Unfriending the Social Media Director

I love it when fuzzy Dotcom buzzwords become the recruiting job title du jour = New Media Director, Emerging Media Specialist, Technology Evangelist, Digital Innovations Manager. The variations are endless!

I have nothing against specific 2.0 job descriptions. Community managers, mobile marketers, and new channel analysts all have important duties to perform. It is the job titles that don't convey a sense of purpose that drive me crazy.

Currently the most overused title being tossed around is Social Media Director. I stopped counting the number of recruiters pushing this over the last six months. Every company seems to have realized that they can't function without one, must have one, and need them right now.

Here's the most interesting issue: none of them can find qualified candidates. The recruiters are certainly confused. Should they find them at digital agencies? PR agencies? Client-side marketing departments? Is it a strategic, executional, or technical role? Do they report into the PR Director, the VP of Marketing or (God forbid) IT? Senior or mid level?

I love asking exactly what the position manages. The most popular response: "Well, you know, the company really expects this person to define that as part of their on-boarding." Runner up: "Well, um, you know, Facebook and things like that."

Therein lies the issue. If you can't explain the job title's responsibilities, then the title itself is too vague. It reminds me of the Days of the Webmaster (for those of you as old as Interweb dirt). Back in the early Dotcom years, anyone involved with a company's website could be the Webmaster. It didn't matter if you were the technical guy in IT who ran the site, the quasi-artistic woman who designed and hand-coded it, or the poor deer-in-the-headlights project manager who had to keep it updated.

Website Owner = Webmaster

Back then it wasn't embarrassing to have Webmaster printed on your business cards. Trust me, I was one of them. But it also was a pain in the ass explaining to your co-workers exactly what you did all day. "You know, website stuff." It was soon replaced by a variety of titles that actually explained your role = Website Technologist, Web Designer, Content Manager. I am waiting for this evolution to hit the whole Social Media job market.

For instance, Director of E-Commerce is more than a job description. It also explains how your employment success is measured = sell stuff online. There is no reason that these social media job titles can't perform the same duty. Social Commerce Manager makes a lot more sense.

Sure it still may require you to oversee all the quasi-social platforms that can't find a home within your organization. But at least you establish a context for how they should be utilized. Twitter unable to generate revenue right now? Maybe you don't need to worry about tweeting so much.

My bet is on a completely new title = Director of Advocacy. This role definitely expands beyond social media. However, its core essence is rooted there. Why do most marketers find promise in Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and niche community web sites? Why do they spend money on social media listening and flood any industry conference session with the word Social in it?

We are all chasing the same Marketing Holy Grail = consumer word of mouth. The chance to influence consumers, have them talk about us, and track the impact those conversations have on our brands (and sales). Social media has become the easiest way to participate in this magical process.

But Word of Mouth itself is a fuzzy marketing term. I believe it is the bastard step-parent of Viral Marketing. Both promise "free" promotion of your product or brand. Both require a cross-your-fingers-and-hope-they-do-spread-it approach. True, WOM can be jump started with marketing programs. But as many of us interactive marketers have been saying for many years = You can't make something go viral. Just like you can't make something go word of mouth.

But I believe Advocacy is more than just a word of mouth initiative. It is a formal strategy encouraging consumers to say positive things about your products and (more importantly) generate positive content that can be leveraged in marketing programs. Online is a very efficient channel to identify the consumers most willing to talk about you positively. It also is an efficient channel to aggregate the content that they create. Most importantly, it is an efficient channel to promote that content and reach non-users who may be influenced by it. This Advocacy Loop can be built on the backbone of social media properties and consumer behaviors.

I recently presented a case study on Brand-Distributed Consumer Advocacy that demonstrates just that. It is a small example, but enough proof that social media has a very important role.

The best part is that the Director of Advocacy cannot be pigeonholed into just being the Social Media Guru. To be successful, advocacy must be leveraged throughout your owned/earned/paid programs online. It should be utilized across not just online channels, but offline as well. All with a very specific goal in mind.

At least that is my current pitch. It usually results in very short recruiter conversations. But eventually companies will realize it as the natural next step. If not, then I already have my Social Webmaster business cards ready to send to the printers.

Celebrating a Shark-Free SXSW 2011

So I finally recovered from SXSW -- an entire week filled with meat, free beer, marathon interactive sessions, and great loud music. I was a bit concerned going into this year's festivities. Attendance for the interactive portion was up 40% to 18,000 people, anyone reserving a hotel room starting in January was stuck staying 30+ minutes out of town, and big brands were sponsoring everything from the convention center to free taco trucks. If SXSW was going to jump the Miller Lite shark in a Chevy Volt full of Pepsi Max, then this was the year.

Fortunately Austin didn't disappoint. More crowded? Yep. More parties with free music and beer? Yep. More trouble finding a lunch spot that didn't require a 30 minute wait? Yep. The only thing geekier than walking around Austin wearing a SXSWi lanyard? Wearing one while standing outside the pop-up Apple Store to buy a brand new iPad2.

I found the conference sessions just as stimulating and interesting as 2010. The post-session beer sessions with my interactive peers were the perfect nightcap as your brain swelled from innovation overload.

For the second year in a row I avoided most of the advertising/marketing sessions and went for the fringe topics = nonprofit social advocacy, location-based APIs, user-generated gaming. Discussions about crowdsourced digitization of historical photos -- in a room full of museum curators and librarians -- was relevant to any marketer: How do you manage user-submitted content efficiently, without micromanaging the process but ensuring quality?

Sometimes you ended up debating sock puppet-based transmedia marketing experiences (Ethics of Pervasive Fiction). Or enjoying IT banter around cloud computing services (who knew Salesforce.com was so funny?) The most annoying emerging trend was digital slackers taking pictures of PPT slides via their cellphones. Too...hungover...to...write...things...down...

Most of these sessions provided unique insights into how non-marketers are using the Interweb. Many which can actually be applied to marketing strategies. You realize that a whole bunch of people still leverage the interactive space for non-advertising purposes. It was nice to gaze at other industries' digital navels for awhile.

So here's my roundup of the cool hip new start-ups, trends, and movements. Impossible to uncover them all, but enough to reassure me that innovation has not stopped at Facebook, Twitter, and Foursquare.

Geo-Event-Based Anonymous Social Media

Color (iPhone / Android) is part of a new emerging social category. Here is a summary:

“Rather than friending or following people, a Color user simply posts pictures. Users see pictures posted recently and nearby their current location. This concept seems fitting for events -- say, a sports game or a wedding -- where lots of people who don't necessarily know each other are taking photos of the same thing. If Color is used by a statistically significant percentage of folks, nearly every location that matters on earth will soon be draped in an ever-growing tapestry of visual cloth."

They caused a minor disturbance due to a recent VC infusion of $41 million.

Group Instant Messaging

A new make social networking simple movement is brewing. These apps allow you to create group message lists that don’t require sending/receiving SMS texts (they are sent via the apps). You can easily add people from your Facebook/Twitter/phone contact lists. Sounds really basic, but I found they were useful in Austin to keep track of people and coordinate meet ups. They also allow group members to invite others into the "pod," thus allowing an interesting two degrees of separation social network to form.

Probably not something you would use all the time. Can suffer from “chatroom clutter” if too many people are invited to participate. They require everyone to have the app installed, which is the biggest weakness. The leaders:

Beluga
“Beluga offers a mobile app and web service that enable simple, instant, and rich group messaging from your phone. Use Beluga to plan a night out or just share updates and photos with your close friends and family. Like SMS, it’s instant. Like email, everyone’s in on the conversation. Best of all, it’s private.”

They were just bought by Facebook

GroupMe
“Start groups with the people already in your contacts. When you send a message, everyone instantly receives it—it’s like a private chat room that works on any phone.”

The Democratization of Video Game Creation

GameSalad
GameSalad believes that video games have become too complex and expensive to create. They developed a visual game builder that allows anyone to make their own video games, without understanding programming and graphic production -- object-oriented gaming. Could result in a new breed of amateur games that redefine the industry. Or just a bunch of crappy games that no one wants to play.

Crowdsourced TV

CurrentTV's Bar Karma is a fully-produced TV show whose episode plots are determined via crowdsourcing:

“You decide the creative direction for Bar Karma, and that process starts right here. You can contribute to anything from the episode's overall story down to what the characters are wearing. It's up to you. Impress the Bar Karma producers and community with your suggestions, and your name just might end up in the credits.”

The plot is developed based on user submissions and alterations. CurrentTV then selects the final plot and produces it. The Storymaker plotline builder was developed by the guy who created The Sims and Spore.

Geo-Location Mobile Gaming

I found the start-up mobile game company Dokogeo really exciting. They hosted the session titled Beyond Check-Ins: Location Based Game Design (presentation audio).

They have two games that mash up physical space with game play, in ways that are much more interesting than a basic Foursquare-style “check-in for points” game. Both utilize Google Maps and your phone’s GPS to incorporate your physical location into the experience.

Seek N Spell is an app that mixes up Scrabble, scavenger hunts, and tag. After downloading a Google Map of your immediate location, the game drops letter tiles around the area. You then race from spot to spot, picking up the tiles and spelling words. The person who spells the most (and longest) words wins.

Dokobots could define a huge new “endless game” trend. It is a geocaching Tamagotchi game that covers the entire earth with game pieces. Here are two good summaries = 1 | 2.

You walk around collecting robots and batteries from the live map based on your actual GPS location. Your robots travel with you, you can take pictures with them, mark locations that they have “visited”, etc. Then you can drop them off at any time. If someone else picks up that robot, then they can see all of its pictures and travels. You can also track the robots that you dropped and see how other people used them (like those traveling garden gnome photos).

I found it easiest to pick up objects while driving around in a cab, but walking is just as rewarding. It just launched three months ago. I find the concept fascinating and something that my kids would become instantly addicted to.

Collaborative Creativity

4Chan creator Christopher Poole's keynote speech also made your brain hurt (summary | presentation audio). If you haven't checked out the site, then do it from home. It's not safe for work, kids, small animals, or anyone on probation. But the idea of real-time user-generated disposable Internet memes is about as pure as the Interweb gets. He also unveiled his new slightly-less-likely-to-get-you-arrested collaborative site called Canvas, which is currently in invite-only beta.

A bit more safe for work is the collaborative time waster Fridge Magnets. It is a visual chat room where you try to build words out of letters, while others on the page try to do the same. Sometimes playful, sometimes aggressive, sometimes downright creepy.

The Music Industry Isn't Dead Yet

Yes, there is still music at SXSW. You have to tolerate stepping in drunk hipster as you rush from bar to bar, but it is worth the hassle to see awesome bands who you have never heard of. Here's my shortlist of great live shows:

1. Typhoon
2. David Wax Museum
3. A Place to Bury Strangers
4. Local Natives
5. Gold Panda
6. Surfer Blood
7. Pains of Being Pure at Heart
8. Casio Kids
9. Strfckr
10. Night Beats
    

Without a doubt the event will be even larger next year, but I still recommend attending. Just bring your shark jumper, book your hotel room this July, stay away from the street pizza, and see a couple bands while you are there.

The Ad:Tech Analysis That The Man Doesn't Want You To Read!

So the 2009 edition of Ad:Tech Chicago just wrapped up. As with most conferences, it offered moments of inspiration, periods of confirmation, and lengthy bouts of “dammit I could do better than that” as you realize 10 minutes into the session that you picked the wrong one.

For those who couldn’t scam a free pass, here are my notable discoveries:

1) Enough With The Data Affirmation!
Geezus our industry loves to remind ourselves of our awesomeness. Usually through the fine art of growth charts documenting the increase in media dollars moving online, the increase in using social network time spent, the increase in TV viewers watching online video, the increase in marketers thinking about eventually using mobile… Some of the sessions could have been retitled Historical Overview of PPT Chart Formats. Problem is we already know online will keep going up, no matter what the context or empirical values. It’s forecast navel gazing at its most redundant. Next time, how about putting a big Thumbs Up icon on the first slide and move on.


2) There Should Be An Arrogant Bastard On Every Panel
It makes the session interesting. Plus our industry doesn’t have enough vocal skeptics, those who don’t think every dotcom trend is the next big thing. That’s what keeps the other marketers treating us like some weird cult. I was waiting for one person to declare that most brands don’t need a Twitter strategy right now. Or point out the percent of consumers who would actually use your iPhone app is about the same number who click on your banners. I would have helped deflect the vendor schwag being thrown at their head.

3) Case Studies Seeking Objectives, No Fuzzies
Way too many case studies started with what they did, not the reason they did it. Assuming there was a strategy to begin with. Here’s a hint: running rich media banners on a teen social network is not a case study. Incorporating your brand into social conversation to increase product advocacy is. [Note to Ad:Tech -- that would have been a good one.] It made me realize most case studies are not really relevant to most of the people in the room, unless they happen to be a direct competitor. My proposal: throw out the creative examples and the results, and just talk about The Why. That’s what is most applicable to the audience at large.

4) Data Can Kick Your Ass
Literally. The Media Metrics panel drifted dangerously close to a beat down between two analytics companies. Never have I heard so much word of mouth post-session, especially one about data analytics. See #2.

5) Social Media Is A Means, Not An End
There was a lot of conversation about budget allocation for social media. Per #1, Social Media Spending is never going to increase exponentially because that’s the wrong metric. If you execute your programs correctly, you shouldn’t have to shift your marketing dollars to Social Media. It should be a natural extension of your efforts.

6) Future Buzzwords Today
There was a disappointing lack of new buzzwords, which are usually an indicator of innovation and evolution. More buzzwords = more new things. So in the interest of career self preservation, here are a couple new buzzwords looking for definitions. I would be happy to host a panel about them next year:

1. Social Coupons
2. Word of Eyeballs
3. Cost per Sentiment
4. Social Preroll
5. Digital Anthill
6. Behavioral Friending
7. Viral Unfriending
8. Antisocial Network
9. Mobile Bangtail
10. User Generated Crap

Digg Our Portfolio and Read Our Cafeteria's Yelp Review!

There's nothing more obsolete online than the advertising agency website. In the ad biz reputation is everything. It's who you know and who knows you. Or at least someone who knows someone who knows the guy who used to work with you and thought you two should meet.

If you rely on your agency website to generate new biz leads then you are doomed. If you rely on your website to attract good employee talent then you are doomed. Rely on your website to express your agency culture, competitive difference, and creative philosophy? Doomed.

At best these sites are Creative Directors Gone Wild expressions of navel-gazing ego-filled self-flagellation that confuse the hell out of the average visitor. At worst they are built by the PR interns and a couple freelancers between pitches, barely worth the cheap hosting space they occupy.

Which makes the recent Adweek article -- that agency sites are going Web 2.0 in an effort to impress everyone else -- even more ironic:

Agency sites, once a sea of client work and clever copy, increasingly are experiments in social media and other Web 2.0 technology. The goal of an agency is not only to show potential clients its ability to create state-of-the-art experiences with site navigation, aggregation and customization, but to create forums for consumer insights about the shop and its work.

First of all, potential clients could care less about your site. And if they did visit it, then a whacked out 2.0 explosion is bound to ensure they step away slowly never to return. So I call bullshit on this:

"For clients searching for an agency and doing their own research, the Web site is very important," says David Beals, president and CEO of new-business consultancy Jones Lundin Beals. "It's a first peek of what the agency is about, what they stand for. ... If a client is very into social media or networking, an agency can send out that signal through their own Web site."

If I have to go to your website to understand your relationship with social media, then that pretty much answers it.

Clients select agencies based on their street cred, their creative reel and, just sometimes, their actual strategic recommendations. Even an awesome agency iPhone app can't change that. Reducing your site to 140 characters or less? That's a start.

"S-" is the new "E-"

Remember back in the day when Cyber was the suffix du jour? We had Cybercafes, Cyberspace, Cybermalls, Cybersex. Cyber, cyber, cyber. Then one day Cyber became sooooo 1996 and we switched over to the more modest, less likely to mock, e-. eCommerce, eBanking, eBooks, eCRM, eCoupons, eMail, eToys, eBay, e, e, e. It became synonymous with "something you can do in real life, but on the Internet instead!" The fastest way to distinguish that your program or service was cutting edge and different.

Well, e is soooo 2008. Please welcome the new prefix 2.0 ... Sesame Street interlude here ...

s- !

Yes s, as in Social of the networking variety. Social media, with Facebook and Twitter as the poster children, is finally incorporating itself into standard online marketing strategies. Can't figure out how to cram your marketing into social media? Cram social media into your marketing! Just add an s to it.

(Once again Mobile gets dethroned so close to the finish. Bye bye m-, we barely new ya.)

Here's a couple s terms coming your way in the next fiscal marketing year:

sCommerce
Sure some marketers are tapping into social networks to enhance their purchasing experience [Jansport w/Fbook Connect] or promote their sales promotions [Dell, local malls].

But the new trend is cramming eCommerce into the social networks themselves. Bring the shopping cart, cash register, and UPS truck to the consumers, if you can lure them away from tagging old high school photos long enough to actually buy something. 1800 Flowers just launched an e-commerce page on Fbook. Other retailers are sure to quickly follow.

Does this position Fbook as the next Amazon.com? Can they actually charge enough commission to make a decent living? Too early to tell, but at least it provides something new to dangle in front of the investor community.

So what happens when Microblogging meets Micropayments? Who will be the first to figure out an eCommerce transaction via Twitter? [hint: Pizza Hut]

More importantly, will they create a funny name for it (twuys requiring twitcash)? Perhaps Paypal should buy Twitter to protect their eCash from sCash. The South Bay Community Network might just be sitting on a golden URL.

sMail
It's like eMail but less trackable! My Fbook inbox and Twitter direct messages are just as congested as my Outlook. Which means they are now prime candidates for marketing clutter.

Actually, I think limiting emails to 140 characters could be the most productive technology solution since charging for faxes per page. I have no problem implementing private tweets as the new corporate messaging platform. Even better if attachments are limited to 140KB.

sCRM
Finally, my favorite fuzzy acronym. CRM on its own has a hundred definitions and receives the most hesitant not-sure-exactly-what-you-are-talking-about headnods per capita of any marketing term. eCRM is often pitched as the solution if you don't have a CRM program.

Where CRM focuses on the lifetime value of a consumer, eCRM focuses on using the internet to cheaply maintain that relationship. All of which is very one-to-one. Where is the viral word of mouth influence in that?

But add an s to CRM and now we're talking viral. I envision sCRM as maintaining a relationship with consumers who have the highest likelihood to socialize your brand. Thus you could potentially reach a much larger audience through key influencers, without messing around with double opt-ins and database fields. Pyramid scheme relationship marketing. Amway would be impressed.

Of course, you need a plan for actually identifying those influencers and communicating with them. Which is how the new breed of sMarketing agencies are born.

sConclusion
Our industry loves buzzwords. Social continues to rank at the top of the hype list, destined to be ingrained in your marketing strategies for the near term.

So pick you favorite marketing term, add an s, and be amazed when your programs are recognized as the future of marketing.

Thoughts & Reflections on Summer Vacation Part 1 – The Internet is a waste of time

I love summer vacation trips – getting away from work, getting together with the family, introducing our kids to new places and experiences. I also use these trips to understand how technology and the Interweb affect our lives. Extended separation from your home wifi really defines how much all this interactive-emerging-media-streaming-video-status-posting impacts our daily lives. [read last year’s posts: 1, 2]

Or doesn’t impact it, as I have discovered during our annual treks to Vacationland, a group of lake cabins in the Michigan Upper Peninsula (the “UP” for those of you from the Midwest, “Northwoods” for those who grew up eating fried cheese curds for breakfast).

It’s a place secluded enough that there is only one phone for all the cabins. No modem plug, as if I’d even remember how to logon using a modem. No wifi.

Best of all there is no cell phone coverage. So a whole week without SMS texts, mobile Facebook access, iPhone web browsing. Might sound terrifying to you, but over the years I have found there is nothing more refreshing than watching the cell phone signal strength drop from 3 bars to 2 bars, from 1 bar to NO SIGNAL. Digital solitary confinement at its best.

It reminds me how we coped with our lives pre-24/7 information. Need to know what the weather will be like today? Stick your head out the front door and look up. Wondering about the most recent big world event? Funny how a morning newspaper provides enough information to get through your day. Need to catch up on what your friends have been doing over last 2 hours? Well, actually, no you don’t.

Every year I reflect on “What we missed without the Internet for a week.” This year it just happened to be Michael Jackson’s death. Or, to be more exact, all the confusion around the possible death of Michael Jackson. Combing through two days of Interweb content, it was apparent we missed quite an event. Ongoing news reports with up-to-the-minute details about how no one was sure exactly what was going on. Steady streams of Fbook posts and Twitter tweets confirming the same fuzzy confusion.

It seems a total failure of the whole crowdsource/groupthink promise: That a collaborative Interweb is a more efficient and productive Interweb. It can also exponentially contribute to a lack of information. I imagine the massive amounts of collective MBs and human minutes expended searching, contributing, reading, and responding to the big question mark around Jackson’s demise. Without any satisfactory results. This Pursuit Of The Truth became an augmented reality game of its own. The ultimate race-the-clock online scavenger hunt to find the answer first, but with no clear winner.

Watching big events unfold in real time is obviously part of our culture now. Online provides easy access to these events, plus a way for the average person to take part and contribute. For everyone caught up in the hype, it probably ranks as one of the biggest online events ever. For someone who spent the week fishing, swimming with his kids, and watching bald eagles; it seemed like a colossal waste of time.

I Can't Believe The Username "Assman" Is Already Taken

Late Friday night was Facebook's Username Landgrab kickoff. According to Facebook, within 15 minutes over half a million usernames had been registered. 3 million had reserved names within 12 hours (1.5% of their user base). Which means you probably missed your chance to reserve your actual name as your Fbook name.

The first question is Do you plan to register? I still believe it is not that important unless you are marketing a brand page (or yourself).

The next question is What name do you register? What is the next best thing to your actual name? Childhood pet? Street you grew up on? Fraternity nickname?

It is slightly amusing to random URL dive into Fbook and see what comes up.

Holiday icons [1, 2]

Obscure music references [1, 2, 3, 4]

Personal protest [1, 2, 3, 4]

Names only a techgeek can love [1, 2, 3]

The most expensive search term on Google - reserved by a lawyer, of course

And yes, the ones you picked drunk Friday night when you didn't realize it was permanent [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]

Just wait for the HR recruiter to stumble on those. Perhaps Fbook has a viable revenue stream charging users to reset their accounts.

You know there is a freelance journalist scouring Urban Dictionary looking for the most outrageous ones that slipped past Fbook's watchful eye. Enough at least to fill a blog post or two and get crosslinked from CNN.com.

And mine? Well of course my real name was already taken. Me and the other 78 Stephen Strongs are out of luck. But watch out first-in-line StephenStrong. I'm doppleganging on you.

The Fbook Quarterly F*ck Up Is Here!

I was just thinking it had been awhile since Facebook screwed up a Big Site Improvement launch. Well, wait no more! The custom username URLs are coming!

That's right. Starting late Friday night, you can bum rush the site (assuming it handles the stampede) and try to submit your request first for a custom profile URL. Facebook's blog announced it today:

Your new Facebook URL is like your personal destination, or home, on the Web. People can enter a Facebook username as a search term on Facebook or a popular search engine like Google, for example, which will make it much easier for people to find friends with common names.

Starting at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Saturday, June 13, you'll be able to choose a username on a first-come, first-serve basis for your profile and the Facebook Pages that you administer by visiting www.facebook.com/username/. You'll also see a notice on your home page with instructions for obtaining your username at that time.

Think carefully about the username you choose. Once it's been selected, you won't be able to change or transfer it.

So let's assume I'm not the first of the 80 Stephen Strongs on Fbook to reserve our name. What do I get next: stephenstrong276? or maybe theotherstephenstrong? Not since the bygone days of AOL username picking has my self-identification stress level been sooo high.

But wait a second, why do I need a custom URL? Don't my friends already know how to find me? Shouldn't anyone wanting to be my "friend" get connected via one of my linked-friend's pages? Fbook has been successful because it is a closed-loop network. Not the freewheeling "everyone be my friend" chaos that doomed MySpace.

Hmmm. Not even sure if I should care. At least not about my personal URL. But I represent over 10 brands for my company online. None of which have an Fbook fan page now. Some might justify it in the near future. Some won't. But I definitely don't want a cybersquatter claiming the names for their URL.

C'mon Fbook! I know you're thinking about all the potential advertising revenue and a way to protect the 95% of brands who aren't on you yet.

Oh crap. Really?

So that's it? A basic Contact Us form? As an added bonus, you can only submit one brand name at a time. So the process is this:

1. Fill out form
2. Submit
3. Back button
4. Re-enter personal info
5. Submit
6. Back button
7. Re-enter personal info
8. Submit
9. Repeat 10 times

And don't get me started that there is no explanation for the Registration # section. What the hell do you type in there? If you entered 123 for every entry like I did, then there's going to be some mass confusion in the old Fbook Customer Service cube tomorrow morning. [Update: it is for entering your brand trademark registration number. Good luck tracking that down in less than 3 days.]

But seriously, did they really have to announce this spontaneously only 4 days in advance? Can someone over there apply some common sense to these launches? They obviously haven't learned a damn thing from all their other Big Site Improvements. Most of which did not go over so well.

It's one thing to annoy and disappoint your average user. But marketers (the ones who could actually contribute to a revenue stream) don't have the patience for this type of thing. We're needy, pouty, and always expect to get our way when we bring the checkbook.

I'd hate to be the media sales rep trying to sell Big Industry on establishing an Fbook presence next month. Especially as he tries to explain why theothercompanythatsellsfriedchicken isn't such a bad URL to have. Much better than theothercompanythatsellsfriedchicken276.

Let the Backlash Countdown begin!

IFoundItFirst

So you think writing semi-complete sentences in 140 characters or less is too time consuming? Welcome the next Damn I should have thought of that slacker trend:

Nanoblogging

One word status posts courtesy of Adocu.com

No need for pesky clutter like adjectives or punctuation. No room for adding mystery teaser short URLs. Forget out-of-context retweets. Just one word expressions of your current state of mind. Which for most Internet users is really all it takes.

Sure you could just post one word tweets on Twitter. But where's the competition in that? You'd just get a bunch of retweets from followers using up the other 130 characters available.

Parody 2.0 or Next Big Thing? Sometimes the silly ideas are the ones that actually survive.

Future Buzzwords Today = Macromicrobroadcaster

Twitter reached that coming-of-age state where the marketing industry can't quite decide what to do with this unruly techno-teenager. Its popularity continues to rise at the same time the only social network with a revenue model is starting to fall.

While getting kicked out of China is always a good sign you're doing something right, discovering that only 1/5 of the popular crowd wants to hang with you doesn't help your street cred. Especially since you repeatedly run out of beer when they do show up.

Then comes the report that 10% of its users generate 90% of its content. Hmmmm, peer-to-peer communication platform or the next microbroadcast model? And what happens when the microbroadcaster goes macro? If the macromicrobroadcasters threaten to revolt, then you definitely hit a nerve.

This all leads to ongoing conflict for marketers. Should we care about it or not? Consumer revolution or marketing devolution?

iMedia recently published their analysis of Twitter marketing Winners & Losers. Ford vs Nissan! Dunkin' Donuts vs Starbucks! My fave analysis is Dell vs Apple:

Apple, on the other hand, appears to be missing in action. As one of the world's premier brands -- a technology brand, nonetheless -- its absence on Twitter is puzzling to me and many others.

Fortunately Apple's stock price hasn't been affected... A chart displaying the number of followers per brand would end the whole conversation very quickly.

The report eerily reflects the days when Second Life received the same scrutiny over its early marketing adopters. Then the hype broke and these marketers -- recently lauded as being soooo cutting edge -- were chastised for being duped into spending real world dollars on virtual branding.

6 months from now will not having a Twitter presence catapult you to the top of 2009's Smartest Marketers? Will the first Twitter TV show sponsor be rewarded for their savviness, or laughed off the trade show expert panel? Will you be collecting accolades, spinning excuses, or just waiting with 95% of the other marketers to see what happens?

At Least @WhiteHouse Isn't a Porn Account

So someone finally figured out how to make money on Twitter the old fashioned way: Extort It.

Here is the brief synopsis courtesy of TechCrunch:

1. Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk 956,186 followers) challenges CNN (@CNNbrk 968,489 followers) to a race to 1 million followers on Twitter


2. Larry King gets involved and takes the battle public on YouTube


3. EA gets involved and turns it into a marketing promotion


4. It is revealed that the CNN doesn't even own the Twitter account/name that has all these followers

That's right. Some average guy set up the account, programmed it to publish CNN's RSS news feeds, and quietly amassed almost 1 million followers. Not sure how that compares to CNN.com's RSS subscribers, but on Twitter it is fairly impressive.

Silly? Yes. Juvenile? Yes. Worth CNN spending money to save face and claim ownership of the Twitter name? No. Er, I mean, Yes!

Apparently CNN "bought" the Twitter account (or maybe just rents it, fairly unclear) in order to lay claim to the user base. Which is a bit mindblowing considering the events that provoked it. Even more so since CNN basically bought ownership of their own content, on a site that is still a relative blip in the webosphere.

It also signals the cybersquatting goldrush for branded usernames on Twitter. Better hurry up and register yours, even if you don't plan on using it. Fake celebrity accounts have already demonstrated how confusing things can get for consumers. Soon even @seriouslywearetherealcompanythatsellsfriedchicken will have a price tag.

Got Doubts About the Future of Advertising?

Here's the top 5 most-read articles on AdAge.com today:

Which shows where the average ad industry exec is focused.

However, if their online marketing strategies are driven by AdAge, then they need additional learning aides. Haven't we all agreed that you can't make something go viral?

@stephenstrong Got Twittered by a Porn Star: That's in our relationship safe-zone, right honey?

The porn industry always takes advantage of new online technologies first. Often identifying and defining new trends before anyone other industry.

Bootleg file sharing? Check. Webcams live chats? Check. Pre-broadband video streaming-on-demand? Check. Affiliate marketing banners? Check. Pop-up ads, digital-rights management, social networking? Check, check, check. Porn was practicing the Long Tail before most marketers even understood the short one.

It isn't important that porn always seems to be a first mover online. It is important that it always seems to be the first industry making money from it. The only reason porn grabs hold of an emerging trend is because it generates revenue. And there are a lot of people trying to get rich off online porn. Think of it as the world's largest startup, constantly testing/prototyping/enhancing/evolving. Only the successful survive. Which makes porn the perfect litmus test for any alleged Web 2.0 business model.

Which is where Twitter comes in -- probably the only website more desperate for a revenue model than Facebook. If porn can't figure out how to make money from it, then kiss it goodbye.

So as an experiment (let me reinforce experiment) I "followed" a variety of porn stars over the weekend on Twitter. Most of them have a couple hundred followers. A few number in the low thousands. Nothing compared to Diddy (173K), Ashton Kuchter (368K), or Shaq (323K), but probably more than you.

The online version of the Red Light District flag down is widely practiced. Some of you might call it lead generation:

E-commerce CTAs appear as well. If you want to drive traffic to your online peep show Friday night, then targeting guys who are bored enough to follow porn tweets is a pretty good start:

It may end up that Twitter cannot monetize any of this, leaving the revenue models to the companies that support its users.

When eBay first started there were a variety of feeder sites that provided added-value services for users -- photo hosting, credit card processing, last-second bid topping. Twitter is no different.

Tinyurl converts web links into condensed URLs, saving precious character counts. Twitpict provides image sharing/instant tweets. Qik mobile video sharing is getting free word-of-mouth thanks to Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore posts. None of them are charging for these offerings yet.

There's even a Porn Tweet Portal that aggregates porn star posts, capitalizing on Twitter's open source content search.

Cursebird.com may actually be more risque. Sure you get the typical posts that would make a truck diver blush. But pornstars are people too. They can be just as boring as everyone else you are following:

Looking for hot photos? You are as likely to download a picture of their cute puppies or new car. Although it can be a bit surreal reading laundry day posts interspersed with on location blow-by-blows. Can being too normal online hurt a pornstar's street cred?

In the end, I decided to go straight to the source. Spamming a variety of them (oh, the irony) to uncover how they plan to leverage Twitter.

Which, based on their replies, shows we may have a long way to go:

Porn is everywhere online. What gives Twitter an advantage? First of all, it has an anonymous intimacy to it. You get an insider's view of the other 98% of a porn star's life, with some smut thrown in. Second, follow enough of them and you catch glimpses of intra-porn communication (if a retweet threesome is your kind of thing).

Lastly, it is a publicly-acceptable porn channel. Besides Twitter.com, you can read tweets and view links on your iPhone, Facebook widget, RSS reader, and eventually any web-connected device (hurry up color Kindle!) Those of you with Internet fridges can hold off bidding for those Jenna Jamson magnets on eBay.

My free advice to the stars? Start with micropayments. As soon as Twitter (or Twitpict) launches their own Paypal billing system, then you should be able to charge followers 10 cents for every naked photo click (charge 50 cents on weekends and after 10 pm). Exclusive coupon codes for discounted video content would help build a new customer base.

Use your public Twitter account for daily posts and new video teasers. Charge followers to access a private account for the real hot talk and behind the scenes details. Sorry, twatter.com is already being squatted and titter.com really is for kids.

Eventually porn will find the Twitter money shot. It always does. How many marketers are too embarrassed to lurk its progress and leverage the learnings when the time is right?

For the record, I avoided taking advantage of tasteless innuendo and bad puns throughout this blog post. I count at least 9 that come close [there's 1! --ed.] But be warned, it's realllly hard to find them! [2! --ed.]

I Call Dibs On Dot-Stupid

This is officially the week for ranting about brand websites.

This one centers around custom website domain names that are only limited by your thesaurus.

A proposed expansion of domains means that by the end of the year there could be hundreds. Coca-Cola and Pepsi could request .soda or .softdrinks; Procter & Gamble and Unilever could sign up for .laundry or .soap; and McDonald's and Wendy's could get .burger or .fries. The potential for names and online branding would be limited only by the imagination of the creative marketing industry.

But what if you had to pay for every one of the new domains that relates to your brand? The initial cost estimated by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the nonprofit agency that oversees the distribution and policy of domain names, is $185,000 for registration plus anywhere from $25,000 to $75,000 in annual fees.

Which violates sooo many of my online marketing principles:

1. Your brand site is increasingly irrelevant. See my previous posts (1, 2). The last thing you need to worry about is creating a .com strategy
2. Consumers are more lazy online than in the real world. This has been the key to Google's success. Typing www.dietcoke.com in the browser takes too much effort. Just type "diet coke" in the Google bar next to it and then click the search results link
   
3. Google could care less what dots your com
   
4. Consumers are not only lazy, they have really crappy long term memory. Think they have a hard enough time remembering your product name? Imagine if they have to remember whether your web address is .soda, .softdrinks, .pop, or .coke. You might as well register all of them just to be safe (that will be $740,000 please)
   
5. It worked out so well for those .tv guys...
   

Do yourself a favor and save your cash for the next .mobi mobile URL firesale.

Here's One Way To Make The Logo Bigger!

Nothing annoys me more than when our industry refuses to innovate. Take online banners. 10 years ago the CTR was 0.45% (4.5 out of every 1,000 people clicked your banner). 8 years ago it dropped to 0.3%, then 0.2%. Finally stabilizing for the last 5 years at 0.15%.

A recent presentation by Doubleclick at iMedia now claims the average banner CTR is 0.1%. That's 1 person out of 1,000 clicking on your banners.

So what should the smart marketer do? Focus on behavioral and contextual targeting to make sure that 1 person is a better qualified site visitor? Stop depending on banner campaigns to drive site traffic? Stop depending on site traffic as a justification your online marketing dollars are working?

Of course not. Hey, I've got an idea!

Let's make the banners bigger!

(I assume you read that sentence more times than the previous smaller ones.)

According to Adweek today, this is the solution to decreasing effectiveness and online media spends:

The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, ESPN and over a dozen more of the Web's most-trafficked sites that belong to the Online Publishers Association have agreed to run three new ad units that they hope will lure brand advertising dollars. The new units are:

• The fixed panel, a 336-by-860-pixel banner that is wider than the standard skyscraper and follows users as they scroll down the page
• The XXL box, a 468-by-648-pixel unit that can expand with video
• The pushdown, a 970-by-418-pixel placement that takes up over half of the page before rolling up

As I expected, consumers avoid clicking on banners because they can't find them. If the home page interstitial [skip], exit pop-up [block], and page takeover ads [wait... wait...] aren't performing, then obviously we just aren't paying attention.

At some point the direct correlation between decreased effectiveness and increased ad sizes will reach a breaking point. Then we'll need to figure out how to cram the actual site content into the advertising.

The Short Tail of Internet Hype

It appears our industry has finally sweated out its dependency on widgets as the Holy Grail of social media marketing. Just in time to fall off the wagon and get handed a dimebag of iPhone apps.

"Come on, it's just a little branded iPhone game. Won't take too long to play. And it's freeeeeeee."

Of course, the iPhone's penetration in marketing departments is probably 5,000 times the average workplace. If you don't have one, then I bet your cubemate does. But all of the sudden iPhone apps are the new designer drug of choice.

Adweek reviewed a whole slew of iPhone apps in February. AdAge recently posted their special interest story: 10 Must-Have iPhone Apps for the Adman. Alas, Bullshit Bingo wasn't on it.

At a recent iMedia conference, the number of iPhone app developers outnumbered the widget guys. And most of the widget guys are branching out into iPhones.

There was also a contingent of media reps selling advertising space inside free iPhone apps (because that business model is working out so well for the widget guys...) And developers willing to make those ads for you. And rich media ad vendors wanting to serve them.

Interactive marketers have a habit of latching onto the newest hype, regardless of its potential for success. Remember viral videos? Second Life? Myspace mascot pages? All of these were flashes of potential marketing energy, greedily consumed and spat out when they didn't taste as good as they looked.

When a flashy shiny new internet technology comes along, we always gather around it and stare -- hypnotized by its brilliance. And we have a tendency to drag our "offline" marketing friends with us, imploring them to also check it out. Until they get bored and leave, shaking their heads and muttering "I just don't get it." Then the object runs out of batteries and we stumble away dazed, looking for the next blinking light to occupy our time.

The Dotcom crash in 2001 is the ultimate case study in embracing Internet hype without caution. Web 2.0 has brought this bad habit back to life. We find the newest social mobile video thing, convince everyone else to spend money on it, and then conveniently pretend it never existed if it doesn't pan out. Widgets will be the next case study in this long list. Twitter is on an upward curve. iPhone apps are just getting started.

We have reached that critical point in the Hype Tail where we need to ask the tough questions. How many people can we actually reach with this technology?(Spoiler alert = iPhones had a meager 6% penetration in Q3 2008.) Will they actually use it for more than 30 days?

All of these technologies have long term potential, if we let them grow out of puberty.

Second Life (or the virtual world 2.0 equivalent) will be back. Just ask any parent whose kids are obsessed with Webkinz / Club Penguin / Barbie Girls / Disney Fairies.

Facebook, despite its massive growth, is still a toddler learning to eat with a spoon. Twitter-style microblogging will eventually morph into a more integrated (and universally accepted) style of communication.

I truly believe that the iPhone-style application is the future for mobile technology. Just let it out of beta before milking it for every last drop.

Expect the Rip-Offs to Arrive In Time for CES 2010

I heard it also requires a special type of battery that is not used by any other electronic device.

Defending Facebook's Right To Own Your Bad High School Photos

Facebook set off its annual User Outcry Event, this time over an update of its usage policy providing it ownership of any content you upload to the site. Even if you delete it. Even after you cancel your account and leave the site.

Every year founder Mark Zuckerberg announces something that pisses off the Facebook masses. Whether it is notifying your friends whenever you do something on your personal page (eventually accepted and embraced), notifies your friends when you do something on other websites (the short-lived Beacons initiative), or just changes the design of their site (1.4 million users apparently still hate them over that). Not surprising 2 of these 3 are privacy related.

Personally I don’t see the point to the current outcry over the obvious: You upload your content to their site. They store it on their web servers. They allow you to share this content with others on their site. Just because you are emotionally attached to it doesn’t mean the site can’t lay claim to it.

Here’s a spoiler alert = There is no privacy on the Internet.

Facebook initially was a place to find and communicate with others. Now it has evolved into a place to share content as well. And most of this content is deeply personal in a puppies and babies scrapbook kind-of-way.

But let’s be honest: 68 million people used Facebook last month. Unless you are famous now – or fall into famousness in the future -- your stuff really isn’t that important to them. The long tail of vacation photos and 25 Things About You doesn’t stop at your profile page.

But there are some open questions. What about Facebook apps that import content from other sites? You can embed Youtube videos to show off your home movies. Use the Flickr widget to present your wedding photos. Import status posts from your Twitter account. Technically all this content resides on other web sites. Can Facebook lay claim to those?

The knee-jerk expectation is that they will use your content in their own advertising. Any ad agency will tell you that is sooooo 2008. Brands already troll YouTube to produce cheap TV ads (Vonage, KFC, Hampton Inn, Geico). That fad is over.

Maybe they plan on publishing a photobook of bad hair from the 80’s. Or sell t-shirts reprinting funny status quotes. It would be one thing if they wanted to own unique creative content – such as when virtual worlds World of Warcraft and Second Life tried to lay claim to virtual items created by their users.

So if they can’t really monetize your stuff, or use it as cheap marketing material, why do they want it? At some point it might be valuable. Any web site desperate for a revenue model needs to cover their bases.

Nothing dies on the Internet. Any content you put online can be found, archived, and stored by web crawlers. Retrieved at any time via search engines. The fact that Facebook saves your content, even after you delete it and cancel your account, means that at some point they could make it publicly searchable and even sell access to it.

This goes beyond just text (such as your status posts and About Me info). Photo recognition technology is here and companies like Google are ready to take advantage of it. Not to mention these photos are already tagged with your name by all your so-called friends. Just wait until your kids start searching for photos of you circa the year College Keg Party. This may be the most serious threat to your personal privacy. Those of you who participated in Cuss In Your Status Day can start sweating now.

Facebook users love to complain and faux protest whenever the mothership steps on their toes. Usually by starting up a protest group ON FACEBOOK. Which I guess means Facebook owns any complaints about themselves. Those self-serving bastards.

Will this cause a mass exit to the next up-and-coming social network site? I doubt it. Friendster is the best case study for this scenario. It lost a majority of its user base to MySpace in two weeks, primarily because their site kept breaking. But also because its users were primarily teenagers and twenty-somethings, who have no problem spontaneously jumping ship and starting anew.

But over the last year Facebook’s demographics has skewed to 30+ yrs old. These old timers can be very lazy online. Set up a new account on a different site and re-upload all my photos? That sounds time consuming. Re-friend 175 people? That’s a pain in the ass.

I predict the fury will be short lived and cause minimal long-term damage to Facebook’s user base. Soon we’ll all get back to listing our random iPod songs and the third sentence on page 56, inviting friends to our birthday party event, and revenge-tagging photos. But don’t be surprised if you see me wearing a t-shirt featuring your prom photo and that hilarious status post about Congress Stimulating Your Package.