Friday, October 7, 2011 at 12:30PM 
Let me start by confessing that I am somewhat of an anomaly in the advertising and marketing world. And it's not because that I am a copywriter who has absolutely no interest in writing the great American novel.
Email Article | 3 Comments | in Apple, Current Affairs, SxSwi, advertising, iPad, iPhone, social media Tuesday, March 8, 2011 at 12:16PM 
No matter if you're an Apple fanboy (and just for the record I am not) or a PC zealot (I'm not a zealot but prefer PCs), there is no denying that the way Apple markets its products is amazing.
Friday, March 4, 2011 at 9:00AM 
Google recently announced that the mobile sector is growing faster than they ever predicted. CEO Eric Schmidt told the audience at the Internet Advertising Bureau’s Annual Leadership meeting keynote that YouTube is seeing 200 million mobile playbacks a day.
Friday, February 25, 2011 at 8:44AM 
Back in November, we wrote a blog article entitled "7 Ways Smart Phones are the Wallets of the Future." One of the things we mentioned was Twitter creator, Jack Dorsey, and his mobile payment application and portable card reader
Friday, February 11, 2011 at 9:57AM ;)
You may have heard that Taco Bell has been under fire for advertising beef tacos that do not contain enough actual beef in its meat filling to justify calling it beef.
Friday, December 17, 2010 at 2:19PM 
Twitter has had an extremely good year. In four years the microblogging site has gone from niche to mainstream. It’s difficult these days to find a website that doesn’t have a Twitter
Tuesday, November 23, 2010 at 4:20PM 
In the United States, Thanksgiving is this Thursday, November 25. It's a holiday that is rife with overindulgence, football, and family (and all the unhealthy dynamics that family represents).
Friday, November 19, 2010 at 3:00PM ;)
Links are what makes the Internet the Internet. It's a simple idea and one we all take for granted.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010 at 3:00PM 
Remember what it was like in the old days (circa 2000)? You needed multiple arms to juggle the myriad of electronic gadgets and accessories we all carried around. You had your laptop, cell phone, PDA, and other bright, shiny accessories.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010 at 3:51PM ;)
We’ve been watching and writing about Twitter for over a year now and a recent Mashable article highlights some of the concerns we’ve seen with recent Twitter developments
Tuesday, June 22, 2010 at 4:00PM
Location-based apps are the hottest thing going right now. Leading the pack is Foursquare. Foursquare isn’t the first location-based app on the market, nor is it the biggest, but what it does have going for it is that it’s the current media darling. The star of this year’s SXSW, this app is proving it’s not just for letting people know where you like to eat and shop.
The system is simple: you check-in to a location, earn badges for multiple check-ins and score points which, in some instances, can lead to real-world rewards from retailers. Local restaurants and bars have started offering free drinks, appetizers and discounts to the person that checked in the most to their establishment. Now you’re seeing the likes of Bravo, Virgin Airlines and Harvard University taking advantage of app to further reward customers. We searched the web to find examples of companies using this simple app in ingenious ways and found four great examples.
Harvard University has teamed up with Foursquare to create a campus-based game that rewards students who check in to locations with badges and helpful bits of information. The idea is to encourage students to connect with others and explore more of the campus. It’s a brilliant way for freshmen to learn about the university and connect with more people.
During New York Fashion Week, fashion designer Marc Jacobs created a “Fashion Victim” badge. It allowed customers during the week to check-in at any Marc Jacobs store to unlock the badge. Four people who unlocked the badge in New York received passes to attend the Marc Jacobs fashion show.
Shoe phenom Jimmy Choo has established a treasure hunt around London using Foursquare. A pair of Jimmy Choo trainers check-in at a location somewhere in the city and whomever checks-in and says, “I’ve been following you” to the pair of trainers before they leave the location will win a pair of Jimmy Choo training shoes. People can track the trainers through their Foursquare user page and their Twitter profile.
Desperate to stay relevant, The Wall Street Journal has created special badges that provide interesting facts about New York City and reviews of local business and movies. It’s always great when a print giant like the WSJ embraces new media instead of fighting it like so many other print outlets.
Hopefully you now feel inspired to craft a location-based campaign of your own. Feel free to share any bright ideas.
Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.
Friday, June 11, 2010 at 4:00PM The very best social media tools for getting the most out of the 2010 World Cup
When the World Cup rolled into Germany in 2006, YouTube was in its infancy, the iPhone didn’t exist and no one knew what a Twitter was. Things have changed a bit these past few years.
Starting today, we will witness the crashing together of two behemoths: the world’s grandest sporting event and the world’s vast social networks. Prepare to have your Facebook, Twitter and every other kind of feed experience a noticeable shift in focus for the next three weeks as every football fan gets the chance to become a global sports reporter without leaving their living room.
There are loads of options for following the 64 games in painstaking detail, but we’ve sorted through them all and put together the top tools that deliver everything you need.
Mobile: The ESPN World Cup App
There are lots of great apps dedicated to the World Cup, but ESPN’s is the cream of the crop and the only one you really need. You’ve got the full schedule, you can select which teams you want to follow to stay updated on breaking news, and stats and bios of every player for every team. You can even get a history lesson in the major events of tournaments past and interact with other fans by posting comments from within the app. If you’re willing to dole out $8, you gain access to radio broadcasts of every game, letting you follow matches no matter what you’re pretending to do at work. And to think a few years ago I was happy with cutting tournament brackets out of the newspaper.
Twitter: The official World Cup aggregator
Sure you can try to follow cluttered, hectic hashtags (like #wc2010 or #worldcup), but Twitter has done you a favor and created a World Cup headquarters themselves. They’ve done a great job of it, too. On the homepage, you’ve got a flow of the top tweets, which is superior to hashtags because it doesn’t just pull in the latest World Cup tweets, but uses an algorithm to select the most interesting ones. You can also see what matches are coming up and jump to a page for tweets about each particular game where you can easily follow and join in the banter. On the flip slide, the constant flow of information on Twitter is guaranteed to contain spoilers, so if you’re recording games to watch later, it’s probably best to abandon Twitter for a while.
Facebook: The Visa Match Planner
Visa has put together a great solution for following your favorite teams via Facebook. When you choose to follow teams and matches, you can invite friends to an event page where your customized group shares comments and media. And of course you’ve got the full day-by-day schedule with live updates, as well as a video of the “worldwide goal cheer.” As an expat the event function is particularly appealing, as it’s a great way for me to root for the (former) home team with friends despite the distance.
Fantasy tournament: FIFA World Cup Fantasy
When they aren’t busy filing ridiculous lawsuits, FIFA (sponsored by McDonalds) is running one of the best fantasy tournaments. You’ve got 140 credits in the bank and all the players in the tournament to choose from. Put your squad together and compete for your piece of the glory.
Bonus! The World Cup Trivia Challenge App
Do a little competing of your own with this fun football trivia app. In a creative twist on the regular old trivia contest, with this app you take the role of a team on the road to World Cup glory, advancing as you get questions right. It’s the perfect way to overcome halftime boredom and learn a thing or two about the tournament at the same time.
If you’ve got any other favorites that you’re horrified I missed, give a shout below.
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.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010 at 4:00PM
I’ve put together a list of what news I expect to hear from Chirp.
Monetization strategy - How will Twitter make money? They’ve been keeping analysts guessing for months and now we’ll finally get an idea of how the company will sustain itself. I’m predicting a paid keyword search, ads on profiles and premium accounts.
New features added - Location, tiny urls and video and photo sharing are standard features on most Twitter apps like Tweetdeck and Seesmic. It only makes sense that Twitter adds more features like this. Sure it will upset a few business models but if Twitter wants to grow, they’ll have to add some features that conflict with already established apps. Their purchase of Tweetie shows they are already moving in that direction.
How @anywhere will work - We can already use OAuth and many sites allow you to use your Twitter account as a log in to their site, so what makes @anywhere any different? We’ll a better idea of why this is a better solution.
Redesign - After redesigning their front page, what other changes are in store for users. If they announce new features, hopefully, we’ll get a peak at how they’ll be integrated into the site.
New partnerships - With the addition of Tweetie as the “official” iPhone app, can other apps be far off? Will Foursquare be the official location app? Will Seesmic become the official desktop application? It makes sense for Twitter to endorse different apps. It ensures a level of quality and makes sure their is a line of products that adhere to a common standard.
I’m curious to hear what features people would like to see added to Twitter and what announcements you expect to hear. Leave your thoughts below.
Stefan Halley is the Digital Project Leader for The Duffy Agency. He loves to talk about social media.
Friday, March 5, 2010 at 2:53PM
What started as a small music event showcasing unsigned musical artists is now a mega event that encompasses music, technology and film. For ten days in March each year, all eyes turn to the capital of Texas to find out what bands we should be on the lookout for, which films are truly groundbreaking and what’s on the forefront of web technology and video games. Past bombshells have included the breaking out of Twitter and Foursquare, the US debut of The Hurt Locker, and performances from the likes of Vampire Weekend, Yo La Tengo and Dolly Parton. With over 2,000 bands, 250 films and AOL, Chevy, Pepsi, and SoBe presenting the latest in technology in social media, how do you make sense of it all and keep track of what’s happening?
Fortunately, there are many ways to keep up to date on events, news and schedules.
My.SXSW.com is the festival’s official planning tool. It lets you create a schedule and join groups. It’s a great way to keep track of what you’re doing. It also has an iPhone app that provides additional features like maps, news, and the ability to share information with other attendees.
After the success of last year’s Zeitgeist, PepsiCo re-enters the fray with SXSW Play. It allows you to listen to the MP3s of featured artists, watch trailers, listen to podcasts, navigate through the SXSW lineup, follow the buzz through the “Zeitgeist” button and more. This appears to be the one iPhone app to rule them all while attending SXSW. This is a great way to follow what's going on without being there.
AOL is working hard to become relevant again with their Lifestream app. Lifestream allows you to bring your Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and AIM accounts together to better stay in touch with others attending the festival. While My.SXSW and SXSW Play keep you up to date with what’s happening, this app allows you to get in touch with people on the ground and to follow along if you can't attend.
Eventbrite has 51 events listed and lets you RSVP to events. This is a great way to connect to people before SXSW kicks off and can help you find events that you might miss otherwise.
Mashable has teamed up with Sony and Cliqset to bring you Austin Real Time. This is a database of people attending SXSW with links to their social media accounts. It’s easy to sign up and get connected with people via your Twitter, Flickr, Picasa, Foursqare, Gowala, YouTube, Vimeo and Plancast accounts.
Don’t get lost in the shuffle of SXSW. With a little planning and forethought, you can be sure to not miss a hot event or fail to make important new connections.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010 at 3:00PM
With the explosion of smart
phones over the past year, more and more companies are moving beyond websites
and social media to embrace the mobile revolution. This year looks to finally
be the year of the mobile phone that people have been predicting for the past
five years. Last year, if you didn’t have a Twitter account and a Facebook Fan
Page, you weren’t in the game. This year’s must have property is an iPhone app.
iPhone apps are a great way to enable brand/consumer interaction and building brand equity. Most businesses think an iPhone app is financially and technically beyond their means. The good news is both of those issues are no longer true. I looked around the web and noticed there are several sites that allow you to create your own iPhone app and publish it either for free or for a small fee.
I set out to discover what options non-developers have for creating iPhone apps without spending too much. I sat down with my co-workers and created a wish-list of qualities that businesses might want in an iPhone app-creating-tool. We wanted:
The evaluation method was simple. I visited each site and registered. I took a screenshot of a relevant part of the interface and then spent some time playing around with it. A decent site should be able to explain itself in that time. After using the application, I rated each site against my wish list.
Pros: Multiple platforms (iPhone, Blackberry and Windows
based), easy to use
Cons: Too basic, no RSS, no natural way of integrating social media
Price: $7.99/update, $19.99 to post to Apple app store
Rating:
Kanchoo is rich in content management and text formatting
tools, making the app well suited for news distribution. Graphics like button
icons, backgrounds and splash pages are pretty much the only things you can
customize, which is a shame since it’s an excellent way for a company to
present themselves. Kanchoo takes some time to get the hang of and the
interface is overly complex. To preview your app before you submit it, you need
to download software.
Pros: Very useful if you’re working in the news industry
Cons: Takes time to learn, expensive
Price: Initial submission fee 88$. Hosting is 28$/month.
Rating:
MobileRoadie creates apps for the iPhone and Android phones.
The tool is highly customizable, allowing the creator to integrate the most
popular social media assets, a store, RSS, a wall for user/brand interaction,
geo segmentation and stats on number of downloads and what excerpts are most
popular. A fun and easy app well worth checking out – if you’ve got a chunk of
change to burn.
Pros: Easy-to-use, social media friendly, rich features
Cons: Too expensive
Price: setup fee $499. Hosting is $29/month.
Rating:
Mobbase is an app positioned for musicians and their fans,
but this web-based service includes many features applicable for brand
promotion as well. The app is extremely customizable, allowing you to define
all the graphics including individual backgrounds on every page, the design and
layout of the buttons, splash pages, bottom bars, etc. The service integrates
most of the desirable social media tools such as Twitter (sorting by username,
@mentions and #hashtags), videos (YouTube: entire channel, specific video or
tags), photos (“sets” if you’re using Flickr or Albums with Picasa), blogs and
RSS (two streams) in a natural way, along with a few other interesting features.
Pros: Highly customizable, easy-to-use, social media
friendly
Cons: Can’t change name of buttons, analytics only tracks number of downloads
Price: $20 activation fee + $5/month for first 500 downloads, $1/month for
every 1000 downloads after that.
Rating:
Swebapps is a rich app-creating tool intended for companies.
Choose whether you want 4, 6 or 8 buttons and select among more than 30
features, including Facebook, a portfolio, Twitter and podcasts. There is an
extra analytics feature called app-tracker that measures not only the numbers
of downloads, but what buttons are used the most. The service is very intuitive
and simple while still offering a lot.
Pros: Intuitive and easy-to-use, good analytics, client signup, many RSS feeds
Cons: Rather expensive, can only add one Twitter account
Price: $50/button, $10 app tracker, hosting fee $25/month
Rating:
All the app creating apps tested were useful, but it comes down to what your ambition level is, how much you’re willing to spend and who your target is. The most social media friendly were Mobbase and Mobile Roadie. These were also my personal favorites, as they enable a great deal of customization and have loads of interesting features to get my creative juices flowing. The other apps had some great features – especially the analytics with Swebapps. But Mobbase takes home the gold as Mobile Roadie and Swebapps are priced much higher without offering a whole lot more.
