TED 2010: Speaker lineup announced

TED 2010 will be held in Long Beach again this year from Feb. 9-13. The event is sold-out and requires an invite of sorts to attend.

Click here for complete TED 2010 program.

Britain's Conservative Party Offers £1 Million Prize for New Crowdsourcing Platform

Frederic Lardinois of RWW reports:Britain's Conservative Party plans to offer a £1 million taxpayer-funded prize for a website that can "harness the wisdom" of voters. The price will be given to the team that develops a platform that enables large groups of people to come together online to solve common problems and develop new policies. According to the Guardian, some of the ideas for this site include services that help to identify wasteful government spending or rate the quality of schools and hospitals. It is worth noting, though, that the Conservatives will only give this prize away if they win the 2010 elections.

Google expected to end Nexus One speculation next week

Macworld/iPhone Central reports: Google is expected to end speculation surrounding the long-rumored Android-powered Nexus One smartphone at a Jan. 5 press event at its Mountain View, Calif., campus. Internet reports say leaked documents offer details about the phone's pricing: $530 unlocked or $180 from T-Mobile USA, which will market the device with an $80 monthly package.

Facebook helps congressmen learn to think like Vin Diesel

The Washington Post reports: Adam Conner, Facebook's first D.C. staffer, says lawmakers need to learn to think like Vin Diesel, the actor whose profile is the network's most-viewed page. Winning a following online means sharing mundane details of one's life and showing a real willingness to engage with one's audience -- skills at which Diesel excels, but most congressmen have yet to master. "Dive deeper," Conner advises one reluctant lawmaker. "You'll be surprised at how things that seem routine to you as a congressman are so interesting and cool to constituents."

As Seen on YouTube

Promo sticker on new Susan Boyle CD.

96 Things I Learned from David Plouffe

I just finished reading David Plouffe's Audacity to Win – The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory
and here are 96 tidbits I picked up:

1. Why BO considered running: the county needed deep, fundamental change; Washington wasn't thinking long term; and the country had big challenges like energy and health care that languished for decades; the special interests and lobbyists had too much power; and the American people needed to once again trust and engage in their democracy; the country was too divided; and the middle class and those trying to be middle class ran the risk of having less opportunity than generations before
   
2. The campaign team entered the race having witnessed the '04 and '06 elections from different perspectives and knowledge of some of the new techniques and political currents that would emerge so forcefully in '08 – Axelrod and Plouffe worked on long-shot Deveal Patrick's '06 MA Governor campaign where they did some new stuff with the internet to organize and communicate messages
   
3. The most powerful weapon the campaign had was BO himself, unfiltered
   
4. "It's Iowa or Bust"
   
5. Campaign believed they need to expand electorate and identify new voters
   
6. Technology, like grassroots focus, was at the core of the campaign from the start. In order to build a grassroots movement, it was clear that the only way to get to scale quickly enough was to use the power of the internet to signup people and ask them to get involved
   
7. Ken Mehlman told BO (a classmate at Harvard Law) the Bush team had a rule that their inner campaign circle would never expand – if they wanted to add someone new, someone else had to be kicked out
   
8. $50m was the initial fundraising target
   
9. Campaign imposed on salary cap on campaign jobs
   
10. In most campaigns – new media (online communications, web page development, maintenance and texting) typically reports to the communications department and its leader is not considered senior staff – but Plouffe believed the net to be so important to the overall success of the campaign – had the leader be senior staff and report direct to him
    
11. Did little or no background research on Rev. Wright
    
12. Initially had IA field staff oversee 12 precincts
    
13. Debate and prepping for debates in not an attribute of BO
    
14. Mark Penn was famous for memos throughout the campaign attacking the methodology of unfavorable polls and extolling the dubious findings of polls that were kind to HRC
    
15. IA Caucus goal was 60k 1's (rock solid confirmed supporters) and 30k 2's (people strongly leaning towards BO)
    
16. John Kerry almost endorsed BO in late December – got cold feet and withdrew endorsement – however after DSM Register came out in early January with BO on top – Kerry once again offered an endorsement pre-caucus
    
17. More than 240k people attended IA Caucus
    
18. Many in IA organized online for the campaign and even more made contact with the campaign through the web – campaign found they could use the web to drive a message and in some cases circumvent mainstream media filter – also allowed campaign to provide basic voting information – like where to caucus – which was essential when trying to expand the electorate beyond habitual voters
    
19. TX + OH Primaries – due to success of online fundraising – campaign had another $15m to spend – tv and radio reached stratospheric levels, internet ads were omnipresent and campaign bought five days worth of full page ads in leading newspapers
    
20. HRC "3 AM Call" ad didn't result in BO freefall – but polling was trending downward and media loved ad
    
21. All of Rev. Wright's sermons were available for purchase – Obama campaign never purchased them or reviewed them
    
22. "I can do more than one thing at a time," comment made several times in book by BO
    
23. Almost every day Plouffe made or took campaign phone calls from his small campaign apartment – his advice, "if you ever run a presidential campaign, spring for an apartment with an extra room"
    
24. Regarding Obama's race speech and how it was consumed by the public, "This marked a fundamental change in political coverage and message consumption, and one that will only continue as technology rolls forward: big moments, political or otherwise, will no longer be remembered by people as times when everyone gathered around TVs to watch a speech, press conference or other event. Increasingly, most of us will recall firing up the computer, searching for a video, and watching it at home or at the office – or even on our cell phones."
    
25. "When I was growing up in politics, the saying was, Don't put anything on paper that you don't want to see on the front page of the NYT. The new adage should be, Don't say anything that you don't want posted on YouTube and whipped around the internet."
    
26. Delegate acquisition was the core of the Obama campaign – not political victory. TX and OH represented missed opportunities to close the deal – this wouldn't happen with IN and NC primaries
    
27. At Obama's request – campaign held regular, nightly calls with him and the senior staff at the end of each campaign day – some calls lasted 10 minutes, some lasted an hour. These calls lasted until November 3
    
28. Campaign team held daily calls at 700am and 615pm
    
29. Team Obama held national finance meetings in key battleground states – this let major donors get a sense of what was happening on the ground and allow them to engage in some gotv activities like making phone calls or knocking on doors
    
30. "We will win ugly if we have to. They are not taking this from us."
    
31. Team Obama registered 100k new voters in NC
    
32. Over 12% of voters in DEM IN primary were Republican
    
33. Team Obama believed whenever they played it safe or as expected – they were punished
    
34. "In politics, your two main pillars are your message and electoral strategy"
    
35. "What are you offering voters in terms of vision, issues and biography? What is your most accessible path to a winning vote margin?"
    
36. "We had one slogan. Clinton had too many to count."
    
37. Mark McKinnon was referenced in the book" "I'd rather have one flawed strategy than seven different strategies." Plouffe goes on to write: In any organization, you have to determine your pathway to success and commit to it. There will inevitably be highs and lows. But you have to give your theory time and strategy time to work. Maybe it won't. Many endeavors fail. But without a clear sense of where you are headed, you will almost certainly fail."
    
38. Technology was at the core from Day One.
    
39. Started campaign with fewer than 10k email addresses – by June 2008 listed had grown to over 5m email addresses – huge portion of that group, almost 40%, had either volunteered or contributed
    
40. Goal was to have a dominant presence in the field and try to fundraise, organize and move messages using digital tools.
    
41. Raised over $200m online in the primary
    
42. Hundreds of emails sent out were a mix of pure information, requests for organizational help, local and statewide emails and fundraising asks
    
43. Obama + Clinton staff meeting after HRC left race – key issues: how to get Clinton donors and volunteers involved; The Dem Convention; Bill Clinton's role; how much time HRC will give to the campaign and be a surrogate; HRC's debt
    
44. HRC's debt was over $30M – she loaned the campaign $10m which she wrote off – and it was clear Team Clinton wanted Team Obama to help erase $20m
    
45. It was clear Team Clinton didn't understand delegates as well as they should have, didn't appreciate the role Iowa would play in the race and made a series of tactical errors that opened the door to BO
    
46. The notion that primary trends carry over into general election are flawed logic and defy history
    
47. "Two-Seventy" was our new mantra
    
48. Real contest occurred in 16 states in which swing voters bumped up against the campaign at every turn – at their doors, on their phones, on their local news, tv shows, and radio programs; and on their computers – the campaign was a ferocious and diversified advertising campaign
    
49. Team Obama wanted a wide playing field and didn't want to wake up Election Day dependent on one state – like Gore with FL in 2000 and Kerry with OH in 2004
    
50. Team Obama assumed from the start all Kerry 2004 states would go with them so they could focus on expanding battleground states and force McCain to defend Bush states
    
51. Kerry 2004 states added up to 252 electoral votes – meaning Team Obama need only 18 more to win presidency
    
52. Virginia was a cornerstone to Obama campaign success – was the first state Obama visited after securing DEM nomination – went to rural and conservative SW corner of state
    
53. Team Obama focused on IA, VA, NM and CO from the start of general election campaign – they won all four states
    
54. Ended primary with 2m contributors and 7m people on their email list
    
55. Goal was to end campaign with 3.75m donors and 12m on the email list – had five months to execute this
    
56. Internet advertising to capture people's attention and hopefully convert them to signing up and joining campaign
    
57. You can't outsource the ground game = If you believe in running a strong ground game based on people leading the charge in their own communities, nothing could be more problematic than having zero control over that operation
    
58. Taking federal funds meant losing control of "our secret weapon, we would have to largely outsource our ground game to DNC"
    
59. "We wanted everything synched up so we could keep our communications tight and coordinated, and maximize our value of all possible data points when making decisions"
    
60. Much more effective to throw late-surge funds on tv than field operations – grassroots and field efforts need time and infrastructure to grow
    
61. Advertising is essential driver in Senate and House campaigns because they don't dominate local news – voters follow Presidential campaigns, they watch conventions and debates
    
62. For General Election: FL budget was $38m, VA budget was $22m and CO budget was $10m
    
63. July trip abroad was designed to show Obama and his staff could handle world stage and be "presidential" – "It was hard to turn on the tv, radio or computer without seeing those qualities on full display." Campaign was also running foreign policy ads on tv, radio and internet in all battleground states, providing real amplification to the press coverage."
    
64. "Everything was synched up and working in symphonic consonance."
    
65. By Aug 22 or Biden announcement day, email list was at 6m and mobile list was at 2m
    
66. "Be the First to Know" campaign had grown mobile list by fifteen-fold in less than two weeks
    
67. "Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee. Watch the first Obama-Biden rally live at 3 p.m. ET on www.barackobama.com. Spread the word!"
    
68. People were encouraged to watch live streams of key events on the campaign website
    
69. The website "was like having our own television reruns."
    
70. Add more videos to email communications – data suggested supporters spent more time with these emails
    
71. Goals for convention: Put final nail in coffin of the bloody-primary fractured party story line; need to come roaring out of the convention unified; introduce BO's personal story to millions of Americans; layout case against John McCain; and use the convention to bolster campaign efforts in CO
    
72. Goals for BO's convention speech: build upon what Michelle said about his family and his values – especially his commitment to the middle class something he and his wife have dealt with most of their lives; lay out in great detail what he planned to do as president; lay out compelling arguments against McCain
    
73. "It looks like they picked Sarah goddamn Palin. We need to get moving."
    
74. Palin was a true surprise – Plouffe had no notes about her on his computer and was forced to Google her for much needed information
    
75. Plouffe thought this was downright bizarre, ill-considered and deeply puzzling – removed the entire experience issue from the debate – on a side note, I was wearing my McCain campaign "Experience" hat that morning while watching Morning Joe report Palin was the VP pick – I had the same feeling as Plouffe
    
76. No one wins the presidency with stunts
    
77. Just a minuscule fraction of true swing voters watch cable news – its audience was almost all partisan on both sides. What really matters is local news. True swing voters watch local news and read their regional paper
    
78. By the end of the campaign, Obama and Biden had done almost twice as many events as their GOP counterparts
    
79. McCain didn't hold his first campaign event in VA until September 10
    
80. Obama campaign added 2.3m to their email list in September – total number now was 11m – aggressive online advertising
    
81. 3.1m had contributed online by end of September – over 30% of the people on their list and almost all had volunteered in some form
    
82. Plouffe to young, green campaign staff: "You are going to be spoiled. Almost all campaigns never have enough money or people to do what they'd like. And most decision making around resources is of the cutting variety – you're falling short of your budget, so what gets axed? Not this campaign. It's like fantasy camp for political operatives, so relish it because you may never see it again."
    
83. Plouffe began making on the fly videos every seven to ten days – response was very positive – provided insights into campaign developments and requests for activities – most positive videos were about spending, that is how the money will be used
    
84. Not new media but digital strategy
    
85. "The fundamentals of our economy are strong"
    
86. "Presidents need to be able do more than one thing at a time," Barack Obama
    
87. Governor Granholm of Michigan played Palin in debate prep with Biden
    
88. Early voting: asked volunteers to vote early so they could work election day, radio ads reminding people to vote early, internet ads to push effort, repeated email and text messages, phone calls and door knocks
    
89. Obama debate prep was held in battleground states to allow for maximum local news coverage and generate positive buzz for campaign
    
90. Email list was 13m by election day – represented nearly 20% total votes needed to win
    
91. Campaign had essentially created their own television network and could communicate directly to voters
    
92. Reaching an audience involves more than just figuring out who your audience is; it also means knowing how to find them
    
93. Campaign put a huge premium on direct digital communication, as well as, the power of people communicating directly to one another by phone, internet and/or at the door
    
94. "We live in a busy and fractured world in which people are bombarded with pleas for their attention. Given this, you have to try extra hard to reach them. You need to be everywhere. And for people you reach multiple items through different mediums, you need to make sure your message is consistent."
    
95. "Messaging needs to be aligned at every level: between offline and on-, principal and volunteer, phone and email."
    
96. Political books don't need an index

The Best and Worst Identities of 2009

Brand New has compiled a great best and worst list of logos developed, recreated and/or launched in 2009 - click here to see their list.

Brightkite experiments with augmented reality ads

LostRemote reports: If you own an Android phone with the Layar augmented reality app, you can pop up the Brightkite layer, point your phone around and see markers for Best Buy stores in the distance. Screen grab and write-up about the AR ad right here.

Old Media Decline to Continue in 2010

Economist reports: Traditional media such as magazines, newspapers, television and radio will continue to lose advertising share next year, according to The World in 2010, a collection of expert predictions from The Economist. "Harnessing the advertising potential of social media will be key."

The Economist tweets for traffic

Financial Times reports: The Economist is pouring money into a social-media strategy, in hopes of acquiring 500,000 Facebook fans and 750,000 Twitter followers within six months. The campaign will see the integration of Facebook profiles and comments into the site, along with activity on the magazine's Twitter feed increasing to what Ben Edwards, the site's publisher, calls a "full-time job." "That shows the importance we place on it as a source of traffic," he says. "We have a mission online of being the foremost destination for global discussion and debate, which is a social proposition."

What I am Reading

Googled: The End of the World As We Know It
by Ken Auletta

Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry
by Marc Benioff, Carlye Adler

India Express: The Future of the New Superpower
by Daniel Lak

What Americans Really Want...Really: The Truth About Our Hopes, Dreams, and Fears
by Frank I. Luntz

The 15 Biggest PR Disasters Of The Decade

Business Insider lists top 15 PR disaters of the decade. I will come clean, none of my projects made the list but I am looking to do better in the '10s.

1. Bridgestone tire
2. Philip Morris says smoking deaths have "positive effects"
3. Abercrombie & Fitch's rasist and sexy clothing
4. Urban Outfitters sells racist board game
5. Merck recalls Vioxx
6. Janet Jackson's halftime "wardrobe malfunction"
7. ABC's Locker-Room Scene
8. The News Corp./OJ Affair: PR Most Foul
9. Cartoon Network ad campaign causes Boston bomb scare
10. JetBlue traps passengers on the runway for hours
11. Automaker CEOs take private jets to D.C... then ask for bailout
12. AIG gets bailed out... then hosts $443,300 corporate retreat
13. KFC's chicken coupon riots
14. Domino's YouTube scandal
15. DOD thinks that low-flying planes over Manhattan are a good idea

Click here for the list.

Report: FB overwhelming favorite SNS amoung college students

According to research by Anderson Analytics, Facebook is not only the overwhelming favorite social networking site (SNS) among college students, it may rapidly become the only SNS that matters. Facebook is found to be the "coolest network" by far among students with over 300,000,000 Facebook active users, half of whom return to the site every day.

Among seven leading social networking sites ranked by college students in the Anderson Analytics 2009-2010 GenX2Z American College Student Survey conducted this fall, Facebook was viewed as "cool" by 82% of males and 90% of females. All other SNS' were deemed "lame" by significant percentages of both male and female collegiate users. MySpace' the granddaddy of SNS'' was considered "lame" by the largest (31%) portion of college students.

Facebook not only topped the SNS landscape, it overtook Google as the number one most popular website among both genders of college students surveyed.
Tom H.C. Anderson, managing partner of Anderson Analytics, noted that "Once a trend goes mainstream, it often... loses its ‘cool' factor among young people, and they move on to the next big thing... (the) data indicate this is not the case with Facebook."

In an equally important development, the study found college students of both genders are participating less in blogs (down 5%), and discussion boards (down 8%) from 2008. These results bode well for microblogging sites like Twitter, says the report, whose growth has flattened over the past few months.

"With its increasing variety of applications and flexibility, Facebook is delivering one-stop shopping... (in a) hyper-fragmented digital universe... (it) is becoming more of a hub than just a social networking site - almost a mass medium... " opined Anderson.

Among findings and predictions in the report:
•70% of college students said they had watched either an entire television episode or full-length movie online

•The streaming media website, Hulu.com, ranked among students' ten most popular websites

•Family Guy topped the list of favorite TV shows among college-aged males

•More than 800,000 users have joined the fan page for the show's character, Brian the dog

•Coca-Cola and McDonald's ranked first in their categories between both genders surveyed

•Coke Facebook fans outnumbered Pepsi fans by approximately 20 to one

Anderson concludes that "... Given the accelerated pace of technological advancement and changes in the way we communicate, it's impossible to predict the future... But if the preferences of today's college students are any indication, Facebook is here to stay..."

The findings reported in this release of the Anderson Analytics GenX2Z American College Student Survey, based on the most recent study conducted in the fall semester 2009, provides a confidence level of +/-3.1% at the 95% confidence level.

For additional information, please visit Anderson Analytics here.

2010 = M&A Mania

NYT Deal Book reports: A new report by the Boston Consulting Group and UBS says next year could herald the return of M&A in Europe. A survey of 166 senior executives suggests that about 20 percent of all companies expect to announce a major deal in 2010.

My advice = invest accordingly over the next few weeks. Once the hot shots get back from Aspen and St. Barts, there will be less deals to be had.

Hyper Local Search = Big

NYT Deal Book reports: In a sign that Google is interested in broadening its reach among local businesses, the search giant is in acquisition talks with Yelp, the review site for local businesses, according to three people with knowledge of the deal.

Sochi 2014 Logo adds .ru

The logo for the 2014 Winter Olympics, to be held in Sochi, Russia, has been unveiled. The logo becomes the first Olympic emblem to feature a web address—Sochi2014.ru—as organisers target the digital generation.

Introducing a Twitter for Credit Card Purchases

NYT reports: Philip Kaplan earned notoriety and profit a decade ago with a site that chronicled the implosion of the Internet bubble. Now he is back with a project that seems sure to get attention again: Blippy, a soon-to-start online social network that lets you share details of your credit card purchases with friends or strangers.

Mr. Kaplan’s earlier venture, an obscenely named Web site that parodied FastCompany magazine, chronicled the dot-com carnage in 2000 and 2001. Though that site trashed failing start-ups, Mr. Kaplan was an entrepreneur himself: he made money by devising a self-service tool that allowed advertisers to place ads on the site. The tool worked so well that in 2002, he spun it off to create AdBrite, which places ads on more than 100,000 affiliated sites and had 2008 revenue of $31.6 million.

Still chairman and a major shareholder, Mr. Kaplan, now 34. left his chief executive role at AdBrite last year, turning its management over to a hired chief executive and freeing himself to noodle. Most of his tinkering is based on the potential of social media sites like Twitter, where he goes by the name Pud. In June, he became entrepreneur in residence at the venture capital firm Charles River Ventures, but after just half a year, he left to work full time on Blippy.

Currently in invitation-only beta testing and headed for a public introduction in 2010, Blippy reports your credit card purchases (for example, “Alice spent $47.60 at Macy’s”) to others, as if the transactions were tweets on Twitter or Facebook status updates.

Mr. Kaplan spoke about Blippy earlier this week. A condensed version of the conversation follows. Click here.

Augmented Reality continues to grow with the cool kids

Brand Republic reports: Wallpaper magazine is selling its January 'Next Generation' issue with an augmented reality cover and has tied with Wolff Olins for a special feature enhanced with AR technology.

The cover of the design and fashion magazine springs into life when readers hold it in front of a webcam, which transforms the flat page image of graduate designer Jørund Blikstad's 'Wall Cubes' into 3-D.

Readers can rotate and view the shelving from various angles by moving the magazine in front of their computer screen.

In its January issue, Wallpaper has also joined forces with international brand and innovation consultancy Wolff Olins to reveal the 10 new developments that could change the world in 2010.

These developments are listed in an 11-page feature, in which every page has AR technology, triggering both videos and animation.
The list of ten new developments — from augmented reality and virtual currency, to waterproof sand and the reinvention of the wheel — are the things that Wallpaper and Wolff Olins are tipping to make a big impact on the way people work, play, travel and relax in 2010.

Tony Chambers, Wallpaper editor-in-chief, said: "This issue of Wallpaper is all about the top trends and technologies for 2010, so we couldn't resist having some fun with the mind-bending, pixel-popping, multimedia minefield that is augmented reality.

"We do like to push creative boundaries here at Wallpaper, and with this issue, readers can see the magazine grow into a whole new dimension."

Facebook offers brand consultants for Fan Pages and apps

Brand Republic reports: Facebook is to help brands get the best out of its Facebook Fan Pages and applications with the launch of a directory of consultants, as it is reported the company will hit $1bn in revenues in 2010.

The directory of consultants, called the 'Preferred Developer Consultant Program', is initially quite small with only 14 listed who have a proven track record of developing for the social networking site.

According to Facebook the directory of consultants is designed to help brands, celebrities or other organisations who are looking for the best resources to start building an application on Facebook.com, optimise a Facebook Connect integration or build a Facebook Fan Page.

The initial consultants include online retail specialist Fluid, which has worked with North Face and Calvin Klein Fragrance, Buddy Media, whose clients include American Express and Starwood Hotels, and Involver, which has racked up projects with the likes of Puma, Time Warner and Southwest Airlines.

Consultants not included can apply to become part of the Preferred Developer Program, but they will need to demonstrate they have built engaging Facebook apps or pages.

Electing a President – with digital media

Netimperative reports: From inside the Obama campaign, Thomas Gensemer talks with Danny Meadows-Klue about the central role email and social media played in the US Presidential Election, making it a case study in political campaigning.

Click here to read more.

Warren Buffett -- Newspaper Industry Got Too Complacent

E&P reports: The newspaper industry got too complacent with its success years ago, says Warren Buffett, and failed to change its business model to grow with the times.

"It is so easy when you've got a wonderful business," Buffett told E&P during a recent interview. "Complacency is pretty easy and it is why they weren't looking over their shoulder at what was happening."

Buffett, the billionaire owner of The Buffalo News and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, spoke with E&P for an upcoming story in our January issue on the News, which he has owned since 1977.

Saying his interest in owning a newspaper "is not totally rational," Buffett says he is content with just one. But he also sees that the industry as a whole did not properly utilize the Internet when it came on the scene.

"When the Internet came along, you gave away your [online] product for free and charged for it in another place [print]," he says. "I'm not positive what you would have done differently, but not figuring out some kind of business model was a mistake."

Buffett, who sits on the board of The Washington Post Company, also points to circulation revenue as a missed opportunity: "They should have probably tried to get more revenue from circulation over the years. Newspapers were essential years ago," he states. "If they had trained [readers] to value it more, they might have had a model that worked in this environment."

The one-time newspaper delivery boy adds that Web revenue is still there, although he stops short of saying the News would begin charging for online: "One way or another, you need a different business model for the dailies. We need to get quite a bit of revenue from online. It is the place where people go."

Asked if the News would charge for online content, he says, "we are going to look at everything everyone else does. How do you charge when a thousand other people don't? We have a business model that is eroding. The whole industry. But we still have a huge base of readers."

Twitter's top trending topics for 2009

SFGate's The Technology Chronicles reports: Twitter Inc. grabbed the international spotlight in June when the microblogging service became a primary source of news and communications as Iranian citizens took to the streets to protest the disputed reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

So it's perhaps no surprise that in Twitter's analysis of keywords, hashtags and phrases, the topic that came up most in 2009 was Iran.

On the company blog, Abdur Chowdhury, Twitter's chief scientist, wrote that #iranelection, Iran and Tehran finished in the top 21 of all trending topics, with #iranelection finishing first in the category of news, above swine flu.

Michael Jackson beat Susan Doyle in the people category, with Harry Potter edging New Moon in movies and American Idol topping Glee for TV shows. The top technology topics were Google Wave and Snow Leopard (Windows 7 finished fourth) and the top hashtag was #musicmonday.

Here is the full chart from Twitter:

or click here for Twitter's blog post.

Twitter to launch first of services aimed at businesses

Brand Republic reports: Twitter is to allow businesses to personalise accounts used by multiple members of staff by adding their own "byline" to tweets in what is the first of a series of additions for business users.

What the 65+ crowd is doing online

Goo.gl Challenges Bit.ly as King of the Short

NYT reports: Google, the giant of the Internet, announced a move into the realm of the small Monday: URL shorteners, which condense long Web addresses into very short ones.

“People share a lot of links online. This is particularly true as microblogging services such as Twitter have grown in popularity,” the company said in a blog post announcing the initiative.

The new Goo.gl service is a direct attack on Bit.ly, a URL shortener developed in-house at Betaworks Studio. Bit.ly has fast become the de facto link shortener on Twitter and many third-party Twitter clients, and the service even raised a $2 million round of venture financing from investors that included Alpha Tech Ventures, the software industry pioneer Mitch Kapor and the early Google investor Ron Conway.

Since Bit.ly was introduced, its volume has soared. The company says that more than 2.1 billion Bit.ly links were clicked in November, compared to 11.8 million a year ago.

One feature that has helped the company stand out among a myriad of quirkily named competitors is its real-time tracking of how many times links are clicked and where users are coming from — data that it makes available publicly on the Web. Bit.ly will also offer that data to the publishers enrolled in its beta program and show them how links are trending among Web surfers.

Currently, Goo.gl is only available from the Google Toolbar and Feedburner, the company’s RSS publishing tool, although the company said it may make it available for a wider audience in the future.

Google will take on Apple with own mobile phone

WSJ reports: Google will circumvent the wireless carriers when it begins to sell its own cell phone next year, according to various published reports that say the Internet company will market the device -- dubbed Nexus One -- directly to consumers who would make their own deal with a carrier. The move, Google's latest challenge to Apple, allows the company more flexibility to offer its own services but risks angering the telecoms that now carry smartphones based on its Android software, according to industry observers. The Wall Street Journal

Seth Godin - Free eBook

Seth Godin has released a new eBook today. The material is a a compilation of brief, bold thoughts from a diverse array of thought leaders, each one based around a word or theme. Access it here: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/files/what-matters-now-1.pdf

Guest Post:Refresh button

Guest post from Christine Stineman - founder of Tribe Effect LLC, a public affairs, public relations, social media and online strategy consulting firm:

It’s been debated for some time the value of social media for companies and organizations – Facebook, Ning, Twitter, Digg – what's the ROI? The problem is, most of those analyzing it from the outside, and even those within companies attempting to tap into the built-in audience of 350 million on Facebook, are looking through marketing, advertising, public relations, technology, business development or other lenses based on years of more traditional experience.

If we hit the refresh button on social media approach, better yet hit the refresh button after installing a needed flash download there may be a different result. I see it as much of an old school approach as new. The customer relationship that developed before the heavy dependency on television, radio, mail, phones and print advertising was a critical component to success. The smile, the handshake, the use of people’s name and the overall emphasis on customer service meant everything at one time.

Social media provides a new online platform from which to develop the relationships old school style, only rather than reaching a few at a time there is capability of reaching a mass audience. Rather than talking at customers and attracting them with sizzle and flare through your ad campaign, now there are multiple social media and online tools to share this information with them through video, audio and written voices but also to include them. Companies and organizations have the opportunity to put not only the company brand/face forward, but also share the many parts roles and values of the organization.

As an example we’ll use a chain grocery store that we’ll call Foodies. The regional store funds an annual toy drive around the holidays. To date the only way this information was shared was with a Foodies logo at the bottom of an ad for the toy drive and a one-day earned media covered by print, radio and TV. Social media provides an opportunity to not only raise more funds and awareness around the cause, but provides the company an opportunity to tell its story. The story of the many employees who give a remarkable amount of time to make the toy drive happen year after year. The story of the child who received a Christmas gift from parents for the first time in 3 years thanks to the event driven by Foodies. The story of the company executives who believed in giving back to those in need and investing in the community who had done so much to help them succeed as a company. With the help of social media, Foodies has a way to share their many stories which would have previously been cost prohibitive to purchase the air time or print space to share this information. It's an opportunity to deepen the connection and loyalty of its customers and to demonstrate Foodies loyalty to the community right back. After all, loyalty should go both ways. In the end there will be a strong ROI, especially considering most social media tools are free and advertising on these sites and online generally is reasonable compared to the cost of offline advertising.

I agree with John Naughton writer for The Observer who stated in an article Sun, Dec 6, that “Facebook is the most glaring example of an unsolved puzzle…”. I also agree that, “there's no point in advertising to them”. However, there is a point in developing a connection, advertising with them.

LostRemote

Check out LostRemote: A blog with thoughts on local online news, advertising and the hyperlocal race, written by Cory Bergman.

http://lostremote.com/

Bergman works for msnbc.com, which owns EveryBlock, and he and his wife run Next Door Media, a neighborhood news network that won a 2009 Online Journalism Award.

Alicia Keys' New Album a Facebook Exclusive

MarketingVox reports: RCA Music Group is releasing a full stream of Alicia Keys' upcoming album, "The Element of Freedom," exclusively to the artist's 1.2 million Facebook fans. RCA Music has partnered with Involver to stream the tracks from her new album directly from her Facebook Page.

Visitors can listen to tracks for free and place pre-orders in advance of the album's Dec. 15th release. Certain singles will be available immediately to purchase as gifts from the Facebook Gift Shop, a service the social networking site launched last year powered by LaLa.

Facebook now has 350m users - and there's no point in advertising to them

Commentary from The Observer's John Naughton: It was announced last week that the population of Facebook now exceeds that of America. Since mid-September the social networking service has added 50 million users, which means it now finds itself with 350 million of them. I am sure that Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, takes the same view of his subscribers as PG Wodehouse attributed to the male codfish – "which, suddenly finding itself the parent of three million five hundred thousand little codfish, cheerfully resolves to love them all". But even Zuckerberg must be wondering how he can monetise the little darlings.

There they are, cavorting in the corner of cyberspace so thoughtfully (and expensively) provided by him, where they post photographs of themselves in embarrassing situations, write affectionate or silly messages on one another's "walls", become "fans" of obscure comedians, join witty "groups" to support the Tiger Woods driving school and do other cool things too numerous to list. And all without paying a cent!

It can't go on like this, can it? The software-engineering and server-farm infrastructure needed to support 350 million users burns money, and so does the bandwidth they use. Zuckerberg is not a philanthropist, well, not yet, anyway – though if Facebook does eventually go public, he might be rich enough to give money away. At the moment he runs a private company ostensibly valued by its most recent investors at $10bn (£6bn). And yet, to date, its revenues (which might just stretch to $500m this year) have not quite matched the expectations implicit in that colossal valuation.

Facebook is the most glaring example of an unsolved puzzle: how to convert social networking into a sustainable business. Twitter, the micro-blogging service that is now in a runaway growth phase, poses the same puzzle. In September it raised $100m in investment funding at a price that valued it at nearly $1bn. And yet, unlike Facebook, Twitter has not yet earned a cent. In 2008, Time Warner bought Bebo, another social networking site, for $850m, which was 42.5 times its revenues at the time. In 2005, Rupert Murdoch paid $580m for My Space, whose 2009 revenues have been "flat" according to a JP Morgan report, which adds that the site "continues to face challenges monetising its large audience. We see more headwinds ahead as remnant inventory pricing is declining and competition makes it more difficult to reach meaningful profitability."

The truth is that investing in social networking represents the triumph of hope over experience. The optimism comes from a feeling that it's impossible to gather, say, 350 million people in one place and not somehow make money. In the real world, one would charge them admission and sell them hot dogs and overpriced T-shirts. But that doesn't work in cyberspace. If Facebook started to charge for membership, its population would dwindle to the number of people who think that its services are worth paying for – probably not that many.

The conventional wisdom used to be that the key to online revenues was advertising. That, after all, is how Google got to where it is. But it turns out that Google is a special case because it specialises in search, the only area where online advertising really works. The explanation is obvious: people searching for something are likely to be deeply interested in the results, and are therefore more likely to click through to an advertiser. But in other situations – say when browsing web pages – advertising is peripheral and we have become very good at ignoring it. In 2007, the market research firm ComScore reported that 32% of internet users clicked on banner ads in a given month. By 2009, that number had fallen to 16%. ComScore also concluded that a hard core of 8% of all internet users – christened "Natural Born Clickers" – are responsible for 85% of all banner clicks on the web.

Everyone who uses the web has experience of the ineffectiveness of online advertising. If it's obtrusive, it's an irritant that gets between you and the content you're seeking and you hit the "Click here to skip this advertisement" button. If it's unobtrusive, you ignore it. Either way, it's ineffective. You can't build an industry on Natural Born Clickers. The inescapable conclusion is that anyone who thinks advertising is the key to sustainable online businesses in any field other than search should think again.

AugmentPro

Check it a new blog dedicated to Augmented Reality.

AugmentPro - http://augmentpro.com/ - a community blog for the marketing professionals looking to be on the cutting edge of understanding Augmented Reality.

Google Unveils News-by-Topic Service

NYT reports: Google on Tuesday introduced a new approach to presenting news online by topic, developed with The New York Times and The Washington Post, and said that if the experiment succeeded, it would be made available to all publishers.

The announcement of the “living stories” project shows Google collaborating with newspapers at a time when some major publishers have characterized the company as a threat. Google has also taken steps recently to project an image of itself as a friend to the industry.

Living stories is a much-enhanced version of what some newspaper Web sites already do by grouping material by subject matter. In the case of The Times, the paper’s Web site has thousands of “topic pages.” But those efforts have not yielded heavy reader traffic or much advertising.

The Google project, presented without ads, is now at livingstories.googlelabs.com, part of Google Labs, where the company tries out experimental products. If it is judged a success, it would eventually reside on the site of any publisher that wanted to use it. Those publishers could also sell ads on those pages.

Google executives argue that the tools their company has developed, including search, make them the papers’ ally, a case made by Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chairman and chief executive, in an opinion piece published last week in The Wall Street Journal. Also last week, Google announced changes in the way its search function interacts with news sites, giving publishers more flexibility in limiting the material readers can see before encountering demands for payment or registration. The changes were relatively minor, but reinforced the message that the company wanted to help news sites.

“There’s been a series of steps to work with and mollify news publishers, to improve the P.R., and you can see the living page in that same vein,” said Ken Doctor, a media analyst with the analysis firm Outsell. The project is a genuine step forward, he said, because “on most news sites, site search, looking for a lot on one subject, is awful.”

Google worked for months on the project with journalists and Web staffs at The Times and The Post. For now, it covers just eight broad topics, like health care reform and the Washington Redskins.

Dell nears $7 million in Twitter sales with "no strategy"

The Huffington Post reports: Dell announced that it had made nearly $7 million in sales through Twitter. Manish Mehta, the firm's social-media and community vice president, offers this advice to companies still standing on the sidelines: "Social media isn't a means to further a corporation's strategy, it's a means to help determine it." He suggests relying heavily on customer feedback to determine the best course of action. "No strategy necessary," he writes.

Citysearch Rolls Out Twitter Integration On Business Listing Page

MediaPost reports: Citysearch plans to reveal Monday a deal with Twitter that lets businesses integrate Twitter streams on their business profile page. The agreement lets companies combine social media through Twitter's Sign-Up API.

Businesses can integrate their existing Twitter name or create a new account directly from the Citysearch business profile through the Claim Your Page feature. The tool, which also provides suggestions for Twitter names, invites consumers to tweet and interact with businesses on the site.

Citysearch reached out about two-and-a-half months ago, just after Twitter received the $100 million in venture capital backing earlier this year. "This is the first step in the evolution of the product," he says. "Just like reviews, we are considering other features, similar to reviews."

It's a part of a push to offer free services on Citysearch. The next step to look at sentiment and pull in common words related to tweets should appear in about two weeks. It will let consumers find the information they care about most and give each a specific rating, without having to weed through hundreds of tweets.

Down the road, Citysearch also plans to highlight the frequency of words and specific events being written about in the tweets. There are no plans to integrate advertising based on the tweet streams, although there have been industry discussions by companies wishing to tap into third-party sites to serve up ads. And Citysearch has been looking at how to pull in references based on mentions of the business tied to geographical location data.

The move to elevate social media into Citysearch business listings will lead sites to pull in more real-time data from a variety of sites. "We were early with Facebook Connect, too," Citysearch says. "This enhances the mobile experience, and we're looking at how to bring in Facebook status. If other sites aren't doing it yet, I would make the bet that it's coming within the next quarter or two."

Video: Social Media ROI by Socialnomics

Razorfish Digital Brand Experience Report 2009

FEED: The Razorfish Digital Brand Experience Report 2009 Key Findings

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Top 50 Facebook Pages 2009

Top 50 Facebook Pages 2009

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Online Video Will Turn Cold Calls to Dinosaurs

MarketingVox reports: As online video becomes a more accepted, widespread, measurable and cost-effective communications tool it is poised to enhance - and even replace - some of the more labor-intensive marketing and training functions at many businesses, according to a recent blog post by Wistia (via MarketingCharts)

Wistia contends that video will likely supplement and replace the following five things in the not-too-distant future:

•Product Demos: The initial demonstration of a product or service no longer need take place in person. Instead, prospects can watch demos on-demand and become knowledgeable more quickly - and in advance of an in-person sales meeting. This, in turn, can free up salespeople to focus on ripe opportunities, provide more in-depth demonstrations to customers at the next stage in the purchase process, and increase meaningful interactions.

•Customer Testimonials: Providing prospects information about satisfied customers is often one of the most meaningful and effective ways to build trust and close deals, though such first-hand recommendations are often one of the hardest things to arrange. Interviewing customers for testimonials and packaging them on video will ensure they are at-the-ready when needed in a marketing or sales pitch.

•Cold Calling: Though cold calling is celebrated by the few salespeople who thrive on it, it is an often-maligned function that is unpalatable to many callers and call recipients alike. Taking a "cold-call" message and making it into a video will enables prospects to receive a polished message in a way that is convenient for them. In terms of measurement, tracking what a potential lead watches also can give salespeople more time to follow up with meaningful conversations and less time chasing prospects down.

•In Person Training: Advances in technology, increasingly busy schedules and tight budgets have made in-person training harder to justify. Using online video to educate eliminates the need to travel, book venues or print out and ship documents. More importantly, it enables people to learn at their own pace and on their own schedule. It's also possible to track the viewers of training videos to gauge the impact.

•Help & Support: Keeping customers and prospects happy and engaged 24/7 is a given in today's competitive environment. While some customers prefer to tweet questions, others want an FAQ or forum, and still others want more in-depth explanations. As expectations have shifted, responsive marketers are coming to realize that they must make many different types of resources - including video that is especially effective in showing complex nuances and procedures - available on demand.

Online Video Will Turn Cold Calls to Dinosaurs - MarketingVOX

MarketingVox reports: As online video becomes a more accepted, widespread, measurable and cost-effective communications tool it is poised to enhance - and even replace - some of the more labor-intensive marketing and training functions at many businesses, according to a recent blog post by Wistia (via MarketingCharts)

Wistia contends that video will likely supplement and replace the following five things in the not-too-distant future:

•Product Demos: The initial demonstration of a product or service no longer need take place in person. Instead, prospects can watch demos on-demand and become knowledgeable more quickly - and in advance of an in-person sales meeting. This, in turn, can free up salespeople to focus on ripe opportunities, provide more in-depth demonstrations to customers at the next stage in the purchase process, and increase meaningful interactions.

•Customer Testimonials: Providing prospects information about satisfied customers is often one of the most meaningful and effective ways to build trust and close deals, though such first-hand recommendations are often one of the hardest things to arrange. Interviewing customers for testimonials and packaging them on video will ensure they are at-the-ready when needed in a marketing or sales pitch.

•Cold Calling: Though cold calling is celebrated by the few salespeople who thrive on it, it is an often-maligned function that is unpalatable to many callers and call recipients alike. Taking a "cold-call" message and making it into a video will enables prospects to receive a polished message in a way that is convenient for them. In terms of measurement, tracking what a potential lead watches also can give salespeople more time to follow up with meaningful conversations and less time chasing prospects down.

•In Person Training: Advances in technology, increasingly busy schedules and tight budgets have made in-person training harder to justify. Using online video to educate eliminates the need to travel, book venues or print out and ship documents. More importantly, it enables people to learn at their own pace and on their own schedule. It's also possible to track the viewers of training videos to gauge the impact.

•Help & Support: Keeping customers and prospects happy and engaged 24/7 is a given in today's competitive environment. While some customers prefer to tweet questions, others want an FAQ or forum, and still others want more in-depth explanations. As expectations have shifted, responsive marketers are coming to realize that they must make many different types of resources - including video that is especially effective in showing complex nuances and procedures - available on demand.

Validate Your Twitter Followers

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Upcoming Facebook changes: 7 things brands need to know

Kevin Barenblat is co-founder and CEO of Context Optional reports:

Facebook recently announced a series of changes to its platform, and the roadmap has a substantial impact on how brands approach building a Facebook presence. While changes to Facebook's platform are nothing new, this is the first time the company has announced a series of 19 changes that will be implemented over the coming months.

Be sure to understand the implications of these changes before pitching your next Facebook project.

1. Email is now a supported channel
Facebook has long hidden user emails, but soon Facebook will provide developers access to a user's verified email address. For brands that are serious about engaging in an ongoing dialogue with their fans, email becomes a powerful communication method. Email will allow brands to better reconnect with users who have interacted with them on Facebook. This becomes important given that...

2. Status updates are no longer guaranteed
Previously users' streams included everything their friends and pages (including brand pages) published. Now the news feed has returned to a default view showing select highlights that Facebook's algorithm thinks are most relevant to the user, which may or may not contain your brand's message. There's still a live feed view, but it's no longer default, so only brand posts that fans interact with will appear in most users' streams.

3. Other communication channels are consolidating
Many brands rely on application-to-user and user-to-user notifications to reconnect with users, and this communication channel is disappearing. That means in order to remarket to users to let them know about new product launches, sales, events, or promotions, you'll need to acquire users' email addresses or send popular posts (per above).

4. Application canvas pages gain more control
The Facebook header is being removed from application canvas pages, giving brands that engage users via applications more real estate on the page and a more customized and branded look and feel. Users will still have the option of returning to Facebook near the top of the page, but for brands that were hesitant to build on Facebook until more branding was possible, now is the time to reconsider.

5. Profile boxes are disappearing
It's been a long time since profile boxes provided much value to brands, as most users don't spend very much time on that part of friends' pages. But that hasn't stopped many brands from creating applications to establish a presence on users' profiles. Within a few months, tabs will be the only way to integrate into the profile, so brands should be thinking now about creating an engaging communication strategy that best leverages email and status updates.

6. Enhanced Facebook share
For many brands and publishers, the value in marketing through Facebook is leveraging word of mouth. In fact, Facebook users share 2 billion pieces of content every week. The new Facebook share button includes a counter displaying the number of times that piece of content has been shared and is a valuable tool for any brand with a large existing audience on its site. This is a relief for content owners who struggle with replicating a presence inside of Facebook; instead, expect Facebook to offer more ways for your site to become more social.

7. Every webpage becomes a fan page
Facebook has long been about connecting people with each other, and it's expanding the graph from people to objects in what it's calling the Open Graph. Soon users will be able to fan not only your brand but a specific page, product, celebrity, movie, or SKU. These pages will also show up in users' profiles and in search results, and that page will be able to publish stories to the stream of its fans. This shifts social brand interactions from Facebook tabs to brand websites in a powerful way for brands and publishers. While currently farthest out in Facebook's announcement roadmap, the Open Graph has the greatest implications and opportunities for brands and publishers.

Expect 2010 to be a real breakout year for social marketing. For two-and-a-half years we've seen brands build strong followings inside of Facebook, but with these changes rolling out early next year, expect smart brands to better engage their best customers through their own channels by leveraging the power of personal relationships via Facebook's platform.

Eric Schmidt: How Google Can Help Newspapers

Video didn't kill the radio star, and the Internet won't destroy news organizations. It will foster a new, digital business model.

It's the year 2015. The compact device in my hand delivers me the world, one news story at a time. I flip through my favorite papers and magazines, the images as crisp as in print, without a maddening wait for each page to load.

Even better, the device knows who I am, what I like, and what I have already read. So while I get all the news and comment, I also see stories tailored for my interests. I zip through a health story in The Wall Street Journal and a piece about Iraq from Egypt's Al Gomhuria, translated automatically from Arabic to English. I tap my finger on the screen, telling the computer brains underneath it got this suggestion right.

Some of these stories are part of a monthly subscription package. Some, where the free preview sucks me in, cost a few pennies billed to my account. Others are available at no charge, paid for by advertising. But these ads are not static pitches for products I'd never use. Like the news I am reading, the ads are tailored just for me. Advertisers are willing to shell out a lot of money for this targeting.

This is a long way from where we are today. The current technology—in this case the distinguished newspaper you are now reading—may be relatively old, but it is a model of simplicity and speed compared with the online news experience today. I can flip through pages much faster in the physical edition of the Journal than I can on the Web. And every time I return to a site, I am treated as a stranger.

So when I think about the current crisis in the print industry, this is where I begin—a traditional technology struggling to adapt to a new, disruptive world. It is a familiar story: It was the arrival of radio and television that started the decline of newspaper circulation. Afternoon newspapers were the first casualties. Then the advent of 24-hour news transformed what was in the morning papers literally into old news.

Now the Internet has broken down the entire news package with articles read individually, reached from a blog or search engine, and abandoned if there is no good reason to hang around once the story is finished. It's what we have come to call internally the atomic unit of consumption.

Read more....

Google limits free news access to 5 a day

The search engine is changing its ‘First Click Free’ programme so that readers would not be able to look at more than five pages in one day.

The programme lets readers get around paying subscriptions or registration to news sites by accessing news articles through Google.

The move means users who now click on more than five articles in a day may be routed to payment or registration pages.

Google's senior business product manager Josh Cohen said: "Previously, each click from a user would be treated as free. Now, we've updated the programme so that publishers can limit users to no more than five pages per day without registering or subscribing."

The Big Money Facebook 50 | The Big Money

The Big Money Facebook 50 | The Big Money

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