After being reintroduced to Twitter a few weeks ago, I’ve been using it more and more. I have to admit that I’m finding it to be a unique creature that has its purpose in the realm of social media. Much like how an RSS feed allows you to choose the content you want to hear about, Twitter provides a taste of all those things, with a little social interaction along with it.

Twitter gives me access to great articles from professionals in the field with pertinent industry news. Mashable (@mashable) is hands down the best tool for emerging media marketers. Not only is their content relevant, it’s also fun. Anyone who’s been to the Web site knows that. I followed a recent Tweet about 10 Cool Cable Management Solutions. What a perfect post for all those techies and digital media junkies who likely have a mess of cables keeping them connected to their favorite online content. Without Twitter, I never would have found this and other awesome posts. My personal favorite is their number two pick, the CableDrop, which looks like a notebook users dream.

Photo from Mashable.com

According to Mashable’s Amy-Mae Elliot “CableDrops hold onto your wires so when you unplug your gadget you won’t have to scramble before it drops down the back of your desk. It’s a simple concept, but if you stick these on your work station, you’ll soon wonder how you lived without them. In ‘bright’ or ‘muted’ shades, a set of six costs $9.95.” Check out their article and let me know which gadget you think are cool.

Additionally, it allows me to interact with my favorite brands, products, celebrities and show. From a marketer’s standpoint, I find it to be a great tool. Twitter gives you the ability to connect with consumers and give them additional insight into who your brand is and what’s going on. It gives them a personality that consumers want to read about and builds buzz for upcoming events and products. Twitter also brings fans closer to celebrities and public figured, which in turn builds trust and loyalty. You can sent a direct message to whomever and likely get a response. Very cool.

As for socializing with friends a la Facebook on Twitter, I think not. It’s not a place (unless you’re a celebrity) to tell people what you’re doing. Because no one really cares (They probably don’t care on Facebook either). For users and marketers, it’s a place for sharing content, engaging audiences and building connections. I think I’ll give this Twitter thing a little while longer.

Most people have seen the now iconic yellow symbol for RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feed. You can use a Web-based feed reader or integrate your feeds into your Microsoft Outlook. Undoubtedly, RSS feeds are the easiest way to get all the news, updates, blog posts and information relevant place sent to you. According to Ben Parr of Mashable, “RSS is not a new phenomenon – there has been real simple syndication based on the XML file format since 1999, although the popularity of RSS didn’t really occur until blogs and news websites started to adopt the format. The process for the user is relatively simple: click on the RSS icon on any website with a feed and it will usually take you to a page where you can subscribe to the feed via an RSS reader or the web browser. For a while, there were two primary ways to read news: visiting different blogs and websites or having articles syndicated to your news reader. For many people, RSS is still the simplest way to consume information.” Steve Ruble of Advertising Age cites an Oct. 20 Forrester Research report, which states that 11% of consumers subscribe to feeds, up from 2% in 2005. However, 40% of the remaining 89% of consumers remain uninterested.

Check out this video from Common Craft, which explains what RSS is, and why it’s so darn useful:

Most online content gives you the ability to subscribe to their RSS feed. The New York Times allows you to choose by topic area which news items you want in your feed. It’s like designing your very own newspaper with only the sections you like. Just want entertainment and style? No problem. Are you a sports junkie who has no time for national news? No problem. The beauty of this tool is that it connects you to the content you want and automatically tells you when there’s new info.

As the video from Common Craft mentioned, there are many reader choices out there. Google Reader is a popular choice. With Google Reader, you can even share items you like with friends or integrate your shared items on your own Web site. You can also access your feed from your mobile Web or any other computer, allowing you to have constant access to your feed.

Parr however, thinks that the rise of social media provides alternative tools for getting news and relevant content, giving RSS a run for its money. According to Parr, “To find breaking news, Twitter has become a better medium, primarily because information moves almost instantaneously on Twitter. It can be minutes to several hours before a new post appears in your RSS reader. For discovering content, websites like StumbleUpon and Digg have become alternatives. And for real-time information, there is now FriendFeed.”

I can see where Parr is coming from, in that Twitter provide instant access and integration of all your favorite content (providing they are on Twitter), but also gives it to you in microblog format allowing you to easily review your feed and decide what to read. For my friends on Facebook, their blogs pop up in my wall feed, and I am more likely to visit their blog from Facebook than from the link in my inbox. However, with Twitter and Facebook updating so rapidly,I can count on my RSS feed to keep my news in one safe place.

In a recent Advertising Age article, Judy Shapiro quotes Jim Griffin of One House as stating, “The content-owner industry is one generation behind the content-consuming generation. If one thinks of content as a product then it runs the risk of becoming a commodity that is hard to protect no matter how good or bad copyright laws are.” Additionally, Shapiro noted that artists in the top of their industry are concerned with getting their work out there in the world and noticed by people. Indrani, a photographer of Markus Klink and Indrani (You might know her from Bravo TV’s Double Exposure), said in the article, “Now I can get our work out there much faster to a much broader audience than ever before.” Enforcing strict copyright and sharing rules would certainly cripple the online system.

She clearly understands that the value of their work is based on their ability to draw high quality and quantity audiences. More than that, the goal for these artists is to create art that is so unique where copyright almost becomes irrelevant. This concept, that art can become so unique that can help “protect itself,” was another “a-ha” moment.

             ~Judy Shapiro, Advertising Age.

And a final thought on online property rights, comes from Adam Ostrow of Mashable. In his article Piracy: The Mother of Legal Music Downloads? he points out that piracy may have actually helped pave the way for the current generation of online music services. In a study by BI Norwegian School of Management, they found that those “who download music illegally are also 10 times more likely to pay for songs that those who don’t.” A perfect example of the “Try before you buy” theory? Perhaps someone has to pirate it, in order for someone to figure out a way to give people what they want and still get their fair share. Think Napster, listed by Stan Schroeder in his Mashable article, Death by Lawyer: 10 Cool Sites We Miss. Now we have iTunes and other digital download services that all users to get their music fix legally.

As in life, moderation is key. Taking anything to the extremes is usually a bad thing. So with a little give and take (and some copyright infringement and piracy too), this whole digital ownership will naturally work itself out. And hopefully the beauty of the Internet will not be lost in the process.

Photo Credit: Jacob Cass

As students, whether it be elementary, high school, college or graduate, we are taught to always give credit for content that is not your own. As journalists, we are taught to honor copyrights, trademarks and seek permission of artistic works including photographs, where you need also need to get permission of all people included in them. So when all this content goes into the fascinating world of cyberspace, many say these rules go out the window. Others hold strong and demand credit where credit is due.

Undoubtedly, the Internet has given people around the world an incredible ability to create, publish and share content like never before. It also provides the opportunity for theft and exploitation. And when it comes to copyright infringement and other generous borrowing of content, it seems that at times even the hard-nosed defenders of their online property fall victim to the murk and muck.

Kristen Nicole of Mashable wrote an article, which was aptly named Viacom: It’s Not Copyright Infringement When We Do It To You, about a sticky situation of generous borrowing and lack of communication. Nicole sums it up nicely: “Viacom runs a clip on TV without permission. The creator takes his clip from TV to post on YouTube. Viacom issues a cease and desist letter to YouTube claiming that they own the clip.” According to Nicole, Filmmaker Christopher Knight created a fun ad campaign for his run for a position on his county Board of Education. Viacom’s VH1 found it and used it in one of its many clip shows, Web Junk 2.0 without permission. Knight, who was pleased to be featured on the show (and wasn’t making a fuss about the vagrant theft), posted a clip from the show on YouTube, which Viacom found and demanded it remove the clip of a video that they stole in the first place. Toyota is also guilty of a little “borrowing” as well according to Abbey Klaassen of Advertising Age. According to Klassen, a Denver photographer found his photo featured on Toyota’s Web site for the 4Runner SUV. Unfortunately, Toyota kinda forgot to ask permission to use the photo. In the end, Toyota owned up to the mistake and attempted to make it right. I guess if you’re going to claim your property online, you better make sure it’s yours first.

Personally, I think that Judy Shapiro’s thoughts after attending the Collision of Ideas 2010 conference provide the most enlightened and reasonable solution to the problem. Shapiro writes, “The answer lies in innovating new ways to compensate content creators such as new compensation structures or new engagement methods that can be monetized. In their personal experiences and outlooks, these content producers effectively laid down the gauntlet to the legal industry – innovate or we may all die.”

Throughout history, people have battled over property rights. The digital world is certainly no different. But with more and easier ways to share, steal and copy, this battle might take a little longer. Here’s hoping we all make it out of the muck.

DMNews asked Steven Rosenblatt, senior vice president of ad sales at Quattro Wireless for his tips and thoughts on measuring mobile and making it work for you. According to Rosenblatt, “Marketers should also look at page views when driving to a mobile landing page or site to measure consumer engagement. In addition, the number of pages viewed, video views, send-to-friend actions, wallpaper downloads and other actions should all be captured. Short codes or text campaigns that are promoted via other media can be used to measure the effectiveness of that medium. Click-to-download banners and click-to-store ads or landing pages can also enable direct measurement. Coupon redemptions can be measured in store.” Peter Johnson, vice president of marketing intelligence and strategy at the Mobile Marketing Association provides his thoughts to DMNew’s question as well. Johnson states, “Mobile is not one channel, but many. Each mobile channel is measurable via its own portfolio of metrics. While SMS, mobile web, and branded apps are the most ubiquitous, MMS, e-mail, voice, Bluetooth, near-field communications (a wireless connectivity technology) and quick response bar codes each have powerful elements that can be measured, tracked and analyzed.”

Dave Sloan, director of marketing at Avot Media suggests avoiding estimating customer potential in terms of click-through on banner ads, unique users on WAP sites and growth of registered community members. Sloan says, “Instead, measure mobile-specific impressions such as amount of data downloaded, number of video impressions and purchase intent after viewing a branded video, for example. Success will be measured in terms of creating great experiences, driving wireless data usage and increasing viral spread of branded content.”

Who Has a Ruler I Can Borrow?

Realizing that the industry will certainly call for analysis of their mobile marketing efforts, some companies have already begun offering tools for measuring mobile. The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) highlights the features of two companies leading the charge in mobile analytics. The first is Omniture, a Web analytics powerhouse. According to the MMA, Omniture employs a variety of techniques to capture mobile data based on the capabilities of the device. It collects image tags, cookies, visitor ID headers, user agents and IP addresses to identify the devices accurately. The product also supports geo-location and carrier identification information for targeted location-based marketing efforts. MMA states “Omniture’s mobile analytics allow every ad request, type of device, impression, and click to be measured in order to give its customers the data needed – whether it’s for altering their mobile campaigns or restructuring the investment to focus on the best performing sites, content, and devices.”

The second product is The Mobile @Plan from the Nielsen Company, one of the world leaders in marketing research, who is trying to bring a different analytical approach to the mobile marketing scene. MMA states, “The Mobile @Plan will help marketers reach their desired audiences through lifestyle and demographic information for 200 of the best mobile websites. This research report will highlight customer information, such as leisure activities, life events, and media usage, which will be analyzed with purchases made. The analysis will provide where mobile web users spend their time and what brands are garnering the most market share.”

Other tools include AdIndex, from Dynamic Logic, which Justin Montgomery of Mobile Marketing Watch describes as going “well beyond basic campaign metrics to provide analysis and actionable insights that help brand marketers understand how mobile ad campaigns perform on traditional brand metrics, such as  brand awareness, ad awareness, message association, brand favorability, and purchase intent.” According to the blog, Medialets, which provides engagement metrics, recently partnered with Dynamic Logic and together they can provide a comprehensive view into how campaigns are performing on every level.

According to Mobile Marketing Watch, a PreTesting Group, a company specializing in real-world testing of marketing and advertising creative recently developed technology allowing brands to measure real-world involvement with ads on the iPad. The technology is called “People Reader” and uses hidden cameras to monitor how people interact with advertising on the iPad.  

But no matter what tool you use, the fact remains that measuring your mobile effort is essential.

What is important for marketers to keep in mind when entering the mobile world, is that mobile is not the Internet. You can’t just use your existing Web site and expect it to be well received by mobile Web. Users don’t want a mini computer screen that takes 18 clicks to read what the page says. They want a unique mobile experience. Bryce Marshall, director of strategic services at Knotice states that Morgan Stanley’s Internet Trends report and projections for 2010 “estimate that access to the Web via mobile devices will outpace access from traditional desktop/laptop devices sometime in 2012. Marshall also points out that a mobile-savvy developer can produce device-specific, user-friendly Web experiences for the majority of Web users. With this in mind, if your brand can afford to optimize, why don’t you? Save us Web 2.0 users the headache and eyestrain and give us an experience that will leave a positive impression.

There’s an App for That

Pekala reports that there are more than 25,000 mobile apps available on the iPhone App Store, with 5,000 new apps being introduced each  month. At this rate, there likely is an app for just about anything your mobile heart desires. But is there? With all the options out there, are they actually useful to you? My favorite apps are Weather Bug, iheartradio, Pandora, and Amazon. I love my Amazon app, which allows me to search for products, place order and track packages from my phone. What’s better, is when I originally searched for them using mobile Web, they automatically asked me if I wanted to download their app. The app provides a simpler, richer experience that as you can see, left a favorable brand impression on me. So why don’t more companies have apps like this? Certainly it would be to their advantage to reach us whenever and whenever they can. Check out Acquity Group’s Internet Retailer 500 Mobile Audit, which identified how some of today’s leading companies use m-commerce. They ranked companies based on level of mobile adaptation. Not surprisingly, Amazon came out on top in their category.

 Best In Industry:

• Books, Music & VideoComputers & Electronics – HP, Dell Industry: Amazon, Barnes & Noble
• Flowers & Gifts – 1800Flowers.com
• Specialty & Non-apparel – Disney, MLB, NFL, NHL, NASCAR
• Sporting Goods – REI, Adidas

Express had a sale this week (5 days only!), which I found out about via my email inbox, but was reminded of as soon as I logged on to Facebook. By the second day of the sale, I had made a purchase. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are quickly becoming efficient ways for consumers to connect with their favorite brands online. This connection not only cultivates more loyal customers, but can lead to increased purchases and revenue.

 According to Michael Kahn, senior vice president of client services at Performics and contributor to Chief Marketer, in a recent Performics and ROI Research study of more than 3,000 social network users:

• 37% learned about a new product or service from a social networking site.
• 32% have recommended a product/service/brand to friends via a social networking site.
• 49% want more printable coupons.
• 46% want more notifications of sales and special deals.
• 35% want more information about new products.

 What’s more, at New York’s annual Internet Week held recently, Judy Shapiro reported that social media technology company Syncapse attempted to answer the question: What are Facebook fans worth to brands? According to Shaprio, the Syncapse study found that Facebook fans spend an average $71.84 more than non-fans over at two-year period, are 28% more likely to continue using the brand than non-fans, and very likely to recommend a brand (68% of fans would recommend versus 28% of non-fans), and feel a stronger connection to the brand (82% of fans versus 39% of non-fans).

 Now Twitter on the other hand, is a whole different animal. Twitter offers me the ability to get all my news in one place in 140 characters or less. If the update intrigues me, I can click on the shortened Web link that is usually included to learn more. Twitter can be a customized digital newspaper, offering you a personalized mix of local, world, entertainment, comics, weather, and anything newsworthy to you. If the headline doesn’t grab you, just keep scrolling until something tickles your fancy. With content being streamed to us constantly in form of video, digital, online and audio 24/7 and faster than ever before, have we developed a sort of ADD, only being able to concentrate for 140 characters at a time? Or is it that we’re fitting twice the amount of content into the same 24 hours that we need to put a limit on how much each source can share with us at once? Don’t get me wrong, I like the highlight reel mentality of Twitter. In fact, I think that’s one of its only redeeming qualities since I haven’t’ fully committed to it yet.

 Either way, these two social media sites have something to offer consumers and help brands in the process. Whether you want to know what Captain Johnathan from the Time Bandit is up to this weekend or read up on a recent Mashable blog, theses media keep consumers connected to what’s important to them, whatever it may be.

Check it out: eBooks at Hennepin County library

Starting July 19, Hennepin County library will offer about 700 titles for free downloading.

No More Paper, No More Books?

I am intrigued by Amazon’s Kindle (Barnes & Noble’s Nook and now the iPad). I think the ability to read books from a convenient hand-held device is amazing, no more lugging three or four paperbacks in my carry-on (only to be upset when the cover gets smashed). Now you can have all your books in one lightweight device.

But I’m not sold. The drawback I find with the Kindle is that downloaded books cannot be lent to friends and family, thus making it more expensive to read than before. After I read a good book, I pass it along to others, and they do the same. Without that ability, I don’t see it taking the place of buying a book that can be saved or passed along. Another scenario would be that books could go the route of MP3’s, in that there will be pirating software to get around each individual downloading their own copy of the book. Instead of stealing songs, people will be illegally downloading books.

Beam Me the Latest Issue

I find it hard to believe that magazines could ever been completely digital. I have often seen the flipbook magazines online, but am not impressed. How will I tear out my coupon for a free sample of a cosmetic, or smell the latest perfume sample? Washkuch states, that according to an Outsell marketing survey, “Print magazine advertising will increase 1.9% this year to $9.4 billion, despite being taken over by Web-based channels.” Wolfe states that the portable readers available today aren’t designed for reading magazines, but could advancements in technology allow enjoyable magazine reading experiences in the future? The color reproduction quality and other features would need to be enhanced, but a portable reader could offer searchable content, video clips and links to advertisers’ Web sites. Wolfe offers this scenario for the future of magazines:

Imagine waiting at an airport for your flight. You have your digital reader in your bag. You want to read a magazine, but, instead of going over to the magazine stand in the airport, you take out your digital reader, log into the digital newsstand, and start perusing the latest covers. You find something you like, press a button, and there it is. If the digital newsstand were like iTunes, you would have an account with them with your credit card information already stored, and the whole transaction would take about 10 seconds.

Wolfe’s vision also suggests that rather than having hard copies available at newsstands, magazine cover displays and posters would be displayed with information on how to download the issue.

What do you think? Is this futuristic idea destined to be our future? Could we have everything we need in the palm of our hand?

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