Social Media is the New CRM

Noticed yesterday that Home Depot is now on Twitter and answering questions in the vein of Frank over on ComcastCares...I thought this post was a succinct display of the Generosity, CRM responsiveness, and "added value" derived from HomeDepot's social media efforts.



More models for how brands may upgrade CRM and advance value on the social webs.

The Feast

"The Feast" on October 16th in NYC will gather 150 of the world's leading creative mavericks, entrepreneurs, revolutionaries, radicals, and innovators together to inspire action to change the world.

A series of inspiring, mind-expanding, and innovative talks that will showcase a look at social innovation from all angles. From design to business to science, our speakers will share a deep look at changing the DNA of their respective industries by harnessing the power of creativity to propel social change. Some confirmed speakers include Dale Jones of PlayPumps International and Tom Szaky of TerraCycle.

Whether you're a social entrepreneur or socially conscious at heart, "The Feast" will provide you with an excellent platform for inspiration, connection, and action.

For more information and to purchase tickets, visit http://www.thefeastconference.com

Politics 2.0: Sex Ads in Denver Up During DNC

Timeless behavior, perhaps, but now enabled and amplified by social media - CNet says: Sex Ads in Denver Up During DNC

"Ads seeking casual sexual encounters through the Denver Craigslist site increased an average of roughly 70 percent to 80 percent over the same days of the week earlier in August."

The general content is what you might expect. Posts suggested "Here 4 DNC? Come get sexual with me"; "Does the DNC make you hot?"; and "Looking to service a young Democrat."


And CNet offers this fair disclaimer: "mere correlation does not imply causation - other factors could explain this rise in advertisements." True, indeed. And I would also add to this disclaimer that increased ad spending doesn't necessarily mean increased sales resulted, either. Advertisers could, perhaps, have been pitching to an indifferent target base who were far too busy to care. If anyone has ROI research data on this feel free to post your charts. Will keep eyes peeled for RNC comparisons.

via Adlab

Electing a US President (in Plain English)

Common Craft strikes again. Swing thought: planners' job is to make strategic complexity as simple and succint as these guys continually do.

What the F**K is social media?

Found this great slide show on Blog de Nuit today. It's a very simple presentation about what social media is and what it means for brands.

For those social network connoisseurs out there, it probably won't say anything new. But I appreciate the simplicity and clarity. Reminds me a bit of the CommonCraft vids about Twitter and LinkedIN


My favorite quote from the presentation:


"Relinquish control: The goal is not to control the conversation."

| View | Upload your own

via Blog de Nuit

Social Wars

Current TV's amusing commentary on the state of social networks.

Fallon Brainfood: The Social 10 Redux

10 Things Marketers Should Know About Social Networking.

On March 26th, 2008, Aki Spicer, strategic planner at Fallon Worldwide, conducted a presentation about social media, using social media, live, across a mashup of social web touchpoints including Fallon Planning Blog on Blogger, Yahoo! Live, NetVibes, Plannersphere on Ning, and Facebook. View the accompanying slides at Slideshare or download the pdf directly to your desktop at Dropio.

Below is the recorded videos (1,2,and 3) and slideshow links of the presentation in case you missed it live on the web:

| View | Upload your own

What is Brainfood?
Brainfood is a monthly all-agency lunch conducted by Fallon Planners. Wide-ranging topics explore trends, business issues, and actionable opportunities for our brands. Moreover, Brainfood offers us a chance to come together, share a beer and some pizza, and engage in a stimulating discussion on a variety of interesting topics that affect our business. Previous topics have included Virtuality, China Rising, Design For All with more stimulating editions still to come.

Fallon Brainfood: The Social 10

10 Things Marketers Should Know About Social Networking.

This will be a live event/webcast presentation about social media, using social media!

You're invited to a one hour presentation that will explore ten trends affecting marketers who are considering entering the burgeoning social networking space - what's now, what's next, and what other brands like yours are already doing.

Join Fallon strategic planner Aki Spicer on Wednesday March 26, 12pm CST/1pm EST/10am PST, in person (for Fallon employees) or on the social web (for everyone else) for this worldwide first, and the latest in an ongoing series of monthly Brainfood presentations to the agency.




How do you attend this social?
For Fallon employees, come on down to 27Rotunda and you can see the presentation live (lunch provided).

For everyone else, it's an open social on the web (lunch not provided)! Attend Aki's presentation (slideshow, live sound and video) on your choice of a range of social web touchpoints including Fallon Planning Blog on Blogger, Yahoo! Live (sound and video only), NetVibes, Plannersphere on Ning, Slideshare (slides only), and Facebook.


*Don't worry, specific links will be forthcoming on day of the event, you will not have to download or learn any new or complicated technology to participate, I promise.

**Social web attendees will be able to talk/text questions via Yahoo! Live and AIM.


What is Brainfood?
Brainfood is a monthly all-agency lunch conducted by Fallon Planners. Wide-ranging topics explore trends, business issues, and actionable opportunities for our brands. Moreover, Brainfood offers us a chance to come together, share a beer and some pizza, and engage in a stimulating discussion on a variety of interesting topics that affect our business. Previous topics have included Virtuality, China Rising, Design For All with more stimulating editions still to come.

Twitter in plain english

Another smart clip from the guys at Common Craft.

Check here and here for some other great examples.

Lifestreamed: Aki Channels Are Live

Its like an Aki Fishtank!
http://live.yahoo.com/akispicer
If you ooVoo, then catch latest episodes on "akispicer"...but ooVoo requires that you download software. Yahoo!Live is free and on the internets. Of course, you gotta have a webcam enabled computr. But u may still chat and join the conversation.
*i'll try not to pick my nose on cam


Webcam chat at Ustream

Brave New Media: How Facebook Users Spend Their Time

Compete.com blog discusses "how Facebook users spend their time".

Not unsurprisingly, people spend most of their time browsing profiles, but using applications is getting up there in terms of number of users, and the time spent is almost as long.

And speaking of Facebook Apps...Compete data show that Facebook activity grew 32% from May to August, 2007, with more than a third of the growth coming from the new applications.


And furthermore...O'Reilly released a report The Facebook Application Platform and it has good and bad news. Good: there are nearly 5000 Facebook applications, and the top applications have tens of millions of installs and millions of active users. Bad news: 87% of the usage goes to only 84 applications! Only 45 applications have more than 100,000 active users. "This is a long tail marketplace with a vengeance -- but unfortunately, the economic models (for developers at least, though not for Facebook itself) all rely on getting into the very short head."

Here's the distribution of active users among the top 200 developers. (Some developers have multiple popular applications.) As you can see, the drop-off is extremely steep:


Doh! Tim O'Reilly says: "This doesn't mean that Facebook won't become an important platform for developers, just that a throwaway Facebook app is not the ticket to quick riches. Embracing the Facebook opportunity requires more than just optimism."

via O'Reilly Radar and Compete.com Blog

Virtuality: Social Media in 3D

Caught a post over on adverblog about the launch of a new social networking site for your virtual self, Koinup. The site allows you to connect all of your virtual world experiences in one network- your activities from Second Life, World of Warcraft, The Sims all in one location, where you can post content of your adventures (video of a recent SL trip for example) and browse through the virtual lives of the sites other members.

This brings an interesting new layer to all of the talk around virtual worlds. KoinUp elevates the discussion above "worlds" and highlights the trend that our online activity is increasingly becoming virtual, so much so that we now need a social web to bring together all of the virtual identities that define us in the digital space.

I just came across this (thanks Aki) and while interested, still haven't quite decided where I see this going and how "big" it may be. Any readers out there more familiar and care to weigh in? For those of you in virtual worlds, do you see yourself social networking your virtual identities? Are you so dedicated that, in addition to maintaining Facebook, MySpace, and your other real world social webs that you would start a virtual side?

Live Web in Plain English (as Advertisement)

Common Craft strikes again, this time for the new Google Docs app - yet another smart play at making Google your dashboard for digital living (Facebook is aiming at becoming your dashboard for social life).



*Google Docs don't work for Safari...so, ya'll lemme know how it's workin'.

Emoticon Celebrates 25 Years

Mashable notes that the ubiquitous emoticon is 25 years old. Happy Birfday Emoticon (sing the song, ya'll)!

It turns out that the emoticon was not just an afterthought, but a much discussed idea addressing a problem early users of the system were having in separating sarcastic comments from serious ones. Carnegie Mellon professor Scott Fahlman proposed a smiley face to indicate joking and an upside down one to indicate unhappiness in a thread (captured below).



Respect the architect and recognize game.

Politics 2.0: Barack 2.0, Again

Sen. Barack Obama is now on LinkedIn. And not with lame banner ads. Obama has been making the most of Web 2.0, launching his own social network, gaining a larger-than-life presence on MySpace, YouTube, and even Twitter.

Social Media: This One Time, When I Googled Myself...

On a random curious tangent during an otherwise productive (hm...for the most part) day, decided to Google my name and see what popped up. Before I started at Fallon, I remember doing this same search and, while I expected the result, was disappointed that it returned nothing. While I'm no Aki Spicer (my paltry 52 web hits is childs' play), I'm doing a bit better than I once was.


Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace...whatever. All of this social media comes up in conversations all the time, and I for one often take for granted the impact all of it has because it's such a natural part of my everyday life. I check Facebook multiple times a day, and barely think twice about how amazing it is that I'm able to stay tapped into friends lives who otherwise I would've lost all connections to.

But as I scrolled through my Google search results, I quickly realized that without social networks, my name would fall into the category of "having no documents matched this search." And while this may be due to my age and level of experience, I wonder what a similar search reveals for the rest of you.

And I don't think it's really a bad thing. For one, I know that all of the superficial Google results on me were, in some way, influenced by me, so there's no surprises. That's not to say that someday, I wouldn't like to have some quotes from big shot sources to my credit (AdAge, still waiting for that phone call).

In the interim though, just happy that I'm Google worthy.

Short History of YouTube

Live Web In Plain English

The Common Craft Show is a series of short explanatory videos by Lee and Sachi LeFever. Their goal is to fight complexity with simple tools and plain language.

Mass Interactive: Infinite Cat Project

Cats do Web 2.0, too!



MC Escher Cats. Looking at cats. Looking at cats. Looking at cats. Looking at cats. Looking at cats. I think you get the idea... Nice (AND DAMN SIMPLE) way to hook cat lovers into a participatory web game. Kittenwar still reigns, though.

Mass Interactive: GMail Does Web 2.0

Help Google imagine how an email message travels around the world.

Post your clip as a response to this one. They'll edit a selection of submissions together to make a final video, which will be featured on the Gmail homepage and seen by users worldwide.

Respond to this video with your own clip by August 13, 2007 to be considered to the final collaborative video. Learn more about the project at http://mail.google.com/mvideo