A brief look to top media, web portal and agency companies.
It’s a late news, but still important for me. Also, it has not been updated yet. Yammer is the winner of Techcrunch50 Startups 2008. Yammer is an enterprise version of Twitter. So, you answer, what are you working on question by using Yammer. It allows people post news, links, ask questions, get answers. The most followed people can be seen. This is a private Twitter only for employees of a specific company. Just like Facebook in the early days, which required a university e-mail address to join, Yammer requires a corporate email address to join.
Techcrunch50’s people choice is Iamnews, a global open newsroom. A blog or any Web publisher can use it to solicit submissions from citizen journalists—videos, photos, links, Twitters, notes, or full articles The Web publisher then takes all the submissions and pulls together the best ones to create a post or article.So, the aim is make the media brands buy news from Iamnews, instead of Reuters. It reminded me Wikipedia.
Here is the other 50 Techcrunch Startups.
Now, it’s time to go to amazing South By Southwest Festival in Austin. It’s an annual music, film and digital industry event that takes place every spring in Austin, Texas. SXSW Interactive is an important part of the festival because of attracting digital entrepreneurs from all around the world by focusing on emerging technologies. For instance, Twitter is launched at SXSW Interactive in 2007. Therefore, it’s important to know who the speakers are and what they talk about. Here is the 2009 speakers lists to have an idea what’s going on digital world. This is a long list with people from Yahoo, Google, Twitter, Wired Magazine, wonderful agency Crispin Porter+Bogusky, Current TV, Digitas, Vodafone, Creative Commons, IDEO, Ask.com, Microsoft, Flickr, Digg, MIT Media Lab, of course the University of Texas and so on. Hope to watch all the talks later on the website.
Mashable.com listed 40 of the best Twitter brands. I think, Twitter works best for the brands that needs immediate updates, such as for finance, travel or entrertainment companies.
From Mashable’s list, Jetblue, Hertz and Wachovia are in my top list.
Jetblue informs its customers daily about flights, delays and travel deals via Twitter. Twitter usage also supports Jetblue’s user friendly brand image.
Similar to Jetblue; Hertz, the car rental company, also uptades its customers about car rental deals, promotions for specific locations and discount coupons.
Wachovia is another company, uses Twitter for daily updates. Dolar rates, mutual funds, annuities and stocks are the financial topics that people need to check regularly during the day. So, Waxhovia is doing good on Twitter by providing necessary info.
In Turkey, users are no longer have a chance to have mobile SMS updates via Twitter. This problem decreases the effectiveness of the brands using Twitter. But, still Turkish brands should begin using Twitter. So far, I don’t know any Turkish brand using Twitter except Mustafa Sarigul, who totally duplicates Barack Obama in terms of marketing.
Adage ranked the top 941 media and marketing blogs. The first three are marketing guru Seth Godin’s blog, Search Engine Land and Search Engine Watch. My all time favourites from this list are Micro Persuasion, Adver Blog, and very funny BannersBlog. In addition to the list, agency blogs are another good source for latest works, such as Tribal DDB’s.
Kraft Food has launched a new iPhone and iPod touch application that offers consumers access to food and meal-planning ideas.
Called the iFood Assistant, the app can be downloaded from the Apple App Store for installation on any iPhone or iPod touch. The app targets consumers on the go looking for recipes.
The iFood Assistant includes more than 7,000 tested, searchable recipes with detailed instructions and video demonstrations and an alternative horizontal view to follow along while cooking. The iFood Assistant costs 99 cents to download from the Apple App Store on the iPhone or iPod touch.
Hope to see these kind of apps in Turkey.
Bannerblog.au has a list of 120+ agency and brand christmas card list. My favourite one is Akqa’s simple but creative Microwave Youtube video. As far as access to Youtube is banned in Turkey, people need to try diffferent ways to watch the video. So, just search it as Akqa Microwave video.
Prescribe Nation is a social experiment by Vaseline. Vaseline first finds people with the highest need for a good moisturizer for their skin. These people live in Alaska, in a village callled Kodiak. Then, Vaseline finds Retal. She is a mother of four, vocal instructor and maternal pillar of the 6.000 strong Kodiak population. She becomes the product ambassador in Kodiak, and she manages to seed the product to almost 1000 people in the village converting them to brand fans as well.
The seeding experiment has been followed day by day by the agencies, that spent almost 20 days with the local community, interviewing people and shooting their lives through their skin. All the material has been used to create a commercial as well as rich footage for the website.
This campaign has all the steps of interactivity. In addition, you get 1 off coupon on Vaseline in case prescribing it to others or yourself.
Context Optional is a social marketing company that provides applications aimed at engaging the social sites’ audience. Miller, Absolut and Microsoft recently launched Facebook applications with Context Optional. They worked with Digitas and designed a toasting application that celebrates everyday. Absolut’s Facebook application is for voting the best bartender. And, Microsoft allows users to create slices of pie, then share them with friends that enables to promote Internet Explorer 8.
Some of the other clients of Context are Electronic Arts, Bank of America, Kraft. And, they’re working with the top digital agencies in the U.S. such as Digitas and Organic.
By the way, Inside Facebook is wonderful blog that’s needed to be checked out frequently, especially by marketers to track Facebook.
