Archive for December, 2009
The 2009 Holiday Social Media Carol
Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009
The holidays are here and everyone seems to be putting out wish lists, but the team here at Spring Creek Group has been so hard at work that we just now had the time to put together our holiday social media wish lists. We decided, in the spirit of the holidays, to fashion our wish list in the form of a melodic poem (to the tune of Jolly Old St. Nicholas, which is actually kind of mean in its original form):
Jolly Old St. Zuckerberg,
Lean your ear this way;
Don’t you send a status update,
Of what I’m ‘bout to say-
Holidays are coming soon,
Now you rich young man,
tell me what you’ll bring to me;
in a PowerPoint plan.
When the clock is striking twelve;
And Twitter is asleep,
Through the tubes in a North Face black,
With TOS changes you’ll creep;
All the inboxes you will find
Hanging in a row;
Mine will be the spam-filled one,
You’ll be sure to know.
Cody wants a ban on pokes;
Feran wants an IPO;
Lindsey wants three Zhu Zhu pets,
But Amazon said no.
As for me I’d be just fine
If you could only
Promise me you’ll give some thought
To this whole “Live Feed.”
Happy Holidays, everyone, from the team here at Spring Creek Group.
Google Voice Could Bring Improved SEO to YouTube Videos
Monday, December 21st, 2009
As what is essentially the second largest search engine, the accuracy and relevancy of search results on YouTube are still stuck in the search query stone age. Google ports many of the same techniques it uses for indexing its search results to YouTube, but it’s missing one primary piece of information: the actual content. With a system like this in place, you’re forced to use boring titles for relevancy and create tag lists to capture related searches. However, this is all primed to change in the near future.
Google’s acquisition of voice startup Grand Central two years ago has left them with two important things: a unique centralized phone service and a robust voice recognition algorithm. The first has been spun into the Google Voice. The second piece of the acquisition is the voice recognition technology, which is currently in the initial phases of a site-wide roll out. The roll creates automatic closed captions, and is starting with Google and Education channels.
While closed captioning is nothing new, the adoption has been slow. The caption creation process is an onerous one and restricted to video owners instead of adapting a crowd-sourced solution. There are a lot of implications here in terms of policing of these user-generated captions, but the wide-reaching benefits of accessibility alone are tremendous.
In a space where content is king, auto captioning will help provide users with accessibility issues more useful content, but will also allow Google to actually understand the content of their videos. Google has yet to comment on the larger search implications or how it will be integrated, but assuredly, this is a game changer for video search and we’re looking forward to a complete roll out… and also to reading some funny, funny captions.
WE CAN HAZ REMATCH?
Thursday, December 10th, 2009
Thomas Jefferson, Bill Gates, Return of the Jedi… that’s not a bad group of thirds to be lumped in with, especially when you consider that the Spring Creek Group trivia team battled their way to a third place finish last night at TechFlash’s Holiday/Birthday Bash (GEEK SIDE NOTE: we realize that technically Return of the Jedi is the sixth installment, but hey, it’s our blog, and we’re going with the original releases).
In a five-round battle royale of trivia might, our four-person team fought their way past self-doubt and a perceived all-out lack of knowledge en route to a top-three finish.
Congrats are in order for the first and second place teams; Cheezburger Network and Findwell, who actually went head-to-head in a tiebreaker to determine the champion. However, we must admit that we believe the system was flawed and that a BCS system of determining a proper standing should be implemented. That being said, we’d like to extend an invitation to Cheezburger Network and Findwell to join us for another trivia showdown sometime. We can work out details later.
Social Shopping 101: An Online Holiday Shopping Q&A with SCG Principal Clay McDaniel
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009Recently we sat down and picked the brain of Spring Creek Group Principal Clay McDaniel about the topic that’s dancing around like sugar plums in peoples’ heads this Holiday season – shopping, or more specifically social shopping.
Q: What is Social Shopping?
We all know that the Internet has seriously changed the way we shop. With the meteoric rise of social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook, we’re about to enter a whole new dimension – social shopping. Social Shopping combines the power of social networks with e-commerce. People visit social shopping sites to share deals, bargains, promotions, product recommendations and reviews to help each other make better purchase decisions. This Holiday season, social shopping will be in full effect. In fact, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF), almost half of online retailers (47%) plan to increase their use of social media this Holiday season. Meaning there is power in numbers: if we consumers share bargains and deals with one another, we can save a big chunk of change. But you do need to know where to look.
Q: Should I become Facebook friends with brands or companies?
If you are a genuine supporter of a product or company and plan to make purchases at some point, it’s probably worth it to ‘fan’ their page. It’s a free and easy way to get exclusive deals, offers and freebies. Some brands even offer an initial joining gift when you fan their page. If the deals don’t turn out to be compelling, simply ‘defriend’ them.
Q: How can I use Twitter to find deals?
Think of Twitter like as a real-time search engine. Every minute of every day, sites and brands are tweeting about exclusive deals and discounts. Seeing “limited-time” offers used to mean you had days, or even weeks, to take advantage of a good deal. With Twitter, many of the deals shared work only for an hour or so.
You can follow your favorite brands, restaurants and stores to get their deals directly, and you can also follow @woot, @bingcashback, @slickdeals, and @fatwallet to find out about the best deals happening each day. These services track and tweet deals, coupons and discounts on a wide variety of products. Some of the promotions are only for Twitter followers, so you can’t get them elsewhere, and most are short in duration.
You can also use hashtags to find good deals. Great ones to follow are #holidaydeals, #coupon, #cybermonday and #savings. If you are looking for something specific try a hashtag for the particular product such as #wii or #zhuzhupets. Another option is to create a specific Twitter list for deals that is separate from your main feed. Some great local companies to follow are @theindustryshop, @REI_CoOp, @EE_Robbins, @myjulep, @tottiniseattle and @goodbyn.
Q: What is “Group Gifting”?
It’s an old practice – improved by the new social Internet. Say you want to chip in with others and provide one special gift to a teacher, co-worker, friend or family member. Small sites like lolligift.com, edivvy.com, dreambank.org and wisheo.com have made this concept their bread-and-butter. Some big retailers are also experimenting with the group gifting concept on their sites. Best Buy recently launched a “Pitch In” program, where shoppers can register online for gifts they want, and send a notice to friends and relatives via e-mail or social networking sites like Facebook. Gift-givers can then sign up for the program online to pay for a portion of the listed items.
Q: What are “Private Sales”?
One of the fastest-growing e-commerce trends today are “private sale” sites that offer steep discounts on off-season luxury items for a limited time. Gilt.com and RueLaLa are popular in the fashion space, while OneKingsLane focuses on furniture and housewares. The sites are “members only”, but they are free to join. Simply sign up to get the daily email from these private sales detailing what brands are on offer today. Woot.com offers just one product for sale per day, but it often sells out fast if it’s a really good deal.
We hope this answers some of your questions about social shopping, and makes your gift-giving a little easier this Holiday season. If you have additional social shopping tips or advice, please feel free to share.
Facebook Privacy Change Cheat Sheet
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009Last night, Mark Zuckerberg took to his keyboard and sent a 515 word note (that’s 2,938 characters, or roughly 20.9 tweets) to Facebook’s 350 million users regarding upcoming changes to the current privacy model as they relate to networks and information sharing.
You can read the full post here, but we decided we’d save you the trouble by creating this short summary of the post and upcoming changes:
In
- Ability to control who sees each piece of your content
- Simpler privacy settings page
Out
- Networks
Important Numbers
- 350 million – number of world-wide users
- 50 percent – Percentage of users who belong to regional networks
- 100 million – Estimated number of users who will have more control over their information thanks to the new privacy settings
The Big Idea
Facebook has grown so quickly in its just around five years of existence that security and privacy have become real concerns. Facebook is taking steps to reaffirm their commitment to being a place where users can live their online social lives with the peace of mind that they want and need. Highly-customized privacy settings will allow for a richer overall experience in Facebook, one where users are able to share more with the people they want and less with those they want to keep at a digital arm’s length.
Saving Green This Holiday Season with Social Media
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009Social shopping is all over the Web right now. We spoke about it a bit back in November, but since then the trend has gained some steam.
Clay McDaniel recently chatted with Alison Brownrigg of nwsource and talked about how a little time in the social Web can save you some serious dough this holiday season.
Read the full piece here.
