So, for all you loyal HQ blog readers out there, if you think back to 4/27/10, you’ll probably remember a post on how The History Channel was teaming up with everyone’s favorite location-based social networking platform, Foursquare, to help promote their new show “America: The Story of Us.”
On a local level, I continue to see more and more businesses taking advantage of what Foursquare is all about and unlocking the potential new ways to market to consumers as they check-in at their locations. I’ll admit, I’m still not completely sold on Foursquare yet, but I do know if I check in while at the cupcake shop near my house, I can get 2 free cupcakes and that’s a good thing. (They’re like $3.00 each!)
But, all kidding aside, I’m intrigued by the way that brands are using the Foursquare platform to connect with consumers. Bottom line, it keeps getting better and more relevant.
Recently Simon Owens over at Bloggasm.com shot me a note (thanks Simon!) about how C-SPAN has now teamed up with Foursquare to launch a political education campaign of sorts.
Concept is once again very simple. C-SPAN has a custom page on Foursquare and is pushing information on politics, public policy and government to people as they check in at various locations around the Washington D.C. area. There is even a YouTube channel set up, dedicated to sharing video feeds when you check in at specific locations. As things progress, apparently check-ins outside of the D.C. area will begin to be included.
Straightforward, simple and to-the-point as far as what it provides users. Not to mention, pretty informative from all appearances. I’ve seen the show Street Smarts and unfortunately clips of Jay-Walking on Jay Leno before and it’s clear that the majority of our society doesn’t know anything about politics, so with that in mind, this seems like a pretty good thing. Curious to see how it goes from here.
At first it sounds terrifying, but in fact the purpose of Togetherville is teach children early-on how to become good digital citizens. It is in full compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and was actually developed by those trained in child development, learning, and online safety.
Courtesy of CNN.com
Aimed to bridge the gap between the parent and child, the child actually signs up through the parent’s Facebook account, which will increase Facebook’s reach, and can only gain contacts with the parent’s permission, placing the responsibility of monitoring on the parent. It is both ad-free and strictly monitored hoping to ensure safe interaction.
Courtesy of Switched.com
The mission of this site is two-fold: 1) to foster safe-social web use starting at a young age and 2) to teach children digital expression as a compliment to their school education. The hope of this site to help children transition into the digital and social network dominated world in which we live as smoothly as possible.
History, it’s both extremely important and often times very interesting. No doubt about it. Some would say not everyone is well versed enough in it.
The problem is, the manner in which history is presented usually isn’t that interesting: it’s b-o-r-i-n-g…. (hello high school history text books!). Even when you are watching it on TV, the monotone voice that often presents it to you in beautiful technicolor just isn’t that captivating.
Well, The History Channel wants to change that and obviously wants everyone to learn more about history of course, while also getting you to engage with their brand a bit more in the social media sphere.
So, what did they do, they’ve embarked on a FourSquare mission to leverage the social networking tool in helping to promote its upcoming series, “America: The Story of Us.”
Normally, I wouldn’t be a FourSquare advocate, I just think it’s pretty childish (i.e. “Hey, look I’m the Mayor of my office.” “Hey, I got my Adventurer Badge”), but this is a great idea because it uses the location-based mobile app to tie in with historical tidbits about over 1,000 historical locations around the county.
Example: “users visiting the Victory Gardens Biograph Theater in Chicago will discover that infamous bank robber John Dillinger was shot to death there by federal agents when leaving a movie in 1934.”
I’m a little unclear on how you’ll know to check in at these locations or if it’s just a luck thing, but either way, The History Channel appears to be making a big push behind it with Facebook pages, e-newsletter updates, etc.
Oh and yeah, if you check in at a lot of places on the list, you can get yourself a nifty virtual badge if you’re into that kinda stuff. That means you too have the chance to become a Mayor of someplace.
It’s truly awesome to see someone like Conan O’Brien, who wasn’t an internet user before in terms of interacting with his fans, more and more becoming a social media powerhouse.
If you’ve been following him on Twitter, you know how hilarious he is (come on, picking fights with Justin Bieber and proclaiming he is only going to follow 1 randomly selected person, the list goes on) and it has been hard to miss the legions of fans that have started groups like Team CoCo on Facebook.
Regardless of whether you like Conan and his comedy or not, he’s a brand with its own unique identity and boy are Conan and his staff embracing every bit of the web to their advantage during the year or so he can’t do tv after leaving NBC. They even appear to be empowering the fans that have started groups like team CoCo and are leveraging them for things like tour posters.
Truly great to see in such a short period of time, the way Conan is carving his niche, engaging with fans, giving them reason to follow him and reasons to buy his product when no one really knows what it will be like (RE: go see him on tour). His 30-city comedy tour, which I’d be kinda skeptical about just because he’s not done that before, sold out after merely a few tweets from CoCo.
All in all, a great story that is continuing to unfold and one that applies not only to famous celebs use of the web, but to brands in general. I for one encourage you to check him out on Twitter. You’ll get some good laughs and may pick up some pointers from CoCo.
We all know that movie releases are big business, and that social media has moved to the center of all things marketing-related, thus how social media is handled by movie studios is a core component to a modern film’s success. But let’s face it, it’s annoying to have to go to the movie’s microsite AND Facebook AND YouTube AND Twitter etc etc for your movie info. Total ugh, amiright? Not to mention it is also annoying and expensive for studios to build all that for every movie. It is this exact issue that Lionsgate Films, partnered with online media firm ThisMoment, aim to address in promotion of LG’s new film, Kick-Ass.
ThisMoment has developed the Distributed Engagement Channel, which essentially aggregates all of a movie’s social media stuff (Twitter/Myspace/Facebook/YouTube comments and ability to friend/follow/subscribe in those channels), and all of the movie’s official stuff (videos, downloads, contests etc.) into one place, which is THEN posted up onto Myspace, Facebook and YouTube in theoretical-lieu of a custom microsite/branding for each of those sites. (Although they HAVE covered all their bases with a traditional movie website as well in this case. Baby steps.)
The advantage to users and fans is obvious (so convenient!), but less apparent is the advantage afforded to Lionsgate in this move. The Distributed Engagement Channel technology is controlled by one single CMS system, allowing LG to manage their content on all the social channels at once (except Twitter, alas!) and providing consolidated metrics all in one place. Simplicity FTW!
There is a pretty confusing article on Ad Age about it, I recommend reading through the comments, there is a great dialogue going on between commenters and representatives from ThisMoment.
Thanks to Chris Strong for the tip.
Saturday, February 13, 2010
In the case that you’re not satisfied with the amount of personal information already shared on the Internet, head on over to formspring.me.
Formspring.me is a social networking site in which people anonymously pose questions to one another. Responses can also be posted to your other networking sites like Facebook or Twitter.
Twitter users will probably find the functionality and aesthetic to be quite familiar, although it’s not overly complicated to begin with. As far as I can tell, the network hasn’t quite caught on yet, but if it does turn into a site similar to Twitter – full of celebrities and their fans - I could see it taking off. I mean, I’d be curious to find out what superpower Ocho Cinco wished he had.
This is pretty gnarly. I’ve only messed with it for a few minutes though, so I’ve only scratched the surface. It links to your last.fm page and flickr page.
Fidg’t Visualizer
