Ever since Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim created Youtube in 2005, it has been growing into the most powerful online video sharing site, enabling millions of people to share their stories with the world. The founders, who all met while working at Paypal, created Youtube because they wanted to share videos from a dinner party with friends and their email programs couldn’t handle the large size video files.

As with other successful tech stories, like Facebook, Google and Microsoft, the creation of the site came to life from a basic need as consumer and from when the site was launched, it was quickly turned into a big hit by simple word-of-mouth.

The first video featured on Youtube was uploaded by Jawed – a small clip showing him at the Zoo

I found this infographic compiled by Website Monitoring. It shows all the facts and information about Youtube into the five year old timeline:

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I came across a brilliant article by Mashable about 11 Ways to Speed Up WordPress.

It’s brilliant, because as a company working on your online profile, it is absolutely crucial that you set up the best platform for your blog as possible and take into consideration the following measurements when you set up or adjust your blog, so it suits the current and future traffic on your blog.

This article goes into details about:

• Using WordPresss object cache, where you can set WordPress to begin caching database queries rather than initiating new server requests on each load
• Choosing the right host
• Pruning your plugin list and removing the inactive ones
• Choosing the right theme
• Compressing images, and defining the layout for your blog
• Compressing your code (JavaScript, CSS Sprites)
• Choosing servers
• Reducing PHP and HTTP calls
• Keeping your code clean, through validation through W3C Validator
• Optimizing your database through using a database administration interface
• Adjusting your WordPress Settings

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Old Spice Spoof nails it! New Spice – Study like a Scholar, Scholar

Look at me! Now back to the blog!

Doing a spoof of a popular commercial, film or simple a private YouTube hit, happens all the time, a few is good and a lot really bad.

One of the most popular and talked about campaigns right now is the campaign from Old Spice. I have given up counting how many spoofs that’s been made about that campaign, a few actually is really funny – a lot home made, and some brings you the same fun feeling as the original.

But one stands out – its called “New Spice – study like a Scholar, Scholar”.

Its made by The Harold B. Lee Library Multimedia Production Crew – and it’s a brilliant – well produces and perfectly executed spoof.

On the blog site,  http://newspicepromo.blogspot.com – you can go behind the camera and see the making of the film.

The spoof is making an education sexy, fun, edgy and showing that it know whats going down!

Bravo – well done!

Now back at the video!

» Follow Jonas on Twitter

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Guest blog by Maria Hilden, Business Development Manager with a background in communications and public relations. She blogs at mariahilden.blogspot.com.

Why do people of highly diverse backgrounds connect online? The notion of ‘tribe’ is the predominant way to convey what social connectivity online is all about. It cannot stand alone, however. Indeed, a preoccupation with online tribes obscures a range of opportunities for companies and organizations to connect with and engage individual stakeholders and threatens to leave obvious business opportunities unexploited.

Tribes
The notion of ‘tribe’ elucidates how people gather online around shared interests and preferences. The word ‘tribe’ itself connotes strong in-group ties, stable group belonging and group longevity (born an Apache die an Apache, once a Coca-Cola fan always a Coca-Cola fan). Also, it suggests well-defined demarcations between tribes (either you’re in, or, you’re out).

The notion is accompanied by the understanding that companies and organizations can support already existing stakeholder tribes and/or initiate and facilitate the formation and maintenance of new tribes. It also suggests that once a company or organization has identified its online tribes it can map out how it intends to tie these tribes ever closer to company products, services and brands.

Now, what if tribes and tribe belonging aren’t as stable as all that? And what if tribe ‘engineering’ isn’t as straightforward as suggested? We need to take a closer look at social connectivity and group belonging from the perspective of the individual.

Fluidity
We all have multiple social identities – online as well as offline. It depends on the situation which identity and corresponding group belonging is predominant. When travelling abroad it’s relevant to think of myself as a Dane and as belonging to the group – or tribe, if you like – of Danes. Not so when studying Nike’s homepage. In the latter context my identity as jogging female and my affinity with other female joggers might predominate. My identity as activist looking for indications of child labour might also be relevant for me in relation to Nike’s products and brand, however.

What we see here is the situational or contextual character of identity and group belonging (we slip in and out of our various identities and corresponding groups depending on the situation at hand). We also note that a stakeholder may relate to a company, organization or brand in several capacities (jogger, activist and more). Some refer to this phenomenon as fluid identity.

The way forward
Online identity and group belonging isn’t as stable nor tribe engineering as straightforward as implied by the notion of tribe. That is clear by now. The concept of fluidity, however, gives us a handle on the complexity of social connectivity online. The concept enables us to recognize and act on the different ways in which a company, organization or brand is relevant to individual stakeholders. Thus, it allows us to explore and exploit the whole range of opportunities to connect with, engage and do business with the stakeholder.

The notion of tribe remains as the ideal goal of stakeholder community engineering. Obviously, the closely knit and enduring online community consisting of highly loyal individuals is what we strive to achieve when supporting existing stakeholder groups or initiating and facilitating new ones. In the meantime we had better connect with and engage stakeholders both on the group (tribal) and individual level.

Afterthought: It may prove profitable – in all meanings of the word – to consider the idea of fluid segmentation. Fluid segmentation takes the individual customer’s needs, interests and preferences – rather than predefined categories – as its starting point. It keeps us focused on the various ways in which the company’s products, services and brands may be relevant to individual customers at different times. Online business platforms, traffic tracking and business intelligence make it possible to employ fluid segmentation in a cost-efficient manner.

» Follow Maria Hilden on Twitter

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Social media has been used as a channel for finding the audience and giving them something to talk about. In this case it was all about creating a buzz around a name – the name of the brand to be exact. Can a brand become word of mouth within days?

The Indonesian headache reliever brand Dumin was introduced at the market year 2005. For a while ago it had a brand awareness of 0 % despite 2 years of heavy TV campaigning. The challenge: to get Dumin famous. The plan was to create something that people would like to talk about, to create conversation, and make people co-create.

A real character with the surname Dumin was created and they started to create a story around this character which they thought people would pass on and share; Dumin – a “girl next door” with an obsession to be a TV star. But she has a big weakness: stutter (speech disorder which makes her shout out a series of words). This story was featured in a series of YouTube videos showing Dumin and her trials to get a casting. The tools for making people interact with Dumin was handed; Facebook, Twitter, blog, e-mail and telephone number.

The story made a great impact. Online media put her in big headlines and she was invited to take part in radio and TV programs. She got a huge amount of friends on Facebook and thousands of views on YouTube and her blog became popular. Finally, Dumin got a place in a TV commercial – Dumins commercial, and the brand awareness of Dumin was a fact.

Dumin received US $ 58,000 worth of media coverage, with less than US $ 2,000 campaign budget. This shows that social media is a cost effective channel for creating brand awareness. It’s also a place for the audience to interact. I would like to add though, that it’s important to be careful when doing a campaign like this. People discussed however the story was true or not and I don’t know how people respond to the campaign when it became obvious that it was made of the brand Dumin. But one thing is clear – the company achieved the goal of brand awareness. Well done to agency Publicis.

So what is your goal? That is the main point when doing the strategic plan of a social media campaign.

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While the engagement in social media within the Danish hospitality industry still remain easy to miss, the Peruvian-based blog WorldClass Hotel Marketing News provides a blogpost on best practices on how to connect with hotel guests via social media – a blogpost that is worth mentioning and reading, not only for its insights but also for its best-practice on a hotel that happened to generate great results from engaging in social media.

It is no surprise that the competitive power of a hotel lies within its service. It is from the level of service that a hotel derives customer loyalty and traditional word-of-mouth marketing spread.

“Modern” hotel marketing today is probably best known from sites such as hotels.com, where the determining competitive power primarily is based on price and location, and where the hotels appear by ‘Best sellers’ that not necessarily represent the quality of service. Additionally, the key marketing initiatives seem to be newsletter sign-ups and traditional reward / member programs, which are both debatable in terms of efficiency and additional sales potential.

By engaging in social media and the possibilities that are available through Web 2.0, the level of service can now be increasingly improved, in large due to the possibility of engaging in dialogue with potential customers, and therefore in co-creating unique experiences for the customers.

The blogpost on WorldClass Hotel Marketing News presents four potential strategic initiatives for social media engagement. These are as follows:

- Engage in ‘corporate’ blogging as a means to distinct the hotel from competitors, and accentuate visibility to unique aspects of your hotel product and destination in a more dynamic and involving manner. A blog is easy to setup at a platform like Wordpress.

- Initiate a customer feedback function to your existing online platform(s) with the intention to retrieve insights on how to improve the totality of your service, often supported by some sort of reward system. We recommend platforms such as Get Satisfaction for this kind of implementation.

- Apply interactive competitions to generate viral spread and promotion. Such an initiative is likely to increase the number of daily online visitors, thus providing various opportunities to derive additional sales. Platforms such as Foursquare, Facebook, or Twitter could be applied creatively to setup various forms of competitions.

- Initiate interactive events as a way to derive increasing traffic to your various online platforms. This is likely to affect how often your hotel provides updated online content, hence it affects how many potential guests you can influence with appealing offers and other marketing messages. It is recommended, though, that you bear in mind that dialogue is key, and this is why you should remember to involve and engage online visitors.

The benefits of choosing to engage in social media seem more and more evident. As online user behavior, indisputably, is increasingly driven by demand for engagement, interaction and participation, organizations in general are to comprehend that traditional mass marketing messages are steps in the wrong direction.  And that goes for hotels as well.

Focus should be put on addressing potential customers where these are present; online! A fact that is no less true for travelers. By adapting marketing initiatives to this, a hotel will be enabled to establish closer relationship to its (potential) guests based on its level of service and develop a more appealing, modern and dynamic profile, which in combination should be the pivotal element for generating business.

As a final piece of advice, I recommend that you make sure to plan your social media strategy in same manner as you plan all other business activities. And we will of course urge you to read the full blogpost on WorldClass Hotel Marketing News.

» Follow Steffen on Twitter

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On Friday, I am going to visit the SF New Tech – the Big Endless Summer Social event in Los Altos Hills, located in the San Francisco.

About SF New Tech

SF New Tech is the largest and longest running monthly technology event in San Francisco. Since forming in March 2006 more than 5,000 people have signed up to attend monthly standing room only events.

More than 2000 companies have attended  over the years, and more than 200 of them have been to the SF New Tech stage to demo their latest and greatest.

OliveWoo – location based date service

One of the demos that will be held  at tomorrow’s event is for the latest within location based services.

It’s the first location based application for couples that analyzes your interests and mood to find the perfect date idea for you and your significant other.

Basically OliveWoo is a place where you can create, discover, and share exciting date ideas.

On the latest SXSW conference location based services were called out to be the next big thing, and with the most successful location based application ‘Foursquare’ just turning their 100 millions check in, there is a good chance of success for an application combining the location based feature and something that have been driving humans since Adam and Eva: dating.

For a lot of restaurants and other service industries there are interesting business opportunities in OliveWoo when the service gets a large enough critical mass. Being recommended as a great dating venue can mean business.

I have made myself a profile and will pay good attention at the presentation, and do a follow up giving some more specifics to this new service.

What do you think – can you use an location based date service to enhance your dating life?

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Yesterday, the location-based network Foursquare hit the 100 million checkin threshold.

The news of the great milestone was tweeted by Foursquare’s head of business development, Tristan Walker.

The NYC-based startup is only about 1 1/2 year old and has been experiencing immense growth, especially since it was announced as the new dominating technology earlier this year on SXSW conference.

During the last year, Foursquare has experienced almost 1 million checkins taking place each day – so maybe location-based services is about to make it into the mainstream? One of the explanations of Foursquare’s growth may also be due to their partnerships with major brands like Bravo, Zagat and The New York Times, which undoubtedly has helped drive traffic and new users to the site.

I guess, location-based networks will continue to grow alongside the dissemination of smartphones. It doesn’t really make sense to be on board unless you have a smartphone to use it on. But if you have one, and are not already on Foursquare, then check it out.

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It’s time for a recap. Every day we post blog posts about social media, so I have collected 5 of our most popular blog posts within the last quarter. It tells me that our readers like to know about cases and to get the knowledge and tips on how to practice social media.

Well, the posts speak for themselves so here they are: 

• Probably The Best Campaign Use of Co-Creation And Social Media Ever
The soda company Mountain Dew understands that the best promotion comes from your already dedicated fans. With a Facebook Page with more than 800,000 people connected to it, they chose to use it for launching the DEWmocrazy campaign. The company roamed their social network to find the ultimate Mountain Dew fanatics to be involved … Read Full Post »

• 5 Great Infographics About Social Media
The social media landscape may seem complex and intangible so I have been searching the web for some useful infographics to show what is going on with social media – let’s just say that I have been inspired by other great social media blogs. I quickly stumbled upon a lot of really impressive infographics, but I … Read Full Post »

• A Recipe For Social Media Marketing = Co-Creation
A piece of customization and co-creation can be the recipe for your business to get your costumers interested in your product. When allowing persons to be the creators, handing them tools to do something new with your product, you show them how important they are for you. We have seen brilliant cases on this like the … Read Full Post »

• 10 Simple Linkedin Best Practices
Guest blog written by Steffen Hedebrandt, who is passionate about entreneurship, networking, personal and professionel development. He currently works as a COO at VintageandRare.com. I will start this blog post by stepping into a dangerous field and quoting my girlfriends mother, who is a very skilled and wise business consultant, but not yet into all … Read Full Post »

• 3 Presentations: Why Social Media Is Valuable For Your Business
If you or your business are considering getting on board the social media train, there are plenty of ways to learn more about the aspects of using it. For a brand or company willing to invest, social media can turn out valuable both relating to customer service, product development, building trust etc. One of the online … Read Full Post »

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There has been much debate about Facebook’s privacy settings during the last year or so – a debate that will probably continue on no matter what.

During the last couple of years, Facebook’s default privacy settings have become more and more permissive – and often with great confusion to the users.

I have found this chart that illustrates Facebook’s evolution of privacy from the early days in 2005 up until recently.

On the chart you can see the default Privacy settings on Facebook over time (Clicking the image will lead you to another site, where you can see the animated version)

Just like the creator of this chart Matt McKeon, I am also fond of using Facebook and do not see this evolution as an incitement to close down my Facebook profile. Rather I encourage people to go through their privacy settings. Many of the default settings are set to include ‘Everyone’ – instead you can change them to ‘Friends of friends’ or ‘Friends only’ to exclude everyone on the web to see the contents of your profile.

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