It’s been a long time in the making, but Yahoo!’s new site is now available. This fresh look attempts to be more like iGoogle, with a column for favorites on the left side of the page. The cool part is that when you scroll over a category, a box pops open on the screen, enabling you to view your Facebook profile (for example) without even one click. You can also add favorites such as WordPress, Flickr, many news outlets such as All Things D and WIRED, and even Gmail (yes, Gmail.)
Check out the site and let us know what you think of Yahoo!’s new look.
Earlier this week Advertising Age took a look at how PR heads are shifting towards the center of marketing departments. The role shift at top levels evidence of a larger shift for communications and PR as a whole. The media meltdown, combined with the explosion of social media, has served as the great equalizer for the PR and marketing / advertising industries.
Corporations no longer able to leverage “old media” to reach mass or niche audiences with messages are moving their budgets online to new media channels. Channels that are up for grabs in the agency world. And guess what? PR agencies have the early leg up on owning these channels.
PR leads marketing in the management of all social media communications channels.
In 51% of organizations, PR lead digital communications compared to 40.5% where marketing leads
PR is responsible for blogging at 49% of all organizations. Marketing is responsible for blogging at 22% of all organizations. PR is responsible for social networking at 48% of all organizations. Marketing is responsible for social networking at 27% of all organizations.
PR is responsible for micro-blogging at 52% of all organizations. Marketing is responsible for micro-blogging at 22% of all organizations.
Capitalizing on the fact that social media is relationship-based, a top PR characteristic, and that we specialize in creating content, a big part of social media, it’s not that surprising.
However, a troubling stat caught my eye on Mashable earlier this week, given that PR and communications are leading the way with social media. An August 2009 survey by Mzinga and Babson Executive Education found that 84% of professionals using social media – in a variety of fields – don’t currently measure the ROI of their social media programs.
RED FLAG. No wonder the head of the PRSA is calling out the entire industry to establish measurement standards – Fast. The fallout of Madison Avenue, combined with the digital media evolution, is a huge opportunity for the communications and PR industry. One opportunity that we better get right – with measurement. If we’ve learned one thing from our peers in online advertising, it’s that today, companies pay for measurable ROI. While Google may not have been recession proof, it’s successful because it efficiently provides and measures ROI with its search marketing services. If we hope to move corporate communications where we believe it belongs – into a key component of marketing’s media planning stage, we better make numbers (more than 3)a top priority.
Have you been using Twitter or Facebook more frequently the past few months?
If so, you are one of the 14 million plus people in the U.S. that logged in to Twitter.com (this figure doesn’t even include TweetDeck or Twhirl traffic) and 91 million plus people that signed on to Facebook in the last year. Mashable recently reported these figures, noting that the uplift in traffic could be attributed to the increasing number of mainstream media and entertainment outlets now using the social networks.
The Boston FOX affiliate is one local example of a news station that has been successfully using the platforms to connect with their audience. Every morning, the anchors ask viewers to post questions and comments to their Twitter account, then address some of the tweets on air — it’s pretty cool to engage in that instantaneous communication with the people that just a few years ago might have been referred to as “talking heads.”
With Twitter and Facebook growing more than 75% and 23% respectively last month alone, the media outlets that embrace these platforms and harness the power of digital media will surely prove to hold their ground in this tough economy. Every week, another traditional media outlet seems to fall prey to bankruptcy or threat of closure, yet what amazes me is that that the “surviving” outlets aren’t jumping out of their chairs to enroll in Digital & Social Media 101 to learn how to adapt to this trend!
Here is a tip for the Boston Globe: “Meet your audience where they want to be met.” If I can’t name one person on my hand that subscribes to the print edition of the newspaper, yet can name at least 50 people that visit Boston.com regularly, chances are you need to update your business model and embrace the digital wave (perhaps promote your Twitter account in a place where it doesn’t take me 2 minutes to find it on the homepage!)
With APRs on credit cards doubling out of the blue, investment options dwindling and banks tightening their loan policies, RaceTalk connected with Kim Muhota – CEO of Pertuity Direct – to discuss how online social lending could play a significant role in freeing up consumer credit and helping the U.S. pull out of the financial market meltdown.
A financial services industry veteran, Kim provides insight into the current credit crunch and how social lending (otherwise known as peer-to-peer) is quickly becoming a viable alternative to traditional banks.
Q: Celent predicts that by 2010, there will be $5.8 billion peer-to-peer loans made in the U.S. – an 800% growth from 2007. Why do you think peer-to-peer lending has taken off the way it has?
Peer-to-peer lending has grown quite fast over the last 2 or so years for a number of reasons. Most recently, there is the issue of the liquidity crisis which means that even the prime borrower or small business owner does not have access to credit as they did a year or two ago. Traditional providers are also raising prices pretty aggressively to drive more revenue growth and compensate for added risk – and this impacts the consumer adversely.
There is also the fact that P2P loans are installment loans and are therefore very transparent and user friendly – in other words, there is no penalty pricing, hidden fees or anything like that. The P2P marketplace offers good potential returns for lenders and allows individuals to participate in a vibrant community of borrowers and lenders. So there are multiple compelling reasons why P2P is becoming more of a main-stream alternative than it was just 2 short years ago.
Q: What are the benefits of taking out a loan on a social lending site, as opposed to a traditional financial institution?
Social lending sites offer loans that are well priced (typically between 6.9% – 17.9%) and have fixed rates. Alternatives like credit cards have been increasing their interest rates across the board and have gotten very aggressive with penalty pricing and unfair fees. Social lending sites offer a loan product that allows you to go through the application and approval process in minutes; any time of the day.
The no-hassles loan option is a much better alternative to having to go into the branch, dealing with paper work and high fees. Further, it’s a great social networking opportunity where borrowers can tell their story and lenders can get to see where their money is going. Most of the lenders and borrowers are like minded individuals looking for a better deal than what they are getting from their bank.
Q: JPMorgan Chase — the largest credit card issuer in the U.S. — recently began adding a $10 fee to borrowers’ monthly balances (which accrues interest) and raise minimum payments to 5% from 2%. Is social lending a viable alternative to credit cards help consumers mitigate debt?
Absolutely. The fact that the loans are fixed term and fixed rate loans means that the consumer knows exactly what their loan payment is going to be and they know exactly how long it will take them to pay off the loan. It’s a great mechanism to get proactive around managing debt.
Q: Do you believe that social lending can play a role in helping to reverse the current economic crisis?
Yes. The current economic crisis is driven in large part to a lack of liquidity in the credit markets. Any option that provides much needed credit liquidity will help solve the current crisis – and the social lending model allows for the liquidity in the credit market by the consumer themselves. So in many ways, it’s the consumer driving the solution directly by participating in the social lending marketplace.
Q: How do you see the social lending space evolving in the next 9 – 12 months, following the October 2008 decision by the SEC to crackdown on the industry?
The recent regulatory changes raise the barrier to entry and increases the price to play in the space for the various companies out there. Most importantly, it provides an added level of regulation which is built to protect the consumer – and that’s always a huge positive. I think we will see more people adapting to the social lending marketplace as it continues to gain awareness and traction broadly. As a result, there is a good chance that we will see one or two innovative banks and financial services companies looking to partner with some of the social lending players as a way to get a head start into what is positioned to become a great customer acquisition channel.
For more of Kim’s thoughts on the current credit and liquidity crisis, you can check out his posts to the Pertuity Direct blog here.
Disclosure: Pertuity Direct is a Racepoint Group client
Have you ever counseled a client about participating on Twitter? Then you should probably know that in the future, there is a good chance that micro-blogging will come with a price.
According to Marketing magazine and TechCrunch, brands using Twitter for commercial purposes could very well start getting charged fees – a decision that could affect the thousands of companies (Twibs currently reports 3,482) that engage in the community every day.
Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone commented on the decision, saying:
“We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts.”
This new business plan for Twitter could be very similar to the business plan that won Silicon Alley Insider’s Create Twitter’s Revenue Model Contest last week. The plan, submitted by a Publicis Group named Denuo, was aimed at charging corporate marketers for two things:
• Access to opted-in users willing to field the occasional question from brands
• For dashboard access to deep user analytics.
These could be two of the major add-ons that Biz Stone and Twitter look to provide for commercial accounts to increase value for the fees they aim to charge. This would be great for the brands such as Dell that have successfully leveraged Twitter to drive revenues, to the tune of $1 million.
While it’s clear that Twitter has quickly evolved into a next-generation marketing tool, it seems to me that this decision could potentially impact the consumer more so than the brands. Twitter is not only a vehicle for message delivery/selling – it’s also a platform for customer service/listening (see post on “micro-listening” here).
Let me tell you – when I was having difficulty connecting my universal remote, I sent Comcast a Tweet in desperation asking for help, and Frank Eliason helped fix the problem within minutes. (Mind you, this was after an hour searching for the answer online and reading through every print booklet.)
I hope these fees don’t discourage brands from participating on Twitter, as it’ll be the customer that bears the brunt.
Michael Arrington has been a Web 2.0 lightning rod over the past year, announcing he plans to break every embargo he wants, attacking PR people and even banning the Associated Press. To his credit, he’s dealt with a lot of people willing to do almost anything to appear in TechCrunch, but from an outside perspective, it seemed like he always enjoyed the fight.
Apparently Arrington has had enough. While at a conference somone walked over to him and spit in his face, which was his sign that he (finally) needed to take a vacation. Arrington will be writing stories through this week, then plans to take a vacation to a beach without his iPhone to determine what he will do next:
I’ve decided the right thing to do is take some time off and get a better perspective on what I’m spending my life doing. I’ll be taking most of February off from writing, and decide what the best future for me is while sitting on a beach somewhere far away from my iPhone and laptop. I’ll be continuing to write this week and cover news from the World Economic Forum in Davos, then I’ll take time off starting next week.
On a slightly more upbeat note, the Wall Street Journal threw the latest wrinkle into your media outreach plans this week, by launching its new Digits blog. While those outside of Silicon Valley and the media (& PR) industry may see it as a minor move – it could alter the tech media landscape.
Finally, the Journal has put considerable resources into its technology blogging, in a direct effort to compete with the Times’ Bits Blog.
The Journal’s (now former) Business Technology blog, which was almost solely manned by Ben Worthen, was never easy to find – as editors at the WSJ.com failed to make it an integral aspect of their technology coverage (Something that the nytimes.com has succeeded in doing with Bits). In finally making the official move to Digits, the Journal has a platform for its 22 tech writers (10 more than the NYT’s uses for Bits) to cover breaking technology news in real-time along with news from start-ups, which may not make it into the print issue.
Sure, some will poke fun at the Journal(and perhaps rightly so) for seemingly copying the Bits’ blog structure (Julia Angwin plays the Bizarro Saul Hansell role) and name (Bits, Digits, Code, Oh-My!).
However, with the Journal’s sources and “inside” reporting, the addition of (not just another) tech blog to an already crowded market is nothing to sneeze at for folks like Michael Arrington and Om Malik. They will break stories and there will be people lining up to talk with them (knowing that they have a new platform to cover more stories).
Web 2.0 companies like Facebook and Google are actively encouraging Americans to vote today. Google has gone the traditional route with a graphic for the occasion:
Facebook is also encouraging people to vote, and is even tallying how many Facebook users have gone to the polls:
Meanwhile, The New York Times is also trying to figure out how voters are feeling, and have asked people to write the words that describe their current state of mind:
Add this to the list of strange stories: A woman in Japan has been arrested (in real life) after deleting her (virtual) ex-husband’s video game identity.
The couple was (virtually) married in a video game called Maple Story, and the woman’s (virtual) husband decided he wanted to (virtually) break up. She got upset and hacked into his (real) Maple Story account to delete his online persona. She was arrested this week on suspicion of hacking.
The crime could result in a five year prison sentence and a fine of $5,000.
Unfortunately, this virtual divorce and murder is just an example of what’s happening in real life due to video game that may seem a little to real, and social networks like Facebook becoming the official guide to relationship statuses.
Just this week a man in London known as the ‘Facebook Killer’ was sentenced to life in prison for murdering his ex-wife. The man killed his wife after she changed her Facebook relationship status to ‘single’ just four days after they separated. The man told offers he felt devastated and humiliated that she changed her relationship status so quickly and publicly, and announced that she was looking for other men.
These two cases are unfortunate examples how some people get way too wrapped up in what’s online and aren’t able to separate social networks and video games from real life. Let’s hope they don’t continue.
