Kraft cheesy singles -- using social apps for branding

Out with friends last wk from a local social marketing firm and while enjoying the pleasant blend of mojitos and metabolic processes, the topic of branding and advertising on social media bubbled up. A silly and giddy exchange ensued. Agreed that a Kraft page on Facebook is like a box of mac and cheese in the toiletries section, I suggested a Kraft cheesy singles Likeness or dating app. Why not? How about Kraft cheesy singles Likeness questions?

How do you like your singles?

a) cheesy cheesy cheesy!
b) goodness all in one wrapper
c) warm
d) in the bread

Where do you get your singles?

a) at the corner store
b) at the bar
c) one at a time please!
d) in bulk

Where do you keep your singles?
a) stored up for a lonely night
b) in your pantry
c) in my drawers
d) in the bread

and so on...

Facebook users would click through and match with their friends. Krafty or silly, it'd sure be more fun than joining a Kraft Facebook page....

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[Resist] [Submit} ... advertising in facebook dialog boxes?

Here's a bug worth noting, if only for the fun of it. I've always wanted to see a dialog box pick up the cause of users everywhere by offering a choice of "submit" or "resist." Utterly useless of course. Perhaps an idea for a t-shirt.

Well this one must be a bug, because the I had just removed the exact same event successfully with options of "remove" or "do not remove." If this is social media marketing, it earns points for creativity. Whether it would count as user choice, however... Maybe if I opt not to remove and then try again I'll get a different ad in place of the "remove" button? Or is this the only sponsor the event organizer has lined up? If so, and the option is to go to the event or check out the Qbox player, I should take the latter. But will it show up in my activity feed? And if it did would my feed state that I'm going to the event and checking out the Qbox player?

Will users submit to advertising of this form? Methinks they'd rather resist!

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Scoble banished for botting Facebook

Folks who know me know that one of my interests last year was social analytics -- and that I'm interested in new ways of capturing and representing our online profiles and activities. Well the news that Robert Scoble's been kicked off Facebook for running scripts indicates, for now at least, that we're going to have to wait on the social networking sites to give us data after all. There's nothing unexpected in this, and I would be surprised if Scoble was caught by surprise.

http://scobleizer.com/2008/01/03/ive-been-kicked-off-of-facebook/

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Twitter vs Facebook status feeds

Twitter was conceived as a status updater copasetic with sms. Ironically though, it's become a personal broadcast service, while facebook's status updates read like true updates.

We write to an audience, in this case twitter followers or facebook friends. Here facebook has the advantage in that we can take our audience for granted, whereas on twitter our sense of the audience generally diffuse.

Twitter does produce those brief conversational runs -- an effect of the tool's strange manner of creating presence.

Twitter posts are more likely to be conversation starters. and are more talkative. They often invite acknowledgment if not response.

Facebook status updates tend to be tales and statements, told in a non-conversational tone and for the purpose of getting on the radar.

Twitter can be more addictive for the reason that we might itch to check it -- for replies or news. It's more psychological.

Facebook's feed is more of a social utility, and it seems less psychological (there are pokes, walls, and apps for that).

I'm back to blogging. Took a break in order to focus on a couple new social interaction design white papers and to work on some company ideas.

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You looking at me? Invisibility at Facebook

According to Techcrunch last week, Facebook has enabled the following updates to privacy controls, hand in hand with its grand opening (to the public; facebook was an invite only community):

• Block other users in specific networks from searching for his or her name.


• Prevent people in those networks from messaging, poking and adding him or her as a friend.


• Control whether his or her profile picture shows up in search results.

I don't have anything against Facebook. I'm a triber myself, but that owes more to being in San Francisco and discovering social networking years ago. Tribe today is a hidden gem, a hole in the wall in the bustling downtown of myface.

One can't help but see the remnants of cliquish antagonisms, though, in the new privacy controls listed above. It seems Facebook members are actually searched out by name (but only by members of a network (read: school/group)). Glad I didn't do anything terribly cruel to anyone in school. Glad I tied up all those aborted flings and unfinished relationships. Glad I'm old enough that my picture is probably not recognizable to anybody I knew intimately back then! And phew, I knew who my friends were -- because I wouldn't have anybody citing my friendship unless it was the real thing!

Privacy controls have a double function on social networking sites.

• they allow users to describe their relations, especially friendships, with others


• they allow users to manage their "presence availability" online, meaning that they allow users some control over access others have to them, be it simply referring to a user, seeing his/her picture in search results (to wit, new facebook features), or be it communication settings like IM, skype availability, commenting, emailing, etc.

One can't help but view Facebook's update as an attempt to head off attempts by new members to mine facebook for old connections, friendships, relationships, enmities... It's as if an online social network were gearing up to meet actual social networks: present, meet the past.


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