No more meat. Not more sweets. Seriously.

You know that the adoption of participatory/community (yeah web 2.0) sites has reached the masses when people gives up Facebook for lent. It may sound crazy but is happening as covered in today’s Wall Street Journal.

"If I give up clams, which I hate, I'm not really doing anything," says Kevin Shine, a 39-year-old electrical contractor from Philadelphia. But abstain from posting "status updates" on his every move? That's a worthy struggle. "It's my candy," he explains, noting that he logs on as much as 20 times a day. "That's pathological."

And what can help us to understand this a bit better? Maybe what are does sites used for according to eMarketer will help.

Capt. Sullenberger and US Airways social media landing

Fascinating article about Capt. Chesley B. Sullenberger III Fan page on Facebook.

Capt. Sullenberger was the pilot of the US Airways airplane that landed on the Hudson River last Thursday January 15. By Sunday January 18, the page had gather more that 300K fans and 14K post.

Meanwhile, Vitrue's Social Media Index was showing scores for US Airways soaring since Thursday. At their peak, the airline's scores were up 171% from its December average, reaching a three-day average of plus-135%. The Index is a proprietary reporting technology that measures a brand's online conversations.

For the time being the airline public relations department has created their group in facebook (One Million Strong For "Sully".) It would be interesting to see if US Airways uses this “social clamor” in the future.

Blogs as display ads platforms

We have known for a while of how effective blogs are to gain consumers confidence. But a recent article on eMarketer hints to a different strategy. While display ads on social networks are still viewed as ineffective, ads in blogs benefit from the blogs traction and attract more interest.


Also, as we have seen on Samsung partnership with the Pioneer Woman for the Moms Like Us site, a relationship with a blogger is an effective way to drive traffic to a site, and to create an engaged audience.

Isn’t easy being green?

A Yahoo Green Study identifies five segments regarding “green” purchases. Two groups, “deeply committed” and “trendy” are ready low hanging fruit for marketers.


Yahoo report on Research Brief

Here It Comes

It was inevitable. After weeks of banks and financial institutions going done on almost a daily basis, endless talks about bail-outs and all the markets going, going, gone down, it has to hit the digital space.

In his Video Insider blog, Tod Sacerdoti’s starts the conversation about how this crisis is going to affect us all. He mainly covers three factors.

1. A flight to quality, recognized publishers.
2. Their increase on inventory
3. How content syndication translates into a surplus of parties selling the same inventory.

Stay tune because this is only the beginning.

About Microsites

A very interesting article by David Armano about microsites, their reason of being and how better use them.

One of the examples he uses is a Lenovo site for the Olympics. This site works pretty much like an agregator of content generated / submitted from the usual suspects: blogger, YouTube, Flicker and Tweeter. I specially like it how the home page is orgznized by sport, country and language, it makes for a very simple and esay navigation.

Email vs. Social Networks

There have been some talks around about email beings substituted by social networks, but the recent AOL Email Addiction Report shows email usage is stronger than ever.

The Email Insider column brings up some interesting points:

"When the consumers that buy goods from us begin to spend more time managing their social networking sites and profiles than they do in their inbox, then I'll be worried."

And anyway, don't we receive alarms from our social networks on our inbox too...