I am a marketing-minded digital media professional at Butler/Till in Rochester, NY. I have a great deal of passion in particular for social/conversational media and social influence marketing. I have been at Butler/Till since 2006, and have been working solely in the digital space ever since. I can be found on Twitter at the handle @gavinthomas11. Outside of the office, you’re most likely to find me spending time with family and friends, listening to my favorite bands, hitting the slopes/court/field/course, or cheering on Duke Basketball.
This morning, Facebook announced that it would be taking it’s highly praised and highly controversial Open Graph and Like Button to the streets. Soon, this functionality will be available on mobile phones via mobile applications. Given the explosion of mobile internet and app use in the past few months/years, this was the next logical step in the progression of Open Graph.
Perhaps what’s most interesting about this announcement is the language used by Eric Tseng, Facebook’s Head of Mobile Products. He said Facebook “really sees mobile as the future.” With Facebook’s recent usage and cross-platform functionality explosions, it seems as though the overall digital landscape will be largely influenced by moves made by Facebook. Mobile sites and applications will soon be able to take advantage of this new social functionality.
Let’s take Foursquare or Yelp for example; Many of us are used to checking in or reading reviews on this type of mobile app. When Facebook brings the Like Button to these apps, we’ll not only be able to check into these locations on Foursquare, we’ll be able to see which of our Facebook friends have liked that venue. We’ll be able to read reviews or see Likes from those same friends from a nearby restaurant on Yelp or Urbanspoon as well. Sure, we have “friends” on these applications already, but the potential is much greater with the bucket of hundreds of my Facebook friends than it is with the 15 or 20 close friends I have on Foursquare.
Last night, many of us fell witness to a remarkable event in sports that has only happened 20 other times in major league baseball history – a perfect game. Well… almost. The Detroit Tigers’ Armando Galarraga came as close as it gets to baseball history (2 outs in the 9th inning) before being snubbed by a horrific call by the first base umpire. In what should have been the last at-bat of the game, the Indians batter was clearly thrown out at first base. However, MLB umpire Jim Joyce saw it differently. He called the runner safe, thereby extending the game and ruining Galarraga’s shot at baseball immortality.
At this point, you’re probably wondering what a sports story like this is doing on a blog devoted to media and marketing. It’s not just because I’m a big sports fan and want to talk more about it in true “water-cooler” fashion with our readers. The real purpose for this post is to highlight the way the situation was handled by all parties involved.
As many of you have probably noticed, Google took another unique approach to its homepage logo today. In the past, we’ve seen logo celebrations ranging from children’s artwork to Dr. Seuss scenes. Today, however, marked a new level of interest and engagement for users of the google.com search page. Instead of a traditional celebratory static gif, today’s searchers have been greeted with a fully interactive and completely enjoyable version of everyone’s true favorite video game – Pac-Man. The simple game has been posted to recognize Pac-Man’s 30th birthday.
So why would Google make the effort to implement such a different concept on perhaps the most recognizable page on the web today? It may seem like just a quirky addition that some developer at Google threw together in 12 minutes (in reality it probably took him or her 7), but this “cute” little game has had a big impact for Google in a very short time. By providing users with an engagement aspect besides search, they are providing a utility that extends beyond the page’s normal offerings. In this case, that utility is entertainment.
Over the last few days, there has been a great deal of talk surrounding Facebook’s immanent “check-in” to the geolocation space. Sources close to Facebook have admitted that users will soon have the ability to tag their location within their status updates. So, is this feature a direct threat to location-based applications like Foursquare and Gowalla? Probably. But… maybe not.
It appears that Facebook will be launching its location service in the form of a custom application for McDonalds. What’s interesting about the discussion surrounding the McDonalds example is the speculation of how Facebook will monetize this feature – especially since it is launching with one of the world’s largest advertisers. Initial signs point to Facebook not making money from the actual application or functionality, but from an associated media buy. A lot of the impact Foursquare and Gowalla will feel from this move will be determined by just how “local” Facebook decides to go. If Facebook allows every mom and pop under the sun with a Facebook page to create a “Place” for their business, Foursquare and Gowalla could be in trouble. After all, a majority of the locations in those apps are user created and not part of huge national/multinational chains. If, however, Facebook decides to keep the locations to major partner chains as an incentive for media buys, the current location players may be ok.
As you may know from our previous post, we’ve been digging into the massive Facebook changes to try to uncover what they mean for Facebook users and the internet landscape in general. For the purpose of this post, I’m going to focus on the potential impact Facebook’s Open Graph will have on digital advertising.
For a while, Facebook has been trying to bring a social aspect to its display ads within their site. We’ve all seen the engagement ads telling us our friends are a fan of something and encouraging us to become a fan (now “like”). There’s a great deal of research supporting the theory that friends and acquaintances are much more trusted and influential than brands and advertisers. So, it is clearly advantageous to tap into a user’s Facebook friends to help sell products or services. With Open Graph, I can now more readily see what my friends are doing or what they are interested in across the web – not just on Facebook. This is information that they are willingly sharing with their network (again – privacy post coming soon…). Right now, early adopters like Levi’s have crafted content portals that show users what their friends think about a particular pair of jeans. If I see my one of my friends likes a pair and why, I’m more likely to consider purchasing those jeans.
After yesterday’s Facebook F8 Developer’s Conference announcements, I noticed myself doing something very interesting. After hearing about the new Facebook integration on Pandora, I found myself racing to Pandora to make sure I had an updated station list of my current favorite bands. I haven’t been a heavy user of Pandora in the past few months, but you can bet I went there straight away to start using it again when I found out my friends were going to be able to see mypublic artist list. Now, I’ll be using the tool more to see what my Facebook friends are listening to.
I love sharing music with others to discover new tracks or artists, and love giving people suggestions on new bands to check out. At the root, it’s what Pandora has set out to do from the beginning. It is no longer just “Discover New Artists and Songs (that our robot is plugging into your playlist)”. It’s now “Discover New Artists and Songs (that your friends are already listening to and are now sharing with you socially…. and all that other robot stuff too). Facebook has given Pandora a well-deserved boost in usage by me, and I can almost guarantee that I’m not alone.
Yesterday, Twitter announced the release of it’s long-awaited ad platform entitled “Twitter Promoted Tweets”. Bear with me because I’m trying to get up to speed with all of the provisions behind the new service, but here’s my “first-glance” review in the form of 3 quick points:
Since Promoted Tweets are going to have the same look, feel and functionality of typical tweets, advertisers will now have a quick and easy way to combine their brand’s paid and earned Twitter efforts. Users can retweet and reply to the tweet as they would if the tweet lived within the advertiser’s normal stream. We talk a lot about the importance and potential success gained from driving earned media with paid placements… this is a condensed version that all lives within Twitter (smart).
[Note: Following sentence to be read in your best valley-girl dialect] Since we haven’t been, like, increasingly bombarded with the word “Like” enough in, like, everyday language, Facebook is making moves to, like, hammer us over the head with it.
[Ok, back to your own voice] Many of you have already heard the news about Facebook’s decision to soon do away with the “Become a Fan” button on brand pages and replace it with a simpler “Like” button. This news follows the other recent “Like” announcement that will allow people to like just about anything across the internet via Facebook functionality. For the sake of this post, let’s focus on the impact the new Like button has on Facebook brand pages and their former “Fans”.
Mike Davis, Senior Digital Planner/Buyer here at B/T provided Media Mosaic with a fantastic wrap up of the 2010 iMedia Breakthrough Summit. Here’s what he had to say: .
After four jam-packed days of presentations, conversations with 75+ vendors about their latest and greatest capabilities and getting to spend some time with the best of the best in Digital Media I left with a slightly different perspective on where Digital Media is today and where it’s going. Dean Donaldson, Director of Digital Experience at Eyeblaster gave a great presentation tying everything covered at iMedia together nicely. If you ever get the chance to see him speak I highly recommend taking advantage of it.
monetize this feature – especially since it is launching with one of the world’s largest advertisers. Initial signs point to Facebook not making money from the actual application or functionality, but from an associated media buy. A lot of the impact Foursquare and Gowalla will feel from this move will be determined by just how “local” Facebook decides to go. If Facebook allows every mom and pop under the sun with a Facebook page to create a “Place” for their business, Foursquare and Gowalla could be in trouble. After all, a majority of the locations in those apps are user created and not part of huge national/multinational chains. If, however, Facebook decides to keep the locations to major partner chains as an incentive for media buys, the current location players may be ok.
