I'm not checking Facebook nearly as often as I used to. Today I noticed I'd been sent by a political SuperPoke. I'm a little surprised that Slide has gone in this direction.
Time will tell whether this is a wise choice or not. Tibet's a more complex situation than TV reports do full justice too. Annoying China is not a good strategy if you wish to expand into APAC either.
On the other hand, this shows how powerful social networks can be harnessed to promote a positive and peaceful message. I think it's far better to use Facebook to bring attention to the problems in Tibet than trying to disrupt the Olympics is.
Showing posts with label social media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social media. Show all posts
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Facebook and Slide gets political: Free Tibet
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Doing the FriendFeed thang
This is the Twhirl effect. As Twhirl will soon support FriendFeed... I thought it's about time I did too.
So, this morning, it took just a few minutes to set up
The Marketing and Communications department lurvs it when I do that sort of thing
Dear Marcoms; I've created a bigmouthmedia FriendsFeed. Don't worry about it. It'll take care of itself. Oh... you might get some friend emails. Don't worry about this other.
Once again I note that all these efforts to cope with the "decentralised self" work around the single person concept and not that of a company. The very word "friend" is a human concept and rather emotive too. It doesn't seem to suit corporations at all.
MSN flying high, Google and Yahoo doing equally badly
Ah. A chart that shows MSN kicking Google into touch. How often do you see that?
The chart, of course, comes from Facebook's newly launched Lexicon. It's great fun to play with.
MSN likely does this well because Facebookers will be inviting each other to chat on 'MSN' - meaning Live Messenger.
Here's a chart that was used to try and stoke the heated console debates we're prone to!
Finaly's first comment was, "Can you get UK specific data?". Sadly not. Not yet.
It's a shame because if you could drill into geographies then you'd have a great tool for predicting retail buzz. Which toys are going to be the big sellers at Christmas? Facebook's Lexicon could tell you. I fear it's a little bit of a blunt instrument for the retail vertical now. It should work for travel (to an extent, at least for hotel room prices) and any international topic.
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
My voting policy
Gosh.
Now that I force myself to post to this blog now and then. Now that I'm on LinkedIn, Twitter and other social sites I'm finding myself in contact with you lot more often.
This is a good thing.
One thing that I've noticed is that I get asked to vote for things rather a lot; mainly on Sphinn but also on other sites.
Hmm.
Here's my policy; Feel free to ask me to vote for something. I'll go to the site, review the latest submissions and vote for all of the ones there I like. I may or may not end up voting for you as I won't vote for anything I don't think deserves a vote. By asking me to vote for something you are, in effect, reminding me to go check in on the site and engage with it.
How does that sound?
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Building your own micro-Sphinn with Yahoo Pipes
I announced to Twitter that I want Sphinn to let me know when people I trusted had started to sphinn a post. Seconds later; oh wait... I think each user has a sphinns RSS and I love Yahoo Pipes.
And so I present the Yahoo Pipe for Micro Sphinn (beta 0.1) which outputs sphinn posts when two or more of the following have voted for the same story.
Danny Sullivan, Rusty Brick, Susan, Patrick Altoft, Philipp Lenssen, Vanessa Fox, Chris Winfield, Bill Slawski, Lisa Barone, SEO Honolulu, Lyndon, Loren Baker, Viper Chill, Chris Cathcart, Sebastian, David Wallace, Spostare Duro, Kevin Heisler, Rach, Mel C and Jeff Quipp
I'll put my hands up and admit - this needs work. I actually probably need to submit more Sphinn users in order to get the "wisdom of the crowds" to work. I can off set this by increasing the 2 or more limit to 3 or more or higher. If you'd like to be added then leave me a comment with your Sphinn URL.
I've also published this Pipe so feel free to subscribe to it or clone and modify! http://pipes.yahoo.com/girdwood/microsphinn
Monday, March 31, 2008
Decentralised Profiles
I've spent the entire weekend and all of today in Edinburgh. Woo. Rare. As a result I've spent a little time tending to all the decentralised profiles bigmouth has grown over the years.
- Flickr - With pictures from SES uploaded and some more from Norway's ski slopes to appear tonight
- Twitter - New! I fell to Twitter during SES New York thanks to Jennifer Laycock so now bigmouth has too.
- Upcoming - Where you can expect to find bigmouths roaming around, talking, eating popcorn and handing out teeth.
- big clever - It doesn't look like its getting updated very often but one of the Edinburgh based teams run a branded blog!
- delicious - Used to tag lots of external news about is; good news, comments, award wins, etc
It takes a while! We've products like FriendFeed to try and help tie all these profiles together. I don't suspect it'll take long before we start seeing corporate alternatives.
In particular, Flickr really needs help understanding that big companies might want to use it. Right now we're a set of rules within marcoms which govern the type of photographs that can get uploaded, who gets the password, etc. A Google style MCC would be nice!
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
SES New York: Successful Tactics for Social Media Optimization (SMO)
Rookie mistake! I didn’t get to the room early enough for the popular Successful Tactics for Social Media Optimization (SMO) track and all the power sources for my laptop are already in use. No batteries left. No choice... I’ll have to try and take notes by hand.
Hmm. Not sure my note taking went very well. I’ve lots of bullet points... but what do they mean? For this blog post I think I’ll simply list my bullet points verbatim (risky!) and see if I can remember what I was thinking when I made them. Comments below each bullet point reflect my after the track thoughts.
Update: This will come as no surprise but I've started a Twitter account.
Li Evans
- Viagra Joke
- Create Buzz
Okay... let’s see where Li is going with this...
- Video Sharing
Gosh. We’re minutes into the session and I’m already wondering where we’re going... we’ve got Viagra, we’ve got the need to create a buzz and Li’s just suggested video sharing.
- How to tie a tie
What? Tie tying? I didn’t see that one coming!
- It’s all about links. Wow! SEO 2.0
- Li remembers Yahoo (puts her ahead of many of yesterday’s presentations)
- Li mentions Yahoo and doesn’t mention Microsoft. Wow!
- People respect honest reviews
- Know your audience
- Know how sites work
- Know how the rules
Good stuff
- Cheese steaks
Li used cheese steaks and Yelp as a social media example. But what the hell is a cheese steak? Logic dictates that they might be a steak covered in cheese... but, no? Surely no one would do that!?
Jennifer Laycock
- Talking about Flickr and Twitter
- No voice but she’s a good speaker
- Conversation to join in
- Shows pictures of cakes
Damn it Jennifer. I’m getting hungry now.
- People digest images differently from how they digest text
Ha-ha! Clever! I see what she’s done there... shows pictures of cake and then talks about digesting images.
- Shows images of Cookie Monster Cupcakes
- Shows ‘Edible Gardening’ community on Flickr. What!
- Scrapbooking with food
Right. Jennifer’s beaten me with this food onslaught.
- Sells cucumbers
- Points out that you can take camera phone pictures and send them directly to Flickr
- Li Evans takes picture of audience with her camera phone
- Moves onto Twitter
- Asks who’s twittering this session; people are; people are twittering that she’s asking who’s twittering this session.
I was beginning to fear an infinite loop at this stage. Thankfully Jennifer doesn’t ask whether anyone is twittering that people are twittering that Jennifer is asking whether anyone is twittering her session on twittering.
I skipped Twitter and went straight to Pownce. Tamar suggested this was a silly idea. I think she may be right. Must consider Twitter again.
- Mr T picture shared via Twitter hooks interest from Lisa Barone
Hmm. Must re-consider Twitter.
- Chicken Dance Elmo
Not sure why I wrote that down. An alien intervention? Anyone else remember Chicken Dance Elmo appearing – at all – in SES New York?
- Twitter as a news source
I’m addicted to news; must re-consider twitter.
- Retweets
- Great shiny red shirt
- It’s not stalking; it’s observing!
Hmm. Must reconsider Twitter.
Tamera Kremer from Wildfire
- Cakes! Again!
- del.icio.us
Ha! Another pun no one notices... pictures of cakes and then onto del.icio.us.
- 4 million users at delicious
- 100 million webpages bookmarked
- She laughs at the mention of “A-List” bloggers
Good thing to laugh at. I’d have twittered that. Oh; if I had a twitter account.
- Jennifer studies Tamera’s delicious screen grab closely
- What? Has she seen a link building opportunity on the screen?
I remember studying Tamera’s delicious screen grab closely again at this point.
- Wildfire produced a two page quick start guide for delicious
- Boosted their clients’ delicious participation ten fold
- Note to self; must delicious tag Lisa’s coverage of Lyndsay’s Orion Panel
William Flaiz from Avenue A | Razorfish
- Note to self; AA | R have Apple has a client and are owned by Microsoft. How oddly cool!
- Flaiz headlines with: Be Part of the Community
Got to agree with Flaiz here – social media is about being part of the community and not trying to trick or manipulate it. I hope the audience take this home.
- Can tell this is a presentation from a big agency; it has a circle diagram in it
I think I need to get a circle diagram into one of my next presentations.
- Screen grab includes the ‘share’ widget for blog posts
- Note to self; consider the widget for this blog
- Flaiz suggests social bookmarking positive and neutral mentions of clients’ brand and products.
Ooh. Isn’t this a controversial thing to suggest?
- Flaiz suggests that this tactic can be used to push negative mentions of clients’ brand and products off the top of the SERPs.
Oooh. This certainly is a controversial thing to suggest... especially from an agency the size of Avenue A | Razorfish. I wonder if there were any journalists in the room?
- Warns about using wikis and editing your own profile
- Doesn’t warn people off editing your own profile and suggests avoiding using marketing talk instead
Wow. I would never have imaged that Avenue A | Razorfish would come to SES and be so bold.
- Shows Search Engine Strategies profile on Wikipedia
- Doens’t understand how the nofollows are added
Ah yes. I remember this. William noted that Wikipedia was supposed to be adding nofollow to the links but that he still sees Wikipedia in the backlinks. I can explain that; a) only new links in Wikipedia have nofollow on them and older links which pre-date that ruling are still followed and b) Yahoo SiteExplorer and Google’s Webmaster Console link reports include nofollow links anyway.
- Photobucket of a can of soup
- Byebye bees viral
- Avenue A | Razorfish have a blog
That’s a blog I’m going to dig up and add to Google Reader. I do rate Avenue A | Razorfish as one of thought leaders within the ‘big digital agency’ landscape.
- Be Social. Bee Social?
Flaiz’s final slide was simply “Be Social” but I think we should have had a final homage to the vanishing bee viral and concluded with “Bee Social” instead!
Update: This will come as no surprise but I've started a Twitter account.
SES New York: Social Media Marketing: What is it and What is it Good for?
The session kicks off with a Wikipedia definition of social media marketing; just to make sure everyone in the audience has a basic understanding of the subject. This is a new track to SES.
I think there’s been a change of speaker. Rather than Paul Beck the Senior Partner, World Wide, Executive Director, Interactive Marketing & Advertising, Ogilvy we’ve a Mr Beland instead. He’s also from Ogilvy.
Conn Fishburn from Yahoo
Yahoo refer to the Rise of the People. When you talk about social media you have to talk about the people. Later on, Conn reminds us that the kipper app has always been people.
- If the web were a country it would be the third largest in the world.
- 800m people use the internet every month.
- This figure is expected to rise by 2b by 2011.
Fishburn proffers the Nicholas Negroponte quote
If I werre to do the MIT MediaLab over again, I wouldn't make it so much about the technologies per se. I would make it more about culture, about the cultures behind any technology that adopts it, adapts it and makes it useful and interesting."
We’ve seen this before at the Igniting Viral Campaigns track. It’s a good quote to have brought to SES. It clearly has traction here.
Yahoo share their definition of social media
- Media made by and for users in communities
- A business model in which “our customers are our suppliers”
- An advertising system in which people articulate their interests and passions and share marketing messages with each other
- A new approach to solving hard problems in networked information systems (flickr)
- Platforms, systems, and applications that connect media, technology, and people together into a processing and value-creation network
I like the part where he explains that Ogilvy stopped to debate whether social media marketing was something significant enough to include in their 360 degree view of their marketing and advertising services.
Beland shares some stats on the sources of information that people trust. The top three are:
- Recommendations from consumers – 78%
- Newspapers – 63%
- Consumer opinions posted online – 61%
- Traditional sources continue to decline.
- Listening as a disciplined marketing practice
- Passive listening (who, what when where and to whom – why?)
- Active listening = engagement (transparency, commitment, context/value proposition)
- Advocacy as a deliberate marketing channel
- Measure, impact and activate audience’s propensity to recommend the brand
- Unlock and unleash content for wider distribution
- Earned media to accompany paid plans – enable and encourage audience to share content
Jory tackles brands’ fear of social media head on. A brand’s biggest fear is often that if they engage in the social media sphere that people may say something negative.
We have the Review Myth;
“If I release my brand to the blogosphere, all hell will break loose. One nasty thing said about my product and poof – I’ve committed brandicide”Jory illustrates how this is the wrong mindset. Avoidance is not a valid strategy. She notes that it is not always about what the bloggers are saying – it’s that they are talking about it. Just by being discussed by bloggers brands can build up a buzz about their products.
Bloggers have credibility issues too, sometimes, she notes.
Brands will tend to get credit for trying to connect with bloggers. The BlogHer recommended approach is a no strings approach. Don’t give books to bloggers, for example, and insist that they write a positive review in exchange – or even that they write a review. Simply give the bloggers a copy of the book and see what happens – if you’ve picked the right bloggers then you’ll get some reviews.
Finally, Des Jardins suggests that if ‘touchy feely’ isn’t in your DNA that you engage in the social media landscape in a defensive way.
Chris Winfield from 10e20
Wow. Chris has some cracking PowerPoint templates! So sexy. If you read the 10e20 blog then this won’t come as a surprise to you!
Chris is here to take the audience through the basics of social bookmarking and share some case studies. He’s had some cracking success in driving tens of thousands of hits to his clients.
No surprises as to Chris’ top three recommendations;
- Delicious
- Stumble Upon
- Digg
Don starts by checking with the audience that everyone’s heard of Comedy Central. For a second I toy with playing the dumb foreigner card and denying I’ve heard of them (for that matter; MTV? Who are they?). Fortunately my common sense wins that debate and I maintain my silence.
A key part of Comedy Central’s social media strategy is to ensure that fans have their environments. They have a very savvy audience and Don notes that, “Our audience lives online so we must understand how and where to speak with them”
The four tenants of Comedy Central’s digital media planning are:
- Discoverable
- Branded
- Portable
- Smart
A key take away for me is that Comedy Central is atomic enough to buy media and plan social media on sites where ad buyers who might be interested in purchasing inventory from them. For example; the Comedy Central buys ads on Perez Hilton because that’s a blog which interests ad buyers.
Steele ends with a social media algorithm:
CC Programming + (On Advertising + Search) * Social Media Efforts = Smart Digital Strategy
Monday, February 25, 2008
Fishticuffs
MSN is doing a good job of using display marketing to promote a social media campaign. To be honest it's pretty rare to see this; you tend to need an agency with an excellence in search before you'll find someone okay at social media and you tend to need to find a traditional media buyer before you can find anyone in display advertising. Yeah; there are some notable exceptions!
Animated skyscrapers like the one you see to the left are appearing all over Facebook - and at pretty generous frequency caps too.
A click takes you through to www.fishticuffs.co.uk. Yeah. That's a .co.uk address so if any of you aren't in the UK and are seeing the Fishticuff banners then let me know - as that would be poor targeting.
The main way to get to the game - and it is a game - is via the Live Messenger actions -> games menu. It's a two player game. You take turns slapping each other with fish.
A clever bit is that you can access better weapons/more fish by winning often. As a result there's a built in incentive to encourage your friends to play. 
Thank you to Wenders for letting me hit you with fish in order to demonstrate the game.
At the end of the game users are given the option of syncing in to either Facebook or Bebo. The process is fairly straight forward.
Monday, January 28, 2008
Grr! Misconstrued Comments! :(
I'm a little annoyed by this - even though I know it may be an over reaction.
Over the weekend (I assume) someone set up a blog to publicly out a large UK finance web site for buying an awful lot of links. This is old news to the UK SEO community.
The single page blog was quickly picked up by a member of the UK SEO community and posted to Sphinn. It went hot quickly and currently has over 50 sphinns and 20 comments.
There are loads of comments on the original blog post too. One of the comments comes from "Big mouth".
Either by accident or by design that name "Big mouth" could quite easily be interpreted as coming from bigmouthmedia or someone in bigmouthmedia.
It hasn't. It didn't.
I've emailed around the whole of the UK, the US and much of France and Germany! I've spoken to all sorts of people in our finance vertical and SEO department (heck; even the PPC department) and no current employee made that comment.
That comment would be against our blogs, forums and networking guidelines. We like to encourage people to read and take part in the Search Community but no one is allowed to represent the company without permission. No one gets permission for that sort of comment! In fact, let me repeat the big warning on the side of this blog - this is a personal blog, my comments here don't reflect the views of my employers.
So, what do you think? Am I over reacting? We don't claim to own the concept of "big mouth" - I mean, that's pretty generic. Do you think someone within bigmouthmedia couldn't resist the temptation to get their two pence in? (But why brand it; badly with a space between 'big' and 'mouth'?). Was it a competitor?
Or just I just go a vent some frustration by trying to play Guitar Hero on Medium level again?
Watch What You Do With That Press Release
It is spammy to email press releases around willy nilly.
It can also be stupid.
I've just been sent a press release from a new media agency offering SEO and Social Media to say that they redesigned and launched a new website for [UK Tourist Attraction #56]
Great. Why did you send this Press Release to me? The digital marketing agency I work for happens to have 'media' in its name. The emailer just sent that press release to a generic alias to an email address they assumed was a press media company. Sorry; we've no interest in making a news story out of the activities of a competitor!
As it happens we've no shortage of travel clients. We have clients that sell train, plane or coach tickets to [UK Tourist Attraction #56] and we have clients who have hotels and restaurants near [UK Tourist Attraction #56].
The press release is interesting to me. I have to wonder whether [UK Tourist Attraction #56] might be doing a little extra marketing activity to promote their new website. This is a good time to ensure our travel and leisure campaigns have enough PPC budget or SEO presence related to keywords relating to [UK Tourist Attraction #56] or the city it is in.
In fact, it gets better than this, because I was the web site of [UK Tourist Attraction #56] I found that they have a micro-site to generate hotel bookings for people going to see the attraction and staying in the city. That micro-site looks to be a white label/affiliate offering from one of our client's competitors.
There are a whole load of branded booking engines on a single IP address, as it happens. I didn't just discover one affiliate working for a client's competitor; I found a whole bunch.
So, all because of this badly targeted email press release from [UK Tourist Attraction #56]'s social media and search company... our clients are now prepped to expect a possible surge of interest in the attraction and the city and one particular client (who runs their own affiliate marketing) is mulling over whether it is worth approaching any of those affiliates.
In one word: Ooops
By all means; announce a success and a website redesign warrants a press release. Just think through what's going to happen as a result of the press release, though.
Monday, December 31, 2007
$16,000 for an SMO campaign with no authority and three fans
I _think_ it was Darren Jamieson, aka the Unluckiest Man In Search, aka Mr Daz who alerted me to Real Estate Hyperlinks. I can't find his original post, though.
I think my favourite aspect of this site, a site with no authority on Technorati and only three fans is that they charge $16,000 with no refund for a link baiting campaign.
I'm sure they're very good. Really. I just wonder whether the rest of us should be increasing our prices.
Friday, December 28, 2007
Votrs - I like what I see!
Over on Sphinn, Dan Zarrella of Boston Web Properties (site may be down) posted news of Votrs.com.
This is a really simple idea - but I like what I see. Pick a URL and a title, give it Votrs and Votrs will give you a short URL back and with some social voting site details/vote buttons supplied.
This screen shot is of votrs.com/bdd0e03b. (Note; Votrs lets you include Sphinn (proof that it's aimed us search people) but I've taken it off from this example as I am trying to sphinn that particular post and I don't want to be seen to be trying to game the system!)
Votrs is going to be useful in a number of ways. I easily chucked the URL into my Facebook posted items list. I easily zapped the URL over to a workmate via Google Talk. It would just as easily whiz back and forth in emails.
Votrs isn't simply about making it easy for people to vote for stories you find interesting - it's a good way to keep track of how well the story is doing.
Could it be better? Heck yeah. The day someone writes the perfect website is the day the intrawebs are 0wn3d. For example, given that Votrs is such as easy way to check how well something is doing I would like to see mobile/blackberry friendly pages (with short URLs) there. What's with the weird background graphic too?
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Canonication issues in social media
One of the most easy SEO issues I'd pick up on a pitch in first half of the decade was the canonication of domain names. Now it's a widely known issue. Hurmph!
The with-www and without-www issue doesn't just effect search rankings directly. It effects social media (and therefore search rankings indirectly via quality signals). Look at how NaughtyCode is splitting it's 'vote' in delicious by not having sorted out it's sub-domains.
HMV moving into social media
Early next year (or thereabouts) we'll see HMV launch a social media site.
We have some clues from HMV's e-commerce director Gideon Lask
We've been in extensive dialogue with our core music and film suppliers, to identify cool and exciting content that we hope to include when we launch next year.
The way people discover and consume music and film is changing, and we need to reflect this in what we do.
HMV staff will be the first to explore and report on the site, along with a small number of hand-picked public users who will be identified by Cake.
Agencies LBi and Cake have helped develop the site. I've had one journalist ring me up and really wanted me to dismiss this as another "me too" project. I didn't agree. I suspect that line of questioning comes from Lask saying;
There are so many details we're still finalising - we're not even sure how best to describe the concept, and we haven't settled on a final name.
Although it remains to be seen whether the social media site is successful I wouldn't dismiss this as a "me too". HMV needs to look at the way people find and discuss music these days and this is exactly how they do it. I'd love to see it. I don't think I know anyone in Cake otherwise I'd be pestering them!
If the site is successful then it should help offset HMV's poor PPC strategy which is heavily reliant on burning through tokens and database queries to update bids in line with their inventory. That's a short term strategy and means HMV's clicks are more expensive than competitors. It also means they don't get to use current hits (inventory pending) to drive traffic to the site. A better strategy would be landing pages which cross-sold should the keyword title not be currently available. Not only would that let HMV benefit from the fickle fashion in music but would allow them to bid more cheaply.
So, we've got HMV making a stab at social (there's an irony in a company called His Master's Voice engaging with the voice of the socialnet) but doing badly in PPC. We also have Zavvi (ex-Virgin Megastories) leaving themselves open for annihilation on the SEO front. 2008 will be an interesting year for Entertainment retailers and affiliates!
Monday, November 19, 2007
Facebook Fakers
Dear Facebook user,
You don't actually work for us. What's with listing bigmouthmedia as your employer?
I'm not sure what to make with discoveries like this? Do we contact the person? Do we leave it alone? Maybe she does work for us - perhaps the cleaning agency have hired someone new... but that seems unlikely! Perhaps she's a freelancing caterer that we know only as Liz? Does it matter anyway?
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
In the Shadow of Linkbait
SubBait? SubscriberBait? ScriberBait?
Yesterday I published three posts:
- Words of Wisdom from IT
- When Google Confuses Search with Content
- Search Engine Land's Secrets: Mining SearchCap
... however I feel that the most important post I made was When Google Confuses Search with Content. The easy linkbait, I think, got all the attention over the more niche Paid Search post. Perhaps I should buzz Barry Schwartz or Andy Beal and get their opinion on the Content versus Search question? Would that encourage more comments or thoughts on the issue? I did sphinn the post and as of the time of writing this I've had 10 sphinns. I think the truth might be that the Search community pays a lot less attention to PPC/SEM than it does to SEO. Well, that's okay, I can live with that.
I did have good success with the SearchCap Mining post. My MyBlogLog has been a veritable who's'who (including JZawodn) so I should be thankful.
It's early days yet but let's look at my feedburner stats? Do they reflect my (in terms of traffic) best post yet?
Not yet. No.
I'll hold my hands up again and note that there may well be a delayed effect. It might not be until today (the day after) that people subscribe or that feedburner notices the hike - so I'll keep the situation under review.
However, it may well be that we need to break down tactics into linkbait and subbait. Now that could be fun; one tactic to attract eyeballs and another to keep them. Marketing Pilgrim comes to mind as it's the blog that I watch closely that tends to run the most competitions related to encouraging people to sign up. Is that the approach?
What about the term SubBait? Too dodgy? Over at SEO Chicks I laughed (and stumbled) Lisa Ditlefsen's Master Baiter t-shirt. Would a SubBait tactic require a Sub Master Baiter t-shirt?
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Facebook facts you might not know
I've been lucky enough to enjoy a presentation of the new Facebook Ads by Owen Van Natta who is Facebook's COO. (btw; isn't Van Natta the best surname ever!)
I'm not going to blog my thoughts about the new Social Ads! Ha! Sorry. That analysis goes straight to work, I'm afraid! Well... maybe a little. Beacon looks interesting and I suspect we start to see some other social sites (even forums) start adding Beacon enhanced events (such as starting a thread) and eBay will love it! Pulse becomes a hugely important social media analytics tool if Facebook lives up to today's promises.
Okay! Some stats!
Facebook has 80 applications that have over 1,000,000 users.
Since Facebook Ads launched last night over 100,000 'ad pages' have been created. I know they're free but that's incredible! (Have you noticed any 'fan' mentions in your news feed or mini feed yet? I've not).
London is Facebook's biggest city audience (so bigger than New York, LA, Tokyo, etc) and the UK is the third largest geographic is the system. If I can read my scribbles correctly then I wrote down there are 7,000,000 UK users.
Facebook recruits 250,000 new users per day. That means it doubles in size ever 6 months.
50% of Facebook users return to check their profiles every day. With (currently) 50,000,000 users that means there are 25,000,000 people checking out Facebook each day.
Facebook serves 40,000,000 impressions every day.
I was sitting beside *censored* from MySpace (who work's Display department knows well) and the only comment I could get from him was 'interesting'. Darn. Far from the blogging scoop/scandal that I was hoping for!
[This is one of my Engage 07 posts.]
Monday, November 05, 2007
Atlas servers struggling? Poor LinkedIn?
I'm not picking on the big networks. Promise.
Here we can see Atlas failing to provide a square banner to LinkedIn. It's LinkedIn who suffers the most when this happens as they'll fail to generate the impression and it makes the site look bad.
Thursday, November 01, 2007
Naymz - good first impression
Following on from an usually stellar post from Andy Beal on reputation management I signed up to Naymz.
The site's made a good first impression on me. Okay, I don't like sites that ask for your contact address book but there are always exceptions which prove the rule (like LinkedIn).
I like the fact that Naymz rewards you for filling in details. I scored points for linking to my blog and even for linking to my LinkedIn profile.
It's clear how Naymz works on your reputation. It seems willing to put PPC ads up for your name (not something I want it to do!) and it uses tags a lot. The tagging, I'm sure, is designed just for the search engines. As I've put bigmouthmedia in my profile Naymz created a bigmouthmedia tag search page.
My favourite aspect of Naymz is how it acts as an RSS collector for you. 
The clever thing about Naymz is that is rewards me for helping it. I get RepPoints for giving it spider food.
Here's the link to my Naymz profile.
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