(* Source: Robin Wauters *)

Robin says...

Sony is set to announce a re-launch of video entertainment network site Crackle today, with a roll-out of a number of new web shows including sketches by L.A. comedy troupe “The Groundlings”, a video game show called “The Jace Hall Show” and a five-minute talk show dubbed “Anytime with Bob Kushell” hosted by a Hollywood writer.

Sony’s media business, Sony Pictures Entertainment, will be using the types of production techniques that it puts into movies and TV to resemble other online programming by staying short, often no more than five minutes long, reports Reuters. Crackle’s season begins December 1.

Last August, Sony Pictures partnered up with Rocketboom, acquiring the worldwide distribution rights to Rocketboom.com in all media, putting the daily show on Crackle.com, presenting the show with a Crackle player on the Rocketboom.com website and distributing it over its syndication network. See RocketBoom founder Andrew Baron’s take on the upcoming announcement here.

Crackle used to be Grouper, before Sony bought the startup for a reported $65 million in the Summer of 2006. The Reuters report cites 2.4 million visitors in October, according to research firm The Nielsen Online Co., while Compete shows higher number and a nice growth pattern.

Posted by brian tiong at 01:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Jason Kincaid *)

It's interesting to see how major acts are now heading to these web2.0 sites as a launch pad.

Jason reports...

Pop sensation-turned-tabloid punching bag Britney Spears is ready for her comeback. Britney has just released her new album Circus exclusively on imeem, where you can stream the album in its entirety for free (you’ll also be able to embed the album playlist anywhere you’d like). The downloadable/physical version of the album won’t be available until December 2nd, but you can currently pre-order it through imeem and a number of other stores.

The exclusive album launch marks a big win for Imeem, which also recently launched Lil Wayne’s latest mixtape, Dedication 3. The site seems to be in a heated battle for album launches with MySpace Music, which has also launched a number of high profile albums in the last few months, including Guns N’ Roses’ first album in 17 years, Beyonce, The Cure, Oasis, and a number of others. imeem’s Matt Graves says that one advantage imeem has over MySpace Music is its embeddable playlists, which makes it easier for albums to go viral as they get embedded on blogs across the web.

As with every major album release these days, Circus was leaked and has been available on a number of pirate sites since at least last week (some albums have been beaten to the punch by months, so it could be worse). These leaks do take some of the luster away from album launches, but there isn’t much the record labels can do beyond changing their distribution methods or bumping up release dates when there is a leak (which is what happened to Britney’s last album).

In other news the pop princess has also managed to lay claim to the Twitter account BritneySpears, in place of her old account therealbritney. Since joining us on Twitter in October Britney has racked up over 9000 followers after a meager 42 updates.

Listen here

Posted by brian tiong at 01:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Souce: Seth Godin *)

For those of you that have read the book... this is the crowd sourced followup.

For those of you that didn't read the book... after review this, you might buy the book.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Seth Godin *)

I've always enjoyed reading what Seth says, here another reason why.

Seth says...

Posted by brian tiong at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Marketing Charts *)

The growing popularity of interactive tools such as wikis, blogs and social networks is giving customers the ability to engage with firms as never before, and global marketers need to put customers at the center of their operations to respond to this new and challenging reality, according to an study of global CMOs conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit and sponsored by Google.

The report, “Future Tense: The Global CMO” (pdf), finds marketers are increasingly able to reach out to consumers at all points along the value chain, not just at the moment a purchase decision is made. Because of this, global marketing of the future must engage all corporate stakeholders with consistent, constant and accurate messaging. At the same time, it must encourage and be able to respond quickly to customer feedback and involvement, pulling stakeholders closer to the corporate brand.

The report provides the following recommendations based on findings:

Balance global brand awareness with local market relevance: Centralizing global marketing functions, such as advertising development and production, can create economies of scale and save money, but they must be guided by the needs of the local market. At the same time, marketing budgets must be decentralized so that regional directors can make appropriate decisions based on market demands.

Integrate marketing with other corporate communications: Both the interactive nature of Web 2.0 technologies and the transparency of corporate messages among different constituencies require the integration of various forms of marketing and communications. Businesses can no longer segment audiences and messages as if audiences don’t talk to each other.

Adopt new media: Organizations should consider setting aside a specific budget for experimenting with the newest Web 2.0 technologies. The CMO should have the foresight to anticipate how different constituencies will respond to different events, messages and channels, and should be able to deal with the proliferation of new-media tools and expanded audiences.

Develop new skills, capabilities-and partnerships: CMOs must understand the fundamental business model, brand, culture, policies and values of the organization. Equally important in terms of adapting to the evolution of new media are partnerships with vendors whose expertise can be used to take new initiatives to market faster-and more effectively-than a company would on its own.

Champion innovation: The need for greater accountability for marketing expenditure is pushing global companies towards digital marketing campaigns with higher returns than traditional media. The interactive nature of the latest digital-media vehicles provides the opportunity to develop deeper insights into customer dynamics and allows the CMO to become the corporate champion of customer insight.

“The CMO of the future must be the chief proponent of close engagement with customers,” says Nigel Holloway, Director, Americas, Industry and Management Research, at the Economist Intelligence Unit. “Rather than merely pushing out the corporate message to consumers, marketers must draw them in so that they are regarded as helpful participants in the development of the brand.”

 More here

Posted by brian tiong at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Morgan Stanley *)

Mary Meeker shares the below presentation on tech trends at the State of the Technology Industry November 2008 Web 2.0 Summit.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: YouTube *)

Dr. Vinton G. Cerf, "The Father Of The Internet" and VP, Chief Internet Evangelist for Google shares with OgilvyOne Singapore on how brands can tap into the social media phenomenon.

Posted by brian tiong at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Slideshare *)

Social media has matured beyond early adopters to earn a place in mainstream marketing. Cymfony sponsored this Aberdeen Group study to learn how “best in class” companies are using social media monitoring and analysis to improve their business results.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Jim Nail *)

Jim says...

An Ad Age story is headlined "Content Trumps Community" and notes that only 7.5% of consumer time online is spent in community sites like Facebook, MySpace, etc. True enough, but the stats say social networks have less of an issue with the number of users and page view consumption than with their users' fleeting attention.

First, kudos to the Online Publishers Association for recognizing that community is its own category. That alone is a statement about how far "social media" has come in the last couple of years.

I've followed the OPA's Internet Activity Index for several years and I often quote it to show how the Internet is different from other media: other media are 100% about content, but the Internet has always been a balance of content and communications (email and IM), with a healthy dollop of commerce thrown in.

While the Ad Age article implies that the focus and attention paid to social networks is overblown compared to the time spent, I beg to disagree with my friend Ms. Klaasen on these grounds:

• Time spent on social networks is 50% higher than search -- and we all know how big search is.
• Contrary to Ms. Klaassen's observation that social network time is coming primarily from communications, content's share of time dropped 6 percentage points from December to January, making up the bulk of community's 7.5 percentage points. With this drop, content's share of time is lower that it was in January 2007.
• Look also at page views per person: content dropped 225 pages, which suggests that in the reclassification, a number of sites formerly in the content group were moved to community. Communications, meanwhile, had 404 pages, the second highest number in the past 12 months.
• Another interesting angle is that content sites show 480 pages per month per user while community sites show 380 pages. In other words, community sites already have 80% as many places to put ads in front of each user as content sites.
• Only 59.5% of online users used community sites in January, while the other categories ranged from 78% - 93%. Given that these sites are only a couple of years old, that is a healthy number.
• Even more important, and not reflected in any of these numbers, is the degree of influence this time has on users' brand perceptions and purchasing decisions. Word-of-mouth continues to be the leading influence and roughly twice the influence of online ads, which would imply that this 7.5% of time is likely to have disproportionately higher impact than content pages.

I don't think social media's issue is with having sufficient space to sell -- the audience will continue to grow, and if the past is any indication of the future the number of pages per user will grow as well.

I wrote a while ago that social networks have a difficult tightrope to walk, between monetizing their user's attention and alienating those very users.

These numbers also imply that the users' attention is so fleeting (users are cramming 380 pages into about 1/4 the time they spend on content sites) that creating an effective marketing communication/ad format is the real challenge. Like email and IM before it, banners and other display ad formats are probably not the answer; unlike those communications media, word-of-mouth marketing techniques can be employed to involve brands in the conversations taking place.

Posted by brian tiong at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Jeff Zabin *)

Jeff says...

By now, most companies recognize that blogs, discussion forums and other Web 2.0 social media can provide a highly effective platform for any consumer who wishes to share their recommendations, experiences or opinions about any given brand. Their voices can wield an enormous amount of influence in shaping other consumers' opinions -- and, ultimately, their purchase decisions.

Pay Attention to Web 2.0

Lately, I've been thinking about the concept of trust in the context of consumer marketing and the fact that control over a brand's marketing messages -- and indeed it's very image -- is continuing to shift from traditional media to online communities. Of course, what underlies this shift is the fact that consumers place far more trust on the opinions of other consumers than they do on a company's traditional marketing messages.

By now, most companies recognize that blogs, discussion forums and other Web 2.0 social media can provide a highly effective platform for any consumer who wishes to share their recommendations, experiences or opinions about any given brand. Their voices can wield an enormous amount of influence in shaping other consumers' opinions -- and, ultimately, their purchase decisions.

While it may be true that companies can't control consumer dialog, they can certainly pay close attention to it. Moreover, if appropriate, they can modify their own messages and/or strategies accordingly. 

Monitoring Brand Loyalty

With the advent of a new breed of solutions designed to monitor, analyze and measure the impact of consumer-generated media, companies are becoming increasing adept at keeping a proverbial ear to the ground -- but how adept? That's what I intend to find out through my current market research efforts.

In particular, my upcoming benchmark report will seek to understand the extent to which brand monitoring tools are already being deployed and what percentage of companies plan to adopt the tools over the next 12 months.

It will also seek to identify what metrics are being used to measure success as well as what lies ahead as companies strive to keep even closer tabs on consumer perception as part of their product marketing, brand intelligence and consumer insight activities.

In the context of product recommendations, trust is indeed the common glue. Consumers trust the opinions of other consumers, plain and simple, and what marketers have to say about their own brands is becoming increasingly less important than the chatter of consumers participating in online social media. However, that's not to say marketers can't use brand monitoring solutions to listen in on the conversations.

More here

Posted by brian tiong at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Jason Kincaid *)

Jason reports...

Juice, a Firefox browser sidebar developed by Linkool International, has launched to the public. The powerful plugin automatically culls information from around the web whenever you search for or highlight a term, making it a handy reference tool that I could quickly get used to. It also doubles as a media storage tool, allowing you to simply drag and drop videos and image files into the sidebar to save them for later.

Juice pulls from sources including Wikipedia, Google News, YouTube, and our own CrunchBase (through its API) to offer users a quick at-a-glance summary of many popular topics. The sidebar is very polished, allowing for in-line video playback and expandable text summaries, and the media storage function is intuitive.

At this point it seems that the plugin’s database is still fairly small, as many searches (even for such common terms as “Superman”) result in a notice that “Juice has learned a new keyword”. Within a few minutes these new terms are added to the database automatically, and the issue will probably be gone within a few weeks of the public beta.

Juice is the first application from Beijing-based Linkool Labs to integrate the company’s “intelligent discovery engine” which uses “natural language processing” and “a dictionary management system” to produce semantic results. It’s impossible to tell just how much processing is going on behind the scenes, but search results are generally accurate, though it’s possible to find some words that will “trick” the system.

There are a number of Firefox extensions that offer integrated reference lookup, including CoolPreviews, Briteclick, and others that can be found here.

Posted by brian tiong at 10:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)