King of Shaves, the shaving brand and e-commerce site, is planning to release a Facebook application in what could be the first ever brand marketing use of the social networking site in this manner. Word leaked out via Twitter and a screen shot has been posted to Flickr.
So far brands in the UK (outside of media companies like Virgin and the BBC, see comment) have hung back form developing full-blown applications, preferring instead to use traditional advertising banners on the site.
King of Shaves, the shaving brand and e-commerce site, is planning to release a Facebook application in what could be the first ever brand marketing use of the social networking site in this manner. Word leaked out via Twitter and a screen shot has been posted to Flickr.
So far brands in the Uk have hung back form developing full-blown applications, preferring instead to use traditional advertising banners on the site.
moblog:tech, the new name for UK moblogging pioneers MoblogUK, has entered a new phase and is now looking for an ‘equity for investment’ deal.
The privately owned moblog:tech (MT) launched Moblog.co.uk in 2003 and is now now one of Europe’s biggest moblogging community sites. In fact pictures from the London bombings appeared first on the site, showing at the time that the emerging phenomena of ‘citizen journalism’ and user generated content could have dramatic impact on new events.
Moblogging – as they define it – is the process of posting online images, audio and video from mobile phones. Right now the site generates advertising and subscriber revenues, and features “Promoblogs“. These are branded promotional websites to which a rock band, or event or a community can send content from their mobiles. These are then customised or held as standalone micro-sites, and are also featured within the moblog:UK community. Clients pay a license fee for a 3-month or annual Promoblogs.
MT also offers the Participation Toolkit which allows them to create a separate white-label moblogging community site for a client and their target audience. This is possibly their most valuable asset at this time, outside of the online community of MoblogUK. A major client for this so far is Channel 4′s Big Art Mob project.
MT has a pretty experienced 5-person management team which includes, Mat Brown and Ben Godfrey (tech), Jonathan Allen (community), Lori Faye Fischler and Alfie Dennen (sales and marketing).
Dennen is also well known starting the “We are not afraid” viral campaign after the London bombings of July 2005.
moblog:tech, the new name for UK moblogging pioneers MoblogUK, has entered a new phase and is now looking for an ‘equity for investment’ deal.
The privately owned moblog:tech (MT) launched Moblog.co.uk in 2003 and is now now one of Europe’s biggest moblogging community sites. In fact pictures from the London bombings appeared first on the site, showing at the time that the emerging phenomena of ‘citizen journalism’ and user generated content could have dramatic impact on new events.
Moblogging – as they define it – is the process of posting online images, audio and video from mobile phones. Right now the site generates advertising and subscriber revenues, and features “Promoblogs“. These are branded promotional websites to which a rock band, or event or a community can send content from their mobiles. These are then customised or held as standalone micro-sites, and are also featured within the moblog:UK community. Clients pay a license fee for a 3-month or annual Promoblogs.
MT also offers the Participation Toolkit which allows them to create a separate white-label moblogging community site for a client and their target audience. This is possibly their most valuable asset at this time, outside of the online community of MoblogUK. A major client for this so far is Channel 4′s Big Art Mob project.
MT has a pretty experienced 5-person management team which includes, Mat Brown and Ben Godfrey (tech), Jonathan Allen (community), Lori Faye Fischler and Alfie Dennen (sales and marketing).
Dennen is also well known starting the “We are not afraid” viral campaign after the London bombings of July 2005.
Thanks to the “Facebook Isn’t Private, and 7 Other Things You Should Know” post I have taken the main points about its Terms and Conditions and summarised below. It makes for gritty reading.
1. The terms can change at any time of Facebook’s choosing.
2. Facebook is legally for personal use only (only actual people can create profiles. And you’re not supposed to profit from it. A profile for a business technically would be banned/deleted).
3. A single, individual user account (you can’t – under their T&Cs – have two accounts on Facebook)
4. You’re giving up a HUGE license (posting content gives Facebook a license to do whatever they want with your content).
5. Applications are NOT guaranteed safe (In other words, “installer beware.” A malicious application developer could break through Facebook’s security protocols and expose your info. That would probably be difficult to do, but Facebook wouldn’t have to take the blame).
6. Disputes are arbitrated under Delaware law in the US (If Facebook does something horridly wrong and you want to sue you can’t because you’ve already agreed to “final and binding arbitration”)
7. You surrender “all submissions” (If you give them a good idea for Facebook it becomes their property)
8. Privacy is NOT guaranteed: “[W]e cannot and do not guarantee that User Content you post on the Site will not be viewed by unauthorized persons. We are not responsible for circumvention of any privacy settings or security measures contained on the Site… …Please keep in mind that if you disclose personal information in your profile or when posting comments, messages, photos, videos, Marketplace listings or other items , this information may become publicly available.”
If somebody hacks Facebook, steals all your content and contact info you have no remedy against Facebook.
John Dvorak is an old-fashioned tech jounralist in the US who thinks we’re going to have another dotcom bust:
“Every single person working in the media today who experienced the dot-com bubble in 1999 to 2000 believes that we are going through the exact same process and can expect the exact same results—a bust…Today everything from YouTube to the local church has a social-networking angle. And this doesn’t even consider the actual social-networking sites, from MySpace to LinkedIn to Facebook to even Second Life. This scene is totally out of control and will contribute to the collapse for sure.”
Marshal Kirkpatrick is a startup guy and a former TechCrunch writer who nails this rubbish to the wall:
“I say: Social networking is an emerging utility that combines the functionality of blogging’s self publishing with the usefulness of email list serves. Social networking services make these activities more accessible than ever before… Why on earth is this man considered a leading voice on tech? I’m guessing that it’s because he speaks to the potent paranoia of much of the aging population – afraid in the face of a changing, confusing world that they will face humiliation if they bet on new tech, that they will be unemployed if things take a downturn or that they will lose their self-righteous know-it-all credentials if this new economy does succeed.”
Live blog of Ben Hammersley talk at Frontline Club. – excuse typos/errors….
QUESTION (supplied by Graham Holliday and delivered by me)
You had 91 twitter folowers, but you ‘follow’ just 2
Yu posted 44 pictures on flickr, but got few comments
You had 110 subs on YouTube , 6,000 views, few comments, but replied twice
The blog did not allow comments at all.
Only 20 Facebook ‘friends’
Beyond any comments you may have made on blogs, as far as I can tell, you “interacted” exactly seven times – one comment on YouTube and six replies – including one to Richard Sambrook and another to The Guardian’s Neil McIntosh – on Twitter.
With this in mind – and the fact that you and the BBC called this a social media experiment – how social was it really?
Ben’s Answer (paraphrased):
The story was not ‘pushed’ by the BBC.
Not that many people are interested in Turkish politics.
These were not successful traffic/ interaction figures, yes.
But the real point was that from the bbc.co.uk/turkishjourney page, 80% of the content there was built were built with social media tools / public tools
All were consumer social media tools.
In essense it was an internal facing project.
The vast majority of the content was not run off BBC software.
The key thing is – there is a huge driving force from the IT dept to do only stuff built ‘in house’
But this is done specifically on tools which were free, simple and available now.
So the question was can we get this thing into the BBC site under the radar?
Asnwer – yes – that was a huge success.
Yes, we screwed up a lot – it wouldn’t have been an experiment otherwise.
We did the behind the scenes videos in black and white on YouTube to separate them from BBC editorial.
[Q: What about lack of comments on the blog?]
Very little added value would have come from comments . Mark Mardel’s blog has been great but “every single comment thread has gone to shit.”
[later]
British Libel law prevented us from allowing coomments. And it was on MY BLOG and I didn’t want to get sued.
Brunch Bites 1.0, the first “salon” style event from Bites Media (the new mini-network of digital business blogs: tbites, mediabites, mobbites, musicbites) went very well today. In attendance were a wide variety of people drawn from digital media, marketing, mobile, music and the startup world of Web 2.0. These included Luke Razzell who is currently developing a Facebook application called Blog Friends; Walid Al Saqqaf, co-founder of TrustedPlaces; David Jennings, author of a book about to be published on social media and music (which I’ll review soon); mobile guru Helen Keegan of Beepmarketing; Thayer Driver from Chinwag; a new startup still in stealth mode; Anthony Goh, advertising strategist; Lloyd Davis; and serial Internet entrepreneur Steve Bowbrick, who I described as the Grande Dame of the UK internet industry. (I was trying to be reverential but it came out wrong!) Look out for the next Brunch Bites on August 29 (venue to be announced) or join the Facebook group or keeping an eye on bitesmedia.com / mbites.com. There are some photos on Flickr already (thanks Thayer! and here are mine) which make me look – entirely incorrectly – like I was holding court, but which were taken during the two minutes when I just outlined what the event was about an introduced people to each other. Honest!
Recent Comments