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Google has announced a new product called Google Buzz, which represents the company’s latest attempt to hitch its wagon to the popularity of social networking and, more specifically, the growth of social sharing and status updates.
Many will call this a Twitter killer or a threat to Facebook. Certainly the company is targeting the audiences that [...]

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Get ready for the “Bring Back the Old Facebook” groups.

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Super Bowl. It’s that special time of year where long lost friends and family members are drawn together to eat wings and pizza, while jumping out of their chairs cheering for each touchdown their team makes and giggling over this year’s outrageous commercials.

It’s also the time for companies to participate in the Super Bowl’s competitive advertising environment; pushing the boundaries for the viewers and making a long-lasting (serious or funny) impression. Millions of viewers tune in to the Super Bowl. A suprising 51% for the commercials alone.

Audi Green Police

Lately, a new trend has been emerging. With the rising popularity of viral videos and social media, many companies are taking the stage on YouTube and Facebook prior to Super Bowl, to build up anticipation for the long-awaited advertisements. Audi, for example, has launched a social media campaign by the name of “Green Police.” Protecting and conserving, they have been launching YouTube short videos, using examples such as simple arithmetic to demonstrate how we can keep the landfills free of excess napkins, ending with a catchy theme song reminiscent of Captain Planet.

The Green Police campaign is a catchy and gentle way to highlight the importance of adopting a green lifestyle in order to take care of our environment. The model in the commercial, the Audi A3 TDI, reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 30% and was presented the 2010 “Green Car of the Year” award by Green Car Journal. They are not only helping to educate the public but are following their own advice as well.

Audi has also made use of the social media phenomenon known as Facebook. If you were a fan of the Audi fan page as of Thursday evening, you had access to an early sneak peek of their Super Bowl XLIV commercial, along with bonus extras such as a downloadable  “Green Police Remix” made exclusively by the rock band Cheap Trick. They’ve certainly done a good job of adding multiple viral elements to this campaign to make it a hit. One video alone from the Green Police campaign was the “9th most viewed video” on YouTube from Canada today.

E-trade, who is best known for their humorous talking baby commercials, has a 360-degree campaign running, utilizing Twitter, Facebook Fan Pages and YouTube. E-trade alone has 18,000+ Facebook fans and the Fan Page for the baby has 12,000+. Over 3,000 users follow the baby’s tweets on Twitter and 10,000+ subscribers on YouTube, where they’re putting up fresh commercials along with funny outtake s you won’t see during the Super Bowl.

My personal favorite? Outtake number 2.

America loves getting a sneak peak of things to come, so getting an inside look at the new babies that will be airing during the Super Bowl is certain to draw more viewers to the actual event. Some have been speculating that E-Trade’s baby campaign is overrated, but thanks to the solid numbers of Facebook fans and Twitter followers, we can see that the speculation is far from true. Not to mention the amount of fans that are posting their own versions of the E-trade commercials with their own babies. That shows the true amount of love viewers have for them.

Gone are the days where simply having a new (and hopefully humorous) advertisement on deck for an event as large as the Super Bowl will suffice for a company. Viewers and consumers of the product want it all; they want to live, eat and breathe your campaign. Spinning off into social media to turn a company’s commercials into live personalities and making them accessible will keep consumers engaged. If done right, we’ll be amused and constantly looking for new content and sharing it with the people closest to us. Sometimes even strangers via Twitter. This is why viral marketing and social media are such strong additions to any campaign. Companies that are adapting and changing by harnessing this new age marketing to build anticipation for their advertisement on the Super Bowl will attract an extraordinary amount of viewers, including those who may not enjoy watching those guys in funny tight pants throw around a football!

If you’re interested in more of the aforementioned videos, please visit the Green Police YouTube Channel and the E-trade YouTube Channel.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Green Police & eTrade Up Super Bowl Ante w/ Social Media

The Bing Search Blog announced Microsoft has extended their search deal with Facebook. In addition to extending the search deal, as expected, Facebook will drop Microsoft on the display ad side of the deal.
The extended search deal includes a more robust Bing search experience on Facebook. This includes “richer answers combined with tools [...]

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On Christmas Eve, December 24th, Facebook garnered 7.56% of United States internet traffic market share, whereas Google had 7.54%. Subsequently on Christmas Day, December 25th, Facebook’s piece of pie ballooned to a whopping 7.81% while Google dropped a bit to 7.51%. The day after Christmas, December 26, Google regained its stature as most visited site [...]

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On Christmas Eve, December 24th, Facebook garnered 7.56% of United States internet traffic market share, whereas Google had 7.54%. Subsequently on Christmas Day, December 25th, Facebook’s piece of pie ballooned to a whopping 7.81% while Google dropped a bit to 7.51%. The day after Christmas, December 26, Google regained its stature as most visited site [...]

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Facebook has released a new email feature that will streamline the conversation process for many users. Now, when you get an email notification of a comment on an update, you can respond by replying to the email.

Since some employers block Facebook, this is a way to keep up with some aspects of your social networking while at work.

Social media marketers in charge of Facebook campaigns will find this an extremely efficient way of engaging with consumers.

This will also be great for you productivity/GTD junkies.

For my first try at this new feature, it did take longer than normal for the update to post. But we’re talking 30 seconds to a minute. BUT that might be a time saver if you’re on a mobile device - you know, depending on your carrier, phone, and whether you’re using an app or the mobile web to access Facebook.

If you’ve visited Facebook in the past two days, you may have noticed your friends posting a color as their status.

Black.

Pink.

Purple.

A meme is going around encouraging women to post the color of the bra they’re wearing. Supposedly, it’s designed to raise breast cancer awareness.

But many are thinking it’s the color of your underwear. And they have no idea why it’s being posted. So now you have dudes posting funny updates about their undies or lack thereof.

Many who have learned what the original meme is about have suggested boxer color updates for men and prostate cancer awareness.

I’m a thyroid cancer survivor - so I say post the color of your scarf. (Actually, it *is* thyroid awareness month. So, do please check your neck.)

The bra color meme seems to have its roots in the Detroit area. But there’s no real “control” to this viral campaign. Unfortunately, though this began with good intentions, it’s reminiscent of what ultimately drove people away from MySpace.

What do you think? Update this post with your comments below.

I’ve seen a ton of blog posts and articles regarding the unhip situation that is parents friending their kids on Facebook. It’s all backwards. The truly socially tragic situation is when your kids friend YOU on Facebook.

Recently, I caught my 11 year old daughter saying to her 12 year old brother, “Stop being a douchebag!”

I was stunned. Naturally, I reprimanded, “Don’t say that!”

The retort: “You said it on your Facebook page.”

And the follow up: “What is a douchebag anyway?”

Crap. My daughter doesn’t check her page everyday, but she just *happened* to catch a day where I updated with a particularly passive aggressive status. I was mad at someone who keeps, well, being a douchebag to his employees. I couldn’t say their name because I didn’t want to get my friend fired. (No, friend is not code for myself. Not in this case, anyway.)

So, kids, quite your whining about your parents being able to see your Facebook profile. Maybe, just maybe - we don’t want you reading ours, either.

Creative Commons image by escapedtowisconsin

Hitwise tweeted this morning that Facebook reached the number one most visited site in the US for the first time ever over the Christmas holiday, pushing past Google. But digging a little deeper, that might not be so. It all depends on what you consider “Google” to be.
From the tweet:
Facebook was the most visited site [...]

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Facebook has identified and compiled a list of the top status trends on its social network for 2009. They’re calling it “Facebook Memology” with the word memology referring to the study of memes.

The list includes 15 trends and the methodology is, um, interesting. For example, the first trend is Facebook Applications - but that includes updates about popular Facebook games such as Farmville, where users often are prompted to post updates about leveling up or other “achievements.”

Other topics were lumped together such as “sports” and “movies,” but Lady Gaga gets her own category instead of being lumped into “music,” which doesn’t appear. No Taylor Swift? No Kanye West? No Miley Cyrus or Jo Bros? (I’m not endorsing those trends. Except for the Jo Bros. They’re so dreamy.)

Meanwhile, Michael Jackson doesn’t get his own category, though Celebrity Deaths is a trend.

Lastly, the 15th trend is “I” - is that really a trend?

I’m not a statistician and only a spectator of memology mind you, but after seeing the lists from search engines, this one seems a bit, how should I put this… vanilla.

Last week, Google seemingly caught up with Bing in the war over status updates from social sites, announcing a deal to get real time information from Facebook. In reality, Bing’s receiving more complete information.
Both Google and Bing have coveted the “status updates” that users make on social sites like Twitter and Facebook. [...]

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Yahoo announced on their blog and press area that Yahoo will integrate their properties with Facebook Connect at a pretty massive level. The Yahoo announcement reads:
Yahoo! Inc. today announced further integration with Facebook that unites social experiences from across the Web to provide a place for consumers to enjoy meaningful content and stay in [...]

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Websites like Sponsored Tweets and Ad.Ly were created with the hope that famous and popular social media users will be willing to start sponsored conversations online. And with clients such Kendra Wilkinson and Kim Kardashian ready to spread any advertiser’s message for the right price, participating in social media has finally become profitable. Even Google [...]

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To successfully promote a business through social media means walking the finest of fine lines. To market without intruding, to advertise without offending; these things are not easily done. This week, I was thinking about online marketing opportunities using Facebook. And nowhere is the line finer than on Facebook. On that platform, you need to [...]

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Facebook has been in an ongoing fight against spam and yesterday announced a significant victory in court. The company said it had obtained an eye-popping $711 million judgment against Spam King Sanford Wallace who had had posted unwanted messages on Facebook users’ Walls. Wallace, who is reportedly bankrupt may also face time in the big [...]

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Microsoft’s Qi Lu announced two new partnerships today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Here’s a transcript of his chat with Tim O’Reilly.
Qi Lu
I was at Yahoo for 10 years, and I always told Jerry, after 10 years I’m going to try something new. I went to Microsoft because I wanted to have [...]

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Bing new Bing Twitter Search has gone live today, made possible through a new deal cut with Twitter. Below, a close-up look at features in the new service.
How Fresh Are Your Tweets?
Let’s start with keyword search, the core of any search engine. Below, a look for a search on kanye west, a popular topic at [...]

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