Yes, Activision is a client of mine. Specifically, Guitar Hero is a project that I work very closely with. As my buddy Agent M says, “awesome jobs are awesome”.
We helped push out the RUSH trailer yesterday, and for those of you that have played Guitar Hero before, you’ll see that this is pretty crazy game play. The epic “2112″ from RUSH is now a part of the game. Simply awesome. Check it out for yourself in the video below.
Almost every client I’ve worked with in social media wants data tracked and reported for practically every post, tweet, comment and sweepstakes that they participate in online, and rightfully so. From a business perspective, Key Performance Indicators (K.P.I.s) are important to help guide decisions and craft strategy. The problem that so many companies have with this process is that they don’t see it through to the most important part: the analysis and interpretation.
Data, without insightful interpretation, is worthless. It’s like staring at the instruments of an airplane, but not knowing how to use them to get you where you want to go.
So you have 200,000 Facebook fans…so what? How many of them engage on a regular basis? What countries are primarily represented, and is it important to your business? What time of day is best for you to post so that you get the most exposure? These are questions that should be asked, but often are not.
I think that so many people and organizations are in the habit of asking for reports that they just do it automatically, and assume that the process is over. The way I see it, the process is just beginning at that point, and data can be used to make important business decisions, particular as they related to social media, looking forward.
A few guidelines and suggestions for how to use the data you capture:
I spend a lot of time looking over data that has been scraped from all around the internet, and an equal amount of time interpreting what it means so that we can help our clients make important strategic and tactical decisions. What I’ve learned from all of this is that, no matter where you are pulling it from, data that stands by itself without good interpretation is at best worthless, at worst dangerous.
Earlier in the week I had the opportunity to see the fruit of many, many weeks of labor. Microsoft teamed with Cirque du Soleil to present the Project Natal event at the Galen Center in Los Angeles, which kicked off the week for E3, the biggest gaming convention in the world.
First, a brief explanation of my role in all of this. Our company, M80, is the social media agency of record for Xbox, and as such we get to do some wicked-cool things with them, but this was one of the best. For several weeks we’ve worked with teams inside and outside of Xbox to come up with hashtag programs,contact and invite people to the event and just to create general “buzz” strategies around all of this. We use social media to amplify messages, and this event was no exception. Without going into granular detail, I will just say that the teams at M80 and the other groups we worked with spent countless man (and woman!) hours working to create excitement and conversation around something that most people had no detailed information about…they just knew it would be grandiose and awesome.
The event was put on two nights, Sunday the 13th and Monday the 14th, each identical to the other, and each designed to reveal the new name and features of the long-speculated and anticipated “Project Natal”. So, at 9pm on Sunday the 14th the name was officially released to the world: the new controller-free gaming and entertainment system for Xbox will be called “Kinect“. Continue Reading…
I think everybody knows that pornography is amazingly prevalent on the internet, but sometimes it takes an infograph to really put it in perspective. Personally, I wish these statistics weren’t so extraordinary, but unfortunately they are, and it is news worthy. I’m writing about this here because I’m seeing more and more pornography (spam and otherwise) being shared within social networks and I think it’s only going to get worse.
Check out the info-graphic below (I usually call these things data porn, but somehow it just seems a little too pointed in this case), among other things you’ll see that:
I’ve been a big fan of Foursquare for some time, going as far as to call it the “next” social network way back in October 2009. For those of you that enjoy Foursquare as much as I do, I’m sure you’ve often checked into a place and thought (or even complained out loud), “I check in here all the time, how many more check ins until I’m mayor?” Wonder no more.
I just checked out a new site called appropriately, When Will I Be Mayor? The premise is pretty simple and it does exactly what it states in the title, it helps you predict how many more check-ins you need to (potentially) become mayor of a venue. It’s easy enough to use, just sign up for an account then log in using Foursquare OAuth, and you’re in! It will do a lot of API calls then give you a list of venues you’ve been checking in to and tell you approximately how many more check-ins you need to gain mayorship! It appears that the assumption is that the person you are trying to de-mayor (is that a word?) doesn’t check in any more times, and they will, so adjust accordingly.
If nothing else, the site is fun and adds another layer to the already popular Foursquare service. I’m a Foursquare purist and think that the best way to earn a mayorship is to legitimately check in when you frequent a particular place, so I’m not really going to watch this diligently, but it does give me something to aim for. Watch out, Kyle…M80 will be mine some day!
Give the service a shot and let me know what you think. You can also keep up with their blog here, and naturally can follow them on Twitter here.
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I’m very fortunate; I have a job that allows me to work with some amazing brands. As such, I get to see a side of social media that many people probably don’t spend a lot of time looking at; comments from other users. A lot of comments for a lot of users. One of the great things M80 does so well is page moderation, and since we handle a lot of accounts that have hundreds of thousands…even millions…of fans on their Facebook pages, we are pretty good at quickly assessing spam, trolling, flaming and all sorts of online behavior.
As much as I dislike the general nastiness that can occur on a brand wall or in comment threads, I have to admit that it really gets to me more than just about anything when it’s done by younger kids. Although it’s aggravating to have to delete or defend against a minor (they even have an acronym…ATYO which stands for “annoying twelve year old”), as a father myself I’m more incensed by the fact that there doesn’t seem to be any parental monitoring. Continue Reading…
Just watched a video from the Ford Fiesta project and I love it. Very effective for a few reasons, I think:
So check it out, and judge it for yourself. Effective? Why or why not? The video is embedded below, it can be found on YouTube here and the Ford Fiesta site here.
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Did you enjoy this post? Consider subscribing to the RSS for future updates delivered straight to a feed reader, or come over to Twitter and say hi…that is where I do most of my one-on-one engagement
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In a move that I hope is a signal that good things are ahead for Facebook page admins, Facebook has made a very subtle change to the way wall comments can be managed.
Spam is an ever-increasing problem on Facebook, particularly on Fan Pages with huge followings (I know, they’re not “fans” anymore, but everybody still calls them that). As a page administrator, our two options to this point have been to delete the message completely, or more to my liking, reporting the spammer/offender by clicking “report” and then briefly describing the problem. This would send a report to Facebook, and we had the option to request the offender be banded from the page. I usually picked this as the vermin were rarely first timers.
Today, when I took a glance over the pages we manage, I noticed that “report” was gone, replaced with “flag”. Naturally I had a lot of spammers on the page I was looking at, so I clicked “flag”, but was disappointed that I received an error message each time, telling me the action couldn’t be performed. I ended up just deleting the posts.
This very small change gives me great hope that Facebook may be making the pages more admin-friendly. I can only speculate on what is being rolled out, but I’m hoping for big things! On my wish list: Continue Reading…
Since their announcements at F8 about Open Graph Protocol (OGP), I’ve been following Facebook far more closely that I normally do. Why? From the moment I watched the videos about what OGP does, I knew that the way the internet works will be changed forever. Today I saw something that confirms that Facebook now controls the internet. No, I’m not saying that to be sensational or dramatic, I believe it to be true…a shift has occurred with OGP that will forever change how brands and consumers interact, and Facebook owns it all. How do I know? Because long time rival Google is already embracing Facebook’s new protocol.
More about that in a moment. But first, if you are not familiar with what Facebook has done, let me give you a very brief overview.
UPDATED: SEE NEW STEPS IN HOW-TO (BELOW)
It’s only been a day since Facebook announced sweeping changes to their platform at their F8 conference, but already the implications are being seen around the web. Check out what Levi’s is doing on their site…very cool stuff. Essentially, they are personalizing each web page you visit based upon your Facebook friends and their preferences. As I’ve pondered and discussed what this means to marketing, to brand and to consumers, one question comes up again and again…what if I don’t want to participate?
It’s a fair question. As it stands right now, if you do connect to a web site that is using the new Facebook Open Graph Protocol you are sharing a lot of information by default, including your activities & interests, your birthday, photos you’ve been tagged in, even your family and relationship status! Continue Reading…
