What’s Pownce?

Three popular social/micro blogging apps are: Twitter, Jaiku and newly launched Pownce – all addictive platforms for sharing presence:
– what I’m doing
– observations
– links to useful resources

Twitter is simple to post and view messages via Web browser, SMS, IM, client app, widget.

Jaiku expands on the idea and allows you to aggregate RSS feeds and create channels.

Pownce allows you to create groups of friends and push a variety of media to select users depending on the relationship. Imaging sharing audio files privately with select people you know will appreciate it. Pownce definitely takes the best ideas of the existing applications and builds upon them.

Personally, I find it easiest to use Twitter and find people I want to follow or interact with. Jaiku and Pownce are more restrictive in that sense. Pownce (in beta) raised the bar in service offerings.

Will I switch? It’s to early to say. Pownce needs to come out of beta and demonstrate what type of mobile capability they’ll have. I love Jaiku, but Twitter is so darn easy to use. Plus there’s the dilemma of abandoning the current platforms after time spent building relationships there. We need to see what Twitter and Jaiku will do to upgrade and compete.”

Related articles:

Promote your personal brand with Twitter, Tumblr and Jaiku

Resources for your habit

Leo Laporte does a great explanation on the Net@Night podcast episode 27. (Starts at 24 minutes in)

Resources for Your Twitter/Jaiku Habit

Okay, I’ve become addicted to Twitter and Jaiku. I like Twitter for the simplicity and the breadth of friends I have. I like Jaiku for the feed aggregation. Plus, I enjoy the convenience of publishing my presence from the desktop or my smart phone.

Here are some helpful resources to fuel your addiction (guess that makes me an enabler) …

• “Refuse to choose!” is the motto for TwitKu. I learned about this from BerniesWorld. You can use TwitKu to monitor your Twitter and Jaiku accounts via a single Web page. Very convenient since there’s no software to install. They even have a mobile-friendly browser version.
• There are a variety of add-ons for the Firefox Web Browser worth looking at. I like Twitbin.
• Twitterrific is a desktop application for Mac OS X users that allows you to monitor and respond to your friends in a very elegant user interface. This is a must have for Mac owners.
• Tweetr is a desktop application for either Windows or Mac users, similar to Twitterrific.
• EmailTwitter allows you to send and receive by email on your phone, helping you avoid incurring SMS charges.

Related Links…

• Use Twitter, Tumblr and Jaiku To Build Your Personal Brand.
• Mashable has a comprehensive list of 19 Cool Jaiku Tools.
• Lifehack.org has a good post called 5 Ways to Use Twitter for Good (Not Evil).
• If your curious about extreme Twitters, check out the top 100 according to Twitterholic.

I hope you find this useful.

Please let me know what your favorite application is:

Use Twitter, Tumblr and Jaiku To Build Your Personal Brand

I’ve been playing with Twitter, Tumblr and Jaiku.

These are relatively new social media tools. I informally polled my colleagues to gauge their awareness of these applications.

		Twitter		Tumblr		Jaiku
No, I’ve never heard of it and never used it.		65%		88%		76%
Yes, I’ve heard of it, but I don’t use it.		29%		12%		18%
Yes, I’ve heard of it and post to my own account.		6%		0%		6%

Sample size (n = 17)

These are three Web applications that are quickly growing in popularity. Essentially, they allow anyone to post thoughts immediately, in real time, and share with a community they associate themselves with. These are supposed to be short posts, typically under 140 characters, to share a thought, observation, learning, news. Some people post what they happen to be doing at the moment. It enables a community to follow a popular person, and create a more intimate relationship/understanding.

Essentially, with one of these accounts you are creating/publishing an RSS feed. The user has a great range of flexibility to publish from a phone, a wireless PDA, an instant messenger application or via a Web page. Likewise, the user can receive posts from others where, when and how he/she wants it.

Tumblr takes Twitter a step further and allows the user to post images and longer test posts on their Tumblog.

Jaiku does the same as Twitter, but the really nice feature is that the user can aggregate all the RSS feeds associated with him/herself into one feed for anyone wanting to follow that user. For example, a user posts on two blogs, publishes a podcast, publishes photos to Flickr, bookmarks favorite videos on YouTube and still posts to Twitter. With Jaiku, others can see every place that user is active online.

From my research/experience, Twitter is the most popular, having been growing in popularity since last year. I find most of the popular personalities in technology, podcasting and social media posting on their Twitter accounts. But they are beginning to migrate to Jaiku, often citing frustrations with Twitter server outages, delays and lost posts.

It can be fun and addicting. There is also a voyeuristic nature to this. It can also be frustrating to see a string of useless posts, such as: “Going to sleep now” or “At home with family.”

So how is this useful from a marketing perspective?

I’ve observed…

• People who are busy building themselves as subject matter experts and personal brands use this to share insights.
• Various software companies creating posts to get news out to the tech/podcasting community.

Would it make sense to have a fictional brand character make friends and post daily? It’s hard to say whether that would be successful or stir backlash. But having a brand’s Ask the Expert feature posting a tip a day or some useful nugget of advice might make sense.

Feel free to check out my Jaiku where I’ve aggregated some feeds together.

You should create your own accounts to test drive for yourself:
www.twitter.com
www.tumblr.com
www.jaiku.com

I hope you find this mini-brief useful.

Please share your thoughts.
Thank you.
-Roland

Give Brand Evangelists Access to Your Assets

Here’s something extremely smart. A clever PR / marketer arranged for mommy bloggers and podcasters to come for a special day on the set at the CBS comedy The New Adventures of Old Christine, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus. They got to hang out on the set, mingle and have a Q&A session with the cast.

Why?

Because the protagonist, Christine, is a working mother. In fact, of the shows currently on air, it’s extremely rare to have a show centered around the character of a working mother where you actually see her also dealing with family and personal issues. Most of the time, you see the “working mom” doing her lawyer or doctor duties — no family in site.

Think about the after effect. Those mommy bloggers head back home, tell their respective audiences about the experience, more and more may tune in to watch. Get the picture?

So, embrace your audience or fan base. Throw them some swag. Create an event or special offer for them and their listeners.

It’s a great grass roots approach to spreading your message.

Check out this behind the scenes video by the Manic Mommies podcast.

-Roland

MySpace Marketing Tips

This article on MarketingProfs.com has some great insights into marketing on MySpace.com. Check it out: MySpace Marketing Tips

I thought I’d add on some info from my experience…

Media campaign packages on MySpace that include your own “community page” start at around $75k (up from about $50k last year) and easily double based on extras you might pile on. The CPMs for targeted display media are very low.

According to the MySpace reps I’ve worked with, the keys to success includes providing consumers with lots of “cool” freebies and interactivity. The key is to give the MySpace users the ability to “make your brand their own.” Examples:

• Downloadable badges (catch phrases, cool visuals, etc.)
• Downloadable wallpaper
• Code to incorporate your background artwork, badges, etc. on their own MySpace pages
• Royalty free music files

The South Park 10th Season page recently had a build your own South Park character tool. Then you could copy the code to display your custom SP character on your own profile.

Up until a week or two ago, Apple had four community pages for it’s second generation iPod Nano. One page per color: Black, blue, green, pink. Each was it’s own personality with very cool visuals you could copy to your own profile. Plus each Nano had several mood music tracks you could listen to. That was the first instance I had seen of a brand having more than one page representing it.

Please share your MySpace marketing experience or thoughts.
Thanks.
-Roland

Teens on MySpace

Whether or not MySpace accounts are mainly teens to twenty somethings is highly debatable. One school of thought is that MySpace registered users skew much older than the demographics suggest, because they may lie about their self-reported demographic info.

But this TRU research survey mentioned below specifically sampled teens about their destination choices. Those participants indicated MySpace as one of their top destinations. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really suggest what the up and coming new alternatives to MySpace will be.

For further information:
TEENAGE RESEARCH UNLIMITED
Rob Callender
707 Skokie Blvd., 7th Floor
Northbrook, IL 60062
(847) 564-3440

Dec. 13, 2006

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

TEENS’ SPACE: MYSPACE TOPS TEENS’ LIST OF ONLINE DESTINATIONS

Northbrook, Ill. – Six months after achieving a major upset over more-established websites, MySpace (http://www.myspace.com) continues to solidify its position as teens’ most-visited web destination.

According to a new TRU survey of more than 2,000 teens aged 12 to 19, more than one-third of respondents (34%) listed MySpace as one of their two most-visited websites. Runner-up Yahoo collected 19% of teens’ votes, while third-place Google claimed 14%.

MySpace’s achievement is even more impressive than the numbers suggest because the responses resulted from a write-in question, TRU Trend Director Rob Callender said.

“The internet offers virtually unlimited content,” Callender said. “So the fact that more than one-third of teens were able to agree on a single web destination—without the benefit of a list of choices—speaks volumes about the impression MySpace has made on teen life.”

And MySpace has been able to build this consensus with impressive speed, Callender said.

“MySpace made its TRU Study debut one year ago. At that time, nine percent of teens listed it as a favorite—good enough for third place. Six months later, it vaulted to first place with mentions from 24% of teens. This fall’s results show MySpace consolidating its lead even further.”

The TRU Study reveals some interesting demographic differences:

» MySpace takes top honors among each age group (12- to 15-year-olds, 16- and 17-year-olds, and 18- and 19-year-olds) but significantly more of the oldest teens say it’s one of their most-frequented destinations compared to other age groups.
» MySpace takes first place among both guys and girls, but significantly more girls say they visit the site most often.
» MySpace is the most-visited website among African-American teens, Hispanic teens, and white teens. Interestingly, significantly more Hispanic teens claim MySpace is one of their most-visited sites compared to the other ethnic groups.

The Fall 2006 TRU Study also reveals that nearly six teens in 10 (58%) say they’ve checked out someone’s profile on a virtual-networking site. Nearly half of teens (49%) say they themselves have profiles on a virtual-networking site. MySpace again leads: 40% of teens say they have a MySpace profile, compared to 10% for Xanga and nine percent for Facebook.

This research data is part of The TRU Study. The largest study of its type, The TRU Study provides a twice-annual profile of teen attitudes, values, lifestyles, consumer behaviors, and trends. The research is based upon responses from more than 2,000 teens nationwide. The sample is representative of the overall U.S. teen population in terms of age, gender, ethnicity, and region of residence.

TRU, based in Chicago, is the nation’s pre-eminent market-research firm specializing on the teen market. Last year, TRU conducted 1,000 qualitative-research sessions, in addition to many in-depth interviews and customized quantitative studies. Over the past 24 years, TRU has interviewed nearly one million teenagers.

###

« Previous Page