It’s been a while since we’ve discussed newspaper paywalls, but this most recent move by The New York Times, Gannett Group and the Washington Post, under the name of Ongo, forces us to bring up the topic again.

As we have said many times, we would not be in this paywall mess if Rupert Murdoch did not bring it up.  But funnily enough, the originator the lack luster plan, did not continue with his own roll out of paywalls for his properties – so what does that tell you… it probably will not work, especially if all you serve to users is general news content that can be found elsewhere.  Nonetheless, the three publishing groups above, have launched a service called Ongo, where users subscribe to receive news content from not only the the three founding publishers, but also the Associated press, the Guardian and the Financial Times.  Subscribers pay $6.99 and they are served the news content that Ongo editors deem top content.  Now while there is some customization allowed, the service, as best as we can understand, does not encourage a $6.99 spend on the behalf of users.

The concept is simple – if you are looking to erect content paywalls ensure your content is niche, specific and fills a content void.

We think it our job to share with our readers, some just happen to be publishers, new and innovative ideas that leak on the web or in offline conversations that we think they may find interesting, and in that light, we share that the New York Times is contemplating creating their own version of WikiLeaks.

The concept, for all intensive purposes, makes sense, as the rate of interest from the public web on the topic of WikiLeaks (remember Operation Payback?) was unprecedentedly high when the story was just unfolding, late last year.  Yet,  we can’t help but wonder how government bodies will react to this New York Times initiative.  Let’s not forget how they reprimanded, blasted and attacked WikiLeaks and it’s staff, when what they deemed confidential documents were released.  We also know that there were warnings , around social sharing and commenting on WikiLeaks stories, distributed to educational programs that earmarked students for jobs within the government and many businesses (Amazon, Master Card, PayPal, etc…) ceased supporting, hosting and or providing services to WikiLeaks, due to government pressure.  What’s more, many members of the US government tried to minimize the credibility of WikiLeaks by saying they were not a real media group, insinuating that the public should not take them seriously.  Well… what will they say about the New York Times and their bout at publicly supporting whistle blowing – the, arguably , largest publishing media group in the US?  Has the New York Times thought about government reaction?  We’re hoping they have and plan to brave the storm.  The alternative, a watered down and heavily censored version of WikiLeaks, would do no good for anyone, and if that is what the plan to roll out, we say put your energies elsewhere.

Have you ever wondered how the US compares to other parts of the world, when looking at social networks and their advertising revenue impact?  Well, below, we’ve done our best to provide two tell tale visuals:

UK Social Network Related Ad Spend Revenues

US Social Network Related Ad Spend Revenues

After taking currency differences into consideration, the above two charts tell us that in 2011, the UK is estimated to garner only 5% of what the US will, from social network ad spend.  This does not mean the UK market is forlorn.  The other obvious from the UK observation chart above is the expected growth.  This coupled with the news we shared earlier this week, on the UK social commerce space and it’s ‘take notice’ changes in growth and user engagement, makes the expected shift in trends in eastern Europe, something to watch.

Last night, just before bed and as I do every night,  I powered up my iPad to take in my personalized news feeds, from the multiple services I find useful (the detail around the services will be left for another blog post).  Nonetheless, I started to read an article about Goldman Sachs and how it plans to tackle private treatment of  Facebook shares.  Interesting stuff, I thought, until I got to a part of the article where they proceeded to give me a definition of Facebook: “Facebook, the wildly popular site used as a message board and for online social networking” (Reuters 2011).  I found the attempt to define Facebook, in this day and age, odd.  I mean, if my mother and her friends can spurt out what Facebook is, then I am sure anyone interested in reading an article about Facebook, definitely does not need the definition served to them.  The whole, ‘define the most popular social network known to man’ thing, then sparked an interest in me, to go through the years, from Facebook’s launch to now, to see how the definition has changed.  In the articles defence, maybe I missed a major defining change from 2010 to 2011 or even 2009 to 2011.  Sadly, for this article, my definition research proved as I thought it would – the definition, within the past two years, has not changed.  So with that being said, we at ad-ition chose to not let our research go to waste and as a result, now present to you a visual of Facebook definitions, taken from multiple, popular news sources, spanning from 2003 to now.  We’ve done our best to grab statements that not only define Facebook, but also give you some insight into how the site was transforming itself, in that year.  Oh and just in case you wondering, TheFacebook.com is still a working URL – but we’re glad they decided to drop the “The”!

We’ve often touted the fact that brands can start to build their own social campaigns, independent of social networks, and have shared convincing reasons as to why, on may of our webcasts.  The primary reason is brand detraction, and building too much dependency on third party properties, to support your brand messaging.  Now, as we’ve said before, even if your social campaigns are built on your company web site, you would be remiss if you do not use social networks as an avenue to publicize your organic social campaigns.  Moreover, if you really dissect the business of advertising that is truly how we were meant to use social networks.  Nonetheless, given our belief in the above, when we seen brands do it right, we like to publicize their story.  Hence today’s coverage on Toyota’s recent campaign ‘Ideas for Good’.

Toyota has recently started running ads on television and online that encourages the public to venture over to their site and share their thoughts on how they would use Toyota technology, for world good.  Their leading TV spot shows a humanitarian, in what appears to be a third world country, aiding in a community relief project.

The way the campaign works is that users can choose from a list of Toyota technology, they then add some commentary on how they would use this technology for good and lastly, they share their ideas on the Toyota site.  Users can also, of course, share their ideas with their friends and on social networks.  So far, the list of suggestions is an impressive one, with actual pointed suggestions, so it  will be interesting to see if anything gets done with them.

Toyota’s campaign for good, works for many reasons:

Organic Control: Toyota houses the campaign on their site, giving them the power to capture user advocate profile information in house – ready to use in other campaigns in future.

Brand Awareness: it’s not that we are saying the Toyota brand is not known, but housing the campaign on their site, encourages them to drive users to the Toyota.com coordinates, thus making it easy for site visitors to venture over into vehicle information, should they happen to be passively, or even better yet, actively looking for a new vehicle.

Campaigns for Good Improve Brand Perception: the issues Toyota has had with recalls and now law suits from the involved insurance companies, has left a bad taste in the mouths of consumers.  There has never been more trepidation around buying the Toyota brand, than there was in the spring of 2010, when all the press could cover was their vehicle faults and recalls.  A campaign calling for public engagement, to communally work toward a betterment, is a great way to bring the focus back to the positives around the brand.

Nonetheless, it is clear a lot of thought went into how they would set up the campaign, all the way through to how they would message it.  Unlike other brands that try to direct users to their Facebook pages to take part in their branded, and special themed campaigns, they choose to do the opposite to further bolster brand awareness in arena of corporate responsibility.

When we talk about digital social campaigns, often times the mind wonders to tools like Twitter or Facebook, but one of the things that we tell businesses all the time, is that to be social and to foster that social behaviour, your idea or campaign does not have to always reside on a third party social network.  I mean sure, you will use them as a way to spread the word (you would be foolish not to), but you can be social, viral and engaging, without them.  This is the approach that Puma has taken with their most recent campaign called ‘Life Scoreboard‘, an awesome example of using your brands core competency to build hype and engagement.

The ‘Life Scoreboard’, Puma Campaign

You can access your personal scoreboard and view general interest score boards online or through a handy iPhone app.  Once set up, you can keep score on any competitive task or situation in your life.  For example, being Canadian, we could track who, between my friend and I, uses the expression “eh” more. Or, competition between my cousin and I to see who can devour the most Barolo in a week (I would never really do that). The point is, the competition could be whatever you like, the number of cheese burgers, or the opposite, the amount of weight lost, based on your most recent New Years resolution.

In order to start keeping score, you do have to set up an account, but the process is quick.  Now the campaign evolution gets more communal  and social, not just because I can share my scoreboard with friends (that’s so 2009), but because I can leave my scoreboard open to have any other registered user add a point to either side, regardless of if I have a relationship with them or not.  Now if everyone respects the process, you could see some interesting data coming out of Puma’s open scoreboards – more than they think.  We could see results that shape consumer and public opinion on some serious things!

The campaign itself has a ton of promise to be a success, as it breeds on our natural instincts to compete, and engulf neat data points that are not only educational, but also funny.  In the end, Puma gains mind-share and a kick-ass, targeted, mailing list and that in itself makes doing your own social campaign well worth it, considering targeted campaigns have an open rate that is 20% higher than those that are general blasts.

Currently, the trending scoreboards consist of things like: WikiLeaks vs The Man; Election Throw-down (Republicans vs Democrats); PC vs Mac and a whole bunch more.  We just opened up our own score board – Windows 7 Mobile: Bust or Success –   travel over to Puma’s Life Scoreboard and let us know what you think.

There is an interesting report just out from eMarketer that speaks to how businesses have started to use social commerce and social personalization, as we like to refer to it, at increasing rates.  We use the term ‘social personalization’ when businesses use data collected from social networks, to personalize and tailor customer messages, around offerings and services and according to eMarketer, businesses are seeing better click through results and response rates, through using these social tools.  The improved customer reach results are a given, as statistics show when messages are targeted, the probability of reaching a far greater audience is inevitable, hence the success around social personalization.

Although the concept around digitally collecting user social data may be daunting to the average business owner, there are many self-serve tools available that act as a plugin, meaning that only a string of code, which is provided by the network, needs to be added to your site.  Below, we’ve listed a few social data gathering possibilities:

“Connect With” buttons: these are API driven links or buttons that you often see on Web sites, giving users the option of registering using either the sites own native sign up process or their Facebook or Twitter accounts.  Once users connect with Facebook for example, a site publisher can see user specific analytics through Facebook Insights. With Insights, you can view data in the form of graphs or listed analytics on User information and Site Interaction details (level of content sharing, etc…).

Like buttons: these too are API driven and are the simple like buttons you see on content pages, within a Web site.  In order to “like” something, a user needs to be logged into Facebook, thus allowing you to collect Insight data, as described above.

Third Party Solutions: with the popularity and increase in the necessity of social participation, there are many third party tools that allow businesses to gain social data, on their incumbent customers.  Most of these are driven through email addresses collected by a business for their electronic newsletter or email campaigns.  One such third party solution is FlowTown.  With FlowTown, you have the ability to gather social information about your customers, via several social networks, all at once.  In addition to getting the basic social data, businesses are also told which of their customers have a greater influence level, allowing them to go one step deeper in their targeted campaigns.

The above are a few options available for businesses today, wishing to dabble in social personalization, with the other obvious gain with using data enabled share options being that it is an awesome way to further syndicate your content through, community involvement.  The only potential drawback to social data collection is the possibility that the amount of data Web site owners are privy to today, may change as looming privacy concerns have caused different social networks to change the way they do business.  However, as the data is available now, it makes sense that business owners take advantage of it, knowing that it can only lead to an increase in leads, adoption and in the end, vested customers.