Communities
Coachella Marketing Blitz: New Brands Shake Up Party Landscape
As many of you already know (and possibly attended), Coachella took place recently. This desert music and arts festival had some pretty hefty social media integration this year, a reflection of the culture and goals of the festival. Many brands were in attendance, appealing to attendees with their social media interactive tools. QR codes were a big hit this year in terms of navigating the festival and interacting with brands. Giltcity.com, Spin.com and Lacoste are all brands that were there showing off their social media chops. Did you attend the festival? Let us know what your impressions of the social media integration were!
Tools and Technology
LocalResponse Taps the Social Web to Help Businesses Draw Customers
LocalResponse is a new tool that was announced on Tuesday. It is being referred to as a “social advertising platform” that allows companies to look through social media information to more directly target their consumers. By being able to look at who their most loyal consumers are, brands have the opportunity to send them rewards and deals specifically, rather than in an email blast. LocalResponse scans Twitter as well as a plethora of location-based services to find out their information. So far, LocalResponse has reported that the beta version of their product had extremely positive response.
Measurement
ContentAide: Get Daily Reports About Your Rival’s Facebook Page
Measurement has always been a great challenge for social media professionals. But since it has come so far, ContentAide has decided to launch a product that they believe we are ready for. Rather than just focusing on the measurement of your social media initiatives, ContentAide allows users to measure the success of their competitor’s initiatives. Talk about getting fancy. So far, this tool can only be used on Facebook, but its offerings are pretty robust. All users need to do is let the tool know which competitors they would like to track. Then, the tool sends daily updates on how that page is doing. Not just the number of likes, but it also tracks specific posts and they are hoping for even deeper analysis soon.
Influencers
People Sold Twitter For Just $5 Million Back In 2006
There are some names in the social media world that are immediately noticeable. Mark Zuckerberg, Ev Williams, Jack Dorsey. And then there are the names that not many would recognize. James Hong, Don Hutchinson, Mitch Kapor. But these are the people who sold their Twitter shares back in 2006, before Twitter became what it is today. How would that feel? To sell a company for $5 million to turn around and find out that today it is worth $10 billion? Not as bad as you would think. Check out this article with interviews with a few of the original Twitter owners.
Partnerships
New Startup America Partnership Commitments from Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, American Express, Intuit and others to Support Tens of Thousands of U.S. Startups
The Startup America Partnership, a call to action from President Obama, is aimed at helping startup companies get their feet, with help from already established startups. It’s no surprise that social media companies have jumped on this opportunity, and earlier this week, LinkedIn joined the ranks of those included in the initiative. LinkedIn has offered their services to help get these relatively unknown companies a platform to tell their message from. However, LinkedIn is not the only new partner in this effort. Google, Intuit, American Express and others have all offered their knowledge and expertise to help entrepreneurs grow their startups.
Fun Stuff
YouTube To Stream Royal Wedding Live
If you’ve had enough of hearing about the royal wedding already, read no further. If you cannot get enough of the Prince and his wife to be, then this story is for you. This week, YouTube announced that they will be live streaming the royal wedding. Yes, you heard correctly. The live stream will be on the official Royal Channel and will begin at 5:00am EST. A live blog will accompany the stream, and this is predicted to be the largest YouTube event to date. To leave your own mark on the royal wedding, there will be a virtual guest book for you to leave all of your congratulations in.
