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| The Booming Branded Applications Industry Posted: 03 Sep 2008 03:11 PM CDT Last year when Facebook opened there platform there was a sudden influx of brands looking to gain access to a new channel for branded exposure. The demand was significant and just in the past couple weeks we have seen an increasing number of applications come out from companies like Context Optional and Buddy Media. How do these new applications differ from websites of the past and how what new opportunities do they provide? What are the Opportunities?Facebook and all the other social platforms have provided brands with a new way of engaging with their customer. As social media has provided a channel for direct engagement, social platforms have provided brands with a central location for a large number of users. Companies (brands) in turn get direct and targeted exposure to their end consumer and it builds brand awareness. The one problem with these new channels? Monitoring ROI is extremely challenging. While you can get users to download an application or most users on social networks are not in a state where a direct purchase will be made. As such these new branded applications are much better at building awareness and building “engagement”. What Types of Things Are Being Built?There is a wide array of applications that are being built. Some also work and some don’t which makes many of these applications a crap shoot without some sort of expertise and the purchase of individual installations. Some of them are being hailed as great successes though and the two primary companies I know that are doing a good job are Buddy Media and Context Optional. Today Buddy Media announced the release of the Bacardi Mojito application. Yesterday Context Optional announced the release of a few applications as well including Today I’m Toasting by Miller. The place where I see the most room for growth is on new platforms like the iPhone. For instance, Audi released an extremely successful application on the iPhone which was one of the most downloaded applications for at least a week. Today the application is the 5th most popular free application according to Apple. You can’t find a single branded application among the top applications on Facebook or any other platform. While this has to do a lot with the timing of this application, I would suggest that this Audi application probably ranks among the most downloaded applications all together. What Does the Future Hold?There is clearly an increasing demand for branded applications but the biggest question is if these brands feel that the investment is worth the return. Most likely a large number will have successes but as some brands generate a less than satisfactory result we will see those advertising dollars go to other channels. Fortunately we are still extremely early in this process and trying to figure out how all of this will pan out. The reality is that brands need to try experimenting in this space and hopefully over time social networks and other non-traditional channels can prove that they are worth serious advertising dollars. |
| Final Social Ad Summit Schedule Announced Posted: 03 Sep 2008 11:03 AM CDT Today I happy to announce the final schedule for Social Ad Summit. We’ve been working hard for the past couple months to put together an incredible lineup and have finally solidified all of our speakers and panels. Below is the current schedule for the event: 9:00am - 9:45am - Social Network Advertising 10:00am - 10:45am - Media Buying on Social Networks 10:45am - 11:00am - Sponsored Plenary Keynote 11:15am - 12:00pm - Branded Experiences on Social Networks 12:15pm - 1:30pm - Lunch 1:45pm - 2:30pm - Social Ad Network Solutions 2:45pm - 3:30pm - Social Advertising Metrics 3:35pm - 4:20pm - Widget Monetization 4:30pm - 5:15pm - Alternative Social Advertising 5:30pm - 7:00pm I would also like to thank our sponsors, who without their support this event would not be possible. Our platinum sponsors Social Cash and Offerpal Media and our Gold Sponsors Buddy Media, SocialMedia, appssavvy, Sometrics, KickApps and JESS3. We may be announcing one or two more speakers in the next week and a half prior to the event but this is pretty much final. If you are interested in attending the event but have yet to receive an invite, please fill out the form on the Social Ad Summit homepage and we will try to get you an invite immediately. There is limited space for this event and it will sell out in the coming days so please let us know that you are interested in attending sooner rather than later. |
| hi5 Fully Launches OpenSocial Version 0.8 Posted: 03 Sep 2008 08:03 AM CDT
Is this a big announcement for OpenSocial? Not necessarily in terms of the standard’s reach but it definitely does imply substantial upgrades from a development perspective. As OpenSocial improves, the standard continues to face challenges in terms of adoption by developers. While the applications on MySpace, hi5 and other platforms appear to be growing rapidly, Facebook continues to dwarf the competition. While that may not be the case indefinitely, it appears that developers have been pushed to their limits. Take the MySpace Data Availability initiative for instance. It is essentially a copycat of Facebook Connect but was first to launch and while it may be confusing, is supposedly completely functional. So far there has been no word of any large applications that have been launched with the service. It’s not completely clear why this is the case but it appears that there is much more anticipation surrounding Facebook Connect. The announcement of this new version of OpenSocial may perhaps attract the same sort of response: a congratulatory pat on the back without comparable developer adoption. I could easily be wrong though. Ali Partovi of iLike for instance has an enthusiastic comment in the press release, “I'm delighted that hi5 is the first Open Social container to release the 0.8 upgrade.” One can only be so excited about a new version of OpenSocial being released though. I think we’re all still waiting on version 1.0 to arrive. Hopefully my negative tone is not taken whole-heartedly. I believe that this is a significant step for OpenSocial and for hi5. It will be interesting to see how the battle between OpenSocial and the Facebook platform plays out over the coming months. |
Today hi5 announced the release of the OpenSocial 0.8 standard which has been in beta for the past few weeks. According to the release, over 1,800 applications have been installed on the platform to date. The most significant change here? The launch of a RESTful API which enables developers to choose their development language rather than being forced into Javascript. This is a huge upgrade for the OpenSocial standard.| You are subscribed to email updates from The Social Times To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email Delivery powered by FeedBurner |
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