The TrendWatch » recommendation

Social Media Marketing – Decieving Carpe Diem

luis FREITAS [FullSIX Portugal] — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 00:04:31 +0000

After reading an article making an interesting paralism between a movie and a web 2.0 symbol, I couldn’t help but to sit and think about it. Web hits are becoming more and more a way for Brands to evaluate a site’s performance. Although true to a certain extent, aren’t the Social Media websites acting towards these results in the same way that the TVs’ effect of creating a public opinion did on their audiences?
Yes and no. In my opinion, Social Media has given birth to a new form of Marketing, specific to each of the Webstartups it’s related to – Digg-Marketing, Reddit-Marketing, etc… – as each has its own specificities. This Marketing, while attractive as a way to add visibility to a Brand, promotes false results as the results that are on top of a page in one day vary, which originates a huge influx of visitors at one moment and a big pitfall in the next. So, in one way, the Social Media websites are shaping the apprehension of the online public opinion to a certain extent. But, there are two variables that differ from the original effect that the TV had – time and interactivity. People might be curious to check a link that is on top in Digg, but the truth is that in the next hour, he’ll be back to check the new number one link, almost forgetting about the original one – information overload syndrome. And there are instant comments – people refute and approve the information in real time, thus shaping and steering information towards a common ground with online audiences.
The bottom line is that Social Media is indeed acting as a opinion shaper, but only towards a certain extent. Yes, it is important for Marketers to acknowledge these tools and their effects, but it isn’t a good strategic pillar to focus on them for pure brand awareness – it will only originate the desired brand awareness if more people actually create links related to the same topic. If it’s a single interesting link, it will definitely create a lot of traffic, but only in a 1 hour maximum time slot.

Snooth: sharing wine recommendations with friends

olivier PEYRE [FullSIX USA] — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 20:24:25 +0000

I’ve always wanted to keep track of the wines I’ve tasted at home or out, so that i could buy again the ones I enjoyed and avoid the other ones. So I started many lists of my own ratings on paper, on my mac, but always failed to keep them up to date. Snooth is a young site where you can store the reviews you write about the wines you’ve tasted, share the ratings with your friends, get personal recommendation according to your reviews, aggregate opinions from users and pros, receive help to pair wine and food, and so on. Still room for improvement but I’m gonna start another of those lists there and hopefully won’t drop it after one week.

Disclaimer: yes, shamelessly, i’ve linked to the page where my parents’ wine is rated ;)

Crunching Numbers

olivier PEYRE [FullSIX USA] — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 19:29:51 +0000

Introducing a new category of short posts, inspired by my last two meetings. People always ask for crazy, obscure numbers and if you don’t want to sound like you have no idea what they are talking about, you have no other option but to know!

So that one day, hopefully, you’ll be able to thank us when your client asks you how many minutes are spent per user per month on facebook, how much US households spend online, or if people really do listen to podcasts.

All you’ll have to do is, calmly, say:
- 190
- 31.5 billion for Q1 2007
- 13% do.

If you have numbers, questions, stories you want to share, please send!