Social Media Predictions for 2009 – an aggregation of the minds

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Peter Kim (former Forrester analyst) has taken the time summarize some thoughts from some leaders within this little phenomenon called social media. The document is worth a read. The opinions span the spectrum. From “social media being the best option due to dwindling marketing budgets”, to “social media will receive less focus due to murky metrics and unclear ROI”. Some of the comments are a good synopsis of the challenges that have emerged over the past year.

Link to full post and PDF (again):
http://www.beingpeterkim.com/2008/12/social-media-2009.html

If you are looking for some good sources of information and insight into social media this list is not a bad place to start. I follow some of them and stay well informed.

David Armano
VP of Experience Design
Critical Mass

Rohit Bhargava
SVP of Stragey
Ogilvy

Pete Blackshaw
EVP Strategic Services
Nielsen Online

Chris Brogan
President
New Marketing Labs

Todd Defren
Principal
Shift Communications

Joseph Jaffe
President
Crayon

Scott Monty
Head of Social Media
Ford Company

Jeremiah Owyang
Sr. Analyst
Forrester Research

Sponsored Blogging – The Oprah Phenomenon

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Jeremiah Owayang, Sr Analyst at Forrester Research has documented (real time) the release of a K-mart paid for blog posting. Jeremiah talked to the blogger who posted it (he got $500) and the company that offers the service called Izea. I bookmarked the twitter posts following Jeremiah. Reading the microblog, it is interesting to watch the story come together. Jeremiah talks to the blogger, talks to Izea, and responds to his his followers on twitter.  Jeremiah then follows up with it on his blog check it here:

Understanding Izea’s Sponsored Blogging Service

MediaPost Publications also covered the story here:

Kmart Enlists Bloggers To Get The Good Word Out

If companies are going to get popular bloggers to pay attention to thier products, more power to them! Who doesn’t like free stuff, especially if the product is high quality. The only person who gets hurt in this scenario is the blogger. If I read someones blog and they started doing product placements, I would tend to gloss over them. The only person who has been able to pull this off is Oprah, but her brand is so strong that people look to see what she has to say about products. We should really call this trend the Oprah phenomenon (patent pending!)

What do you think?

FirstBorn Takes over Big Spaceships Website

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AdAge has a story about Firstborn and Big Spaceship. Apparently all girly men (and women) at Big Spaceship forgot their inhalers. Firstborn took them to school in an Olympic style competition (basketball, pingpong, and foosball). The site has been reverted (24hr takeover), does anyone have any more pics?
See AdAge Article

I know Sapient would work over Firstborn like a little brother. Living in LA, all we do is hone our abs, pecs, and hand/eye coordination. I am going to extend a challenge to Firstborn LA and see if they want to rumble.

Stay Tuned