Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

This week kicked off with some record breakers. One billion browser add-ons downloaded from Mozilla and nearly 60 billion mobile messages delivered by Verizon in just Q3 of this year... which is more than double that of last year. The digital lifestyle is speeding up at exponential rates as more and more people connect to each other, tweet, text, and customize their online space.

What's Been Happening This Week?

All You Do Is Talk, Talk
After the kick-off last week of Obama's weekly YouTube address, many in the blogosphere began asking a very good question... Obama might talk to the people, but what is the effective plan to start listening? Some offered online solutions, like GetSatisfaction and @obamacares, while others detailed just the sort of government roadblocks that might be in the way of a Presidency 2.0.

It's a good question though. In a time where even Shaquille O'Neal and Playboy are on twitter... in a time where a legion of angry moms can create a WOM tidal wave over a 30 second ad... how will our new leader be able to separate the value from the noise?

Google Dabbles
Google launches and kills some things this week. Gmail gets themes, a simple but powerful addition, which Google has been doing a lot with the mail service. Google adds voice recognition search to it's mobile app with mixed success (I guess "bears" and "Paris" sound close enough). And in order to deal with the up and coming threat of Hulu, YouTube begins experimenting with HD video.

Google Lively, which was Google's virtual world offering, gets shut down. With the failure of services like Jaiku (microblogging) and Orkut (social network), it has left some wondering if Google just isn't good at communities.

Facebook, Destined To Be Google Or MySpace?
Facebook is spreading its wings during this tough economic times, but it is leaving many wondering whether it will turn into more of a MySpace or a Google. Let me explain... They are adding more ad space, which should make them more profitable like MySpace with advertising, but also can create drama with their users.

Other revenue models they are implementing include making developers pay a price for a verified (or "sponsored") application. This is very Google-y, and so is their ambitions to be more of a service provider, which we are seeing with things like the Citysearch Facebook Connect pairing.

And yet neither option really gives marketer's what is of true value, it's not the add space, it's not the social services... it's that rich data flowing underneath their feet.

Marta Strickland