Web Strategy by Jeremiah

I’m respecting your limited time by publishing this weekly summary, read the summary, then quickly scan headlines, read the bullet, then click to learn even more.

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Web Strategy Summary
More money moves into this market in the form of investments and new versions of social networks are launched. Wordpress, and Mig 33 receive the largest chunks. As a potential recession looms, the companies that have raised capital will have a chance to outlast the storm.

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Investing: Mobile Social Network Mig33 raises $13m
Mig 33 a friendly branded social network lets users connect from anywhere on the globe to their contacts has raised a serious amount of money. I’ll expect a majority of that money to be pushed to the marketing budget in these crowded markets.

Investing: Blogging Software Wordpress get funding –go social
Automatic, the parent company behind wildly popular wordpress blogging software has received $29.5M in funding, (that’s a lot), which will likely develop social features, including a social networking type of model. Expect social networking to become a feature of nearly every site, including someday this blog.

Valuation: Widget ad revenue was estimated at about $20 million in 2007
MSNBC has an interesting article on widget valuation, and looks forward to 2008. Expect widget networks to continue to gain in growth in 2008, this is where advertising dollars will shift to.

Data: Enterprises concerned over Security and Resources for Social Media
Awareness ran a survey and found out the two many concerns for corporations revolve around the control over data, as well as the lack of resources to manage these programs. They’ve provided a white paper here.

Features: Facebook allows users to optimize profile
It’s safe to assume that many profile pages are overwhelmed with applications, as a result, Facebook has launched a feature that lets you create a separate profile page where you can segment applications. It’s a similar approach to tabbed browsing.

Copyrights: Hasbro misses a key opportunity with Scrabulous
Scrabulous is no more, but does this give birth to a new industry? Hasbro may have missed a huge business opportunity, but we should expect this same issue to occur again as the crowds take control of our brands.

Features: Geni launches news Timeline
With the popularity of Facebook’s newspage, Geni has launched an events update type of feature that lets you keep track of your family members updates, as well as post your own updates. Secondly, they’ve added an improved photo feature, all good features built on top of our first social graph: our family.

Upgrade: Facebook applications easier to embed
Although overhyped (partly my fault) Facebook has made it easier for widgets to be embedded on static websites now using client side javascript code, rather than depending completely on server side code. I’ve outlined exactly what this means for the web strategist.

Widgets: Low revenue from widget advertising
Mashable reports that videoegg’s eggnetwork of advertising is providing low advertising generation for it’s 3rd party widget network. Two things to remember: 1) this is the early days, and adoption and acceptance of this medium has not yet been realize to internet marketers and advertisers 2) Only a few will make a lot of money, and it will come from mass scale.

Launch: Moli, a social network focused on privacy
I was briefed by the Moli team, they’ve launched a social network with an emphasis on user privacy, it appears to be a website with a robust user experience, and many controls for the user to see who can access their information. Of course, time will tell as this crowded market decides on which network will gain adoption.

Leave a comment if this was helpful, or if you’ve anything to add. Feel free to email me if you’ve suggestions for next week’s digest.

Don’t forget to attend this Complimentary Webinar on Social Media Measurement How to Listen Effectively and Engage in the Conversation this Thursday at 12:30 EST/9:30PST with Glenn Fannick, Product Development Manager at Dow Jones.

It’s not often I’m able to do free webinars, often they require membership or payment, so this is real treat. I’m told there are over 800 registered, so please pass the word.

Need to prove successes to your boss? Measure your results in flight? learn more by viewing my other posts on social media measurement.

A Widget Case Study
Yesterday, I gave a teleconference on Facebook as a ready-made marketing program. I gave a few examples of success, and the audience was hungry for success metrics and numbers. One of the case examples was about rebranding an application/widget in this case, Rock You’s vampire application.

Sony rebrands popular Vampires Widget with 30 Days Night, upcoming Vampire movie
Vampires, which you may already know as the RPG where members bite each other to receive points (and duel) was already popular with over 3 million installs in Facebook.

Sony pictures, the parent company of the very scary 30 Days Night vampire horror film rebranded the existing application, and launched a sweepstakes contest to generate registrations and glean intelligence. The grand prizes? 4 wheel ATVs and $1500.

Specifically, they placed banner ads on the rebranded vampire applications which promoted the movie (one could assume that those who opt-in for the vampires application would also like a vampire movie) promoting the sweekstakes.

The measurable results?
The campaign was only live for 3 weeks, and there were 59,100 sweepstakes entries. (success was deemed at 10k, this clearly moved beyond that)
The visits (I don’t know if they were unique or repeated) were 11,642,051 for the bite page, and 17,652,567 for the stats page (I believe these are part of the interactive experience of the game.
Sony was happy, it exceeded expectations, and users of the application weren’t over branded.

RockYou asked me to keep the price confidential, but based upon the results they told me, I suggested they double the rates, this is despite what Mashable reports on.

What worked?

Fishing where the fish are: Sony figured out where the already existing community was (remember to fish where the fish are) and rather than trying to rebuild something completely by scratch, they leveraged an existing successful application.

Rely on specialists for new arenas: In my many briefings with vendors and clients, specialized firms often provide something a general interactive firm or corporate web marketing team can’t. They have experience, know their area, and in this case, they knew to rely on someone that already knew Facebook.

Compliment the existing user experience: Sony didn’t beat the 3 million existing users with heavy advertising (and I’m sure RockYou wouldn’t have let them) over the head, instead offered value by giving away prizes, and tied in a movie that already existed.

What could have been better?
In my opinion, it would be great if:

The campaign lasted longer than 3 weeks.

Rather than simply embedded, Sony could sponsor elements from the movie and integrate within the game. (vampires could fight at different scenes from the movie, key characters from the movie could become non-player characters, etc). They already have a multi-player game that could have tied in.

A spin off game could have emerged just around the game, where members could give virtual gifts to each relating to the movie, then cross-selling other sony products and merchandise.

Also realize there are very few applications in Facebook that are this popular, don’t expect these type of results to occur every time.

Widget Network Developers
Looking bigger, RockYou isn’t the only vendor doing this type of work, also see Slide, Clearspring, Gigya, and a bunch of others. If you’re in the space, feel free to leave a comment below adding to the conversation.

For those Forrester clients who attended the webinar, I hope that clears up the question (as I promised to find the answer), and thanks to Ro Choy and team of Rock You for the details. If you need to know more, read this weekly digest of the social network industry, or see all posts tagged Facebook.

Congrats to college graduate Andrew Cafourek for getting a job with Outrider. How’d he do it? by creating a professional looking site, being an excellent blogger, posting his resume, and learning how to use the tools to network with others –he demonstrated his web marketing prowess by doing it.

I’m always thrilled to see when the community connects, especially if it happens on my blog, and this is no exception. Andrew read my people on the move series, and connected with the folks at Outrider and received a job offer (read his post). He’s now packing his gear, moving to St Louis to start his new career, and life, straight out of college.

Jobs aren’t the only thing you should be thinking about, vendors should realize that where conversations are about their industry is there marketplace. In many cases I know the savvy buyers and savvy sellers are checking each other out in my comments, this is all encouraged as long as everyone is adding value to the conversation and not just taking.

Congrats to Andrew and the Outrider team for connecting!