Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

It's that sad time of year here in the northern states. The inevitable cold. Sure, it will be fun for a while to bundle up in winter clothes, hot chocolate, fireplace, and the holiday season. But come January, the novelty has worn off and there is still three months to go.

Leave it to Google to turn their trends technology to mapping the flu season. While technology might not be able to bring sunshine to Michigan, at least it might make us smarter about not getting sick.

What's Been Happening This Week?

The Battle To Monetize
YouTube made two great leaps this week in the realm of monetization. First, they announced an AdSense-style model that allows video creators to bid on sponsored placement and search terms. Second announcement, which came yesterday, they are placing ads inside of video embeds. The ads are small and can be clicked on to disappear. I imagine there will still be a cry of annoyance from the YouTube fan base, but nothing as drastic as what might happen over at Facebook...

Facebook's monetization strategy and marketing techniques have been under far more scrutiny. A suggestion that marketer's use photo tagging to promote their message sent the bloggers and tweeters into a frenzy. Then, the Wall Street Journal threw some doubt on the launch of Facebook "engagement ads", ads that try and appear more like social applications. While marketers scratch their heads and users resist, I do think that there is some value to be had with the engagement ads. They just need to be in line with the spirit of the platform, like Ben & Jerry's managed to do during the election with it's free ice cream campaign.

The Tweet Cup Floweth
Twitter hit 1 billion tweets this week!!! That is 1000000000 140 character nuggets of link shares, nonsense, and occasional insight. The bird chatter is becoming hard to handle, but luckily people like Chris Brogan have let out their secrets of how to deal with Twitter at full volume. One little bird that has gone silent though is the MarsPhoenix, which has likely been wiped out in a Martian dust storm, one of the coolest ways to quit Twitter.

Meanwhile, there was drama this week over an app called Twitterrank. Hundreds of Twitter users handed over their usernames and passwords out of curiosity, crowd "wisdom", and vanity. Luckily it turns out the app creator's intentions were not for evil... this time.

Marta Strickland