Tim Elliott » Facebook

Links for December 13th through December 23rd

Tim — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 20:26:56 +0000

Shared links for December 13th through December 23rd:

Our New President Really Gets Social Media

Tim — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 00:22:17 +0000

I just checked my Facebook profile and received a message from Barack Obama. He linked a new video that took me back to his site to view what is posted on YouTube and below here. What is interesting is how easily his team has made it to share with friends via email.

Clearly our next President really “gets” social media. The next four years will be very interesting from a lot of perspectives.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfGNgacysHg[/youtube]

Bonus link: Edelman’s white paper about the Obama campaign and social media.

Facebook A Roach Motel?

Tim — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 17:54:26 +0000

Seems Robert Scoble has been locked out of Facebook after running a Plaxo sync script yesterday. Although it will be interesting to watch this story develop, I think the implications for companies using Facebook is the real story here.

As I wrote last month, I think companies should use existing social networks like Facebook to engage their customers and not create their own walled gardens. We don’t need yet another social network to join and Facebook has some interesting features that make it a good platform for marketing. But they also are a roach motel where your data is concerned, as Scoble’s troubles highlight.

This doesn’t mean that companies should avoid social networks that don’t let you export data, as they are just a medium for interaction and not just a new way to do email (although this seems to be a popular commercial usage from my experience). I’m hoping that most marketers will come to the same conclusion and not change their plans of using Facebook.

I don’t expect to see any long-term negative fall out from Scoble’s situation unless the folks at Facebook don’t do the right thing… given what they have done to date, that seems unlikely. My guess is Robert will pop back up as one of my Facebook friends before the week is out.

Facebook a roach motel? You betcha… but I don’t think it matters.

Bob Dylan and The Future of Advertising

Tim — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:05:59 +0000

Traditional advertising is in it’s last days as more consumers become producers and share experiences online via social networks like Facebook. So I was not surprised to see a friend send me the Bob Dylan Facebook application this morning. What did surprise me was how compelling it was as a way to get your message embedded within a spot for Bob Dylan’s new release.

Although the app is a bit glitchy getting your personal message set, it does work as advertised. It’s a great example of where advertising is going as brands encourage their customers participate in the process. It’s also good to see old dogs like Dylan get hip to conversational marketing… or at least his handlers are hip to it

You can see my shameless plug on my profile here.

Is Facebook The Future of Email?

Tim — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 17:13:22 +0000

I’ve been using Facebook more and more over these past few weeks and I really like the email functionality. Since the service is fully integrated with mobile devices, I can be notified when someone sends me a message on my mobile phone and read it on their mobile interface which works great on my 2 year old RAZR with the crappy embedded browser (Opera Mini doesn’t work reliably for some reason).