Social Media This Week: December 19, 2008

"Social Media This Week" will be taking a break over the Holidays. Our next week in review will be posted on January 9, 2009. Seasons greetings from all of us here at com.motion.

You Got Served – Over Facebook?

The news: The Capital Territory Supreme Court in Australia has approved the use of Facebook to serve legal documents. An Australian couple, who were unreachable via e-mail and their home address, had defaulted on their home loan. The bank used a law firm called Meyer Vanderberg to contact the couple. After several attempts to reach the unnamed couple, Attorney Mark McCormack, asked the Australian court for permission to serve the papers electronically to the couple over Facebook.

Key question: What’s next? Marriages in Second Life? Oh wait. That’s been done.

Holiday Party Excuse Generator

The news: For years, physical holiday cards were considered a standard gesture between companies during the month of December. For the past couple years, e-cards have been the trend. In a somewhat cluttered holiday card giving season, organizations may find it difficult to have their greetings stand out to their clients and potential clients. Two years ago, Enlighten created a viral marketing hit called the Holiday Party Excuse Generator to send to their network rather than the traditional holiday greeting. On the site, consumers can create tongue-and-cheek excuses about why they are unable to attend one of the holiday parties they’ve been invited to. Enlighten didn’t promote the site this year, but the excuse generator gets a spike every year.

Key learning: The best viral campaigns get timing right. They involve a sense of urgency, but many are also timeless.

JC Penny Puts Men in the Doghouse

The news: Late in November, JC Penny launched a five-minute online video where a woman takes her husband and puts him in the doghouse in the backyard after he buys her a vacuum. When the character falls into the basement of the doghouse, he is greeted by men folding laundry and drinking chai lattes while a stern woman over a loud speaker is saying things such as “express your feelings” and “help with the cooking.” The video has been viewed more than 1.7 million times and has driven a ton of conversation (positive and negative) in social media as well as traditional media. On the “Beware of the Doghouse” website, women can send their significant others gift “warnings” over e-mail or Facebook.

Key learning: The best viral campaigns involve really good creative. And that may cost a whole lot more than a TV ad supported by paid media. After all, consumers are choosing to watch this.

Are embargoes going dodo?

Twitter has replaced Techmeme as my favourite source for knowing what's hot at this very moment. That's because people tend to talk on the microblogging tool before they take actions that require more time or commitment such as blogging or starting a Facebook group.

When I checked Twitscoop this afternoon to see what was hot on Twitter today, I noticed that the most discussed term was "embargo" - something that caught my eye as an erstwhile journalist and current PR guy. The news that everyone was buzzing about is that TechCrunch, arguably the most influencial online publication has announced that it will no longer honour embargoes. In a post titled "Death to the Embargo" TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington writes:

One annoying thing for us is when an embargo is broken. That means that a news site goes early with the news despite the fact that they’ve promised not to. The benefits are clear - sites like Google News and TechMeme prioritize them first as having broken the story. Traffic and links flow in to whoever breaks an embargo first.

That means it’s a race to the bottom by new sites, who are increasingly stressed themselves with a competitive marketplace and decreasing advertising sales.

A year ago embargo breaks were rare, once-a-month things. Today, nearly every embargo is broken, sometimes by a few minutes, sometimes by half a day or more.

We can’t continue to operate under these rules.

Arrington says TechCrunch will continue to agree to embargoes, but will then break them. The problem, he writes, is that there are no real consequences for publications that break embargoes.

A year ago, when com.motion released our First Annual com.motion-Pollara Social Media Barometer, I decided to experiment with embargoes. I offered the Globe and Mail an exclusive embargo on a few questions and offered a dozen bloggers one exclusive question each. Several agreed to play, but some said embargoes and exclusives don't make sense in a blogging world.

This year, I tried a different experiment, sending out a message on Twitter that I would offer the full embargoed results to anyone who tweeted me back. Only a couple bloggers were interested. (Many more posted about our results after we formally released them).

Offering embargoes - especially on an exclusive basis - increases the chance of coverage. There are stories I wrote at the Globe because they were exclusive embargoes that I wouldn't have written if everyone had them at the same time.

But embargoes have no value when the news is sent to everybody if even one reporter breaks the embargo. Embargoes have become more common and mean far less. We need to get back to a place where they're less frequent, more exclusive and respected by both sides. And publications that break 'em need to be punished for the good of those that don't.

Social Media This Week: December 12, 2008

Ford uses Social Media to Clear the Air

The news: On Wednesday, Ford sent a fan site called The Ranger Station a letter from a lawyer about copyright violations. News spread quickly that Ford objected to the site using the name of its Ranger pickup truck line. Other Ford fan sites (which have Ford in their domain name) feared that they would be asked by the organization to change their material and domains. By the time this news hit the larger auto sites, stories were being published that Ford’s legal department was asking for thousands of dollars in compensation or the site gets automatically shut down. The head of Ford’s social media department, Scott Monty, stayed on top of the online conversation developing around the topic using sites such as Twitter. He quickly began chiming into the conversation and keeping online customers and fans aware of the situation. As it ended up, the situation needed to be clarified. The Ranger Station site was actually selling counterfeit Ford parts. Monty used different online avenues to get the word out, including The Ranger Station’s forum. The entire lifespan of this situation (that could of spiraled out of control online) lasted less than 24 hours.

Key question: News spreads more quickly than ever online. How quickly will this rapid response method spread?

Begging for a BlackBerry this Holiday Season

The news: Rogers launched an online contest this week called “Beg-for-a-BlackBerry” to promote BlackBerry smartphones over the holiday season. Canadian BlackBerry yearners enter the contest by submitting 30 seconds of audio over Facebook to explain why they deserve a BlackBerry over their current cell phones. Facebook participants can add their message to their own profile page where their personal network can hear it.

Key question: Facebook is by far the dominant social network in Canada and the most important mass market social media site for brands. Will its dominance ebb in 2009?

Social Media and the Economy

The news: This week, in partnership with Pollara, com.motion released our second annual Trust Barometer. The results were telling in terms of how marketers will approach social media in the face of an economic slowdown. We found that Canadian business leaders say it would be a mistake to cut back on social and digital spending in tough economic times, with 7 in 10 recommending increased investment.

Key question: Just how much will social media grow in 2009, and how much will traditional marketing communications disciplines suffer?

Social Media and the Economy

The 2nd Annual com.motion-Pollara Social Media Barometer is now live.

Detail and analysis coming soon, but here are the topline results:

• Despite the economic slowdown forcing marketers to modify their spending, 82 per cent of Canadian business leaders and senior marketers say they will spend as much or more on social media in 2009 than they did this year. That’s more than for any other marketing communications discipline, as seen in the table below.

• Canadian business leaders say it would be a mistake to cut back on social and digital spending in tough economic times, with 7 in 10 recommending increased investment.

• Facebook has established itself as Canada’s dominant social network. Among Canadians who use social media, 87 per cent say they have tried Facebook, compared with 33 per cent for MySpace and 13 per cent for Twitter.

• Two-thirds of Canadians (65 per cent) say social media is an important tool for developing, maintaining and nurturing friendships, up from 52 per cent a year ago.

• Two-thirds of Canadians (65 per cent) say social media tools are important for learning about products, services, organizations and brands, up from 59 per cent a year ago.

Tribune down: Will social media win or lose from economic slowdown?

Today's bankruptcy filing by Tribune Corp., which owns the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune underscores that times are tough for businesses that depend on advertising - and by extension - most businesses in the marketing communications space.

But what will the slowdown mean for social media in 2009?

There are lots of opinions. And later this week there will be some hard data to add to the debate.

In our second annual social media poll, in partnership with Pollara, com.motion asked hundreds of Canadian business leaders where they expect to cut marketing spending in 2009. One of the key questions: Is an economic slowdown the right time to cut or boost social media spending.

Click here for the results of last year's survey.

Social Media This Week: December 5, 2008

Friend Portability

The news: On Thursday, Google and Facebook separately announced their own data portability programs called Google Friends Connect and Facebook Connect. The ability to move a group of friends from one social network to another is something many users have been seeking for quite some time. Both Google and Facebook users will be able to use their identities from these sites on others that support one of the programs. The sites that will support these programs will allow their visitors to log in and use the already available information in their profiles as well as find friends already on the sites that they currently visit. The programs are intended to minimize the number of usernames and passwords that users currently use. Using the Google Friends Connect feature, for example, on a companionable site, visitors will be able to go into the site using both their AOL or Yahoo username and password.

Key question: Does friend portability lower the barrier to entry for someone to build a new and better social network?

Santa 2.0

The news: For many years, Canadian children have been sending letters to Santa in the hopes of getting exactly what they want for Christmas. Sympatico MSN has introduced Santa to the beauty of e-mail and personalized web video to help reach out to children using a site called the Portable North Pole. You simply type in a child’s name, age, location, and a few other things and that child will receive a personalized message from Santa in the North Pole. The video is available in English and French.

Key question: With letters to Santa going digital will there be anyone, anywhere sending handwritten letters anywhere?

Canadian Tweetsters and Politics

The news: Politics in Ottawa have sent Tweetsters (Twitter users) aflutter this past week. Twitter is a microblogging tool that has exploded in the past couple of months in much the same what that Facebook exploded early last year. For many hours on Thursday, “coalition” was the most common phrase on Twitter (right after “Christmas”) causing hundreds of confused Americans to wonder what the heck is going on in Canada. Click here to see what Tweetsters are saying about the coalition.

Key question: There’s lots of Canadian politics still to come. What role will Twitter play in the new year?