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Yahoo Open Strategy Adds Apps to Email Posted: 15 Dec 2008 03:45 PM PST Yahoo has been talking about a more social and custom approach to its applications for several years now, and the ramping up of the recently launched Yahoo Open Strategy takes the company further in that direction (finally). To begin with, the Yahoo Mail welcome page will have more relevant information, such as new messages from your friends (i.e. connections) within the Yahoo network, hinting at how social Yahoo is hoping to make its email client. In addition to recommended connections, Yahoo Mail has added some filtering options that let you immediately see messages from your connections. This feature looks to be somewhat similar to the Facebook news feed, which allows users to filter their social graph updates across various settings. There’s also a new Yahoo Toolbar, which is looking to do much of what most recently launched toolbars are doing–centralizing Yahoo products and applications through an always-accessible browser add-on. The biggest change with Yahoo Open Strategy, however, is the new stance on integrated applications. The added support for an open strategy across its products and services means that third-party apps can find better ways in which to fit into Yahoo’s larger picture, as well as their own. Email continues to the the “home room” of online social activity, and so turning Yahoo into a highly social platform where third party apps can facilitate more direct relationships with users will only make Yahoo itself more social in the end. Changes made to both Yahoo Mail and the My Yahoo start page reflect these strides towards becoming more welcoming to third party applications. Yahoo Mail will push relevant and productive third party apps for end user-benefits, such as Xoopit, an application that allows you to search media attachments and directly share them across the web. Admittedly, I have Xoopit for Gmail and have anxiously been awaiting Yahoo Mail compatibility. Other new apps include some from Flixter and Wordpress. Making the inbox more social is certainly an important goal for Yahoo, and its Open Strategy initiative is moving the company down this road while building on the Yahoo Application Platform, Social Platform and Query Language. So I’m sure we’ll be seeing a number of other Yahoo products inching towards more open standards as well, and generally becoming more integrated with Yahoo’s major services.

Emerging Trends in Viral Video and the Implications for Advertising Posted: 15 Dec 2008 09:40 AM PST As part of our work at GeniusRocket, a D.C. startup that crowdsources creative content, we researched some of the trends in viral video (as of July 2008) that confirmed certain assumptions and challenged several widely held beliefs. After looking at the 1) Top 50 Viral Videos of the Year, 2) Top 50 YouTube Videos in a Typical Day, and 3) Top 50 Viral Ads of the Year, we can share some insights that are useful whether you are a Brand Manager or have ambitions to be the next Tay Zonday. Top 50 Viral Videos of the Year: 5 Lessons #1: The most viral content is usually corporate content. #2: The most viral content is posted on hundreds of blogs. #3: The most viral content is usually OVER 1 minute in length. #4: The most viral content occurs in the following categories (by frequency): 1. Music 2. Ads 3. Politics 4. Comedy 5. Animals 6. Sexy 7. Tech 8. Strange #5: The thumbnails of the most viral videos nearly always depict humans (particularly faces), not objects. These results undermine some of the conventional wisdom about viral videos. First, it contradicts the stereotype that viral hits are the mysterious province of webcam diarists. Indeed, the most viral videos are dominated by the film and music industries, and a few savvy companies like Dove, Sony, Honda, and Cadbury. Second, viral videos are not that short. The fact that these videos typically exceed a minute in length validate the credo that “content is king.” Third, advertisements are among the most common genres in the viral video space. These lessons pertain to the most viral of videos. However, it remains possible that focusing on the top 1000 viral videos instead of the top 50 would yield different results. For example, perhaps the ratio of UGC videos would increase, the average length of videos would decrease and the most popular genres would skew more toward parodies, pranks, tech, and news. One way to examine the long-tail of viral videos is to look at the Top 50 most viewed videos on YouTube in a given day. Top 50 Most Viewed Videos on Youtube On A Typical Day: 5 Lessons Revisited #1: Unlike the most viral content, the most viewed daily YouTube videos are just as likely to be UGC as corporate content. #2: The median number of comments on the most viewed daily YouTube videos is about 1000 (ranging from 0 to over 20,000 comments). #3: Like the most viral content, the most viewed daily YouTube videos are usually OVER 1 minute in length. #4: Similar to the most viral content, the most viewed daily YouTube videos occurred in these categories (by frequency): 1. Music 2. Cool 3. Funny 4. Ads 5. Sexy 6. Sports 7. Other #5: Like the most viral content, the most viewed daily YouTube videos usually use thumbnails of humans. Top 50 Viral Ads of the Year: 5 Final Lessons #1: While corporate content dominates advertising, it often takes its cues from UGC. #2: More than half of the top viral ads were one minute or more in duration, representing a shift away from the 30- second spot for online advertising. #3: The most viral ads occurred in the following sub-genres (by frequency): 1. Cool 2. Funny/Parody (one ad was unintentionally funny). 3. Celebrity 4. Politics 5. Other #4: Unlike other viral content, the most viral ads feature thumbnails of objects (rather than people) about 30% of the time. #5: The most viral ads feature disconnected content almost as often as heavily-branded content. Despite the fact that advertising is, not surprisingly, dominated by companies, it often takes its cues from UGC. For example, one Schweppes ad is reminiscent of older slow-motion viral videos and a Smirnoff Ice ad is similar to a tradition of user-generated rap video spoofs. Interestingly, at least a dozen of the top 50 viral ads reference Apple, as a parody (e.g. Conan iPhone commercial), a prop to generate interest (e.g. Will It Blend), or of course, as a commercial made for Apple. Indeed, Apple has the added distinction on this list of being the only company to have a user-generated on-message viral ad (created by Nick Haley, and re-shot with Apple). Several companies, particularly Sony, are clearly taking advantage of the potential for video ads to exceed the constraints of the traditional 30-second spot. These companies are not only creating long-form content, but some are also creating this content exclusively for online advertising. Most importantly, companies are creating a significant amount of “disconnected” content—content that is inherently interesting even without the eventual (and often subtle) injection of branding. This validates a viral strategy of creating compelling content, with less regard for time constraints or brand-centric messaging than traditional advertising dictates. For more figures, watch the slideshow. Michael Mossoba is a community manager for GeniusRocket, a DC-based startup that crowdsources creative content to a community of thousands of artists from over 80 countries. Founded in 2007, GeniusRocket has delivered cutting-edge content and social media strategy to a wide variety of clients from non-profits and startups to Fortune 500 companies like Heinz and Pepsi.

Google FriendConnect Adds Twitter Support Posted: 15 Dec 2008 08:52 AM PST If you’ve visited this blog in the past week and a half, you’ve probably noticed a Google Friend Connect community widget on the side of the site. The service enables any site to instantly create their own community and users can login from Google, Yahoo, AIM, or via OpenID. Now users can promote their communities via Twitter. The way that is works is that when you click the “Invite” link to contact other people the service posts a message. The service is pretty straight-forward. Aside from being able to tweet out the site you are at, you can also import your contacts on Twitter and the Friend Connect widget will immediately list other Twitter users that you’re following on Twitter that have also joined your community. Finally, if you want to switch your existing Friend Connect profile, you can simply import your Twitter profile rather than use your Google profile. The one thing missing from this service is the ability to log into Twitter with your Google account. Twitter has publicly stated that they will be implementing Facebook Connect before any other service. For now though, you can use your Twitter profile within Google Friend Connect.

The Social Advertising Race Has Begun Posted: 15 Dec 2008 06:00 AM PST When Google and Facebook launched their social identity platforms over a week ago, few people realized the changed that occurred. It’s not surprising that few took note. Over a week later, there are less than 100 sites that have publicly integrated with Facebook Connect. Compare that to the more than 150 applications that were being launched daily immediately after the Facebook platform launched last year. The platform continues at a steady pace but the rate of new Facebook Connect implementations is not growing as quickly. While the pace may be slow, all of that will be changing very soon. Personally, I’ve been working on my own application that will launch within days and I have read hundreds of other people state that they are in the process of integrating with Connect as well. What’s the big deal here? Back in October I suggested that Facebook has a lack of inventory. Click thru rates on Facebook are hovering somewhere between 0.03 percent and 0.11 percent. The cost per thousand impressions (CPMs) on Facebook are insanely high for many demographics and this has resulted in a high cost per lead. Connect Arrives Facebook Connect has arrived and we have only begun to see the impact but the theory is that as more sites integrate with the service, advertisers will be able to have broader targeting capabilities. While this wasn’t Facbeook’s stated intent, the reality is that by using Facebook Connect and distributing services throughout the web, we can instantly have more information about users. Want to launch an ad and target people based on their gender, location, and age? Previously, ad networks targeted users based on cookie data which involved piecing together sampled information from a broad range of sites. Also based on a user’s activity on the web, you could assume certain things about that user. For example, a user which previously visited Cosmopolitan.com is most likely a female. As more sites implement Facebook Connect, websites will have access to more data than before. The rationale is that previously, users had little incentive to fill 100 percent accurate information on random sites around the web but on Facebook there is a deep incentive to fill in your profile with accurate information. New Analytics Companies like Sometrics and kontagent have been tracking social data about users within social networks but now that information can extend to the rest of the web. Toss in a cookie with a new Facebook Connect or Google Friend Connect user and suddenly you have a lot more information about that individual. Rather than attaching their activities directly to their unique Facebook ID, web traffic will be associated with a unique ID, which makes their web activity anonymous. Lookery has been doing this for a while and now has a large amount of data about users visiting your site. They even provide a basic analytics package. I would argue that within the next 12 months, it will no longer be acceptable to simply know the approximate location of visitors to your site (as Google Analytics currently provides). Demographic based analytics data will become the norm. The biggest players will rapidly aggregate large databases of anonymous users across a vast number of websites. While companies like Advertising.com/Platform A have been providing targeted advertisements for a while now, broad access to more accurate data will only improve their targeting algorithms. Which only brings about one question: what about Facebook? Facebook’s Advertising Expansion Facebook has been generating hundreds of millions of dollars via their advertising platform but so far there hasn’t appeared to be a breakthrough advertising solution as Randall Stross pointed out in the New York Times this weekend. I’ve argued repeatedly that the breakthrough will take place once Facebook extends their platform to the general web. While Platform A and numerous other ad platforms provide behavioral and demographic targeting, none of them provide a self-serve solution for the masses that competes with Google AdWords. That’s where Facebook comes in and where I believe breakthroughs will begin to occur. Once Facebook Connect is solidified as a reliable platform, Facebook can take steps to open their ad platform to the web. Put ads on your site and even if a Facebook user hasn’t registered for your site, Facebook knows who they are. That’s what gives the company a slight advantage over competing ad networks but unfortunately not a huge advantage. If Facebook played their cards right, they’d roll out a payment platform at the same time that they unleash Facebook Ads for the web. Enough of the speculation though. Conclusion With all the new social platforms extending to the web, it’s clear that the web is rapidly becoming more social. It also means that advertisers are going to have much more data about the people being targeted by their ads. As social data becomes free flowing, the race toward a global self-serve demographically targeted ad platform ensues.

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