Matt Singley | Social Media Optimization

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“. (more…)

Yesterday, Facebook’s F8 conference created quite a wave of buzz when they announced the release of the Open Graph API. Personally, I’m very excited about this from a marketing point of view. But, there was another announcement that was just as exciting to me that didn’t get nearly the same coverage as Open Graph: Facebook and Microsoft have become unlikely bedfellows, rolling out the new Docs.com site.

The short version: a personalized document sharing site that lets you create, upload and share Office files with your Facebook friends. I haven’t seen a more obvious shot across the bow of Google Docs, and I think this site will only pick up speed as more people discover it.

The site is slick and simple, with headers that will let you see your docs, your friends docs, or add a new doc. The “Add a Doc” section offers to ways to share: either you can upload an existing document from your computer, or you can create a new document using the online version of Word, Excel or PowerPoint. (more…)