Social-network | Digital Possibilities

Posts filed under 'social-network'

MySpace Set To Entertain24 Nov 2009

In an attempt to claw back some of the audience that has been rapidly falling over the last year MySpace has shifted its focus to become more of an entertainment portal.

This sets the platform apart from competitors Facebook and Twitter which focus on members updating each other with short sound bites of information. MySpace will now focus more on what people are into as opposed to what they are doing (a shift anyway from being focused solely on user generated content).

Advertising on the site is also to become more entertaining – on the weekend just gone a giant wolf took over the homepage to further add to the hype and anticipation of the Twilight- New Moon movie.

Movie advertisers frequent the MySpace homepage but this is the first time a takeover of this extreme has occurred on the site. With some calling it a “highly intrusive” placement it will be interesting to see what the My Spacers think of it…no doubt it further fuelled the excitement of Twilight fans who have already been able to watch the movie premiere’s red carpet event on the site, follow the stars who regularly update their statuses and sample the movies soundtracks.

I think this type of interactive entertainment led advertising and content is a good move on MySpace’s part. There isn’t any room left in the Facebook/ Twitter world so this gives them a point of differentiation and importantly provides the audience with an experience.

By Claire ‘Coops’ Cooper (@ccoops)

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Gen Wired28 Oct 2009

An AIMIA event last week, Getting Inside Gen Y, tackled how marketers can connect with Generation Y in this age of rapid change and information. It raised some interesting viewpoints and also sparked an interesting debate. Here’s a little food for thought from Emily Birch – Client Services Director, Digital Marketing.

Who are Gen Y?

According to OzTam, people born between 1976 and 1990 are officially ‘Gen Y’. This opens up a conundrum for brands trying to connect to these folks, as a 19 and 32 year old are likely to have different lifestyles, interests and desires. One approach offered was to segment Gen Y into the life stages of high school, university and blue collar, however from my perspective this seems a little too broad and out of date – Gen Y have grown up and left high school!

Do we really need to segment or categorise Gen Y? The beauty of social media is that it provides an opportunity for marketers to observe people’s behaviour to gain insights. Does it then matter if a person who loves Burton snowboards is 19 or 40 years old?

Future of Facebook

Facebook’s phenomenal success (currently over 6.9 million members in Australia and growing daily) has allowed marketers to reinvent their digital marketing strategies. With the Facebook Connect API, brands can engage with niche audiences who pass messages by word of mouth via functionally like automatic wall posts when they become a brand fan, or interact with pages or applications. In addition, the competitive CPCs on advertising make Facebook an attractive channel for brands wanting to target specific audiences.

There is some evidence out there to suggest that Gen Y are starting to lose interest in Facebook due to information overload and, let’s face it, when mum ‘pokes’ you it’s game over! Inside Facebook has reported that over 30% of members are over 35 years old and this demographic has the highest growth rate.

Gen Y Consumes 36 Hours of Media Each Day

This statistic is extreme (although the source was not revealed!). Assuming the younger generation still has to sleep to stay alive and the world still operates based on 24 hrs in day, Gen Ys are seriously multi-tasking and consuming media from multiple channels concurrently.

As I almost qualify as a Gen Y, I measured by own media consumption on Friday last week and calculated a total of 19.5 hrs (combination of iTunes, radio, Internet, TV and mobile phone). I work in the digital industry and still don’t make it close to your average Gen Y.

Is 36 hours a day of media consumption sustainable? Fast forward 10 years and I think there is going to be a shift in behaviour, with Gen Ys starting to seek a more simplistic lifestyle. Brands will need to be ready for a shift from generation ‘wired’ to generation ‘chilled’.

In summary, to understand Gen Y (or any generation) we need to observe people’s behaviour in social spaces, listen to what they are saying and develop insights that brands can use to provide relevant content or tools that truly add value to people – whether to entertain, simplify life or to educate. People are cramming their waking hours with information from multiple media sources, so brands need to focus on cutting through all this noise to build engaging, on-going and trusted relationships.

How many hours a day do you spend consuming media – are you ‘Gen Wired’?

Follow Emily on Twitter: @toadstuff

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Long live the banner ad19 Feb 2009

Who said the banner is dead? I know some creative’s who would love to see it dead, come to think about it so would many viewers, but handled properly and your message targeted to the most relevant customer then you get traction.

Take this little number from Nike although it’s in a 300 x 250 banner they’ve managed to cram a whole mirco site in there, I spent around 5 minutes on the ’site’ (honest, I checked on my Nike watch) I checked out the range the styling, I could even buy the product at this point, now that’s pretty impressive, I got the whole Nike experience in a single banner ad, I also like the fact that the experience comes to the viewer and you don’t have to leave the comfort of your browser unless of course you want to buy and that’s exactly what I did, strong creative, that’s target specific that sells product. Long live the banner.

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2009 digital marketing predictions18 Dec 2008

Here’s a list of 10 Digital Marketing predictions for 2009.

1. Mobile apps
Goldman sachs estimates 210 million iphone apps will be dowloaded by 2010. Much of this will be monetized by the emerging mobile ad market, e.g. www.admob.com

2. Video streaming from mobile
e.g. www.qik.com www.kyte.com www.ustream.com
Soccer mums through to corporate presentations will be beamed from mobiles directly to the internet

3. Syndication and widgets
Content syndication will become more mainstream
Value will emerge in personalized aggregation services
Rss will start to include ads (most rss feeds are ad free at present), this will finally convince the major publishers (news sites) to publish full feeds rather than only the article teaser. e.g. Springwidgets.com/ and Sproutbuilder.com/

4. Location based services
Thanks to the GPS functionality on the Iphone and other smartphones, the use of location based services will rise turning the yellow pages directory listing businesses on their head. e.g. iloop.com and brightkyte.com, but I expect facebook and myspace to integrate location based services in 2009.
Social recommendations will add value creating a mashup of recommendation & discovery services. e.g. tribesmart.com

5. Social media matures
2009 will see social media mature as brands, organisations and politicians read about why Obama’s campaign was so successful.

6. Integrated campaign metrics
The holy grail of marketing .. will get one step closer as technology starts to allow a more integrated metrics reporting of campaign media. This will accelerate the move to digital and digital agencies will start to play the lead role in marketing initiatives & strategy.

7. Personalised Knowledge Discovery
Recommendation engines and personalisation will start to produce some value as people learn about needs they didn’t know they had.
Attention spans will overflow forcing a change in information distribution. E.g. Twitter will be used for what I call SPR or the “short press release”.

8. Attention Surplus Disorder will be coined as a condition that affects a growing number of people. Media saturation will start to drive a market for a growing range of filtering services, many of them specialised on a niche topic.

9. Opinion fraud will become common place with companies paying for positive recommendations for their products and services. Traditional media will continue to publish the worst of these stories, but even that will not be enough to discourage a growing number of companies into this activity.

10. Life Streaming will explode as devices simplify the ability to record experiences. Examples Socialthing.com/ (recently acquired by AOL) and Friendfeed.com/

All in all 2009 promises to be an exciting time for innovation and despite the economic climate, I believe that emerging tools will continue to prosper.

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Dell launches its SB360 website11 Nov 2008

Dell has just released a resource that provides expert advice to Australian SMBs. Following its success in the United States, Dell decided to provide the same service locally.

With over 1.88 million SMBs in Australia, technology can be used as a competitive differentiator for SMBs competing in the global economy, and the right technology is key to survival. Having worked with SMBs extensively in the past, I know firsthand that SMBs have the greatest technology needs, but are often restricted by limited budgets and a lack of access to IT know-how. This is a fantastic initiative by Dell that provides a useful resource to help Australian SMBs make the right technology purchase for their business.

I am delighted to be part of this initiative as the IT Expert. Keep an eye out for the monthly articles as they are both educational and informative.

Website:
www.dell.com.au/sb360

First Articles:
Does Social Networking pose a threat to your business?
Boost your business with online technologies

Bio: Pedro da Palma Rosa

Pedro da Palma Rosa

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Interest based ambient awareness29 Oct 2008

Social scientists refer to the craving for online contact as “Ambient awareness”. They liken the feeling to being similar to being physically near someone and sensing their mood by their body language, mood and comments.

I think the desire for ambient awareness is what has driven the popularity of Facebook, which through it’s provision of the news feed feature, is supplying a stream of up to the minute updates on what your friends are doing. In many cases this feed substitutes the need for email. Twitter is another service which streams snippets of thoughts into a single stream.

Whilst the craving for ambient awareness of our social graph (or friends list) might be strong, it is surprising to me that the use of RSS feedreaders to supply a personalised interest based news feed is still quite low.

Feedreaders such as Feed Demon, Newsgator are free and relatively easy to setup and establish a personalised “Interest based ambient awareness channel”.
Whilst adoption of these services is growing, their usage is still mostly contained to the early adopters. Steve Rubel at Micropersuasion points points to Forrester research that suggests that feedreader adoption is at 11% up only 2% on what it was 3 years ago.

This has always been surprising to me, and led me to consider some possible reasons.

1. Apathy. Much like programming the VCR, setting up a personalised RSS folder is one of those things that people just can’t be bothered setting up.

2. Ignorance. Many people are not aware of the benefits that can be gained from doing this, which include a faster and deeper knowledge acquisition of your interest area, perhaps at the expense of general media consumption.

3. Trainers. It takes less than an hour for most people to acquire the skills needed to do an initial setup and learn how to maintain an “interest based ambient awareness” channel. However there is a lack of resources who have the knowledge and inclination to spread this around.

So what needs to happen to bring these services into the mainstream?

1. Mainstream publishers will start to provide “niche ambient awareness” channels. News.com.au in Australia recently launched a new format which allows some degree of personalisation, and yet it falls short of what can be done with a feedreader. Personalised start pages such as Pageflakes, Netvibes and iGoogle also provide simple tools which will drive the use of “one click” niche interest feeds. Facebook and other social networks will continue to expand their deployment of “interest based ambient awareness” channels via groups and discovery tools. Take a look at Radus for a new example that fits this description.

2. Emergence of the RSS salesperson. Too many of the RSS early adopters are what Malcolm Gladwell would refer to as “Mavens”, immersed in a deep knowledge of a certain area, and without the inclination to evangelise their discoveries to the world. I have seen the adoption of personalised feeds spread quickly when a connected salesperson evangelises the benefits.

3. Increased demand for customised social Media monitoring. Working in this area, I am seeing first hand the continued demand to unlock insights that are often hidden from mainstream media services. One of the main tools that I use for this is my feedreader. As the demand increases, I think this will encourage the training of resources in the creation and use of “interest based ambient awareness” channels.

We all have a passion or interest. I would challenge you to discover for yourself firsthand the benefits of getting more deeply engaged through the creation of an “Interest based ambient awareness” channel.

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Bullseye social media monitor21 Oct 2008

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Bullseye Briefing Series21 Oct 2008

The Bullseye briefing series provides the perfect opportunity for clients and guests to interact with leading industry specialists on a range of topics. The interactive format of the sessions creates the opportunity to ask questions, exchange information and table problems affecting businesses today. Briefing sessions are held in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane throughout the year.

Previous briefing topics have included:

> Social Media and the Conversational Web
> Implementing Content Management Systems for the User
> Driving Sales and Marketing through the Strategic use of ‘eLearning’
> Usability: its affect on your Bottom Line

Sessions are by invitation and are at no cost to guests. To find out more about the Bullseye Briefings Series and to register your interest please contact: jaquelyn.thatcher@bullseye.com.au or on 03 8620 6200.

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Team Member Q&A21 Oct 2008

1. DEXTER VIRAL – TEN
Oh no, not another loony running around with a blade! But hang on a minute,
like all good detectives re-visiting the crime scene, on closer inspection
this is a viral piece for the new series of Dexter. The intro to the US
news report is believable – with the taped-off police areas and CCTV
footage of the killer leaving the scene adds to the authenticity. I do like the
idea and like all good virals has that viral effect in that you can personalise
the piece and send it on giving the impression that your mate could be
next – lovely idea. After all that was revealed at the end, I thought the art
direction needed more of an edge and the line “You’ve just been given the
Dexter treatment” was not as sharp as Dexter’s blade. A good effort overall.

2. THE HAPPENING
Quick cuts, camera zooms with deep gravelly voice-overs from the director
of the Sixth Sense – it was bound to grab my attention, so when I went
online to find out what was happening I was still none the wiser. Maybe that
was the whole point? To create enough intrigue that you’ll want to see the film.
There was ‘The Happening experiment’ which was basically a flash mob of people
all falling to the ground at the same time. I love the thought, but have seen
this idea done before in New York’s Times Square where everyone ‘froze’

3. VICELAND TIME CRISIS GAME
A shoot-em-up game with lots of blood and a high body count – now we’re talking.
As a non-Vice reader, I didn’t really understand the ‘don’ts and dos’ and as
I entered the site I was taken straight to the shooting range.
It would have been nice to chose your weapon of choice as my personal
favourite is the AK-47. Still, pulling my hard gangsta bro face I started shooting.
It didn’t feel like I was using an AK- 47, it felt more like a water pistol. More
action and sound effects would have helped the experience of a virtual
shoot-em-up world all blokes love.

4. BIG BROTHER
A virtual Big Brother house that has lovely art direction. I loved the Flash
animation (apart from a glitch when I rolled over the music stereo in the bedroom)
and thought it was well executed. The prize on offer is an ‘ultimate’
trip for two to the Gold Coast, including limo transfers and a tour of the BB
house and other things. I guess this is very appealing for the
audience but for me – who doesn’t watch BB with all the naval gazing that
goes on with a bunch of wannabe stars – this site didn’t entice me enough to
interact, so earning points and cracking codes wasn’t compelling enough (not
even for a trip to the Gold Coast) and I reckon this audience haven’t the attention
span to navigate around the site.

5. THE WORLD GAME
I thought the site design and interface was a bit stale, but I did like the fact
that they had videos, blogs and stats on the ‘beautiful game’. To be honest
if you’re a football nut this site will be a favourite. For me, it was the
videos from the English Premier League, and coming from the East
End of London I was looking for the ‘ammers, what the hell? No West
Ham and as they say around Upton Park ‘bloody liberty’. I still feel they
could have ‘real’ fans from Australia talking and reviewing games. The
site could have also used Vodcasts and not just on the blogs, and polls
from the fans would have added a bit more to the site.

6. BRATZ FASHION DESIGNER
Out of all the sites I reviewed, this site for me worked the best.
I know it works well as my three girls are on this site all the time so I
know from first-hand experience that this is a great site.
It has everything that all good online experiences should have – relevant
rich content, personalisation with the ‘Fashion Studio to The
Gallery’ where you can upload your favourite design and vote for the
best. This site really understands who its talking to, it doesn’t try to be too
clever but still manages to be very rich and immersive. This gets top marks from me.

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Blackmores BeYourBest Website21 Oct 2008

Case Study: Blackmores BeYourBest Website

To promote the Sydney Running Festival, Blackmores asked Bullseye to design a site that helped runners get the best out of their experience on race day.

We came up with various tools that helped runners achieve their best no matter what their level of fitness. There were training tips, recommended runs, split calculators, even a personalised training program that catered for everyone, from first timers to the more experienced athlete. The training program was custom built for an individuals level of fitness. A number of ‘Challenges’ were introduced during the 8 week lead up to the run, including training sessions and organising running groups to meet up. You could even go round the whole course without leaving your armchair with a web cam which was condensed into a 5 minute timeline: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOwHMbOjh_I
This video brought the experience and flavour of the event to life online way before the big day.

Over 7,000 ‘Challenges’ were taken over the 8 week training program: The site was so successful after the event that we continued the ‘Challenge’ and re-tailored the training program to incorporate not just runs but walks and bike rides. Individuals can track and view the best walks or runs at a glance within Google maps. This fitted perfectly with the brand strategy to become part of the bigger ‘B Your Best’ movement within Blackmores set of sites.

The site is specifically targeted at an individuals level of fitness and a particular stage of life. From weight to pregnancy we developed interactive tools to help you ‘B your best’ this jump page was aimed at all Australians and was deliberately designed to become a rallying call for everyone to take the ‘challenge’ and strive to be fitter.

Another way we promoted the brand value of ‘Be your best’ for Blackmores was to keeep people motivated in preparing for the event and to continue to engage with them once they completed the run. Runners who participated in the Running Festival were able to see themselves cross the finish line by entering their bib number or name. They could also forward their very own ‘moment of glory’ to family and friends.
http://www.byourbest.com/Finish/ We also suggested people share their experience by tagging their pictures with ‘BSRF08’ which was then streamed onto the official Blackmore’s site for all to share in true Web 2.0 fashion. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/BSRF08/show/

Kevin Ferry our creative Director summed the whole event up by saying: ‘It’s amazing the web, yes I know we all talk about the fancy websites, cool interfaces, and slick animation etc. but for me nothing beats it when real people from real communities come together and contribute via the web; that’s what happened last week at the Blackmores Sydney Running Festival, one of the best.”’ Visit the site

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