I know this is old news, but how many out there are really using this? What I am talking about is the Facebook url shortener “fb.me”.
Instead of typing:
http://www.facebook.com/concerts
or
Simply use the fb.me shortener to access your pages:
or
The shorter the URL the easier it is to remember.
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
I feel like all I’ve written about the past few weeks is Facebook’s need for a new social dynamic. Specifically, I want Facebook to break their social graph into two: those people who you are friends with, and those who you follow — for sharing purposes. It seems that Facebook may be testing something like that out — well sort of, maybe.
Facebook appears to be testing out a new feature called “Subscribe.” A source who supposedly has it enabled, tells All Facebook
that “by subscribing you don’t miss any updates from people you subscribe to.” While on the face of it, this would seem to be a lot like the idea of “follow” it’s not clear from that wording if you actually already need to be friends with a person in order to follow them.
In other words, this may just be another mechanism to ensure you see updates from people you really care about. But if that’s the case, this just adds more confusion to Facebook’s social graph because you can already create lists for that purpose. Though, as All Facebook points out, these update will apparently appear in the notifications drop down.
Instead, what I’m hoping is that this is a proper follow feature that allows you to see other users public updates even if you’re not subscribed to them. And vice versa, obviously. I would love to allow people to subscribe to stuff I share publicly (and have it appear in their stream), but have the option to still share stuff with my actual friends.
But still, maybe that is in the works as well. Baby steps are probably wise here for Facebook so their users don’t lose their minds and scream bloody murder — which will happen anyway.
We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment on this to try and get more clarity on the feature. They’re currently “looking into it.”
Update: Here’s Facebook’s comment:
This feature is being tested with a small percent of users. It lets people subscribe to friends and pages to receive notifications whenever the person they’ve subscribed to updates their status or posts new content (photos, videos, links, or notes).
“Friends” appears to be the keyword there — as in, this is still only for people you are connected with. But I’ve asked Facebook to clarify that further just to make sure.
Update 2: As expected, Facebook has confirmed that you need to be a friend of someone (or a fan of them) in order to get these notifications. These notifications go into the tab up top and also get sent as an email to you, I’m told.
In other words, no proper “follow” just yet.
It’s not as mysterious as it seems, this mini-controversy about finding friends on Facebook for Apple’s new social music network.
According to sources familiar with Facebook’s platform, the social networking giant essentially denied Apple’s Ping access to application programming interfaces that would allow it to search for an iTunes user’s friends on Facebook who also had signed up for Ping.
Normally, this API access is open and does not require permission.
That is, unless some entity wants to access it a lot. In that case, Facebook requires an agreement for reasons primarily centered on protection of Facebook user data and, of course, infrastructure impact.
With 160 million iTunes users, that could potentially mean a lot of impact.
Sources said Apple (AAPL) and Facebook conducted negotiations about an agreement, but could not come to terms.
At the launch event in San Francisco yesterday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs complained to me about what he called “onerous terms” that Facebook had demanded for the friends connection and suggested using search or email to add friends to Ping.
But, at the same event another exec, Worldwide Product Marketing SVP Phil Schiller, said to me in a video interview that one could use Facebook to find friends on Ping.
In fact, Apple still included the ability to find Facebook friends in its demo onstage and also after it made iTunes 10 available for download.
It also currently claims this on its Ping page: “Find even more music fans with a quick search, by sending email invites, or by connecting to your Facebook account.”
But you can’t actually do that on Ping right now.
Sources said Apple went ahead with a plan to access the Facebook APIs freely, but Facebook blocked it since it violated its terms of service.
When that happened, it seems Apple pulled the plug on the connection with Facebook friends.
But maybe not for long. Sources also said the companies were still in discussions about putting the more robust Facebook Connect feature in Ping.
Because, in the end, it is all about connection.
BoomTown has requests into both Facebook and Apple for a comment.
Earlier today, Facebook said:
“Facebook believes in connecting people with their interests and we’ve partnered with innovative developers around the world who share this vision. Facebook and Apple have cooperated successfully in the past to offer people great social experiences and we look forward to doing so in the future.”
Photo by Kristin Hoebermann
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If you’re a singer, you should be following Claudia Friedlander’s blog. The classically-trained, New York-based voice teacher provides sage advice not only for singers for all types, but also for musicians and people in general.
Although at least one of her students sings metal, Friedlander knows virtually nothing about it. I wondered what she would think of some of metal’s most classic male singers – the foundation of the artform. It’s rare to find someone who isn’t familiar with any of these singers. Her perspective would be a fresh one, free of cultural baggage. I sent her five completely unidentified songs. Her comments are below. I have also included initial reactions she sent me immediately upon hearing the singers.
Twitter’s Japanese arm may well be on its way to turning a profit next year the old-fashioned way: through ad sales.
- A screen shot of the Twitter profile page of Renho, the minister for administrative reform and avid Twitter user, showing a Panasonic ad in the upper right hand corner.
Digital Garage Inc., the Tokyo-based technology company that provides Twitter to millions of Japanese chirpers, said the revenue of its newly restructured social-media unit is expected to more than double to 1.7 billion yen through June 2011, according to its revised midterm business plan. Twitter makes up more than half of that segment’s business, a Digital Garage spokeswoman said.
The company revamped the segment, called the “media incubation unit,” this year to focus on Twitter. It has generated some 200 million yen in ad sales in the first six months since it launched its advertising service in December, according to its annual financial report.
As of April, the logos of 82 Japanese companies, including Nissan, Panasonic and Sharp, appear in the ad slot of the Japanese-language Twitter site. The growing number of eyeballs skimming ads from Sony, mobile service Au and others will likely throw more dollars Digital Garage’s way.
In the U.S., San Francisco-based Twitter has invested in its advertising operations too, rolling out Promoted Tweets earlier this year.
Digital Garage said monthly ad impressions on the Japanese Twitter site have more than doubled since January to about 700 million views in June, a figure not lost on wannabe advertisers. The PC-based advertising space for the month of July “immediately sold out as soon as it went on sale,” writes Kaoru Hayashi, Digital Garage’s chief executive, in a July message to investors. A mobile-ad service followed suit in August.
The company nabbed a partnership with Twitter in January 2008. The Japanese-language version launched four months later, followed by the mobile-based service in October. That’s when things got wild.
The number of unique visitors to the Japanese site has nearly quintupled to almost 10 million visitors in April, eclipsing the number of users heading to Mixi, the Japanese equivalent of Facebook, according to Nielsen Online. As of April, Japan’s Twitter reach surpassed the U.S., grabbing 16% of Internet users in Japan compared with a mere 10% in the U.S.
Japan also claimed the world record for the number of tweets per second when 3,283 “mumbles” were tapped out per second during the World Cup.
Over two in five surveyed Facebook users (43%) say they “like,” or are fans of, at least one brand on Facebook. Among them, 40% say they like brands to receive discounts and promotions, whereas 39% say they do so to publicly display their brand affiliations to others. By contrast, 23% of consumers who follow brands on Twitter do so for social-badging purposes.
Even Apple, which lives in a bubble of its own device-centered success, can’t resist the lure of social networking. Today, CEO Steve Jobs formally thrust the company into the social-media fray with an iTunes-based network, Ping.
Apple’s new music-focused social network Ping will have familiar elements such as friends, photos and privacy concerns.
–> Why would Apple want to get into social networking? It’s where consumers are spending most of their internet time, and Apple has millions of iTunes customers as an instant revenue stream. “We think this will be really popular very fast because 160 million people can switch it on today,” Mr. Jobs said during his keynote, where he also announced a version of iOS 4 for the iPad and a new $99 version of AppleTV, with 99-cent TV and $4.99 movie rentals.
But the creation of Ping thrusts Apple into an entirely new market, one dominated today by Facebook, with Google on the outside and peering in eagerly. Mr. Jobs said Ping will have all the social-networking features we have come to expect, such as friends, photo and video sharing, and of course privacy gradations. But the biggest angle for Ping is the way it’s centered around sharing and shopping for music. With the latest software update, every single user of iTunes — those 160 million customers — could turn on Ping today.
“The ambition for Ping is not to compete with Twitter and Facebook; they just want you to buy more,” said Forrester analyst James McQuivey. “Even if the existing customers buy just one or two more tracks a month because their friends recommended them, Ping is a huge success for Apple.”
Because customers are buying, and Apple isn’t dependent on ad revenue, the tech company is not as concerned as Facebook and Google with how much time consumers spend on the service. “Because Facebook’s revenue stream is based on advertising, the measure of success is the length of time users remain in Facebook,” Mr. McQuivey said. “But Ping’s revenue stream is iTunes, not advertising.”
Built into Ping’s features — among them what you would expect, such as what your friends are listening to, where your favorite musicians are performing — are many “Buy” buttons. This purchase feature is already at least one step ahead of Facebook, which has a fledgling Facebook Marketplace that has not shown much movement. Facebook sells Facebook credits for use in the Marketplace and games, but compared with iTunes, that revenue is spare change.
MySpace has used music discovery and its network of music fans and artists as its last bulwark against obsolescence. If, as Mr. Jobs hopes, artists begin congregating on Ping, it could accelerate MySpace’s decline. Mr. McQuivey says he sees new artist discovery beginning on YouTube, then going on to iTunes or Amazon, bypassing MySpace altogether. For artists that don’t have music videos, they or their fans tend to upload songs to YouTube along with static images. In this sequence of discovery, Ping is more of a competitor to YouTube.
Privacy could also be an issue for Ping, given that Apple has some pretty sensitive information on iTunes customers, including credit-card information, past purchases and, well, what’s on their iPods and iPhones.
Because many users will have already shopped on iTunes before, Ping can be much more direct and honest that it will use this purchase information to try to sell them more product. With the Genius feature, iTunes has already been suggesting music purchases based on users’ music libraries. EMarketer analyst Debra Williamson said she has reviewed Ping’s privacy policy. “It says that you should not opt in to Ping … if you don’t want others to view [your] activity on iTunes,” she noted. “Ping users are automatically marketed to.”
A little over five years ago, YouTube ushered in a new genre of video advertising, one that succeeded on its ability to rise above a world of pet tricks and backyard stunts, to entertain and to be passed around. Call them “viral” videos, super-sized TV ads, branded videos or just plain commercials, a few of them have crossed a significant psychic milestone: 100 million views and counting.
Last week, the roller-skating babies of Evian’s “Live Young” campaign reached the mark after a little more than a year on the web. This, without any significant TV exposure in the U.S. and very little overseas. It’s advertising that entertains. And it got us thinking: What are the most-watched viral ads of all time?
We put the question to our friends at Visible Measures, and the answer surprised us. It turned out the No. 1 viral campaign of all time is a consistent sleeper hit, not often among the weekly top 10 on Ad Age’s Viral Chart, and not connected to a big, well-heeled brand or fancy creative agency. Rather, it’s a cool gimmick that consistently delivers laughs along with cringe-inducing voyeuristic destruction.
The No. 1 video advertiser of all time is Blendtec, whose “Will It Blend” series has been around in the same form for four years, accumulating 134.2 million views. The key? The brand found what works and stuck with it. Each of the more than 120 original clips has the same kitschy music, the same tagline, variations on the same stunt and the same host, Blendtec CEO Tom Dickson.
While brilliant, Mr. Dickson has to thank Steve Jobs for Blendtec’s biggest hits, including laying waste to an iPhone in 2007 and an iPad in April.
What’s remarkable about the top 10 is that viewers would voluntarily watch an ad 100 million times, let alone 23 million times. Not surprisingly, given the recent growth of web video, most of the entrants are recent campaigns, launched within the last year or two. All but one, Pepsi’s “Gladiator,” came after the launch of YouTube in 2005. (The ad, starring Britney, Beyonce and Pink, appeared on TV in 2004.)
In addition to Blendtec, Evian and Pepsi, the list includes two Old Spice campaigns (including the newly famous “Your Man” Isaiah Mustafa), Microsoft’s Xbox Project Natal, Dove’s “Evolution,” DC Shoes’ “Gymhana Two,” and “T-Mobile Dance.” While the chart stops at No. 10, special honorable mention goes to Nike, which holds the No. 11 spot for its “Write the Future” campaign, as well as the Nos. 12 and 13 spots for early viral efforts starring Kobe Bryant and Ronaldinho.
While great creative is the key to keeping interest and generating pass-along, time also helps. It took Evian and Blendtec more than a year to get to 100 million views. The next campaign to do it will probably feature Old Spice’s Isaiah Mustafa, not for the original “Man Your Man Could Smell Like” TV ad, but the “Responses” campaign, where Mustafa recorded customized replies to folks like Kevin Rose, George Stephanolopous, Gizmodo and Biz Stone.
Brand Campaign Agency Current Week Views* Launch Date Watch the Spot 1 Blendtec Will It Blend? In-house 134,256,499 10/30/06 2 Evian Live Young BETC Euro RSCG 103,867,704 6/4/09 3 Old Spice Responses Wieden & Kennedy 57,132,669 7/12/10 4 Pepsi Gladiator AMV BBDO 46,742,892 1/1/04 5 Microsoft Xbox Project Natal World Famous 42,698,599 6/1/09 6 Dove Evolution Ogilvy & Mather 41,100,418 10/1/06 7 T-Mobile T-Mobile Dance Saatchi & Saatchi 35,487,575 1/15/09 8 Doritos Crash The Super Bowl 2010 Goodby Silverstein & Partners 34,168,845 1/5/10 9 Old Spice Odor Blocker Wieden & Kennedy 33,986,750 3/31/10 10 DC Shoes Gymkhana Two Mad Media 32,872,531 9/3/09
Brands can turn customers into repeat customers by analyzing simple brand attributes that cause customer-base leaks and creating solutions that can be implemented on a day-to-day basis. For example, in a world where service will make or break customer loyalty, Chick-fil-A has instantaneously (and quite inexpensively) solved a source of customer-base leaks by simply using the phrase “my pleasure!” instead of “you are welcome” in interactions with each customer … and they mean it! Of course, there are the exemplary “Nordstrom moments” of customer service that a brand may have once in a while and can use to get its employees feeling motivated and inspired. But instead of hoping and searching for that one “super-wow” moment, accept that the “simple-wow” moments are more effective for the majority of guest experiences.
After a six-month tryout in Australia and New Zealand, Google is bringing sponsored map icons to the U.S., allowing companies to pay for their logos to show up directly on Google maps, indicating the location of their business.
A Google map showing the location of an HSBC branch with the bank’s logo as a marker.
–> Like everything Google does, the program starts in beta, this time with four advertisers representative of the type the search giant believes will want to advertise their physical locations: Bank of America, Target, Public Storage and HSBC. Logos will start appearing on Google Maps today, and on mobile phones in the coming weeks.
Once the program is expanded, any business will be able to buy its logo on Google Maps, which sounds like it could get cluttered fast, except that Google promises that algorithms will anticipate what consumers are looking for and place logos accordingly, without letting them pile up.
“Advertisers can’t pay to increase their prominence or whether or not they appear on the map,” said product manager Matt Leske by phone from Sydney. “We look at the way people search for that business online and we look at what area people are looking at and what zoom level.”
When displayed, the logos will replace the generic gray icons that indicate the type of establishments on the map. Google declined to discuss pricing of the feature except that would be on a cost-per-thousand model and that advertisers would only pay if their logo was displayed.
Google won’t be the first to add business logos to maps; AOL’s Mapquest has been running a program with Comfort Inn, Hampton Inn and Holiday Inn since 2009 but those logos aren’t automatically displayed. The user can elect to see the logos by clicking on the side.
Since the beta is only open to four businesses, there is no fear right now of Google Maps being overrun with logos. But, Mr. Leske said, the idea will be to make Google Maps more — and not less — useful. “Even in the future, lets say 70% of the businesses participated in the program, ultimately, the maps must be useful, so very much all of the determination about how many logos to show in a particular place — we would be very conservative with that.”
Mr. Leske insisted that the presence of logos on maps will actually be helpful for people even if they aren’t shopping. “For example, you can just tell your friend to meet you across the street from the bank since you will be able to see the bank’s logo on the map,” he said, adding that the recognizable and familiar brand logo will be easier to visually remember than already existing gray business markers.
The featured proved to be a business pleaser Down Under, where National Australia Bank, McDonalds, Bankwest, JB Hi-Fi Electronics, LJ Hooker Real Estate, Chemist Warehouse Pharmacy, Fitness First Gym and BP gas stations participated in the beta.
