for april fools day 2010, google has decided to choose "a different kind of company name" and rename itself topeka. as in topeka, kansas. not bad as far as april fools jokes go. don't forget to read the humorous google blog post about this topeka name change. personally, i'm rather fond of the new topeka google logo.
there's even already an entry in the history section of topeka's wikipedia entry.
it was only a matter of time before the first marketers discovered chatroulette and use it for marketing purposes. the official travelocity gnome is the first to jump in and use chatroulette for marketing purposes.
screenshots sent to mashable.com by travelocity confirm that the gnome is hiding out there in chatroulette’s mysterious corridors on people to market travelocity's services to: he wants to motivate chatroulette users to step away from their webcams for a moment and take vacations.
according to adweek, “the idea is that folks sitting around video-chatting with strangers could use the excitement of travel.”
the iconic gnome uses signs to get his message across (see above). they read messages like, “this would be more fun if we were in rio.”
when asked if they are tracking activity or offering special promotions, travelocity responded, “we’re still experimenting so we haven’t applied any measurements just yet. once we figure out how we’ll move forward we will think about other applications like deals and offers.”
i believe that chatroulette is more than just seeing random penises, so it’s great to see that companies like travelocity agree. it still remains to be seen what becomes of this experimental test run, but it's definitely a clever approach to utilizing this new channel for marketing purposes.
how will the future of chatroulette marketing look? as always with any new form of digital media i believe that solid marketing / advertising strategy is that backbone to any success: focus on the marketing objectives, marketing strategies, and then the marketing tactics.
another cool graph. great job by digitalbuzzblog.com stuffing as much facebook data including facebook facts, a facebook timeline, and facebook statistics into one infographic or visualization.
some of the facebook numbers are really mindblowing.
ever wonder exactly how modern marketing came to be? check out this marketing history infographic by flowtown.com based on some research that illustrates the history of marketing from the stone age to today in a nice graph.
Check out these interesting infographics based on Barracuda Networks recent study of Twitter. This study analyzed Twitter accounts with at least ten followers, who followed at least ten people, and has tweeted at least ten times. This pared down the users by 79%.
Full story and graphics at Next Generation Online.
More Twitter tips and tricks.
twitter to launch @anywhere, a tool that will allow third parties to tap into its functionality and content.
twitter plans to roll out a set of API frameworks enabling third-party sites to allow their users to log-in using their twitter accounts, pull information and content from twitter and add functionality that lets people tweet or share from other sites directly onto twitter. The functionality, that will be similar to Facebook Connect, isn’t yet ready for a full launch but participating sites will include a slew of big players including: Amazon, AdAge, Bing, Digg, Ebay, The New York Times, Yahoo, and YouTube.
Biz Stone, twitter co-founder, said, “Soon sites many of us visit every day will be able to recreate these open, engaging interactions providing a new layer of value for visitors without sending them to Twitter.com.” Twitter was expected to unveil plans around its advertising model, but instead announced the @Anywhere tool at the South By South West festival in the U.S. yesterday. Last week it launched location-based functionality, which allows users to show the town or city they are tweeting from.
twitter is finally starting to unveil something that resembles a plan - something that has been missing for too long. Just look at all the improvements and changes Facebook has made in order to stay ahead of the pack.
A recently released study by comScore showed that more than 30 Percent of Smartphone Owners Access Social Networking Sites via a Mobile Browser. That's a lot of people. But, the even bigger statistic is that access to social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter has grown at an almost unbelievable rate: Facebook access via mobile browsers grew 112% in the past year, while Twitter saw a 347% increase. Very interesting is that comScore does not include mobile apps in their statistics. Adding in all the Twitter and Facebook apps for iPhone, Android, and Blackberry surely push the percentage even higher.
I think Mark Donovan, comScore senior vice president of mobile says it best: "Social networking remains one of the... fastest-growing behaviors on both the PC-based Internet and the mobile Web... "
| Number of Mobile Subscribers Accessing Social Sites via Mobile Browser(3-month average ending Jan. 2010 vs. Jan. 2009 Total U.S. Age 13+) | |||
|
| Total Audience (000) | ||
| Social Network Site | Jan-09 | Jan-10 | % Change |
| Facebook.com | 11,874 | 25,137 | 112 |
| MySpace.com | 12,338 | 11,439 | -7 |
| Twitter.com | 1,051 | 4,700 | 347 |
| Source: comScore MobiLens, March 2010 | |||
If you love rap or the beastie boys and scifi then this will truly blow your mind. It’s a video mashup of battlestar galactica and the beastie boys song "sabotage." Combining my favorite show and favorite song of all time equals not only inspiration of the day but probably of the month.
