metarand

Triibes: Moving Beyond The Echo Chamber With Seth Godin

Today marked the inaugural gathering of the San Francisco chapter of Triibes, the social network set up by marketing guru Seth Godin.

Meeting over lunch at Apple HQ, the group discussed what they were looking to get out of their involvement, broke ice and nibbled pizza. About half way through Seth dialled in and the conversation lifted a notch.

Seth spoke about what Triibes means to him - a place to engage in dialogue with the audience he has cultivated through his writing over the years.

He also spoke about his vision of books and how they fit into the social media paradigm. He sees them as a great way of collating a number of conversations or essays into a format that can easily shared. As proof that his theory was being put into practice, the group unanimously pointed out they had all given one of Seth’s books to a colleague.

It was also interesting to note the attraction for some folks in joining Triibe was that it is not a part of the usual social networking echo chamber. Yet.

Tags: Seth Godin, Triibes

Social Media Interaction Via Brandstreaming

Richard MacManus has a great introductory piece to the concept of brandstreaming over on ReadWriteWeb.

As defined by Pheedo, brandstreaming refers to the consistent flow of content created by a brand.

I believe that taken as a concerted effort and part of a portfolio of word of mouth engagement, brandstreaming is both a very useful identifier of brand influencers and propagator of conversations. It’s not a platform in itself, but a key piece of the overall social media brand puzzle.

[Picture courtesy of brentjholmes]

Tags: Brandstreaming, Pheedo, Richard MacManus

4chan: the counterculture netmeme

If you’re not already dialled in, the Guardian has a great article about Chris Poole’s influential message board - 4chan.

David Smith describes the site, which gets 8.5 million page views a day, as an ideas laboratory, capable of unleashing a ferocious creative force. It’s key value proposition is in pointing to what constitutes the current netmeme or zeitgeist of the moment:

Though most of what appears soon vanishes and is forgotten, the stuff that survives can easily jump to the wider web community and ‘go viral’, passing from person to person across the world.

Tags: 4chan, Chris Poole

Metarand Unplugged: Matthew Colebourne, CEO of coComment On Markets As Conversations

In this session of Metarand Unplugged, we talk with the CEO of Geneva based coComment, Matthew Colebourne.

As an aggregator of millions of comments across the web, Matt has a good understanding of how brands are beginning to grok that markets are conversations and that there is a huge opportunity to build deeper brand engagement through conversations.

Stream the mp3:

here

Stream the Session in Quicktime:

here

Tags: coComment, Matthew Colebourne

Playboy Embraces Social Media

Playboy has dived head first into the social media arena, setting up partnerships with Break, Howcast, Metacafe, Veoh and YouTube.

The entertainment-lifestyle brand sees this move as a great way to leverage off of the success of “The Girls Next Door” and create the Playboy Audience Network.

Mixercast will also be developing ad-supported content and contest widgets for use on the network, which will move to short-form content franchises. This suite of marketing and interactive content widgets will be used to extend Playboy-branded experiences to social networks and also to blogs and start pages.

A talent search is currently underway on YouTube to find the 55th Anniversary Playmate.

Playboy is aiming to create more of the interactive engagement in their digital business that they’ve achieved through the high-touch world of parties, events, location-based entertainment venues, and retail stores.

Tags: Break Media, Howcast, Metacafe, Mixercast, Playboy, Social Media, social network, Veoh, Widgets, YouTube

Cox Confirms Acquisition of Adify Ad Network

Cox Enterprises has confirmed that it has acquired vertical online advertising network company, Adify Corp.

Adify provides Build Your Own Network technology, which empowers media companies to increase their reach and boost revenue. Backed by Venrock and US Venture Partners, this Silicon Valley company will become part of Cox TMI in a transaction expected to complete in May.

Cox is a leading player in the automotive media vertical, but has pledged to remain committed to serving the broader media industry through Adify.

Some sources are reporting that the deal is valued at $300 million.

Tags: Adify, Advertising Platform, Cox Enterprises, US Venture Partners, Venrock

Marketing Is Simple, Right?

Identify target. Engage.

Think about this imperative statement set from the perspective of a marketer. Marketing is simple, right.

Now factor in the myriad methods for identifying targets. And overlay that with the exploding number of ways to engage with identified targets.

Whew! I know how you feel - seems overwhelming doesn’t it?
Where do you start?

OK, step back for a second and repeat after me” “Marketing is simple, right.”

This is the message being preached by Emmy award winner, Brad Jakeman. Take a look at the landscape.

There have never been more communications channels, yet it has never been harder to connect with consumers.

Brad believes marketers have become obsessed with the channel and forgotten about the content.
Consumers want brands to participate in their conversations, they want to engage and be engaged. For them the medium is peripheral to the experience.

Now let’s go back to our opening statement.

Identify target. Engage.

Flip this around and think about it from the consumer’s point of view. Given all the ways they could connect it’s also a question for them of which device, program, solution they decide to engage with.

Do I use my iPhone to twitter through twinkle, do it via my desktop on twhirl, dive into one of my browsers and send a message in 140 characters through a Facebook app or on Friendfeed?

The point is that the process of identifying and engaging is a dialogic one. It is two sides of the branding coin, one for marketers, and one for consumers.

To quote Brad, marketers need to create things people want to SEEK out, not SCREEN out. And the key marketing word of the moment: ENGAGE.

[Pictures courtesy of mleak]

Tags: Brands, Marketing

What’s the KeyPoint of a Facebook Application?

The KeyPoint Credit Union is reported by Jim Bruene to be the first financial institution to launch full-fledged account access through Facebook.

The application, which was developed by MShift, Inc, provides one-click access to account balance information for KeyPoint CU users. The app stands at 6 daily active users, which is 40% of the Facebook members who have installed it - so it has a whopping 15 person install base.

Checking out your balance on the site you most frequent is useful, but it’s not a gobsmackingly good experience you want to evangelize to all your Facebook friends, nor is it an engaging utility you cannot do with out. Widgets are great - for example, Wesabe has launched an account balance Mac widget which streams real time balance updates.

However, banking and other enterprise applications on Facebook and other social networks need to go beyond replicating the experience of web solutions. They need to focus on their audience as users, not as banking customers — what engages them, why would they be excited by your app — think brand recognition, think deep engagement and then think again — are you putting up an app because you can or do you have a purpose in mind. In many respects the enterprise Facebook apptivity is analogous to the early corporate approach to virtual worlds - “Woohoo, board members, we have a presence in Second Life…errrm”.

I am sure that Facebook and similar platforms will be an awesome playground for business, but on their users terms.

Do You Have a Facebook Strategy?

Used to be a time, not that long ago (pre May 25th - the launch date of the Facebook platform), when the most frequently asked question in VC pitch meetings was, “What’s your China strategy?”

Today, topping the faqs has to be, “What’s your Facebook strategy?”

For CxOs who have not yet cottoned on to the viral coefficient and engagement aspects of Facebook, here are a few metrics worth digesting:

* in the first 20 weeks 366 million applications were installed from the Facebook platform.

* this growth is continuing unabated and is set to track past 1 billion in the first year.

* in August - there were 14 million unique app users (this equated to 33% of all Facebook members)

* in August - there were 88 million app visits

* in August - average dwell time per visit was 4:30 minutes.

Asking whether a company has a Facebook strategy is also shorthand for asking whether its executives have embraced the open architecture model. Facebook is the tip of the iceberg, with many more opportunities to leverage deeply engaged user communities on the horizon.

[Stats courtesy of Justin Smith of InsideFacebook @ Graphing Social Patterns, picture courtesy of BeFitt]

Viral Video Internet Style

The folks at Cakke have created a compilation of recent viral Internet hits.

Awesome stuff. Thanks Laurel for the tip off.