George Clooney, Facebook and prostate exams
Celebrities and social media seem to go together like cheese and wine for good reason: social media is one of the most powerful mediums for celebrities to connect with fans, increase their visibility and maintain their personal brands. Oh, and stoke their egos.
From Ashton Kutcher to Lindsay Lohan, Michael Phelps to Shaquille O'Neal (oh, and Kanye West), the celebrities you love (or love to hate) are increasingly on Facebook, Twitter and other popular social media platforms. But that doesn't mean that everyone in Hollywood is starstruck with poking and tweeting.
Who does Facebook have to thank for its newfound profitability?
Display ads in social media have been getting a bad rap for awhile now. While many brands have had success marketing on social networks, purchasing display ads in the space does not always appear to be a great investment.
But this week, Facebook announced that it has positive cash flow for the first time. The company met the 300 million user milestone this month and has reached profitability ahead of schedule.
While the company has gotten some bad press for the slow growth of its ad business, clearly some companies are finding success by investing in Facebook display ads.
So what advertisers are making bank on the social net?
Facebook Lite simplifies, complicates Facebook
If you've used Facebook, you've probably lamented a few things. Despite the fact that Facebook generally has a clean interface, navigating all of its features is not the easiest thing in the world. And Facebook isn't the most responsive website either.
In an effort to simplify the experience and make it faster for those who don't have a high-speed connection (or a lot of time to waste), Facebook has launched a version of its website called Facebook Lite. Currently it's available to users in the United States and India via lite.facebook.com but most expect it to be rolled out globally sooner than later.
Q&A: The marketing duo behind New York's social media hotel
The Roger Smith Hotel may be the most social media savvy hotel in New York -- if not the world.
There's a blog. A Facebook fan page. A YouTube Channel. Over 3,000 Twitter followers. A Flickr photostream. And two guys behind all these efforts, both of whom winnowed their way into overseeing online marketing for the property following stints in food and beverage services at the hotel.
We caught up with Adam Wallace, the hotel's new media marketing manager, and his sidekick Brian Simpson, whose official title is still assistant food and beverage director, to find out how they built a family-run, independent hotel into a digital force to be reckoned with.
Q&A: Marc Schiller, CEO of ElectricArtists
Marc Schiller is CEO of ElectricArtists, a groundbreaking digital agency in New York with a client roster that has included such major and broad-ranging clients as American Express, Starwood Hotels, A&E Networks, The History Channel, USA Network, Microsoft, Netflix, and The Los Angeles Lakers.
The company has created some of the most innovative and original work in the social media arena, from the first marketing presence in Second Lift back in 2006 to the much more recent Trackingtwitter, a site that tracks (and rates) major brands and products on Twitter.
Marc spends a great deal of his time considering how social media influences marketing, and how marketing can leverage social media. He'll share some of that thinking with the attendees of our Peer Summit in New York on October 8.
Being the impatient types, we asked Marc if we couldn't have a sneak peek now as to what he'll be sharing with the audience next month. Happiily, he obliged.
What can DSGi do about its employees' Facebook group?
As reported at the end of last week, staff from DSGi group, which runs Dixons and PC World, have set up a Facebook group which includes several posts slagging off customers.
The DSGi employees' Facebook group, which has 3,000 members, is marked as unofficial, but it will still cause plenty of embarrassment to the company, and won't go down too well with any customers whoh happen to read it.
Are paid friends the new paid links?
Paid links have been and still are a popular SEO technique and it's not hard to understand why: they promise instant gratification to those who can't wait for results. Unfortunately, paid links are not in favor with search engines for obvious reasons and those who employ them today do so at significant risk.
As the importance of social media becomes more apparent to businesses both large and small, it's no surprise that the desire for instant gratification is rearing its ugly head in the form of 'paid friends'.
Facebook's most popular app ever? It's probably not what you think
If you had to guess what the most popular Facebook app on Facebook is, chances are you're not thinking that it has anything to do with fruits, vegetables and cows. But you'd be very wrong. What is the most popular app on Facebook? FarmVille.
As the name suggests, FarmVille is a game that gives users the ability to "grow delicious fruits and vegetables and raise adorable animals" on their own virtual farms. With nearly 35m active monthly users and 12m active daily users, FarmVille has just about grown itself into the most popular Facebook application ever. When FarmVille surpasses 35,554,755 active monthly users, it will surpass the record set by the How Well Do You Know Me? application.
There's nothing wrong with liquidity
Are Facebook employees who took advantage of the ability to cash out some of their stock holdings as part of a tender offer from investor Digital Sky Technologies "mercenaries"?
Controversial BusinessWeek tech reporter Sarah Lacy thinks they are. The reason: they're giving up too soon. Lacy believes the $100m tender offer, which is giving some employees the ability to sell up to 25% of their Facebook stock at a $6.5bn valuation, will prove to be a steal for Digital Sky Technologies.
MySpace acquires iLike
After days of chatter, MySpace made its acquisition of social music discovery startup iLike official today. The company, which is best known for its popular Facebook music app, will see its social discovery technology applied in new areas such as gaming, according to MySpace CEO Owen van Natta. To that end, iLike was acquired by MySpace Inc., not MySpace's digital music joint venture.
According to the acquisition announcement, the current iLike experience that users have come to love will be "unaffected by
the acquisition" and iLike will continue to be headquarted in Seattle.
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Web 2.0
Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
