For this week’s Podcast Friday, I had the opportunity to sit down with Hussein Fazal, the CEO and co-founder of AdParlor. We discussed AdParlor’s current strategy, their brand new auction feature, Facebook credits and the future of social advertising and media. The full interview is below.
Bloomberg is reporting that Microsoft Corporation is in talks to acquire Crowdstar, the third largest Facebook Application Developer, for $200 million. This follows the recent acquisition of competing social game developer Playfish by Electronic Arts for up to $400 million. The Social Gaming space has been heating up most recently with Zynga expanding their application distribution through a partnership with Microsoft-owned MSN .
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Today BOKU, a mobile payments platform, is announcing a number of large publisher partnerships to expand their position as a leader in the mobile payments space. The competition is fierce. Just last week, we reported that Zong was in the process of testing out credit payments through a partnership with Facebook. We can only expect more mobile payment providers to integrate in the near future as well, including BOKU.
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Data collection has been big business since the Internet became a widely adoptable means of communication. But there are still a slew of privacy concerns that arise from the use and misuse of data collected, especially when it contains personally identifiable information and can be used for targeted advertising and other marketing efforts.
A class action lawsuit has been filed against Tagged, naming Miriam Slater and Sarah Golden as the individuals representing those bringing the case against the social network. The lawsuit states that Tagged misappropriated user information by using their email address books to reach out to those contacts for the purpose of obtaining new users, without the knowledge of the initial Tagged user.
This isn’t the first time Tagged has been threatened with legal action regarding its email marketing. The New York State Attorney General has let Tagged know of its intent to sue for reasons similar to the Slater v. Tagged case.
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More on the virtual games end; Peanut Labs Media has teamed up with Outspark, the virtual playground, in order to expand the gaming options for multiplayer online games while increasing the monetization potential for both parties involved.
with a reported 5 million gamers, and a handful of commercial games, Outspark is looking to expand its overall potential as a revenue-generating virtual environment. The partnership details that Outspark will be utilizing the Peanut Labs Media monetization engine. It works by presenting surveys to users, who then earn virtual currency which can be used within the Outspark virtual environments.
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Whether you’re keeping up with family members or growing your business’ brand, social media has become the center of activity for many aspects of our lives. And it’s getting hard to keep up. We’ve created a short list of helpful e books that can get you started on your path towards social media success, or help you kick things up a notch if you’re already an active member of the online social media world.
If you’re just getting your feet wet or you’d like to learn more about the relative history of social media, check out some of the following ebooks, which cover the basics. Sometimes boiling things down to their simplest forms could give you the greatest perspective, and that never hurts when it comes to a complex phenomenon like social media.
This book answers one simple question: what is social media? From iCrossing, “What Is Social Media” runs down all the basics, from how social media is being used to providing definitions the ever-changing jargon that personifies social media.
Both broad an analytical in its approach to social media, “Content Nation” goes over the importance of social media, and how it has effectively changed our culture and the way in which we communicate with each other. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!
Yes, blogs are part of social media. With various ways in which to integrate blogs and social media, the end result is a cohesive, fluid and mobile conversation about a plethora of topics. The beauty of social media is that it enables every voice to be heard. Blogs are a great starting point to get your shout on.
Forums and discussion boards are still thriving areas in which people converse about every aspect of their hearts’ desires. If you’re looking to leverage these sometimes forgotten areas of social media, then start with this book. Learning the ins and outs of forums can really help you leverage social media in the end, whether you’re profession is as a community manager or you’re eventually looking to build your personal or business brand.
LinkedIn is one of the core social networks when it comes to professional networking. But a lot of people don’t know just how well they can actually network once they’re on LinkedIn. This book will help you take advantage of LinkedIn’s networking capabilities, which is increasingly important when it comes to today’s job market.
A primer for the most talked about social network today, this guide gives you the basics from how Twitter got so popular to what that means for you as a social networker. Setting up your profile for optimal use, proper etiquette for tweeting and examples of successful users are all part of this ebook.
If there’s one group that has been striving to “figure out” social media, enterprise and business takes the cake. With the popularity of social media and the large virtual congregations of users within online properties, the monetization of social media has been a blessing and a curse when it comes to business and enterprise use. For those CEOs out there, here are some ebooks that might be helpful for navigating these social media waters.
Yes, there are ways in which you need to caution yourself and your business when jumping into the social media pool. Make sure all your bases are covered and check out this book, which offers a very specific yet needed view of how to go about preparing your business for social media, from a conceptual and practical perspective.
Another joy of the online world is sales, direct or indirect. Social media can help you in this department, but it will take some know-how. Get the basics and then some with this book, which speaks to social media marketing and a few other aspects of online marketing. It’s a helpful look at how the various aspects of the online world create sales opportunities from which you can profit.
A lot of the people I speak with about social media often complain about how time consuming it is. This time obstacle is a huge barrier to entry for a lot of businesses looking to leverage social media, so whittling it down to an hour can sound very appealing. Learn a few tricks of the trade to help you better manage your time.
Social Media is a Cocktail Party
That’s right. A cocktail party. What could be more fun? Just as a cocktail party is just a dressy and intoxicating way in which to power up your networking opportunities, so too is the realm of social media. Learn how the various aspects of social media, from blogging to social networks, can be helpful when it comes to your online marketing initiatives.
Mothers have long since been at the center of financial decisions when it comes to many purchases made for the family, which is why mothers have been highly targeted through marketing campaigns since the dawn of modern advertising. Things haven’t changed too much, but the channels for such marketing have been modified a tad. Learn how to target moms online, as they have been a quickly growing group of very active online users for over two years now.
It’s true, Twitter has changed the face of online marketing. But as a mobile tool, Twitter has changed the face of mobile marketing as well. One of the benefits of Twitter is its ability to provide a method of mobile communication without mutual or one-sided contact information exchange, which preserves privacy and is appealing because of its opt-in attitude towards said mobile communication. Get the scoop on how Twitter is being used to push a mobile advertising revolution, so you can be ready for your next move.
As an evolution of sorts from the basics of enterprise and business use of social media, engagement is the buzz word of the year. Engagement is the way in which brands have found to be the most effective when it comes to online marketing. This means you’re not only leveraging the fact that people are networking about and around your brand online, but you’re interacting with them in a direct manner for important brand maintenance. Stay on top of trends by checking out some of the ebooks that have been written specifically for user engagement purposes.
One way in which to directly engage users is for customer service purposes. Through platforms such as Twitter and Facbook, the necessity of “friending” a customer is no longer necessary, opening up the lines of communication and enabling brands to communicate in a less intrusive manner. It is truly an art.
18 Rules of Community Engagement: A Guide for Building Relationships and Connecting With Customers Online
Nothing’s more straightforward than a set of rules to follow. This guide for community engagement will take you step by step through the ways in which you can not only build relationships with customers, but maintain those relationships as well. It’s this maintenance that will enhance your brand-building when it’s all said and done.
Twitter has become an avidly used platform for direct communication with brands and consumers, so it’s only fitting that there is a book on dominating your market in particular via Twitter. It’s rather easy to engage consumers on Twitter’s openly conversational platform, making for a great tool for monitoring their brand while engaging their customers all the while.
Marketing and strategies company Razorfish has released a report this week about brands and their success rate when it comes to online social media marketing. The report, titled Fluent: The Razorfish Social Influence Marketing Report, mentions a survey conducted by Razorfish brought some disarming news, stating that about 33% if consumers aren’t connecting with brands online. Razorfish identifies this group of online users as an untapped market, and as a growing opportunity for social media marketing.
In order to first outline the ways in which social media marketing is currently effecting consumer relations online, Razorfish designed the SIM Score. Standing for Social Influence Marketing, the SIM Score breaks down various aspects of a brand’s online campaign, looking at its targeting methods, its ability to tap into certain resources such as key influencers, and other forms of social advertising in order to devise a brand’s SIM Score. From here, a brand can gauge where they stand in the grand scheme of social media marketing.
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Social networking platform KickApps is offering a new feature for its suite of solutions. Called Custom Community Insights, the new dashboard can be customized for each client to provide information about users, such as engagement with content and activities.
Clients will also be able to track user discussions, pinpoint influential users, and get a clearer idea on how users are interacting with each other for the purpose of grasping the overall attitude of their community. With the collected data, clients can then better align their own initiatives based on user sentiment, improving advertising, online activities and the facilitation of user interaction.
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Mobile and online payments platform Boku has announced its partnership with Icebreaker, maker of mobile social software. As part of the deal, Icebreaker has chosen Boku as its premier mobile payments provider. Through Boku, Icebreaker users can purchase “Coins,” the Icebreaker virtual currency. It appears that this virtual currency is used on the Crush or Flush mobile social network, powered by Icebraker.
With a reported 2 million members, Crush or Flush is a mobile social network that enables you to browse, chat with and arrange meetings with friends. With virtual gifting being a large aspect of the Crush or Flush network, it’s important for Icebreaker to be able to provide a seamless way in which this can be achieved directly through its mobile social network.
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Bing, the new search engine project from Microsoft, has gotten a whirlwind of attention, in part because of its large marketing push which made the world aware of Bing across every major media channel. And while the debate still continues in regards to which search engine is better for what purposes between Bing and Google, Microsoft is continuing its efforts to make its new search engine productive.
Part of this continued effort appears to be BingTweets, a recently launched collaborative project teaming Microsoft with Federated Media and Twitter in order to combine real time Twitter search content with Bing search results. It’s not a far stretch from what Bing was already offering. With a montage of media and text search results, Bing was already fairly diverse in its search results formatting. And Twitter, being the popular microblogging tool that it is, has found itself at the center of the real time trend.
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March 26, 2010 | San Francisco, CA
Mediabistro's first Freemium Summit focuses on exploring what it takes to succeed under the freemium business model.
April 7-8, 2010 | New York, NY
Mobilize your business with mobile marketing, apps, video, and content.
May 6-7, 2010 | San Francisco, CA
December 1-2, 2010 | New York, NY
Explore the intersection of games and the social web.
