The New Face for MySpace

MySpace, once known as the "place for friends" is re-launching the site with the goal of becoming a "social entertainment destination". The re-launch begins today and the entire update will be complete by the end of November. In addition to a new focus the site has introduced a new logo, a new target audience, and a new site design.

Virtuality Sold In Actuality

Facebook credits, currently sold at Target will now be offered at Walmart and Best Buy as well. Think about that for a second, intangible virtual products sold tangibly; non-physical goods sold physically. Who would have thought? As the holiday season rolls around keep these gift cards in mind as they may just be the perfect holiday gift for any FarmVille/Mafia Wars/Texas Hold'em junky.

McDonald's Branded Integration into Farmville

This one day event allowed McDonald's to "become a 'Neighbour Farm' to every player in the world for a day...[and] allows players to come and work on the McDonald’s Farmville Farm, helping to grow things like tomatoes and mustard seeds". Interesting...

Bing to Display Friends' Opinions and Preferences

The “Instant Personalization” system incorporates public information (likes, links, etc.) posted by your friends into your Bing search results. These "social results" are a result of the deepened relationship between Microsoft and Facebook. Very interesting… Making search social.

New Isn't Always Better

Gap's new logo has created quite a stir amongst the social media and advertising world at large. The new logo was released last week and caused a viral "negative backlash that includes user-generated logo contest, a parody Twitter account and a Crap Logo Yourself website." While the new logo still resides on the Gap website, the old logo has been re-instated to Facebook. Now, the company is trying to ride the viral wave and updated their Facebook page with “We love our version, but we’d like to see other ideas. Stay tuned for details in the next few days on this crowd sourcing project.”

It's an App Revolution

It's small here, but check out another interesting infographic this time about app use.

Map of Social Networks

This "for fun" infographic map depicts the lay of the land as far as the size (in number of users) of various social network sites. Very interesting. But remember, this is from September 3rd, I can image the terrain has changed a bit since then. Enjoy!

TV Goes Social

Just like every other aspect of our lives our TV’s are officially going “social”. With the development of Apple TV in 2006, GoogleTV introduced this year, and Samsung’s new dedication to letting developers create apps for their televisions, now is a good time to consider the vastness of this opportunity. Apps such as Twitter, YouTube, eBay, AccuWeather, and Pandora are already involved. Imagine having the ability to watch your favorite show on half the screen while simultaneously reading what everyone else is saying on Twitter, checking the local weather, and buying those cute shoes you just saw an advertisement for, it’s simply incredible. The TV presents new challenges and benefits for developers including the large screen size, the social setting in which we often enjoy TV, the opportunity for sound as a welcomed addition, and more. The internet is releasing televisions from its bondage as a device that pushes information at us to a connected, integrated, all-way communication portal; televisions and our current code of behavior for watching them is undergoing a serious revolution, are you ready?

Happy Social Good Day!

Can social media become a tool to better the world we live in? Today, Social Good Day, is a perfect time to ask. Do you have any suggestions to ways that "social media can be used to tackle some of the world's social challenges" including poverty and hunger (or other UN Millenium Development Goals)? To join in the discussion add a comment below, tweet your solutions using the #socialgood hashtag, or check out what speakers at the Social Good Summit, part of UN Week in NY, think about the effect social media can have on social issues. Personally, I think the global nature of social media, the speed of transmission, and the equality of contributions of are some of the benefits the new media can bring to these old issues.

Location Based Social Networks... what's the deal?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been hearing a lot of buzz lately about Location Based Social Networks (LBSNs) such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite and Loopt. With a growing user-base (Foursquare just passed the 2 million mark) we all want to know who’s using these services, how often they’re using them, what they’re using them for, how our clients can get involved, and if they should. Large chains such as Starbucks and Chili’s restaurant have already partnered with LBSNs to test promotions… so far, with mixed results. Check out this article from AdAge about some of the challenges and pitfalls these early adopters have faced.

A recent report by Forrester provides a little perspective on the subject of LBSNs, finding that less than 5% of U.S. online users have ever used a location-based application on a mobile device. Interesting to note that these users are typically young (~70% between the ages of 19 and 35), male (~80%), well-educated, and influential. Read more on Forrester’s own blog and on gigaom.com

Interesting Social Media Article

Hi All~

As a follow-up to last week’s BPT, I thought this social media article was very relevant. It discusses that while 78% of companies report participating in social media, only 41% say they have a strategic plan in place to guide their efforts. Let’s not let our clients fall into the trap of participating in social media without a solid strategy in place!

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=130723&nid=115750

Okay, I will get off my soap box now :-)
Laura

IKEA Facebook Campaign

For anyone who missed the "Tech Meetup" presentation yesterday, the team shared a great example of a simple, but very effective Facebook Campaign done by popular furniture store, IKEA. to promote the opening of a new IKEA Malmö store.

Basically, they just created a profile for the store manager, and started posting photos of IKEA showrooms to his photo album. The consumer who tagged his or her name on each individual product first, won that product.

"Instead of people just looking at a banner with furniture, we got them to personally promote IKEA. People gladly added their name to an interactive IKEA catalogue, and spread it to all their friends, only using Facebook's already existing functions."

There's a great recap video on YouTube (only 1:33) that illustrates how IDEA brought this marketing idea to life. Check it out