“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.

I am walking a tightrope as I prepare to teach an advanced digital marketing course to a group of pharmaceutical marketers. The focus of the course is social media, and just the mention of the wikis, widgets and blogs makes most of these conservative pharma marketers run screaming from the room. Why? Because they white-knuckle their brand like an alcoholic does his shot glass after a week off the sauce.

Read more…

posted by Adriana

Sandeep Krishnamurth, professor of marketing at UW Bothel published an article (Beware: The Search Advertising Sky is falling”) on iMedia warning on the ineffectiveness of Search Advertising. He didn’t get a lot of support on his claims, in more than one comment his views were discredited with emphatic arguments. But he had a previous article where he criticized Google’s AdSense program which I had found quite poignant (See: Google AdSense report Card).

Read more…

Interesting article on the only true way for niche creatives/producers to profit from the Long Tail (which apparently has been a boon so far for those who can aggregate the long tail, such as Amazon and Netflix): 1,000 True Fans.

My film, Independent America, has done well, thanks to grassroots support, Internet exposure (via Yahoo! News) and broadcast deals.  Without those “assets” — we would have gone straight to DVD and eked out a living on Amazon.com (minimal sales, minimal royalties).

Good fodder for discussion for this class, and for any of you thinking of creating a niche piece of multimedia and hoping to profit from it (or even spread it far and wide through viral marketing).

Posted by: Hanson