The Widget Bell Curve
No matter how you slice it, the numbers are compelling. MySpace now has over 110 million users and Facebook just passed 65 million. And the demographic profile is prime with the majority of users falling into the 18-35 bucket.
|
FUTURELAB |
Home - Services - About us - Team - Business and Games Blog - Publications |
To find out more about Futurelab: Click here
For our other blog on Business and Games, Click here
When
I was last in DC, I had lunch with Daniel Solove and we were talking
about book publishing. He had been thinking of making his book
downloadable under Creative Commons and I was like DO IT DO IT! This is
the kind of book that is sooo relevant so many different audiences who
would never hear about it through traditional advertising. My thought
is that if it were available online, it could whet folks appetite
before buying it
(cuz printing it out is painful and reading it online is not wonderful
either and your Kindle doesn't support PDFs). Introducing...
Continue reading "The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet" »
by: Christian Smagg
We recently touched on the subjects of the many forms of web marketing tactics that could potentially be utilised as part of your digital marketing arsenal as well as the effectiveness and increased use of these online tools. So while we are on the topic of integrating innovative techniques into your marketing plan, let's consider this from a broader, more strategic perspective, rather than a pure tactical point of view.
Continue reading "Changing Your Marketing Mindset: 12 Steps to the Interactive Future" »
by: Roger Dooley
Years ago, I worked with a group of field representatives selling industrial equipment, and found that many had interesting adaptations to local culture in different parts of the U.S. One based in Texas always kept a Western-cut sheepskin jacket in his car. If he was visiting a plant in a remote location, he'd shed the suit coat he wore in Dallas and put on the rugged-looking jacket.
Continue reading "New Year's top resolution: Managing your online reputation!" »
by: Guy Kawasaki
This summary
of an article from the December issue of the Journal of Advertising Research (good luck finding the issue online because I couldn’t) says that common word-of-mouth advertising by regular folks is more powerful than “key influencers.” Which is to say that sucking up to A-list bloggers may not be all that it’s cracked up to be. It seems like it’s bad day for celebrity endorsements
.
Continue reading "Must see video: "We Think" vs."The Cult of the Amateur"" »
by: Alain Thys
A few weeks ago I spoke in the Netherlands at a Marktplein 2.0: A Little Less Action, A Little More Conversation, a conference, which essentially wanted to encourage (direct) marketers to engage in conversations with the consumer, rather than just shout at him. Confronted with the hyperbolic language of the conference brochure indicating the "'newness" fo the conversation phenomenon, I couldn't resist the jab of inverting the title of the conference for my keynote. In stead of talking about conversations with customers, I think it's time marketers got out of their office and actually had them.
Continue reading "A Little Less Conversation ... (slideshow)" »
by: danah boydFor peculiar historical business reasons, Americans and Canadians pay to receive text messages. This creates a stilted social dynamic whereby a friend forces you to pay $.10 (or use up a precious token msg in your plan) simply by deciding to send you something. You have no choice. There's no blocking, no opt-out. Direct to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
by: David Armano
A couple of weeks ago, I asked a simple question. Should digital agencies be blogging? I mean, we are out there advising clients on "social media" and how it's evolving the way we interact with brands and each other. Some folks felt that the question was silly. Isn't this a no brainer? Well, not exactly. The best part of the post came in the comments (no surprise) and the post itself got picked up by several agencies who use internal blogs to discuss issues like this. This means that they are having conversations in private vs. publicly. And there's nothing wrong with that. But wouldn't you like to be fly on that agency's wall? I would.
by: Alain Thys
If you've ever wondered what would happen if CGM pessimist Andrew Keen (Cult of the amateur) would encounter a collaborative creativity evangelist like Charles Leadbeater, you can find out for yourself on November 28 at Marketing3 in the Netherlands.
Continue reading "Conference Highlight: Marketing3 in the Netherlands" »
by: Dominic Basulto
One minute you're the CEO of one of the most powerful Internet companies in the world, the next you're a "moral pygmy" being disgraced by media publications all over the world. Reputation on the Internet can be difficult to measure, and even more difficult to protect.
Continue reading "Yahoo, the "Moral Pygmy" problem and reputation on the Internet" »
by: Karl Long
Todd linked to this excellent viral homage to some of the notable viral videos of the last few years. Believe me they list a hell of a lot, but what I found interesting was the number of deliberate commercial “virals” for want of a better word. These are the companies/people that managed to achieve what I believe is quite a feat, to launch a deliberate campaign that “goes viral”.
Continue reading "We Didn’t Start The Viral - Commercial Successes" »
by: Karl Long
Guinness has added a little twist to its latest advertising campaign and have hidden it online somewhere for someone to find. In good old ARG (alternate reality game) tradition they have started this game off with a couple of clues, in this case a fictional Mayor called Juan Ramon has put a video on youtube and created a pdf letter to share.
by: Christian Smagg
You may have come across one of my posts entitled “Which consumer 2.0 are you?” urging marketers to develop a better understanding of their customers’ online behaviour and devise a coherent and adapted social strategy accordingly.
Continue reading "Word-of-Mouth or when the unbiased opinion is trusted around the globe" »
by: Karl Long
Someone on LinkedIn just posed this question “How can one make Blogs more enjoyable or What is that you do to maintain the popularity/readership of your blog?“. Here are my thoughts on this, this may not be all that leads to a successful blog, but these are for me pretty essential ingredients: Focus, Passion, and Originality.
Continue reading "Three Traits of Successful Blogs - Focus, Passion, and Originality" »
by: Danah Boyd
This morning, I spoke on a panel at the Retail Industry Leaders Association. The day before, a guy from Unilever gave a presentation on what happens when users take up your content and spread it all across the web. He was invited to be on the panel at the last moment because of a cancellation and because his presentation was so well received wrt Web 2.0. Right before we go on, I'm informed that the guy from Unilever was talking about the Dove Evolution campaign that was spread all over YouTube. This is the moment where I went white.
by: Karl Long
If there was a techmeme for marketing Firebrand would be the most talked about story for sure. Even technorati which famously lumps every blog in the world in the same category is listing Firebrand in it’s top ten searched terms. With Rohit, Jaffe (Firebrand is a client of Jaffe’s Crayon), and Steve Hall weighing in it’s generating a lot of buzz in the Marketing O’Sphere.
Continue reading "Firebrand - Extremely Ambitious Advertising as Content Destination" »
by: Roger Dooley
Online community builders love to toss around gross numbers - twenty thousand members, two million posts, and so on. Amid all the statistics, it’s important to recognize that all community members aren’t created equal - some are a lot more prolific.
Continue reading "Taking Care of Your Best Community Members " »
by: Karl Long
In the last couple of years the idea of reaching out to bloggers as a PR/Marketing tactic has started to become a mainstay for companies looking to engage early adopters and technology leaders. I’ve personally been amazed at the sophistication and scale of programs that I have been privy to.
Continue reading "Code Of Ethics For Blogger Outreach Programs" »
by: Karl Long
Hugh over at gapingvoid raises the interesting point that even though the market for companies to create and deliver one way “messages” is dissapearing, demand for PR, marketing, and advertising professionals is growing. The question is now that we don’t control the “message” what are we doing?
By: Marina Natanova
The Russian blogosphere (ca. 2 million journals) is going crazy about the recent Rexona ad campaign. A new TV ad (click here to see video) together with a promo-site announced that Russian women... er... were less attentive to themselves than Polish or German ladies.
by: Alain Thys
Spoiler alert: This post gives away a key plot point of the final Harry Potter book. So if you've haven't finished the book, do not read on.
Last week Monday (at 1:30 AM) I finished part 7 of the Harry Potter series and after sat through the young man’s wizardry adventures for thousands and thousands of pages, the end of the series felt like losing a friend.
by: Lynette Webb
This is one of those things that in many ways is so blindingly obvious that it almost doesn’t warrant mentioning. It comes from Chris Anderson, he of Long Tail fame, from chapter 7 of his book. But, perhaps because of it’s apparent obviousness I’ve found it to be a nice conversational jumping-off point to explore other aspects… like what the remit/approach to PR should be in this new era; like the fact that online conversations lives on and on, echoing long after the original ‘speaker’ has moved on, etc…
Image from Flickr CC www.flickr.com/photos/juiceboxgasoline/279544122/
Original post: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lynetter/453858891/
by: C. Sven Johnson
While reading something yesterday concerning marketing in virtual worlds I resisted the urge to comment. Last night and again early this morning, I further resisted the temptation to post something here regarding what I’d read. And I’m now resisting the urge to slip something in. I won’t.
by: Ilya Vedrashko
When the word about Andrew Keen's "The Cult of the Amateur" first got out last winter, I was hopeful. Finally, I thought, we'd have an informed and comprehensive antidote to the poisonous hype around all things two point oh: all those conversationalist wise crowds of long-tailed lonelygirls-15 blogging their ride on the participatory cluetrain.
by: Guy Kawasaki
Lois Kelly is the author of Beyond Buzz: The Next Generation of Word-of-Mouth Marketing
. This is her explanation of the top nine types of stories that people like to talk about. If you’re pitching your company to investors, customers, partners, journalists, vendors, or employees and you don’t use at least one of these story lines, you probably have a problem. And most likely you’re too close to what you’re doing, so you think that you’re uniquely “patent-pending, curve-jumping, and revolutionary.” :-)
Continue reading "The Nine Best Story Lines for Marketing" »
by: David Armano
I'm a sucker for successful communication whether it be visual, written, or oral. So take a look at this presentation from Scott Gavin titled "What is Enterprise 2.0"? It uses a persona based approach to tell a story.
by: Lynette Webb
Danah Boyd gave an interesting talk recently at Blog Reloaded about the significance of social software. I really like her writing style and she’s great at picking out key aspects and expressing them in down-to-earth terms. You can read the full transcript of her talk here: www.danah.org/papers/BlogTalkReloaded.pdfContinue reading "Social software is a movement not just a technology" »
by: Jon Miller
I believe social media has an inherent bias against the realities of B2B marketing. This is the topic of my new article "What’s Wrong With Social Media For B2B Marketing", now available as part of Search Engine Land's Strictly Business column.
Continue reading "What's Wrong With Social Media For B2B Marketing" »
by: David Wigder
Online retailers find that consumer-generated content such as product reviews and ratings have a significant influence on consumer purchasing behavior.
Continue reading "Consumer-Generated Content: An Underleveraged Opportunity for Green Retailers" »
by: Guy Kawasaki
Because of Truemors
, I’ve learned a lot about launching a company in these “Web 2.0” times. Here’s quick overview “by the numbers.”
by: David Wigder
by: Lynette Webb
I really like this quote because, to me, it explains in a nutshell how “tagging” - which has emerged as one of the Web 2.0 standard functionalities - is connected to the broader long-term direction of web development.
Click image to enlarge.
Continue reading "web 2.0 is messy way the semantic web is happening" »
by: Guy Kawasaki
, the CEO of Redfin
, had a strong reaction to last week’s post about PR by Marge Zable Fisher. So much so that he penned an alternate solution to the challenge of a good client-agency relationship: Don’t hire an agency and do it yourself. Here’s what he wrote. by: Guy Kawasaki
Margie Zable Fisher runs theprsite.com