They do not seem to want to give much weight to these numbers by quoting MediaMemo’s Peter Kafka:

It’s worth noting here that Nielsen is likely overstating the churn because it is only measuring visits to the Twitter.com URL. The majority of Twitter use happens away from the site, on mobile phones and apps like Tweetdeck, and it’s theoretically possible to never visit Twitter.com after you sign up.

Yes, it is “theoretically possible to never visit Twitter after you sign up,” but this is not something that the average internet user knows how to do. For the most part Twitter is geared to and has been adopted by the most tech savvy Internet users. The people using it understand how to use it for search and trending and know how to use the technologies taking advantage of the Twiiter APIs. The problem here is that most Internet users do not. In contrast, a user can no absolutely nothing about the technological intricacies of Facebook to use it to its full potential. There is more than enough to do on Facebook to retain users, but for the average Internet users, once they get tired sharing their life 140 characters at a time they will drop Twitter as fast as they picked it up.

Facebook’s “status update” platform works because it is tied to your profile and the rest of the social network. Members of Facebook (and I am sure there is a major overlap of audiences) do not want to update two status fields. They will stick with Facebook because that is what they are used to and that is what provides the most value to them.

I think once the novelty wears off, Twitter will be singing a different tune entirely. It would be very interesting if Facebook bought Twitter and had their status functionality run by Twitter.

Augmented reality is explained as “add[ing] information and meaning to a real object or place. Unlike virtual reality, augmented reality does not create a simulated reality. Instead, it takes a real object or space and uses technologies to add contextual data to deepen students’ (or in our case consumers’) understanding of it.” In the past, the primary uses of augmented reality devices were academic, research, military, architecture and science based.

Now, marketers and advertises are taking these technologies to the masses. Some early implementations of these technologies include a German print ad for the Mini Cooper and a GE Ecomagination campaign.

While these are very innovative applications and a great beginning to the use of AR in marketing and advertising, I think it falls flat in terms of what a consumer can do with the object. One company leading the way in terms of making AR more interactive is the firm Total Immersion. This company has not only created holograms out of print materials, they have gone one step further giving the user the ability to manipulate and interact with those holograms.

Total Immersion partnered with Topps to create an baseball card that when put infront of a web cam will display the player on the card. It does not end there. It also uses sound to announce the player, and then goes into a simple game that can be played. They have a pitching target game, a batter’s hitting game and an outfielders fly ball game.

While creating a 3-dimentional image from a flat physical object is novel, it is not interactive and there is no real reason to keep coming back. You can only look at the 360 degree views of the mini cooper so many times. Now, if you could use that mini cooper in a driving game, then that is completely different.

Turning these augmented realities into interactive (most likely gaming) environments that live both on- and off-line, is the immediate furture of this technology from a marketing perspective. Once this technology goes completely mainstream and the novelty wears off, the question becomes how can you get consumers to keep interacting with these products? It is through gaming and multi-media that this can be accomplished. Also, because this lives online you can play against users across the web.

The first thing you notice is a floating navigation tool (widget?). When the user clicks on one of the tabs, they are taken to the respective social networking platform. The Products tab drives to Wikipedia. The Chatter tab drives to Twitter. The Home and the Friends tabs drive to Facebook. The Media/Videos tab drives to YouTube and the Media/Photos tab drives to Flickr. Mars has completely given their Skittles online brand up to their customers.

According to ClickZ, the goal of the new home page is to let people do the marketing for Skittles. Ryan Bowling, a spokesperson for the MARS (the parent company of Skittles) said,

“In this day and age, where the consumer is extremely influential, the content for our Web site is really based off consumer chatter and beliefs about our brand.”

Bowling noted that directing Skittles.com visitors to social networking sites allows visitors to find out what people, not MARS, think about the candy. “When you hit the ‘product’ button on a typical Web site, it usually takes you to an information page,” said Bowling. “Now, instead of us telling it, the consumers are telling what the product is about.”

Skittles has created a recession based advertising plan. Leave the marketing up to the consumers and the site design and hosting of Skittles content up to top social media sites.

This is also one of the most integrated uses of social media marketing I have seen. The people at Skittles understand what each social media property is best used for and that is how they use it. This not only makes for a seamless integration of functionality, it also creates massive reach by utilizing the combined audiences of these top online sites.

Many brands will try to replicate these efforts, but they have to do so carefully. Not all brands work well with this approach to social marketing. This cannot be force fit.

He states, “a tipping point has been passed in the competition between print and screen that has been under way since the beginnings of broadcast TV and now continues with video and other media.”

His reasons why television will shine and print will burnout include:

• Text is so infrequently used that it can feel like a burden.
• Print media cannot provide the metrics advertisers are becoming accustomed to.
• People are showing a clear preference of passively viewing video over actively reading text.
• Video format is being reinforced. In December 2008, 5.9 billion YouTube videos were watched.
• People are still buying television sets. The average American household contains 2.9 sets, while consisting of 2.7 persons.
• Television is the one place advertisers can reach a uniquely mass audience with an “immersive experience.”
• HarperCollins released its first “video book,” “What Would Google Do?” by Jeff Jarvis.

While I think these reason support his claim, I think there is more. I think more than people not wanting to read anymore, which seems a bit presumptuous, it is television is a constantly evolving medium, whereas print is not.

Print has, in its truest form, been the same since Egyptians were writing on papyrus in 3000 BC. Yes, there have been major advances in how print is produced and distributed (see Johannes Gutenberg’s Printing Press) and then making it interactive (see Tim Berners-Lee’s hyperlinking text), but for the most part it has remained unchanged in 5000 years. Television on the other hand is a medium that is constantly evolving.

The Gutenberg’s bible compared to today’s bible:

The first color TV compared to today’s color TV:

The difference in how these technologies have changed over time is truly amazing. Advances such as high-definition, video on-demand and remediation of Internet to TV are driving the evolution of television. There are more and more ways for audiences to engage and interact with what they are viewing. Viewing is no-longer as passive as it once was (eg. co-viewing with Facebook). So, it is not only that medium is continuing to evolve, the way in which audiences interact with it is continuing to evolve.

Yes, books have gone digital with Kindle and the iPhone, but they are still written word. Black text on white background. There is no HD text and you are not replacing your home library with a Kindle. While I do not think the printed word will ever become extinct, I think the traditional ways of distributing printed word (magazines, newspapers, books) will in the future.

In Facebook’s Terms Of Use document, they state:

“Facebook Connect (“Connect”) enables participating third party websites to work just like Facebook Platform applications. Once you allow a third party website to connect with Facebook, you will be able to use your Facebook login information to log into that website. The third party website will be able to: generate and publish news feed and other stories about actions you take on their website; access Facebook information related to you (including your profile information, friends, and privacy settings) so you can use your Facebook information on the third party site; and allow you to interact with your friends on the website. In order to make Connect possible, you agree to allow Facebook to check your Facebook cookies when you are visiting participating third party websites, and allow Facebook to receive information concerning the actions you take on those third party websites. In addition, once you allow a participating third party website to connect with Facebook, you agree to allow Facebook and such third party website to generate and publish news feed and other stories about actions you take on the website without any additional permission. In the event you no longer want the third party website to publish stories about you, you can always disable this feature by changing your application settings.”

The important language to note here is, “third party websites [have the ability to] access Facebook information related to you (including your profile information, friends, and privacy settings)”. If the third party sites have the ability to access this level of data, then why can’t they serve ads based on this information on their websites?  This would seem like an obvious use and benefit of partnering with Facebook to bring FB Connect to your website. While these ads would not necessarily be contextually relevant based on the content of the website, they would be extemely targeted to the user. Actually, the data from Facebook could be layered onto contextually relevant data to make these ads impossible for the user not to click.

This could work either as a revenue share between the third party site and Facebook or simply a added value to the site for implementing Facebook Connect further expanding in socialization of the web.

In a time when sites are faltering, due to their lack of targeted ads (see Digg), this would be an ideal way to make ads more targeted, increasing relevance for the user and ultimately revenue for the site.

He says the use of black and red is because those were the colors he could get for free. Jack White intentionally uses black and red (and white) because he has said they are “the most powerful color combination of all time, from a Coca-Cola can to a Nazi banner”. I wonder if this plays any of the significance for Fairy as well.

This presentation is intended to illustrate the difference between  social applications/widgets/mobile apps deemed trivial (adding no real benefit to the community or the user) versus those  deemed utility based (adding value). This is a very interesting dichotomy for advertisers to understand when creating an application for a specific platform. Do they want an application that will hopefully gain a lot of buzz and installs very quickly or do they want to invest in something long-term, providing value and utility.

It is very clear how the two different types of applications match up with each other. The apps like vampires start very strong and then slowly fizz out, whereas the apps that provide utility start a little more slowly but maintain long-term growth.

I would advise advertisers to invest in applications that provide value instead of those who provide flair. The advertisers who succeed most are those seen as willing to invest in the user and their community.

What makes CNN’s live stream so innovative is they have incorporated Facebook Connect into the video. You can update your Facebook status and comment while watching the video stream.

There are two tabs, one to see your friend’s status messages and the second to see the status messages from across all of Facebook.

The online reporters are frequently pointing out this Facebook integration and asking users to participate. They have even gone to live metric reports from a Facebook studio, where a girl named Randi Zuckerberg (Mark’s sister?) is reporting. According to Facebook metrics, there are 2,000 status updates per minutes across the world and 100,000 Facebook members have signed up to watch with CNN.

They also had a segment where they looked at trending from Facebook Lexicon. There are obviously major spikes in the following terms; Obama, inaguration, mall. Is is a great opportunity for Facebook to showcase this relatively new tool.

Facebook is also reporting on the number of targeted ads they are seeing across the network targeted to today. This is obviously another plug for Facebook’s offerings.

This is a very smart move for CNN to use Facebook Connect to create a co-viewing environment for the Inauguration. CNN has been at the forefront of a traditional news company using social media, but this move shows they obviously understand social media and understand how to integrate it into their offerings. It also shows they understand the audience. Obama’s campaign was one of the greatest implementations of social media marketing, and it was so effective because his audience are the people using social media. CNN is using all of this information to relate to a connected audience, while hopefully bringing more users to their site.

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