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Social Media: How Can I Infect You with My Virus if you’re Not Even Here?
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Written By Noah Mallin | June 10, 2009 | Share This
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Typhoid Mary (not to be confused with Mustang Sally) was a turn-of-the-century cook who managed to spread illness and death over a period of many years simply by making meals for lots of people. Oh yeah, and her aversion to hand-washing helped. So when clients ask about Viral Videos, it’s helpful to remember Typhoid Mary who, after all, was a very successful virus spreader. There were 3 conditions that allowed her to be so prolific:
1) Constant repeated contact with sizable groups of people
2) Her role as a food source for these people
3) The unhindered presence of the Typhus infection
In social media, there is a tendency to dwell on the food without paying attention to the infection or the people. Or, to put it another way, serving up a piping hot video won’t get you anywhere if there aren’t people there to watch it (waiting for the meal as it were) or the presence of that wonderful germ of an idea or a hook that makes them want to spread it around.
Social Media: 5 Questions with Seraj Bharwani of Visible Measures
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Written By Noah Mallin | May 18, 2009 | Share This
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There continues to be a myth propagated about social media, namely that outreach efforts aren’t measurable and accountable. Visible Measures has been at the forefront of measuring the success of Internet videos since 2005, providing metrics that include syndicated, social, and paid video placements.
Today, Reprise Media announced a partnership with Visible Measures that will help to deepen the ability to track and measure the success of video content. To add some context to this exciting partnership, we asked Seraj Bharwani, SVP of Business Development at Visible Measures, to answer our patented 5 Questions:
Social Media: Facebook, YouTube and FriendFeed Say Real Time is Where it’s @
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Written By Esther Assaad | May 5, 2009 | Share This
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The spike in success for sites like Twitter and Digg make it clear - the real-time web is here and its seems like just about everyone is jumping on the bandwagon.
Let’s take a look at some of the recent events that are bringing the web closer to the here and now.
Search 3.0: Susan Boyle Links Her Way to Stardom
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Written By Noah Mallin | April 20, 2009 | Share This
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Yep, I got Susan Boyle’s name in the headline of the post – and now the first paragraph. I’ve now joined hundreds of thousands of bloggers who have done the same, illustrating one of the most interesting new principles to emerge from Search 3.0.
In Search 2.0, optimizing for search engines was achieved in part by link building and sharing with other websites. While this is still a valid part of strategy in Search 3.0, the new wrinkle is that the platform size and strength has moved up a level from individual websites to social media sites, interlinked and connected loosely with each other and directly through well-optimized profiles.
Update: Domino’s Takes Our Advice – Too Late to Fight Social Media Slosh?
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Written By Noah Mallin | April 16, 2009 | Share This
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I expect our payment from Domino’s any day now, though I won’t be so churlish as to hold them to their own 30 minutes-or-less delivery guarantee. However, that pledge of swift action should have rang more true for a company that’s been forced into an embrace of the social media bullhorn and now has to play catch up with a story that’s still moving.
Domino’s did take the advice I gave them two days ago here on SearchViews – they made a YouTube video detailing their response to the two errant employees who posted footage of some naughty sandwich-making at a local Domino’s restaurant. Unfortunately by the time they had all their new social media profiles set up on sites like Twitter and uploaded their video to YouTube, the original story had time to go truly viral.
Search 3.0: The Dark Side of Search 3.0
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Written By Noah Mallin | April 14, 2009 | Share This
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For every day there is a night, for every Two-face a Harvey Dent, for every Abbott a Costello. We have been talking about Search 3.0 for a while now – the convergence of social media and search that is happening as we speak (or blog, or tweet, or however you are reaching this post). Search 3.0 is neither good nor bad, it simply is. However there is a dark side to it that can have consequences for brands large and small.
Search News: Search Engines Sprucing Up SERP’s in Lieu of Algorithmic Advances
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Written By Noah Mallin | April 6, 2009 | Share This
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Pity the poor programmers at major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Live Search. It’s clear that, like Netflix’s recommendation engine, search algorithms as they exist today are so well-advanced that any movement forward is so incremental as to be practically invisible unless you are industry geeks like us.
For anyone who isn’t Google that makes distinguishing yourself a near-impossibility. And if you do happen to be Google (and if you are, I have a venture opportunity to discuss with you strictly on the QT, and hush-hush), keeping searchers on your site and just keeping things interesting becomes a challenging process.
Search News: Welcome to Search 3.0
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Written By Noah Mallin | March 30, 2009 | Share This
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Sometimes the world is like a Chuck Close painting: standing up close allows patterns and colors to be discerned, but it’s only by taking several steps back that what seems abstract congeals into a recognizable set of strikingly realistic features. Right now, that’s the way the world of search and social media feel – we all know that they are converging, and we all know that they affect each other, but it’s difficult to actually wrap our heads around what this will look like from a marketing point of view – let alone as users.
In Advertising Age’s latest Digital Issue, Reprise Media Managing Partner Peter Hershberg does the equivalent of taking three big steps back in the museum and reports on what he sees. What he reveals is something that we like to call Search 3.0 and it’s not just where search and social media are right now – it’s where it’s going in the future.
Social Media: Twitter Tests Search Ads
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Written By Noah Mallin | March 24, 2009 | Share This
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With all the hullabaloo over Twitter’s big deal promoting ExecTweets, what may prove to be a far more significant revenue stream has been overlooked. The ExecTweets promotion is tied to a spot on Twitter’s main page right below the user counts, which Twitter uses to promote a variety of tools including third-party iPhone app Tweetie. So far only the ExecTweets placement there is paid. What shows up in that area is completely untethered to activity on the page or by the user, and seems aimed at the relative newcomer who might not know about stuff like Twitter Search – another tool that gets time in the box.
With our interest in how social media and search intersect, it’s no surprise that Twitter’s rollout of integrated search functionality piques our interest. Not every user has access to Twitter search as an integrated function yet but for those who do there is a brand new “featured user” ad spot that looks very much like a typical search ad:
Why hello there, gray lady.
Social Media: Whither Skittles? Twitter Scramble Mangles Message
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Written By Noah Mallin | March 2, 2009 | Share This
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So how about that Twitter eh? The kids – they love it! You know, the youth, as personified by Barbra Walters who yammered about the microblogging site on her show The View today or the inimitable Rick Sanchez, CNN’s Ted Baxter manqué. Even venerable inside Washington comic strip Doonesbury is getting in on the action.
Skittles wants in on this hipness and they are getting a leg up with the help of agency Modernista. You might remember Modernista from such campaigns as the one in which they dismantled their own website and sent curious web-users to Flickr, Facebook, and other social media properties in its stead.
The result is that the Skittles homepage is now a constantly refreshing feed (pun slightly intended) of Skittles mentions on Twitter. Brilliant! And by brilliant we of course mean utter failure.