Twitter Ads

I’m writing about Twitter today, how they’re selling ads against Tweets embedded on other websites as a way to reach non-Twitter users. If you’ve got a few minutes today, I would love to hear what you think!

Twitter has it backwards. Instead of focusing first on monetization, it ought to focus on delighting customers. This is how Facebook and Google grew: by following the “if-you-build-it-they-will-come” playbook. By contrast, Twitter seems to be following the “if-we-build-it-they-must-be-monetized” playbook. Making money is the easy part; attracting a billion users is the hard part.

To be sure, there’s nothing wrong with Twitter’s idea per se. It’s the way Twitter is proceeding that’s troubling: without clarity, without partners, without vision.

Addendum: Success!

Snapcash

Snapchat just announced a partnership with Square for “Snapcash,” a new way for people to send money to their friends. So now Snapchat is involved in payments and Square is involved with social, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on what that can mean for the two companies.

I understand the urge to seize the momentum while you’re the hot new startup, but there’s a difference between innovating and trying to do everything—between perfecting that which you excel at and grasping for solutions in search of problems.

What’s more, Snapcash introduces a branding problem. The service is predicated on transience and frivolity. Traditionally, these are not values we associate with our bank account.

Addendum (11/18/2014): Success!

Alex From Target

1. Yesterday, Target tweeted: “We heart Alex too!” Do you think there’s more that can be done with the meme, or is Target’s acknowledgement enough?

2. It’s hard for brands to know how much to engage with memes and other inside jokes online. Can you think of some brands that have done really well on social with these sort of temporary cultural moments? Any that have backfired?

3. How can brands maintain a sense of humor on social media without becoming too silly? Is Target maintaining a good balance?

Brands are smart to join light-hearted bandwagons every once now and then. And social media is the perfect vehicle to express this levity.

Deploying humor online can be tricky, but when done right—as Target did yesterday—it can draw genuine laughs, build reservoirs of good will, and sharpen brand equity.

@GoldmanSachs did it right when @GSElevator’s book deal collapsed, snarking, “Guess elevators go up and down.” @CIA did it right when it joined Twitter, announcing, “We can neither confirm nor deny that this is our first tweet.” Even @WhiteHouse got in on the game, Rickrolling one concerned citizen who tweeted about the dry subject of fiscal policy.

On the other hand, miss the mark even by a little, and the joke can backfire. This happened to @WashingtonPost, which embraced an Upworthy-style headline in a tweet about child molestation, and @CNNBrk, which followed suit when reporting the stabbing of an 11-year-old girl.

The bottom line: “Alex From Target” has fueled feel-good, free press about the company, which should be happy to be in the news for something other than being hacked.

Addendum: Success!

Email in Internal Communications

Like most Washington institutions, one of my clients compiles and distributes various daily “clips” reports. These emails summarize the previous day’s news coverage, link to articles that quote a staffer, highlight our social media hits, and so on. Indeed, these internal emails are so valued that the organization distributes several of them, which sometimes overlap.

And yet, no one was tracking any of this; we assumed that because Very Important People were receiving these emails, the emails were Very Important. In one case, when we attempted to introduce a tracking mechanism, so we could see, at a minimum, the open and click-through rates, we encountered pushback. The current system worked, we were told; and it took a lot of time to get it where it was. Moreover, the email was a source of pride and turf, and making even small changes required layers of approval.

In another case, we shifted a daily report from a simple distribution list to an email marketing service, MailChimp. This allowed us to see exactly who was—and who wasn’t—opening the emails, and the results were eye-opening: people claimed to value the reports, but few were actually reading them, let alone clicking on their links. These insights fueled the argument to ultimately shut down this particular report.

Addendum (7/29/2013): Success!

The NSA and Silicon Valley

I’m working on a round-up today of the money spent by tech firms during the past year on privacy lobbying efforts. Do you happen to have any thoughts on the trend of companies spending more to influence lawmakers, and on them focusing a lot of their attention in recent quarters on NSA surveillance reform issues?

For any company that Americans entrust with the most personal details of our lives, the NSA revelations are cataclysmic. Reports that the government can spy on virtually anything we do electronically threaten to undercut the almost-total trust we place in tech companies.

We trust Facebook with our friendships, Google with our secrets, Twitter with our stream of consciousness. Trust is the foundation of their success, and they need to be perceived as working overtime to preserve and protect this sacrosanct relationship.

So it makes perfect sense for Silicon Valley to press its case in every forum: that of public opinion; in meetings with President Obama; by lobbying lawmakers and regulators.

Addendum: Success!

2013: The Year the Viral Headline Went Mainstream

I'm looking to do an end-of-the-year story on the top tech improvements/gadgets for communicators for 2013. I'd love to get a quote or at least your opinion. What do you think was the coolest or most useful tech platform/gadget or improvement this past year?

2013 was the year virality went mainstream, and it did so by way of viral headlines. If we takeaway one tech lesson this year, it's that a good headline can be a silver bullet.

As websites like BuzzFeed and Upworthy have demonstrated with truly remarkable success, if you want your content to go viral, you need to spend as much time packaging it with a click-baitish headline as you do writing the post.

This isn't easy. As even the smartest experts have discovered, when it comes to predicting which headline will do the best, your gut is gullible. Instead, you need to need to test, test, and test some more. Done right, a good headline can spur a police investigation or help raise $300K for cancer research.

Addendum (12/18/2013): Success!

Endless Tweets

Greenhouse Management magazine found my article about endless tweets, and cited it in the December 2013 issue. Here’s a screen shot:

Instagram Video

Any initial thoughts about this Instagram video announcement and what it’ll mean for PR/comms?

This is big news. For years, YouTube has utterly dominated the online space for videos. Indeed,  in the same way that “Kleenex” means “tissues,” YouTube has come to mean “videos.” Today’s announcement means there’s a new kid in town—and he’s backed-up by Facebook’s billion-plus users and billions in the bank. Accordingly, communicators now have greater choice in choosing where to direct our resources.

Indeed, Instagram videos threaten not only Google (YouTube) but also Twitter (Vine). This is especially true in light of Instagram’s mobile-first architecture, and because the mobile video market is ripe for the taking.

How do you think this will affect Vine, by the way? Can Vine and Instagram Video co-exist?

Absolutely—there’s more than enough room for many fish in the intertubes. For example, LinkedIn and Facebook happily co-exist, just with different niches.

It’ll be interesting to see which niches Vine and Instagram video capture. Just as LinkedIn is the social network from 9-5 and Facebook is where we go during lunch and for happy hours, so Vine may become a news-oriented platform, whereas Instagram videos take over the cute-kitten market.

A prediction: Because Instagram videos are 15-seconds (compared to Vine’s 3), Vine may feel compelled to expand its timeframe. Which, again, means greater choice for users.

Videos are a famously difficult medium to master, yet with Facebook’s resources, Instagram is well-poised to meet this challenge and capitalize on an enormous market.

Addendum (6/21/2013): Success!

Does Social Media Spur Sales?

I need your help for a story about what the results of this survey really mean.

Long before social media, there has always been tension between salespeople and marketers. Not for nothing does the C suite like to add “and Business Development” to the title of the VP of Marketing: executives—especially at publicly traded companies—are judged by the bottom line every quarter. When your shareholders are concerned about their portfolios, you don’t want to hear about the great things your social media team is doing to build your brand on Facebook.

So, no, in my experience and in general, executives would disagree that sales is a fourth-place priority. It may not be number one, but it needs to be in the top three. Someone’s gotta keep the lights on.

Indeed, this is perhaps the biggest challenge that social media marketers face today. Getting buy-in from skeptical executives requires demonstrating how Twitter will bring in a new client or inspire an existing to re-up. Arguing that this will happen “over time” can be a tough sell.

Of course, this is the crux of the issue: social media success doesn’t happen overnight, but demands an investment for the long-term. As with anything, success takes time and talent. It’s hard. Very hard. Anyone can cobble together a blog post or put up a white paper, but to do it in a way that spurs sales requires patience and stamina.

Addendum: Success!

Cyberbullying at Work

What would you suggest companies do to make sure employees aren’t bullying each other on social media without seeming to harshly restrict something that’s a personal activity as well as a business activity?

This is a dicey issue. Google erases the distinction between your personal and professional brand, so today’s professional is never really off the clock. That is, what you do in your off-hours—on, say, your personal Facebook page—ultimately reflects on your employer.

Solutions:

1. Involve HR early and continously. To underscore the importance of the issue, appoint someone in that department as the POC for cyberbulling. Let employees know from the get-go that they can report incidents to HR anonymously, on any subject, about anyone.

2. Hold an annual webinar or workshop on cyberbulling, just as some companies do for their 401(k)s. If you’re serious about the issue, make attendence mandatory.

3. Create a policy that lays out explicit dos and donts—with examples. Having something in writing is important for corrective action.

4. Cyberbullying underscores the importance of hiring the right people. As Netflix superbly demonstrates with its HR slide deck, a company’s most important asset is it people—so make sure to screen out anyone you think might be a bully.

Addendum: Success!

The Legal and Lobbying Effects of Facebook's Search Graph

Do you see anything about what Facebook is doing that could form the basis of either class actions or probes by regulators?

People love to sue. And with a billion-plus members, Facebook is a big target—not only from unhappy users and the plaintiff’s bar, but also from regulators operating under a mandate to scrutinize Facebook for the next two decades. What’s more, Facebook also faces competitors who can’t compete in the marketplace and so prevail upon governors and members of Congress to assert their influence.

In short: anytime Facebook implements a significant change, people will scrutinize it for any actionable weaknesses.

What should other companies take away from what Facebook is doing?

The takeaway for Silicon Valley is the importance of continuous lobbying. Engage regulators beforehand, so that when you make a big announcement, no one with the power to sanction you is surprised.

Addendum: Success!

Facebook’s Lobbying Numbers

I'm writing an article about Facebook's lobbying spending this past quarter, which topped $4 million. What do you see as propelling this increasingly high spending? Are these efforts likely to (or have they already had) any impact on privacy legislation and regulation?

1. Facebook has paid close attention to Google’s recent triumph over the FTC, the lesson of which is clear to every start-up and establishment from Menlo Park to Manhattan: Lobby, lobby, lobby, and then lobby some more.

To escape punitive legislation, tech firms must aggressively educate legislators and regulators. Not just with lawyers and lobbyists, but also with engineers who can explain how the web works and pundits who can pen op-eds, publish reports, and speak at conferences.

Change on the web takes place so often and so broadly that any company without an active and integrated Washington presence is gambling with its future.

2. The skyrocketing spend is likely attributable, in part, to Facebook’s Graph Search, which promises to be the social network’s most privacy-impinging feature yet. Facebook is smart to ramp up its lobbying now, to secure buy-in from legislators and regulators before it rolls out this potential game-changer.

Addendum (1/24/2013): Success!

Do You Need a Tumblr?

Which brands can get the most out of using Tumblr? What brands have to be on there, and which ones can stick to Facebook/Twitter? For brands that don’t know where to start with it, what are some tips for connecting with Tumblr fans?

1. Less complicated than a blog but more flexible than Facebook and Twitter, Tumblr works best with visual content—for example, memes that can be expressed with mashed-up pics (think Texts From Hillary, McKayla Is Not Impressed, and Binders Full of Women). You don’t need to write a full-length post, but you’re not limited by the lack of a headline, 140 characters, or a single photo size.

2. As such, a Tumblr is ideal for those in a creative field. For example, photographers use the platform to showcase their portfolios, especially since a Tumblr is easier to maintain than a regular website. It’s also worth noting, as Jeff Bercovici recently did, that many writers have used a Tumblr to score a book deal; see Animals With Casts, Dear Old Love, and My Parents Were Awesome.

3. At this point, most brands don’t need a Tumblr. Tumblr is more of a luxury than a necessity. It caters to youth brands with a niche and savvy customer base.

4. The downside to Tumblr: it’s one-directional. This isn’t a platform for two-way conversation. Tumblrs facilitate the pushing out of content, not pulling it in.

5. Nor is this the place for FAQs. It’s a place to pull back the curtain and show a little leg. For example, Mashable offers glimpses of the scenes at its HQ, while Newsweek and PRWeek provide marginalia of what didn’t make the cut into the main website.

Addendum (1/15/2013): Success!

Social Media Use by Small Business Owners

According to new data, only about a quarter small-business owners have a plan for how they use social media. That’s the bad news. The good news is that most of the rest—about half the total—are interested in social media. It seems they’re just having trouble getting going with it, or they’re going by the seats of their pants.

So the big question here is: what do small business owners need to bridge that gap? The obvious answer is almost certainly “infinite time,” but is there something else that could shift these numbers toward more strategic social media use? More training and discussion through small-business associations and the like? What’s it going to take?

1. Many people misunderstand social media, because they underestimate themselves. Many people think that in order to do social media, they need to be a whiz at Google+ Hangouts or up-to-date about the latest Instagram privacy policy. This is a fallacy.

To excel at social media, being socially savvy matters more than being media savvy. That is, knowing how to communicate—how to tell your story, how to connect with people, how to be social—is a better predictor of success than knowing the difference between a Facebook page and a Facebook group.

Once small businesses realize that their customers patronize them because they enjoy dealing with them on a personal level, they’ll begin to appreciate that social media isn’t a block box, but something they’re already doing in real life, which is transferable to the web.

2. Many small businesses approach social media with a “let’s-do-it” attitude, rather than a strategy. They think, “We need to be on Twitter!” instead of taking the time to ask “why” and “how.” But before you entertain a social media strategy, you need a business strategy. Once that foundation is in place—laying out, for example, what content they’ll tweet, who their key audiences are, what balance they want to strike between self-promotion and serving as an industry resource—a LinkedIn profile or a Pinterest page begins to make a lot more sense.

Addendum: Success!

How Can You Keep Employees From Burning Out Leading Up to the Holidays?

1. Give Time Off

Few people — both colleagues and clients — are 100% productive during Christmastime, so giving your staff time off is a win-win. Whether this means shutting down for a few days or closing early, having more time to spend with your family, beat the traffic, or just lounge around is a surefire way to foreclose burnout.

2. Host a Party

By getting staff together outside the office, allowing them to meet their coworkers’ significant others, and encouraging conversation that doesn’t revolve around work, holiday parties bolster morale and strengthen community. Indeed, here in D.C., they’re so common as to be expected. What’s more, they’re a tax write-off. Another win-win.

3. Hold Contests

Whether they pertain to business (for example, who racks up the most billable hours or who thinks up the best name for the new conference room) or to outside activities (for example, Secret Santa or a weekly quiz about the news), contests keep employees engaged at work, rather than staring at the clock. Especially when there’s a prize at the end, competition incentivizes people to come into the office every day.

Addendum (12/17/2012): Success!

How Google and Facebook Lobby

I'm writing an article about companies like Facebook and Google continuing to increase their spending to lobby on privacy and data security issues in Washington. I'm looking to speak to experts on what exactly they are lobbying on and how companies are likely to spend in coming quarters on privacy and consumer protection issues now that Barack Obama has won the White House and the majority in both houses has not changed.

Google has been spending big money lately lobbying Washington. For Google, everything is second to antitrust, as the tech giant seeks to dissuade the FTC from suing the company. To this end, it’s hired the former FCC general counsel and is reaching out not only to federal regulators and members of Congress, but also to the media and influential pundits. Now that Google has built a first-rate lobbying machine in Washington, it’s time to take it out for a spin and see what it can do.

For Facebook, privacy was and will continue to top its list of legislative concerns. Regulators want to know that the world’s biggest social network is protecting its reams of intensely personal data about its one billion users.

Secondary issues (for both Facebook and Google) include cybersecurity, online piracy, and high-tech worker visas.

I’ve heard reports that Facebook is lobbying in the European Union over the bloc’s data protection reform. Do you think companies may start moving to other countries to influence privacy issues there?

Will companies move their HQ to other countries? Probably not. Will they continue to open offices around the world, especially in regions that have a heavy regulatory hand? Absolutely. This is the nature of being a global business: everything is ultimately local, so the closer you are to the decision-makers, the more influence you can cultivate and carry. It’s easier and more effective to influence the EU from Brussels than it is from California. Big decisions are made in person.

Lobbying spending has been increasing in recent quarters. Do you think these figures will continue to rise, or have we reached a peak in spending?

The peak is yet to come. The bigger a company gets, the more lobbying muscle it needs; and Google and Facebook keep growing and growing. To be sure, they’ll come to a point of diminishing returns, but at this point, each dollar spent on legislative protection is money well-invested.

How successful do you think companies’ lobbying efforts have been to date?

Both companies have fought off some major challenges—Facebook successfully swallowed Instagram, while Google acquired Double Click and Motorola and has held off an antitrust lawsuit (thus far). Additionally, both signed privacy pacts with the FTC that would have inflicted far more damage had the firms’ lobbying been less aggressive.

Indeed, this is the cardinal rationale of lobbying: their success ought to be judged by what would happen if they didn’t have people on the ground in Washington, taking meetings, speaking at conferences, producing white papers, holding fundraisers, and so on.

Addendum (11/14/2012): Success!

Small Businesses and Social Media

Is six or more hours per week an appropriate amount of time for a business to spend using social media?

If there’s never enough of something for a small business, it’s time, and so to learn that these entrepreneurs are spending upwards of an hour a day on social media is encouraging news.

One caveat: consistency is important. That is, it’s better to spend an hour every day Facebooking and tweeting than it is to do so for two hours every other day.

Why do you think small-business owners focus so much on Facebook and Twitter and seem to be ignoring LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest?

To a small business owner focused obsessively on the bottom line, social media is still somewhat of a risk. As such, it’s far more assuring to go with an established network—one about which a major Hollywood movie was made—than with an upstart that revolves around a bulletin board. If you know nothing else about Facebook, you know it boasts a billion users. That’s an extremely compelling data point—even if only an infinitesimal fraction of that base are potential customers for you.

Finding and posting content is what takes businesspeople the longest. Is that where they should be focusing most of their energy?

Absolutely. The best way to build an audience and engage people is through content that’s compelling and original. Creating such content—whether that entails crafting an email subject line that’s irresistible, finding the perfect picture for your Facebook post, or A/B testing your AdWords—is laborious.

Social media budgets are increasing, in general. What does that indicate to you?

We’re now past the point where a business could simply slap the Twitter bird on its website and its CEO could tell friends that his firm was active in social media. That social media budgets are increasing is an overdue recognition of the fact that to do anything right requires an investment of time and money.

Addendum (11/2/2012): Success!

How Much Do You Charge to Write Blog Posts?

A friend (not a reporter) asks: I am going to start doing writing blog posts for a website and need to tell them what I charge. Do you usually get paid by the post, by the hour, by the word? Any hints you have would be greatly appreciated.

The material I write under my own name for publications like Mashable, PR Daily, and Fast Company is unpaid. But one reason I do this is that it leads to client work—in many cases, ghostwriting blog posts.

On one hand, some writers get paid by the word. But since blog posts are so much shorter than, say, a New Yorker article, I prefer to charge a flat fee. Options to consider:

* How long will your average post be? (I aim for anywhere from 500-1,000 words.)

* Will you include a round of revision based on client feedback?

* Will you include a (royalty-free) picture, or is this the client’s responsibility?

* Will you be publishing the post, or just submitting it (in, say, Word) to the client?

Depending on these factors, the cost can range from [redacted] per post. Another consideration: if the client commits to X posts per week/month/months, this will reduce the price (and make your cash flow more reliable). The bottom line: ascertain how many hours you need on average to write each post, then multiply that number by what you think is a fair hourly rate.

Etsy Gift Cards

What are the pros and cons of Etsy gift cards?

Gift cards are a sign that Etsy has arrived, a signal that it’s now a storefront consumers can trust not to go out of business and whose reputation is such that our friends and family will want to do business here.

For Etsy, gift cards are a win-win.

1. They constitute revenue now for a purchase later.

2. This purchase may not ever happen, in which case it’s found money. (This happens more than you’d think, especially if the cards arrive via email rather than being a physical object: they expire, get lost, and fall victim to forgetfulness.)

3. If a purchase does happens, it’s a sale. And because people don’t like to leave money on the table, they typically overspend to deplete the card, thus providing even more revenue than Etsy was expecting.

Pinkwashing

Wondering if public relations folks working with clients on breast cancer awareness campaigns are more sensitive to criticisms of pinkwashing than they used to be, now that it’s more of a topic in mainstream media?

Yes. Raising awareness for cancer, like raising awareness for veterans, is a special responsibility that calls upon a PR pro’s highest attributes: restraint and tact.

You need to eschew exaggeration and embellishment. Where these tactics may work in the service of other initiatives, here they only dilute the brand. The breast cancer story—a story of millions of moms, grandmoms, daughters, wives, sisters and aunts—sells itself.

With cancer, you are the custodian of a sacrosanct story that must be managed with the utmost integrity.

Marketing in the Post-PC Era

How does the emergence of mobile technology, social media, geolocation services, and other tools used on tablets and smartphones alter the marketing equation?

The explosive growth of mobile devices is shaking the marketing industry at its core. For example, websites now need to be designed responsively (to shrink in accordance with screen size) and with a literally on-the-go user in mind. Companies now need to add an app to their litany of marketing vehicles. And the ability to geotarget means you can reach your users with ever-increasing specificity.

Indeed, mobile now takes a seat not at the end of the marketing process, but the beginning. The best marketers are baking a mobile strategy and tactics into their brainstorming and proposals. To do otherwise is to risk irrelevance.

What Is Branding?

I’m writing an article for small and medium-size business owners on what branding is and how to make it work for their company.

Whether you know or not, your businesses has a brand. It’s not only how your website looks or where your office is located, but also the search results that appear when your company name is Googled and the dress code in the office. In other words: with every action you take or don’t take, there’s an opportunity to communicate your identity, to distinguish yourself from your competitors, to brand yourself.

For example, consider one of the most overlooked yet most common opportunities for businesses to brand themselves: email. Consider just the syntax of your address. Does the first half (the part before the “@”) employ the first letter of your first name, followed by your full last name, thus indicating that you’re part of corporate America? Is it just your first name—or even a nickname—thus indicating playfulness? Are there letters, thus indicating that you’re part of a giant corporation? Is the domain your company name, or are you relying on a personal address, thus weakening your credibility?

What about your signature block? Is the format consistent with that of your colleagues, thus indicating professionalism? Do you reference your social media channels, thus indicating your digital savvy? Do you include your title?

And what about your salutation? Do you even use one, or do jump right in? Ditto for a sign-off—do you bother to say “Thanks” or “Best”?

Facebook and Hiding Posts

Last week, Intel's social media strategist posted data highlighting negative feedback from Facebook fans. What do you think explains this behavior? What can brands do to avoid having their posts hidden, or worse, yet, be reported for spam? Intel's strategist says the problem is brands looking to increase their fan counts rather than engaging with the fans they have. Do you agree? Can you offer any other tips?

1. Ekaterina is 100% right: while it’s natural to focus on quantity over quality, marketers know that a single fan who’s engaging with your content is worth 10 who watch it scroll by. This is as true for page owners as it for Facebook itself: it’s more important to wring engagement out of your existing customers, rather than trying to generate another billion.

2. We highlight the big number for a variety of reasons: it’s public, so you can’t skew it; it doesn’t require qualification or explanation; and it makes us look good. Only a savvy boss or client will ask about the second metric.

3. I suspect part of the problem lies in advertising. Most marketers have bought ads to increase their fans. The thing is, in order to drive their numbers up, we cast our nets too widely, thus catching people who are only tangentially interested in our product or service. One solution, then, is to more narrowly define our advertising parameters.

How Much Brand Equity Did KitchenAid Just Burn?

KitchenAid’s Twitter person just tweeted something tasteless. How bad will the damage be to their brand?

Given the company’s reaction, the damage to KitchenAid will be minimal.

First, KitchenAid issued its “deepest apologies” for what it called an “irresponsible” tweet. It put out this statement, wisely, on the same medium—Twitter—where the offense took place, and did so immediately and with a hashtag. Check, check, check.

Next, when the top tech blog, Mashable, reported on the incident, KitchenAid delivered a statement that Mashable appended to its story. The statement didn’t come from a PR person but the woman in charge of KitchenAid’s Twitter channel. She reiterated the company’s contrition, and made it specific (we are “deeply sorry to President, his family, and the Twitter community”). She condemned the tweet as “tasteless,” and again took full responsibility (“I take responsibility for the whole team”). Finally, she implemented corrective action by promising that the jokester “won’t be tweeting for us anymore.” Check, check, check.

Finally, the company responded to follow-up tweets with an offer to talk on the record. Case closed.

In sum, like Apple, which last week apologized expertly for its Maps app, KitchenAid has managed this incident with pitch-perfect poise. It responded quickly, thoroughly, and smartly.

Equally important: it’s overwhelmingly obvious that this was a mistake, a personal opinion expressed on the corporate channel. Indeed, Twitter has made these blunders an occupational hazard. Fortunately, many customers can imagine themselves committing the same screw-up.

Mobile Ads

According to a new Pew report on mobile ads, people are seven times likelier to click on mobile ads than on other ads. That seems crazy.

1. On one hand, given their small screen size, smartphones and tablets make it difficult to avoid advertisements while browsing. No doubt, this is why full-page “takeover” ads on mobile devices are touted by Flipboard, Quartz, and others.

2. On the other hand, false positives—namely, clumsy thumbs—are surely one of the culprits here. (This is why auto-correct is so popular.) This so-called fat finger syndrome will likely decrease as screen sizes increase and our digits get more dexterous, but I suspect that the future of mobile advertising lies more in sponsored content than in straightforward, traditional banners.

Addendum: Success!

The New MySpace

I’m sure you saw the news last week about the big revamp coming for MySpace, along with the video that showcases all its new features. It does look like a robust, visually pleasing site is on the way. But the public already rejected MySpace once. So do you think they'll come back? Do people have time for another social media site, particularly one with all the features this one seems to have coming? How much does it help to have a celebrity spokesman (and stakeholder) in Justin Timberlake? And finally, should brands be anxious to get involved on the new MySpace? Which brands would benefit most from the music culture focus of the site?

1. The challenge is enormous, but there’s always room in the digital marketplace. For example, Facebook had the status update, but then Twitter came along and did it better—to the tune of 140 million users. Twitter had Twitpic, but then Instagram came in and did it better—to the tune of 80 million users. The beauty of the web is that it dramatically lowers the traditional barriers to entry, so a brilliant service can penetrate an already saturated market.

The old MySpace focused on monetization at the expense of growth—the exact opposite of Facebook’s strategy. If the new MySpace can reverse this, if it can recapture the spirit of a startup, it can rebound.

2. Just as Arianna Huffington persuaded her friends to blog for the Huffington Post, so too will Justin Timberlake leverage his offline social network to boost MySpace. Indeed, so central are celebrities to Twitter’s future that the company is interviewing Hollywood bigwigs for a seat on its board of directors. If MySpace can brand itself as the place where celebrities go for music, then the public will follow.

3. At this point, MySpace needs brands more than brands need MySpace. As such, brands curious about this rejuvenated site might explore the possibility of perks—say, a free ad budget, promotion among the site’s “featured” accounts, or access to an account rep. Make your early-adopter status mutually advantageous.

Addendum: Success!