Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
ShareThis Gains +2 Metrics: Social Reach and the Audience Index
Friday, August 27th, 2010As more and more content is put on the Web, it’s increasingly important to know as much about the sharing of that content – including who is doing the sharing. With ShareThis’ new additions of Social Reach and Audience Index metrics to their mix of data, users will be able to have an in-depth look at where their content is being shared and by whom.
Head over to their site for the full info.
RE: NEW SCG POLICY: MANDATORY BELT INITIATIVE
Thursday, August 19th, 2010MEMORANDUM:
To: SCG-ALL
Date: August 19, 2010
A single comment about Clay’s jaunty orange belt has spurred an office-wide movement to thwart any possible wardrobe malfunctions – all employees not wearing belts have been strongly encouraged to don some form of SCG-branded pants support system.
Thanks to the continued intrepid efforts of honorable SCGers such as these:
NONE OF THE BELTLESS SHALL ESCAPE.
Facebook Places: What’s On Your Mind and Where are You?
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010Note: This was written in real-time and might not read like our normal stuff. Apologies for the errors and no apologies for the timeliness.
Foursquare users around the world have been hearing that Facebook would roll out a location-aware feature, but today is the day they finally get to see what it’s all about. In a short time (I’m writing this in real-time) the world will tune in to Facebook’s newly-launched livestream application and hear, straight from Palo Alto, about the new location-based elements of Facebook. Since we want our readers, friends, and colleagues to be informed not only about the news, but what it means for them, we’re staying late here at SCG to bring you the coverage…
4:44 p.m.
I just finished writing that opening paragraph, so there’s nothing to new report other than the fact that there are a ton of people in the chat asking when it starts.
4:50 p.m.
I submitted a question through the “Ask a Question” box, but it just disappears and doesn’t give any indication that it’s been received or anything. So, we’ll see if they answer my question I guess.
4:55 p.m.
In order to match the location shift (so subtle, Facebook) the journalists on location went through, I moved to Feran’s desk across the pod.
5:11 p.m.
Randi Zuckerberg was audible for a second, but then went away. Now she’s back. Looks like we’re ogin to hear from execs, then devs, then a Q&A. The scene behind her looks like it could be filmed in a college dormitory common area.
5:13 p.m.
Worst. Hold. Music. Ever. Also, the furniture in whatever building there in looks it belongs on the front porch of someone’s summer cottage.
5:23 p.m.
Zuck is on stage! He’s talking about the tradition of launch nights being something bigger than an employee or partner event, but about the community (including journalists and other people). Now he lost his train of thought.
Talking about how Facebook works to create new tools on Facebook (no deadlines?).
It’s called Places and has been in testing for a couple months. Zuckerberg is telling a story about being out in Menlo Park with his GF and showing her how it works. His GF noticed that their friends were nearby and said “hey, let’s have dinner with them.” Wow.
Facebook’s location tools are about:
- Helping people share in a social way
- Connecting with others
- Discovering new places
5:27 p.m.
Video about places which is very, very Apple-like. Lots of cool looking people connecting with other cool looking people. The word serendipitous has been used three times so far in this livestream.
A big emphasis put on creating a trail and having it for all time. Going back on your timeline and seeing what you were doing 10-15 years ago at a certain spot.
5:29 p.m.
Product manager for Places Michael Sharon is up on stage. The new features will be available on touch.facebook.com and a new iPhone application available later tonight.
Places are listed as what Facebook feels will be most interesting to you.
The general use of the application looks and feels a lot like Foursquare, Whrrl and Gowalla.
“It’s not about broadcasting your location to the world, it’s about sharing where you are with your friends”
Here Now is a listing of who is where you are at that time (friends and others).
5:33 p.m.
The Places addition lets users tag friends who are with you wherever you may be similar to tagging people in status updates.
Having tagging makes it easy to incorporate people who may not have a smartphone with them, but stil want to be a part of the story.
5:36 p.m.
Differing levels of security broadcasting levels “Allow” and “Not now” make it easy to change how you are sharing your info.
Separate privacy controls are available to change who can see your actions.
You have to be checked in somewhere to tag a friend there (so you can’t say your friend is at a strip club if you’re not there too) and you can always remove tags.
As a final kill switch, you can change your privacy settings to disallow all tagging.
5:40 p.m.
Not only is this a new application for users, it’s a new API that will be available to partners (read, write and search – in closed beta) like: Gowalla (surprise), Foursquare (wow, again) and Yelp! (remember them?), and Booyah (creators of MyTown). The Foursquare guy definitely took a bit of mic time and talked a lot about future things for Foursquare. Yelp will also be pulling your Facebook friends places into their iPhone application in the near future (tomorrow). Booyah is creating a new product called InCrowd which will be half-game half-social utility (built in three weeks) based on the Places API.
Check out the dev info here: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/#places
5:50 p.m.
Chris Cox (VP of Prod. Management) gets up on stage and makes a poor joke about sociology. Then actually breaks it down: home (where you wake up, go to sleep, where your family is, where you eat, and where you reflect on your day) work (the economic engine of society, where you work your brains and muscles, where you invest in creating something that’s greater than ourselves), the third place (the bar, the restaurant, the library, the street outside, the barbershop, the newsstand, the places where we go and share our lives with each other — the most-important). Oldenberg made a hypothesis that the technology of today is in danger of destroying the third place.
Facebook Places aims to be the opposite of that. “Technology does not need to estrange us from one another.”
Cox gives a story about what might come in the future and it seems pretty awesome: sharing stories, sharing memories from your friends and getting recommendations – our collective memory. OK, he just said “that’s dope.”
OK, this is getting a bit sappy… talking about our children visiting somewhere in the future and their phone letting them know that their parents had their first kiss there and shows pictures, comments, etc.
5:58 p.m.
Q&A time! Questions about privacy, monetization and more. I’m not going to write these out, but I’ll throw a link in here later if they release transcripts.
Holy cow, they actually have traditions that are pretty awesome. Gong. Launch switch. Watch the video and check them out!
That’s it!
The Moderation Dilemma: Hit Delete or Own It?
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010For many companies, the thought of having negative conversations about their brand, particularly on their own branded forums , is about as off-putting as having someone stand in front of their stores with giant signs saying “don’t buy stuff here!”
We all know there’s a problem with the iPhone 4 antenna. Gizmodo, Engadget, Consumer Reports (and even Apple) have talked about the problem (although Apple has flip-flopped a number of times). The Web is fraught with commentary on the issue and users, case providers, and hobbyists are clamoring to get their opinions, fixes and hacks on the Web. Now, with judges giving the go ahead to class-action lawsuits, things could get a little dicey for the Cupertino company.
While the online forums arena is one that is often overlooked from a social media perspective (overshadowed by the glitz and glam of other SM properties), brands which are active in the space have seen positive returns on their investment when deploying outreach teams focused on delivering information and guiding users to resources managed by the brand. Sentiments have shifted and messages that previously went un-sent are now spread through linking and sharing – not to mention the fact that users have that general “this brand cares” feeling after interacting with the outreach teams.
Apple doesn’t seem to “get it”
In the latest dust up, TUAW reports that Apple has yet again pulled conversations about the iPhone 4 antenna issues from their official forums. That’d be all fine and dandy if it weren’t for a little thing called Bing. The Microsoft-owned search crawler cached the pages for the entire world to see, even after an Apple employee seemingly wiped them from the Web.
So, the question is: When is it OK to delete something on your branded sites?
We work with branded communities for a number of our larger clients, and the rules for moderation are usually set at the onset of the project, or when entering a new social property, but the general rule of “have a thick skin” remains, regardless of the arena. Not every user is going the brand, but it’s not the role of the community manager to play censor to negative commentary.
Yes, we pull stuff down. We’ll be the first to admit that. However, we’re not censoring for negative comments or criticisms of the brand or products, but rather for objectionable content (swear words, racial slurs, sexual content – basically if it was part of a George Carlin sketch, you can place a safe bet that we’ll delete it) as the brands we work with are often focused on a wide range of ages and we never want some 13 year old kid stumbling across something on one of our pages that his mom could get angry about. We also pull spam down, because who wants that crap anyway?
In the end…
Negative discussions can actually lead to chances for brands to own up and show that “human side” of their brands by listening, making changes and addressing users’ concerns. What might be an engineering mistake could quickly turn into a PR and customer service win in the course of a few months.
While the egos of some might take a few bumps and bruises, the positive effects on consumer confidence in the brand and positive brand sentiment can swing greatly when attention is paid to consumer concerns and disappointments.
Microsoft, the creator of Bing, is a client of Spring Creek Group.
This wedding has been brought to you by Smirnoff
Friday, July 9th, 2010A couple of weekends ago, my big sister got married to her boyfriend of eight years. The ceremony was beautiful, on the patio of the Chicago History Museum with an elegant reception to follow inside in two adjoining ballrooms. There’s really no moment tenderer than seeing a loved one get married to the person with whom they’re meant to be. Needless to say, I was elated. Soon after the ceremony, the photographer asked me to come back outside to take a couple more photos. The bridesmaids were waiting with their hands conspicuously behind their backs. Oh dear! I knew what was coming next. Yes, my sister’s classy wedding took a swift kick to the ovaries as a bridesmaid handed me a Smirnoff Ice. The day before during the men’s golf outing and the rehearsal dinner I was iced six times—so I was not surprised when those artful shrews iced all the groomsmen. Here’s basically how the night played out: we iced them back, we iced the photographers for being in cahoots, the first man iced my sister and her husband during his toast, my mom iced herself to “find out what it tasted like”, etc. Frankly, I still have no idea where all this damn alcoholic syrup came from because they sure as sugar weren’t serving it at the bar.
There are two reasons that I wanted to talk about this dying internet meme. First of all, I’m out. No more icing. It’s official. I no longer want to play the game. Second, I had numerous conversations with my dad about whether or not Smirnoff was behind this icing craze that nearly ruined his daughter’s wedding. Though I thought the notion of Smirnoff masterminding this meme was interesting, I just can’t bring myself to believe they would risk associating themselves with binge drinking. They obviously haven’t made any great efforts to distance themselves from it or denounce it; but to come up with a SMM campaign like that, which slowly unravels and then explodes with precision and accuracy, would make the earned media team at Smirnoff easily the best in the game. I’ve talked about hoax SMM campaigns before and continue to be fascinated by the possibilities. We’ll leave aside the fact that they are deceptive for now and just focus on how fun they can be. Let’s take a look at a couple of hoax ad campaigns:
Ivar’s Submarine Billboards: Seattleites may remember hearing about the discovery of underwater billboards in the Puget Sound dating back to the 1950s. Apparently, Ivar Haglund the eccentric owner and promoter of the popular seafood chain put them there in the 50s because he thought that submarines would eventually be a popular mode of travel in the Sound. Allegedly the current CEO and a local historian discover documents on these billboards and set out on a media-driven quest to find them. A couple of months later, the food chain and the local historian admitted to the hoax, but what was really interesting were the numbers that went with it. They spent $250,000 on the campaign and successfully quadrupled their sales of clam chowder, going from 19,000 cups to 83,000 cups. Furthermore, customer counts in their restaurants went up 5-10%. Granted, sales would go up no matter what if you injected $250k into your marketing budget, but rather than just throwing up TV spots and whatnot, they create a fantastical story that captured people’s imaginations.
Cellphone Jiffy-Pop: In 2008, four videos of cellphones popping popcorn kernels went viral on YouTube. The idea was that if you put a couple of cellphones all together and make them all ring at the same time, the kernels would pop. Which had to make viewers wonder, “If these deathboxes are popping popcorn then WTH are they doing to my brainbox?!” It turned out the a Parisian guerrilla marketing company called Last Fools came up with the ad campaign for Cardo Systems, a maker of Bluetooth headsets. I can’t find any specific numbers on the campaign, but once Cardo came clean, their brand recognition skyrocketed. Several news outlets interviewed company representatives to talk about how they made the popcorn pop and the ethics behind the ad.
Many brands have had hoax campaigns. Some embrace the ruse like Cardo Systems while others distance themselves. And then there’s the spinning cat by Nokia, ‘nuff said about that one. All in all, these guerrilla marketing tactics seem to work pretty well, at least the ones that are visible. I’m sure that there have been countless unseen failures. This blog post is already too long, and if you are still reading it then I commend your tolerance for poor grammar and your obvious lack of ADD/your obvious aderol consumption. Researching for this post has left me with some questions about this kind of advertising. The thing about hoaxes is that they spread by word of mouth and word of mouth is what we do as social media marketers. So where does the fun stop and where do the ethical questions start? Does admitting to the hoax, like Ivar’s and Cardo did, make everything copasetic with their customer base? How do campaigns like this affect the customer’s trust in the company? And finally, was icing born in a board room?
Hollywood Goes Mobile
Thursday, July 8th, 2010
If “reality” television and 3-D glasses weren’t enough, the line between fiction and real-life becomes even hazier as Hollywood takes advantage of location-based applications (most notably, Foursquare) to market its movies. Now, you can literally make fantasy into reality.
This past winter, Warner Brothers used Foursquare to promote the movie, Valentine’s Day. Warner provided romantic “tips” for followers who checked into a variety of landmarks in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Boston. Followers who visited two places on the list of “Romantic Places” were awarded with a Valentine’s Day badge.
Lionsgate is taking things one step further with its Foursquare partnership to promote The Expendables, which also includes local businesses. Followers will be privy to special Expendable-themed rewards and tips at business locations in 11 cities. The marketing initiative provides a way for followers to feel part of the movie through special insider code words that hint to characters and events.
Integrating mobile applications into movie promotion is a smart move on the part of studio execs because passive viewing of any media is no longer satiating today’s audiences. The ability to interact with characters and themes through mobile devices enables audiences to build a bond with a movie before it even hits the big screen, spurring conversation and anticipation at restaurants, landmarks, and bars. Perhaps promotion through location-based applications could even be the studios’ solution to the challenge of getting audiences to view commercials, previews, and advertisements in the world of downloading, Hulu-ing, and DVR-ing. Mobile applications, such as Foursquare, could be the first, tentative step of Hollywood’s foray into using mobile as the way to reach an increasingly connected audience.
Source: Mashable
Computer Blues
Wednesday, July 7th, 2010If you’ve been using the Internet, we’ve got some bad news for you. It is officially over. We always had a sneaking suspicion that it was just a fad, but this latest proclamation FROM AN INTERNET EXPERT really confirms it. That’s right, that dude who punched Apollonia in the face in Purple Rain has officially declared the Internet to be “completely over.”
In honor of this recent development, we here at Spring Creek Group would like to assist the Internet with a little personal/spiritual reinvention. From here on forward, we shall only refer to our now deceased cyberspacian colleague as “The Artist Formerly Known as the Internet,” to be represented by the following symbol:
So thanks for all the good times,
. Thanks for holding all that information and essentially revolutionizing the way the world works and holding a seemingly limitless communicative potential that we probably hadn’t even begun to tap before the guy that once wrote a fight song for the Minnesota Vikings said you were over. Think of what could have been had we just a little more time together.
If it makes you feel any better, we were always more of a Morris Day and the Time kind of crew anyway.
Mad Men Does it Again with a Little Help from JibJab
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010
Last year’s “Man Men Yourself” craze had people all over the globe 60s-a-fying themselves through the AMC-hosted tool, which was built by agency Deep Focus. This year, as Mad Men is set to kick off on July 25, users can upload their faces on the familiar frames of the hard-drinking and silver-haired Roger Sterling, the always-on-the-verge of tears former model Betty Draper, the stoic quintessential ad man Don Draper (or is it Dick Whitman?), and finally the Marilynesque red head Joan Harris (previously Holloway).
Here’s a very SCG version of the video starring Jake Sikma as Roger Sterling, Kate Hannum as Betty Draper, Ron Schott as Don Draper, and Lindsey Miller as Joan Harris (Holloway).
Fast Company and Mekanism Let You Know How Cool You Really Are
Tuesday, July 6th, 2010How influential are you? Who do you influence? Who influences you? With today’s Web, it’s easier to see the connections between those that are doing the persuading and those that are hearing the messages (and taking action) than ever before. Knowing that, Fast Company teamed up with agency Mekanism to create The Influence Project.
The site, which is essentially a giant living wall of faces showing those involved in the project, is an online yearbook of sorts – and you can even sort it by who’s most-popular.
Users interested in providing their data to the project can sign up in about a minute (even less if you use the Facebook Connect option) and are given a unique URL to Tweet, Facebook, blog, etc. Every time their unique URL is clicked, their influence goes up – pretty simple. For those looking to do a bit of self-promoting, all users who take part in the project will have their pictures printed in the November issue of the magazine – users with more influence will have larger pictures.
While Fast Company spends a lot of time being a kingmaker in the world of business, they started the project with one simple question (according to their about section which we can’t link to because the site is all Flash-based): Who are the most influential people online right now?
But, how do they measure, Ron? Here’s how (directly from their Flashy site):
HOW WE MEASURE INFLUENCE
The scale of your influence, and therefore the size of your photo, is based on two measures:
1. The number of people who directly click on your unique URL link. This is the primary measure of your influence, pure and simple.
2. You will receive partial “credit” for subsequent clicks generated by those who register as a result of your URL. In other words, anyone who comes to the site through your link and registers for their own account will be spreading your influence while they spread theirs. That way, you get some benefit from influencing people who are influential themselves. We will give a diminishing, fractional credit (1/2, ¼, 1/8 etc ) for clicks generated up to six degrees away from your original link.
So, who do you think will top the list? Leave your guesses in the comments, on our Facebook page, or @reply us on Twitter.
Stats & Info in Bullets: SCG’s Weekly Social Media Digest Volume 1
Friday, July 2nd, 2010This is the first of a weekly series we’re starting here at Spring Creek Group where we’ll repurpose stats and changes in Facebook and Twitter that happened throughout the week. For this week, we’ve gone a little further back to make sure everyone is caught up.
Many of the facts and stats may affect you or your client’s business, so get ready. They’re simple stats and info in bullets.
Hope you enjoy, and always feel free to add any additional news, input or suggestions in the comments!
Numbers and Stats:
- Facebook announces they now have around 500MM users.
- Grew by 2.1M users in May despite privacy controversies.
- In the US, there are slightly more female users than males.
- Large percentage of users are middle aged.
- 70% of Facebook users are outside of the US.
- 53.3% of Facebook users like, or feel neutral towards ads on Facebook.
- According to Reuters, Facebook was profitable in 2009, with revenue up to $800M.
- Video uploads and views show growth. Now, according to ComScore, Facebook grew to be the 10th largest US video site in May 2010.
- 20MM videos uploaded every month (12MM in 2009).
- 2B video views every month (not sure about last year).
- The English version of Facebook is used in many non-english speaking countries: Philippines (98.7%), Singapore (94.6%), Malaysia (78.8%), and Hong Kong (35.8%).
- In Indonesia, 43.7% of people using the English version of Facebook are between the ages of 18 and 25.
- Order of top 5 countries by largest % of users: US, UK, Indonesia, Turkey, France.
- Indonesia and India led Facebook growth in June 2010.
- Indonesia added 1,190,600 users in June, bringing their total users to 25.9 million.
Changes and Additions to Facebook:
- Improved analytics for Pages officially launched on Monday. Here’s a look at what changed.
- You are now able to remove ALL Facebook Page administrators. Before, this was a headache for agencies and companies as they couldn’t remove the original creator of the Page if needed.
- When new users sign up for Facebook now, the second step is choosing Pages to Like. This will increase the exposure of Pages in general, and boost the premium placed Pages many new Likes.
- Bringing Likes to Comments – Users are now not only able to like wall posts and status updates, but comments as well.
- Post a voicemail to Facebook walls – could be something fun to look into for posting to a client’s Page.
- Facebook begins testing automated Face-tagging photo feature. Basically, you can tag your friend once and then it will automatically tag the rest of the photos of that friend.
- Facebook location features to be coming soon.
Brand News
- Facebook integration is live on Bing. Bing’s site for this is bing.com/social.
- Ford to launch new 2011 Explorer on their Facebook Page.
- AT&T takes on customer service through Facebook. With more than 10,000 mentions online each day of dissatisfaction, AT&T has finally decided to take action. They’ve created a Customer Service tab on their Facebook Page, which takes advantage of many social media best practices (like putting faces to names).
- Mobile: Android has more than 7M Facebook users.
Changes and Additions to Twitter:
- Promoted Tweets – This is one of the first signs that Twitter is working towards a business model.
- Library of Congress – The Library of Congress receives copies of every book, pamphlet, map, print, and piece of music registered in the US. Now it has tweets.
- @Anywhere – Twitter has made it really easy for people to more deeply integrate Twitter into their website.
- Switching to OAuth – Affective in a couple months, all third-party Twitter applications will be required to use OAuth to authenticate Twitter profiles.
- Twitter Places – Starting soon, you’ll be able to choose the exact location that you’re tweeting from. For example, Safeco Field, Seattle, WA. You’ll also be able to see tweets at exact locations nearby with Foursquare and Gowalla integration.
- Twitter Stability Issues – with spikes in traffic from World Cup and the growth of Twitter in general, Twitter has been experiencing small outages and missing tweets. They’re hard on the case to fix it and should be close to normal in a few weeks.
- Ads in Trending Topics – As a part of Twitter’s new promoted tweets initiative, they’re rolling out promoted trending topics.
- Find friends easier – Twitter has improved their Facebook and LinkedIn apps to include the ability to search your friends and colleagues that are on Twitter. This function is currently available for LinkedIn, but has been delayed slightly in Facebook.
Brand News
- Twitter for Android.
- Twitter for iPhone – The app from Twitter.
- Coca-Cola was the 2nd company (after Disney/Pixar) to buy advertising in Twitter’s trending topics. Their promoted tweet garnered 86M impressions, an engagement rate of 6%, and a Vice President of Global Interactive Marketing that was “pretty pleased.”
- Twitpic adds Twitter Places – This means that on Twitpic, you’ll now be able to search public pictures by geotagged location, as well as see a history of places you’ve been.
- Virgin America offers free flights to Twitter influencers – Virgin America partnered with Klout to find Twitter influencers in Toronto and give them a free round-trip ticket to San Francisco or LA. The influencer aren’t required to do anything. Virgin America just assumes they’ll tweet about it.
- Sports and Tweets – Records were broken for a new Tweets-per-second (TPS) this week. Keep in mind that the average TPS is 750.
- 2,940 TPS when Japan scored against Cameroon
- 2,928 TPS when Brazil scored their first goal against North Korea
- 2,704 TPS when Mexico tied South Africa
- But the winner was when the LA Lakers beat the Boston Celtics. That victory generated an all-time record of 3,085 tweets
