Therefore, I chose to add Mohd’s introduction to my post since, frankly, I like it better ;)

While white people in Europe and North America are swarming to tanning salons and picking up overpriced tanning creams to gain a lovely bronze shade, people in South East Asia have a completely contrary appreciation to skin tones; they are obsessed with lighter skin. The whitening creams’ industry has been booming in the past decade and is not limited to face creams only, they are even marketing creams for “pink nipples”!

Shahid Kapoor - Star for Vaseline's Ad for India

Sadly, it seems that the people there associate whiter and lighter skin with a higher class, beauty and success. Some even seriously consider skin tone when choosing a partner! For centuries, women have been using various concoctions to achieve the whitest of white skins and nowadays a growing number of men are starting to groom and use creams to whiten their skins as well!

The competition in the multi-billion dollar cosmetic industry is fierce and their marketing teams are doing everything they can and more so that potential customers think of their product when they are shopping. Recently, these brands started utilizing social media to reach their customer base.

Idea & Objectives:

The “Be Prepared” Campaign was created by Vaseline in efforts to utilize social media, especially its tools, images and applications, in order to promote their skin whitening cream line for Vaseline men.

Furthermore, they crated a Facebook app that allows men – and ostensibly women – to lighten their photos and see the difference for themselves. Vaseline hopes that once people start getting positive reactions to their “lighter” photos on Facebook and other dating sites, it will encourage them to pick up the product and try it out. The application promises to “transform your face“!

Skin Whitening Campaign

Buzz Generated:

The application currently has a rapidly increasing number of 8,950 monthly active users.

Be Prepared- The Application

Furthermore, and due to the application’s simplicity and user-friendly interface, its reviews are positive and its Facebook page is live and interactive!

From the campaign's Facebook page

Opinion & Lessons Learned:

Although some bloggers considered this campaign and its application to be very insulting, I think the idea itself is smart and well planned: Vaseline did not create a need, rather it fulfilled one! Moreover, if this campaign truly did upset Indians, how come there all all those active users on its application and this many conversation on its page?

So, what could we learn from this campaign?

• Successful campaigns always depend on the needs of your target audience. Sometimes creating a need is needed. At other times, knowing the need and producing a product or service to fulfill it is the right way to go!
• Applications add more fun to campaigns! When you are using Facebook to promote your campaign, it is advised that you develop an application alongside with that campaign, something fun and easy to learn.

To wrap up, what do you think of this campaign and its application: Do you think its offensive? And how do you think it could have been managed better through Vaseline’s website? Maybe even a Twitter account?

Looking forward to reading your feedback and insights down below :)

So, in efforts to make your Facebook related information collection easier, here is a small list of the top Facebook news for this week:

Facebook Testing “Delete Account” Option

Bye Bye Facebook!

It appears that Facebook has released a Delete Account option, in addition to the previous Deactivate Account.

I’m sure you remember the process of deactivating your account and how long it took for your information to be out of the cycle. It used to be so frustrating that even when your account was deactivated, you could still Google your name and find your Facebook account right there staring at you!

Those days, hopefully, will be gone soon and if Facebook take the leap of faith and decides to “let go” of those who want out, all we have to do is wait and see what will happen to its huge users’ number! Read more at thenextweb.com

Facebook Security Fears after ‘Private Details of 100m Users Leaked to Web’

Recently, the personal details of more than a fifth of Facebook’s estimated 500 million users have been “leaked” to the Internet by campaigners in efforts to highlight its “terrifying” privacy fears.

Law Student Wins £10,000 Libel Award from Ex-Friend

Barber

Jeremiah Barber posted an indecent image of children on Raymond Bryce’s page along with the comment: ‘Ray, you like kids and you are gay so I bet you love this picture.‘ The image, which hundreds of users could see, showed Bryce superimposed on to a collage of pornographic pictures.

Barber was ordered to pay £10,000 in damages to Bryce due to his false accusation of being a pedophile on Facebook. Read more at dailymail.co.uk

That’s all for now…

Finally, I wonder, what do you think is the future of Facebook? Do you believe it’s evil? Would you consider terminating your account indefinitely?

Looking forward to your comments and insights…

Old Spice Homepage

Idea & Objectives:

The campaign was simple, straight-forward yet had a great deal of creativity and innovation invested it in it. A few advertisements for Old Spice fragrance followed by a series of personalized re-tweet Youtube clips by the Old Spice guy (the same guy who starred in the ads). Did anyone think of this before? The answer is a 100% negative!

The ad agency, Wieden & Kennedy, put together some bizarre and funny commercials for Old Spice that premiered a few months ago. The ads featured a towel-clad man in his bathroom addressing a camera and promoting the Old Spice brand of men’s fragrances.

Not only did the team behind the campaign take great care to engage celebrities, influencers, common folk and popular social media sites in balanced quantities, it knew exactly how to talk to them. They also leveraged Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and blogs.

“In his penultimate video, the Old Spice guy talks directly to his daughter, explaining that until recently, he was just a struggling actor no one has ever heard of“.

The original video

Buzz Generation:

The Old Spice funny commercials became very popular on YouTube — the original video has more than 13 million views.

A few weeks after that hit, and due to the brilliant new response ads, the campaign got more than 6 million millions of additional views and 22,500 comments in total.

Popular virals in the first 24 hours

Major blogs and websites talked about the campaign as well, which made the campaign even more viral and successful. Even tough cynics at Reddit are even calling it “the greatest ad campaign in Internet history.”

Re: Perez Hilton | Old Spice

Re: @Gillette | Old Spice

And the clips keep on coming: 180 clips in total!

Opinion & Lessons Learned:

Allow me to ask you this: “When was the last time a marketing campaign spoke directly to you in such a frank way, making you laugh and cry at the same time?” I think if not never, then probably just a few times in your whole life!

Old Spice hammered the nail with its brilliant hammer; right on its head! I can’t even think of anything else they could have done to improve their campaign or any other elements they could have added!

So, what’s the catch? What did they do? What can we learn?

• Creativity, creativity & again, creativity! I realize that it’s easier said than done and that, in many cases, creative ideas are costly. However, investing in great creativity can bring you great brand recognition and brand loyalty.
• Sex appeal should never be underestimated! Whether you are a girlfriend of a guy who does not use Old Spice or you are the boyfriend himself, sex appeal will draw the target audience to the ad and make it more memorable than they imagine!
• Know your target audience – I can’t begin to stress this point enough. If you design a brilliant campaign without knowing whom you’re targeting, the campaign is a failure!
• Visual and audio stimulation have a great impact on perceptions. Not only does the Old Spice guy look “HOT”, he also sounds hot and the backgrounds behind him are so appealing and relaxing!

To wrap it all up, what do you think of this campaign? Could you possibly love it half as much as I do? And would you consider the brand, Old Spice, to be your one and only after this campaign?

Looking forward to your feedback and comments down below :)

So I was curious to figure out who might those people be and why might they not have joined Facebook.

The Country Club Retirees

Oh the life!

These are the people who have everything they want in life and they are unplugged from the hustle and tussle of life. They are in their mid-fifties, hang out in the country club with their friends and chill in the evening in a fund raiser event or to watch Agrippina at the opera house. They are content in their way and don’t care about being adopters of newer technology. Moreover, they already meet all their friends regularly and don’t see a need to be more “in touch” with them more than they already are.

What would it take for them to join: They stop receiving their grandchildren’s pictures on their emails and are blackmailed into joining Facebook in order for them to be able to see the photos.

The Super Elitists

Have some Cake?

They are the creme de la creme of the social elite who find Facebook too – how should it be put – populace. It is far too easy to be on Facebook, there is no exclusivity to it and has the stench of the “everyday man” all over it and they would rather drink a malt beer rather than have their name show up as one of the profiles on Facebook. Some of them regret their decision of holding out from joining the site but now can’t bare to join and see that they have “ZERO” friends.

What would it take for them to join: Nothing! They already created their own uber-exclusive and status-conscious social media sites such as the Black Card Circle which caters to their tastes.

The Privacy Paranoids

Everything will be OK!

These are the people that view Facebook as the tool of the Illuminati, the extremists on the right and left of the political spectrum, the politicians that rather not be too out there, and those academics that rather not be in the public sphere. Whatever reasons they might give for their “friending” impotence, it boils down to one reason: they worry about their privacy and being crucified -literally or figuratively – for a slip on the social network.

What would it take for them to join: They might join if Facebook refudiates [this misspelling is intentional] any ties they have to the Illuminati, chupacabras, aliens, blond Jews and every other conspiracy theory out there and assure the people that their privacy is assured and that not a single piece of information on the network will result in a scandal to them… even then they will protest that this just to get them bite the bait.

The Hardcore Techies

Super Geek

These are the people who not only know what “phreaking” is but they still do it! They were the early adopters of the internet, the ones that viewed it as the geeks Valhalla and the only place where there is justice on this “earth”, that is until Facebook ruined everything and brought the jocks over to the geeks playground.

What would it take for them to join: They did join, but only to write a tutorial on how to best eliminate any trace of your Facebook profile and delete all of its data. Beyond that they, have no interest in the Facebook culture and rather stick to their IRC channels.

So basically, and in conclusion, Facebook can’t do much to attract any of them, and since everyone else who is able to is already on it, they will have to wait until the younger generation comes of age and starts joining its legions.

Who from your friends is holding out from joining Facebook? How would you describe them?

Logged in everywhere!

This form of “instant personalization” of sites using your Facebook profile is a privacy slippery slope. Therefore, if you are interested in protecting your privacy, you have a few options to do so…

Opting Out of Specific Sites

Instant Personalization on Yelp

Most decent sites that partner with Facebook, like Docs, Yelp, Pandora and others, allow you to turn off the personalization option upon visiting the site for the first time.

On the other hand, some other sites, such as CNN Money, don’t really provide you with any options to turn it off so you’ll have to look for other ways to do it. Turning it off on a case to case bases is a tedious and annoying endeavor.

Switching it off from the Source

The personalization option is on by default on Facebook but you will be able to disable it if you dig deep into your settings;

Turning off Facebook Instant Personalization

• Click on “Account” on the top right of your Facebook home page and move to the “Privacy Settings“
• Under Privacy settings select “Applications and Websites” on the bottom left and select “Edit Your Settings”
• Click on the “Edit settings” for Instant Personalization
• BONUS - Edit the settings of  “Info accessible through your friends” under “Applications and Websites” and select the information that you feel comfortable letting your friends share with websites and applications.

Treat It Like The Spam It Is …

People don’t appreciate ads intruding on their browsing experience and hence they install Firefox and adblocker, for the same reasons some people don’t like Facebook intruding on their presence on the net. One of those people is David Collier who wasn’t too happy about Facebook’s instant personalization and hence blocked it.

• Install Firefox and the AdBlock Plus add-on
• After Starting Firefox click on the “ABP” icon next to your search bar to access the preferences or go to Tools–>AdBlock Plus Preferences
• Click on Add Filter and create a filter called ‘Facebook Block’ and add the following code in it:
  ||facebook.*$domain=~facebook.com|~127.0.0.1
• Click “Apply“

Now AdBlock Plus will be blocking access and traffic to and from Facebook.com on any website except for Facebook.com. That way you will no longer see “like” buttons or swathes of the people who like a certain page or company and no longer have to deal with those pesky auto-logins.

“What your husband reads online can get you beaten to death when pregnant!”

Our lives now have recently started revolving around links; those our friends share with us, those we come across on Twitter, Facebook, Mixx, Stumble Upon, Digg and so on and links that we find and share! It is safe to say that, due to social media, links play a very important role in shaping the way we think, what we believe and what we do as well!

As a result of this deduction, it is very important for us to pay attention to what we share online. We now have a responsibility towards those people we interact with online; they depend on the information we share and we must always try to validate the information, when possible, in order not to cause or promote chaos, aggression, violence and drama!

The following is an example of something that happened with me a few days ago: I was going through my Mixx shares and I came across an article entitled:

8 Reasons Why God Hates Denmark [we decided to remove links]. I am a curious girl so I clicked on the link and read the post, which in my opinion, was not that impressive. However, I then saw a disturbing title of an article: Start hitting your child with a rod 16 weeks before birth! [link removed] Written by a man who calls himself a “True Christian” who is promoting violence against pregnant women in efforts to educate their unborn children!

Recommendation- Hit Your Child with a Rod!

Here’s a part of the annoying and insulting article:

“All loving parents know that you have to hit a child with a rod to properly raise it.”

God is very clear about that:

* Proverbs 23:13-14 “Withhold not correction from the child: for if thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die. Thou shalt beat him with the rod, and shalt deliver his soul from hell.”
* Proverbs 13:24 “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes.”

Less clear is the perfect age to start doing this. Fortunately True Christian™ science has now finally solved that mystery.

Using advanced ultrasound scans of a fetus, True Christian™ researchers have found that connections in the fetal brain are not fully formed before 24 weeks. In practical terms this means the best time to start hitting the child with a rod is about 16 weeks before it is born. Usually this is also a period in which your wife starts neglecting her duties so you can hit two birds with one stone by hitting hard with a rod on the belly of the pregnant woman. Make sure to be forceful enough, otherwise the child will not notice!“

Finally, I’m looking forward to your thought and insights about this topic: Do you think it is a serious issue? Have you ever came across such links?

Let us hear your thoughts…

Game Overview

Players enter the game as pioneers in the early century trying to make it on the frontiers of the new world. The general goal of the game is to live well and prosper on the frontiers, and in order to achieve that you will have to manage several tasks and goals.

Unlike other Zynga games that center around a single goal, whether it’s farming when it comes to Farmville or amassing power as is the case with Mafia Wars, FrontierVille requires the player to manage several goals. You will have to plant and harvest your crops, fight the pests and woodland creatures, you will be collecting items that will randomly appear once you complete an action and you’ll have to get married and take care of your virtual family and build your own town. And if that wasn’t enough, you will also be able to visit and establish relationships and trade with neighboring frontier towns and help friends completing their tasks and quests.

As you can imagine, it departs from the single-minded nature of previous Zynga games and creates a complex, rich, and original game that will surely amass a huge fan-base with the Facebook gaming crowd.

How it got its 3.7 million in a week

You are definitely doing something right if you manage to gain 3.7 million users within the span of a single week, so we will look at how they managed to achieve this:

Spam!

The game will spam your news feed with updates, and although you can easily disable it, it still manages to get news about a new game on the block to prospective users. And to encourage users to keep them, the live feeds contain links to bonuses, coins, and XP.

Live Feeds with incentives

Capitalized on the decline of other games.

The Top 25 games of Facebook continued to plummet with FarmVille losing 7.7 million players, certainly people are getting bored with the simple games, and FrontierVille’s more complex approach to gaming was enticing to many users.

New social activities in the game.

The game introduces many new social aspects to the game play; making people promote the game heavily in order to advance in it. The game allows people to earn stats and reputation for working for a neighbor, hiring a neighbor to do some work and helping out on quests and many more.

Ask Friends for help

The game is certainly a breath of fresh air to the social media game, and it is really intriguing how Zynga handled non-gamers, gave them a crash course in gaming, and groomed them in preparation for more complex games such as FrontierVille. So the game is worth a run for gamers who thought Facebook games were too simple, and a must join for Facebook gamers since it provides the addictiveness and challenge that they have been craving.

To play the game check out the FrontierVille App page.

So have you joined FrontierVille? What do you think of it? Share with us your thoughts about the game in our comments section.

From the website Hyves.nl

Founded in 2004, Hyves is the biggest social networking site of The Netherlands. The name Hyves comes from the English beehive (not from hives), comparing users to bees in a hive.

The focus of the website is on keeping in touch with existing friends and making new friends. There is no need to know HTML for creating a Hyve. It is comparable with other social networking sites. Users can create personalized pages of themselves with rich media content, such as photos, videos, flash content and custom layouts. (Wikipedia)

Hyves came to my attention recently through an article in a Dutch newspaper about how the police are using social media – in this case Hyves.nl – to help look for clues in the murder of a 55 year old man, who was found dead in a forest. The man was killed in a knife attack, his legs were separated from his body and was partly undressed!

The police have distributed posters in bus and train stations, highlighted the case on TV and placed a banner on Hyves, asking for any relevant info. A reward of 15,000 Euros has been issued for the provision of info that will lead to the arrest of the murderer.

Can Hyves Compete with Facebook?

According to stats, Hyves is doing very well and the fact that it is being used to help catch criminals means that it does have an active and interactive user base. See the figure below for more specific stats:

Hyves.nl on Alexa

As for the stats on its website, these are the numbers I found:

• Hyves has 10,271,748 Members
• 192,419 scraps were made that day
• 7,055 blogs were created that day

While not all members of Hyves are Dutch, Hyves is still very popular given that Holland has only 16 million inhabitants!

To wrap up, I wonder: Do you think Facebook might be in danger from Hyves and its popularity minus privacy concerns? Would you consider signing up to it?

Looking forward to your comments down below :)

We will be looking at how the public manifested its psyche on several different social media fronts:

Twitter

Twitter has been at the forefront of taking jabs at BP, The fake BP Public Relations account – @BPGlobalPR – has been a run away hit with fans and has been taking sophomoric jabs at the company and providing its fans with the highest quality of satire. The account has almost three times as many followers as BP’s official Twitter account. To BP’s credit, they have reacted greatly to the satirical nature of the account and didn’t wage a crusade against it. Some even go as far as saying that the account is managed by BP’s real PR to lighten up the atmosphere around the company’s name.

Tumblr

Tumblr joined a list of organizations that are working to raise money to help clean the oil spill. If you give a donation to any of the groups that are helping with the oil spill, they will unlock a limited edition black background from your account preferences that would replace their iconic ocean blue default background.

Youtube

The parody Valhalla of the internet is certainly the Youtube, so it’s naturally filled with a lot of videos that are making fun of BP and its handling of the disaster. Probably the most popular of those videos comes from the UCBcomedy channel and its BP Coffee spill skit.

Youtube hasn’t only contributed by providing humour and parodies, it was also the place where a lot of people posted about their experiences on the beach after oil has hit the shores. Also it was a major venue for news exposes and documentation of the effects of the oils spill on the environment. They didn’t stop their, they have also collaborated with PBS news hour to give Youtube users the chance to interview the CEO of BP’s Gulf Coast Restoration Organization live and on the web. The interview occurred on July 1st.

Facebook

The BP Facebook fanpage has a measly 35,000+ fans on their nauseatingly optimistic and positive page. The page is mainly used as a mouthpiece for the BP spin machine with a few adds sprinkled throughout the page. On the other hand, the wildly popular Boycott BP fanpage faced a few hiccups and “accidental” deletions by Facebook but it has been a focal point for disseminating news about the disaster and has more than 823,500+ fans. Moreover, a quick search on Openbook will show just how active people have been in updating their statuses with news about the BP spill, which helps to spread the word beyond the activist core that would join cause pages and groups.

The Boycott BP Fanpage

Whether it’s a Facebook status update or a video parody on Youtube, everyone is joining in the conversation and it’s becoming very difficult for BP’s PR to control the message or use a well polished commercial to change the public opinion because no one will listen to them! In the age of the internet, it is a lot more credible to hear something from your friend rather than the company’s PR boutique and once a company loses its credibility with the public, then it will be the bane of that brand.

So what are your thoughts about the way the public used social media to voice their opinion? Have you participated? Please share with us your opinions in our comment section

Liberty Bay Books - The Store

Some smaller businesses play it by the ear; their marketing methodologies are moment-based without deep thought to the outcomes. Others keep an eye out for change and take it into consideration when planning their marketing efforts. Liberty Bay Books in a great example of that.

Just do a quick search on Google by typing “Liberty Bay“, and before you know it, you have the complete name of this book store in addition to its map, website and social media presence! At least I just did…

Idea & Objectives:

Liberty Bay Books is an independent bookstore located in Downtown Poulsbo – an Indie bound supported community.

Their main mission could be summarized as follows:

Liberty Bay - UPCOMING EVENTS!

“We want to be your community home away from home in North Kitsap. We have many books in stock for a small Independent book store. And if we don’t have something in stock we place book orders daily and can find just about anything. We offer Free events in our store and at other local spots. We have great espresso, a comfy couch, tables and chairs to sit at, and FREE WI-FI. Book clubs, writing groups, and knitting groups can also be found. We hope to see you…”

In a nutshell, this library chose to evolve from being a static location where people could go and buy books to a social media based interactive venue where various events are carried out and announced for.

Check out the screen-shots in this post for a few examples from their blog, Facebook page & Twitter account…

Buzz Generated:

Twitter wise, Liberty Bay Books is doing well: they already have a continuously increasing 2,560 Twitter followers and are listed in 166 Twitter lists. They RT, reply and advertise regularly and unintrusively.

Liberty Bay Books @Twitter

As for Facebook, they already have 578 people who like their page and who engage in conversations, comment and participate in events regularly.

Liberty Bay Books @Facebook

They also share pictures from their events on their Facebook page which makes the overall experience of being a customer for Liberty Bay Books more personal and memorable!

Furthermore, their website seems to be highly active due to the fact that it is easily searchable and extremely valuable!

Opinion & Lessons Learned:

Just as Emerson’s Salon was able to use social media, in its simplest form to give itself a competitive advantage, Liberty Bay Books understood what needed to be done and went for it. In my opinion, cutting down advertising costs and replacing them with social media venues and channels is a genius idea to boost their image and create awareness for their brand.

What could we learn from this?

• Even businesses which seem to be “out of social media’s league” have the chance to flourish if they know how to benefit from the existing social media platforms.
• Knowing how to utilize social media for your marketing campaign could easily change the image of your business from static to fully interactive and dynamic, thus attracting a larger number of fans and loyal customers.
• You don’t have to pay too much to be heard or seen! Social media campaigns often offer small businesses a chance to grow virtually at a speed that might actually beat the real growth of the business.

Finally, I wonder: Have you heard about this campaign or participated in it on some level or another? What else do you think they can do to promote themselves through social media and reach a larger number of potential customers?

Looking forward to hearing your feedback down below…

Scary thought, isn’t it: someone you love and care about is kidnapped right before your eyes but you missed it because you were hypnotized by your social media infatuation, addiction, habit – you can call it whatever you may!

What’s the deal?

While watching television the other day, a scene in a movie stuck me hard and made me think of how Facebook, Twitter, Flickr (…) are slowly taking over our lives and, even more, causing us to fall into several dangerous pitfalls which could actually lead to great losses!

Therefore, in order to help you avoid, as much as possible, falling into those pitfall, I have prepared for you a list of 4 new dangers imposed by social media:

1. Thefts:

We had previously uncovered the dangers of identity and monetary theft as a result of using social media before. However, what I am talking about here is actual real-life theft which could be a result of social media stalking or even the mere chance of being preoccupied with your phone messages, online surfing or even your cool new iPhone that you don’t notice someone stealing your wallet out of your purse!

Example: Handbag theft

2. Kidnappings:

Most of us naively think that some things are so far away from them: “This could never happen to me“, the claim. Reality is different and some bad things can happen so unexpectedly, just like kidnapping! Imagine a mother with her laptop in the park turning her focus away from her 2 years old crawling son to write a couple of comments on her friend’s new pictures for example. Are you 100% sure that the son will be safe?

3. Car Accidents:

Can you imagine the number of accidents occurring, as you read this, around the world due to messaging while driving your car? Can you imagine this number grow when you choose to check your e-mail from your phone while driving? Or even try to upload and share an image you just took to Flickr, again, while driving?

Social media ala mobile while driving!

4. Misc Falls:

Here’s an example of this danger and I will be using myself to make my point clearer: I fell down the stairs while tweeting from my new mobile phone (true story)! This might sound funny now but at the time it happened it was bot scary and painful. It could happen to you as well.

Falling while socializing!

What do you think: Do you agree with me on these dangers imposed by social media? Can you think of more?

Looking forward to your feedback and insights down below…

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Timberlake, Andrew Garfield, Joseph Mazzello and Armie Hammer.

Directed by: David Fincher.

October 2010, in a cinema theater near you…

I am looking forward to this movie, are you?

Waiting for your feedback and speculations about the movie :)

The campaign's website

FarmVille is an extremely popular game on Facebook that is developed by Zynga. The game requires its player to plant and harvest their farms and maintain crops and animals that live in the farm. The game is highly addictive, has managed to attract over 80 million active users of the app and has a huge fanbase. The game recently released a widely anticipated non-Flash iPhone and iPad applications that will allow users to play the game while they are on the go (you can get them here).

Zynga the creator of FarmVille, Mafia Wars, YoVille and many other games teamed up with 7 Eleven to offer a retail tie-in for the convenience retailer’s products allowing players to redeem their Slurpees and ice-cream pints for some exclusive in-game goodies and perks!

About the campaign

The campaign aims at encouraging players of Zynga games to shop at 7 Eleven and marks the first real-life campaign for a Facebook game and surely will drive a lot of gamers to 7 Eleven so that they can go and buy their Farmville goodies. Once you buy one of the promotional goodies, you will have to locate your code and then go to the www.buyearnplay.com (the site is only accessible in the US & Canada) and log on to your Facebook to get your virtual goody of your choice according to the list below.

You can get a neapolitan cow

Once you have redeemed 5-8 of the products on the website and completed an in-game task, they will be able to unlock the Uber-gifts section of the website. For example, the task for Famville could be planting Goji berry crop, a limited edition crop that is unlocked by the promotion and achieving a level crop 3 mastery. The Uber prizes live up to their name, in FarmVille you will able to earn $200 FV Dollars! This certainly encourages users to frequent 7 Eleven a lot more than they usually do during the six week span of the promotion. The campaign is accompanied with TV, radio and online ads to promote during its 6 week run.

Buzz Generation:

7 Eleven Facebook: 262,000+ Fans

Zynga Facebook: 266,000+ Fans

It is hard to measure how successful the campaign has been by just looking at the page view or follower numbers since the brands involved are already widely popular, but the turnout at 7 Eleven stores should give us a good indicator. The FVFan.com was present at a 7 eleven and took these pictures which prove that there was a considerable turnout at the 7 Eleven store and that the campaign has succeeded in bringing the fans to the stores.

FarmVille fans queue

Why did it do what it did?

The six-week campaign is still in its second week but it’s already proving to be a success; it has been covered and talked about extensively in the Facebook gaming circles.

• Create partnerships; creating the proper partnership can help bolster a campaign and bring it to a wider audience. In this case, they chose to partner with a game developer that has million of faithful players of their games.
• Create the proper incentives; there were always retail tie-in promotions going on for different products and different brands but the perks provided by the tie-in were never enticing enough for people to care about them. However, in this campaign, they created gifts that mattered to the fans.
• Target the Niche; millions of people are hardly a niche but they certainly have all the features of one. By targeting the people that care passionately about something, you will certainly gain a passionate response.

What do you think of this campaign? Did you go to 7 Eleven to earn the gifts or would you? Let us hear your thoughts.

This “madness” comes a few weeks after the anger of the Pakistani community at Facebook for allowing a group called “Draw Mohammed Day” to be activated and publicized. With more and more of these mistakes I can’t help but wonder: “What the hell is Facebook thinking?”

If you are lucky enough not to have heard about him, Raoul was a “callous murderer”, he went on the run after injuring Samantha Stobbart and killing her new lover Chris Brown, 29. The following day he blasted PC Rathband, 42, with a shotgun!

“I don’t blame the(genuine) Family of Moat, leaving tributes to his memory on FB, but all the rest almost make me ashamed to admit I’m from the Northeast! But thankfully we’re not all like this. Please don’t tar us all with the same brush. Most of us have higher morals than these poor misguided fools“. Brian. H., New Ollerton

I am sure many of you would have various opinions about this topic since sympathy and forgiveness are relative concepts to different people. Therefore, I invite you to share with me your feedback and insights:

Do you think Facebook is to blame? Do you feel that mercy should be wished upon those who die, regardless of what they did when they were alive and well?

Looking forward to your opinions down below…

Apart from their addictive nature, the hundreds of scams they facilitate, the way they make cheating easier and the fact that they have the power to promote and spread fascism, they also pose an eminent threat on our lives by making it easier for killers, thieves and perverts to stalk and even, may God forbid, get to us!

The TV Series “Criminal Minds” Brilliantly Tackles It:

Thousands of users out there chose to shut down their social networking accounts like Facebook, Twitter, and even MySpace due to crimes committed by utilizing such sites. However, not everyone is taking the subject as seriously as they should be! 

A couple of examples include

1. “A couple who left a Facebook status update that they were attending a concern for the evening. They came back to find they’d been robbed“.
2. “Police say that an Australian woman who was murdered had been lured via Facebook and Bebo“. Associated Content

Since words are not enough, below are a few videos that can help social media and social networking users realize how the little things they do online and the information they share can actually cost them their lives:

Criminal Minds show how a killer was able to find his victims through social networking sites, specifically Facebook and Twitter, but also references geo-location social networks like FourSquare.

While the details of the episode are fiction, the episode brings up valid points about the information that we share online, and feels real enough to make you check your privacy settings following the show.

Here are some sentences I picked up from the cast’s chat, please try to take them seriously:

“Social networking sites are surprisingly insecure”

“Many people are obsessed with those social websites”

“Social websites are like e-mails on crack“!

Some tips for you to help you protect your privacy:

Criminal Minds Shows Us We Share Too Much in Social Networking, A Few Tips to be Safe

And some more as our way to show you that we want you to be safe…

5 Simple Ways to Protect Your Privacy On Facebook

Finally, I wonder: Do you realize the dangers that social media and social networking impose? Are you taking the necessary measures to protect yourself and your loved ones?

Looking forward to your insights and a few real-life stories to help our readers realize the dangers they might be ignoring or unaware of.

The New Friends

Some of those “new friends” on the block have became so ubiquitous that people are creating labels to describe them …

1. The Facebook-Only Friend

Facebook Only

In the past, this person was an acquaintance, he was always in the background you probably have never talked directly to each other before Facebook. But once you have befriended them on Facebook, you were amused by their online persona and how they interacted with their friends and you were intrigued enough to meet them in real life …. BIG mistake! because after 30 seconds of meeting them you realize that you can’t stand them at all but you are still amused by their online presence.

2. The Mega Friend

That’s the person who seems to be everyone’s mutual friend; he is commenting on everyone’s updates and posts and just seems all over the place on Facebook. He’s the person that has so many friends that he has maxed out one account (2,000 friends) and has created a second one so that he’s able to add more and more friends and probably is flagged and blocked by Facebook for being a spammer. He’s the “go to person” to get the word out about anything though and that’s why you keep him around.

3. The UnFriend

Careful where You tread

These are your co-workers, family members, the cousins and in generally everyone that you force yourself to be civil to real in life. When they ask you for your Facebook and add you, you can’t bring yourself to reject them or limit their profiles because it will cause more trouble than it’s worth so you will have to bear with their comments and criticism of everything you do on Facebook… in real life.

4. The Avoid-a-Friend

It’s the ex that you want to keep tabs on, or the one friend that pissed you off during last week’s party and you can’t stand seeing. What ever the reason, the reality is that you rather not see them in real life and that’s why you have them on Facebook and Foursquare. The Avoidr application for Fouresquare allows you to create an avoid list so that you won’t be seen in places that they checked in from.

5. The Newscaster Friend

He’s the Tweep that has the latest and most interesting links. He’s the one that has the latest news updates on his Facebook and joins every campaign and cause that exists in the world. If you want an overview of any issue, he’s the one that you turn to. Sadly, his reliability in this area means he has no life outside of his obsession which makes him a single purpose character in your life, albeit a useful one.

Do any of your social media friends fall into any of the categories? Are there any other archetypes that you would like to add?

Which type of Facebook friends are YOU?

Share with us your thoughts in the comments section…

Facebook Bows to Pressure!

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article entitled: Why is Facebook Panicking about the Panic Button? Thoughts & Insights. The main reason for that post was trying to figure out why Facebook was refusing to add the Panic Button and speculating the reasons behind such a decision.

However, it seems that Facebook has finally bowed to the pressure and began providing a new application which allows young users to report suspicious behavior.

What Does This Application Do?

This application allows all Facebook users to access an advice center from their home page where they will be able to report suspected grooming or inappropriate sexual behavior.

Joanne Shields, Facebook’s vice president, acknowledges that the new app likely won’t be a “silver bullet” of social networking safety. She insists that the industry, the parents, the police and the young people themselves need to be well educated about their online activities and the threats that might face them as a result.

Examiner.com adds: “Facebook has teamed with the UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), and will be providing a Facebook app that will serve as a sort of “panic button,” allowing teenagers an easy to report cyberbullying and other such incidents. The tool will be advertised on the home pages of teenage Facebook users”.

It’s great that Facebook has finally made that step. However, I wonder: Did they do it in order to get recognition like Bebo did at the end of last year? Or did they just surrender in order not to lose face with their users and avoid more criticism?

Looking forward to your insights and feedback on this topic.

Testimony: Equality on Trial is a social media campaign by the courage campaign institute aimed at raising awareness about the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial, also known as the “Proposition 8 Trial”.

Participate In Raising Awaerness

In 2008, Proposition 8 passed in California denying the LGBT community the right to marry. Two couples wanted to challenge the proposition, and fight it in court, and that’s the Proposition 8 trial that started in January and was supposed to be the first trial to be broadcasted on Youtube but the defense challenged the decision and won the right to keep the footage of the trial from the public record. That decision was very disappointing to the supporters of same sex marriage and they tried some creative ways to bring awareness to the trial and Testimony is one of those ways.

About the campaign

Testimony raises awareness for the prop 8 trial in several ways. They chose to take a different approach that appropriate to the channel they are using and tailored it in a manner that would encourage interaction and be a building block for a support base in the future.

The blog was an Invaluable source during the trial

The Testimony blog, the prop8trial tracker, has been active in covering the trial ever since it went to court. The site provided live-blogging of the trial, legal analysis for what happened in court and other relevant news that would interest the blog audience. The blog was flourishing with comments, testimonials, and debate about the issue of marriage and was a hot bed of ideas for what to do to raise awareness of the trial. One of those ideas is reenacting the trial which the testimony campaign picked up and ran with.

The re-enactment of the trial helps bring it to a wider audience and hence it became part of the Testimony Campaign’s objectives to encourage people to re-enact the prop 8 trial and upload it to the web. To kick start the drive, a bunch of activists, actors and directors got together to re-enact various parts of the trial and posted it on the campaign’s web presence including Youtube and it proved to be a very interesting way to encourage interaction.

Buzz Generation:

Facebook: 33,900+ Fans

Twitter: 820+ Followers

The topic is always present on Twitter

While the numbers seem to be modest, the totality of the effort is what counts. The website has received more than 2 million hits and got over 30,000 comments ever since it was launched in January and it certainly will be a good building block in the courage campaign’s bigger goal of establishing a 1 million person strong network in California.

Why did it do what it did?

This is definitely a very polarizing topic, and one that every person has a strong opinion so it is refreshing how the campaign attempted to cool down the arguments and present them in a different manner and focus on presenting the stories of individuals and families rather than discussing the issue on the grounds of ideals.

• Humanize the issue. Talking in terms of ideals and politics tends to be cold and detached and denies people the opportunity of relating to the issue, so when you open the space for people affected by the issue to speak for themselves, it gives a chance for a warm bond to form between people rather than just the issues.
• Tell your story. Statistics can convinces mathematicians and other left brained individuals but a story will win over a lot more people since it is a form that people are used to getting their information from on daily bases. Using stories makes the issue more tangible to the audience.

What do you think of the way that the Courage Campaign are running their presence? What can they do to gain more exposure for their cause? Let us hear your thoughts.

The Application:

MindJolt games gives users the chance to play any of the many Arcade, Puzzle, Strategy and Sports games they offer for free.

In terms of statistics, MindJolt has around 19,689,057 monthly active users on Facebook and an increasing number of 3,716,635 fans!

Take a look at the number of likes and comments one wall post on their Facebook page got:

Proof of MindJolts' Loyal Fans!

What They Did:

MindJolt games were developed in a way to attract users to play by themselves and share their scores and achievements. More importantly, they also focused on the social media side of the equation by allowing, and even encouraging, their users to challenge friends:

One, MindJolt Games application encourages you to challenge your friends by allowing you to easily track your scores!

Tracking scores & challenging friends!

Two, in order to really keep you up-to-date with your friends’ progress in each of the games, MindJolt has a list of stats and scores for you to view and compare of its games’ pages:

Scores & stats for comparison

Game results

Try it out and let us know what more do you think adds to the social face of this application :)

To wrap up: What do you think of MindJolt Games? Do you like how they are utilizing social media? What could they be missing?

New Jersey, a state so bad they cut it’s name in half, chewed it and spat it so that now most people call it Joisey. No one is quite sure how Jersey does it, but it takes an awful lot of energy to maintain the reputation that it has fostered across many generations, while the title of the Garden state is what is written on NJ’s license plate it is better known by its many other colorful nicknames, like the Armpit of the US.

So in an attempt to capitalize on the rise of guidos to prominence through shows like MTV’s Jersey Shore, and the Real Housewives of New Jersey a campaign was born. The Jersey Doesn’t stink Campaign was launched to help Jerseyans show their pride for their state and defend it against the bashers.

The website

About the campaign

The campaign is focused on shaming the bashers of Jersey and allowing Jerseyans to express their love for their state through Twitter, Facebook and Youtube. The campaigners have had it with the jokes and comments that people make about their beloved state and have set out “rally those who are tired of the putdowns about pollution, wisecracks about wise guys, and cheap shots about corruption.”

To fight back and show your pride, the website encourages users to participate through posting videos shaming those who bash NJ, talking about their pride and expressing their love of Jersey on Twitter, Facebook or by sporting some of the products that are on sale at the website’s shop.

Buzz Generation:

Facebook: 4,760 + Fans

Twitter: 389 Followers
Total Upload Views: 13,400+ Views

The campaign is still very young at only 3 weeks old and it got Jerseyites talking. Sponsored by High Point Auto Insurance and seven others, the campaign has rented billboards on the turnpike so it has both a physical as well as an internet presence. Also, the website features the comedian Anthony DeVito playing the talking air freshener in the Youtube video,  giving it the financial backing and star power to succeed at denting the state’s bad reputation.

Jerseyites doing what they do best... Complaining

Several blogs talked about the campaign, and even the Wall Street Journal and NPR wrote about it on their blog but the buzz that the campaign is creating is still very limited.

Why did it do what it did?

A smart marketer knows how to pick his fights and this is a case where passion over took logic and that’s why the campaign never gathered any steam.

• Know your audience, people of New Jersey are infamous for not liking their state a recent survey concluded that it is one of the unhappiest states beaten by only NY and CT. So if your campaign is about those people taking pride in a place they feel unhappy in then you are fighting an uphill battle.
• When employing stars for your cause pick someone who is not bland. If you are going through the effort of hiring some star power for your campaign at least ensure that they are polarizing and can create some discourse about themselves rather than just being bland.

What do you think of the campaign? Did you hear of it? Let us hear your thoughts.

Emerson Salon - Seattle

If you think social media campaigns are limited to the big players in the consumer market, you are mistaken. And if you believe that a social media campaign needs to be huge in order to succeed, you definitely need to reevaluate your beliefs!

If you’re active on Facebook and Twitter, there is a fair chance that you might have heard of Emerson Salon; the social savvy salon that has enjoyed great success through channels like Facebook, Twitter and their blog.

Idea & Objectives:

Emerson Salon understands the value of social media, even when it comes to such a personal service such as hair grooming! They decided to use the power of social media to their advantage in order to attract customers to their salon and inform them about their latest offers, products, hairstyles, stylists and events within a campaign style framework!

These are some of the messages they have posted on their Twitter accounts for their followers to read, learn and share:

• Friday before Pride! Come in to Emerson to get your rainbow mohawks, purple bobs, or fantastic new cuts for the weekend!
• Beautiful morning! The sun is out. The iPhone4 is out. Perfect day for a haircut at Emerson Salon!
• John has been rocking the cuts and colors at Emerson for 2 months now, check out his bio here: http://bit.ly/bwHUES

Buzz Generated:

Within a short period of time, Emerson was able to gather 12,420 followers on their Twitter account and become listed in 172 lists.

Twitter Chats

As for their Facebook page, they already have around 1,422 people liking them and actively engaging in conversations about the salon’s great reputation, events, staff and so on.

People's reactions about the salon's party

Opinion & Lessons Learned:

I have a thing for simplicity: I just love it! Also, I very much support smaller businesses seeking to grow through unique and simple methods. Therefore, I really liked this campaign!

As for the lessons we could learn from this salon’s campaign, they are as follows:

• In the service business, and especially when using social media for promotion, your employees can play a great role in attracting and retaining customers. Try, as much as possible, to keep them satisfied.
• Knowing which social media channels to use is very important. With the case of services, the more personal the channels the better because you need to promote your service and the environment your customers should expect when they visit your store, salon and so on.
• Never underestimate the power of small businesses; they are a product of so many failing businesses, they have learned from others’ mistakes!

Finally, what do you think of this salon’s campaign? Would you join their community or consider a haircut there? If not, why so?

Looking forward to your comments down below…

But those were the old days. Nowadays, things are different and to land a job in a good reputable company or organization, you need some know-hows relating to social media, its channels and its benefits.

Therefore, in order to help you utilize social media for landing a job, I’ve prepared a list of the top 10 ways in which social media can be used to boost your resume and give you an edge over other applicants.

1. Create a Blog:

Blogs are usually a portal to your personality, or at least that’s what many employers would assume. Creating and managing a well organized and creative blog can be an indirect way of showing your employer your strengths when it comes to design, writing or even social media knowledge.

2. Share Wisely:

Many of us love to share! Whether it’s because we want to prove to others that we are happy or just to feel good about ourselves, many of us end up sharing too much! When using social media, always keep in mind that anything and everything you post could be tracked and used against you.

Example of Sharing on Facebook

3. Mix it Up:

When using social media, make sure that you mix it up a little by using more than one channel in case you are later on asked about them or even requested to utilize any of them for a campaign. There are many social media sites out there; learn about them and through trial, error and stats, you will be able to point out which is useful for what for that extra edge!

4. Quality People Count:

While having a great number of Facebook friends and Twitter followers is impressive and sometimes even considered “cool”, having quality friends and followers through social media could open up doors for you for freelancing jobs or even full-time, well paid positions. (Lose those who cramp your style!)

Twitter Followers

5. Update Moderately:

Too little is exactly the same as too much, remember that. Whether you are tweeting on Twitter, updating your Facebook status or even submitting articles to Mixx, it is important for you to keep in mind that being moderate can say a lot about your commitment and time management skills.

6. Be Courteous:

Automatic updates and tweets are annoying; I say that from personal experience! Imagine yourself sending an auto reply of some generic message to a perspective employer. What can that say about you?

7. Experience Matters:

Whenever possible, share your work experiences on the social media accounts you use the most. Just like you resume, your social media accounts have the ability to attract a large pool of interested employers surfing social media for that person who walked that extra mile.

8. Use Language Carefully:

140-character messages do not automatically give you a green pass for making all sorts of spelling and grammatical mistakes! Moreover, and whenever possible, try using full words and less slang.

Twitter Grammar

9. Protect Your Accounts:

Spam, ads and other useless information that might be found on your account can show that you are negligent or even careless when it comes to managing your accounts. Make sure to protect your accounts and manage them in a well organized manner to reflect an image of professionalism.

10. Stay Up-to-Date:

Please keep in mind that social media is and will always be a double-edged sword. Read, research and follow up on the latest social media news especially those related to privacy issues, security concerns, problems and so on.

That’s all for now! So, to wrap up, I’d like to ask you the following questions: Do have have any more tips or advices to add for our readers about landing a job through using social media? Have you ever landed a job through your social media accounts?

Looking forward to your comments down below :)

Just as in the previous episodes (1, 2, 3 & 4), we will be looking into examples of tricks and methods that online games and applications are using to make the most of social media. In other words, what is making those apps as “spreadable” and “viral” as they are.

The Application:

Posting Your Listing is just so easy...

Marketplace on Facebook is a part of the Oodle Network.

Powering classifieds for over 200 local and national sites, Oodle.com is a fast growing classifieds network. The Oodle network includes newspapers, broadcast television sites, yellow pages, community sites, and national portals. When a user posts a classified ad through Oodle, their listings appear on hundreds of leading media and publishing sites.

Here’s a few features of Oodle’s Marketplace:

• It is a way for Facebook users to buy and sell through online classifieds.
• It offers a platform for advertisers to promote their local listings.
• It is helps publishers to power or enhance their classifieds.

Oodle’s Marketplace has a growing number of 76,000,000++ fans on Facebook!

How They Did It:

Apart from the fact that this application is demanded in its nature and its great ability to attract millions of people from all over the world, developing Marketplace for Facebook is just brilliant!

Not only is placing your ad easy and simple, the process of buying and selling can be understood by anyone! But that’s not all! The viral elements here, which actually make this application very social are as follows:

One: You can easily share your listings with your circle of friends:

Listings in Order

Two: You can easily share your listings on your wall, send them as a message and request others to pass them around:

Share on Your Wall or As a Message

Three: You trust your friends-friends more than you trust total strangers, and that’s Marketplace’s default recommendations.

Four: You can easily track your listings through comments and/or questions e-mailed to you via interested buyers/sellers.

To wrap up: What do you think of Marketplace on Facebook? Do you like how its developers  are utilizing social media? And would you consider becoming a fan of this application?

Looking forward to your comments below…

Facebook Threat! By passiveaggressive

The Oil Spill's Affect on Twitter By outtacontext

Blogging By xkcd

Facebook: The Truth is Out By sireesht

Better Living through Clicking By Rob Cottingham

ipad By xkcd

Living With A Geek Made Easy - Chapter 1 By geek&poke

Facebook Captcha By FredMikeRudy

Golden Rules For The iPad Delivery Day By geek&poke

Facebook Screws Your Privacy By bentremblay

The Li(k)e Economy By geek&poke

We're the Children of Facebook! By tulipánka

Simply Explained By geek&poke

Facebook Wants a New Face! By smlions12

2040 By geek&poke

Text Jokes:

• A North Carolina waitress was fired for complaining on Facebook about a small tip she received. A lesson to all servers who like to post online complaints: write them where they’ll never be seen — on MySpace. By Erik Bronsten (C)
• Drug giant and Prozac manufacturer Eli Lilly’s stock prices soared today as millions threaten to leave Facebook. Stock analysts predict this will awaken Americans to the reality that they really only have two friends. By David C Jordan (C)

Use the comments below to let us know your favorite!

We hope you enjoyed this compilation of jokes, and don’t forget to subscribe to our feeds for more fun posts and topics. You can use the comments below to let us know which is your favorite :)

There are always smaller headlines that tend to go unnoticed. They are the headlines that let us know how individualistic and unique some of the interactions on the web can be, and how much social media is shaping our world in ways that we could not have fathomed 20 years ago.

Therefore, the Quirky News of the Web section will be dedicated to those pieces of news that might go unnoticed but still pack quite the punch.

Where to look for spies and deserters?

Dangerous Beauty

You know you have a bad case of sloppy when people who operate in the shadow, like spies, are befriending you on Facebook, but that’s exactly how the young 20-something spies do it nowadays.

Mikhail Semenko and Anna Chapman are not only present on Facebook you can also find them on LinkedIn and Twitter. Was it just a slip or was the plan to mine these sites for leads and information? And they are not alone in gaffe of being too loyal to Facebook, 11 of the 17 Afghanistan soldiers who went AWOL were tracked down on Facebook where they shared their current locations and interests with the world.

Children: Are You experienced?

So that's how you do it!

You have surely seen the 2 year-old smoker video and read about the smoking baby issue on Facebook and now welcome the Bong baby. A 19 year old mother posted a photo of her child holding – and what seems like – smoking a bong, after child protection agency investigated the parents and the mother had this to say:

“If u look at the picture u can see that there is no bowl in the TABACCO (sic) pipe. And i took a pic to show one (expletive) person and it was a mistake. I would never ever ever let him get high.”

Good Job MOM -_-’ I think Smokers anonymous should consider forming a juniors club soon.

Meet the next Oprah

Oprah was running the “Your Own Show” contest in which they are searching for the next TV star and encouraging people to upload their audition tapes to Youtube. One of the contest’s most unlikely submissions became a viral hit: Meet Zach Anner who submitted his tape hoping to get a chance to achieve his dream of having his own travel show on TV, Zach has cerebral palsy – he calls it “the sexiest of the palsies”- and describes himself as a “wheelchair-bound lady magnet,” he is currently leading with more than 9 million votes. For more of his videos be sure to check out his Youtube channel.

When Face is Not Enough?

When face is not enough

Are you sick of how stuffy and clothed people are on Facebook? Do you think there should be more people sharing their private parts on it? Then we have the perfect social media site for you to join, welcome to Skinbook. The UK based site, Europeans and their damn liberalism, touts itself as the web’s only true nudist social network. Don’t get too excited yet, the website is even more strict in who they admit than that beauties only website, only 10% of the people that sign-up end up being accepted.

Wanna be a TJ?

PJ? VJ? TJ? What J are you?

MTV who revolutionized the music world by inventing the job designation of Video Jockey are attempting to do it again, they are on the look out for the world’s first TJ – Twitter Jockey – a TJ will be the link between the audience and the execs at MTV and will be the voice of MTV in social networks, and the incentive to join the fray is a finger watering $100,000 prize! to join check out MTV’s website.

Let us know if you enjoyed this post, or if we missed any pieces of news that deserved to be mentioned.

The Facebook Welcome Page

The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) is a non profit organization that is spearheading the campaign to protect the institution of marriage from being redefined, affirm that marriage is only a relationship between a man and a women and seeks to prevent the legal recognition for same-sex relationships and same-sex marriage.

The organization is very active on the internet and is always there to present a counter the arguments of the gay agenda and affirm the role that faith communities have in defining marriage.

About the campaign

The nation for marriage is the umbrella campaign for NOM and there are constantly new campaigns that are springing up to address specific issues of concern. Most recently, the National Organization for Marriage has been focusing on mobilizing their constituents to oppose the Kagan nomination, the disclose act and to defend Defense of Marriage Act. As such you would expect that the message for the campaign’s social media presence to advocate what the organization cares about the most, but that’s not the case.

No friends?

When visiting their Facebook page, you will be confronted with a welcoming page that will ask you to join “NOM” by giving them your name, email and phone number with absolutely no explanation for why they are asking for that info. Upon entering the info, you get a message saying “Someone will be in touch with you shortly.” Which, at least in my case, never happened. The group has the standard fanpage tabs but there is a dearth of information about the organization and what it is up to, or recent news of its activities and causes which were listed on its website.

For a group that has fighting the “Disclosure Act” as one of its its goals, they at least stick to the message. The Facebook page allows minimal interaction from people, you are unable to view the people who have joined the campaign, and it seems like they understand of social media as a one way street.

After the dismal state of their Facebook page, Twitter was the next stop. Their Twitter account was more active and more representative of their message, it contained relevant news items, and information about the activities and speeches of NOM board members. Furthermore, the account interlinks very well with their website and blog by pointing to their posts and activities and that brings us to their main social media presence, their blog.

Consistant Message

The blog is the cauldron that fans of NOM flock to drink from; this is the only place where there seemed to be some interactivity albeit it was very one sided in most cases. The blog was on message, constantly updated, and posted comments on the latest news that encourages people to place their own feedback and express their support for NOM’s message. For those reasons, the blog works very well as a social media presence for the NOM campaign.

Buzz Generation:

Facebook: 8,800+ Fans

Twitter: 1,780+ Followers

The NOM Message

It is really interesting how there are more than a million views for NOM’s videos although there are only a few members that are willing to affiliate themselves with the organization. That could mean one of two things: either than people who support NOM are afraid of coming out as supporters for it, or that the majority of people that check out NOM are those who are curious about it but don’t support its message.

Given the way they handled their Facebook fanpage and how they limited who can view their fans, it seems to be the former of those 2 choices.

Why did it do what it did?

It seems like NOM chose to use social media in that matter, but they misunderstood some of the core concepts of what makes a social media campaign successful:

• Be transparent. People on the internet are suspicious of everything you encounter and if it seems like you are not clear with your message, that you attempted to limit the discourse about your brand or that you are hiding some information, then your brand is doomed in social media.
• Show case who supports you. Social media is about the people more so than the brand. Show case the people who support your brand, celebrate them and highlight them in sections of your Facebook page and RT them on Twitter. If you feel that you need to hide your supporters, then your brand is shameful!

What do you think NOM and their usage of social media? is it effective? Let us hear your thoughts.

“People have a peculiar pleasure in making converts, that is, in causing others to enjoy what they enjoy, thus finding their own likeness represented and reflected back to them“. Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832) German poet, novelist and dramatist.

Social media is definitely the power tool helping people reach their goals in making those converts!

In the case of brand marketing and positioning, there is mainly one winner in this human persuasion and social media equation: brands! Brands highly benefit from the need of people to share what they like and what they enjoy. Consequently, the overall effort of brands to appeal to their consumers and attract potential customers slowly decreases: yes, we are doing most of the work!

Therefore, I decided to try and separate social media users’ efforts from brand efforts and compare similar brands in terms of the amount of effort and resources they are REALLY investing in order to deserve the exposure they are getting!

For my first two brands, I chose Pringles vs. Lay’s.

Pringles:

Pringles Logo

I’m sure you all know this brand! It is a brand of potato snacks produced by Procter & Gamble and sold in over 100 countries and have yearly sales of over US$1 billion.

In a nutshell, the Pringles people understand the value and importance of social media and realize how to use it to their advantage!

Apart from their main website and the site designed just for sweepstakes, Pringles has a huge number of fans on its Facebook Fanpage, reaching more than 3,500,000!

Pringles: So, how are they utilizing social media?

In 2009, Pringles launched a “Shaped for Nothing Else” Campaign. Although it had cool images, it was heavily criticized by its target audience for the message it conveyed, “Is shape a reason to buy food?” they exclaimed.

Shaped for Nothing Else Campaign

Another campaign Pringles carried out was Twitter’s “The Overshares” campaign, which was also heavily attacked by the public: “it’s annoyance at dull updates on Facebook, irrelevant Tweets and people sharing things that are ‘totally ridiculous’ online“.

Pringles shows inconsistency in their campaign efforts. After I found the new Pringles Multigrain product page, I looked all over for a campaign to promote it, but there was none! If you take me as an example, I am more interested in knowing more about a product such as this one, just like many health conscious people out there I’m sure.

Why are they inconsistent? I guess their complacency plays a big role in that!

However, this also applies to one of Pringles’ competitors: Lay’s!

Lay’s:

Lay's Logo

Lay’s, another lovable brand! Lay’s is the brand name for a number of potato chip varieties as well as the name of the company that founded the chip brand in 1932. Lay’s chips are marketed as a division of Frito-Lay, a company owned by PepsiCo Inc. since 1965. Other brands in the Frito-Lay group include Fritos, Doritos, Ruffles, Cheetos, Rold Gold pretzels, and Sun Chips.

With a fun and colorful website and a Facebook Fanpage gathering more than 1,000,000  fans, Lay’s too seems to have a thing for social media.

Lay’s: So, how are they utilizing social media?

Frito-Lay is one of several big companies that, along with some large-scale farming concerns, are embracing a broad interpretation of what eating locally means. This mission creep has the original locavores choking on their yerba mate. But food executives who measure marketing budgets in the millions say they are mining the concept because consumers care more than ever about where their food comes from.

Therefore, the creative agency, Juniper Park, launched a US nationwide campaign to promote the locality of Lay’s potato chips with a lifesize installation of potatoes hanging from the ceiling of the Chicago Jackson Tunnel: Potatoes on the ceiling, WOW – “Our potatoes are grown closer than you may think”!

The ceiling display is at least 8 feet long, with faux cracks shooting out on either side of the real-dirt patch, as if the potato roots had caused the ceiling to crack as they grew through. The potatoes are arranged in bunches of about five, and there are more than a dozen bunches clustered among dangling roots.

Another fairly new campaign for Lay’s is one which was launched by the same ad agency on March, 2010: “Happiness Exhibit” engagement campaign. The “Happiness Exhibit” effort, which began March 15, encourages consumers to share photos of happy moments. The images will become part of a growing online photo montage.

Lay's Happiness Exhibit Campaign

The effort follows Lay’s 2009 brand repositioning and the introduction of the tag line, “happiness is simple,” an effort which I have never heard of before through my daily and extensive internet research!

It ends there for Lay’s as well – no other outstanding campaigns to capture the eye and alter the taste buds!

To Wrap Up:

What do you think is going wrong here: Why don’t Pringles and Lay’s utilize their great presence on social media to create and launch louder, bigger and more attractive campaigns that are able to change brand loyalty? Do you believe they are satisfied with their current market shares to the extent that they don’t think they need any more?

Looking forward to your comments down below…

Although social media can definitely cause you to lose your job, become a victim of revenge and can even be the reason why you lose friends, I see that in return, social media can gear you up to help in a cause or even save a relationship!

So, allow me to share with you the top 10 tips I could think of in which social media use can help you save your relationship, regardless of its nature and its duration.

1. A whole new world

Social media has the power to open you up to a world full of possibilities and adventures! If routine is suffocating your relationship and you need to spice it up, you can always find cheaper and more convenient places to go and things to see, just a few clicks away with social media!

A whole new world by =madmoiselleclau

2. Meet me half way

If you’re in a relationship, you must be aware of your partners’ likes, dislikes, habits, traits and so on. If not, this is something which social media can indeed help you learn and capitalize on in order to better utilize positives and try to deal with what you see as negatives!

3. Love me tender

Social media can also help you deliver certain messages of love, misses and regrets which otherwise you may not be able to deliver! A short poem on your blog, a sweet status update or even just a short tweet to declare, universally, how you feel about someone could all have the power of mending the small cracks in the relationship.

4. A friend in need

One of the simplest, most effortless things one could do to save a friendship is write a “get well soon” or “happy birthday” note on your friend’s Facebook wall! However, there are many other ways to save the relationship which would require more time like: posting and tagging pictures of good memories, sharing certain jokes and clips and showing you care through short thoughtful comments about a piece they wrote, a new look they have and so on.

5. Lean on me

Sometimes, people shy away from directly sharing their fears or their troubles. They tend to vent through social media more openly. Try to listen between the noise online and put an effort into noticing a change of Facebook wall post tone or a sad tweet! If or when you do, make your move: call, message or try to meet in person and be there.

Lean on Me...

6. A fool for you

No one likes to feel fooled, and it hurts the same may it be coming from a friend, a lover or a life partner. Therefore, never try to hide, manipulate or lie about things through your social media accounts because sooner or later, you will be made and hell will break loose!

7. Set me free

If you care about your relationship with your partner, please, please, PLEASE, don’t suffocate them, neither offline nor online! Don’t track their every tweet, status update and posted picture then go mouthing off to him/her about that – learn to trust your partner because not everyone wants to cheat!

8. Me & Mrs. Jones

You might almost always be able to find someone who is a little bit prettier, maybe a wee bit funnier or just has a more toned body! Remember, both online and offline, fidelity remains sacred. Use social media in a way that allows you to meet new friends and business contacts but don’t let it alter your love for and faith in your partner.

9. Unforgettable

That’s what you want to be to your significant other however, 20 messages on his/her Facebook wall, 10 tweets in his/her stream and a bunch of virtual gifts every day will most definitely drive your partner away! Be moderate and unpredictable.

10. Can’t let you go

I don’t think any of us really wants to give up on a relationship. Nevertheless, always remember that when it’s time to let go, you need to let go! Don’t stalk your ex and don’t try to ruin their reputation through social media! Trust me, if you had one chance of getting back to them, you have lost that chance forever!

So, what do you think of these tips? Can you add anything more to them? How has social media changed your interactions with your partner?

Looking forward to your feedback :)

click on the image to enlarge

HTML 5 is the next generation of base platform of the web. While it’s still in draft, that didn’t stop a large number of developers and companies to start showcasing some of what the platform offers.

Apple is one of those companies that is very excited about HTML5 and is pushing heavily for wider adoption of the technology. They have produced a showcase of some of the techniques that people should be looking forward to using in HTML5.  The reason why Apple likes HTML5 is because it helps cure some of its flash phobias by providing native support for graphics within the HTML framework.

While web politics will surely play a part in the success of HTML5, what will definitely decide its success is how good HTML5 does graphics and how successful it is in bringing the internet’s platform from text into a full fledged graphic platform.

Not that it comes as any surprise, but this is also a battleground of internet browsers as well since not all internet browsers support all the HTML5 features and hence users will be limited in functionality depending on what browser they have. As you can see above, Internet explorer 8 and 9 are definitely the worst browsers when it comes to support of HTML5 and if they don’t correct that soon they will surely become quickly irrelevant.

Already, there are some great examples of HTML5 usage on the web and here are some of them:

Youtube HTML5 beta

Rejoice iPhone users, no Flash required

Youtube has a page where some of their videos are available in HTML5 format allowing you to view them without the use of Flash, if only people start embedding those so that I’m able to view them on my iPhone.

HTML5 Gallery

A lot of interesting examples

A website dedicated to showcasing other websites that uses HTML5 and what features they use in their implementations.

HTML5 Demos and Examples

Good for convincing skeptics

This websites provides quick examples of what HTML5 is capable off, seeing Canvas and Geolocation for the first time is certainly impressive.

CanvasPaint

Pixel Painting is Lovely!

MS Paint in your browser, nuff said! It even has a Ctrl-Z support!

So are you looking forward to HTML5? What impact do you see it having on applications and websites? Let us hear your thoughts.

Modern day slavery is more prominent and more of an issue than any other period of slavery in recorded history.

There is slavery in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, and nearly every country across the globe. The U.S. State Department estimates some 800,000 people are trafficked worldwide each year. More than 17,000 of those people end up in the U.S.

Children are "Not For Sale"

Idea & Objectives:

“United to fight the global slave trade of over 27 million people”…

Not For Sale Poster

Not For Sale is a campaign of students, artists, entrepreneurs, people of faith, athletes, law enforcement officers, politicians, social workers, skilled professionals, and all justice seekers united to fight the global slave trade and end human trafficking.

The campaign’s mission is to bring enough awareness about human trafficking to end modern day slavery in our lifetime. Furthermore, it aims to recruit, educate, and mobilize an international grassroots social movement that effectively combats human trafficking and slavery through “Smart Activism”. It deploys innovative solutions for every individual to re-abolish slavery — in their own backyards and across the globe.

Not For Sale believes that everyone has a skill to contribute that can free an individual living in bondage, and together we can stop human trafficking and end slavery in our lifetime.

Buzz Generated:

+13,472 active fans of the campaign’s Facebook fan page. It is very important to mention at this point the great efforts that are being marketed and promoted through Facebook such as certain cause related offline events that have the ability to raise funds and awareness simultaneously.

Events on the campaign's Facebook Fanpage

+10,312 followers on the campaign’s Twitter account.

More events marketed on the campaign's Twitter account

Opinion & Lessons Learned:

In my humble opinion, I think everyone who is anyone should be part of this campaign and should support it in any way possible! The issue that this campaign is trying to spread is both serious and spread worldwide and has no political agenda behind it.

So, what can we learn from this campaign?

• Combining online and offline activities could greatly help in achieving the campaign’s objectives and even in raising money to support the campaign.
• Campaigns which target millions of people should utilize more social media channels to capture the attention of those people.
• Capturing audience attention is never enough; you should be able to obtain their loyalty and show them that they are part of something real and tangible.
• Using facts and figures to support your campaign plays a very crucial role in helping people understand the gravity of the issue being campaigned.

Finally, I wonder: Have you been exposed to or involved in the issue of slavery before? Have you heard about this campaign? And do you support its mission?

Looking forward to your feedback down below…

Have you ever wondered how parents might think of it?

I have, therefore, I prepared a list of 5 reasons why parents can hate Facebook especially when it comes to their kids using it, followed up by some tips and pointers that could help parents in their struggle to give their kids some freedom while making sure they are safe.

1. Easy come, easy go…

Facebook applications, especially those like Cafe World and Farmville, teach kids that everything could be achieved with just a click or a few. Many parents consider this very negative because it effects the way their children are growing up and alters their image of reality!

2. Ready or not, here I come…

Parents, kids & Facebook!

When kids are exposed to social media channels at an early age, especially when it comes to Facebook, they are exposed to different people from all over the world. Although some people might view this as a positive growing aid, many parents fear that this will raise the chances of exposing their children to the “bad world and the bad people” since they are more likely to encounter sex offenders, perverts, pedophiles and so on.

3. What should I believe?

When children are young, they start developing their own belief system in the world they are living in. Through their parents, siblings, relatives, friends and school, they are supposed to build solid grounds for how they will turn up to be. Facebook allows for unorganized interactions with others who come from various cultures and have different mentalities, personalities, ways of thinking and so on, which can leave the child confused and lost!

4. Did you do your homework?

Regardless of your age, Facebook can cause serious problems for you, namely: addiction! As adults, we are more likely to be able to control our addiction and limit it to certain hours of the day. Kids, however, are not likely to do so! Therefore, Facebook could end up causing kids to ignore doing their homework, hyperactivity or even playing sick not to go to school!

5. Behavior is acquired!

Molding a kid requires a great amount of self discipline from parents, a discipline which surely does not exist on Facebook or any other social media sites for that matter! Drama, exaggerated reactions, rebellion and many other actions could be easily learned through Facebook.

Oh Crap. My Parents Joined Facebook!

So, what could parents do to limit the damage?

Consider the following:

• Monitor and control the time your kids spend on Facebook.
• Try to friend your your kids on Facebook, this will keep you involved and up-to-date with their latest.
• Remember: if you ban them from using Facebook, they will do it behind your back, so be smart about your approach!
• Talk to them and advise them but also take time to play some games with them!

Finally, and to wrap up allow me to ask you a few questions: Have you ever felt that Facebook represents a problem to your kids? Have you ever used Facebook to track your kids? Did it work?

Looking forward to your comments down below…

3OH!3 Got Iced On Stage

This was certainly a marketing and PR misstep by Diageo, the only way they could make it worse is by taking legal action against those behind the website. Now it is totally understandable if Smirnoff’s Marketing execs groaned with their palms across their faces when they first heard about this game but they should have capitalized on it instead of icing it. This can be poison to the brand, especially since the whole game is based on the perception that the drink is a girly and will make you gag, but there were ways that they could have spun the exposure to their advantage.

Now the main concern for Smirnoff is that it would have been inevitable, sooner or later, that some accident that involved ‘icing’ would occur and they would be left to do the clean up. Hence they attempted to distance themselves early on, but they went beyond the call of duty in what they have done by appearing antagonistic towards the bros icing bros. By doing so they are risking a Barbra Streisand effect in which they will call upon the wrath and attention of the internet, they should’ve instead made a statement distancing themselves from the game and moved on to hi-jack the message of the game.

Social media advertising and marketing is a certainly a two way street and brands should be able to react quickly to how fans are utilizing their brand, and instead of coercing them into stopping the brand should be able to convince them to get in line and promote the brand properly, something Apple does really well. In this case Smirnoff should have contained the campaign by probably participating with spoof of icing incidents and promoted responsible drinking through those ads. So instead of capitalizing on a new found market for their products and reacting quickly to the ever changing landscape of social media marketing they decided to just toughen up and alienate everyone that was involved in the game. A game that got so pervasive that it had people like Mike Zuckerberg and Denis Crowley of Foursquare participated in it.

Lesson’s that need to be learned by Smirnoff

• Marketing in the Social Media Age is agile, it is more about containing and redirecting that it is about blocking, limiting and censoring. As a brand you should avoid outright censorship on social media by all means, because the internet perceives the act as a cardinal sin and your brand might be crucified on the altar of freedom.
• Branding is a two way street and people through social media have more power over the brand than the marketing department does. So whatever they do, the brand needs to react positively and rely on their true fans to come to their defense before relying on their lawyers.

So what do you think of “icing”? Did Smirnoff react in a constructive manner? Let us hear your thought.

So far, and throughout my stay in both New York and Washington DC, I was able to see and experience the popularity of the infamous Starbucks; a popularity which one would believe is only exaggerated on TV and in movies! However, in reality, all this is true people: almost 6 out of 10 pedestrians has a cup of Starbucks beverage with them at any time of any given day! Just try walking into one of the many branches spread all over the place, chances are you will have to wait in line to get your coffee, muffin or even your small bottle of water!

Still, Starbucks excels in social media!

The Infamous Starbcuks Logo

Although Starbucks seems to not need any more advertising efforts or social media campaigns for that matter, it still aims to make its way deeper and firmer in its current and potential consumers’ minds and hearts through its social media campaigns.

It is worth mentioning here that, according to BrandChannel, Starbucks came in #1 among consumer brands by having 7.4 million Facebook fans, 901,925 Twitter followers and 6,509 YouTube subscribers. American brands dominated the top 10, with Red Bull the only non-US brand to make the top 10.

The latest campaign:

The “Reusable Tumbler” Campaign is one of the latest social media campaigns designed by Starbucks. In this campaign, Starbucks asks customers worldwide to use tumblers and help reduce environmental impacts.

Customers who bring a reusable tumbler into Starbucks stores on April 15 receive a complimentary brewed coffee!

Campaign Idea & Objectives:

Starbucks is giving customers around the world a bold incentive to swap the paper cup for a more eco-friendly option. This effort is just one of the ways Starbucks is collaborating with customers to reduce environmental impacts. The company has offered customers a discount for tumbler use since 1985.

Starbucks Free Coffee with Every Resuable Tumbler

“While our cup has become an integral part of the coffeehouse experience over the years, it has also become an environmental concern,” said Ben Packard, Starbucks vice president of Global Responsibility. “As a result, we’ve set aggressive goals to minimize cup waste through recycling and reusable options, and are collaborating with a wide range of stakeholders to drive meaningful change. In addition to working with cup manufacturers, municipalities and recyclers to make our cups more broadly recyclable, we’re encouraging customers to think about reusable cups the way they think about reusable grocery bags.”

The company said that customers can visit starbucks.com/thebigpicture and use the Impact Calculator, powered by the Environmental Defense Fund, to see how many trees can be saved through tumbler use. They can also make a pledge to use tumblers every day and encourage others to do so through social tools such as Facebook.

The Buzz:

Due to the great popularity of Starbucks, its huge number of fans on Facebook and the fact that the campaign results were seen offline, it is hard to give an estimate of this campaign’s Facebook buzz. However, I’m sure, just by looking at it’s Facebook fanpage, that the conversation and the engagement must have been huge!

The same goes for Twitter! There’s an endless stream of tweets about Starbucks everything!

Opinion & Lessons Learned:

I think this campaign rocks, and the Starbucks people are very smart to carry it out. Not only did they give their customers free coffee, they also were able to apply their CSR policy simultaneously! Simply, brilliant…

So what could we learn from this campaign?

• Even huge companies do benefit from social media, especially if they do it right!
• Social media campaigns do not have to always be about obtaining new customers or converting consumers to your product or service, they could also be about building loyalty, reminding existing customers and showing concern towards the environment.
• Giving to your customers will pay you back in loyalty which translates into sales!

To wrap up, what do you think of this particular campaign? Did you participate in it? And do you think Starbucks is doing well in terms of its social media efforts?

Looking forward to your feedback and insights down below.

Then comes Openbook, a website allows anyone to search embarrassing Facebook updates!

So what is Openbook?

Openbook is simply a new website that allows anyone to trawl through embarrassing and indiscreet status updates posted by Facebook users.

“Searching Openbook for potentially compromising terms like “sex”, “boss” or “drunk” throws up thousands of updates from the past few hours.” By Telegraph

Openbook: sharing your Facebook updates with the world!

The controversy:

When faced with an issue like this one, we as users are obliged to think of things in 2 ways:

On the one hand, we are the ones able to control what we write in our status updates. By that token, we should be able to decide what we want to share by limiting what we share! Therefore, if we don’t want the world to be able to find our embarrassing updates, we should not make them available and we do that by not writing them to begin with!

On the other hand, we feel that whichever social media platform we choose to use should be able to keep up its promises of privacy and we rebel against those that can’t or won’t.

At the end, I believe the choice is ours since, as we have seen already in the past, there is a limited response to our nags and complaints from those social media giants we choose to be signed up to!

What do you think: Are you pro or anti Openbook? And do you blame Facebook for this mess? Looking forward to your comments down below…

Don’t forget to check our previous post: “5 things that really shouldn’t be on Facebook!“

Using a combination of Openbook , a website that lets you search Facebook’s status updates, and the consultation of the nosy people of the neighborhood, we came up with the 5 things that should not be publicly shared on Facebook.

1. Phone numbers

If you have a new phone number, how about an SMS to everyone you know for the update? Or if you can’t help but do it on Facebook, at least use messages rather than posting your phone number where the entire world can see it.

Openbook: Want to prank call someone?

2. Your Crabs status

There are certain things that are just so intimate and private in nature that not only are you encouraged to keep them to yourself but even if you wanted to share them you won’t find anyone interested enough to listen to you.

One of those things is whether you have crabs or not!

TMI

3. Porn

Porn is pretty much everywhere on the web, every other bit that traverses the “Internet” is a porn bit. So it is no surprise to anyone that you can find it on Facebook but the amount and accessibility of it is astounding, just search for “4shared .flv” so it’s not that hard at all …

You are only using Facebook as far as anyone is concerned

4. Your Arrests

If you ever plan on being hired, associate with decent people, or project an image as anything but a thug you will need to keep your criminal record off social media networks. Also, it might not be too popular with your parole officer that you are boasting about your criminal record.

What else is on your record?

5. That you hate your job

Some people like their jobs, others are OK with it and a good chunk of people just don’t have much love for their jobs. While that statement is true, you don’t really find a whole lot of people announcing it to the world and possibly their bosses that they feel that way.

Then you should stay at home

It is just wonderful the info that people share on Facebook, and Openbook is doing us all a favor by exposing just how much people love sharing that information. I just wonder if everyone realizes that they are sharing it with the whole wide world and not just their group of “friends”!

Do you have any suggestions for things that we should be looking for on Openbook? Share with us your favorite stalker techniques.

Everybody Draw Mohammed Day Invitation

News is buzzing about death penalty due to the fact that Facebook has allowed the setting up of a Facebook group which is viewed as “blasphemous” according to Islamic beliefs.

“It is reported that petitioner Muhammad Azhar Sidiqque is waiting for the Pakistani police to contact Interpol about making arrangements for the arrest of Zuckerberg, Moskovitz, Hughes, and Andy (the guy who started the Facebook group – Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.”

Moreover, the Deputy Attorney General told the Pakistani High Court that Pakistan’s United Nations ambassador has been asked to escalate the issue in the U.N. General Assembly“. Examiner.com

What do you think will happen next? Will this one pass? Do you think that Facebook founder and co-founders are to blame?

Looking forward to your comments below.

The idea

Sometimes users need the extra encouragement to press that “like” button on Facebook, sometimes they need that extra push and that’s exactly what Nike did on their Nike Football’s Facebook Fanpage.

Basically, they offered exclusive content to their fans who click the “like” button, and encouraged and reminded those fans who didn’t press the button to do so.

How they did it?

Just Do It!

Nike are currently running their latest marketing campaign, “write the future” which highlights stars such as Drogba, Rooney, Ronaldo and others and displays the consequences for them making or breaking those critical moments on the game. Whether it’s saving your team from an eminent goal or missing that sure-goal pass.

The campaign’s corner piece is an ad:

To encourage fans to circulate and promote this ad, they have added a 10 minute behind the scenes feature on their Facebook that is only viewable if you click the “like” button.

What did they achieve?

Using this little trick they have:

• Gave people a reason to “like” the brand beyond just expressing their fandom.
• Made the brand more visible on peoples welcome screen on Facebook.
• Created exclusivity for the brand.

Would you click the “like” button just to see something? Let us know what you think in the comments section.

Advertising and PR agencies are constantly looking for the “right” ad concept to present their clients with. They jump up and down, roll over, turn upside down and sometimes even climb on trees in order to create an advertisement which is able to “speak” to the audience, grab their attention, and most importantly get them interested enough to want to own that product or service!

Many advertisers fail to do so, however, some do succeed and they do it with flying colors: Call of Duty – World of Warcraft 2 on Xbox is a perfect example of that!

The ad title is: “Everyone’s doing it!” and there are 2 versions of this ad with more or else the same idea, edge, wits and ability to REALLY capture your attention. Together, the 2 videos below have more than 142,000 views on Youtube!

Enjoy…

So tell me now, do you want to do it? ;)

Looking forward to your comments down below!

But the market of social networking sites proved to be far more liberal. We had many niche sites and even competitors for Facebook in the form of Twitter, LinkedIn and the many other services that co-exist with Facebook and shape what social networking is today.

This nature of the market allowed for more room for innovation, complimenting or integrating with existing services rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, and a healthy environment where risk takers and start-ups can blossom.

Fragmentation

Where will you go?

Social media is currently a one-size-fit-all space in which people of all walks and interests share this space. Soon enough, with the advent of more customizable and private Social networks, people will start fragmenting while still wanting to maintain the public connection. Activists, obsessive hobbyists, and the like would favor the space where they can free front their identities and discuss their interests with like minded people. This will open the space for more secluded and niche social networks to spring up on platforms like Ning and grou.ps.

Professionalization

Set yourself apart

Social networks, since their inception, have been all about connecting, but those connections didn’t have any purpose in and of themselves beyond the personal drives. I connected to a “friend” because I’ve been to college with him, or he’s my brother in law; whatever the reason was, it was strictly personal.

Businesses didn’t really factor into people’s social media connections at all beyond the networking and social factor. This will change.

The creation of networks that include a group of specialized handpicked people who provide customized and reliable services will be invaluable. Think of a network of lawyers that will provide basic services and answer legal questions, or a network of designers that provide designing advice and serve as a freelance hub.

All those services existed but they will soon rise to prominence when our social media starts professionalizing beyond its current casual nature.

Quantification

Social Media Return on Investment

Businesses like statistics; they help them understand their position and scrutinize their strategy. As more and more businesses join in the fray of social media marketing, a parallel industry will start growing along side it, a statistics business. Services such as Trendrr, Sprout, Shoutlet and many others will gain momentum and in turn more business, just to make sense of the data and trends of social media. This will force marketing firms to complete their migration into the information age.

Given the current environment of mistrust that engulfs Facebook, the future of it being the biggest social network is being jeopardized and surely competitors will jump on the opportunity to take advantage of the circumstances. This will translate into a fiercer environment and will only be beneficial to us, the users. It will create the perfect environment for social networks to evolve beyond their casual nature into even more complex beasts.

So what do you feel is the next big thing in social media? Let us hear your thoughts.

Idea & Objectives:

Campaign for Liberty

The Campaign for Liberty’s mission is to promote and defend the great American principles of individual liberty, constitutional government, sound money, free markets, and a noninterventionist foreign policy, by means of educational and political activity.

It is worth mentioning here that the Campaign for Liberty is the name of the actual organization carrying out this mission for liberty. This is quite interesting to me since it is the second organization’s name I come across which defines itself as a campaign. What I can deduce from this is that people are more likely to “follow” or “support” a certain organization or cause if its name entailed “campaign”, which shows virality, unity and a real goal.

Buzz Generated:

47,245 active and engaging people “Like” this on the campaign’s Facebook Fanpage, with comments reaching 125 per wall post!

Talks on the campaign's Facebook Fanpage

As for the site’s Alexa ranking, all I can say is: Politics do really attract people and here’s why:

Alexa Stats- Campaign for Liberty Website

Lessons Learned:

I may or may not agree with the organization’s mission or its campaign goals, however, the truth of the matter is that: politics sells!

Therefore, if you have a cause you need to promote through social media, and based on this campaign and other cause-related campaigns I’ve written before, here are the lessons to learn:

• Your campaign’s name has value – and your organization’s name too! If you have a cause-related organization it helps if you add “campaign” to it, it makes it feel more viral.
• Political campaigns in specific, and cause-related campaigns in general, usually attract the target audience and are able to get support and even donations more than any other campaigns.
• Adding a store to your campaign helps generate income to support your campaign goals and objectives.
• Combining online presence and offline events is a great mix for success when your campaign objectives and audience are well defined.

Finally, what do you think of the organization and the campaign? Do you think there is actual room for making a real difference? Would you consider supporting or being a part of this campaign?