Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Scamville: The Social Gaming Ecosystem Of Hell — Last weekend I wrote about how the big social gaming companies are making hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue on Facebook and MySpace through games like Farmville and Mobsters. Major media can't stop applauding the companies long enough …
Edo Segal / TechCrunch:
For The Future Of The Media Industry, Look In The App Store — The following guest post was written by Edo Segal (@edosegal). — Media scarcity is dead. In the future my son will have a flash drive that he will pay $29 for that will have the capacity to hold all movies and music ever released …
Continue reading New Sony Ericsson Rachael UI video hits, still looks nothing like Android
Filed under: Cellphones, Software
New Sony Ericsson Rachael UI video hits, still looks nothing like Android originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington and Offerpal Media chief executive Anu Shukla got into a brouhaha over special offers, which are used to monetize social apps on social networks, at the close of the Virtual Goods Summit on Friday.
At the close of a panel where Shukla spoke, Arrington asked how Shukla could defend her business of making offers that were leading the social game industry “into hell.” Shukla responded with a long answer about why Arrington’s commentary was “shit, double shit and bullshit.” You can see Alexa Lee’s video on the whole 10-minute exchange below. I also interviewed Shukla about the issue before the panel.
The debate revolves around whether specials offers are unethical and a bad experience for both users and advertisers. Shukla defended the practice of monetizing games and other social apps through offers, which let users pay with their time, participation and attention, rather than actual money.
Users can play games from the likes of Zynga and Playdom for free. But when they want to buy something in the games, such as a better plow to farm the land in Zynga’s FarmVille game, they have to pay. As an alternative to shelling out cash, they can accept an offer from Offerpal, which gets the user to do something like fill out a survey or subscribe to Netflix.
Arrington alleged these offers are so much trash. The offers are “slimy” and users scam the advertisers by making up answers in surveys or signing up for services they plan to cancel. Arrington said that this means that advertisers like Netflix aren’t getting their money’s worth from the ads, but Facebook and others involved aren’t putting a stop to the practice because they all make money from it.
Shukla contended that those objections are “shit” because most of the offers are high-quality and are filtered. She said, as we wrote earlier, that more than 160 million consumers have participated in Offerpal’s offers over the past two years. The total reach of the whole offer industry is still small, with only 5 percent to 30 percent of all gamers participating in offers.
The vast majority of offers are working out well, because the advertisers keep coming back. Most of the business is on Facebook, though it moved to Open Social-based networks for a time and has now returned to Facebook, thanks to that network’s rapid growth to more than 300 million users.
“We see more users turning to offers as a way to pay,” Shukla said in our interview.
Shukla acknowledged there were some offers in the general industry that were “spoiling the experience.” That’s why Facebook issued new policies in July that put restrictions on the offer business, particularly on offers that had to do with the mobile phone business. Shukla said Offerpal spent a lot of time cleaning out marginal offers and had to take a revenue hit as well. All of the social app companies are taking a hit as a result. Shukla said that was good for the industry, since some offer companies were letting bad offers creep in to gain market share.
“Unfortunately, some of the offers that were considered poor quality actually perform well,” she said. “If we took them out, and our competitors didn’t, they would perform better than us. So I love the fact that Facebook forced everyone to take them out.”
Even so, Shukla struck back hard at Arrington, who promised to expose bad practices. Video and pictures by Alexa Lee.
Business and Technology, GamesBeat, Technology, VentureBeat, feature
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
When you think about social media marketing or building your social media presence, you probably think about Facebook or Twitter, or perhaps YouTube or MySpace. That's good. These are some of the top places on the Internet where people are spending their time online.
What online communities do you focus on? Comment here.
That said, there are probably plenty of places that you are either overlooking or just plain ignoring. They might not have the broad user-bases of the aforementioned services, but there are people there, and the more people you can reach and engage with, the better off you may be in some cases (depending on your goals for social network use).
According to Hitwise data, the top ten social networking websites and forums by US market share of visits looked like this:
To be clear, the Hitwise data from which MarketingCharts compiled the above graph is based on US market share of visits as defined by the IAB, which is the percentage of online traffic to the domain or category, from Hitwise's sample of 10 million US internet users. It's unclear exactly what all kinds of sites fall into the social networks category.
But the point is that there are a lot of places out there where people are forming communities that you may not be thinking of, but may provide plenty of opportunities for driving more engagement, brand awareness, and/or even traffic.
Are you considering things like Tagged or Yahoo Profiles/Groups? Are you considering the forums out there that pertain to your niche? Forums are relevant in social media marketing. I've discussed this in the past. Forums are basically social networks. They're communities too. You have to think about where the people are, and not just where they are, but where they are talking. Where they're communicating with others.
Forums or other more narrow communities may even prove to be more valuable tools than Facebook or Twitter in some cases. They are more likely to be focused on specific niches, than on the general public. There are certainly plenty of times where the general public - the Facebook/Twitter crowds are who you are trying to reach, but there will be other times when you may want to reach a specific group of people, which may or may not be a part of Facebook or Twitter.
Look at Ford for example. Scott Monty, who runs the social media efforts for the Ford Motor Company recently told WebProNews that they use all sorts of forms of social media, because "Let's face it, people are using all sorts of forms."
"We try to be where the mainstream are and we do it in a way that humanizes the company at every turn, so we're on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, Scribd, Delicious, and upcoming as our major platforms," he said. "And we're constantly monitoring to see what the trends are and where people are going, so that we're relevant."
The key word there is relevant. Go where you're relevant.
What are some less thought about communities that you use to engage with people? Discuss here.
Related Articles:
> Forums Are Relevant in Social Media Marketing
> How Big Brands Use Social Media
> Some Brands Have Good Ideas For Social Media. Do You?
> Using Facebook Traffic to Drive Brand Loyalty
Forums, Research, Social Media, Technology, Twitter, facebook, social media marketing, social networks
Filed under: Desktops
ATI's dual-GPU Radeon HD 5970 pictured in the wilderness originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 21:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Dan Gillmor / Mediactive:
The Only ‘Journalism’ Subsidy We Need is in Bandwidth — Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols believe that “journalists deserve subsidies, too.” They argue that America is “nearing a point where we will no longer have more than minimal resources (relative to the nation's size) dedicated to reporting the news.”
Fuckin' vampires, Halloween, SNFF, Saturday Night Special, Technology, open thread
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Check out some of the latest MakeUseOf discoveries. All listed websites are FREE (or come with a decent free account option). No trials or buy-to-use craplets. For more cool websites and web app reviews subscribe to MakeUseOf Directory. |
(1) ScheduleGenerator – Online class schedule maker tool that lets you quickly generate class schedules online. The application is simple and straightforward, just enter your data such as class names, locations and times, and click on ‘Generate’ button. ScheduleGenerator will then open up a new tab containing a ready to print schedule. Read more: ScheduleGenerator – Class Schedule Maker
(2) @MicrosoftHelps – While Microsoft has already embraced Twitter like the other big firms and has many Twitter handles, @MicrosoftHelps was launched recently to provide real time support to Windows 7 users. Microsoft describes it as “the official Twitter account for Microsoft Customer Service.” Read more: @MicrosoftHelps – Quick Tech Support for Windows 7 on Twitter
(3) eClocking – Interesting free online stopwatch which goes beyond just being a timer. It lets you save your timings and then anaylze them thoroughly using charts and graphs. A personal project by a developer named Ben Noland, this service could become a very efficient time management tool if used properly. Read more: eClocking – Free Online Stopwatch & Organizer
(4) RiledUp – Online platform dedicated to discussion and debating topics of your interest in a social media format. Users can start a debate by posting the debate title and a brief description (including rules and guidelines). Read more: RiledUp – Website for Debating Topics of Your Interest
(5) Nurphy – Web application that makes group conversations easy. It features a clutter free interface specifically designed for group messaging. The conversations could be on any subject and there is no limit on the number of conversations you can have. Read more: Nurphy – Group Conversations Made Easy
These are just half of the websites that we discovered in the last couple of days. If you want us to send you daily round-ups of all cool websites we come across, leave your email here. Or follow us via RSS feed.
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Continue reading Laziness on the move: robot plays Rock Band on the iPhone
Filed under: Cellphones, Robots
Laziness on the move: robot plays Rock Band on the iPhone originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 31 Oct 2009 19:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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