Facebook – one “Like” to rule them all!
Apr 26th
I have not done a good job of following all the changes on Facebook in the last week, but few people have, because there have been many changes, both on the public user side and on the developer side. Many of these changes have been mentioned on the F8 conference, you can check videos here.
And here are few of the changes that i managed to catch:
- Social plugins – by adding just a simple line on HTML to your websites, you can drive engagement – particularly with the Like button and the Activity Feed, which shows users what their friends liked on your sites; and even automate Recommendations of your websites’ content.
There is one very interesting fact about the on-site embeddable “Like” feature – it is supported by RDFa – which means that anyone who wants to use this functionality must also mark-up their pages with semantics, pushing the Semantic Web movement a big step closer towards getting semantic mark-up throughout the Web.
Still, we’re talking just a simple line of HTML. This is all it takes to make you more social than you were before. Thus Facebook gets a broader sense of our little finger-patterns from all over the Web. Implications? Very significant:
“For example, if you like a band on Pandora, that information can become part of the graph so that later if you visit a concert site, the site can tell you when the band you like is coming to your area. The power of the open graph is that it helps to create a smarter, personalized web that gets better with every action taken.”
- Open Graph Protocol – this one is everything that Google’s Orkut was planned to be, but alas, could not. This protocol turns your pages into “objects” that users can easily add to their profiles. “When a user establishes this connection by clicking Like on one of your Open Graph-enabled pages, you gain the lasting capabilities of Facebook Pages: a link from the user’s profile, ability to publish on the user’s News Feed, inclusion in search on Facebook, and analytics, through our revamped Insights product.“
- The Graph API – supercharged with Facebook’s recent adoption of OAuth2.0, this redesign of the core API is more powerful than it is predecessor. A robust search feature lets you look up people and events, both in public streams and in personalized ones. Real-time updates let you subscribe to updates of user data.
- Community Pages – these are pages on different topics of interest, owned by the people who love them – for example, you can have a community page about “Sushi”, with data from Wikipedia.
For a deeper explanation of all this, you can check out Scobleizer’s breakdown of why this is significant and what it means for Facebook. Also, i recommend you to see Pandora’s CTO sharing how these might impact the music genome project:
FYI: Facebook is swiftly approaching 500 million monthly unique visitors per month. There were 484 million worldwide uniques in March, up 64% from this time last year!
On average, people log-in about 11 times a month, an increase from 8.5 times a month a year ago.
Mobile internet to beat desktop internet in 5 years – says Mary Meeker (…did not we all expect this?)
Apr 20th
Mary Meeker, analyst of Morgan Stanley, has produced a very interesting, practical and intelligent slideshare of Immediate Internet Trends. Be sure to not miss this! If you do not have the time right now, bookmark it and look it up later, because it contains very valuable information, even incorporates the stock market.
- Mobile internet will have become bigger than desktop internet by 2015, though i and other people as well think that this is going to happen sooner, having in mind the advances smartphones have made and everybody’s attention over the iPad.
- Five countries – USA, Russia, China, India, Brazil – compose 48% of users.
- US online penetration in e-commerce is at 4-6%, and still rising
- Apple’s leading the mobile internet charge (this one is not very surprising)
- Another not really surprising fact, but an important one for sure is that overall, Japan owns mobile e-commerce: NTT DoCoMo, the dominant mobile services provider, introduced a mobile payment model at least 5 years ago.
So there you go, 87 slides full of fun, but also important stats inside. And again – don’t miss it – it is an easy and incredibly useful read. Be quick and smart and take advantage of this… you have 5 years to take over ;) Business Insider sums it up like this: “The bottom line? Apple, Google and Facebook win”
The long-anticipated Twitter ad platform to be launched this Tuesday
Apr 13th
Twitter are finally launching their advertising platform this Tuesday, just one day before its first developers conference. The ad model is called “Promoted Tweets” and will be launched on Tuesday afternoon, starting with promoted tweets within Twitter Search results.
The platform’s first customers include Virgin America, Bravo and Starbucks. Advertisers will be bidding on keywords on a CPM basis initially, but later on Twitter intend to launch a “resonance score” metric that will analyze how much impact sponsored tweets have, based on favorites, retweets, views, etc.
The beginning is now with search and it is planned to expand till the end of 2010, depending on how users react to this new model.
Quoting AdAge and The New York Times, Mashable say that “the platform will allow businesses to insert themselves into the Twitter stream in order to rise above the noise”.
There is something that sounds disturbing in this commentary, because it is exactly that same “noise”, also referred to as “social conversation”, that made consumers listen to and trust on brands again and thus allowed them to create and promote communities of brand advocates.
Mashable compare Promoted Tweets to Digg Ads, but really let’s not forget why people started loving Twitter – simple way of communication, simple interface, no ads…
Crish Bruzzo, vice president of brand, content and online at Starbucks said: “When people are searching on Starbucks, what we really want to show them is that something is happening at Starbucks right now, and Promoted Tweets will give us a chance to do that” – let’s not also forget that brands used TV ads to do just that and definitely lost impact, just because consumers don’t want to be broadcasted at, consumers welcome interactive communication.
Dick Costolo, who is Twitter Chief Operating Officer shared: “We wanted to do something that just enhances the conversation that companies are already having with their customers on Twitter”.
As an idea i find this great, but i do not think that Promoted Tweets will be the best solution. Just because at this term Promoted Tweets sounds to me more similar as a model to Google Adwords for search, which does not enhance communication, but just ads broadcasting.
Though Twitter have been after a monetization model for so long, i believe that when something works well and that much people love it, you should not try to monetize it in exchange for user-experience. …unless of course you incorporate some revenue sharing model.
I imagine two alternative options – keep this model, but add revenue sharing to it or forget the whole idea and monetize on advanced metric platform to measure reach and impact on what is currently going on with brand communication and thus let brands optimize, re-think and re-consider their social efforts.
What do you think?
Metal City: interactive universe promoting a metal band’s new CD
Apr 12th
Population: Declining is the new album of a Canadian metal band. For its launch the band’s decided to go bigger than just Myspace. On their behalf, interactive company Grand created HailtheVillain.com, which lets you sneak a peek into the band’s imaginary universe.
Here is a demo vid outlining most of website’s features.
Hail The Villain from Grand Creative on Vimeo.
Hail the Villain is an interactive exploration of a fictional city named Metal City. Horrific human vices play out graphic novel-style as you are investigating an accident that happened in the city.
Of course it is nicest to play with your headphones on. While you struggle to figure out the point-and-click action, Hail the Villain’s ambient music plays in the background, adding a sense of film-noir to the drama. You also have the option to explore with webcam on/off, though it is not clear to me why you need this.
During the gameplay you can dig in everywhere to find out more clues; don’t miss accessing the radio if you want to check out samples of the band’s new tunes.
There surely is a lot to do in Metal City. However, if this experience is too immersive for you and you just want tour dates, merchandise, all this is available on the home page, where you can choose whether to enter Metal City or not.
Don’t miss to check out the website, even if you are not a metal fan, i am not, too, but this is not the point. I certainly give major creativity points to Grand for the interactive experience they created.
Are you, people, ready to give up on oil as you gave up on Nestle’s KitKat?
Mar 30th
So here is another take on the Greenpeace vs. Nestle KitKat drama that’s been taking place recently.
I just kept on waiting for someone to speak out of common sense on Nestle’s fan page in Facebook and it finally happened!
Earlier today Michal Marcinik – person that i do not know and have never heard of, certainly not a PR, media guru or some agency representative – spoke out, in the cleanest and most honest voice possible – ” Anyone of you have thought that you are being a little bit FOOLED by Greenpeace? Why they have not chosen f.e. LIDL, Boots, Danone or E.Leclerc to HIT AT? Those companies are much WORSE than Nestle. I would ask Greenpeace who HAVE PAID for that kind of ATTACK?”. The author of the post goes even further: “… I wonder how many of those here are without ANY fault? How many of them turn off the water while brushing teeth? How many turn off the light while its not used or any AC equipment? How many of you guys go from time to time to work by bike? Look at yourself people first, and sometimes think a little bit deeper about what it is being published and why… Dont just believe everything you are given, just because it is “eco-friendly”. ”
Since Nestle’s fan page is pretty overloaded with comments, here is also a screen shot for this post and the following comments:
Now… this case is certainly not about “true or false”, at least it has not yet come to my attention if Nestle deny using palm oil. The case here is rather about common sense and people’s tending ability to lose it at times and act shallow.
Is it possible that Nestle is the only corporation that does harm to our environment – of course not, and i bet it is not the corporation that harms it most. Would not you look at yourself as a consumer or you just need time for that …until Greenpeace points its finger at you? Are YOU doing your best to save and protect our environment? Would you give up on gas and oil and leave your car parked home so that you save our atmosphere some exhausted fumes?
And even further… can you guess what is the primary reason for rainforests to become dead flatlands and for orangutans’ extinction? It is again YOU – because you are the consumer that palm oil is actually sold to, so that you can safely enjoy your chocolate bars during lunch-break for example. Do you want a reason for wars? It is you again, because world’s economy is driven by oil and you, as a consumer, are a huge part of it. Nestle as well as other corporations and even governments, harm our environment because of you. Accept this and think about it.
On another note, wouldn’t you at least ask yourself the question – who are Greenpeace, beside your general shallow idea that they are “good people”, just because they are “green” ?
Here is a little teaser for you – back in 2006 Greenpeace released a report on “Guide to Green Electronics”. Since this is a topic, as expected, this is Greenpeace after all, dealing with big brands, there were people who questioned their report and responded by proving that Greenpeace’s report was “misleading and incompetent”. The analysis of the report is very interesting and i highly recommend you to read it. You can find it HERE.
And here is a little more about Greenpeace – opinion based on true, undeniable facts. It is up to your decision whether you should take their words, actions and initiatives as ultimately genuine and ethically driven as they appear.
“Greenpeace has worked to create awareness of important environmental issues since the 1970′s, but their methods, accuracy, and effectiveness have ranged from controversial to comical, to scandalous. Greenpeace activism is based upon simplification of complex political issues into epic battles between good and evil. Rather than devoting a lot of resources into educating the public, Greenpeace, like most political activist groups, tries to create sensationalist drama to grab attention and put simplistic issues in the headlines. This is pretty commonplace in politics; however, Greenpeace has an established history of playing fast and loose with facts in order to intensify their stories, and in some cases their pursuits’ careless disregard for the truth has caused more damage than the evil they attempted to target.”
– quoted from Roughly Drafted
–
I for sure know that people are now more irritated by the fact that Nestle do not respond to their voice rather than by their usage of palm oil, but it was high time somebody had said this. And, people, if you really want to look at the real picture of things, for your common sense’s sake, watch this move: The Corporation.
Nestle gets into serious trouble with social media
Mar 28th
Communication specialists have always pointed out that brands should either go serious about social media or should not go for social media at all. Nestle are learning this the hard way.
This month Greenpeace released a truly disturbing video where a bored office employee rips open a KitKat package, to our surprise he takes out a hairy piece of dried-up orangutan and takes a big bite that leaves trails of blood around his mouth and keyboard.
Here is the video:
Here is also the website for the initiative – Greenpeace | Nestle
The purpose of this noxious video is to spread the message that Nestle, KitKat’s parent company, purchases palm oil from companies that destroy rainforests and are thus pushing orangutans to extinction.
As expected, the video made a resonant impression and this is where it gets interesting for social media and communication addicts. Not a long time ago, Nestle decided to go social by launching a Facebook Fan page. I guess it had been pretty dead before the launch of the Greenpeace video, but since then it’s been on fire!
At first there were deliberate efforts to censor people’s response by actively taking down Greenpeace-influenced commentaries. When people complained about censorship, Nestle’s moderator responded: “Oh please… it’s like we’re censoring everything to allow only positive comments”, followed by, “it’s our page, we set the rules, it was ever thus”.
OMG / WTF
Here you can find more about the actual drama.
This was just a week ago and since then the crowd has even intensified the pressure. Nestle’s moderator voice is drowned into the crowd.
The thing is that this chaos could have probably been prevented if Nestle had looked at all those enraged “fans” as people in pursuit for a reason to trust its brand again. Is not it obvious that if people care enough to yell at Nestle, they are doing it because they want to go back to happy living of eating KitKats again without ethical hesitations?
Instead, Nestle’s approach was lead by censorship, leaving people with the impression that they are winning the rage war against a stubborn, old dinosaur that simply does not want to change. There are rare occasions when the moderator does show up, but it is only to say in its cleanest PR voice that Nestle plans to use fully sustainable palm oil by 2015… which actually makes people even madder, because companies like Cadbury don’t use it anymore.
This whole case reminds big brands that before entering the social media space, they should accept that they can’t fake it like they are the authority on a topic anymore, because not only can people ferret out lies, but they can also broadcast the truth just as loudly as a corporate PR.
InternetOnlineWebsite.com – no more having to explain your uncle what is SEO
Mar 24th
It may sound strange to most of you, but there are still people out there that wonder: “How do they make all that Internet? And how do i get some?” Well, there are plenty of people struggling with such questions since the dawn of the Internet. For this reason The Barbarian Group teamed up with Aquent, America’s best talent sourcing agency, to create the InternetOnlineWebsite.com project.
So what is it… beside a catchy URL…
In short InternetOnlineWebsite.com is a website about websites. It has been created with the idea to educate, enlighten and delight those who are looking to add to their online presence and marketing efforts.
Does this sound familiar to you – “I need this same thing on my website, but i dont know how to get it, where to get it, or even what it’s called! THERE’S GOT TO BE A BETTER WAY!”
So, don’t fred any more! InternetOnlineWebsite.com knows what “it’s called. InternetOnlineWebsite.com is designed with the most frequently used features of today’s popular websites, and lets you discover more about these features – what they are called, why you need them, and most importantly, who you need to get them created.
Clicking on objects at InternetOnlineWebsite.com will bring up Aquent’s pop-up orange box where you can read descriptions about what the thing is for, why you need it and who you need to hire in order to accomplish it.
And there is more!
InternetOnlineWebsite.com is not just about websites. It also addresses other helpful aspects of one’s successful online presence, like marketing campaigns including:
- Mobile Internet Online Sites
- Send to a friend E-Cards
- Sharing on all of the most popular online social places
- Flash Videos
- Direct Mail Items
- Promotional T-Shirts
So here it is – no more struggling with technical jargon and no more having to explain your uncle what SEO is – no more Internet Anxiety Disorder. And it is FREE! Check it out.
