Social Media Influence

Social Media Influence daily headlines

Friday, 4 July, 2008

Facebook as interview tool

We've seen lots of journalists quoting from Facebook pages but here is the Guardian conducting an interview via the social network with the sister of murdered French student Gabriel Ferez.

"Nothing can change what's happened, but I want to know who did this, and why. I will do absolutely anything to find the person or persons who did it," she told the Guardian in a Facebook message yesterday."

A wacky theory that just might work: leave YouTube in the red

This is my latest theory for preserving the future of YouTube as I wrote in a recent Times column. If shareholders demand of Google brass one day that YouTube eventually break even we would be robbed off all kinds of cultural gems. Like Italian Spiderman. My argument to shareholders: think of YouTube as a social good. Its return won't ever be felt on the bottom line.

- Bernhard

Flash becomes searchable

Normally we stay clear of news about search and website design but today's news from Adobe that its popular Flash technology will now be searchable by Google and Yahoo offers a whole new level of opportunities for online marketing and informational sites.

Up until now Flash has been flaunted by digital agencies to promote their cool design skills but has been pretty useless for any company wanting to bring traffic to its site.

Adobe's announcement changes all that and will no doubt unleash a flood of all-singing, all-dancing Flashorific brand digital campaigns whatever the needs and desires of the target audience.

Google's Adsense: the next major broadcaster?

There has been quite a bit of chatter over the past 24 hours about Google's decision to team with "Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane to be the exclusive broadcaster of his next sit-com, one with the catchy title, “Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy.” Yes, the same Seth MacFarlane.

Here's the twist. Google will use its AdSense delivery platform to distribute video clips of "Cavalcade" to thousands of (presumably) targeted websites. Google already owns the world's biggest online video channel in YouTube, but, as is becoming clear, there is no proven formula yet of YouTube making the adverts pay for the broadcasting costs. AdSense (or, in this case, to be referred to as the Google Content Network), the thinking goes, will deliver more ad impressions than YouTube. Google and MacFarlane told the New York Times they've already landed "several deals [that] are among the largest ever landed by   AdSense, which  went into business  in 2003".

Targeted placement to individual sites rather than hosting in a single busy location where viewers are bound to get lost or distracted, Google feels, is the way to finally monetise online video. If successful it will turn mass media video distribution on its head, The Times predicts.

I can see the appeal of the on-demand aspect of distributing video in this way, but I'm dubious Google will be able to control the distribution via AdSense so that the video lands only on legit and relevant sites. For spammers and the like, it's still too easy to game the AdSense (not to mention Blogger) system with bogus fly-by-night sites whose only purpose is to dupe the occasional hoodwinked surfer to make an errant click or two. At the very least, this could be the perfect excuse for Google to clean up AdSense. If we get a few good laughs as well, all the better.

-- Bernhard

JC Penney and Heinz learn you can never get rid of online video

One thing we keep hammering on about in workshops and client meetings is that content and reputational information never dies online. In fact it seems to have a half-life that can jump back to bite companies at any moment.

Both JC Penney and Heinz are learning this at the moment thanks in no small part to their misguided belief that they can still control media once it is created.

First Heinz, a company that commissioned a fairly innocuous TV ad in the UK for its deli mustard range, only to pull the ad in the face of some 200 viewer complaints. Their problem? The ad shows a "normal" British family getting ready for school except the mother is played by a gruff, short-order NY deli chef projecting a tough-guy De Niro accent. He's serving sandwiches and gives the whole family a kiss goodbye, including the father (who in full disclosure is played by a friend of ours, David Charles).

Two men kissing? Shock, horror!! Cue the outraged complaints that this ad promotes homosexuality. Bizarrely, Heinz immediately apologised and pulled the ad.

Regular readers of this blog know the next bit. It's up on YouTube in various incarnations with the most-viewed versions attracting over 232,000 visits in the last few days. (UPDATE - this version has been taken down but another version has 63,000 views.)

Here it is:

Then there's JC Penney who are equally dismayed to discover that one of their ads seems to promote teen sex. The company claims the ad - now clocking 220,000 views on YouTube - was produced by agency Saatchi & Saatchi without JC Penney's consent. Saatchi says that it didn't produce the ad, but that it was the work of a third-party vendor who then posted it on YouTube.

Saatchi has apologised to JC Penney for the millions of eyeball of free publicity and has vowed to "remove the ad from public circulation".

As Silicon Alley Insider asks: as Saatchi didn't post the ad in the first place, "Exactly how are they going to do that?"

Follow the furore here and check out the ad here while you're at it.

Angry eBay merchants take to YouTube; shares tumble

Unless you're part of the legion of eBay merchants, you may not have heard that the online auctioneer is making a series of changes to its business, including the baffling idea to eradicate negative seller ratings. The changes haven't gone over so well as this YouTube video of an angry merchant disrupting a presentation at last week's annual eBay seller conference demonstrates. Posted last week it has already 166 nasty comments that seem to capture the sellers' frustration and the prospect that sellers could be ready to abandon eBay enmasse.

eBay shares have taken a bit of a beating in the past 10 weeks (down almost 20 per cent). Now, the revolt at the seller conference, captured by this fuzzy, barely audible YouTube video, is sending shares down further. As the Motley Fool wrote yesterday in a stock picking column titled "Throw This Stock Away":

... things aren't exactly verbalicious in eBay's world these days. Meg Whitman, the charismatic CEO who guided the company through most of its growth spurt, left in April. Power sellers are more restless than usual, as if the wave of boycotts, lackluster growth, and unimpressive turnout at last week's eBay Live annual powwow weren't putting enough weight on the namesake site's shoulders.

You can expect this very public break-up to play out for weeks on every social media forum and in the mainstream press.

- Bernhard

New skool book promotion - Charles Leadbeater's We Think

This smart piece of book promotion has been up on YouTube since the end of February so excuse me if I'm late to the party.

I saw it on RadarDDB's site and, quite simply, it's an amazing way of marketing a new book by giving a Coles Notes synopsis through shareable video.

The clip has been viewed 76,000 times - not too shabby if it could convert into book sales.

 

Check it out:

- Matthew

Goofing off online = productivity?

That seems to be the surprising equation drawn up by researchers at Ohio State University, who looked into the merits of cyber-slacking, according to (gulp) the Associated Press. The researchers found that:

a) serial cyber-slacking is not just for bored worker drones. Even the boss is doing it.
b) and, more importantly, that companies draconian measures to ban workplace personal email or even social network usage comes with costs. People use these tools to make their home-work balance more efficient. Once the babysitter, plumber and shopping list is taken care of in a 5-minute email, a worker can get back to the task at hand.

One area the study did not touch on is the inspiration factor. A quick passaggiatta through YouTube, Facebook or favourite blogs, can keep workers not only more informed about the world around them, but also, for some anyhow, inspired to be a bit more creative. Just look at how creative the NY Times was with this AP story. Scroll over the name of the first researcher hyper-linked in the article, R. Kelly Garrett. Ouch.

- Bernhard

Is AP right to sic the copyright police on bloggers?

I realise this is a deeply unpopular position, but I say "yes." In case you haven't been following this story in full, the Associated Press, America's biggest news wire, is challenging bloggers who post snippets of AP stories on their blogs (with the link to the original article), saying this does not constitute "fair use" of their original reportage. I think the news wire is right to challenge the bloggers, as I wrote in my Times column this week. Before you aim your flame thrower at me, read the column. Then we'll talk.

-- Bernhard

Reuters covers Social Media Influence

Reuters' Matt Cowans produced this report on Social Media Influence. Call it a 97-second synopsis of what was covered on the 4th of June.