We always stress that new media (social networking) does not replace traditional media (email marketing and other). And so we weren't surprised when we read a report published by eMarketer which states that new media or social media marketing boosts the benefits of email marketing campaigns because social media marketing is yet another way to engage with customers and prospects.

So if you want the stats on this, here they are:
 
Of the businesses surveyed by Emarketer, it was found that over 40 percent of business owners stated that they plan on integrating social media and email to their marketing initiatives in 2010. About a quarter of the businesses surveyed claimed that they had already done so and the rest were still researching on how to make it happen.

So the message is clear; businesses do see the benefit of increasing brand awareness, visibility, and engagement via social networks. Yet, many businesses aren't able to devote time or resources to make this happen. We at NET believe that that's where our biggest value proposition comes in because our customers can hand-over their entire marketing campaign to us. Using new and traditional strategies, we provide our customers with the biggest bang for their buck. Are you ready???? Contact us today to see how we can help!
 

Yep, so naturally if social media can help criminals, so can it help law enforcement catch the same criminals. Here's an interesting story which also highlights criminal stupidity.
 
Apparently, the thief, listed the Garmin Forerunner watch he had stolen from a home for sale on Craigslist. A man who wanted to buy the watch went and bought the watch from the thief. But when he tried to connect the watch to his computer, the new buyer discovered that the watch was registered to another individual.

After finding out the owner details that were listed for the watch's registration, using Facebook, the new buyer contacted the original owner of the watch along with four other individuals who had the same name. The victim of the burglary responded to the new buyer and also contacted the police. Long story short, the criminal was arrested and placed behind bars.
 
So, here's adding one more use for Social Media websites; Catching Thieves!

So I finally got around to checking out Google's Buzz. It allows convenient sharing of pictures, videos, and full links. And Buzz is like Twitter without the 140 characters, YAY!

Not quite like a full blogging platform, Buzz also allows setting up of groups of followers to post to. The format for posting is very fluid. You can comment on a Buzz in the Buzz folder or via an email or chat if the user and you are both on GTalk. Interestingly, you can also edit your messages later on. So you may find posts changed at a later time. Buzz interface collapses multiple posts from the same user by default. If you use IMAP, buzzes will appear as regular emails in your inbox. If enabled, Buzz on mobile shares your location down to street level with other Buzz users.

But over and over again, users in the social networks continued to criticize the Buzz for features that were encroaching on user privacy.

And so over the weekend, Google apologized to its users for those privacy intruding features and announced product changes. Basically Buzz allows users a ready-made circle of friends which was based on a user's most frequent e-mail and chat contacts in Gmail. Google announced that in the future, it will merely suggest a group of people rather than make them immediately available to the new user.
 
By turning off the auto-follow, Google has been able to quieten down the uproar to some extent. Google also plans to make the following changes to Buzz:

• Creating a new Buzz tab in Gmail’s settings page to allow users to hide Buzz. This will allow users to disable Buzz.
• Disabling auto-connect to picasa albums and items shared on Google reader.

Oh and Google announced that within the first 48 hours of its launch, "tens of millions of people" had tried Buzz. I was one of them!!!

I am not sympathetic towards Paul Chambers one bit. You'd think EVERYONE would know that bombing is NO joking matter anywhere, anymore, anyhow. Not that we'd ever forget 911 but after the recent almost-bombing of an airline on way to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009, you'd think people would know better than to say "bomb" and "airport" in the same breath in public, never mind on a worldwide platform like Twitter.

Here's what happened.  Paul Chambers tweeted his frustrations about his England to Ireland flight potentially getting canceled due to snow, by posting something to the effect of "Robin Hood airport is closed, you've got a week to get your act together, otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high".

What the heck was he thinking posting something SO inflammatory?  I read some blogs where people thought the punishment netted out to Paul was excessive. Paul has been suspended from his job indefinitely, he is banned from Robin Hood airport for life, and his phone, computer, etc. were taken away after he was arrested for conspiracy to create a bomb hoax.

Come on people, let's get real here! A bomb threat is a bomb threat is a bomb threat. After what we're going through across the globe as we fight terrorism, everyone is sensitive to anything that remotely makes us suspicious. And frankly if I had been at Robin Hood airport and had read the tweet myself, I'd be calling 911 and reporting Paul Chambers for sure.

And this reiterates what I always tell my clients and anyone who'll listen to me: THINK before you post something online for the world to read. IF it can lead to jail, unemployment, or trouble with your family, zip it right up errr take a break from your online writing.

Happy New Year to you!

In December 2009, eMarketer released the fourth and last part of it's Business-to-Business (B2B) and On-Line Marketing Outlook series. The series primarily tries to predict the overall on-line marketing outlook for 2010. The predictions are provided by analysts Debra Aho Williamson and Paul Verna.

Here are two predictions from their 2009 fourth online marketing outlook.

Verna predicts that in 2010, twitter will grow into a serious web-based business from merely being an on-line phenomenon. He also predicts that Twitter will also make some money. It's a well known fact that despite tripling its user base in 2009, twitter hasn't made any money despite its the immense (??) popularity.

Williamson predicts that due to the growing integration of social media content with on-line search, social media will become important for businesses in 2010. She says that businesses will find new opportunities for advertising on social media sites and also warns of intensive scrutiny of such efforts by privacy pundits.

Now maybe I'm just darn good at this stuff. Or perhaps it's just simple logic that allows me to arrive at the same "predictions" as the above mentioned "industry experts".

I mean, wouldn't you as a business owner even be able to predict that eventually Twitter founders will monetize their baby (Twitter) one way or the other? They can't not know the power of handing greater than 6M users to advertisers on a platter. And of course social media will become important to businesses. How else can they get viral instant popularity if they have experts like us to help them market them online?

And finally, social networks are great for criminals who want to lurk and read up on every piece of personal detail shared by users. So of course privacy issues will continue to remain high on the minds of not just the site owners but also the people who want to advertise there.

So once again, Happy New Year! And look for more emarketer 2010 predictions (that are more interesting too) coming soon….
 

A friend recently remarked, "I'm a stalker on Facebook because I am too, too, too much of a private person". That pronouncement got a lot of comments from other friends who attempted to defend their own actions and postings on Facebook and other Social web sites. It also led to a loud discussion about netiquette and what should and should not be posted online. But the thing that got everyone stumped was when a friend who had been pretty low-key through the whole discussion asked "ok, so how would you manage your privacy when someone else posts your pictures online on their own Facebook page"?

The look of horror on the "so, so, so private" friend would have been funny if none of us felt the same horror about not having control over content that would get posted online.

Most of us are more than happy to let people take our pictures at social events and work events. But what if someone takes photos of  you and places them on their page but that person has a list of friends whom you don't want to have access to your photos?
 
Complicated? No kidding! Solution? None that we could come up with after lots of debate and dialog about how to monitor and control online content publishing that is done by others over whom you  have no control over.

Thoughts???

Toyota has joined the ranks of automotive giants like GM, Ford, and others who are already on social platforms and are getting a lot of good visibility from them.

Toyota announced the launch of their Social Media Program where Toyota will be engaging with customers, suppliers, dealers, and other stakeholders and facilitating communication through these online channels.

How much money they plan on spending online is unclear but if there's one thing that we can learn from the Japanese, it's that they may start slow but they'll catch up speed pretty quickly and race past the early adopters. So GM and Ford, I'd say should beware of Toyota's online presence. They have a way of "taking over" fast and furious.

Oh but I forgot to mention the whole purpose of my discussing Toyota's online foray. Here it is!

If larger brands can do it and they have plenty of money to spend on their marketing initiatives, smaller brands can do it too. When larger brands move to online media for marketing, they end up saving money by not paying for those expensive TV, billboard, and other campaigns. Smaller brands can move online and capture the market that they never had access to in the past. So what's stopping you smaller brands? Get online and if you need help,  you know who to call! (NET of course!)

If you are a Twitter user, you've come across direct messages that ask you such questions like "Are you in this video?" or "What's your IQ?" These are malicious viruses that are being spread across the social media networks causing quite a bit of guilt and embarrassment to unsuspecting users.

Another scam that is quite popular on Facebook is the "Western Union scam" wherein friends of users whose accounts have been hacked are approached with long-soppy stories about the user being stuck somewhere and requesting money through Western Union.

So what to do to prevent yourself from falling victim to such viruses and scams?

• First and foremost don't have passwords that are easy to guess. admin123; 12345678; 87654321; and password are just some of the very very very commonly used passwords. Why allow yourself to be vulnerable with a password that can easily be identified by spammers who have use of sophisticated password guessing software? Also, try not to use birth dates, names, and easy to decipher passwords. Create a combination of letters, numbers, and characters that is unique.
   
• Change your password every 30-45 days. It will only take a minute to do so, so make the effort to protect yourself.
   
• Try not to click on any links from anyone whom you don't know. Any information that looks suspicious should be ignored and only trust links that come to you with real information.
   
• Trust no one with your passwords.
   
• Keep an eye on news items that may report on what's happening in the social networks with new viruses or scams so that you can be one step ahead of the scammers and spammers.

Social networks are MORE and MORE susceptible to crooks than any other media to-date. Stay vigilante!

Many people claim “lack of privacy” the reason they don’t use social networks. A friend of mine states that he doesn’t use it because he doesn’t want the government spying on him.

But then there are others, and quite a few of them for that matter, who don’t mind giving out details like birth dates, email addresses, and other information on Facebook, without a second thought!

In a study conducted by Sophos, an Australian Security Team, up to 46% of users blindly accepted friend requests from fake Facebook accounts created by the Sophos team. Once the friend requests were accepted, personal information was more than readily available.

Now think about the implications of this in general for pretty much all of us but especially so for those groups (elderly, youths, etc.) who are more susceptible to predators online.

Mack Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, stresses the importance of using privacy tools. Facebook has also recently formed a safety advisory board to improve online safety for its users.

So! Here’s the bottom-line. Even if you are smart and don’t think you will ever fall prey to crooks online, think twice before adding friends arbitrarily. Privacy or lack there of is nothing to take lightly.

Don't go where others are going. Protect your privacy, protect your information on social networks. Forewarned is forearmed, right?

Friendster.com – one of the top global social networking website based on traffic (Source Comscore August 2009) announced that the US patent and trademark office has awarded it a patent on “Method for Sharing Relationship Information Stored in a Social Network Database with Third Party Databases” (U.S. Patent No. 7,478,078).

This becomes the fifth patent awarded to friendster, validating Friendster’s innovative excellence in the field of social networking.

The awarded patent is for sharing information stored in the database of the social networking platform with another database. It is also for owners of the second database to use this information to better manage their customer engagement and targeting.

Friendster allows people to meaningfully participate in discussions with others in exciting and fun ways. Will this patent helps it get an edge over its competition?

Facebook, watch out. Myspace may no longer be competition but Friendster?