by Jonathan Marshall

You will get very different answers depending on who you talk to, but everyone seems to have an opinion on the subject. Some people say that social media is just a fad, anyone working in marketing firms or advertising agencies will say that social media is the biggest shift since the industrial revolution.

Regardless of what anyone says, the numbers don’t lie, and social media is where everyone’s target market is at today. In my opinion, which clearly sides with the advertising gurus, social media is here to stay and it has completely changed the way we communicate – on a global level.

This post isn’t debating it’s use for marketing and advertising, as we are still discovering new tools for those purposes every day, but this video makes a pretty tough argument for social media being an absolute cultural phenomenon. What do you think? Re-tweet and let us know your opinion.

by Jonathan Marshall

While it is difficult to understand how any of these guys will ever get a girlfriend after this video- I am even more confused as to who MSI is going after with this one??? Which segment of their target market has been slipping, and how is this targeted to them? In addition to normal specs like speed and memory, clearly this skinny laptop’s best selling point is no carrying case necessary…. Sorry- out of the dozens of butt jokes that flooded to the front of my mind, that one made it in this post.

Anyway, down to the real business- does this kind of video work? For MSI, no. Their brand identity doesn’t have the bravado to be taken seriously with this stunt. Not that this interactive video was intended to be taken seriously, but there is a difference in how we as the audience laugh at this. For example, if Apple put this video on YouTube, we would still laugh and think it’s ridiculous, but ultimately we would most likely feel that it is clever. With MSI, people think “just another PC company,” – if they even think of them at all… I don’t. As a creative agency, if the previous work for the client wasn’t risky, humorous and ridiculous like this video is, the chances of this type of video working are slim-to-none. Changing the identity of a company can be a very challenging, if not impossible task after they have already established themselves as a completely different type of brand.

This just goes to show that even though the video was funny, if the message or even personality of the humor doesn’t match up with the company, not only is the attempt ineffective, it can work against you. Many of the comments below the video were disapproving at best, one saying “I didn’t even know who MSI is, but now that I do, I will always think of how stupid this video is…” Sorry to say, butt it looks like it’s time to head back to the drawing board guys.

by Jonathan Marshall

FriendFeed, the social-identity hub that quickly stalled after it’s initial launch, has suddenly accepted a friend request from the largest player in social media. Facebook’s acquisition gives consumers, marketing professionals and future social media communities an entirely new reason to join in the conversation. Facebook realizes something that no one else has picked up on, and it’s going to extend their dominance not only in the social media industry, but eventually allow them to go head-to-head with Google…. Yes you read that correctly.

Combining Social Identities

On FriendFeed, users can combine status updates from many different services including Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Pandora and Amazon. This is where Facebook originally adopted the idea for their own community. Those users can follow each other across the seemingly-endless collection of those services to get all of their updates in one community.

The best part of FriendFeed is its search functionality. Without having to log-in or even register a profile on the site, a marketer can search every FriendFeed user’s updates from the site’s home page. This can be a great way to search users’ updates across dozens of services so that the marketer won’t wind up searching each network individually. Even though Twitter has been around for a while now, marketers still seem to have a hard time remembering to search Twitter- so this is a great way to gain a perspective on what specific consumers are talking about from multiple sources.

Facebook, meanwhile, has been making it easier for its users to share updates from other sites. It, like FriendFeed, wants to be more of a central hub in the social portal. Even though this is FriendFeed’s bread and butter, Facebook doesn’t really need them to make this happen. What Facebook is doing instead is stressing the importance for consumers and marketing professionals to have a place to share all of their status updates in one place.

This all goes back to Real-time Social Search

Hopefully, through the FriendFeed acquisition, Facebook will make it easier to search these status updates. In my opinion, this is where Facebook is in need of drastic improvement, it’s VERY difficult to search for anything on Facebook. They recently released an article talking about how they plan to focus more on that experience. Now imagine if on Facebook you could search what consumers are publicly sharing anywhere- that is where the real gold is in this acquisition. Being able to see what your friends/clients/target market are saying in different social communities (as many have a completely different social element than Facebook) will be priceless to marketing professionals.

The Actual Value of the Acquisition

Even though Google is hands-down the King in search today, they do have a weakness. And even though they are currently working to better their search functionality with “Caffeine,” (their latest version) it’s not real-time search as this entire post has been eluding to. Every blog that I have been reading this week suggests that FriendFeed’s search functionality, the connection with other communities or focus on real-time are the advantages. While all of those are well and good, great actually, none of them have anything to do with what Facebook is really thinking.

The real value has been determined most recently by the users, and the content that users eat, sleep and breathe all the time every day. The viral, self-made, low-budget and generally unnecessary content that drives marketers crazy- that is what all consumers are obsessed with. The random and pointless twitter updates, the nonsensical YouTube videos and the ridiculous, self-destructive photos people throw on their Facebook profiles. This fascination with hearing what our friends think about everything from a new restaurant to what they ate for breakfast is what both Facebook and Twitter realize is the key to the future of social media.

That being said, here is my final point- thanks for being patient… When we search for information in Google, sometimes it’s difficult to decipher which results are created by our friends or amateurs, and which results are scholarly and trustworthy. For many, this can become annoying. However, Facebook realizes that if you can simply search for what your friends are thinking/updating and immediately separate that information from everything else- you have an extremely commanding suggestion/recommendation engine. When this catches on, and it will- Twitter’s days are numbered.

by Jonathan Marshall

Earmuffs and blindfolds for easily-offended viewers, today’s post contains explicit material… so now you are warned. Today the Jacob Tyler blog features another great viral video brought to us by the Daily Sport, targeting males between the ages of 18 – 34. What more could a man want? Tits, sport and funny shit. The Daily Sport has tried to find a niche by giving little attention to political news or world current events. Instead, its news coverage indulges more in yellow journalism- with stories generally emphasizing celebrities, nudity, bad behavior and toilet humor. Basically a British descendant of Mad, the classic American comic magazine.

The video claims that men have lost their way between yoga, drinking tea, moisturizing, and being considerate in bed. While this 40-second video may not impress some, it will no doubt get passed along in emails, blogged and re-blogged, most likely viewed over 100,000 of times on YouTube, and ultimately drive more traffic to their website.

Even though the video is of better quality than most user-generated content, it is short, to the point and still comes off as a last minute, and relatively low-budget home-made project. While it may sound strange, sometimes an interactive video doesn’t get the same attention from users because it is too well done. It doesn’t have that amateur, raw and unedited content that the majority of viewers can easily relate to. The copy and some of the images are similar to user-generated content as opposed to something an advertising agency or a professional would produce- and that works in this case.