I was going to comment on Pete Blackshaws Post „Twitter Spam„, but unfortunately, the long and complex typekey registration process put me off. So I will comment here and trackback, why not. And I can even add my own screenshots.
In his post, Pete suspects twitter now having spam profiles. I second that, I have a Chinese Hotel,a kidney stones and a prostrate cancer follower. Seems like twitter is slowly becoming a playing field of professional spammers, too.
Just a quick one: here are 2 presentations about social media that I found in the last few days:
Neil Perkin about what’s next in Media:
The second one is about the future of social networks, a research report by futurethink.
Barack Obama seems to utilize quite a few social media tools, having many speeches published on youtube, twittering, and of course blogging and a facebook profile. Now he has launched a crowd sourcing platform „oh boy obama„, on which people can vote for projects during his presidency, once he wins the election.
The concept behind these types of services is that by letting users suggest ideas and vet them via a community voting process, you’ll be left with only the ideas that your most loyal customers really want – and that these are things that are most likely to succeed in the marketplace.
The idea is basically the same as for „my starbucks idea„, „dell ideastorm“ or even „tchibo ideas“ (in Germany). Everybody can submit an idea, users then vote on the ideas, comment&discuss, etc. Apparently, the idea was born out of necessity, but I don’t quite fathom why people might think that Obama has not reached out to the online audience sufficiently enough (as it says in this article).
While I think he does well using all these social media tools, his new platform has one critical flaw as a commenter to one of my previous posts on this type of crowd sourcing noted: the same way users can see the new ideas (and vote&comment), so can his political opponents. And the might see in which direction his campaign topics could be targeted.
Nevertheless, I sometimes wish German politicians would increasingly use these tools…
Another good one by the guys from Commoncraft:
The European Championchip is coming soon and you can see how companies like adidas and nike have started to publish all sorts of clips and virals. Now a company rather unlikely to produce football virals has published this 2.5 minute long video of a battle of Franck Ribéry vs Luca Toni:
You can see a company logo in this clip several times, but it is not too obvious. Only once you see this clip, you get a URL that provides more info about who’s behind it:
Once you visit the website mentioned at the end of this clip, you can see it’s done by Allianz, a German insurance company. It’s nicely done, but I am still surprised to see an insurance company go through all this effort to show their logo. But since it’s very entertaining, I won’t ask any more questions 😉
Just when you thought that everybody who wants to use a (corporate) blog in their communication has tried (and sometimes failed miserably), Becks opens the bottle and starts a blogger casting.
Here is what they want:
You live by the blog. You have a way with words that hold people captive. And you don’t shy away from being in the public eye. Then we want you. Give your two cents worth, and we’ll give you a handsome salary and other bright perks. Your name and blogs will be seen by many around the world. Others have 365 days, you have 365 entries in a year. You get to work with Beck’s and a congenial creative team in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You might even relocate to a greener pasture. Sounds too good to be true?
Adverblog found a quote from a press release:
„Our consumers actively seek out links to new trends and genuine material from around the globe. They have a desire to learn about people who share the same values as they do. The Beck’s new columnist will help uncover and highlight relevant and exciting topics for our consumers, enabling us to better connect with them.“
The idea is not new, but it could work well for becks, if the blogger manages to connect will with the becks consumer. But there are several possible negative outcomes:
In either case it is a comparatively small investment (at the cost of probably only a few TV commercials) with a large possible upside to it.
Wo ich sonst so bin...