Social media dictates behavior, according to Andy Betts. He provides three examples for reasons to share but also reasons not to share. Fear, privacy and strategic goals may prevent people from sharing personal information in the future. Many will begin to think and act strategically about their use of social networks and social connections. Betts analyzes Twitter, Facebook and other social sites to determine how social media platforms impact consumer behavior.
One of the coolest damned experiments I have seen lately in blending social, mobile, news media and multimedia is the Winston app that Reactor Labs launched this week. This is a voice-enabled news assistant that tries (tries, mind you) to summarize your social feeds and topically organized news items into a kind of digest. It is like a narrative Flipboard. Or Siri reading you the news…and Twitter. Or Max Headroom without a touch of wit. The app can access your Facebook and Twitter feeds as well as accept your topical news picks, “technology,” “Headlines,” etc. Then it uses semantic analysis and multimedia razzle dazzle to create a narration that mimics a real newscast, but personalized. If you tap the Briefing tile, Winston -- in a synthesized voice with a British accent -- tells you the local weather forecast and then begins reading from your feeds. But the well-designed app does not do a straight read. It often introduces the item by telling you which of your friends posted it. Or it recognizes that the item is a question and so it tells you that so-and-so asks… . When items are heavily shared or commented upon, it alerts you to their popularity. The app also wisely turns the audio experience into a video one. It pulls relevant photos and uses the Ken Burns span and pan documentary technique. The app also has Airplay support for putting up on larger screens. The result is absolutely fascinating, if not entirely convincing. The app is at times uncanny in its ability to root out the substance of a news item and present it succinctly. But like all synthesized voices and reading algorithms, Winston’s cadence is off, and he gets into some weird but funny Max Headroom stuttering jags. For drivers, of course, Winston is a natural idea. But it also reminds us how little smartphone media makes use of the audio channel. There are times when people just don’t want to be neck-bent over their smartphones in what has now become our normal American profile. More to the point, Winston is a genuinely interesting innovation on media consumption and aggregation. Just as Flipboard sought and found an attractive new way to make news more fun and native to the device, this aims in a similar direction. It is no Flipboard, but there is that same reach about it. It encourages our thinking about how aggregation, personalization, image and animation, social media and more can be presented in ways we haven’t tried yet. The device’s capabilities and its new contexts should help us reimagine ways of experiencing content.
OK, that’s it. I’m tired of hearing people talk about Oreo’s Super Bowl tweet. Not because Oreo’s response wasn’t great. It was. But people are talking about the wrong things. Yes, kudos to the company’s team for responding quickly and for writing engaging copy. After all, they created a graphic and had it posted in less than 15 minutes after the power outage. The question we aren’t asking: Who actually made the tweet successful? You see, Oreo had a mere 65,000 followers when the company tweeted “Power out? No problem.” The tweet has since generated about 16,000 retweets and 6,000 favorites off of those 65,000 followers. Compare that to the most popular tweet by President Obama after the State of the Union address:
RT if you support President Obama's plan to create jobs and grow the middle class. #JobsNow, twitter.com/BarackObama/st… — Barack Obama (@BarackObama) February 13, 2013This tweet generated 5,600 retweets and 1,200 favorites off of 27,122,288 followers. So, Oreo got about three times as many retweets and five times as many favorites as Obama, while Oreo had less than .05% of the President’s followers. Here’s why the two are worthy of comparison: 1) They both capitalize on a moment in time where the country is united around an event and 2) They both capitalize on the intensity of people’s emotions. So, why did Oreo’s tweet gain so much more traction compared to the size of the brand’s followers? The biggest difference: The President’s tweet was spread by average Americans, but Oreo’s tweet was spread by us: ad industry pundits, professionals and news outlets. And it was retweeted by us IMMEDIATELY after it came out. Do a search for “Power out? No problem.” If you take a look at the people who retweeted the Oreo tweet with the accompanying picture, you’ll find a list like that below. The list shows the time of the tweet, the name of the person, the person’s profession and how much sharing that person’s tweet generated. Take a look. Notice anything? Nearly everyone is in the marketing profession. So, essentially, we all created the news cycle around Oreo’s tweet. A decent number of people retweeted it (mainly marketing folks), then AdFreak and 360i retweeted, no doubt accelerating the number of marketing folks exposed to the tweet. In an age when social media is supposed to help brands connect with average consumers, I find it ironic that the social media industry is what Oreo seemed to connect with most – not average consumers. Now, some might say I have sour grapes for not being with the agency that made this happen. Not at all. I think Oreo and 360i did an amazing job. They were aware, smart, creative and fast --everything a brand and agency should be. Here’s the big point: I just question how much the tweet resonated with the general public, compared to resonating with what our industry is craving. In the meantime, I think Oreo needs to send a year’s supply of cookies to Shauna, the astronomy educator from Washington, D.C., who retweeted at 5:56 PST (a mere eight minutes after the original tweet). You see, Shauna’s is the truly amazing tweet of the Super Bowl. Her tweet generated 224 retweets -- off of 487 followers. Nearly HALF of Shauna’s audience found her tweet relevant. Now THAT’S amazing. (And, here, for your viewing pleasure, the breakdown of Top Tweets when you search for “Power out? No problem.”) 5:48 original Oreo tweet goes out (16,064 RTs, 6,157 Fav) 5:48 Ariel, pr professional: 22 RTs, 9 Fav 5:49 Katie, Marketing Manager at 360i (the agency who worked with Oreo to create the tweet): 2 RTs, 2 Favorites 5:49 Michael, some German guy: 28 RTs, 8 Fav 5:50 Rich, Executive Editor at IGN: 22 RTs, 6 Fav 5:51 Katie, copywriter and photographer: 5 RTs, 3 Fav 5:51 Dan, web developer: 15 RTs, 1 Fav 5:51 AdFreak, trade pub: 476 RTs, 106 Fav 5:51 Jon, web developer: 14 RTs, 2 Fav 5:51 Corrie, freelance video production: 11 RTs, 1 Fav 5:51 Zoe, movie journalist: 7 RTs, 4 Fav 5:52 Paul, service industry strategist: 16 RTs, 1 Fav 5:52 Andrea, content marketer: 10 RTs, 1 Fav 5:52 Mark, sourcing coordinator: 15 RTs, 5 Fav 5:52 360i, Oreo's agency: 86 RTs, 31 Fav 5:52 Seamus, social media marketer: 23 RTs, 2 Fav 5:53 Jenn, social media freelancer: 10 RTs, 1 Fav 5:53 Danielle, advertising professional: 6 RTs, 1 Fav 5:53 Awful Ads, trade pub: 5 RTs, 2 Fav 5:53 Lauren, pr profesional: 32 RTs, 5 Fav 5:53 Brian, advertising profesional: 32 RTs, 9 Fav 5:53 Cara, copywriter: 2 RTs 5:53 Heather, pr and social profesional: 161 RTs, 45 Fav 5:54 Stephanie, corporate communications: 116 RTs, 23 Fav 5:54 Ashley, buzzfeed press director: 72 RTs, 11 Fav 5:54 Elyse, social media marketer: 145 RTs, 31 Fav 5:55 Charlie, reporter: 4 RTs 5:55 KT, reporter: 41 RTs, 4 Fav 5:56 Chris, reporter: 38 RTs, 7 Fav 5:56 Janna, social media for Disney: 53 RTs, 14 Fav 5:56 Anthony, reporter: 77 RTs, 15 Fav 5:56 Christopher, actor: 203 RTs, 88 Fav 5:56 Brooke, pr professional: 8 RTs, 1 Fav 5:56 Shauna, astronomy educator: 224 RTs, 59 Fav (487 followers) 5:57 Justin, tv meteorologist: 107 RTs, 21 Fav 5:58 Musa, social media at Nike: 34 RTs, 14 Fav 5:58 Tim, internet marketing consultant: 129 RTs, 22 Fav