So, I’ve lately been really interested in this new social media application, Vine. Maybe it’s because I can’t use it yet since I’m a droid-user. Maybe it’s because of all this buzz online.. Regardless, I wanted to look into it more and see if this really could be a smart move for Twitter (since they bought Vine).
January 24, Twitter introduced Vine as an IPhone application and it hit the number one app in the Apple social app store the very next day. However, Emarketer reports that about 14% of internet users have either heard of it, seen Vine videos, or actually signed up. The other 86% of internet users haven’t even heard of it. But hey, it’s only been a month..
Looking at a measure of the methods used to share mobile videos, Twitter only contributes 12% to that while Facebook is on top with 56%. So Vine could definitely be Twitter’s video-sharing extension in the online world.
How will advertisers adapt to this new application? Will they even bother?
I think they should. I think that in some sense it can be very similar to how brands adapted to YouTube, in terms of branded content. Although six seconds may be the hardest part.
The downside of Vine? Other than the length, Vine needs to work on it’s adult content restrictions.. A lot of marketers aren’t comfortable. I’m sure they don’t want to become known for the same reasons that we know chat roulette.
In another article from NPR, Vine tried to address this problem by adding a 17+ rating due to “age-restricted material”.
Okay, cool. But does that really solve anything? No. According to the article Apple says it requires a new user to enter their birth date to help verify identity, but there’s nothing to confirm the user’s age. Kids aren’t stupid, they’ll lie.
So other measures were taken by Vine. #porn and other searches have been disabled so users can’t straight up search for adult content, but that doesn’t mean they still can’t find it. Maybe Vine should get some tips from YouTube.
Brands are starting realizing the value in Pinterest - the only problem is trying to evaluate the data.
Pinterest currently does not offer a public API (application programming interfaces) so trying to collect data about “pins” proves to be a little harder than to be desired.
Analytics firm, Curalate, has done well so far in gathering the information from Pinterest, however it requires them to “crawl” the site to get the data. Curalate CEO, Apu Gupta, explains that it’s hard work, but sees the silver lining in the opportunity it creates for companies to step in a help solve a problem.
It makes sense for Pinterest to not have a public API. They would basically be letting people create platforms on the site, along with more to deal with for themselves.
Pinterest isn’t being selfish or inconsiderate though. The article sites a Pinterest spokesperson who said that future tools “may include analytics or access to an API”, and that Pinterest “will continue to create things that help data firms get the most out of Pinterest.”
Enter Pinfluencer, a Pinterest marketing and analytics company that helps determine the ROI from marketing activities on the website. All those brands that were nervous to get involved with Pinterest? Fear not, for now there is a dollar amount assigned to pins. This is also a plus for marketers. Now they can make a viable argument in regards to an investment in Pinterest.
It almost sounds like Pinterest is a better investment than Facebook or Twitter because you have the untraditional ability to bring the product to the consumer. The activity on Pinterest is a direct measure of what people like. “Some of our [Pinfluencer] customers are using data to make offline merchandising decisions… what to sell in future seasons based on what’s working right now,” says Sharad Verma, Pinfluencer CEO.
The article also says that Pinterest has started allowing users to create “secret pinboards”. I think that these secret boards will definitely stifle engagement and traffic. Verma says that they “could actually benefit the brand. What businesses really want is a staging area… where their team can collaborate on a board then publish a board once it’s ready.” That sounds like it could work, but as far as actual users creating secret boards, no brand will ever be able to track that information. The only limitation is that users can’t have more than 3 secret boards.
Maybe Pinterest can sell out and allow access to those secret boards for a premium price. That’d be messed up, but I could see that happening.
Pinfluencer is a good move on Pinterest’s part. I guess we will wait and see if it “secret boards” ends up being a good strategy for Pinterest as well.
http://www.dmnews.com/pinfluencer-determines-the-value-of-a-picture/article/268164/
What Google did with this project was overall pretty inspiring. I enjoyed every moment of this documentary. I couldn’t believe that they were taking on such a daunting task, but at the same time I knew it was going to come out impressive… it’s Google.
So if it was, like, the end of the world and my life depended on picking only one of these reinvented ads, I would probably have to pick The Countdown to 3 Million Miles. I don’t know if it was his stories or the distance, but it gave me chills! I mean, putting 3 million miles on a car is jaw-dropping alone. It really says something about the brand which I think made it such a great basis for an ad. I liked that it was more of a branded content direction instead of just an ad. It was an engaging and entertaining story. I liked the design, I liked the story lines, the personalization, the nostalgia. I enjoyed Irv’s reminiscing introducing each episode. I don’t even know who this guy is, but I’m emotionally invested in his story! It makes me want to keep watching and watching.
I learned that there are so many aspects that can take an ad from just being ad to an actual experience. When your location, your interests and your hobbies are included in that story it really does create a connection and thats what you have to do with ads today. I liked a lot of the ideas that people were throwing around towards the end of the movie; about first not destroying and then creating good. It’s becoming more and more difficult to not create more clutter for people to being annoyed by and this documentary really highlights that as a challenge, but encourages us young ones to overcome it. As cheesy as it sounds, it made me want to go and create something like this to share with the world.
Here we have a perfect example of exactly what our professor, Eric Ritter, was saying the other day in class; everything must be social.
According to Kay M. Madati, who spoke at Mashable’s Media Summit on Friday, the “Big 5” broadcast networks collectively launched about 25-30 shows this season, only about 6 will survive. Average ratings for TV shows are trending down.”
So what does this have to do with the social space? The idea is to recruit social media platforms to help spread entertainment content. Madati says, “social is critical for content producers to tap into the power of friends and the influence they have on each other.” This can also relate back to my last blog post about how more and more people are using online and social media sources to help make purchasing decisions.. It only makes sense to take advantage of this for the entertainment sphere. Buying a ticket or renting a movie, spending time watching a new TV show; it all costs us, tangible or not. Why don’t we start get our value’s worth?
Twitter allows viewers to chat real-time during premieres which I think should be integrated so much with a show that you can see it on the TV all the time. Why not make every episode a social event? Kinda like a revamp of pop-up video on MTV..
http://mashable.com/2012/11/30/social-media-entertainment/
Before social media existed as a core part of our daily life, it was a bit of a trying task to figure out what people really thought of TV. My first thought was, “well, what about Nielsen?” Yeah, Nielsen tells you who is watching, but doesn’t delve into the details or really give anyone any insight to what they think about the show. I mean, I could watch a show, but not like it. I’m watching football right now, and I don’t even like football.
See how numbers pre-social media could’ve been a little misleading?
Okay, jump a few years forward. Now you have social media monitoring firms and everyone is getting excited watching millions and millions of comments circulating about one show. It finally came full-circle. People are watching and liking.
So, here is where our author and social TV expert, Simon Dumenco, starts to lose faith. “Last December, Nielsen and Twitter announced they were working on creating something called the Nielsen Twitter TV Rating in time for the 2013 season.” Dumenco writes, “when it comes to social-media response, absolute numbers are largely meaningless. There are just too many variables…”
What should be happening, and what is in some cases, is that firms should start to “draw insights from the social-media stream surrounding individual shows.” Then social TV does exactly what social media did; becomes a part of our daily life so much so that social TV just becomes as normal as TV.
So I conclude as I did before, TV and movies should start integrating across multiple platforms in order to increase viewership and engagement. TV is going to have to start really building a relationship with social media in order to keep our attention.
http://adage.com/article/the-media-guy/end-social-tv-socialtv-jumped-shark/239125/
Michal Marko | http://behance.net/michal_marko
“My goal: To create disposable food bowl with minimum environmental impact and to teach wide society about new biodegradable materials in a funny way. Description from etiquette: Enjoy your food. Then put the seeds…
(Source: behance.net)
