RockYou Facebook Ad Network is Live
0 Comments Published by Rodney Rumford May 17th, 2008 in Facebook Advertising, Facebook Applications, Marketing.
RockYou has served as an ad network by delivering ads from their highly successful facebook application portfolio for some time (tho not widely known). It is now possible for facebook application owners to start serving from an ad inventory. The ads do not appear to be standard IAB ad sizes. They appear to be geared specifically for facebook canvas pages.
App owners (publishers) can generate revenue from your application by joining the RockYou Ad Network. RockYou has created an ad network on Facebook and are offering publishers of all sizes the opportunity to serve ads from their extensive advertiser base. Ads are optimized to drive maximum revenue and are proven to deliver industry leading CPMs according to RockYou.
What are industry leading CPM’s? No official word what the level is or how well the inventory has been performing yet. I think this is yet another smart move by RockYou to spread their ad serving influence even deeper into the facebook ecosystem. If they can bring in more mainstream advertisers and brands I think this will be a good thing. What they really need is demographic analytics behind each app and the ability to serve the most appropriate ads (but I am sure this is a long way into the future), which could result in even higher CPM rates.
You can learn more about RockYou Ad Network here.
Custom Banner Ads Sample
Sample RockYou Ad Creative
Technorati Tags: rockyou, rockyou ad network, facebook, facebook advertising
Animoto Receives Funding from Amazon
0 Comments Published by Rodney Rumford May 15th, 2008 in Facebook, Facebook Applications, business.
Animoto Receives Funding from Amazon: The Animoto.com website, launched in August 2007, currently has over 160,000 registered users and over 7.5% of those users have paid for premium services. They have just announced that they have received funding from Amazon. The terms were not disclosed.
Animoto is a web application that lets users create professional-quality videos from their own photos and music. Using Cinematic AI technology, Animoto thinks like a director and editor and uses the same post-production techniques used in TV & film to create one-of-a-kind, dynamic videos.
The Animoto Facebook application has quickly become one of the most popular photo sharing applications on the social network with over 750,000 users.
I was speaking with Animoto CEO on Monday about how well the application has been doing since it’s launch just a short time ago. “In our first eight months, we’ve helped make photo sharing fun again,” said Brad Jefferson, CEO & Co-founder. “Now we’re ready to accelerate our team growth and product development to establish Animoto as the ubiquitous rendering platform for generating high-production value video from images and music. We are delighted to find in Amazon.com an investor who believes in our vision.”
Jefferson also shared that they will be turning Animoto from a website into a platform. The facebook application was the first instance of an application being built off of the API. The API will be private and most likely at a premium.
Animoto’s Facebook application is the first of many offerings that leverages the Animoto platform. Released in March 2008, the Animoto Videos Facebook application has quickly become one of the most popular applications on Facebook with over 750,000 users. To accommodate its dramatic growth, Animoto has relied on Amazon Web Services for all of its’ technical infrastructure needs.
“Animoto has a very smart team with an innovative approach to helping people create personalized, high production videos for the web,” said Jeff Blackburn, Senior Vice President for Business Development, Amazon.com. “As a customer of our Amazon Web Services business, Animoto shared with us the success they’ve had recently with their Facebook application, and we think this is just the beginning.”
While it’s free for Animoto users to create 30 second Animoto videos, the company currently earns revenue by offering premium services which allow users to create extended-length Animoto videos and download their Animoto videos in MP4 format.
Technorati Tags: animoto, amazon
IBM Social Computing Guidelines Released
1 Comment Published by Rodney Rumford May 14th, 2008 in business, social networks.
IBM Social Computing Guidelines Released: It is all about common sense; which is really not so common to the web enabled social network newbies. 
The bottom line is is that more and more companies and their employees are engaging on social networks like facebook, LinkedIn, twitter, etc. Business employees are also blogging more frequently (both on company and personal blogs). The rule sets laid out below are by no means totally inclusive but they are a great starting point for organizations to start from when considering their social media engagement strategy.
I found these IBM social guidelines on IBM employee Luis Suarez blog. Which as an interesting side note, I initially connected with him via twitter. It just goes to show yet again how social networks can spread discussions and dissemination of information in many ways that are still considered non traditional.
These “non-traditional” ways of communication via social networks are a trend that is here to stay. These “non traditional” social ways of communication are becoming more and more traditional. I hope all brand managers are paying very close attention here.
IBM Social Computing Guidelines: Executive Summary
1. Know and follow IBM’s Business Conduct Guidelines.
2. IBMers are personally responsible for the content they publish on blogs, wikis or any other form of user-generated media. Be mindful that what you publish will be public for a long time — protect your privacy.
3. Identify yourself — name and, when relevant, role at IBM — when you discuss IBM or IBM-related matters. And write in the first person. You must make it clear that you are speaking for yourself and not on behalf of IBM.
4. If you publish content to any website outside of IBM and it has something to do with work you do or subjects associated with IBM, use a disclaimer such as this: “The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.”
5. Respect copyright, fair use and financial disclosure laws.
6. Don’t provide IBM’s or another’s confidential or other proprietary information. Ask permission to publish or report on conversations that are meant to be private or internal to IBM.
7. Don’t cite or reference clients, partners or suppliers without their approval. When you do make a reference, where possible link back to the source.
8. Respect your audience. Don’t use ethnic slurs, personal insults, obscenity, or engage in any conduct that would not be acceptable in IBM’s workplace. You should also show proper consideration for others’ privacy and for topics that may be considered objectionable or inflammatory — such as politics and religion.
9. Find out who else is blogging or publishing on the topic, and cite them.
10. Be aware of your association with IBM in online social networks. If you identify yourself as an IBMer, ensure your profile and related content is consistent with how you wish to present yourself with colleagues and clients.
11. Don’t pick fights, be the first to correct your own mistakes, and don’t alter previous posts without indicating that you have done so.
12. Try to add value. Provide worthwhile information and perspective. IBM’s brand is best represented by its people and what you publish may reflect on IBM’s brand.”
You can also see what Sun is doing in the area of public discourse guidelines.
Technorati Tags: social engagement, social guidelines, social computing guidelines, ibm, sun
Digital Leadership Summit: LIVE
0 Comments Published by Rodney Rumford May 13th, 2008 in Branding, business.Real Branding Digital Leadership Summit: We are proud to be a partner with Real Branding for this Digiltal Leadership Summit. This exclusive event is invite only.
Mark Silva (Founder of Real Branding) has assembled some of the brightest minds to share their knowledge about social media, business, trends and branding.
We will be streaming the event Tuesday on Ustream.TV so be sure to spread the word and come join the online conversation: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/spotlight-on-social-media
We will have live chat enabled on Ustream and hope to see you there.
You can twitter using the hashtag #RBDLS
Live Videos provided by Ustream.TV
Google Friend Connect Looks Broad Reaching
0 Comments Published by Rodney Rumford May 13th, 2008 in Google, OpenSocial.I was at the Google campfire event tonight for the launch of Google Friend Connect. At first pass there is a LOT to like about this. Social media is going even more mainstream and will start to live outside of “traditional” social networking sites.
Now connections can be effectively “portable” to any site that utilizes friend connect. The implications will start to be seen as they roll out with a few dozen sites in the next few weeks.
Interview with David Glazer From Google
Real Branding Digital Leadership Summit
1 Comment Published by Rodney Rumford May 12th, 2008 in Branding, business, social networks.
Real Branding Digital Leadership Summit: We are proud to be a partner with Real Branding for this Digiltal Leadership Summit. This exclusive event is invite only.
Mark Silva (Founder of Real Branding) has assembled some of the brightest minds to share their knowledge about social media, business, trends and branding.
We will be streaming the event Tuesday on Ustream.TV so be sure to spread the word and come join the online conversation: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/spotlight-on-social-media
We will have live chat enabled on Ustream and hope to see you there.
You can twitter using the hashtag #RBDLS
Here is the speaker agenda for Event.
Technorati Tags: digital leadership summit, real branding
Google Friend Connect Makes Any Site Social
1 Comment Published by Rodney Rumford May 12th, 2008 in Google, OpenSocial, business, social media.
Google will officially announce a preview release of Google Friend Connect in about an hour. I will be on the conference call to learn as much as possible as to how Google Friend Connect will work.
Here is what we know for sure at this point:
The Friend Connect service will help website owners grow engagement by enabling any site on the web to easily provide social features for its visitors. Websites that are not social networks may still want to be social, and now they can be, in a relatively easy fashion.
With Google Friend Connect (see http://www.google.com/friendconnect following this evening’s Campfire One), any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming — picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.
Visitors to any site using Google Friend Connect will be able to see, invite, and interact with new friends, or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends from social sites on the web, including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and more.
There is an emerging wave of social standards — OpenID, OAuth, OpenSocial, and the data access APIs published by Facebook, Google, MySpace, and others. Google Friend Connect builds on these standards to let people easily connect with their friends, wherever they are on the web, making ‘any app, any site, any friends’ a reality.
This is fundamentally game changing for many sites as it will add a social layer to that users experience if properly integrated. Sites and widgets can instantly provide a social layer of engagement that was not possible previously.
Sample site showing Google Friend Connect Integrated
Google Friend Connect Set up area
We will be a Google Campfire tonight and get some video interviews & some additional details & friend connect insights.
TechCrunch also has some thoughts on Friend Connect.
Technorati Tags: google, friend connect, google friend connect
We have a handful of the elusive and in demand TwitterFone.com invites. Twitterfone lets you speak your tweets and it transcribes and sends a tweet for you along with a link to the audio message. Nice!
We are holding a twitter 6 word contest over the next few days. Here are the rules:
1. Include @rumford #twitterfonecontest in the tweet
2. In EXACTLY 6 words tweet why you love twitter (funny, sad, serious, wacky, twisted, anything!)
3. You can enter as many times as you wish
4. We will have a panel of judges pick the 3 best tweets. The winners get invites to Twitterfone!
Now go tweet your entry!
Feel free to retweet and spread the word: #Twitterfone 6 word contest “what i love about twitter” win an invite. get details http://tinyurl.com/5pwunl
The 6 Word Judges Panel:
Rodney Rumford
Chris Brogan
CenterNetworks
Video of Twitterfone in action:
Technorati Tags: twitterfone, twitterfone contest
Facebook To Get 50,000 New Servers? Yikes!
1 Comment Published by Rodney Rumford May 10th, 2008 in Facebook, Facebook News.
Facebook will be getting ~50,000 new servers over the next 1-2 years. Facebook has secured a 100 million dollar lease from Triplepoint Ventures according to Business Week to fund the technology that they will need to handle all of that growth & good data that people are sharing.
Rumor has it that facebook has 10,000 servers currently. So why do they need add 500% more capacity? The answer is really simple. Facebook Connect! Facebook Connect was just announced yesterday. The implications of Facebook Connect could very well be a game changer for many many sites online.
The opportunities boggle the mind with what could be done with Facebook Connect. This is bigger than facebook, this is potentially very far reaching outside of the “facebook” site. This will facilitate a fundamental change in the way many sites operate and how people interact and share data. All this data sharing comes at a price. That price appears to be 50,000 new servers.
Business Week Excerpt on the facebook lease deal: “Facebook does not disclose the number of servers it operates. But research firm Data Center Knowledge puts the tally at about 10,000. The slug of cash will help Facebook buy approximately 50,000 more servers, giving the company “the kind of headroom they need in the next year or two,” estimates Frank Gillett, a vice-president at Forrester Research.
Technorati Tags: facebook, facebook servers
Google Campfire Monday: Friend Connect Launching?
0 Comments Published by Rodney Rumford May 10th, 2008 in Google, OpenSocial.
Google Campfire Monday: Launching Google Friend Connect? We have been hearing some rumblings that Google has some big announcement around a product set of API’s for use with Open Social that is supposedly called “Friend Connect”. In theory it might allow Google Open Social developers to have access to profile information and allow those data sets to be used on other 3rd party websites.
This is coming directly after the recent announcement today of Facebook Connect. In all fairness here Google has had this event planned for some time.
I will be attending the Google Campfire on Monday evening for the event. I suspect that what techcrunch is reporting is most likely true that Google will launch a service that will allow some level of accessibility to your profile information for developers to use in creative ways. No word yet as to who potential launch partners might be.
Past history of the Google Campfire events has been to make some big announcement and create some buzz as to what they are brining to market. At the first campfire event they announced Open Social, then the next campfire they announced App Engine… I see a trend with these campfire events.
Google will have to bring some big partners on to gain traction with friend connect. Most people do not have any sort of profile associated with Google with the exception of Orkut. I have said many times that facebook knows far more about me than Google due to my profile information and behavior. Google will have to bring some big swinging partners to the party to make this a huge hit and gain traction rapidly.
The social network race is on in full force and getting kicked into 5th gear. I will be there Monday night with video camera in tow getting the scoop and reporting back.
Technorati Tags: google, google friend connect, friend connect
