'Indiana Jones' Sees Highs and Lows of Facebook Effort

Paramount Pictures is expected to have a monster hit this Memorial Day Weekend with "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." Regardless of how the film does in theaters, the studio has scored big on Facebook.

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Nine Digital Trends for the Future

Every day a new social network is born and yet another dies. This makes spotting digital trends and tracking them to be challenging at times. Steve Rubel knows of a system that works really well called Open Files.

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Top 10 Social Networking Sites for April, 2008

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The Mobile Web is the New Hangout

According to Opera's survey of the more 11.9 million Opera Mini users in March, almost 41% of mobile traffic now goes to social networking -- up to 60% in some countries, including the US. Compare that to about 6% of total web traffic for social networks outside of the mobile web.

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The Promise and Peril of Ubiquitous Community

As social networking moves from 2.0 to 3.0 it becomes even harder for marketers to successfully advertise using traditional methods.

In the words of Steve Rubel: "The end result is that marketers will need to shift the way they approach communities. Static advertising is no longer viable. The solution is collaboration. Marketers will need to tap these emerging social operating systems to build meaningful connections through their sites and others before competitors do.

Participation is no longer optional and the fist [sic] movers who dedicate resources will win."

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Social Media Advertising Barriers Eroding

Although eMarketer reduced its forecast for U.S. online social network ad spending, social media sites should be grabbing advertisers' attention.

Here's why.

Microsoft Needs To Do Something. But Combining Facebook With Yahoo Search Ain’t It.

As Microsoft toys with Yahoo over the possibility of a resumed deal to buy only its search business, is it also thinking of throwing Facebook into the mix?

Erick Schonfeld takes a look

Robert Scoble looks at the negative side to this

AOL Completes Acquisition Of Global Social Media Network Bebo

AOL announced that it has completed its acquisition of Bebo, a global social media network that will form the centerpiece of AOL's newly created People Networks business unit. .

“With the addition of Bebo and the creation of People Networks, AOL is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the exploding social media space by delivering a more personal experience for consumers and a better way for advertisers to engage them,” said Randy Falco, Chairman and CEO of AOL.

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AIM + Bebo: A great idea, 5 years ago

Comcast To Acquire Plaxo, Add Social Networking To TV

In a move expected to bring social networking to TV viewers, Comcast Corp. has agreed to acquire seminal online social networking platform Plaxo for upwards of $175 million, according to various published reports. The deal comes a week after Comcast entered a partnership with Sprint, Clearwire and Google to launch a powerful, seamless wireless communications platform, giving Comcast a powerful foothold across three screen platforms: TV, online and mobile.

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Facebook’s Friends Data Has Already Left the Barn

Facebook may be able to prevent Google from accessing its data for the moment. But other social networks, such as Zude, Minggl and Media6, are finding ways around their official APIs to get the data consumers want into their own systems.

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Yahoo could lose Bebo ads deal

Yahoo is in danger of being edged out of a landmark advertising deal with Bebo as the social networking site plans to begin using technology developed by AOL, its new owner.

AOL will on Monday mark the completion of the $850m acquisition with news that it plans to integrate Bebo with existing community platforms such as AIM instant messaging into a single division.

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Adweek: Social Ad Lessons

Social networks and advertisers are plowing ahead with experiments to see what works and what doesn't in social media. It's a painstaking process of trial and error, marked frequently by one step back and two steps forward. But successful campaigns typically have something in common: They avoid the tried-and-true approaches of Web advertising in favor of what makes social media unique: the ability for people to share.

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The Future of Mobile Social Networks: 4 Promising Services

Here's a look at four mobile social networks that may have what it takes to stick around.

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Users Get Banned for Creating Branded Fan Pages

This was bound to happen eventually. When Facebook launched fan pages, a lot of users jumped at the opportunity to create fan pages for large brands. Whether television shows or clothing brands, it was technically against the terms of service and now users are having their pages taken down and the brands are having the pages transferred to internal accounts. Two people have provided examples of their pages being taken down in the past day (while getting rewarded from the brands in question for their efforts).

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Social Site Ad Revenue Disappoints, Insiders Remain Positive

Recent earnings reports, research and punditry bode ill for social network advertising. Yet despite heightened concern about lackluster revenue predictions and monetization of sites like Facebook and MySpace, observers and insiders still see great promise.

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Data Portability: It’s The New Walled Garden

The scuffle between Facebook and Google has very little to do with user privacy and everything to do with user control. A huge battle is underway between Google, MySpace and Facebook around control of user profiles and, therefore, users themselves. And their three new products, Friend Connect, Data Availability and Facebook Connect are all designed to further that goal.

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Here's How Google Might Be Building Its Own Social Network

There’s now no doubt now that Google is gradually building a social network to rival all other social networks. Google has various strands that seems to be in dribs and drabs and it’s a bit confusing how they are going to eventually connect it all up.

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Celebrate Originality with Adidas

Alright, a few posts ago, I reviewed a Facebook effort from Adidas (with Diesel) that wasn't doing as well. I presumed it to be due to a lack of incentive. I might be wrong. Adidas has another incentive-less UGC campaign on Facebook that's doing quite a bit better.

How much better? Well, already, it has almost 28,000 fans. So what is this page doing right that the other Adidas one wasn't. I'd say it has a more engaging UGC effort. The "83 ways" app asked for users to upload 83 different pieces of content (whereas most would only ever create one, if any). Here, users are asked to upload just one video. There are already a few videos seeded that capably entertain.

Another thing: The discussion boards also have recent activity, which shows how fresh this page is remaining. Like the other page, there's a widget. This one has far more many installs though, around 7,000. There's also a neat little app that lets you "stitch" a piece of original art to share with the world. It many not compare to the Grafitti app, but at least Adidas is showing a bit of Originality here.

Check out Adidas Originals

Now this is the part that drives me crazy. Here we have two different Adidas efforts, with no links to each other. I took a quick check to see if there were any other Adidas pages. Lo and behold, I found the main Adidas page. With over 46,000 fans. Funny thing is, there's nothing for people to do here. A little bit of posting (with several from today). But that's it. Of course, there's no links to any other Adidas page. Really, it doesn't matter which agency did which effort, Adidas has to integrate its efforts to maximize their potential. One link to Adidas Originals could double the number of fans, and get more contributions. This is where the NBA Facebook campaign got it right: The NBA's main Facebook page linked to other NBA Facebook pages.

Facebook's Big Facelift

According to BusinessWeek: The social networking site's coming redesign will be marked by a cleaner, more organized look to appeal to its vastly bigger, more diverse user base.

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NBA: MySpace vs Facebook vs Bebo

The NBA has pages on America's top three social networks: MySpace, Facebook and Bebo. In the spirit of the ongoing NBA playoffs, let’s see which social network is the NBA champion.



NBA on MySpace

It’s rich in content for MySpacers. Video highlights, top plays and game previews/recaps. There’s also a photo slideshow, and a badge app. You can check out the updated schedule/scoreboard, read the latest NBA news, and visit NBA Cares. The forum is still active, with people posting about the playoffs. Right now, the NBA here has over 57,600 friends.



NBA on Bebo

The positive: An app that lets you display your favorite NBA team’s logo in your profile, score updates, upcoming schedule, player stats, and a new NBA video highlight wrap up every day. To date, it has almost 38,000 downloads.

The negative: Now that the playoffs are halfway over, the forum has few postings, mainly spam. There’s also, strangely, a section devoted to the developers of the app. The blog here has no postings. Makes me wonder if the NBA has anything to do with this. There is an official NBA app on Bebo that I’ll talk about in the Facebook section.



NBA on Facebook

NBA’s Facebook page serves up daily video highlights, a RSS feed of basketball news and a scoreboard. There are also links to two apps (see below) and another to an NBA contest. The discussion board has almost 27,000 topics, and there are almost 1,200 wall posts. How many fans? Right now: 139,380.

NBA Playoffs Bracket app: Can you predict who’s going to win the NBA finals? With this app, you can set up a private league with your friends, then see how you do against the rest of Facebook. 64,680 app installs; 1,392 fans. This same app on Bebo has only 3394 installs and 2 fans.

NBA Fantasy Challenge: Set up a private league with your friends; choose a starting lineup of five players plus a sixth man. Earn points for how well they do. See how you do in your league and against others in Facebook. 113,300 installs; 999 fans.

The NBA Finals have yet to be played, but in the world of social networks, Facebook is the clear winner.

Brands on Bebo: A Quick Look

For the most part, I've concentrated on advertising efforts on the top two social networks: MySpace and Facebook. Let's give Bebo, the #3 social network in the U.S., at least the courtesy of a glance. Since Bebo is #1 in the UK, it's easy to think of it as a UK site. It doesn't help that, when reading various copy, words like "favorite" and "color" are spelled: "favourite" and "colour".

If that's the case, then why does the US Air Force not only have a Bebo page, but front page placement as well? Look at the above visual. On Bebo's home page, in the Profiles section (above-the-fold), there is a banner for the Air Force.



The USAF page is interesting in the way that it's practically the antithesis of a social network page. It features three videos (commercials) and three games. You can't see who added it as a friend, who "fanned it". There's no place for postings from other Beboers. It's a micosite without any social elements. There's no way to judge how effective it is.





On the other hand, the GapYear banner on the front page leads one to many pages filled with social media components.

Not to be confused with The Gap, The Gap Year is a contest in which several winners are selected to go out on a six-month adventure.

On the Gap Year main page alone, there are loads of comments, photos and art (via the White Board app) posted by users. There are also mobile uploads, quizzes, polls and skins downloads. A Gap blog, too, (though not with daily postings).

At last count there were over 8,600 friends.

Checking back on it a week later, things have drastically changed. There is a new page just put up, with most of these components gone. No friends anymore, but 268 fans. However, it now has several sponsors: Trident, Canon, Acuvue and Doritos. They all have pages linked to The Gap Year page, with each having their fill of widgets, slideshows, contests, polls, forums and more.



These four sub-pages (seemingly put up 5/21) are way too new to have even a small number of fans/friends.




Skittles has two, count 'em, two front page placements.

Like the Gap Year, the Original Fruit Skittles page uses Whiteboards, so users can get creative and show off their best Skittles sketches. It also features a comments section, photos, and a blog. No contest to speak of, but there is a “Create a Rainbow Game”. So how many friends does this page have? Over 10,200.

One thing to note: The Gap Year page is obviously of UK origin, but the Skittles looks to be all-American. Mind you, I’m just going by how “colors” and “flavors” are spelled.

The Sour Skittles page features many of the same elements: whiteboards, a blog, comments, photos. A few differences include polls, videos, but no contest or games. So obviously, this page will have fewer friends than the other Skittles page, logging in about 6,259 friends. Still that’s nothing to sneeze at. (There's also a Chocolate Skittles page.) Many brand pages over at Facebook would love to have that many friends. Of course, many of those pages are quite lacking in content.

Virgin Mobile Extends Sugar Mama To Facebook

Virgin Mobile USA has launched the Fund My Phone application on Facebook, extending its Sugar Mama advertising program to the social networking site.

Through Fund My Phone, Facebook members download the app to their profile page and share up to five different ads with friends, racking up free minutes as the spots are viewed.
131 fans, 4,700 installs

Contrast that with this other effort: the Mobile Identity, which lets you show off off your handset model and last five content purchases within your Facebook profile.
15 fans, 0 users.

Once again, brands have to give their customers a reason to install an app on their Facebook page. Brand loyalty alone just doesn't cut it.

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The Top Brands on Facebook

What's the top brand on Facebook? Barack Obama. At least that's according to a list of the top 25 most popular Facebook Pages--the profile pages launched six months ago that enable brands, bands, celebrities and others to create a customized presence on the social network.

The first consumer brand on the list, at #3, is Apple, with a page geared toward college students. It has 415,535 fans, according to the list compiled by the blog Inside Facebook. The site features the company's discount program for students and faculty, including access to Apple Stores customized for participating schools.

Taking fourth place with 350,983 fans is Victoria's Secret Pink, a product line from the lingerie chain aimed at high school and college students. The only other actual brands with among the top 25 Facebook Pages were the NBA (17) and Nutella (21).

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Take a Joyride on Facebook

Another Facebook widget from BMW. Only this time, it's one they created. Last time out they used Grafitti. To promote, the 1 Series, they created an app that lets you customize a BMW 1 Series, then invite your friends to go on a Joyride. All you have to do is decide where to go and what to do.

Nice idea, but the execution falls flat. Boring actually. It doesn't engage the user to do more than just a one-time ride.

Still, it has almost 4,000 installs in the relatively short time it's been up. Helping it to arrive at this number is a BMW Joyride app banner campaign on Facebook (see above).

Take a Joyride

How-To: Launching and Monetizing a Facebook Application

Now that Facebook applications can be put on any website, the time is now to create an app, whether to promote a brand or for your own tactical reference.

This is intended as an introduction to researching, creating, launching, advertising, and making money from Facebook applications.

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Were Adidas and Diesel's Facebook Effort A Waste of Time?

To promote a new line of denim from Adidas and Diesel, they came up with a UGC contest that celebrates 83 original ways to successfully waste your time. The idea is take a picture or video of you accomplishing each of these 83 ways with your own imitable style. Then post it to their website. The site got a couple hundred uploads spread across the 83 categories (no idea as to how many unique uploaders though).

Adidas and Diesel also created a Facebook widget so you can keep track of what pictures you've taken and uploaded. It appears to have been up for two months, and so far: 110 fans and 13 daily active users (out of 1,300 installs).

So why did this effort not do as well? One could be a lack of promotion. But it's probably more due to a lack of incentive. There were no prizes to be won for one's efforts. So really, why bother?

Vitaminwater on Facebook: A Quick Look

Here's the tally:

Its profile page has 75 fans, two fan photos and 9 Wall posts. Pretty much an example of a derelict page. No apps, no links, no mini-feed, nothing to engage users.

Vitaminwater Magic Bottle app Add the Vitaminwater magic bottle to your profile. It will provide you guidance at different points in the day and night. Ask it any question, you never no what response you'll get. Hmm, 6 fans, 6 daily users (approx 588 installs). No support or link to this app on their profile page. Presumably no advertising support to drive users to it, either, like MINI Cooper does whenever they launch a page/app. (This is, of course, assuming Vw is even behind this effort.)

Vitaminwater Top Friends What if Vitaminwater were to take a page from Dell, BMW, and Sony Pictures, and use an already existing app? Such as Top Friends? This app from Slide has close to 2 million daily active users, and lets friends send drinks to one another. According to Slide, users sent 10 million virtual bottles of Vitaminwater to friends. I think the folks at Vw will drink to that. Vw worked with Deep Focus on this one.

Wacom Wins Social Media Award at AD:TECH

At the 11th annual ad:tech awards, Wacom took top honors in the Best Social Media Marketing Campaign category for its efforts on Facebook. The work was created by Guerilla PR.

Bamboo by Wacom on Facebook

MySpace Helps You Eat Alone

Digiorno launched a U.S. mobile campaign this month promoting its Digiorno-for-one pizza using a MySpace page to turn ordinary people into ditchers. Looking for excuses to eat alone? The Ditcher can help. Solitary diners ditch friends by sending themselves a text message or phone call of the utmost urgency. Excuses range from the possible (there's something wrong with your car, your friend is waiting at the airport) to the improbable (you need to step in for a pro baseball player, you're missing an online wedding ceremony). Lastly, you pick a day and time for this emergency call/text to be placed. Now you can print out your $1 off coupon for Digiorno-for-one pizza and eat it without interruption. AKQA created the campaign.

Digiorno For One

Friend Connect, Open Social, Ning, and The Web

Ning is rolling out formal production support for Open Social this June. Open Social is a standard way, sponsored by Google, to build new features ("gadgets") and/or plug those features into social networks all over the web, including social networks on Ning.

Ning will also support Google's new Friend Connect initiative, which they believe will make Open Social even more functional and widely available for a broad swath of their users and Network Creators on Ning and throughout the web.

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For Developers, The Facebook Hype Machine is Slowing Down

Last week, developer Jesse Farmer set the stage for some lively discussion about whether the Facebook Platform, revolutionary at its launch, is approaching an expiration date--and it only debuted a year ago. Activity in the site's official developer forum has declined sharply, he observed, new applications are less likely to become successful, and now that there are more destinations for social applications--from gaming sites to OpenSocial--developer activity no longer has a single hub.

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Finding cracks in Facebook: The social-networking supersite is taking flak from users, developers, and advertisers.

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CondéNet Links With MySpace

Further exploring the latest trend in online content distribution, CondéNet has launched MySpace applications for its top properties, including Style.com, Epicurious.com, Wired.com and its teen girl-focused flip.com.

Style.com was the first to debut its application, Fashion Flash, which offers bits and bites on fashion, shopping, beauty and celebrity style. In its first week, more than 1,200 users installed the tool--without any promotion or marketing.

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Social Networks Don't Engage: Prospectiv Survey

About 87% of those polled recently by Prospectiv feel that very few (58%) or none (29%) of the ads and offers they see on social networking sites match their specific interests and preferences.

Despite debate about the acceptance of ads on social networks, 56% polled said the quality of their online experience would be improved if social networking sites provided more targeted advertisements and offers tailored to their specific interests and preferences.

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Social Networks And Profitability: Facebook, MySpace Look Beyond Ads

Much has been made about Facebook’s $15 billion valuation, but when will it start making some actual profits? As the co-founder of marketing solutions provider bSocial Networks says” You can’t have a $15 billion market valuation based on advertising alone.”

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Coming Soon: A Web-Wide Social Network?

Moves by Google, Facebook and MySpace point to crumbling walls in the social-media space.

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Prying Open the Social Graph

MySpace, Facebook and Google: Racing For Web 3.0

MySpace announces 'Data Availability' project with Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket, Twitter

The News Corp.-owned social-networking site MySpace has announced a new initiative called Data Availability, a way for members to share profile data with other social and community sites across the Web.

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MySpace Nets 74% Of U.S Social Networking Visits In April

MySpace.com is still the overall leader in social networking, with 73.82% of the American market share. Facebook is a distant second.

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Traditional Efforts Failing on Social Networking Sites

Young consumers are turning up their noses at old-fashioned online ads on Social Networking sites.

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Gartner Says Social Networks Are Attracting Too Much Traffic for Retailers to Ignore

Analysts highlight 10 things retailers should know about social networks, and what to do.

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A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk’d by Social Media

Jeremiah Owyang discusses a bunch of companies that were blind-sided the the impact of social medial.

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Case Study: How Sony Leveraged A Popular “Vampire” Facebook Widget To Reach Its Community

Jeremiah Owyang took a look on how Sony rebranded popular Vampires Widget to promote 30 Days Night

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Scarlet goes Social

LG's Scarlet campaign extends to Facebook and MySpace.

Here she is on Facebook.

Her MySpace page already has close to 2 million hits.

More Women Than Men on Social Networks, Have More Friends Than Men Do

More women are on social networks and on average have slightly more "friends" than do men, even though men tend to be more focused on acquiring "friends" than building relationships with them, according to a Rapleaf study of 30.74 million social networkers.

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Is Your Consumer Using Social Media?

Here are nine profiles of who your consumers are and where they might be online.

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MySpace Begins Charging for Application Promotion

MySpace, which opened up its applications to users last week, has begun charging for premium placement on its Apps Gallery page and on each of its 22 category pages. The featured spots cost between $50K and $100K per week. MySpace is the first platform to actively seek revenue from app makers.

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Truman Green is H&R Block

Jason Falls takes a look at a recent H&R Block campaign that hit MySpace, Facebook, Second Life, YouTube, even Twitter, while remaining transparent.

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Ad Age has an in-depth article on it as well

Social Media Marketers Bullish in Face of Recession

Research from Forrester shows that many interactive marketers actually plan increases in the face of recession.

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Social Networking Apps Can Pose Security Risks

People often think Facebook profiles and sometimes MySpace pages, if they're set as private, are only available to friends or specific groups, such as a university, workplace, or even a city.

But that's not true if they use applications.

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