I was inspired recently after watching one of the founders of Living Social speak. He spoke of his successes and his failures, in addition to the countless ‘pivots’, or reevaluations, his company experienced before finally arriving at their latest project: Living Social. Above all else he emphasized the inevitable doom that comes with complacency… and I, for one, wholeheartedly agree.

For me, the key to mental happiness lies within constant challenge. A perfect example of this theory’s absolute opposite is MySpace. MySpace, everyone’s first social network got comfortable and for lack of a, well, nicer word, cocky. They were the ‘it’ kid in the cyber playground and as quickly as they inhaled the sweet breath of popularity, in came the new kid in town, you all know who it was, Facebook. By the time they realized what they were up against, they were back eating lunch in the bathroom. Nowadays, thank goodness, MySpace has learned its lesson, pivoting head first into the music realm. Good for you MySpace.

Living Social morphed from company to company; starting out with Hungry Machine and Digital Bookshelf, to Pick Your 5, the app that quickly made its way to the number on facebook. Insert Farmville. This new evolution in gaming had sheep and farms and villes (forgive me, I’ve never actually played it) and, wait for it, money. Yes indeed, this new breed of app had one thing the to-be-Living Social guys didn’t: paid customers. Just like that, lightbulbs went off and the fab four founding members began the path toward social enlightenment.

His main point in this speech is simply and darkly, never be happy with what you create. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you should never be proud of your work- though he says that trait is part of his DNA as an entrepreneur. I’m merely recommending and pointing out that your idea is probably wrong. Call me cold, call my pessimistic, call me whatever you like; I’m just telling you the truth. Don’t get comfortable – keep working hard in life and on the web for if you’re constantly striving for the best, well, complacency won’t stand a chance.

I check my phone as much, cough if not more, as the next gal but I came across this little gem and thought I’d share. My goal this holiday, is to take a step back and relax.. for once. Social media doesn’t sleep and most of the time, I absolutely love that but occasionally, that inherent trait can be exhausting. This holiday weekend, no matter your profession, make some time to kick back and chill a bit. I can’t promise you won’t see my avatar bidding you good day on Christmas morning, but hey, nobody’s perfect. Have a great holiday weekend everyone – tweet at you soon.

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a computer mouse. ‘Cause y’all are checking your work e-mail on your BlackBerrys under the dining room table.

All year long, we shamble through the work week, zombie-walking to and from our cubicles, our eyes dead and cold like those of that hideous teddy bear you bought for your 15-year-old niece because you’re not sure what “kids these days are into.” (Hint: She wants an iPhone, fool!)

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By Nicole Fletcher

In watching a recording of a social media conference, I learned some pretty interesting things about Oreo’s social standpoint and some facts that may very well blow your socks off.

This conference took place on August 11, 2010 – the speaker began by expressing her feigned annoyance in that while she started putting together the presentation a few weeks earlier, she was forced to consistently edit it as a result of Oreo’s staggering fan growth. Okay, I thought, I get it. Oreo wants their information to be the most recent, the most impressive, they want to report the biggest numbers possible. Then she noted a fan increase of 200,000 … overnight. After picking my jaw up off the floor I frantically surfed to Oreo’s fan page. This speaker noted the number of fans to have been 8.4 million in early August. It’s now December. Oreo boasts an astonishing 16 million fans. You heard me correctly friends; Oreo doubled their fans in 4 months. Party on Oreo.

The speaker went on to discuss the brand’s social media standpoint. As she dove deeper into their strategy and standpoint, she noted that ALL marketing exploits push traffic to the company’s facebook page; not their homepage. This new age statement means that all banner ads, campaigns, everything pushes to facebook. Interesting. She continued to explain that the Oreo url is still alive and kicking and indeed serves its purposes for SEO and Google search, but when it comes down to it, Oreo wants to “fish where the fish are”. Here’s another company as an example: CocaCola’s homepage sees 348,000 unique views monthly. Sounds pretty solid right? Well, when compared to daily interactions with their 21 million + fans, the good ol’ www loses some of its allure, doesn’t it?

This goes back to an earlier post about discovering your target market and where it hangs out online. Oreo’s primary demographic is who? Moms and kids right? Right. 93.3% of moms are part of some social networking site and seeing as facebook is the biggest, by a long shot, you should probably start there.

This year, social networking trumped both online gaming and, wait for it, EMAIL. You heard me folks, social media outfoxed the good old electronic mail, which is probably why one of facebook’s latest projects involves re-doing it.

Regardless, Oreo sees social media not as a short term sales driver, though that is certainly a fortunate side affect, but as a long term brand management plan. The book of faces has wiggled its way into the top spot, so get ready for it world and market accordingly.

Watch the video I watched, HERE.

In case you don’t get the Vanilla Ice reference in the title, enjoy.

By Nicole Fletcher
Google announced the launch of TeachParentsTech.org today and to be clear, I thought of this idea first. Well, to be honest and clear, I think it’s a brilliant idea that I came up with almost a year ago about hosting seminars, or happy hours if you will, where adults could get together and pick their poison with respect to tech. Then, over a glass of wine, we would delve into the complexities of word processing, copying and pasting and finally the wide world of photo editing/uploading. Granted, I did not patent it nor did I execute it, so leave it to Google to seep into my brain and make millions off it.

Bitterness aside, this new site was researched by Mashable and is a pretty fantastic idea. It’s described as a “tech support passage” to help kids teach parents about computers and tech galore. This could be a great way to get kids involved in their parents’ education (talk about role reversal). Basically, kids can send their parents and friends tutorials via email with links to said videos. As a launch promotion, the first 10,000 to send this aid are also eligible to send a help package via snail mail to the tech virgin of his or her choice.

If it were up to me, I’d make the parent – child, or in this case, student – teacher, interaction more personable, as opposed to solely electronic. Perhaps this feature will roll out in the future, but it would be great for parents and kids to sit at the computer together, learning face to face. It would be quite the change from when your mom and dad helped you with your homework at the kitchen table, but how great would it be to move in this direction of tech evolution..since we’re pretty much there anyway. In all likelihood, kids know more about tech than their parents ever will, so why not take advantage of these valuable resources so long as they live in your home?

For the record Google, I was on this bandwagon before you so don’t get too excited but touche on the execution of this wonderful idea. I just hope it’s just as effective in practice as in theory.