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Social Media: Is Facebook a Final Destination or Just Another Social Fling?
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Written By Noah Mallin | August 25, 2009 | Share This
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Recently, a client asked me why they should put time and resources into their Facebook fan page when users are only going to migrate to the next platform eventually. The question felt very last year but I had to really stop and examine why that is – what is to stop fickle users from fleeing Facebook? After all Friendster and to a lesser extent MySpace were once the networking sites du jour but each found users siphoned off by the next big thing. Why shouldn’t Facebook be a victim of user burnout too? Or does it even matter?
After all, you go where the people are today. It’s unlikely that users discovering a new social media destination will stampede in such numbers that your fan page will be rendered useless in a matter of months. Also, although they have been eclipsed by Facebook, both Friendster and especially MySpace serve particular subsets of users very well. In the case of MySpace teens and music fans find the eye-wateringly be-spangled site to be more relevant to them in many cases than Facebook.
News Roundup: Google Opens Up, Twitter Clams Up, MySpace Cleans Out
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Written By Noah Mallin | April 22, 2009 | Share This
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Quite a lot of news has been generated in the last day, so here’s our take on a few of the stories that caught our attention.
Google Gives the Gift of Data
While folks were oooing and aaahing over Google’s attempts to build a profile database the real news to come out of the Googleplex was their release of their Analytics API. This allows marketers and techie wrenchheads to get their elbows dirty with sweet, sweet, Google analytics data in ways that were difficult to do until now. Look for more cool custom third party analytics applications soon.
Social Media: When You Say You Do Social Media Marketing, What Do You Really Mean?
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Written By Noah Mallin | February 25, 2009 | Share This
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This happens to me at parties all the time – I’m regaling Princess Grace and Bill Wyman with stories of my escapades on a sleeper car in the French Riveria when …oh wait, that’s not me. I was thinking of Truman Capote. What does actually happen to me is I’ll get into a conversation about social media marketing and find that we are all talking about completely different things.
There will be one person’s agency which places ads on a variety of social media platforms, another agency that creates assets to be used on social media sites like YouTube, and a handful of other agencies like Reprise Media which specialize in engagement within social media spaces.
It’s like having an English grammar master class taught by Charo, George W. Bush and Brad Pitt in Snatch.
Social Media: Content Burglars Punished With Advertising – Making Crime Pay for the Victim
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Written By Noah Mallin | November 5, 2008 | Share This
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Media companies have been spending much time, effort, and money on stopping online piracy at sites like YouTube and MySpace through expensive lawsuits and vigilance. In essence they end up playing a game of global whack-a-mole – shutting down sites or suppressing content only to have their copyrighted material pop up somewhere else overnight.
So if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
That seems to be the impetus behind YouTube and MySpace’s recent forays into a new form of advertising – video ads on pirated copyrighted content. YouTube uses the same technology that allowed content owners to pull down videos, VideoID, to help media companies identify targets to monetize.
Social Media: Twitter as Training Wheels - Can All the Goodness of Social Media Be Packed Into One Tool?
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Written By Noah Mallin | October 27, 2008 | Share This
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Today I eavesdropped on a conversation between Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Wesley Crusher, I mean Wil Wheaton, and MSNBC’s next generation newscaster Rachel Maddow about podcasts. Apparently they share more than just a hairstyle (see pic). Normally this kind of experience would be bought to me by late night pizza and my overactive dream-state synapses. In this case though I was perfectly awake as it floated down my Twitter stream in between my middle school friend and entertainment PR specialist Ariel’s insights on the music scene in Iceland and former colleague Tom linking to an interview with New York Times ad columnist Stuart Elliot.
So wow, the future huh?
Social Media: Social Networking Driven by Age, Work; Kids Today? Feh!
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Written By Noah Mallin | October 23, 2008 | Share This
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When I was a kid we had to network socially by punching a random bunch of digits into a keypad, (or twirling a dial with your finger – a dial!) picking up a big clumsy plastic thing attached to a squiggly wire, and speaking into it. If you were lucky your buddy was on the other end. Worse, it was done one person at a time! You kids never had it so good!
The reality is that even Facebook, a site that was originally designed for college age students and younger, has seen most of its growth from adult users, and not just the ones who are auditioning for To Catch a Predator. In fact the latest evidence from Nielsen Online is that the most successful blogs skew towards the 25-49 age range. Their blog points out Tagged as a prime example. Tagged started out as a site targeted to high schoolers. As the Wall Street Journal noted back in 2006:
Social Media: Twittering Your Music with Blip.FM
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Written By Noah Mallin | October 15, 2008 | Share This
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TechCrunch has an interesting post today about Blip.FM making a new beta API available so that developers could add Blip.FM’s functionality to their tools and sites.
Like most good posts it made me curious - I hadn’t tried Blip.FM. I signed up quickly and found that as advertised, it’s like Twitter for music fans. The interface is very similar to Twitter and it even links you up with your Twitter account so that you can crosspost your Blip posts there. Blip even tells you which other users have Blipped songs by the same artist so you can build a network very quickly. It’s an ever-evolving playlist that becomes the ultimate in custom radio for the masses.
Social Media: Katie Couric is Cool, at Least Online
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Written By Noah Mallin | August 20, 2008 | Share This
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Yes, I know, Katie Couric hasn’t exactly set the world on fire as anchor of the CBS Evening News. One of the main reasons for the tepid response has been her desire to present the news in a serious newscaster-y way that has essentially neutered whatever personality had been on display previously.
Enter comedian Harry Shearer, the man responsible for a plethora of voices on the Simpsons, played bass in Spinal Tap, and delights millions of listeners on NPR. On his dedicated section of humor website MyDamnChannel, Shearer has been posting “Found Objects” — surreptitiously obtained satellite feeds of news personalities prepping off-air but with the cameras rolling. Once posted they invariably make their way through the Internet, reposted and linked to by bloggers, and on MySpace and YouTube.
Online Marketing: Hey Music Business – Learn How to Market Online Already!
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Written By Noah Mallin | August 19, 2008 | Share This
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Ah the record business. For a group of people who thrive on being hip, they just don’t get the Internet. Now the typical music mogul will say that they get it just fine, mostly in the rear. The Internet is where people go to steal money from them. Instead of whining like little babies perhaps they should look at their own sales and revenue figures. Even better they should try to apply some of the marketing lessons from search and social media.
According to the Record Industry Association of America’s own figures, more people than ever before are downloading singles and albums as well as ringtones and other items on the Internet. The online segment that in 2005 accounted for less than 10% of industry revenue counted for 23% in 2007.
Yes, but revenue is down overall they might say. True dat, but can this really be laid at the feet of file sharers, Muxtape, and CD burning? There are two things happening: First, a whole generation has grown up without reverence for the album format. They like a song, they download the song. The shift to single tracks from albums is actually a return to the record landscape that predominated until the late 1960s when the album began to dominate. The margin on albums is higher than on single tracks so the labels would prefer a return to the old days.
Social Media: LinkedIn Proves the Power of Three-Way Action
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Written By Noah Mallin | June 19, 2008 | Share This
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One of the great things about social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace is the ability to see what your old buddies are up to without actually having to talk to them. Hey, that guy who wore a skirt and mascara in college is a corporate lawyer now!
On the other hand, sometimes you want to do more than just accumulate “friends”, you actually want to network and do some online schmoozing. LinkedIn, which has been described back-handedly as “social media for grownups” and has been all over the news this week, is a site that focuses on career connections with a clean low-widget design and a plethora of helpful tools. This has helped them to become the number 4 site for social networking on the net according to Nielsen. Even more phenomenal is their 146% year-over-year growth, making them the fastest growing social network in the U.S…. check da chart: