Frontiering Talk

Word of Mouth Measurement | Andiamo Systems

Gooruze - Sentiment analysis and consumer generated content

Designing Portable Social Networks at Like It Matters

I have just installed another cool widget to this blog from Snap Shots that enhances links with visual previews of the destination site. This gives you the opportunity to see a small snap shot of the destination link as well as interactive excerpts of Wikipedia articles, MySpace profiles, IMDb profiles and Amazon products, display inline videos, RSS, MP3s, photos, stock charts and more.

If you don’t like it, it’s easy to disable, just click the Options icon in the upper right corner of the Snap Shot and opt-out.

I have been using social bookmarking tools for a while, and many of my colleagues have been asking me to share these.   So I am going to trial Diigo’s automatted posting service that will create a daily blog post of the sites that I bookmarked along with my comments.

My Bookmarks

Enjoy !

There were 2 reasons why I decided to move my blog from B2evolution into Wordpress. Firstly, was to provide a greater management of unwanted SPAM, and the second was to get access to the growing number of available Widgets that various sites are now providing.

One such widget that has been produced by HP for both Wordpress and Movable Type is their Printing Widget.  (hat tip to Neville Hobson for bringing it to my attention)

I now have a button on the right of this blog, which allows you to print one or many blogs from the page where you are browsing using this selection pop-up.

Perspective: I think this is a great initiative from HP and reinforces the brand with Print Leadership.

Wii’s NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams, will soon include a mini-game called A-list that will utilise Wii’s Weather channel to incorporate real weather into the game’s play.

Perspective: Whilst this is a cool feature for a game, I can see this technology being used by computer controlled houses to alter lighting, update shopping lists, display pictures to remind younger kids of what to wear, etc.

Tags: Frontiering Websites, Gaming

Your client makes biscuits, and their slogan is “Connect with Cookies”.  You know tv is dying and want to make a name for yourself trying something new and hip.  So you come up with the idea to create a social network around the connecting theme.

This is what Pepperidge Farm’s agency has just done with the creation of the Art of the Cookie website.   Whilst the NY times seems to love the idea, I think it is very poorly executed.

For a start the site budget was $2-3 million presumably to cover building, and advertising the site.
Whilst I do like the site design, it lakes the ability to interact and connect with others, which is afterall the basic essence of the brand.  The name of site is also confusing as I was expecting a site that discusses various ways to create art using or making cookies.  Why isn’t this site called ConnectingThroughCookies.com?

So what would I advise?  

Firstly, this isn’t a destination site and nor should it be.  The brand should be enabling connections by running or giving away Connection parties, sponsoring School Reunions, and enabling their consumers to connect (as opposed to giving them a check list of how to connect).

Provide people the tools to share connection stories, discuss them, and sharing them would be great, but why host them here?   Why not integrate the brand with existing social networks like Facebook, or Shespeaks and join the conversation rather than assuming people will want to spend their precious time coming here to read up on one persons journey across the country.    If you are going to share connections, would you be better working with a site like Meetup.com which is in the business of connecting people.

Tags: cookie, Social Network

Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV fame, talks with The Trend Junkie about building the Wine Community, transparency and the acqusition of Cork’d.

It’s an insightful video full of excellent advice for people wanting to start a community.

Tags: community, interview, Social Network, wine

We have often mentioned the car segment as one of the best categories suited to “long format” advertising. If you are in the market for a particular make of car, you really want a more detailed engagement than what can be delivered in a 30 second spot.

So it’s no surprise to us that Honda have today launched an Internet TV channel (which will soon be linked to Honda’s UK site) which will deliver on-demand delivery of the company’s films and video content including Honda racing, driving tips and advertisements. Included in the short films section will be a feature on ASIMO (Honda’s humanoid robot), who will also feature as the host of the tv channel.

Currently the site only runs on Internet Explorer, but a Firefox version is in development. It’s also not clear what plans Honda has to allow it’s consumers to comment or discuss this content.

Perspective: Consumer controlled viewing is continuing to grow, and companies should be providing easy options for their existing and potential consumers to engage with their brands. Whilst this site would have quite a large budget, smaller businesses can utilise free social video sites such as Youtube combined with a channel grouping site like Magnify to share content, and allow consumer participation.

Tags: car, honda, Social Network, Video

Widgets are all the rage, and it’s no surprise to me that many new businesses are creating business models on the creation of them.

Gydget is one such company, and it focused around creating Widgets to promote musical artists.

Not only is it a great way for people to show their support for their favourite artist, it’s also a tool for sporting clubs or brands to engage their passionate fans in the promotion of their products.
Here’s a test Gydget i have setup which includes the RSS feed from this blog, a video from youtube, as well as a test event.

Alvin and the Chipmunks is a new movie to be released on Dec 14th.  To promote the movie, the Oddcast software has been used to create quite a unique promotional microsite. The site is called Munkyourself and allows consumers to create a mashup of a chipmunk animated character generated combined with your own voice recording which is of course modified to sound like a chipmunk.

Perspective: The technology is very clever, and the site is simple to use, and allows you to send links or embed the result in your site as I have done below. I like this offering as it has strong ties to the movie.

Tags: , Frontiering Campaigns, movies

People are continuing to talk about brands, and a recent Mediapost  article by Jack Loechner suggests that there are 3.5 billion word of mouth conversations every day in the US alone.

Whilst 90% of these conversations take place offline, that still means that 350 million discussions are happening daily.  Can you afford not to start listening?

Tags: Social Networks, WOM, Word of Mouth

Now that Youtube has gained acceptance across the world as video sharing site, it’s no surprise that companies are creating tools to assist content producers in establishing their own video collections.

Magnify is one such tool. You can browse the existing channels by category, or create your own in a few simple steps. The resulting site contains all the social sharing features that you need to allow your audience to comment and rate your videos as well as placing a widget of your collection on their own blogs, such as I have done above with the Creative Robot collection.What surprises me is the lack of brands in the collection of Video Categories. The notable exception seems to be Absolut with over 1400 videos in their channel. So what are you waiting for, starting a video channel for your brand / category has never been easier. In fact to show you how easy, i have just created a Gourmet Food channel.

Tags: Frontiering Products, Frontiering Websites

Polls and Surveys are 2 easy ways to engage opinions, and Polldaddy has just made things simpler by providing an easy way to embed these utilities into websites / blogs etc.

I’ve put one on my blog in the right hand column and true to form it was easy to add, use and manage.

Perspective: I think Widgets like this are a growth area and Polldaddy’s Open Social commitment will only help to expand it’s 70k footprint of users.

Tags: Campaigns, Products, Websites