“In the year 3000, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook will merge into one super time wasting Web site called YouTweetFace.” -Conan O’Brien, The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien

This prediction came this week on The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien. While “YouTweetFace” is a quite humorous interpretation of the multitude of social media platforms available, this was not the part of O’Brien’s statement that most caught my attention.  

“Time wasting” seemed to be the underlying message. The degree of ridiculousness put behind all of these new media tools would certainly come to mind for outsiders not familiar with the impact of digital media. According to comScore, Twitter grew 3,000 percent over the past year. Businesses are rapidly tapping into this market to promote their messages and to find new customers.

While it may be a waste of time for some, those interested in profiting from the social media wave are finding the time invested in it to be worthwhile. At many organizations today, there are full time social media experts on staff. Marketing and PR companies have entire departments dedicated to using such online tools. The proof is in the pudding – or the YouTweetFace platforms. Bottom line: companies are willing to pay for these experts. This shows that businesses perceive a value in the digital media Web sites that O’Brien lightheartedly jokes about. 

For anyone looking to join the social media space, YouTweetFace.com is no longer an available domain name. However, there are many other options: YouTweetFaceNow.com, YouTweetFaceStore.com and YouTweetFaceToday.com. Endless possibilities to waste time.

Not that most people are unaware of Google and its products, but as this Advertising Age article shows, the company has decided to use an old media – television- to promote Google Chrome. Its small market share (currently 1.42% vs. Internet Explorer 66.1%) may be one of the reasons why Google Chrome is going to be shown on TV. The article mentions Dish Network and NBC Universal cable networks as the television venues, and this is the ad that will be shown.

Even though companies usually consider television promotion to be a major investment, Google’s spokesman considered it a “small experiment”.  In my opinion, it seems that Google is running several video experiments to improve its market share numbers with Google Chrome.  Another of Google’s video ad experiments can be seen on Zooppa’s website. Google is running an ad competition (including videos) for Google Chrome on the Italian site, open to all in the Italian speaking community.  The public brief for the competition asserts that Google goals include “increase awareness of Google Chrome and communicate the benefits of using Google Chrome.”

Ace Team, a video game company in Chile in the effort to fight piracy is using the P2P model: “All the games are there to be pirated.  We were not going to be the exception.  Once we saw the game being distributed by BitTorrent, we started to post comments in these pages appealing to those who downloaded the games” Stated a member of Ace Team.  The statement they post on this pages says that they cannot do anything to stop piracy, but if who ever is downloading the game likes to test the game and likes it, they encourage them to buy the game.

This may sound crazy, but it is actually working according to Ace Team. P2P members are posting messages stating that they have bought the game, and that they do it because of Ace Team attitude!

Would this be a new marketing model in the internet for video games, e-books, movies and music?

In response to low prime time ratings, multimedia giant MTV is now creating a live talk show that uses various social media platforms during the program.  Advertisers were convinced that this would be MTVs biggest daytime talk show since TRL ended in November 2008.

As traditional media outlets battle to engage their audiences and produce relevant content, cable network MTV answered the call with the Alexa Chung Show. Read more…

If you’re a young company, getting on the Oprah show can mean a pot of gold – it can also make you plenty nervous about ramping up to the anticipated demand. Despite her mainstream platform, Oprah Winfrey practices social networking with gusto! Think about the “favorite things” product handouts and her endorsements of all kinds of products – talk about a network!

Bacon Salt is a Seattle company that just got Oprah-ized, but has a real track record of using social media to get established.

Xconomy first reported on the company, started by two alumni of Jobster.com in 2007. They started with profiles on MySpace and Facebook, and launched discussion groups. Perhaps their crowning touch was to friend everybody who said “I love bacon”. Xconomy quotes their results as 37,000 bacon loving fans on MySpace alone. Founder Justin Esch is quoted as saying “There’s a huge bacon subculture. There’s love and there’s fanaticism.” They have since attracted the attention of venture capitalists, and now Oprah. There are some business lessons here also – Again in Esch’s words:

1. In the social media space, having advocates of your brand, evangelists, is the most powerful thing you can do. Do you trust someone marketing to you, or do you trust a friend’s referral?

2. Be genuine. be honest about who you are and what your intention is.

3. Never give up on promotion. – they mailed product to the Oprah show four separate times, but a convergence that started with John Stewart’s poke at baconnaise got her attention.

Lessons here for all kinds of companies, and for daytime Divas.  Social media has the power to make an overnight sensation – or maybe just a hurricane that was forecast, but never came ashore.

Wharton Professor Eric Clemons joins us at noon today to talk about his provocative article on why advertising is dying on the web.

Lots of companies are now trying to incorporate social media into their marketing campaign. Twitter as a very famous social media platform has become a important place for companies to do that.

Tracking Twitter(http://trackingtwitter.com/brands) is a website used to classify companies that have profiles in Twitter. It sorts all those brands by media, television, celebrities and electronic artists. Under these four big groups, it further classifies those brands for the purpose of bringing convenience to users. Further more, every brand’s latest tweets and followers will be demonstrated parrallel to each brand. As I see, this website could be a good place for companies to evaluate their online influence and for users to measure the popularity and credibility of those brands.

I remember when first hearing about Twitter, someone explaining the concept as “Text Messaging on steroids”. As an observer more of a player in the Tweet-Mania, I came across this latest Twitter Tool: the TwitterFall, presented by a journalist as: “… Twitter on crack, on roller-skates… in a jumpsuit.”

TwitterFall is a very efficient tool to track instant news and trends via Twitter, but caution, it should be used with “moderation as it is highly addictive”. Since I discovered TwitterFall, I’ve had a hard time pulling myself away from it, hypnotized by the constant free fall of tweets on my screen.

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