Month: March 2012

Since January this year, an independent site by the name of Swaylo, pronounced “Sway-low,” based in San Fransico, has established themselves has an application that analyzes the social influence a user has on his social circle. The application apparently measures the impact people have on their social media activities with their friends and social group.  The metrics are calculated across 80 different dimensions and into four main groups:

– audience (the number of people in your network that regularly engage with you)

– trends (your interests vs. your friends’ interests and who liked it first)

– voice (how much you say and how what you say affects your network)

Swaylo’s utilizes complex algorithms to infer probability of close connections and degree of influence between users. Once users register for Swaylo, they are simply enabling Swaylo to acquire their profile information and friend information. Apparently, Swaylo is also pitching these services to brands in an effort to offer anonymous information regarding their customers.

I have personally and don’t intend on ever utilizing such an application as I do not see the benefit in this. These efforts are merely driving our heavily internet-dependent world into an unnecessary shift towards placing value on our virtual identities. All our social media accounts are more or less digital representations of ourselves. Swaylo, in turn is thus seizing this opportunity to market to us in a way that positions itself has helping us understand our social media activity. Realistically, do we us individual really need to share all our information and let alone have an organization earn revenue based off the information we offer them?

 However, from a brand and company’s perspective, this is highly intriguing! With this application companies can evaluate and understand how effective their social media strategies are! The question is, how reliable are these algorithms and are there not existing software applications such as Google Analytics or Smart Media that companies that do similar analysis?

Feel free to take a peek at this new application and decide for yourself >>> http://swaylo.com/?static=true <<<

Or hear what marketers have to say about it through this link >>> http://www.marketingmag.ca/news/media-news/new-app-shares-facebook-friend-lists-with-marketers-48981 <<<

An application with potential and yet questionable at the same time! 

Following on the Youtube phenomenon, companies are beginning to see the benefit in creating a youtube channel for their brand. Many companies are still mind-boggled by all the various social media platforms and do not know how and where to effectively invest in their online marketing communications. At the moment, brands have seen the importance and success in creating their company’s online presence through their Youtube channels. There are many companies that have succeeded in the past and continue to do so today. However, the most recent company to have succeeded through Youtube, has done so in a highly creative manner and this award goes to the UK based newspaper organization, The Guardian.

The Guardian has launched a series of video advertisements aired on youtube to illustrate the creativity and shares aspects of the hard hitting journalism that takes place within the organization. Have a click on the video above and get a taste of my favorite  video ad of the few. In this video, The Guardian utilizes the fairy tale story of the three little pigs as a vessel to convey all the peculiar aspects of open journalism. The short clip takes the audience through the processes of how The Guardian would have covered a story of the three little pigs over the existing mediums now, in print or online. The video has received many positive remarks and has become highly acclaimed. Some viewers even mistaken the video ad to be a trailer for a epic movie regarding 21st century open journalism!

Personally, I find The Guardian’s work to be very educational and forward-thinking. Who would have imagined creating a commercial of a newspaper company can be this thrilling, suspenseful and innovative. The positive reaction from the public has no doubt generated additional buzz and e-marketing recognition to this media company. I’m sure, in the future, more journalist and newspaper companies will begin to create commercials that highlight and flaunt the organizations capabilities in an effort to promote more readership!

For more details, visit: >>> http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2012/feb/29/open-journalism-three-little-pigs-advert <<<

The beginning of future newspaper promotional commercials that fool audiences in having viewed a movie trailer!

Social media these days are beginning to consume our internet time and are constantly tempting us to create our virtual identities through various platforms. Facebook’s new timeline interface has now enabled users to create an online scrapbook of their lives with images and wall post activities, Instagram has provided the artistic tools to make any picture a piece of art, Twitter has given us the channel to voice our and listen to other’s thoughts, and the list goes on! Essentially, you could say social media has virtually turned the internet into an arts and crafts club where we’re given the tools to beautify our lives! Recently, there has been another new and emerging social media platform that is storming through our internet cyber space by the ever so pretty name, Pinterest ~

In continuation of our arts and crafts club-theme, Pinterest offers users the ability to make social catalogs, share and collect images! It has been dubbed the social media sweetheart of 2012 and has grown by 400% from September to December 2011. Though the highly vertical growth rate and rapidly increasing membership of over 11 million is not uncommon with growing social media sites, Pinterest does have a point of differentiation. According to a data compiled by Modea, a digital advertising agency, they have investigated the average time users spend on their social media websites: Pinterest (15.8 minutes), Twitter (3.3 minutes) and Facebook (12.1 minutes). Surprisingly, the newest competitor on the social media scheme is now the leader and holds the strongest rivalry in time average time spent on website! This is highly intriguing as clearly the shift towards a more visually-oriented social platform has resulted in the interest of more users! At this rate, it almost seems as if Twitter does not make an effort to adapt to this visual-trend, the tweeting social media will soon begin to tweet declines in Twitter activity and membership!

On the note of more visual social media platforms, there is thus no need to justify the flock of women that are beginning to visit the sites more and pinning images on their Pinterest boards! Back to the arts of crafts theme, Pinterest is creating emotional spaces with imagery that connects users together! In addition, Pinterest is built to easily work with Facebook users and this has been a genius strategy of the Pinterest management team in continuing the social media crusade of world membership domination! Evidently, the success of Pinterest has led users to click the millions of pinned images that redirect them to the original online image source. The source then translates to conversion rates of users visiting different websites. Consequently, Pinterest is now viewed as the social media site that directs the most traffic to differnet websites, and in particular corporate websites as well!

Read more of the Pinterest social media trend and/or their future opportunities here >>> http://www.marketingmag.ca/news/media-news/what-you-need-to-know-about-pinterest-49176 <<< , >>> http://www.clickz.asia/6479/the_pinterest_opportunity_in_japan <<< 

Pinterest, virtual public space with visual imagery to color your online pin board ~ 

We are all familiar with the usefulness of Google Adwords and its profound impact on the online advertising network by creating a search-based advertising platform. Luckily, Google has recently announced further improvements to be made with the display ad system! These changes will be aimed to simplify the process of selecting ads to buy and running the ads in a more effective manner! The changes will start from an entire new interface just for display ads and the purpose of running online display campaigns. In the new interface, Adword users will be able to bid, target and optimize their campaigns in one location. I’m presuming this means no more hassle of clicking through different tabs and drop down menus on different pages. All of these efforts are made to assist and ease the process of understanding Google Adwords and ultimately help advertisers be more exact in targeting the target consumers!

Google has dubbed the new and improved system as: Next-Gen Keyword Contextual Targeting. The new system will enable users to have more control and be able to optimize their contextual ad campaigns to the individual keyword level! If some of you are still confused as to what type of change and capability this enables users, hear it straight from the Google’s staff’s example:

“Let’s say you’re running display campaigns for a travel agency who offers a vacation packages in several Caribbean islands. In the past, you would have created themed ad groups targeting vacations to Turks and Caicos and the Caribbean. Now, with this new keyword level transparency, you might realize that the keyword ‘Turks and Caicos vacations’ is four times more profitable than the keyword ‘caribbean vacations’. You can optimize your campaigns to aggressively target these high-performing keywords, and be more conservative on ‘caribbean vacations’.” 

During the beta-test, an advertiser saw a 40% increase in conversion rates and 14% increase in click-through rates! Additionally, there are also more minor changes to the options enabled to users with the new interface, such as a dedicated tab and ad refinement capabilities etc.

For more information have a read of this article from Marketing Magazine >>> http://www.marketingmag.ca/news/media-news/google-to-upgrade-display-ad-system-49057 <<<

New & improved Google Adwords system interface that incorporates more accurate and control in marketing means of the display advertisements!

We have all heard the stories of employees getting fired due to inappropriate images or activity on their Facebook accounts. It’s no biggie. People know and are beginning to be more mindful of their Facebook content and Facebook has also improved their privacy options. Nonetheless, other social media platforms may have yet to fully establish the similar boundaries to protect users from scrutiny.

Twitter  has recently been plastered on the news regarding a negative articles about users with nasty tweets that have landed them in jail! According to an BBC article, lawyers in the UK have stated that there are parts of the UK legislation that can virtually be used to prosecute internet users with unlawful online activity. Unfortunately, a local student has faced the wrath of these lawyers and the UK legislation after posting racially abusive content about a football player on his twitter account. He has then been charged under the Crime and Disorder Act of posting abusive comments such as racially aggravating remarks. Consequently, the student has now been sentenced to 56 days of jail! 

Sadly, this is only the most recent case of internet users posting content that have landed them in prison! Earlier this year, there have been other convictions of similar cases. Last month, another die-hard football fan posted racist comments at a rival football club which has deemed a violation of the Malicious Communications Act. The poor or unfortunate lad has now received a four month suspended jail sentence. Last week, a Law student was also charged under the section 127 of the Communications Act after sending racist tweets to a former football player in hopes of provoking an reaction. 

Yes, social media is indeed fun and word spreads fast. However, just like Facebook, Twitter users need to be if not more mindful of their tweets given the lack of privacy settings Twitter offers compared to Facebook! The existing issue now are user’s lack of knowledge that virtually anything posted on the virtual space of social media platforms can be used as evidence to create a robust police case to prosecute individuals!

For more detailed readings of the different prosecutions and cases visit >>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17530450 <<<

Fellow internet users, please refrain from any abusive comments, encouraging unlawful acts such as riots, menacing communications or any unlawful comments that can result in jail time for you!  The world of social media is not a virtual playground for individuals to voice their heated and controversial comments! It is a platform of fast information sharing, sharing that IS monitored by the government or police!