Media Week

AOL has announced that it is going to support Google's Open Social project. You can read Eric Staat, the software engineer of AOL, here:

http://opensocialapis.blogspot.com/

Just reading Groundswell - winning in a world transformed by social technologies which is written by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research www.groundswell.forrester.com. It is very useful when explaining how brands should listen to social media.

With customers ganging up on you on Facebook, defining you on Wikipedia and talking about your products and services now - without reference to you - the authors argue that it is essential to undertake some kind of brand monitoring.

The reasons they give are that you have to know what your brand stands for and how that is different from what people are talking about.

If you keep listening, you can understand the changes taking place. Discover if your competitor is getting all the talk

Brand monitoring helps you identify influencers in your market, it can act as an early warning system if a crisis is brewing and it can also generate new product and marketing ideas. Maybe there is a blogger out there who has some comments on your packaging and design? Or there are bloggers pointing out why your customer service is letting you down.

When we recommend monitoring services to clients it is always best to ensure that you have someone who is experienced in your market who is able to interpret the results and put them in some kind of context. Technology vendors might not know what the key topics and issues are for your brand so you need to have someone who can help put any online developments in context.

There are also different levels of monitoringto consider. You can go for general buzz monitoring which is an important start or also you can go for more bespoke high end monitoring to focus on say the most influential sites and blogs in your sector and only monitor them.  And obviously it is important to act upon what is being said online.

www.itsopen.co.uk

Social media means that people now have the technologies which enables them to talk to people without reference to traditional organisations. So people are happily sharing content with each other which includes a large amount of TV commercials and logos being mashed up, re-cut and distorted.

Are companies losing control of their brands online? Or were they never fully in control? And what protection do they have - if any? If you search on you tube for most brands you nearly always come up with spoof ads. Some can be very funny and entertaining. But they are not what the brand stands for or how the brand sees itself. I have lost count of the times I have asked marketing executives if they were responsible for a certain online video ad and frequently they were not. So who owns the brand now? And should marketeers perhaps be paying more attention to how brands are being reflected online? Probably most marketeers can't see what is happening to their precious brands because their IT department treats them like children and blocks access to the relevant sites. But marketeers surely cannot ignore the fact that brands are evolving online in ways they did not anticipate. This is not just a case of a viral campaign. This is brand butchery which would send the brand police into a rage if they saw what was happening to the commercials and images they spend millions carefully cultivating. Brand equity is taking a nose dive on certain social networks and no one seems to care. Many social media networks have APIs which enable outside developers to develop fresh applications such as on Facebook or Twitter. Maybe advertisers should accept that their influence will grow if they let people mess with their TV commericials and logos online. But it will be virtually impossible to control the messaging. Companies pay millions to put their logo on a football pitch and those same logos are being passed around and put anywhere online in social networks which have serious influence.  It is pretty chaotic out there.  But by listening and seeing what is going on with ads can present some interesting ideas. Stuck for an idea for a pitch for a brand? Why not log onto YouTube or surf photobucket and see what logo/ TV commercial pranks and ideas people are experimenting with and if they are popular, you never know it might be something to develop. What has happened online is that the editors have been shut out. We have the citizen journalists. Well just maybe advertisers are going to have to accept the role and increasing power of citizen advertisers. They mug your fine TV commercial, mess around with it, so it appeals to a totally different audience and broadcast it 24/7. What happens if a major brand sees a TV commercial that has been edited as the most watched you tube video? What's the impact of that going to be? How does that square with all the careful associations ads try to build around their products? It's a difficult area. I suppose if the ads are any good you could just hire the person who made them perhaps.

The Google team has been posting on their blog about the fact that Facebook does not want to join up with Friend Connect

http://google-code-updates.blogspot.com/2008/05/how-google-friend-connect-works.html

The Google team stress that Google Friend Connect puts users in control over whether they're connected to their data on Facebook and then says Friend Connect only reads a small amount of user data from Facebook using Facebook public APIs.

Google are so smart. They are successfully portraying Facebook as monopolistic and you can understand why Facebook is concerned about linking up with Google. But I don't think Facebook has much choice. They can't sit in their castle fuming.

Virgin Mobile has launched an innovative marketing initiative on Facebook called Fund my Phone. So what's all this about then?

Creative and advertising spots that are part of the Sugar Mama program are accessible on Facebook through an application, and can be shared with friends. The more friends you get to watch the spots, the more minutes you earn for your mobile cell phone bill. It is a clever way to participate more in the Facebook culture and why this could do so well is that Virgin has created content of value which people will want to share. Even if it does not do huge numbers they deserve credit for experimenting in creative ways with social media. With social media networks fragmenting, the only way to gain meaningful connections with users is by providing content which they really want to pass on.

Google has just launched Google Friend Connect

http://www.google.com/friendconnect/home/moreinfo

Google Friend Connect is in preview stage and is being tested by some web sites. It enables web site owners to add social features to their web sites (such as message boards/member management/photo-sharing/ratings and review facilities). Some of these social features (or rather what Google likes to call social gadgets) have been either developed by Google or outside developers. This is a highly significant development as Google friend connect will enable web sites to easily add in their Facebook friends. The web is becoming more open and the 'walled garden' approach of social networks is now dead. It will remove the need to join multiple social networks and people will be able to link up with their friends all across the web rather than where they first registered their details. In effect people will be able to plug their social network into other sites. Google is marketing Friend Connect as a means for site owners to increase traffic (which can grow virally through the addition of social features) and of enrichening sites through the addition of social features.

From a marketing perspective, Google Friend Connect presents an excellent opportunity for brands to develop social networks of their own, adding features they think will work best to their sites, blogs or microsites. In terms of the power struggle on the web, this is a masterly stroke by Google to lead the social media growth online. From an advertisers' perspective, it will be interesting to see how Google offers ads through Friend Connect. That though could be difficult as Facebook has discovered.

My Space has announced an initiative to let users share their profiles as they move across other sites they visit. It is part of a partnership programme, with the likes of Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket and Twitter.It is a canny move by My Space to effectively move first by allowing users to set up a service where they can travel around with their profiles because it means they will be at the centre of social media networking in the future. The notion of data portability offers a whole range of possibilities but it fundamentally underlines the fact that media online is becoming more and more personal. Mass is out. Creativity and bespoke applications are going to prosper in this environment. If for example you could create an application which spread across MySpace users then it could go with them across all the other sites they visit instead of just being stuck within MySpace. The walls of social media networks are coming down and people are being encouraged to travel around with their profiles. Signing them up as brand advocates is going to be an interesting challenge.

Next Monday (12) at 8pm Digg is holding a webcast and already the suggestions are coming in...

http://digg.com/tech_news/Call_for_Topics_Digg_Townhall_this_Monday

One of the biggest complaints that Diggers seem to have is that mob rule is taking over their beloved Digg. Is it that hard core diggers cannot stand the concept of a democratic free-for-all when it comes to deciding which stories appear on which pages or are they right to complain that activists are taking over?

Diggers are grumbling that environmentalists are going on the site in droves trying to push their own agendas, voting for stories so they deliberately gain prominence. And there are also complaints about all the US presidential hopeful stories on there.

You can imagine teams of PR people out there trying to push their clients stories up the Digg ladder.So what can be done to stop it? It seems like some diggers want to have special enclaves where they can go and digg with trusted diggers...The risk is that without any proper moderation or editorial control, good social media sites can be hijacked by fanatics, activists, maniacs, you know what I am talking about. A free-for-all can soon degenerate without any clear rules. So some social media networks are going to have to get tougher with their moderation otherwise it will spoil the party for everyone else.

Stuck for something to watch? How about a social media drama called Spinning Jenny?

http://www.youtube.com/user/spinningjennytv

You can watch clips on YouTube and Spinning Jenny, which follows the life of a young woman going into PR, even has a Facebook presence as well. As this is a social media drama, you're invited to vote on storylines and there's even a chance you can appear in the show.

Social media dramas are catching on...My Space has commissioned one called I love Chieftown. There are sponsorship opportunities which sound a good idea as the brand becomes part of the content which can then spread through networks. The challenge for advertisers is that there could be lots of social media dramas but they might not do huge numbers which are as predictable as TV. Still though it's an innovative way to experiment with social media and one of these could take off.....or agencies might decide to sponsor several and try to get product placement.

You Tube has launched in India (http://in.youtube.com) further underlining the economic power of the country. According to Alexa (www.alexa.com), you tube is the fifth most popular site in India.You Tube's decision to launch a channel in India follows on from You Tube Korea. It shows the power of video and how important it is going to be for advertisers going forward. Youtube says it has added an Indian lens to the content. The charts reflect which videos are being watched in India. They have also signed up local partners to deliver video content. It provides an interesting insight into Indian life and could provide ideas and inspirations for communications teams looking to engage with the Indian market in a more personal and meaningful way.

Got a client who wants a blog? Wondering how to make your blog a success? Look here for some useful tips:

http://www.betterbusinessblogging.com/business-blog-design/optimising-your-blog-for-your-readers/

If you are interested in monitoring brands on Twitter go to www.summize.com and you can subscribe to alerts and key words. It is an excellent way to see the kinds of conversations going on around your brands.