Rapid Fire - Sunday, July 20
Twitter URL = Uniform Person Locator (UPL)?
Rapid Fire - Saturday, July 19
Eye Candy IS A Critical Business Requirement
Quotes Daddy | Over 1,000,000 Famous Quotes
Stacie Krajchir: 5 Reasons Why I Want To Kick Facebook’s Ass.
New Heroes Commercial « THE FIRE WIRE
Influential Marketing Blog: The 4 Big Problems With Blog Metrics And How To Solve Them
Social Media in the Inc. 500: The First Longitudinal Study - Center for Marketing Research - University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Go Scott Monty!
Genius social media guy, Scott Monty has taken the plunge and joined Ford as their in-house social media guru. Adweek has the details (and a good article around big brands starting to step into this realm):
When it comes to social media, Ford is an admitted neophyte. It dipped its toe in the water with its well-received “Bold moves” campaign in 2006, and it hired a social-media consulting firm to create blog-friendly press releases. But for the most part, it has remained on the sidelines when it comes to using new technology tools to foster two-way conversations with customers and its employees.
The company hopes to change that, in part with the recent hiring of a social-media expert, Scott Monty. The well-known blogger and exec at new-media shop Crayon is trading a “virtual company” of a handful of people for a 250,000-employee monolith that’s struggling to reinvent itself.
“They needed an internal evangelist, someone who can work within the company to bring all the disparate groups together,” said Monty, whose background includes a stint as an account director at b-to-b agency PJA Advertising + Marketing. Monty’s new boss, vp of communications Ray Day, agrees: “Frankly, we were behind the times. We need to leapfrog where we are and move really quickly.”
Congrats, Scott. We’re all rooting for you! (Oh yeah, Ford too)
FFF: Blurry Foreground
This week has been an interesting one as far as my business “larger picture” goes. More on this soon, but there are some exciting things in the works. When I saw this picture, it immediately made me think of my week: the big picture is clear, the end result is obvious, but the details to get there are still a little murky.
Rapid Fire - Thursday, July 17
Terminator Salvation Teaser
“Clone Wars”: Film Revives “Star Wars” Fun
iPhone Wallpapers - a set on Flickr
OCRN: The Online Community Marketing, Growth and Engagement Report
The Online Community Research Network has released their latest research project: “The Online Community Marketing, Growth and Engagement Report”. Join up with the OCRN to get the full report (email me if you want the intro), or check out the d skinny here:
The research study was initiated in May of 2008. The study was created in order to investigate the relationship between marketing, community growth and member engagement. Our goal was to gain insight into how people are measuring engagement in their online communities and to understand how many organizations were using an elite / influencer program, and how those programs were structured.
Participants included large software companies, large community destination sites, niche community sites, platform providers and interactive marketing and advertising firms.
There is a tremendous amount of useful write-in data from our research. We have organized the report with an eye towards summaries. We have also included all of the write-in data for your review.
Trends reported by participants include:
- Work in either Online Community / Social Media organizations (17%) or Software Companies (17%) and teams reside in Marketing (38%).
- Most (27%) of the participants said that 11-20% of their community members login each month. The overall average member login rate is 34% and the Median is 25%.
- Most (30%) of the respondents said that member response rate of email is 21-30%.
- 27 participants gave detailed feedback about how they successfully attracted new members to their communities using Newsletter and Emails, Events, Search Engine Optimization and Marketing, and other techniques
- Definition of Community Member Engagement.
- Most effective ways to foster or improve member engagement.
- Additional programs, methods and opportunities used to link online and offline activities of the community members.
- Description of methodology for identifying and engaging influencers or elites in communities.
Funny Twitter Comic
From this site (with other funny nerd comics).
Rapid Fire - Wednesday, July 16
10 Web 2.0 Ideas that Failed | Fast Company
GOOD Magazine | Goodmagazine - Train in Vain
Social Media and Special Effects
On the way to see “Wanted” last weekend, I ran into some friends. I mentioned I was going to see the movie and they shared that they had recently seen it. My friends didn’t really dig the movie, mainly because they thought it was more than a little plot stretch. (And it was - I loved the movie, in a suspend every bit of reality there is and just have good time sorta way)
When I walked out of the movie, I was struck by something my friends had said:
“The special effects were supposed to be fantastic, but I didn’t really think much of them.”
To be clear, Wanted had some amazing effects and some fantastic design style to it. So why did my friends not think much of them? Because as frequent moviegoers, they’ve seen the effects before. While they were great, well-done and relevant to the plot they were inventing a new Bullet Time or adding virtual Clone Troopers en masse, they were still very impressive.
The exchange reminded me of the conversation our echo chamber has been having about whether blog comments are dead or whether Twitter is uninteresting or any range of other “too cool for school” arguments.
More and more I’m seeing two things are true, whether in relation to special effects or social media adoption:
- “Standard” happens faster than we think for some groups, slower for others. The key is not to get caught up only in our won personal context.
- When new becomes standard, it’s more important to ensure you’re implementing these things in the best way possible rather than constantly chasing the shiny new thing of the week.
If you ever find yourself wondering if you are ahead of the curve (vs. normal users), you just answered your question.
Does the Long Tail actually improve quality?
TechCrunch links to an article about whether the Long Tail is really valid and/or valuable.
Although no one disputes the lengthening of the tail (clearly, more obscure products are being made available for purchase every day), the tail is likely to be extremely flat and populated by titles that are mostly a diversion for consumers whose appetite for true blockbusters continues to grow. It is therefore highly disputable that much money can be made in the tail.
(Check out Chris Anderson’s reply, the guy who first talked about the Long Tail concept, here)
The point here is not whether the concept of the Long Tail is valid, it clearly is. The question is what you do with the concept. The question of whether the Long Tail makes money is a bit short-sighted. The question is who is making money: old players vs. new players, big players vs. small players, companies vs. individuals.
I have to wonder if the Long Tail is actually improving the quality of head. Look at the blockbusters of the summer, for instance, and you’ll see an interesting and fairly eclectic collection of content. I have to believe that studios are seeing the way people are generating and responding to Long Tail content and greenlighting projects accordingly.
What do you think? Is the Long Tail just more proof that the head of the Tail is where the real activity happens? Or is the Long Tail a creative catalyst?
