I saw this story on a Hollywood news site earlier today. It’s basically an article dissing Twitter for not being as big or effective a marketing vehicle as some have cracked it up to be: Why was everyone in the movie business so excited about Twitter? Probably because of its potential, more than anything....
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Fascinating and (sometimes) annoying: By utilizing the simplest action-reward gameplay mechanic — borrowed from a Chinese game, which was itself inspired by a Japanese RPG — Facebook’s farm games have quietly turned millions of people into constant gardeners (and consistent gamers). Cheri Van Hoover, 56, tends a real 11-acre farm in Washington state, but...
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I’m a sharer. That’s why I’ve got a few thousand followers on Twitter, why I blog, why I save links to del.icio.us, post videos to YouTube, and so on … So I need social sharing features when I surf … and I just got an iPad. Most social sharing is done through Javascript “bookmarklets.”...
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I find it interesting that many of the scholars and intellectuals of centuries past were, in effect, bloggers: I want to start with a page out of history—the handwriting of Thomas Jefferson, taken from one of his notebooks on religion. The words on this page belongs to a long and fruitful tradition that peaked...
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Interesting speech by social game maker Zynga’s CEO Mark Pincus today at Inside Social Apps. An excerpt: In his speech, Pincus envisioned a world that runs on an app economy, where it’s easy to access and use sophisticated software on any device or platform via Web services. The current platform is booming and has...
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Wonderful, insightful, and funny talk by Jesse Schell on games, reality, convergence, Facebook, mafia wars, Wii, WebKinz, and more … PS3 Games – E3 2010 – Guitar Hero 5
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Good insight into both Facebook’s business model and especially their aspirations … how high they think they can go. Over dinner at her favorite restaurant, a few blocks from her home in Atherton, California, her strategy for making money sounds simple. She takes my pen and notebook and starts drawing the classic marketing funnel,...
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From AdAge: Facebook-home-page ads on average generated a 10% increase in ad recall, a 4% increase in brand awareness and a 2% increase in purchase intent among users who saw them compared with a control group with similar demographics or characteristics who didn't. But the increase in recall jumped to 16% when ads included...
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From TechCrunch: Whoever knows what your interests are right now and can package them up for advertisers has the chance to make a lot of money. Of course, Google does this right now every time you declare your interests in a search box and it offers up matching ads on the side of results....
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5. What’s The Next Whatever We have all of the “new” we could possibly want, but we’re distinctly lacking in execution with what we have. Clamoring for the next big thing is looking for permission to be messy. It’s easier to latch on to something new and unproven, because then you’re not accountable. Instead,...
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Check out the graph on the left. The curves represent different ideas and different starting points. If you start with 10,000 fans and have an idea that on average nets .8 new people per generation, that means that 10,000 people will pass it on to 8000 people, and then 6400 people, etc. That’s yellow...
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We have analyzed data for 13 countries, for business buyers, and even for voters. My colleagues and I have done profiles for over a hundred clients, profiling Walmart shoppers, non-profit donors, and doctors. In all that time, only one thing has been bugging me: there was no place for Twitter. We fixed that today:...
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I sure hope this is not the future of the web. Where’d the website go? This is what I saw when I visited a recent story on Mashable: 10 Must-Read eBooks for Social Media Lovers. The post title doesn’t even start until the extreme bottom of the page. I like free content as much...
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Check this short video (1:30 minutes) to see what a smart creative Swedish agency did to promote a new IKEA store: Cheap, easy, fast. And very, very smart.
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Social Signal is opening up the treasure chest and revealing how they make the secret sauce: Each Concept Jam has three key deliverables: 1. A day-long workshop that engages 10-40 people (employees and stakeholders in a client organization) in a learning and brainstorming process that helps participants develop a stronger understanding of social media...
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Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology, social media, education, innovation ... and anything else that catches my fancy.