Don't take yourself too seriously. Use humor, but ensure that the humor supports your brand. Humor is very personal, and in order for most things to be funny, it will usually push the edges of NSFW (not safe for work) -- and if you don't know that acronym then you should definitely not be judging whether something is funny).
Don't do creative by committee. If you want a viral video effort to work, you must free the hands of your agency from company politics.
Be aware that it might backfire. Inform those in the company that it may generate a lot of chatter, which is not always bad.
Don't get discouraged. If one viral video fails, get up and make another one.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Why your viral video never went viral - iMediaConnection.com
New Moontoast eBook on Facebook Commerce for Brands (#Infographic) | Social Commerce Today
Moontoast, one of the leading social commerce platforms working with retailers, publishers, musicians and celebrities has just published a new, useful and insightful e-book on Facebook commerce for brands.
It’s most definitely worth a download – from here (free) – as it contains some of the smartest advice we’ve found on f-commerce to date. We think the smartest way for brands to understand Facebook and Facebook Commerce is as fan-media and fan-sales; Moontoast’s e-book provides invaluable insight for doing precisely that – and for creating an army of ‘super fans‘ (brilliant concept) who buy and advocate more and more often.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Facebook Just Bowed Out of the Check-In War With Foursquare | Betabeat — News, gossip and intel from Silicon Alley 2.0.
Image of Foursquare's board via Fortune
While some folks might attribute the rumbling feeling that hit New York this afternoon to a 5.9 earthquake in Virginia, Betabeat now knows better. It was the tectonic reverberations of defeat, as Facebook quietly phased out the Places feature of its mobile app which everyone was screaming for months would kill Foursquare.
via betabeat.com
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Monday, August 22, 2011
Mobile patent lawsuits #infographic
Mike Bostock visualizes mobile patent lawsuits, improving on a graphic from Thomson Reuters that wasn't so good. Dashed lines are resolved suits and green ones are licenses to the company.
via flowingdata.com
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Turkish bank earns 500k fans by offering Facebook games #Akbank
by Jenny Ng, Posted Aug 16th 2011 7:15PM
These days, many companies are turning to Facebook games as a way of connecting with and building their audience (e.g. Channel 4's Beauty Town). But one pioneering company, a Turkish bank called Akbank, is really throwing themselves into their official Facebook page.
As of this writing, Akbank's Facebook page has 508,397 fans. The bank itself has 913 branches serving 8 million customers, and they've been managing a total of 15 social media accounts between Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. They've also created 5 Facebook applications, some of which, are games promoting their brand.
One of these games, Kur Yönet, which translates into "Manage the Exchange Rate", allows users to build a virtual factory that involves everything from production to marketing to R&D. All banking, of course, is handled by the Akbank branch within the game.
Another game, Kırmızı'nın Peşinde or "Pursuit of the Orange", is based on Pac-Man and comes with a super dramatic game trailer. Your characters run around each level collecting personal needs (e.g. education, vacation, home renovations). Ads are shown in-between level changes.
Aside from these two, there's also been a music trivia page offering free concert tickets that was targeted at the youth, a gift cards giveaway page on applying for personal loans, and another trivia game involving current events in Turkish history that later tells players how much money they could've made if only they opened a Cumulative Mutual Fund account on a certain date. These are all a bit of a stretch, but Akbank seems completely devoted to pushing their brand, wherever, whenever, and however possible. Moreover, it appears that all their efforts have paid off.[Source: The Financial Brand]
Tags: akbank, Kur Yönet, Sosyal Medya
via blog.games.com
Monday, August 15, 2011
Google to Acquire Motorola Mobility - Google Investor Relations
Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Motorola Mobility Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: MMI) today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Google will acquire Motorola Mobility for $40.00 per share in cash, or a total of about $12.5 billion, a premium of 63% to the closing price of Motorola Mobility shares on Friday, August 12, 2011. The transaction was unanimously approved by the boards of directors of both companies.
The acquisition of Motorola Mobility, a dedicated Android partner, will enable Google to supercharge the Android ecosystem and will enhance competition in mobile computing. Motorola Mobility will remain a licensee of Android and Android will remain open. Google will run Motorola Mobility as a separate business.
Friday, August 12, 2011
LinkedIn opts 100 million users into sharing private information within advertisements - Yahoo! News
In order to opt out of social advertising, the LinkedIn user has to take four steps to escape third-party advertisements:
Hover over the user name in the top right hand corner of any LinkedIn page and click ‘Settings’. On the Settings page, click ‘Account’. On the Account tab, click ‘Manage Social Advertising’. Uncheck the box next to “LinkedIn may use my name, photo in social advertising.” and click the save button.
via news.yahoo.com
Thursday, August 11, 2011
BankSimple Announces Funding & Partnerships to Launch Real-Time Banking Platform
BankSimple, the highly anticipated web-only bank being built with an emphasis on user experience and no fees, is getting closer to launching, the company said today. CEO Joshua Reich put up a blog post this afternoon announcing that BankSimple has secured partnerships with VISA, Barcorp and other institutions to enable its customers to get transaction rewards and have their deposits FDIC insured. Additionally, the company announced that it has grown its venture capital war-chest from $3.1 million to $13.1 million. The company is testing its products now and says it will launch within the year.
via readwriteweb.com
Gartner's Hype Cycle places #NFC at 'Peak of Inflated Expectations' • NFC World
ON TOP OF THE WORLD? Gartner puts NFC payments right at the top of its hype curve, facing an uncomfortable slide into consumer and industry disillusionment. Hold on tight! Click to enlarge.
"Mobile technologies continue to be part of most of our clients' short- and long-range plans and are present on this Hype Cycle in the form of media tablets, NFC payments, QR codes and color codes, mobile application stores and location-aware applications," Fenn adds.
Monday, August 8, 2011
How #Visa Plans To Dominate #Mobile #Payments, Create The Digital Wallet And More | TechCrunch
Creating the digital wallet, both on the mobile and web platforms, is no easy task. Visa has a name for itself in the credit card industry but the fact is that the brand still has to attach innovation to itself in order for people to take these products seriously. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why Google’s Mobile Wallet news created waves, even though NFC technology is in its early stages.
Visa competitor American Express is also working hard to innovate both at the large retailer level, as well as among smaller retailers, with GoSocial.
While Visa, American Express and others are looking to capitalize on the changes taking place in the payments industry, it is a challenging effort. Local commerce is a big part of this, and everyone is trying to find a way to close the redemption loop. But e-commerce, amongst larger retailers, is also a multi-billion dollar market that Visa hopes to continue to play in with products like a digital wallet. And in-store payments, whether that be through NFC, Square or others, represent another market.
I’ve been talking to a number of executives of payments companies and founders of innovative payments startups, and while their objectives are different, they all seem to agree on one thing. It’s early and there is still much more innovation were going to see in the next few years in the online and mobile payments space.
via techcrunch.com
Why Most #Facebook #Marketing Doesn't Work
A big secret of Facebook marketing is that it is easy and cheap to drive promotions using ads targeted only at your fans that link to landing tabs that deliver the offer and encourage fans to share to their newsfeed.
A brand on Facebook should be like a casual friend or neighbor and not try to suck people into heavy levels of interaction. What do you do with a friend? Comment on their photos, like their status, vote on their outfit. These types of interactions take seconds, not minutes, and definitely not hours.
A brand on Facebook should offer their users regularly updated, simple to interact with engagement features. Each of the engagement apps should be fully branded, and run in a separate tab with traffic driven from wall posts, newsfeed and Facebook ad units to increase engagement. Start with a personality quiz. Then two weeks later put up a poll. Then try a trivia app. For special events, put up a gifting app for Valentine's Day, or for the holiday season, a holiday song card.
via readwriteweb.com
Friday, August 5, 2011
The Changing Face of Corporate Facebook Landing Pages
As businesses get more involved in using social media, they are starting to redo their landing pages, or places where you enter their ecosystems on Facebook, Twitter et al. We were reminded by this post by my colleague Paul Gillin that it could be a good time to brush up on your Facebook Markup Language and other techniques to not just pretty up the place, but provide solid information as well as calls to action for your visitors.
via readwriteweb.com
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
New #Android #virus secretly records phone calls - #mobile #security
A new Trojan virus that targets Android smartphones covertly records users' phone calls. Unfortunately, this malicious software is just one part of a new trend in hacking that targets Android and Apple iOS devices.
A new Android virus records users’ phone calls without their knowledge, reports Network World.
#Facebook Officially Launches #Ads #API, Opening Efficient Ad Management Tool Development
Facebook today announced the official launch of Ads API, which allows developers to create tools and services that programmatically create, buy, and manage Facebook ad campaigns. The Ads API had been in limited private beta since late 2009, and has been used by brands via third-party providers to run and optimize multi-million dollar ad campaigns too complex to conducted through Facebook’s self-serve ad tool.
Developers can now apply to join the program, which may lead to the rise of many new Ads API tool and service providers. The influx might create new small acquisition targets for Page management companies, or commodify ads management, with an economy tier of tools and services emerging to serve smaller advertisers. Alternatively it might lead Page management companies to build ads products and services in-house, slowing the recent wave of consolidation between the two industries.
finally..
Flixmaster makes HTML5 video interactive — Online Video News
Founder Cameron McCaddon, who previously worked in casual and online gaming, said the startup wanted to make sure from the beginning that it would be “really, really easy to use.” Hence the drag-and-drop interface. But if a user wanted to get more creative in building an interactive storyline, Flixmaster offers more advanced customization if needed.
via gigaom.com
Monday, August 1, 2011
Farewell Flash? Adobe Launches HTML5 Web Animations Tool "Adobe Edge"
Adobe's Support for HTML5 Continues with Edge
"HTML5 is an opportunity for Adobe," explains Devin Fernandez, Group Product Manager for Adobe's Web Pro Segment, "that's not to say there aren't opportunities for Flash." He contends that Flash will continue to push forward, and, as we have reported previously, it will focus on areas that HTML5 cannot yet address as well - like 3D gaming for example. (Although even there, HTML5 is making inroads.)
Still, with HTML5 being a relatively new technology, it doesn't today deliver a consistent experience across the widest range of devices and browsers. For example, Windows XP, which even to Microsoft's own chagrin remains a fairly popular computer operating system, can only run up to Internet Explorer 8. That means it can't take advantage of the many major leaps in terms of HTML5 support introduced in IE 9.
In other words, Adobe believes Flash still has a solid future here on the Web for some time. But when the Web is ready for an entirely Flash-free existence, this is surely Adobe's plan for maintaining its relevance among the creative professionals crowd, including developers and designers alike.
via readwriteweb.com
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