Community Mobilization

DIY fashion for teens

There is a new online DIY fashion service that is targeting teens and tweens. EST. Today is a compelling site that encourages the exchange of ideas amongst its fashionista teen user base.

The site leverages the power of interactive community driven social media and incorporates do it yourself excitement. The production of the content and fashion rests on the shoulders of the participants making the idea exchanges that more interesting. No doubt this is certain to become a fashion hunting mecca as designers and clothing producers lurk to see the next up and coming trends so they can bring them to mass market.

The Irrational Logic Of Twitter Spam

I was doing some cleaning upon my twitter lists today and I began to notice more and more spam accounts. Heck, there are event twitterspam, and stop twitter spam sites. Give, we all knew this would happen eventually, but the concept is illogical. Micro posting spam is about as effective as e-mail spam ... it gets caught and you get booted. Moreover users, I would think, would tun off your feed, report you, and then you get booted.

On the other hand, I have seen some nice uses of marketing via twitter. Product updates, information, and insider goodies all are appearing on twitter seducing potential users to join the stream and reap the rewards. As it is still a relatively small community, comparatively, I think there is a lot of intimacy and authenticity here and that is why I am taking the time to clean out my lists and make sure I am really getting the updates I.

Social Network useres Don't Mind the Advertising ... Too Much

Razorfish recently conducted a survey of its Social Network users, and based on the results of over 1,000 responses they do not mind the presences of advertisements on the sites. Given there are some social networks that do a better job of integrating advertisements into the their user interface than others, making the advertisements integrated into the experience instead of a large flashing portal on the side of a page. The survey says 76% do not mind seeing the adds and 40% actually purchased from them.

The article goes on to discuss the value proposition and monetization strategies that exist in social networks, and how companies are being proactive in investigating these spaces. Razorfish's suggestion is that content and services distribution is becoming more important than Web destinations. The development of widgets to promote word of mouth marketing is a growing strategy as well as targeted recommendation marketing. sixty-five percent of survey respondents said they made repeat purchases from a Web site that sent them a recommendation based on their purchase history, and there exist opportunities to use social network feed information to develop applications around peer-to-peer recommendations as well.

Tweehearts - Love on SMS

In recent days there has been some buzz about the wedding engagements being proposed on Twitter. As a medium I love the idea, as a married man I am not sure that I would ask my wife to marry me in an open public forum ... with only 140 characters to express my self.

What I most like about the story is that this small micro trend is a statement about the openness that our personal lives are taking on as we adopt and implement more technology. In particular social network / presence technology. Even as far back as 2000 we were seeing the death of privacy, and in some cases we embraced the idea, documenting our every life moment not just for ourselves, but for for the friends / fans we digitally accumulate.

Do Social Networks Make Good Friends

I got a ping when I looked at my Facebook Account the other day reminding me it was a friend's birthday. He is a good friend, someone I have know for over a decade, and so I sent him a message and gave a call congratulating him on another year. This is also the same friend who has been in and out of the hospital battling pneumonia, but you would never have know it from his profile.

To what extent do social networks provide the rudimentary bits of data to help people identify as a 'friend', and blur the meaning of a friendship? In addition have social networks spaces changed our definition of Friend to whomever finds us in the digital spaces and asks to befriend us? And most curious to me is do we have different standards for what constitutes a real world friend and an online friend?

I do not ask these questions rhetorically, I am honestly interested in the evolving definition of Friend. And once we understand the barrier to entry, I think we have to look at what the expectations and benefits are to both. Is it more permissible for a live friend to miss a birthday vs the digital on line friend who has the system as a crib sheet to important data?If you are in distress who get put on the telephone tree - either or both?  Most importantly who holds the most sway in helping you with decision making?

I think the last one is the million dollar question. There are associations and conference all based on word of mouth marketing, but have we measured the value or power of word of text? Does the digital friend have the same impact on your decision making as the real world friend? I would be hesitant to throw blanket statements over this, and end the post with my hope that there may be some genuine longitudinal market research showcasing the value propositions that exist in digital friends.

Social Media Marketing vs. Word of Mouth? Are You Crazy?

I was having a conversation with a fellow marketing professional the other day and we lamented about recent conversations we had both overheard about the strategic independence of word of mouth marketing and social network marketing.

Certain organizations we both interface with are retooling their marketing approach to segment word of mouth and social media, but they are missing the point that this is all one in the same. The ability to deliver a compelling message and have it spread from one person to the next is equally as critical in traditional media as it is in new social media. When consider that 'net speed' is 7X faster than real life, we have to really consider who is king here - channel, content, or connection.

Social Network Wars

The fractured individual identity that comes with multiple social networks used to be easy. You were who you were depending on who you were with. Now with the persistent nature of Social networks it is nearly impossible to maintain your own identity consistently, seeing that you have so many different user groups converging in one open arena. I think this was an unintended consequence of open social networking spaces. I love this video - it captures the realities of juggling not only multiple identities but multiple identities on multiple spaces.

David Neff on using social media tools in Non Profits

Our friend and social media maven Beth Kanter has posted a insightful interview with our other friend and frequent co-presenter David Neff. David using the Sharinghope.tv platform to provide 3 key tips to non profits when entering the social medial space.

The tips are 1. Experiment, 2. Buys a video Camera, and 3. Research what other companies and organizations are doing in the field and learn from their success and mistakes. These suggestions are not only valid for nonprofits but they ring true to any organization or company. Part of being successful is understanding the space you are entering. Any for profit company will invest money and research into understanding new markets before getting into them. With social media all you really need is a few adventurous staff members to try things on with an eye always focusing on the organization's goal.

Brightkite looks a lot like Dodgeball

I just got an invitation to join Brightkite, a private beta location based social network. From the outset the system seems to mirror Dodgeball, a three year old Mososo built by friends Dennis Crowley and Alex.

After playing with Brightkite I really do not see a whole lot of difference between it and other mososos I have seen in the past. The infuriating thing that this system may prevent is what Dennis calls the Ex-girlfriend situation. Once in a circle, always in a circle. It is the quintessential example of how technology does not always play nice with the social realties and proclivities of users.

I will give Brightkite a point for integrating other social space lists to help you connect with existing connections in new spaces. One of the more frustrating things when you experiment with a new system is trying to hunt down all of your real friends. I put in my Twitter user name and found a number of folks I would like to know their whereabouts, particularly during a conference. The heart breaking thing is that Verizon does not support the Brightkite platform yet. But like most innovations most people 'get it' after a while.

Social Networks and Fundraising

Non Profit organizations are being drawn towards large social networking sites at a rapid pace, due in large part to the density of potential volunteers. One of the organizations looking to recruit new donors is the International Humanitarian Foundation. The group recently launched the $10/1000 campaign focusing on attracting 1000 new donors at $10. "Social networking has the power to effect change in our world. We can reach the people we know will be interested in our work in a viral manner," said IHF President Amish Parashar.

Part of the allure continues to be massive scope and size of these spaces, but no one has really tried to quantify the quality for specific actions. There have been no research studies that I have seen that help fund raisers better understand conversion rates in social networks, and ROI for each fund raised dollar. IHF suspects tha the overwhelming majority of new donors will be 1 to 3 degrees away from existing IHF volunteer, which speaks to the assumption that the web technology allows for stronger reach across weaker ties but we still do not know how strong or how far that reach can go.