Social media tools to help you sort through the Cyber Monday chaos

There was a time when the after Thanksgiving price dropping frenzy was confined to the US. But a few years ago, some enterprising marketers went and created Cyber Monday – the online equivalent to Black Friday – letting shoppers across the world wide web get in on the action.

While the online slash fest is a great opportunity for every Christmas shopper on a budget, the vast amount of offers is staggering. To help you find your way to the deal you’ve been dreaming of, check out these social media tools that that help organize the madness into digestible chunks. 

Apps
The DealNews.com iPhone app was originally only geared towards Black Friday, but it’s now expanded to send the best Cyber Monday deals directly to your phone, minimizing the time you need to spend searching yourself.

If you’re in the States and combing the stores today, TGI Black Friday is a huge help in comparing deals on the go. It’s also useful for Monday, as many sellers feature the same deals online on Monday as in stores on Friday.

Twitter
Another way to have the deals sent directly to you is by following the Twitter feeds dedicated to finding Cyber Monday’s best deals. CyberMonday.com and Dealighted both provide nice feeds with frequently updated info and links to coupons. 

http://twitter.com/cyber_monday
http://twitter.com/dealightedcom


Facebook
Many retailers are using their Facebook pages to announce Cyber Monday deals early, so it could be worthwhile to join some new fan pages to get a head start.

Etsy is using Facebook to aggregate all their sellers for a huge Cyber Monday sale, check them out if you’re interested in handmade crafts.

If you need some gifts for the little ones, visit the Toys’r’Us Facebook page. They’re letting people vote on which toys they want to see go on sale on Monday.  

Deal Aggregators
And last but not least are the good old fashioned website aggregators. They let you search through deals from various stores by product category and price range. Cybermonday.com and cybermonday.fm are quite comprehensive resources for all your armchair shopping needs.

These were the best tools out there I could find. Do you have any social media tips for taking advantage of this year’s Cyber Monday?

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We are our own Big Brother

New developments in social media and technology make more and more of your private life public

Social media offers up a way for people to express themselves in ways never possible, but like Uncle Ben told a young Peter Parker, “With great power comes great responsibility.”  Information that used to be difficult or impossible to find, people now freely offer up. Over the course of this week, my Internet prowling unearthed some new trends that made me wonder if social media wasn’t starting to ask me to put too much of my life out in the public domain.

We can now make it easier than ever for people stalk and track us. Check out the new SenseCam. This little gadget is designed to capture pretty much every aspect of your life on camera. You wear it around your neck and its fisheye lens takes a picture every 30 seconds. It’s easy to see the appeal – there’s potential for a whole lot of wonderful images and moments from your life to be captured that would otherwise be missed if you hands are otherwise occupied.




Somehow the thought of a whole lot of people walking around with these things taking automated pictures all the time makes me just a little uneasy.

Now combine that with SoundBiter, a new iPhone app that constantly records the world around it. This nifty little app constantly records all audio around you. If you hear something you want to share, you hit a button and the phone saves the last 60 seconds of audio. You can then instantly send it out to the world via Twitter.

This could be a fun party app but the potential for paparazzi to exploit celebrities they are stalking or for people to be quoted out of context means there is great damage it could do.

Another trend that’s taking advantage of technology’s watchful eye are location based services (LBS) like the new Google Latitude. Thanks to built-in GPS, most new phones know where you are all the time . Developers are creating apps to show you nearby locations of people in your network.

With automated alerts when someone you know is close by, don’t be surprised if your friends suddenly start popping up a lot more often when you’re out and about.

As if that wasn’t enough ways to expose ourselves, here is my personal favorite. This new scale guilts you into losing weight by Tweeting how heavy you are automatically when you step on it. The Internet has officially invaded your bathroom.

The brilliance of social media and technology is that it you can share your life with people in ways never before possible. If you want to stay in the loop, putting a whole lot of yourself out there is inevitable. After all, that’s the spirit of social media. But the question is how much should we share? Is the rapid advancement in social media technologies putting too much of our lives online? Perhaps, but these gadgets sure do look cool.

Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry. 

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U2 and Foo Fighters usher in new era of interactive concerts

There’s no question the Internet has changed the way we consume music. Digital downloads have become a staple of our lives, but digital concerts? Is experiencing your favorite band perform live being claimed by the ever expanding Internet as well?

I don’t see bands ever forsaking the road, but they are starting to embrace the concept of concert via fiber optic cable as a way to get closer to their fans. Two weeks ago, U2 played a concert in the Rose Bowl which was simultaneously broadcast by YouTube to millions of viewers across 16 countries. It was a first for the world’s largest video provider, and, unsurprisingly, it was a major success. After all, what U2 fan wouldn’t go to the trouble of simply clicking a link from the comfort of their living room?

The roughly 10 million fans who tuned in were able to chat with each other via an integrated Twitter feed, many of whom simply posted thank you’s to the band. Never one to miss an opportunity to save the world, Bono slipped in a “donate to (RED)” button for the millions of viewers to contemplate clicking while in their happy spirits over the free show.

The event was another demonstration of traditional media’s decline in prominence. Those 10 million viewers showed up with zero promotion carried out in traditional media – the concert was promoted exclusively online. And while those numbers are pretty far off what the big network TV broadcasts get, it’s a major jump forward in seriously competing with them.

U2’s Internet extravaganza was well publicized and hard to miss, but did you catch Foo Fighters pulling an Internet first of their own last weekend? The alt-rockers broadcast a live show on Facebook (via livestream), becoming the first major act to do so. Even without much promotion, the 2 hour and 45 minute stream from their recording studio drew in 440,000 viewers.

The band played fan favorites in support of their newly released greatest hits album. During the show, fans were able to talk not only with each other, but with the band themselves who responded to comments and took requests. Imagine having that opportunity with your favorite band.

So are streaming concerts the wave of the future? Perhaps, but probably not the near future. The rights issues around concerts are far more complicated than broadcasting other media, as there are so many people who need to sign off on the project including managers, band members, the record label, the venue, etc. But the technology is there, the demand is there and there is money to be made, so expect the likes of Bono and Dave Grohl to be invading your living room more often in the coming years.

Jason Ross is a copywriter for The Duffy Agency. He loves working on both traditional and social media projects and speculating on the future of the ad industry. 

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Spooktacular Halloween – 2.0 style

What are the scariest online activities for this Halloween?

It’s my favorite time of the year, Halloween! For me, Halloween is Christmas for adults. We get to dress up, make fools of ourselves and have fun. In order to set the mood, we have to get our Twitter avatar properly set up. Trickotweet gives you several really cute and fun monster avatars to choose from. I went with the hockey masked one.

On to Facebook. Pet Zombie allows you to create your own pet zombie that you can feed, play with, cover in toilet paper and make dance. My zombie is named Marvin.

Cute isn’t he.

I’m sure you’re asking yourself, “How would I do in a zombie apocalypse?” Find out by taking this short Facebook quiz. Turns out I might survive.

I love carving jack-o-lanterns. But sometimes I have problems coming up with ideas. Extreme Pumpkins has lots of jack-o-lanterns that people have taken to unusual levels. The 2009 winners provide lots of inspiration to go far beyond the mundane. The site is packed with “how to” tips, patterns and lots of photos of pumpkins.

If you need some practice before you start carving your pumpkin, try carving a virtual pumpkin.

If you don’t want to sit inside this Samhain, join a zombie walk.


What could be more fun than dressing up as the undead and shambling down the street?

If dressing as a zombie isn’t your game, why not play some? Re-kill the undead with Boxhead, a Lego like character game where you’re stranded in a tunnel where you shoot or get eaten. The more you kill, the better your weapons become. If the undead become too much, shoot barrels to thin the herd.

If you need something a little bloodier to slake your zombie thirst, Endless Zombie Rampage is your game. You have to defend your ground against gut-munchers with a handgun. As you gain experience points, you can upgrade your weapons to assault rifles, shotguns and laser cannons. Both games are great fun.

Sometimes you can’t be at your computer (you have to eat, poop and sleep sometimes). Thankfully, 148apps.com has found four iPhone applications to fill the void that’s in your soul when you leave your computer. Alive 4-ever gets their highest rating and from the images, it looks action packed. Personally, I can't wait to play Hysteria Project, check out the screen capture below. There are also iPhone versions of DOOM and Resident Evil for a bit of classic game play.

Finally, this All Hallow’s Eve, I want to leave you with this bit of stop motion zombie mayhem fright, Chainsaw Maid. 

What are you favorite Halloween sites?

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

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Fall is in the air

Time to bundle up

Summer is over and gone and taken with it all those sunny days on the beach. It’s rainy in Atlanta and snowy in Stockholm. Time to put away your swimsuits and dig out the scarfs, gloves and coats. If you find that last year’s fashion has become horribly out of date, check out Uniqlo’s  website for a fun and unique way to shop for clothes.


Having lived in a warmer climate for ten years, how to wear a scarf is a bit of a mystery. Then I found this video that shows how to wear a scarf in six different way. Now I can do something different every day of the week.


Knowing what the weather will be like has never been easier. AccuWeather.com has an iPhone app, Mac and Windows dashboard widgets, a Twitter & Tumblr app and a browser toolbar. Now you can find out if you need to wear a windbreaker, heavy coat or if you’ll need an umbrella anywhere you are.

No matter how bad the weather gets where you are, there is always worse weather somewhere else.

You could be caught in a huge hail storm.


or a tornado


or a blizzard.


So this fall when you’re stuck inside trying to keep warm, just imagine relaxing on an island paradise and dream of a happier place.

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Blog Action Day: 5 ways to use social media to affect climate change

Social media is the new voice of the people. Don’t believe me? Twitter kept alive the civil unrest in Iran after the elections and awoke interest around the world leading to global protests. This week in the United Kingdom, bloggers and Twitter usersfought back against a court injunction that called into question the Guardian newspaper’s right to report on a parliamentary debate. Within 16 hours, they were able to get to the judge to overturn the order. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are filled with groups to join on almost any and every issue you can think of. From Dafur to H1N1 to climate change, groups are forming to affect change. People want to be part of something bigger than themselves.

Living right next door to Copenhagen, the upcoming United Nation’s Climate Change Conference (COP15) in December is a constant source of conversation. Climate change has become more and more a topic of daily conversation. Every day, we see more tweets, blog posts and YouTube videos being used to crack the public consciousness. Social media is activating more people in better ways than in the whole history of communication. It’s no longer students on college campuses trying to find a few hundred votes. Now you can mobilize a city, a state or a nation from your living room.

Here are five ways you can help affect climate change though social media.

1. Join a Facebook group – Don’t join a group just to join. Find a group with lots of members and actively post news, videos and content you find online. Start discussions with other members of the group and invite your friends to join.
2. Sign an online petition – Care2.com has an entire section dedicated to petitions involved with climate change.
3. Add a badge to your blog or online profile – If you’re active online these days, odds are you have a blog, a website, a facebook profile, or a Twitter account. Show people that visit your site that you care about an issue. Blog Action Day has done a great job of raising awareness of what they’re doing. They have created a series of badges with the most common banner sizes that you can add to your blog or website. You can also add one to your Twitter profile or add a link to your Facebook profile.
4. Share videos – Here are six videos that will help you get started and give you ideas for our next suggestion.
5. Make your own content – Create a new website around an issue, make a video about a project you are working on, write a song, do a dance and show people how you would affect climate change.

The good news is you’re already doing the 6th thing. You’re reading blogs that promote climate change. Check out more of the bloggers participating in the Blog Action Day. If we all work together and make our voices heard, we can make the people in charge listen and change the world for the better.

So what would you do to get involved in affecting climate change?

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He love to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

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Google verses the world

Google moves one step closer to world wide web domination

Google has once again dominated internet conversations. People clamored over each other trying to get an invite to the beta release of Google Wave.

Only 100,000 invites were given out and each invited person was given eight invites. Contest were constructed, promises were made and hoops were jumped though to get one of the precious invites. The irony is, as far as I know,  very few people that were invited by the inital 100,000 have received their Google Wave invite.

While you wait on your Google Wave invite, check out Google Wave: A Complete Guide to see what you’re missing.

Another app has been released to much less fanfare. Google Sidewiki is a toolbar application that allows users to add more content and provide context to a website. Imagine visiting a website and being able to add more information for others to see. Sidewiki does just that.

The release has been applauded for it’s user interaction and criticized for allowing people to add content that wasn’t provided by the original site creator.

Taking the offline to the online, Google announced the release of TED 5000 (The Energy Detective) from Energy Inc. The device is a home energy monitoring device that measures a home’s electrical usage in real-time. The Google PowerMeter takes that information and puts it online or your mobile phone.

Personally I think this is a great way to be more aware of your power consumption and helps people decrease their energy useage.

Finally incase you think Google might becoming the Microsoft, Hitwise is reporting that Google controls 71% of the search engine market share.

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These are the twrules

 
Welcome to Twitter Tuesday. Every Tuesday we will post about Twitter. Stop by for advice and how to's for marketing professionals. Every other week we will post our AppQuest Edition featuring a review of twitter applications.

10 tips to good Twitter manners

It doesn’t matter if you’re CEO of a Fortune 500 company or a 75 year old grandmother, there are basic guidelines that people follow to get the most out of Twitter. These are the ten twrules that I find most important.  

1. Don’t Auto DM – The whole business model of Twitter involves people following people they don’t know. You don’t have make your first impression an obnoxious bore. In the summer of 2008 it was a great way to promote yourself, now it’s just annoying spam. This is probably the quickest way to get someone to unfollow you. Honestly, no one cares that ”you’re glad they are following you and that you look forward to their tweets.” If you would like to block people from auto DMing you, start with this opt-out page from Social Oomph.
   
   
2. Share useful information - We’ve all been guilty of tweeting the most banal subjects: ”I just got coffee”, ”That ham sandwich at lunch was delicious”. The good news is it is OK to do it occasionally provided you also provide useful information. People want to connect and showing that you share a common interest through useful links, insight and comments works best. Keep your lunch, bathroom and bedtime events to yourself.
   
   
3. It's OK to ask for a ReTweet, just say Thank You - The best way to get people to retweet your tweet is to ask. It sounds simple but most people don’t do it. When you have really good content, ask for people to share it. Odds are they will. You’ll garner even better good will after you thank people for their time.
   
   
4. Give credit to someone for good content - It’s easy to steal a tweet and use it as your own. It’s better if you retweet and give credit. Odds are then next time you tweet something good, that people will retweet you.
   
   
5. Don't spam - A certain amount of self-promotion is to be expected. These days everyone has a blog or a website. Be proud of your links. But don’t just don’t repost the same link over and over again. Mix in other links, retweets and comments instead of the same link.
   
   
6. Watch what you say – This is one of the most important guidelines. The internet has a very, very, very long memory and rarely forgets. One offhanded comment or inappropriate link might not harm you right away but could find you later. Or it could set the internet on fire with bad publicity and brand reputation damage. If you think your tweet might be too controversial, odds are it probably is.
   
   
7. Become a resource - This is especially important to smaller companies. Show you’re more than just a brand trying to sell someone on your product. Provide links to news, website or blogs that your clients might find useful. Become an expert in your field so when you do tweet your followers look forward to what you say.
   
   
8. Tweet often but don't over tweet or under tweet - This is the hardest to define. How much is too much? How little is too little? The ”experts” say that 20-30 tweets a day is too much. Anything less than 10 times a day is too little. You need to establish a presence and anything less than 10 times a day will be lost in the stream of tweets. Otherwise, go crazy. Tweet as often as you feel comfortable. Through feedback and time, you’ll develop a natural feel for what you think is the proper amount your audience will accept.
   
   
9. Learn the lingo - What is RT, hashtags, DM – it’s important to be able to talk to the talk with others. Learn what the language of Twitter is before you get started.
   
   
10. Don’t have huge conversations – Twitter isn’t a message board or instant messenger. Its main function is send out a single message. Of course you want people to respond to your tweets. As a rule of thumb, anything longer than three tweets back and forth should be moved to DMs or another channel like email, AIM or MSN. Since everyone that follows you can see your tweets, if they aren’t following the other person, they miss half the conversation and your tweets are cluttering their twit stream.

If I could offer one last piece of advice, read and listen to what’s being said by your followers. You’ll have a much richer Twitter experience and develop greater relationships. There are more rules that could be added but these are the top ten that I find the most useful.

What are your rules for good tweeting?

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He love to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

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Random Sitings

Here at the agency we come across some pretty interesting web content in the course of any given week. We thought we'd share some with you. This week we have helicopter fishing, a guide to world domination, a dancing baby and the secret to retweeting.

Chris Guillebeau has written a brief guide to world domination.  Not bad for a 30 year old whose goal in life is to travel to all 197 countries in the world. So far he’s visited 119 of them. His guide is very thought-provoking and contains a great deal of useful information. Check out his blog The Art of Non-Conformity.

Just when you thought you had seen everything, someone comes up with something unexpected. A man with too much time on his hands uses a R/C helicopter with an E-Flite blade 400 for fishing.  I don't know what that means but the video has had 1.6 million views to date.

 
Dan Zarrella is about to become a household name in social media circles. He spent nine months looking at 5 million tweets and 40 million retweets and may have discovered the secret to getting your post retweeted more frequently. His report “Science of ReTweets” is a 22 page document that breaks down the who, what, when, where and why of retweeting.

Sure Kanye disrupted the MTV Video Awards to tell everyone that Beyonce had the best video ever, but watching a baby dance to her video is even better.  1.7 million people agree with me.

What have you seen this week that others should see?

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Ten things I don’t want to hear at Cannes Lions 2010.

It’s the end of the second day at the Cannes Lions 2009. The evening rains have done their bit to contribute to a festival that is already proving to be quite damp in other respects.

Attendance seems to be thin. (Some are saying it’s down by 40%, but the festival organizers obviously won’t confirm or comment on it.) The quality of entries leave a lot to be desired. And the speakers, in a variety of different accents, seem to be parrotting the same platitudes we’ve been hearing for the last several years. So here, in no particular order are some things I wouldn’t want to pay 2,600 Euros to sit through next year.

1.    ”It’s not about advertising, it’s about engagement.”
2.    ”Print’s days are numbered.”
3.    ”You don’t want to advertise, you want to have a conversation.”
4.    ”It’s about having a great narrative, a great story.”
5.    ”Advertising is no longer a one-way process. The consumer can now talk back to you.”
6.    ”You have to let go when it comes to the controls for your brand online. Consumers will take it anyway.”
7.    ”Online banner and display advertising is a broken model.”
8.    ”The next big breakthrough will be centered around mobile devices.”
9.    ”Social media is not a fad, it’s here to stay.”
10.    ”Consumers are ’always on’.”

Asif Ansari is partner and creative director at The Duffy Agency. He loves writing, technology and beer.

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Cannes do.

The world economy’s in a death spiral, cutbacks are sweeping the entire business world, the advertising industry in particular seems to be struggling to find its way forward. There’s never been a better time to make the annual pilgrimage to Cannes for the Cannes Lions 2009.

 

Few organizations are immune to the excruciating sting of the recession. But we don’t see battening down the hatches and waiting for the storm to pass as the ideal solution. We’d rather ride out the squall in an attempt to stay abreast of what’s happening out there. We strongly feel that staying focused and motivated, and finding inspiration is priceless when you’re in the business of ideas. And finding the best ideas possible for our clients is vital, because they won’t put down their marketing dollars for anything less.

Cannes also provides us the opportunity to meet and interact with some of the industry’s finest creative minds. And we’re always ready to consider hires, especially if we come across creative talent that fits our international advertising profile.

Like last year, this year too we’re particularly interested in the ways like-minded agencies are using social media to create affording marketing solutions for clients. We’ve got a few success stories of our own to share over a beer or two if you’re interested in hearing them. To get in touch with us in Cannes, sign up at our Facebook events page. And follow our Twitter stream here for daily updates on what’s on during the day and where the happening parties are at night. See you at the Palais.

Asif Ansari is partner and creative director at The Duffy Agency. He loves writing, technology and beer.

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Advertising on the Edge

In case you missed it, the world economy is in the toilet. Companies are laying off people and cutting budgets. The good news is now is the time to embrace social media and online advertising. The Economist has created an exceptional slide show that explains why companies shouldn’t quit advertising in an economic crisis but shift the way the market their message.

Ads on Edge

View more presentations from Geert Desager. (tags: branding recession)

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The Future Is Free

According to Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired Magazine and author of The Long Tail, the future is free, or as Chris calls it “Freeconomics.” It’s no longer about charging for a service but giving the base away and charging for the upgrades and extras. In other words, “giveaway the abundance, sell the scarcity.”

At the Media Evolution in Malmö, Sweden yesterday, Chris spent almost an hour giving us what amounts to basically an outline to his new book, “Free, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love $0.00.” While not groundbreaking, Chris gave an interesting lecture that had some comments that appeared to be a rude wake up for the panel that followed.

Today’s generation expects everything to be free. From games to music to movies, the expectation is it’s out there for the taking and you shouldn’t have to pay for it. That is in direct contrast to older generations where you expect to pay for everything.  The balance falls in-between.  You can see this happening with everything from video games to music sites. You give away the base service and then charge for the add-on or unique version. With Second Life, you get the basic online interaction but if you want house, that’s going to cost you. Spotify allows you to listen to free music all day, but if you want to avoid commercials, that’s going to require a credit card.

Chris has taken this model and applied it to his new book. You can get the mp3, pdf or any other online version for free, but it will cost you $24.95 to buy the hardback version. This is a great model for him because it is a quick and easy way to disseminate his ideas. His publisher thinks it is a horrible concept. Since they are in the market to sell books, just giving it away is not what they want to see.

Publishers of content (music, literature, movies, etc) are not prepared to handle the freeconomy. After Chris’ lecture, there was a panel filled with publishers and it was obvious they weren’t thrilled with Chris’ message. As more and more newspapers and magazines fail, it’s hard to compete with free online news and information. The solution is to build a following with free and then convert them to offline clients with good content. It’s not an easy sell to publishers but you either embrace the future or you fall by the side for those who can.

Overall, I would call the Media Evolution a positive experience. The panel at the end was well organized and it was interesting to hear the concerns of the panelists. Chris is a talented speaker and was able to hold the huge crowd’s attention. In the future, I would like to see it expand to a full day’s conference with a keynote speaker at the end. There are enough people in the Nordic region to fill six hours. For the price, hearing two and half hours worth of material seems a little steep. Sure there were other events (live singer and an after party) but they felt more like padding and didn’t add any real value.  Also, how do you not have free wi-fi at an event that talks about the value of free?

I hope they have more Media Evolutions. It was a good start and I met some interesting people. If you want to see Chris’s lecture and hear the panel, Media Evolutions has the entire event up to view.

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The Future is Free: http://is.gd/ittw

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He love to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

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Best and Worst of Super Bowl 2009 Ads

This year’s Super Bowl didn’t disappoint.  It was an intense showdown between the Cardinals and the Steelers.  The other half of the viewing experience is that multimillion dollar ads that companies create.  These are the best and worst of this year’s Super Bowl Ads. What are your favorites? What should have been on added?

Cutest – E-Trade – Baby Broken Wings

Well It Starts Good… Sobe – Lizard Swan Lake

Most Unexpected – Cash4Gold.com – McHammer & Ed McMahon

Funniest – Doritos – Crystal Ball/Snow Globe

Weirdest – Cheetos  - Spoiled Girl

Best Product Re-Positioning – Pepsi Max – I’m Good

Sentimental Favorite – Gatorade -  Talking Heads/Tiger

Evil Aliens Are Taking Over – Hulu.com – Alec Baldwin

Worst – GoDaddy.com – Enhanced Hearing

MVP – Bridgestone – Potatoheads & Hot Item

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You Are Being Served

Social media is taking new forms daily.  When people create an account they forget that they can be seen by everyone that is a member of that site.  In the past people have put photos of themselves doing something stupid and ended up getting fired, divorced or sued. It’s called social media for a reason. You can display yourself and people see what your doing.

The latest use is serving court papers.  A company in Australia couldn’t reach a couple by phone, email or at their house to serve them court papers, so taking advantage of social media, they contacted the two people via their Facebook profile.  Lawyer Mark McCormack found the couple on Facebook after they had defaulted on a six-figure loan.  It’s surprising a court would allow this but since they duo had their names, dates of birth and listed each other as friends, the courts allowed it. Since it was all public information, there was no reason not to.

This is another case of social media reaching out in a new way and it reminds you that just because you can, maybe you shouldn’t. I love social media and have accounts on so many sites I can’t remember them half the time.  But I have a rule, don’t put too much of yourself out there.  When creating an account on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc., remember a few guidelines.

1.    Don’t put your full name.
2.    Don’t display your birthday, if you do, just put month and day.
3.    Don’t list your full address.

These three things aren’t just to keep the courts from serving you summons but it’s also to keep people from stealing your identity.  If these two individuals hadn’t provided so much personal information, the courts wouldn’t have agreed to the serving of the papers. 

This also marks what could become a larger trend. As more and more people are creating their second lives online, companies, governments and social groups are starting to wise up and track people down.  Companies do online background checks to see what potential hires are blogging about, sharing on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flikr, Picasa, Linkedin and more. 

Never mind the Big Brother/Orwellian overtones to the whole affair, this event shows how mainstream social media is becoming and how important it is for companies and individuals to take it serious.  Social media isn’t going anywhere.  In fact, it’s just getting started. With global economy in a slump, people are looking for new, cheaper ways to communicate and get information. 

Could we see divorce papers served on Second Life? Will you receive jury duty via twitter? Maybe track down deadbeat dads on Facebook.

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency.  He loves to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.  Don't get him started.

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I Survivied the Great Quake of '08

If you live in the southern region of Sweden called Skåne, you got a bit of a surprise this morning. The strongest earthquake in 100 years hit us with a magnitude of 4.7 on the Richter scale. Personally, I was asleep and by the time it was over I thought it was the dog scratching himself (he’s a big dog and a vicious scratcher). 

When I got up to do my morning Twitter check, I discovered two things:

1.    My boss is up by 6:30 am.
2.    I slept through an earthquake
 
I went to work and checked my Twitter feeds again. People were talking about the earthquake and the comments ranged from shock to dismay to "huh, there was an earthquake?" 

So the reaction wasn’t overwhelming (it was a pretty small earthquake) but what's interesting is that I was able to find useful news links and discover how people reacted to the quake from all over Sweden and Denmark. Within minutes of the event, people started talking about it. I didn’t have to wait for the news to report, and when they did, someone provided a link before I even had a chance to search it out.

It's no wonder that newspapers are going bankrupt.  More and more, people are turning online to keep apace of current events.  Who wants to wait for the next edition of a newspaper when you can go online and find out instantly? 

My favorite tweet is from @choirshark, ”Huh? Earthquake in Sweden? It's like 'snowstorm in the sahara'"

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He love to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.

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Mumbai Terror Attacks and Twitter

The Tweet Who Cried Wolf

The news out of Mumbai, India came quick and sudden.  No one knew what was going on at first but if you were on Twitter, the reports were flooding in.  From individuals tweeting about “the horrible thing happening” to people blogging from within the Oberoi Hotel (“Mumbai terrorists are asking hotel reception for rooms of American citizens and holding them hostage on one floor,” reported one person from inside the hotel), Twitter was the front line reporting method for people all over the world.

It was used to get blood supplies to hospitals in need as well as transcribe lists of the wounded and dead that could be posted online.  Twitter may be the window that allowed people to put a human face to a travesty, but it also did damage and created even more confusion. 

Currently Hashtags.org, a site that allows you to follow conversations on Twitter via a preset code, shows 574 pages of tweets over the past 24 hours.  The chatter is just amazing.  Twitter once again shows how powerful it is in getting in on the ground floor of an event and providing in-depth coverage.  It also shows how dangerous it can be by perpetuating rumors.  It would be easy for someone to create a fake account and overwhelm a subject with false information.

With hundreds of people tweeting and re-tweeting, the information soon became redundant and when new information came in, it was treated as truth when it should have been questioned.  Rumor-mongering ran rampant with reports of the dead ranging between 100 to 1000.  Bombs exploding at the Marriott, when nothing happened there but at the Ramada next door. The number of armed men ranged wildly and pleas from the Indian government to quit using Twitter were believed to be true at first but later tracked to a high schooler in America.

The attacks in Mumbai are yet another test case on how Twitter and social media is being use to spread information.  You can already find scores of bloggers talking about how great Twitter has been in covering the event.  What doesn’t seem to be asked is what good is the information if none of it is correct or can be corroborated? Or should we trust the tweets that are coming out of a situation where anyone can say anything? 

Several social media evangelist have been praising Twitter as a new news source.  They are right for the most part.  It was used to great effect during the earthquakes in China and the forest fires in California but Twitter is a fairly unreliable news source and should be treated as such.  It’s an excellent way to find out what’s happening at the moment but just don’t believe everything you read. Temper the Twitter news with more factual reports and eventually we’ll be able to separate the truth from the fiction.

Photo Credit: By SOMINI SENGUPTA

Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency.  He loves to talk about social media and won't shut up about Twitter.  Don't get him started.

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When moms attack

 
Johnson & Johnson’s Motrin is supposed to ease back pain. Instead, it ended up being more of a pain in the backside for J&J, after an attempt to get cute and patronising with moms backfired in the face of the healthcare giant.

The online and print campaign for Motrin, created by Taxi, New York suggested that mothers carried their babies as fashion accessories. Ooh la la, what a faux pas that was.

The campaign, which broke on the 30th of September 2008 has now been officially pulled. And it all happened over the weekend.

On Friday evening, Jessica Gottlieb an influential blogger from LA, who admits to being ‘tipped off’ about the campaign, started twittering about the campaign in a not very friendly way. Next day, Katja Presnal, a New York blogger collected tweets from upset moms, stitched together a rough video and posted it on YouTube.

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