brands from Firefox and Comcast to Southwest and Whole Foods are realizing the value of immersing themselves in their customer's lifestreams. Unfortunately, with no clear way to indicate "official" corporate messaging, services like Twitter are an easy target for "brandjacking". A user recently fooled the Twitter-sphere into thinking she was the voice of Exxon Mobil.

On Sunday morning I woke up at 4am to the sounds of what I thought was bombing! I guess I was dreaming about the Soviet / Georgian bombings and awoke in that reality. Then my mind told me I was in "Safe Toronto" but I still felt anxious as the sounds continued.

I switched on the radio - nothing.
I switched on the TV - nothing.
I went to Google and searched for any news on Toronto - nothing.

Then I reached for my Blackberry and sent out the series of Tweets above. Looking on Twitter Search led me to PhotoJunkie and to Youtube videos and Flickr photos.

This episode in Toronto sparked a great commentary by Jeremiah Owyang on the risks and opportunities of citizen journalism. And last week, the use of Twitter to report the L.A. earthquakes inspired Organic's Mike Hudson to write an article about his experiences. Mike held a different view, in which, he found the phone a more useful tool for his crisis:

"While we all look to the Twitter, text and Facebook or whatever else as the 'next' way of doing things, I'd say the real hero of breaking news is consistently turning out to be the biggest dinosaur of them all, the phone."

But in my case... at 5am, I went back to sleep, feeling way less anxious now that I was better informed. The traditional media were all still asleep! They finally woke up hours later and started reporting on the events. Empowered by Twitter, Youtube and Flickr, I was able to express my anxiety with the World, poll the community to find out more, share information and be educated by and be part of citizen journalism on Twitter, YouTube and Flickr.

For my siblings and me, the summers of the 70s went something like this...

We'd fly to places we'd never heard of like Taxco, Mexico. Mom, my sister and I would buy tiny souvenir silver charms, mined and made only in Taxco. Dad would buy a red sombrero from a street vendor, later regretting his purchase. My 16-year old brother would skip the silver and sombreros, get sloshed on locally made tequila and concentrate his efforts on a locally grown, um, local. But, that's another story entirely.

Soon after returning home, we'd get bored and start driving our parents nuts. So, Dad would pile us into the custom Buick sedan and drop us off at Grandma and Grandpas house for a weeklong, summertime break from us, er, visit. We'd spend our days at Grandpa's watch shop where he'd make one-of-a-kind timepieces, Grandma would teach us to make "kiddie" coffee - one part coffee, 3 parts milk - and curse in Polish (purely accidental on her part). We'd have two choices for lunch: the original Pancake House, before the word "original" needed to be in the name; or 31 Flavors, where we'd learn to "accidentally" push the ice-cream off the cone with our tongues so Grandma would buy us a scoop of the next flavor on the list. And, yes, ice cream for lunch.

After work, Grandma would make her secret recipe Kapusta and Kielbasa (sauerkraut and sausage) while we listened to The Faygo Song on the record player . It seemed that was the only record they owned, but we loved it.

Life was good.

Now, in the 00s, life for me is something like this...

I travel again to Mexico, this time with my husband, hoping to mark the occasion with a locally made piece of jewelry. I search high and low for something unmistakably Mexican only to find the exact same jewelry on my travels that I saw a month earlier at a jewelry show in Novi, Michigan. But familiarity doesn't stop me from buying a lovely blue topaz ring. After all, it IS jewelry and I AM a girl.

Whether you love it, hate it, or ignore it... the redesigned Facebook is here to stay. Many in the blogging world have been theorizing why Facebook has made the design choices that is has in the redesign. Are they trying to focus their efforts on becoming a new social bookmarking and sharing site? Have they been drinking too much of the Silicon Valley kool-aid? As Eric Eldon at VentureBeat puts it:

"I've long argued that the value of Facebook is in the fact that it has convinced millions to share real information about themselves -- versus the fake information you see on MySpace and many other social networks. But the thing is, it seems Facebook users want to share real information along the lines of glittery photos. It wouldn't surprise me if Facebook sees a sustained protest from millions of users who don't care about publishing, in the first place, who just want to decorate their profiles to show off to their friends."

And so they have. With bloggers pondering and Facebookers petitioning, I thought it would be interesting to see what people around the office think...

"They've improved the control you have over your profile and privacy. Who can see what of your content and so on. That is always an area close to my heart as I don't like to share personal info with my business network and vice versa. And they really start to elevate the most recent content, so it's easier to keep up with friends who update their pages more frequently. I like the refreshed look and feel, it's definitely easier to navigate. But I think they also sneaked in more ad space, I didn't notice these big ads before on my profile pages."
Sonja Scharrer, Operations

"No likie. At first I thought it hadn't finished loading, when in fact it had. My reaction was 'really?'. And when I reverted back, I felt better."
Vaibhavi Bhide, Engagement Management

"The 'new' Facebook does a good job at separating out the content of what you really want. What was once cluttered and often times kept below the fold is now easily accessible. When viewing someone's profile you can see their wall, their info, photos, or more separately; something that was cluttered into one page before. I think overall there is a cleanliness to it and I think this also has to do with the way we are viewing webpages (widescreen, better screens) then when Facebook first started. The ability to only have to look through certain amount of pages will help with how users interact with the network.

"One thing you will see is a lot of people hating it. Well remember how many people 'hated' mini feed. Now that is the most popular feature. So we are very quick to hate on something when we get familiar with it."
St. John Oneil-Dunne, Global Business Development

If I asked you who you thought the Most Followed Person on Twitter was, I'm sure I'd get a number of interesting and viable answers. I am forced to wonder, however, how many people would have picked the correct answer: Barack Obama.

"Barack Obama?!" you say? Yep, it's true. According to C|Net, Obama recently passed Digg creator Kevin Rose as the Most Followed Person On Twitter. I admit, I was pretty surprised - a politician? Using social media? And actually using it pretty well? That is not something I expected to see.

So, I figured "hey, why not?", and I decided to follow him too. In doing this, I got another surprise - less than 10 minutes later, I get an e-mail from Twitter that Barack Obama is now following ME on Twitter. OMG! Following ME?

It's pretty clear the Obama camp is really on the ball with this - no doubt they have a volunteer whose job it is to ensure that everybody who chooses to follow Obama on Twitter immediately gets a response in kind. Imagine being a young, impressionable voter, getting an e-mail that Barack Obama - THE Barack Obama, the (presumptive) Democratic Nominee for the Presidency of the United States, is following YOU on Twitter! The potential power of that simple e-mail alone is enormous. Like never before, social media is allowing people to feel like they're really in touch with a candidate for office.

Add to this Obama's 1.3 million Facebook supporters, and the fact that it looks like he's about to surpass 2 million online donors, and this becomes even more impressive.

Obama is not the first politician to benefit from the Internet or social media. As many of you probably know, Ron Paul received a staggering amount of Internet support in his bid to become the Republican candidate. His YouTube channel currently has over 130 videos, and over 7 million views. Nobody paid much attention when he entered the race, but thanks to people in his camp who were Web and social media-savvy, he became a household name, whose opinions could not be ignored.

With all the debate about social media going on right now, one thing's for sure - a political candidate who ignores the potential power of social media does so at their peril.

In the meantime, I'd better be careful what I say on Twitter - Obama is watching!

Daryl Brewer

"What if your photo collection was an entry point into the world, like a wormhole that you could jump through and explore..."

No, this is not a tagline for an upcoming sci-fi film. This is the tagline for a breakthrough technology brought to you by... Microsoft?

The technology is called Photosynth. It's an application that is able to map hundreds of photos geographically in three-dimensional space. The software creates "orbits" that allow users to rotate their viewpoint and have the photos change based on the new perspective. The result is the ability for users to explore the photos similar to the way they would navigate the actual place in real life. Basically, if enough photos are taken of the same famous monument, like say the Eiffel Tower, you are able to see it from all angles and zoom levels.

Photosynth is actually a 2 year old project and the Microsoft site is jam packed with demo videos, but the incredible tech preview that just debuted this week at SIGGRAPH 2008 kicked it up a notch. The new Photosynth demo features color correction, smoothing, and time of day. Just sit back, and be amazed:

The awesomeness of Photosynth is ultimately reliant on the wealth of photography. With the popularity of photo sharing sites and the continual advancement of mobile phone cameras, that might not be such a big problem afterall. And since Yahoo! owns Flickr, it certainly makes one rethink the value of the Microsoft-Yahoo! takeover, as well as their stakes in Facebook. Maybe Microsoft does know what their doing afterall.

Marta Strickland

Building on the Sexy Subaru Forester Sumo Carwash viral video that was a hit on YouTube, Subaru created a nice little follow-up site (in conjunction with Canon) that allows one to take the sexy action into their own hands. You are the official photographer on a photoshoot involving a scadly dressed sumo wrestler and a Subaru Forrester.

Go ahead, you know you want to take a few shots:
http://www.sexysubaru.ca

Lau Ardelean