Social Media Today: Yahoo Acquires LBS, Wendy’s Gets Frosty, Google Hates Productivity
- May 25th, 2010
- Posted by admin
- Posted in Uncategorized
While it’s still a few ticks before 9am here in the Spring Creek Group World Headquarters, the rest of the world has been churning for hours. Here’s what’s been going on already:
Yahoo! Buys Location-based Service, No, Not a Well-known One
Fresh off CEO Carol Bartz telling Arrington to eff off, Yahoo announced their acquisition of a company involved in one of the hottest areas of social tech – location based services. The only thing is, it wasn’t Foursquare, Gowalla, Whrrl, Loopt, or even Wheretheladies.at.
The company is called Koprol and is based in Indonesia, which might lend itself to Yahoo’s focus on Asia, but more integral (probably) is Yahoo’s working relationship with cell powerhouse Nokia.
One thing is for certain, Yahoo isn’t resting one bit. If Bartz’s fiery interview with Arrington taught us one thing, it’s that Yahoos work hard during their time and expect big things… or that Bartz isn’t afraid to go toe to toe with the jerks of Silicon Valley.
Frosties for Foster Kids
With Summer fast approaching, Wendy’s is rolling out a new campaign centered around their iconic Frosty treats. Using the likes of Twitter, Facebook and Foursquare, Wendy’s aims at tying together user experiences with the treats to tell stories and eventually give away some fairly cool prizes (Kindles, iPads, etc.).
The philanthropic aspect of a socially-charged campaigns came into play when Wendy’s promised to donate 50 cents for every social action (using the #TreatItFwd tag, a virtual Frosty FB gift, a Foursquare checkin at a Wendy’s, or a Father’s Day e-card created on Frostycard.com) to the Dave Thomas Foundation for Adoption.
The meatspace doesn’t miss out as Wendy’s also plans to donated 50 cents for every Frosty purchased in-store between June 19-20.
Google and Pac-Man Gobble up Productivity Pellets
Almost as soon as the Pac-Man doodle went live on Google’s search page, the Twitter stream was filled with guesses as to how much money would be lost from workers clicking away trying to eat those tiny yellow pellets.
Luckily for us, The RescueTime Blog cares about such things and took the time to analyze the situation and assign a dollar amount (based on site visits, etc.) to the damage:
$120,483,800
3 comments
As an IT consultant I am fully aware that IT management is struggling with whether social media is productive or obstructive for companies and their employees. Software is being developed and policy and restrictions are being decided everyday by IT managers. The security of company networks are at stake but the potential for innovation using social media is a large enough carrot for the discussion of how to properly utilize the medium continues. Palo Alto networks came up with an webinar, http://bit.ly/cR80Al, that should be interesting exploring the issues surrounding social media in the workplace. It is important to not only understand the immediate benefits of doing business how one lives, but the threat it presents to a company’s greater ROI and productivity when it comes to the server’s safety and security.
[...] » Spring Creek Group :: Blog – Social Media Today: Yahoo Acquires … [...]
@Kelly – Definitely. We think that policies about social media usage definitely need to be talked about at all levels of the company and need throughout all departments (including IT management).
Thanks for dropping by.
Cheers,
Ron
Spring Creek Group