The WGA Writer strike has been ongoing for more than two weeks now. At the heart of it, the WGA Writer Strike is a signaling that writers and the producers knows that the future of film and televisions shows is not in cable television, but with in the “New Media”: we are moving away from broadcast/cable and DVDs to the long tail of content delivery via IPTV, Internet Downloads, download-to-mobiles shows and other forms of “Straight to Internet” and “On-demand” distribution methods.

As the channel by which we watch television and film diversify way from movie theaters and cable tv, writers should be rightly compensated with their work no matter what delivery mechanism is used. Currently, this is not the case.

Currently, writers are not seeing a dime from iTunes, Amazon OneBox or on-demand streaming on NBC.com. And what are writers seeing from DVD sales? 4 cents. Between 2-5 writers a show That’s what? 1 penny per DVD sold? This is not a case about greed. Just like most music bands never hit it big time, most writers are not driving around in brand new BMWs. But I am sure many producers are.

Adam at Gizmodo says it best here:

“Imagine if the recording industry decided that the internet was merely a way to promote CDs and that no songs sold online counted when paying musicians. Their argument would be that people were just checking out those songs and might go buy the CD later, at which point the artist would get paid. This is essentially the argument the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) is making.”

Despite the producers saying that the digital medium is both unproven and unknown, both the writers and producers knows where the future is headed. This is why the producers are slow to bargain with the writers and why the writers literally cannot afford to lose.

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The two businesses we had to do a marketing plan for were for:

• “Open Source” Musician: The musician wanted to recruit and play with other artist virtually via YouTube and Second Life and also promote him/herself purely online.
• Collaboration Service for Carpooling Parents using GoogleMaps: We showed ways how just because you have a web-based software doesn’t meet you cant promote effectively offline: Such as promotions via PTA meetings.

The crowd, while very business savvy, were not necessarily “Web 2.0″ savvy, which was great. We had to answer questions that helped explained why Web 2.0 applies to small business to non high-tech business. Also, in the Q&A sessions, instead of asking us the “difference between Twitter and Pownce“, we were asked what revenue models worked best for online business, what advertising opportunities would be available in 5 years etc. Real Questions.

Overall, it was a spectacular event that had many of us outside our comfort zone and giving us an opportunity to discuss Web 2.0 and Marketing with people outside the usual Web 2.0 San Francisco Bay Area circle.

Thanks to Mitch Posada for organizing the event and inviting me. I hope to return for the follow-up Digital Survivor in December/January.

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I do not usually do speculative postings on companies on Emergence-Media, but this ad on Technorati (while I was doing research on Google Analytics filters) took me by surprise. The thought of Technorati running ads for an “adult” dating service does bode well as a sign of confidence, especially their ability to sell ad inventory at a premium.

I do know that sites like AdultFriendFinder have a gigantic media spend and can afford to buy choice real estate, but I’m more considering that the placement of these means that they cannot be too choosy of what ads they choose to run.

Please Note: To disclose, I know of some of the current and former folks at Technorati and I do hope Technorati does succeed and do well.

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Big Rig Jig

Hey All, I just got back from Burning Man, surviving dust storms, the extreme weather and the igniting of 900 gallons of jet fuel. I’m just finally getting up to speed with blogs, emails, and client meetings. Tomorrow night us e-Storm folks will have a nice dinner with the folks over from BuzzLogic, who we’re using for some of our clients for social media metrics and community monitoring.

This year’s Burning Man was simply amazing, where the surreal always happens. There was an art installation called Crude Awakening featuring a 90′ foot oil derrick, which shot up 900 gallons of jet fuel igniting a fireball easily over 250 foot high. See my Revver video above.

Temple of Forgiveness

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Following up with my last post on the San Francisco Symphony’s Bloggers Night, I’d like to discuss the PR/marketing perspective of the event. I’ll review 1) Quick thoughts on the Bloggers Night; and 2) What I suggest they do different in the next round.
I’ve done a few blog outreach campaigns, but “Bloggers Night” events are an interesting mix of old fashioned PR and social media.

Another Blogger’s Night: By Monster Cable

Indeed, I actually went to another “Bloggers Night” this week held by Monster Cable in the hip dot-com area of San Francisco, known as SoMa near the Adobe and Nokia offices. But more on that, some other time. Pictures of the event, here.

A Marketer’s take of the SF Symphony Blog Outreach

The Bloggers: SocialMedia.biz to MetroBlogging SF

There were approximately 10-15 of us, from Nick Douglas (of ValleyWag fame), Eddie Codel (GE TV), JD Lasica of SocialMedia.biz and some true local events only bloggers from Metroblogging SF and Civic Center.

While this may seem like a strange mix, I think it was the right mix though I wish I knew the “who” and “from where” of the Bloggers Night guestlist. Blogs that cover local events, Metroblogging and Civic Center, are the obvious “first tier” choices. But as the Symphony is looking to extend its current audience, it is worth going long and expanding from local news coverage in print to online blogs

Blog Outreach: Losing Control or Gaining Exposure

I spoke to several of the Symphony PR people, specifically Oliver Theil and Gary Ginstling. I asked them why they decided to do blog outreach.

1.All of them were very knowledge about what is going on in social media, citing blogs to Yelp.com as an alternative means by which a good portion of people (especially in the Bay Area) get their information.
2.Social Media will not replace the Symphony’s needs for coverage in the local newspaper, it will supplement it. People gather news in different ways. Some via Yelp others from the local Sunday paper.

“Tag” the Event, So You Can Track the Conversations

Something that all the bloggers asked Kevin Smokler, one of the key organizers, was “what’s the Technorati and Flickr tag for this event”. It sounds like an obvious issue, but the Monster Cable event had no such tags. No tags means it’ll be just a little harder to track conversations generated from the event.

Building a Better Bloggers Night Experience

1. Foster a Sense of “Community”

The word “community” is a tired word, but it is still an appropriate term. All of us bloggers were brought to the “Green Room” at the Symphony without introduction and honestly, I think some of us felt like an awkward random bunch.

A quick informal round of introduction would be appropriate, where all the bloggers could introduce themselves to each other and to the Symphony press team.

2. Build a Retention Program: Follow-Up, Feedback, Discounts

It would be interesting for the Symphony folks to do a simply follow-up with the bloggers. Not just a simple question, but also links to photos of the performance, online program materials – stuff would further make it easier for bloggers to post something up.

Also, I’m not sure if anyone who has blog posted on the Symphony has been followed-up or contacted by the Symphony folks. It would be nice for them to offer comments/feedback on our commentary on the Symphony experience.

Perhaps even offer discounts for bloggers who decide to go to the Symphony on their own?

3. Educating the Bloggers on the Product (Or in this case, the Music)

While I love Bach’s violin sonatas, I don’t know classical music as much as I should. I think a quick 5 minute education by Symphony folks would be much appreciated – nothing complicated, but a simple context as to the concert program (e.g. “why is this song famous?”) and its history.

This would help set the blogger’s expectations and understanding; hopefully, a positive enough effect to help further encourage enjoying and blogging about the event. Plus, we’ll get to sound smart when we write about it. :)

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Bloggers’ Night at the San Francisco Symphony

Last week, I was one of the few lucky bloggers who were invited by the San Francisco Symphony to their first Blogger’s Night for their “Classical Romance” program. See all the photos from the SF Symphony here.

I’ll post first about the music and follow-up with a review of how the SFS Public Relations team conducted their blog outreach later. So if wish to learn more about my experience as a audience member at the symphony read on, otherwise wait from my follow-up on the PR/marketing perspective.

Fellow Bloggers in the SFS’ Press Room

The Music: James Gaffigan, Gabriela Martinez and Rachmaninoff

First off, I was very surprised how different classical music sounded in an actual symphony hall compared to listening to HD-CD on a high-end stereo. Yes, I know it was going to be different – but not this different. The music was warm and textured with the audience members easily getting carried away with every note, the musical sway of the orchestra, and every turn of James Gaffigan’s (the conductor) baton.

The symphony began with Tchaikovsky’s “Romeo & Juliet” and Strauss’ “Don Juan”. Both two very recognizable classical numbers, which sadly has been long abused and overplayed in popular culture. While I enjoyed the aural experience of the music, I wasn’t too fond of the songs themselves because they were so overplayed.

Q&A Session with James Gaffigan (middle) and Gabriela Martinez (right)

Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 with Gabriela Martinez

The Symphony finished with Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3, known for the demanding technical skill and endurance required on the pianist to perform.

Gabriela Martinez (yes a MySpace link), a 23-year pianist from Venezuela, took to the piano. She recently graduated from Juillard in May and rehearsed Rachmaninoff only once before. Martinez stage presence was incredible as her ability to play; indeed, Rachmaninoff’s concerto sounded like something that required a creature with 3-4 hands and the endurance of a train athlete to perform. During Q&A, Martinez mentioned she drank 4-5 Gatorades before in preparation of performing.

The chemistry between James Gaffigan, the young and spirited conductor, and Martinez was obvious and endearing. Gaffigan and Martinez has a readily apparent chemistry throughout the performance, with both of them casually making eye contact and smiling at each other.

Conclusion: Go check out the Symphony

While I got the tickets free this time around (hurray for blogging), I would love to come back to the Symphony again. Maybe for some Bach violin sonatas or Shostakovich. I don’t know what it’s like at your local symphony, but while I did have the initial apprehensive feeling of “oh no, I’m in a stuffy symphony” – the atmosphere was far more casual than I thought and had none of the Old World pretentiousness that I feared.

Disclosure

Yes, the fine folks at the San Francisco Symphony did give me two free tickets to the Symphony, and the same goes for other bloggers present that night. While blogging about the event was strongly encouraged, there was no demand for us to blog or to blog positively about the experience. Indeed, some bloggers that night gave a mixed review. Also, they gave us free milano cookies. ;)

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Last Saturday, I attended the CommunityNext Viral Marketing conference in Silicon Valley. The Conference, by Noah Kagan and Adam Kalamchi, brought together an interesting array of speakers to talk about Viral Marketing – from tactics, strategy, philosophy to viral marketing as Facebook widgets to community building.

Most of the speakers ranged from the experienced serial entrepreneurs (Dave McClure: PayPal, SimplyHired) to founders of accidental start-ups (Eric Nakagawa of icanhascheezurger). The atmosphere was very much on the casual side, with some point reaching nearly 1990s dot-com humor with of Adam Rifkin of Booze Mail making a cocktail during a talk to clearly very sharp and serious with Keith Rabois of Slide.

Below are my notes on:

1. Widgets – Metrics, Key Points on Facebook Widgets
2. Notes from Keith Rabois, one of the most impressive speaker at CommunityNext (Definitely Read This)
3. Flickr Photos: Including PowerPoint Slides given by Speakers. Plus: All Photos of the event
4. Feedback for the next CommunityNext Conference

** General Notes by Theme **
The Power of Leveraging Existing Networks: iLike v. last.fm

• The long established music discovery service from 2002, Last.FM, has been quickly overtaken by iLike which grew quickly once it launched the iLike widget for Facebook. (Tom Conrad of Pandora)
• Leveraging Existing Off-site Networks: It is a simple feature for your product to ask if the user if wants to import her Gmail Address book (or Yahoo, etc) and see who else is on the site and to “friend” existing contacts.

The Appeal of Widgets on User Profiles – Unique, Media, not Technology (From Jia of RockYou)

• “It’s like the first day of highschool” and you want to show-off how you’re different.
• Think of Widgets as a Media tool and a product, not a technological gadget
• It is not about “being technologically cool” but “being cool to use”

Facebook v. MySpace Widget Marketing Channels (Flickr Slide)

• There are 14 channels (opportunities) for spreading widgets, such as from the mini-feed, refer a friend (shown when adding a widget) and the profile page. (From Jia from Rock You).
• MySpace channels were mainly focused on In-Profile, Profile Comments, Bulletin Messages (e.g. “Your Friend Daniel has added Widget X”), and Forums (not often talked about, but highly effective).

MySpace v. Facebook Differences, Openness (From Jia of Rock You)

• FaceBook: Users do not necessarily browse around by visiting profiles, they have more reliance on using the FaceBook Mini-Feed on keeping touch on their friends
• In FaceBook, you need to rely on the Mini-Feed to place your call to action, e.g. “Daniel Riveong has just added the widget ZYZ, you should too”
• In Facebook, a user can only invite 10 friends a day to add a widget, making the friends feel more special

UGC Challenges

• With Yelp.com: Debate the use of paid-reviews to seed reviews. How authentic is it?
• Use MyBlogLog, Friendster and Others: Spam. Black-Hat marketers will always look for cheap tricks to hijack a platform for spam marketing tactics.
• From Friendster: The need to constant “prune” bad content to help develop the culture of the community and thus the brand

Miscellaneous Viral and Widgets Metrics

• Booze Mail on Facebook was able to grow its userbase at 30% per day
• RocketYou achived 9 million users in Facebook in 1.5 months
• Friendster: For every 1 (Exhibitionist) profile, there is 5,000-10,000 (Voyeurs) viewers
• Development of Widgets: ranged from 2 days to 4 weeks, using 1-2 programmers.

** Keith Rabois of Slide **

Lesson 1: “Viral Growth is Really Hard”
A very, very good reminder that Viral marketing and growth (user adoption) is just not magic and not just putting a YouTube video of a “funny video” and expecting traffic. It’s a mix of luck and strategy.

Examples:
Only 1 really great viral video every 6 months
Facebook Widgets: LinkedIn and Yelp.com have 2 widgets each, all have so far failed to reach beyond 4000 users each.

Lesson 2: Knowing the Value of a User: Viral Marketing v. E-Commerce Projection
E-commerce (Online Retailers) have data on the “tangible of users”, and so there is no real need for viral marketing. They know how much they are willing to spend for each user.

In a space where the value of each new user value is unknown viral marketing becomes very attractive; it has potentially the “lowest marginal cost for user acquition”. It is the safe choice to go far, when you don’t know how much you should spend, so you spend as little as possible.

Lesson 3: Is PR helpful in Viral Marketing? Not Really.
Keith felt that the best PR is done in-house, based on his experience and from talking to others. He cites the story that out of 5-6 start-ups in a room, only 1 company raised their hand when asked if they were happy with their PR firm. Other speakers repeated a similar theme.

Lesson 4: Viral/Social Network Structures & Business Model Changes
Yelp was originally an “Ask a friend where to eat tonight” referral service. YouTube was more focused as a dating service, but changed after utterly failure in the Los Angeles market. Slides was originally desktop-based before going into the Widget space with Facebook.

** For Next Time: Suggestions for Improvements **

Noah, Adam and the rest of the CommunityNext gang pulled off a heck of a conference. So I’m providing suggestions here, but in no way are they intended to criticize either the CommunityNext team or their invited speakers. This is stuff both CommunityNext and the speakers will hopefully (I hope that is) find constructive and useful.

Overall, I think a quick 30 minute session on refreshing one’s presentation skill will go a long way in making many of the speaker’s performance. We all need reminders! Also, maybe invite folks from the Marketing Agency world too to talk about their experience, especially working with a client to understand the viral/social-media space…of course, I’m not suggesting merely me. :)

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10 Spock.com Invites

1 ImInLikeWithYou Invite

1 Joost (Watch the Transformers!)

I’ll be handing out these randomly to whomever comments. Of course, I maybe influenced by people linking back to this blog. ;)

Just passing along the invite love!

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Yahoo: User Data and Smart Ads
Emergence-Media has been hot on the idea of Yahoo’s potential to do Behavioral Targeting and Social Search in a big way for awhile now. Yahoo has a mountain of user information (Y! Jobs, Upcoming, Flickr, Del.iciou.us, Y! Games) that the ability to do customized ad servicing (behavioral targeting) and social search is quite obvious.

The introduction of Yahoo’s SmartAds is a major step for Behavioral Targeting (BT). Behavioral Targeting has been a buzz since 2004 (if not earlier), which makes it interesting that it took this long for Yahoo, who has oodles of user information, has taken its first step in doing BT in a big way.

As per Yahoo’s demo on SmartAds, the system works by matching a user’s behavior to a customized on the fly advertisement. In the demo, it has user Joe (who Yahoo knows lives in Los Angeles and plays Yahoo! Poker Superstars II game), being served “LA to Las Vegas” flight ads (which is a banner ad created on the fly):

Beyond Tim Mayer’s “Cool Lamps” Social Search
Yahoo’s demo with SmartAds gives a glimpse of what Behavioral (with Social Search) can look like. Tim Mayer, Yahoo’s VP of Product Management, is fond of giving the “Cool Lamps” example of Social Search: A user would be receive not only what is traditionally algorithmically ranking for “cool lamps” but also what the user’s friends have tagged as being “cool lamps”.

While that’s the “Social” side of search, what about the behavioral (intent) side of search? The SmartAds example of the gambling enthusiast named Joe can be applied to both SEO and PPC:

PPC: Link Joe’s search for “cheap flights to Vegas” with more accurate geographic information “Joe is from Los Angeles” (than by using IP information), giving greater weight to ads for Casino.

SEO: Like PPC, organic SERPs could give higher relevancy to websites with “Los Angeles” in them due to Joe’s geographic location. Also, more generic searches like “Las Vegas” will lean towards Las Vegas casinos, since Joe is a gambler. On the Social side, maybe webpage URL recommendations based on the behavior of his fellow gambler players online.

Potential Impact
Note that the above is pure speculation, but it is not difficult to imagine Yahoo eventually adopting their SmartAds system to the Search world. In any case, the impact will be more evolutionary than revolutionary: SEO is already increasingly more about PR and relevancy and PPC has been moving to a similar model with the use of Google and Yahoo’s Quality Score. Attempting to assess user behavior and their social network is just one more layer of complexity.

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As you’ve noticed, I haven’t been blogging for close to one month now. I’ve been extra busy with work, an actual social life (egad!) and the introduction of a new member into my family (my newborn nephew).

On the work side, e-Storm International has been busy with welcoming hires (we’re still hiring), some new clients and also working on our international travel client, Vayama.com, which has just launched. As part of the Vayama campaign, I’m helping lead the SEO and PPC campaigns with the rest of the SEM team.

Check out Vayama (see the excellent review at CNET Webware):

Will begin blogging in a day or two…

- Daniel

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You are leading a blog outreach and marketing campaign. You find over 550 blogs pointing to you – great traffic (you see a spike traffic from referrals), great exposure and great for SEO. But, how do you know what those blog visitors from those 550 blogs are up to? Converting? Registering? And Purchasing?

If Technorati has the ability to track and identify over 70 million blogs, why cant it help tell my analytics program, which of the 1,400 referring websites are actually blogs and what the quality of that traffic is like (KPIs like registration, purchase etc)?

Is there an answer to this already? If so, please leave comments below to let me know.

Blogging as a Marketing Channel

The typical Marketing Channels that are readily configurable in an analytics service is paid search (PPC), organic search (SEO), online display (banners etc) and email-based marketing. Click and traffic data from these channels are usually used to segment key KPIs such as registration, using internal search (esp. for ecommerce), and completing a purchase. But what about blogs?

As noted above, Technorati is already tracking over 70 million blogs. Technorati’s identification of blogs could be readily plugged into analytics programs like Omniture SiteCatalyst, which has a “Genesis” program that allows for third-party data integration. Similarly, Google Blog Search could send their data to Google Analytics, so GA can track blog traffic etc.

Of course there will be limitation, not all blog search have each and every blog identified correctly and major websites with quasi-blogging features, like Yelp & Facebook, would probably not be included.

So if this capability already exist for any analytics program – please let me know.
Tantek, David Sifry, Matt Belkin or Avinash: What say you?

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Sorry folks, but its been a busy week for me, so postings will be virtually nil for this week (same like the last). I always wonder how folks like Steve Rubel keep up.

In the mean time, I’ve just signed up Emergence-Media with “Text Link Ads” with all profits (assuming someone buys) going to my Mom. :) So please buy some ads here (Log-In required to view Emergence-Media’s inventory)!

By the way, if you’re a freelancing Art Director with some availability, shoot me a line.
- Daniel

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Aaron Wall of SEOBook has a great write-up on the changing face of Google’s Search Results (SERPs). They now include Vertical-Creeps of its various properties and the integration of Google News into the *organic* listings.

Where does this bring SEO?

Going Beyond Vertical Search Creep

We are now seeing Google pulling information beyond its own vertical search engines with the actual integration of editorial information with Google News *inside* the organic listings.

SEO’s purpose is to optimize Search Engine Listings (SERPs), but how people are getting their information is evolving:

• Google/Yahoo’s main Search Page now includes information from Local Search, Real Estate, Maps, Weather, TV Listings, and Google News (inside Google’s SERPs), Yahoo Answers (Bottom of SERPs in Yahoo), etc.
• Than there is the increasing use of specific communities and content where people are also searching: Yahoo! Travel, TripAdvisor, Yelp, etc.

So again, what does it mean to do SEO? What is the point of doing Local SEO, if you’re local business (or saw local branches) are not listed on Yelp?

How Google and Yahoo are handling search is changing. How people are now using sites like Yelp is also changing. How will SEO Change?

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As you’ve noticed I’ve been a little slow on the blogging. At work I’ve been working on a super exciting major client in the travel space (launching soon) and I’ve been busy personally too (yes, personal life outside of blogging).

I’m currently at the Hat Factory in San Francisco for SuperHappyVlogHouse, where we are doing a Creative Commons video (as part of kicking off for Videobloggin Week 2007). Justin from Justin.Tv also came bay to make a quick cameo before going to see a date.

I asked Justin how his life has changed for him personally (in terms of how he does things), he mentions that he finds himself “more honest, and not talking behind peoples backs as much”.

Regular blogging will return next week or so.

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Hey All,

If you’ve always wondered what it would be like to work with me or at an exciting boutique interactive agency with talented and great co-workers, now here’s your chance. e-Storm International is looking for an Account Supervisor for our San Francisco office.

Email me at Daniel@e-storm.com for inquiries or recommendations and I’ll pass it along. If you’d like to know more about e-Storm, what its like etc – feel free to contact me as well.

We met Polly during our company trip to Paso Robles

See more details below!
Here’s the complete Account Supervisor job description and requirements.

The Official Low-Down on e-Storm (beside simply being an exciting interactive agency with talented people, food, art and a company that occasionally plays a good game of cornhole):

Founded in 1998, e-Storm International is a San Francisco-based international interactive agency with offices in Europe, Asia and Canada servicing business to business, business to consumer companies with market research, online advertising, creative, word of mouth marketing and international marketing services.

Our clients include ACS, AirTrade International, Karen Neuburger, Microsoft, National University, Maporama, Verizon, Travelpod, Leading Hotels of the World, among others as well as leading agencies, and partners across the World.

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The recent 2006 and coming 2008 US elections has been heralded as the moment when blogs and social media make their play on election campaigns. Indeed for the 2008 US presidential elections, much has been made regarding John Edward’s involvement with dozens of social networking site, plus web 2.0 sites like Twitter. Additionally, Barack Obama’s website includes its own social networking website.

But the real factor has been on the grassroots level, which the new video on Hillary Clinton is an example of (link of video above). San Francisco Chronical describes the video :

Groundbreaking 74-second pitch for Democratic Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, which remixes the classic “1984″ ad that introduced Apple computers to the world, is not on cable or network TV, but on the Internet.

This video, at the time of this writing, has been viewed over 200,000 times since it was posted on March 5th. This is powerful for a video that was apparently created on a grassroots level by a Barack Obama supporter.

Blogs have been a large political factor for some time, especially with the Little Green Footballs, a conservative news/blog website, which revealed the “Killian documents” forgeries that was in a Dan Rather’s segment in CBS’s “60 Minutes” and helped call attention to the photoshopped forgeries by an Reuters Photographer that exaggerated damage from the 2006 Israeli-Lebanon Conflict. Maybe this time online videos will raise to be the major influencer?

With the 2008 Presidential Elections just getting a start, the “Vote Different”/1984 Hillary video is just one example of how social media will impact the cultural landscape – beyond a marketer’s viral video, college kids on Facebook and Mentos viral videos. The Lesson: While avoiding the whole kool-aid, marketers should could watch to understand social media is more than just viral videos.

PS: Of course with politics being as it is, this video could of been an inside job by the Obama camp, but for the sake of avoiding political speculation we’ll avoid that discussion.

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Making Video Ads Viral. But how about Direct to YouTube Viral?
I’ve been noticing that LinkedIn has been very aggressive in displaying video ads for Cadillac, a film called “Reign Over Me” and Google’s Gmail video. Yet, while being all videos advertisements, they share three very different paths when looking at what the ads link to:

• “Reign Over Me” goes to a horrible Moviefone page with no call to action. What exactly am I supposed to learn or do when I get to this page?
• Cadillac goes to a very slick looking “My Cadillac Story” minisite, with video profiles of famous people that have been changed by Cadillac, and includes the usual “Send to a Friend” links. This is very similar to the Blackberry Pearl minisite.
• The Gmail Google Video is a quirky lo-fi video that links straight to the YouTube webpage for that video.

Cadillac and Gmail both wins points for execution, but the Gmail Team has a very interesting link back to YouTube. And here’s why:

• Familiarity for the Users: This YouTube tie-in brings the user to a website that she/he is very familiar with and most likely has probably played around in, forward clips to friends from, copied and pasted YouTube videos to MySpace, etc.
• Increased Exposure: Instead of having the video siloed on a standalone minisite – say GmailMuppetTheatre.com – the Gmail Team has positioned the video within YouTube itself, where it maybe found by a search on YouTube or because it made it to one of the top viewed videos this month (yep, it did).

This method is not for every client or advertiser. But for those who feel their video has strong “viralbility” and probably has strong attraction for a young adult audience, a YouTube-based Video Ad like Gmail’s should be considered.

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Beyond Mobile 2.0, Here Comes Consoles 2.0
(We’re on the roll with Web, Mobile, Marketing, [Insert Word Here] 2.0s. )
Just as the idea of Mobile 2.0 (the integration of internet with the uniqueness of mobile phones) is picking off, so will the idea of gaming consoles integrating into the internet gain currency.

Recently, Read/Write Web discussed the “55 Piece Mobile Search Tool Kit” that are shaping the mobile landscape along with who are active in providing these particular “mobile tools”. Some of those mentioned include:

• Mobile site builders
• Mobile search engines
• Local sites
• Mobile portals
• Mobile social networks
• Mobile visual search (matching your cell phone camera’s pictures)
• Mobile video search
• Mobile downloads
• Real estate search
• Mobile map apps

Soon, there maybe a need to think of adapting these “tools” to gaming entertainment consoles themselves. The online world is moving to the Consoles too, not just Mobile.

What is the Wii up to on Social Media?

Nintendo’s Wii has seen to movements on territory that is usually found in traditional social media: 1) StumbleUpon Video; and 2) Online Group Polling.

Nintendo’s Wii partnership with StumbleUpon Video creates an interesting integration of TV-based Entertainment Consoles (Wii) and StumbleUpon Video (Social Media Video).
Wii also has a “Everybody Votes Channel” as discussed by lifefilter and TC399, which allows:

• Vote on regional or worldwide polls
• After vote is placed, predict how the majority voted.
• Allow users to submit questions that they would like to be asked

Just like Hot or Not evolved from a online polling website into a social network/dating website, the potential evolution of the “Everybody Votes Channel” can clearly be seen.

Overall, it is way too early to tell, but it will be interesting to see how all of this evolves in 1-3 years.

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Hey All, after it’s been busy crazy week, which explains the low blogging (hey, I have to work too). But after all the craziness, I’m off to one of our yearly company retreats in Tahoe (yeah, we rock like that) for the weekend. I’ll be either snowboarding or simply chilling-out.
When I get back, we’ll catch up on the link between SEO & PR and Engagement Metrics.

Cheers!

- Daniel

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Emergence Media will be joining the Marketing Community of 9Rules (to be confirmed), which has plenty of great blogs I’ve been regularly reading for some time – Experience Curve (I’ve had drinks with Karl Long), Pronet Advertising, Influential Interactive Marketing – and new ones I’m just discovering.

Here is a peak at the 9Rules Network Marketing Community:

• Experience Curve
• Cameron Olthuis
• Simple and Loveable
• Marketing.fm
• Pronet Advertising
• Apogee Weblog
• Ads of the World
• Your Elevator Pitch
• Wurkit
• Return Customer
• Brandon Milford
• Who Is Andrew Wee
• Forty Media
• Influential Interactive Marketing
• Online Marketing Blog

Again, looking forward to being an active contributor to the 9Rules Marketing Community! This is a great start to 2007!

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See you next year!

Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!

Cheers!

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Last week I attended a “Geek Dinner” attended by over 16 folks from around the Bay Area/Silicon Valley (see the roll call here). It was a chance to meet beyond the usual Internet Marketing circle and interact with others in the high-tech scene. For example, more folks were talking about the upcoming CES than the latest social media website – that’s definite change from my usual scene.
By the way, Jeremy Toeman, formerly VP at SlingMedia, generously describes me as a “Internet Marketing and Social Media guru”. Thanks Jeremy!

Read it all here at Jeremy Toeman’s blog.

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