Social Media

Analysis: The Top 10 Most Overused Metrics of 2007

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on December 17, 2007 - 9:34am.

We all know marketers love metrics. Flashy award winning campaigns are great and celebrity spokespersons are always appealing, but most of the time we try to base judging the success of a campaign on hard and fast metrics. The only problem is, many times the metrics that marketers use to gauge success are wrong, inaccurate, incomplete or just plain useless. There are two main reasons this happens ... precedent and ignorance.

MSNBC.com Acquires Social Media News Site Newsvine

Authored by Scott Goldberg on October 7, 2007 - 2:28pm.
Newsvine LogoNew York – Newsvine, a company that displays news via the contributions of its community, has been acquired by MSNBC.com.

Analysis: MSNBC Skips Social News Trend, Focuses on Visual News

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on June 28, 2007 - 1:47pm.

I2m_msnbc_newsbreaker_3Standing out for your online news offering is rapidly becoming almost impossible for publishers.  After all, as we each get smarter about using RSS feeds to only get the content we want, the old "news portal" sites of several years ago are becoming less and less important. 

Analysis: 6 Useful Social Media Tools and Sites For Women

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on June 26, 2007 - 9:52am.

When it comes to social media tools, most are not gender specific.  That's a good thing, as it means they can be uniformly useful for everyone, but it's a sign of evolution when more specifically targeted sites start to appear.  It happened with websites and now the same seems to be happening with several new interesting social media tools popping up targeted at women. 

What Should Yahoo Do About Social Networking And Search?

Authored by Scott Karp on June 20, 2007 - 9:07am.

The New York Times asks, “Should Yahoo stop trying to beat Google at its own game?” and VC Jim Breyer says, “They should take a hard look at the search business, and it may well be the right time to stop trying to out-Google Google.” Wow, that sounds awfully familiar — probably just a coincidence. In any case, the Times and others are reporting some radical notions that had been floating around Yahoo prior to Semel’s stepping down as CEO — acquiring MySpace from News Corp in exchange for a 25% stake in Yahoo and conceding search to Google.

Analysis: To Beat Google, Yahoo Needs To Change The Game

Authored by Scott Karp on June 19, 2007 - 11:08am.

In all the coverage of Terry Semel’s stepping down as Yahoo CEO to be replaced by founder Jerry Yang, there’s a standard reference to Yahoo’s failure to beat Google — and the implication that perhaps Yahoo can never beat Google. The main reason way Yahoo has lagged Google is that Yahoo has been trying to beat Google at its own game:

Is Social Media Revolution or Evolution?

Authored by Jay Baage on April 25, 2007 - 12:34pm.


It is interesting to see how fast trends shift. This is European fashion and lifestyle marketeer Alain Thys' stylish presentation from a marketing conference in November of last year. Now, 5 months later, bloggers already say that it is outdated and that participation and adoption of Social Media isn't as compelling anymore. Take a look and make up your own mind.

Product (RED): Smart Social Marketing or Meaningless Celebrity?

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on March 2, 2007 - 2:54pm.
I2m_productred_equalszero_1 In a great post over at PSFK - Piers publishes the content of a conversation he had with Julie Cordua, the VP of Marketing for the often talked about Product (RED) social marketing campaign.  In case you're among the few people that hasn't seen the campaign, it created waves last year by introducing a for-profit model where companies could sign on to create products that they would sell for profit that became part of a line of items furthering the Red brand and donate a portion of profits to The Global Fund.

Jaman and The New Global Niche

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on February 21, 2007 - 1:03pm.
I2m_jaman2 Ethnicity has always been an appealing niche for foreign language newspapers and magazines to local cable television programs.  Restaurants, churches and temples are all centers for exploring global cultures in the real world.  Yet on the Internet, the most successful ethnically focused sites seem to be the online dating sites such as Shaadi.com, JDate and Corazones.com - as well as online communities targeting ethnicities for networking.  The problem with this is that most of these sites are not inviting others outside a particular ethnicity to interact and learn about a culture.

10 Secrets of Successful Online Communities

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on February 12, 2007 - 11:23am.

Community Next Conference Program via FlickrThis past weekend I was moderating a panel at CommunityNext, a smart event focused on everything about online communities coordinated by Noah Kagan.  The event was a fun gathering of extremely smart folks from some of the hottest online communities today - and panelists/speakers shared many great thoughts on topics ranging from how to be more awesome, to the genesis behind HotorNot.com.  Through the day, I took several notes and during the flight back to the east coast, started to aggregate the day into some central lessons about online communities gained from listening to many of the speakers, as well as looking at what is making many of the sites from attendees stand out.  Here's my list of 10 lessons that I took away from the event, as well as a few great sites that are worth visiting for further exploration:

Yahoo! Pipes Offers The Next Evolution of Marketing with RSS

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on February 9, 2007 - 4:56pm.
I2m_yahoo_pipes_1 RSS is one of those technologies that has a relatively enigmatic name for a very simple concept.  The idea that you can provide a feed of content that others can subscribe to is the ultimate simplicity.  Yet so far, RSS has been used primarily to push content that is offered by one group to many subscribers.  The power of RSS is mainly in the fact that I can pull multiple feeds from very different content providers into a single location.  My RSS aggregator has news from MarketingVox, the NY Times, my upcoming Netflix movies, and tips from Lifehacker (among lots of others) all on a single page.  That's powerful stuff.  But what if I want to have an even more customized view?  There are plenty of services like Squidoo and Rollyo that have pursued an idea that in the past I have termed "human filtered search."  Whatever you call it, this is the growing trend of people filtering content for other people.  It's the idea behind those sites, as well as the basic concept behind social news sites like Digg or iceRocket. 

The Future of Online Communities: A Panel and a Poll

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on February 6, 2007 - 10:23am.
I2m_communitynextlogo This coming weekend, I will be moderating a panel during Community Next, a very interesting day long event focused on the evolution of online communities.  The topic of the panel is on exploring some of the smartest do-it-yourself tools out there for “creating, analyzing, and marketing your own online community" and I will be joined by Hiten Shah of Crazyegg, Matt Roche of Offermatica, Mike Jones of Userplane, and Joe Hurd of VideoEgg .  The focus of our session will be to identify what makes an online community successful and what tools are out there for helping launch, manage or optimize your own community.

Sun's Schwartz: A Model for the Social Media CEO?

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on January 17, 2007 - 12:50pm.
This past weekend, the Saturday Interview in the business section of the NY Times focused on Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun.  Over the course of a single column, Schwartz shared more insight into the evolving media world (and how businesses should work) than most other CEO I have seen in the recent past.  Among his gems is the (sadly) rare understanding that lawyers only provide legal advice – they don't make the business decisions, unless you let them.  How many great ideas have we all seen die because businesspeople have taken legal advice as gospel and refused to question it?  The headline of the NY Times piece quips, "Sun's Chief Doesn't Fear the Snarky" – take this along with Schwartz's nuanced view of how to properly use legal advice, and there is an interesting point emerging.  Could it be that the simplest reason why we are not seeing more organizations embrace social media comes down to fear of snarkiness and fear of lawyers?

CES and Marketing in the Age of Control

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on January 8, 2007 - 7:34am.
Last night Bill Gates shared his vision of the future to kickoff the Consumer Electronics Show - and focus attention during the annual gadget-fest on the role of Microsoft's Vista in how consumers will be using electronics and technology in the coming year. Not surprisingly, his focus was on "connected experiences" and how the vision behind Vista is not just a sexed up user interface for your PC, but also the promise of connecting all your digital devices, and more importantly, sharing content between them. When Bill Gates makes a prediction, it's worth paying attention to - and his prediction here is that users will continue to demand inter-connectedness from their devices. Yet if users are in control of content, they need to be able to share it more easily.

Top 7 Marketing Trends for 2007

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on December 29, 2006 - 7:48am.

As the year comes to a close, it's time to look forwards to next year and what are shaping up to be some key trends for marketers to track through the year.  To add to the already vibrant discussion of trends to pay attention to, here is my stab at a few top marketing trends that I will be watching in the new year (in no particular order):

Analysis: 3 Reasons SMO is Taking Off

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on December 18, 2006 - 2:40pm.
Social Media Optimization has been hitting the big time at several recent events on web marketing including a session entirely devoted to SMO at the recent SES Chicago conference last week and discussion of SMO at the recent Vegas Pubcon WebMaster conference. I was reading Lee Odden's recap of the session that featured many smart folks in the world of interactive marketing, including Neil Patel, Andy Hagans, Rand Fishkin, and Todd Malicoat. I really wish I had been in town to be able to attend the event and participate, but reading some of the posts about the event and session, it seems that the concept of SMO was introduced to the entire audience of search marketing professionals at the event and some even considered it the main theme of the entire event.

IDT Forms Mobile Unit, Acquires Norway's Zedge.net

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on December 18, 2006 - 11:47am.
Newark, N.J. - IDT Capital, a unit of the international telecom and technology firm, announced on Monday the formation of an IDT Internet Mobile Group.

The new division will be responsible for the acquisition, development and incubation of Internet and mobile content. With the announcement, IDT also announced its acquisition of Norway-based Zedge.net, a user-generated mobile content site.

iLike Debuts Social Music Discovery Service for iTunes

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on October 25, 2006 - 1:07pm.
Seattle - iLike.com on Wednesday introduced its social music discovery service for Apple's iTunes. The iLike Sidebar for iTunes helps users explore the libraries of their friends, while the iLike website gives users a profile of their music listening habits, and provides personalized recommendations of free MP3 downloads from GarageBand.com, the company's other website. Seattle-based iLike said it anticipates supporting other media players in the future.

The Dark Side of Social Media And 5 Ways to Avoid It

Authored by Rohit Bhargava on October 23, 2006 - 10:05am.
PR blogs have been on fire the past week debating the Walmart blog fiasco with Edelman at the helm.  Some have taken a subtle delight in Edelman's failure (see comments on Richard's response post), while others have shared fears about what this means for the future of PR and social media.  At it's core, the Walmart case illustrates what is quickly growing to become the dark side of social media - the ease with which the truth can be manipulated.