Facebook vs Twitter series 13/800: What about Digital Books? Can Kindle be about social collaboration?

I know what you all are thinking. Why suddenly a Kindle in Facebook vs Twitter wars? What about the Friendfeed and the dozen social networks to be branded me too! Where do they come in? Well, to me Kindle comes first because Amazon is a phenomenon on my personal list of Enterprise greats and the other start ups have still got something to prove in terms of viability. Not that the risk is any lesser for a Myspace or a Kindle but My space going down would be a turning point people would remember like AOL, eBay and the others who have had a not so easy time since they set up on the web and who have never graduated to the real Web 2.0 or near real time social collaboration. Amazon and Kindle however have that potential ( may be they will also drop out later like Starbucks) and they can handle innovation and complex consumer minds with a relative ease that would be critical.
 
Long back, during the days of Patricia Seybold’s customers.com and Guy Hagel’s ‘Net Worth’ we saw an expostulation of the success determining parameters of the new invisible continent by Kenichi Ohmae ( let’s face it, the guy was an other world icon but still made it as a strategist on the new web). What the Invisible Continent described in great detail was an Infomediary – An organization or ‘Trust agent’ that would broker all business transactions on the web because they would be entrusted with the Customers foibles and deep seated choices that would make the best buying decision and robust sales. Amazon and Kindle are the perfect intermediaries for such digital transactions like iPhone and iPod have been for music albeit non collaboratively till now.
 
I think the new web needs Kindle and amazon to ramp up the offering in tune with customers, learning the nuances along with the customer as they go along this adventure. For amazon to continue with its 50% market share of the World’s Book Sales has been relatively easy when compared with the others and a vital part of that has been the enriched customer experience which is really beautifully collaborative and store front’ish at the same time. It also highlights the other essential for social collaboration which Facebook and Twitter seem to make light of, ad that is the reading habit. For any transaction on the new web, one has to be a voracious reader to navigate the choices, discuss with friends, colleagues and competitors online and make instant decisions that are almost always right.
 
Kindle could easily include Video, Audio and twitter / friendfeed messaging on the device along with maps and the books to replace other devices you need to carry arund today for a complete mobile experience. I think that’s the way it’s going to go too.

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Facebook vs Twitter series 12/800: Twitter is down from FB hunting?

Sitting inside a conference room at Twitter, BlackBerry in hand, Kevin Thau is all business.In his first interview since taking charge of the San Francisco technology companys mobile business development a month ago, Thau is confident that cellphones will play a crucial role in helping the messaging service make money.

The four-year-old company, which has raised more than $35 million from Benchmark Capital, Spark Capital and others, offers its service free of charge, and hasn’t yet figured out how to generate revenues.

Thau, 36, says thats about to change. He says the number of text messages passing through Twitters platform has grown 1,000% in the last year. Add to that the fact that users are texting more substantive observations and opinions in real time, and the company has a valuable information database it can sell to businesses.

Thau says Twitter is developing a range of analytics and metrics products and services built around the information contained in “tweets,” the e-mail and text messages that pass through its platform. “We can measure the tweets,” he says. “Were trying to figure out what are the appropriate metrics around engagement and how to convey those.”

Thau, however, didnt say when Twitter plans to sell these services or how much it will charge for them.

Its an interesting business model, but can Twitter survive selling analytics and other services? “When it comes to enterprises, absolutely,” says Jeremiah Owyang, a social computing analyst with Forrester Research ($FORR ) . “I just got off a call with a client thats asking about how to engage on Twitter. There’s definitely interest.”

via ‘Forbes’

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The new Pepsi logos

You already heard, and it wasn’t shaking twitter and facebook..but the Tropicana Orange juice logo just got withdrawn and back to the traditional one with the orange. And the ‘Marketrazzi’ like zyaada used email and (my thought waves) to push the envelope and tell YUM and PEP that the new brand designs were flawed.

There has been a lot of similar talk of the new smiling face of Pepsi (see below) and not so much of their social strategy ( remember sobe diet , it was a big twitter on superbowl time with gator) They are obviously under fire for the social web has empowered voices that were killed by the health revolution ( I am told, it is still on at Pepsi, because of my compatriot CEO Ms. Indra Nooyi )

here is an extract directly from the  bnbranding.com team :

Great design speaks for itself. You don’t need a physics thesis to explain it. It just works.

My 11 year-old daughter likes the new Pepsi logo. (Says it makes her happy.)  And now that I’ve read the exhaustive brief, I know why…

It’s a smiley face! An overanalyzed, underwhelming, million dollar smiley face. It even comes in a variety of grin sizes. (Apparently regular ol’ Pepsi gets a smaller grin than the newer versions of Pepsi, like Pepsi Max. Whatever that is.)

Pepsi’s going to spend more than a billion dollars redoing all their packaging, vending machines, trucks, POP materials and everything else. The new logo’s going to be EVERYWHERE!

So I’m kinda glad Arnell changed the old wavy logo into a smiley face. I’m just not sure about their methods.

Actually, it was Pepsi and it still looks like a very soft target out on the web but this brand insight has changed my moind, though i still remain all things coke at heart.

more from the blokes at brandinsightblog.com

The 27-page design brief entitled “Breathtaking” reads like a scientific white paper loaded with marketingese and unprecedented levels of highly creative BS. In fact, Fast Company Magazine called it branding lunacy…

“Every page of this document is more ridiculous than the last ending with a pseudo-scientific explanation of how Pepsi’s new branding identity will manifest it’s own gravitational pull.”

The L.A. Times was equally critical:

“Behold, then, the scattered and burning debris field of one of corporate America’s most misbegotten image makeovers… According to the brief, the new Pepsi logo lies along a trajectory of human consciousness that includes in its arc the Vastu Shastra, a 3,000-year-old Hindu architectural guide; Pythagoras (the Golden Section); the Roman architect Vitruvius; the Fibonacci series; Descartes; and Corbusier.”

Oooookay.

Get a load of  it at:  http://drop.io/pepsipdf/asset/pepsi-gravitational-field-pdf

Well, i can guess the criticism directed at me as well, because i don’t like to muddy waters when someone else is equally bright and so there is less of authorship in my blogs than elsewhere, ( it also helps me concentrate on zyaada ‘s social strategy and branding exercises and attend to my work..but i believe that even if they do change the logo back it wouldn’t hurt to love this logo.

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Burger King campaign targets all groups, regardless

zyakaira notes: this should now probably be a bank campaign punch strategy..an all you can eat account with safe underwriting ..if bank of america far behind ( they had a great in-store ad just a few months back, the day obama got elected!

In an effort to keep making horrible ads that have nothing to do with whatever Burger King’s brand identity is they’ve come out with this pile of crap:

Let’s not forget their past insulting work here, Mexican get sizzled, and here, Slap that booty.

Obviously the only branding strategy Burger King can come up with is to be controversial. Brilliant.

identity guru writes: So I’m out of the Burger King loop. They obviously want people in the business to write negatively about them because what women is gonna run out and buy this sandwich now? And do men really think they’ll get a blow job? No, the only thing Burger King wants is press, so stop giving it to them, they don’t deserve it.

Ads are meant to do one thing…sell product, period.

via Branding Blog

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Facebook vs. twitter series 4/800

That facebook is preferable to a host of individuals ready to spend half an hour daily during and after the work week and twitter is readily used by marketers and online businesses are two fairly simple posits that miss a key unique point. People who prefer to have conversations about serious topics would also like to carry them as a single conversation rather than the search results in twitter or no such option in facebook, yet. That brings great ideas like friendfeed.com into play.
 
My friendfeed can still find my earlier conversations and threads, and there are tools to save these precious personal and business conversations, facebook vs. twitter being an often repeated idea there..Also, the other options include better playing with pictures, posting by email and posting to all your owned pages/blogs from a single post(erous), Mashdeck, tweetie or others
 
However the fun and games on Facebook, really give you choice in business apps and games that are appealing nd eye catching at the same time.

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Facebook vs Twitter series 3/800

Flock 2.5 social web browser adds more Facebook and Twitter features

by Brad Linder May 19th 2009

Flock is a web browser that's based on Mozilla. But what really makes it stand out is the integration with social networking services including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, and YouTube. Flock 2.5 is out today, and it adds enhanced features for Twitter and Facebook, including:

• Read Twitter replies (err… @mentions) in the Flock sidebar
• Save Twitter searches
• Take actions like replying or clicking on Twitter links from the sidebar
• Use Facebook chat from any web page
• Drag and drop web content into the Facebook chat box to share it

There's also a new feature called FlockCast so that when you post a tweet, set your MySpace status, write a blog post, or upload pictures to Flickr, you can click a button to automatically post those actions to Facebook as well.

Tags: facebook, flock, flock-2.5, flockcast, myspace, twitter

via downloadsquad.com

Thus, we now have tumblr, post(erous), flock and the shorteners supporting twitter and facebook seemingly

We are probably leaving behind the reddits and the stumbleupons! you digg?

Maybe, we are going to make all of them redundant and just use facebook. How? I don't see that happening in the long distant future either.

Anyway, it is time for the net users to enjoy sharing and transacting business on the new age platforms and the rest of us, avoiding office for these silly geezers…(i know, plain slander!)

BTW, this time I am neither in Chicago or in LA, enjoying back home!

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Facebook vs Twitter 3/800 – The aggregators (see post here) come in to bat for all MLB teams

Flock 2.5 social web browser adds more Facebook and Twitter features

by Brad Linder May 19th 2009

Flock is a web browser that’s based on Mozilla. But what really makes it stand out is the integration with social networking services including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, and YouTube. Flock 2.5 is out today, and it adds enhanced features for Twitter and Facebook, including:

• Read Twitter replies (err… @mentions) in the Flock sidebar
• Save Twitter searches
• Take actions like replying or clicking on Twitter links from the sidebar
• Use Facebook chat from any web page
• Drag and drop web content into the Facebook chat box to share it

There’s also a new feature called FlockCast so that when you post a tweet, set your MySpace status, write a blog post, or upload pictures to Flickr, you can click a button to automatically post those actions to Facebook as well.

via downloadsquad.com

I love all MLB teams, so this year I am neither in LA nor in Chicago! Backhome here..

Posted via web from The investment blog on Post

Facebook vs. Twitter 2/800

Despite the personable Facebook’s massive lead, the world of its ‘followers’ looked on as Facebook launched status updates in the style of twitter a few months back, time now is they are planning to roll the same back, but then that could be just a rumor
 
Check out foller.me here. It is doing pretty well since it was featured on twitterone last week http://tr.im/puCv and let me know how that usability would come from facebook pages ( apart from targeted marketing) http://tr.im/puFx
 
Point one(1/800): Facebook is working out trying to make its linkers a success with the one and only ‘Retweet’ Personally, I would use the same without the ‘RT’ as long as I could credit the dude whose effort brought me the idea/url to be RT’d

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The new twitter app that rocked twitterone.com

Check out foller.me here. It is doing pretty well since it was featured on twitterone last week http://tr.im/puCv

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Facebook vs Twitter series 1/800

Facebook needs to emulate a lot of twitter and really soon. Keep looking here. Remember fb needs to turn into profit in some time. Facebook Needs Its Own Version of the Twitter Retweet http://bit.ly/2lPdC1 via @tweetmeme

Twitter is one of the most viral platforms on the social web. One link can be spread to millions of people in a matter of minutes. Perhaps the primary reason for this is the Twitter retweet (or “RT”), which provides Twitter users..

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