So Facebook acquired hipster photo-sharing app Instagram for 1 billion dollars (cheap skates) and people went wild with the news. Facebook is on a spending spree—they recently gobbled up a load of patents from IBM, the staff behind the webcam eye-tracking software startup GazaHawk, and the staffs from Momentus Media and Caffeinated Mind. Instagram had about 30 million users at the time of purchase, who are reportedly uploading five million new photos to the service each day. Some Twitter followers lamented the end of Instagram’s “cool” factor”, while others raised questions over security. It remains to be seen wheat Facebook will do with so many ironic photographs. For a laugh, watch The Daily Show’s take on the buy-in.
Secretary of Sass
Similar to the Ryan Gosling “Hey Girl” meme that swept the internet a few months back, TextsFromHillary — a Tumblr of fake and hilarious text messages Secretary of Sate Hillary Clinton would send, caught everyone’s attention. The blog saw 83,000 shares on Facebook, 8,400 Twitter followers, over 45K Tumblr followers, as well as news stories from round the world. But unlike the “Hey Girl” meme which dragged into exhaustion, the duo behind TextsFromHillary ended on a high-note (like Seinfeld) and pulled the plug when Hillary Clinton herself (with a help from her staffers) chimed in: “Sup Adam. Nice Selfie Stace :-)” “ROFL @ ur tumblr! G2g-Scrunchie time. Ttyl?” Guess the ruse is up!
Generation Multitask
Nope, it’s not a headline from The Onion—a new study actually reports that Young Consumers Switch Media 27 Times An Hour. The study, which was commissioned by Time Warner Inc. and conducted by Boston’s Innerscope Research, claims consumers in their 20’s (aka “digital natives”) switch media an average 27 times in a non-working hour. All participants in the study wore biometric belts that monitored their physical responses as they used media throughout more than 300 hours’ worth of nonworking time. They also wore glasses with embedded cameras that kept track of what platform they used, and for how long. AdAge reported on the study along with comments from some very frantic and concerned advertising execs about the future of youth marketing engagement. But commentators acutely point out that the study only had 30 participants, and is in no way conclusive of young adult media behavior.
Twitter vs. The Man
Twitter had a power-to-the-people moment when it refused to hand over the Twitter account information of a Occupy Wallstreet Protestor by the name of Jeffrey Rae. Rae was one of several hundred activists arrested during a March 1 OWS demonstration in New York City. Twitter was subpoenaed by the New York D.A’s office seeking Rae’s account activity during the OWS protest, despite the fact that Rae was guilty of minor charges including disorderly conduct and blocking traffic. And even stranger, most of the data sought by the DA was publically available. Go Twitter.
Google Doodle
Cubicle workers got a pick-me-up on Monday morning upon opening Google, when they spotted a Google Doodle celebrating legendary British photographer Eadweard J. Muybridge. Google put its signature colors on the stop-action video sequence of a running horse that Muybridge produced in 1887, by using multiple cameras to take photographs of the animal in motion. Watch this delightful video here.
Show Me The money
The countdown to Tax Day usually has people on edge and in a foul mood, so you wouldn’t expect a tax company to be making (positive) waves in social media. But tax site Intuit (the makers of Turbo Tax) launched a 2-part social media campaign to get people excited about doing their taxes. AdAge reports that Intuit created a charity app (pledging toys if visitors took a quiz), and a poll asking people what they would do with their tax refund. Intuit now has over 34,000 followers on its Facebook page. What’s even more interesting is that Intuit was able to generate this amount of buzz almost entirely for free. Other sites are sure to look to Intuit for inspiration.
SEO Guru
We also came across a web series called “Manta Minute”, where Manta SEO Manger, Reuben Yau, discusses 5 tips to improve SEO when redesigning your website. Short, effective, and to the point, Manta’s message in a nutshell is: list your top landing pages and search phrases; make a list of old URL’s and new URL’s; don’t overwrite the robots.txt file; don’t skimp on testing; and consider hiring an SEO pro. Get enlightened:
The Rise of Pinterest
Last Friday, we reported on the release of Media Examiner’s “2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report”, which listed the top 5 social media sites as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, and YouTube, in that order. In just one week, Pinterest has climbed to the #3 spot, outranking LinkedIn, based on American users. The Daily Mail reported the change, citing Pinterest’s 104,415,903 unique visitors last month alone. And Experian has also reported that in Alabama, Oklahoma, Kansas, Utah and Missouri Pinterest is actually more popular than Facebook and Twitter—who knew?
The Pitch
And lastly, while not exactly social media news, AMC previewed a new series called “The Pitch” Sunday night, about 2 competing advertising agencies vying for a contract. The first episode saw ad firms McKinney, and Los Angeles-based WDCW battle it out for a deal with Subway to promote the chain’s new breakfast menu. This show is absolutely fascinating—we so rarely get insight into the creative processes behind huge ad campaigns. The team that won (spoiler alert) won by capitalizing on the trend of finding an up-and-coming YouTube sensation and creating a faux-organic commercial. Sure, letting your consumers know that you’re hip with the latest social media trends is a positive—but does it really take that many people and that much money to do a Google video search for “breakfast sandwich”?
Amazing how simple it can be to communicate with people and have them understand a certain topic, you made my day
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