I wanted to share an example of how a company can utilize widgets and social media to cater to the season and play to the poor economy…
Chevys Fresh Mex has created “The Compadre” - a widget that was designed to engage online users with and includes a festive flash game and a special holiday offer. The widget can be embedded on any blog, Web site, or social networking site, and the top three online users who drive the most engagement win a party valued at $500.
Compadre Facts:
– The Compadre Widget offers an interactive “Mexican jumping bean” video game, Chevys Fresh Mex recipes, store locator with local taxi information, and holiday gift cards
– When buying holiday gift cards through The Compadre widget, holiday shoppers receive $10 back towards their next meal for every $50 card purchased
– The three users who drive the most engagement with the widget receive a party valued up to $500
– The Chevys holiday party destination offers all the information you need to plan your holiday party – whether it happens at Chevys or not!
Good luck to all of those who participate!
Need proof that online video is continuing to grow?
According to ComScore, the viewing of videos on Google owned sites (i.e. YouTube) grew 6.5% to almost 5.4 billion views. In October, YouTube commanded a whopping 39.7% of all videos viewed, with its next closest competitor being Fox Interactive with 3.8%.At the same time, its share of the video category is down almost 10% over the same time period.
Why?
Because of new(er) sites like hulu.com which grew video views 97% between July and October to reach 235 million views and move into the No. 6 spot. It went from 1% of the share of online videos viewed to 1.7%. Hulu was also the biggest riser in terms of unique visitors, and noted ComScore, while the duration of the average online video was three minutes, the duration of the average online video viewed at Hulu was 11.6 minutes
Yahoo sites, which were responsible for 2.7% of all videos viewed with 363 million views, up from 2.4% share in July.
Fox Interactive Media sites lost 0.1% in share, but gained 74 million views.
And Viacom Digital lost 0.1% of share but gained 59 million views.
Disney lost the most share and was the only property in ComScore’s top 10 to actually lose video views between July and October; views were down 32%. But Disney property ESPN broke into the top 10 in October, with 105 million views.
When it came to unique viewers, the biggest riser was again Hulu, which broke into the top 10. In total, 77% of the total
U.S. internet audience viewed an online video in October, according to ComScore.
*Advertising Age - YouTube Gains Online Video Views but Loses Market Share
MySpace has announced the development of a single sign on service, which apparently follows on the heels of similar programs that were created by Google and Facebook (so why is this the first time I’ve heard about it…?? hmmm), which were launched last week.
The service allows users to easily sign onto third party sites via the MySpace platform, and includes partners such as: Vodafone, Netvibes, AOL, Flock, Eventful, Flixster, and Yoono… not to mention the fact that this effort also supports Google’s Friend Connect.
I don’t know about you, but I rarely log onto MySpace anymore let alone use it as a platform to log onto other sites. Can’t say that I would want to use the platforms that have been designed by Google and Facebook either, but I would be happy to see y’all prove me wrong.
Throughout my years of working in Social Media, the topic has repeatedly turned to the subject of Social Bookmarking. If you’re like me, you’ve probably heard some of the following questions too:
- I don’t understand how to do it?
- Why would I want to post that?
- Can search engines spider these links?
- I just don’t understand, why would anyone want to see my favorite sites?
Well today, some of the biggest social bookmarking sites are upping the anti. A prime example is Reddit, a leading name in the space, who has announced the creation of a new feature that allows you to utilize an open source version that can be hosted on your own domain with customizable features including look and feel.
According to Mashable.com, the move follows news last week that Ma.gnolia was going open source, and word earlier this summer that Digg is working on their own offering to let users create their own custom social news sites.
While some argue that social bookmarking is dying, the new wave of open source versions allow the general public to add customizable platforms to expand their own sites, thus breathing new life into the art of tagging sites for the benefit of an entire community.
I don’t know if this is a sign of how scary technology can be, or how frightening stupid today’s youth is.
In Spain, a teenager posted an open invite to her 16th birthday bash on the popular social networking site Facebook. Over 400 people saw the invitation, and crashed the bash at the $8.6 million dollar mansion where they stole thousands of dollars worth of jewelry and designer clothes in addition to throwing a tv in the estate’s swimming pool.
As Fox News reported, “The place looked like a war zone,” one partygoer said. “All the banisters have been broken. The walls are ruined, the carpets are destroyed, furniture is broken and it is going to take months to sort out.”
While the estate’s owners have incredible damages to repair over the summer, they are also going to miss out on the $8,000 a month that they usually receive for renting the mansion out over the summer. Can you say “grounded”?