Digital Talent Agency

MySpace Stars: Is Your Celebrity 'Friend' a Famous Fake?

By Hollie McKay for Fox News.

"In social networking sites like MySpace, users can become "friends" with Paris Hilton, Jenna Jameson, Hilary Duff, Madonna and "America's Next Top Model” winner Adrianne Curry, just to name a few. These profiles are real. But be warned: your new celebrity friend may be a faux.

Entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Donald Trump, for example, have more than 30 poser profiles, while media magnets like Britney Spears and Paris Hilton have hundreds."

The lack of control can be damaging to someone's image.

The complete article here.

Bemes, clouds and MySpace: Welcome to the brave new world of retail.

Some questionable new nomenclature aside, there are some good insights in this article by Tom Hayes and Micheal Malone for the Wall Street Journal

"With this shift toward self-organization by consumers, national advertising campaigns as we know them will increasingly become a waste of time and money for many companies. The trick for brands is to cohabit social spaces with these consumers. Social media, and its verb form, "friending," requires entirely new forms of advertising: bottom up instead of top down, personal rather than public, and subtle rather than full frontal."

"Brute force marketing won't work inside social networks. The best online marketing now takes place among people who know and trust each other. Consider how rumors work. Like a rumor, a beme is a bit of useful information that rewards each person who passes it along. Want to be a sensation? Create a beme (business meme) that consumers willingly accept and share with others."

Full article here.

Twilight's Online Marketing Success

by Cyndy Aleo-Carreira for the Standard

"The online marketing for the film has been astounding. It's a complex, multifaceted outreach effort to fans and new customers, comparable with what the Obama campaign did online before the election. The online campaign has generated a huge amount of buzz for the movie, and a surge in online sales for tickets, books, and the upcoming film soundtrack.

In fact, if you need proof that the Web can encourage young people to buy music, look no further than the soundtrack sales data. Billboard announced yesterday that the soundtrack had reached the number one spot on the charts, selling 165,000 copies in its first week of release, 29% of which (48,000) were digital copies, making it the second highest for online sales since the company began tracking them. The soundtrack marketing effort has been highly successful, ranging from videos released on author Stephenie Meyer's site to exclusives available for fans depending on format and place of purchase: iTunes has a digital booklet and three additional songs, while the physical CD contains a poster from the movie, with several different posters randomly placed in the CD cases. In addition to the Billboard ranking, the soundtrack currently sits at the top of the iTunes chart, as well as #4 on Amazon's MP3 Albums chart, and #3 on Amazon's music chart for the physical CD. Amazon is also seeing huge sales for the books, with Twilight: The Complete Illustrated Movie Companion at #37, and the book the movie is based on at #5 two years after its original release."

from an online survey of Fandango ticket buyers:

"Fandango has an informal survey the site is taking of users indicating interest in purchasing pre-sale tickets for Twilight. Over 2000 have responded, and the results show some interesting trends. Of those who completed the survey, 41% say they are online all the time, and another 34% say they are online several hours a day, and 4% have their own Twilight fan site or series-related blog. They are also social media-savvy, with 20% saying they "always check" MySpace and 23% "always check" Facebook. The age spans also seem to indicate that the book and film have a wider appeal than the "young adult" audience they are geared for; 41% of intersted ticket buyers are 25 years and older, and 29% couldn't think of another film that appealed to the whole family as they believe Twilight will."

Here's the complete article.

Repurposing Archival Footage

Here's the original.

Here's the VW re-appropriation.

Golden Era TV meets the Digital Age

By David Sarno

When shows like "The Frank Sinatra Show" and other television series were produced, no one predicted Youtube.

"As television collectors large and small continue to digitize and upload thousands of rare old film reels and videotapes, YouTube is threatening to become a repository of television history that could rival the nation's leading broadcast museums, both in the scope of its offerings and in the number of people it can reach."

With this YouTube-based resurrection, however, has come not just nostalgia but a set of legal questions as tangled as a reel of tape that's come off its spool.

For one thing, a Dickensian legal impasse arises when a collector owns a piece of one-of-a-kind footage that's still under copyright. In a case like that, the collector owns the footage, but not the rights, while the rights-holder owns the rights but not the footage."

Here's the complete article.

More Global Social Network Insights

via socialmediatoday by Greg Verdino

"A couple of interesting things for me: (1) Friendster, the social network first mover that is so widely considered a failure here in the US that its brand name is sometimes used as a verb meaning 'to be lose your lead and be trounced by a competitor who learns from your mistakes and does what you do smarter and better,' is still tops in Asia; (2) two of the top properties -- Gaia Online here in the states and Cyworld in Asia -- are not mere MySpace-style social networks; both incorporate virtual world elements, hinting that Second Life or no Second Life, consumers (especially youth and teens) are moving toward virtual worlds to interact with one another."

Here the complete post.

Social Network World Map: Why Do Indians & Brazilians Love Orkut?

click here for a larger map
via blog Gauravonomics

"Indian and Brazil are the only two countries in the world where Orkut is the most popular social network.

I have often wondered what joins Brazilians and Indians in their love for Orkut. The answer is a combination of serendipity, first mover advantage, faster loading time, simplicity of the name, similarity of the name to Hindi/ Portuguese sounds, simplicity of the user interface, and association with the Google brand name, but the most powerful reason is the lax attitude towards privacy common to Indians and Brazilians."

The complete article here.

Social Networking Explodes Worldwide as Sites Increase their Focus on Cultural Relevance

via Comscore

During the past year, the total North American audience of social networkers has grown 9 percent compared to a much larger 25 percent growth for the world at large. The Middle East-Africa region (up 66 percent), Europe (up 35 percent), and Latin America (up 33 percent) have each grown at well-above average rates.

“While the social networking trend first took off in North America, it is beginning to reach a point of maturity in the region,” said Jack Flanagan, comScore executive vice president. “However, the phenomenon is still growing rapidly in other regions around the world – especially as the established American brands turn their focus to developing markets.”

All the stats and full report here.

The Global Social Promise

The world messaging promise.  Imagine a new form of communication: dynamic, localized, timely, and culturally focused (native language, local learning).  Social networks are forming the world largest meet and greet (growing at 25% next year).  DTA provides unified and custom messaging across major platforms worldwide.

      

Social network site users 'are chronically unfaithful'

by Rhys Blakely for the Times Online

Users of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are “chronically unfaithful” with nearly half regularly using more than one site and one in six using three or more, according to a report.

The findings, by Parks Associates, the analysts, underscore the problems faced by social networks in keeping young flighty users engaged in a market where the majority of services are free to join and use.

The infidelity of users also raises questions over the long-term futures of the business models embraced by social networks, who rely heavily on their "stickiness" — or ability to keep audiences on their sites for long periods — to sell advertising space at premium rates.

According to Park Associates nearly 40 per cent per cent of users of MySpace also keep profiles on rival sites such as Friendster and Facebook.

Loyalty among the smaller social networking sites was lower, with more than 50 per cent of all users actively maintaining multiple profiles across different sites.

Park Associates suggested that the wandering behaviour of social network users could open opportunities for new sites and software developers who build applications that can link different networks.

The entire article here.