Marketing Pilgrim

With the box office for “The Social Network” beginning to feel the effects of everyone in the social media industry already seeing it and the likelihood that the rest of the world doesn’t care, it’s time to get back to real business for Facebook. Oftentimes, though, real business and Facebook is more about what Facebook is supposedly doing ‘to’ people rather than ‘for’ them. Today is no exception.

The Wall Street Journal is yet again calling out Facebook on continued privacy concerns

Many of the most popular applications, or “apps,” on the social-networking site Facebook Inc. have been transmitting identifying information—in effect, providing access to people’s names and, in some cases, their friends’ names—to dozens of advertising and Internet tracking companies, a Wall Street Journal investigation has found.

We regret to announce that there is no Cup of Joe this week. The world was in danger and Joe slipped into his Superman underpants to save the day.

Cup of Joe will return next week.

Starting today, Mountain Dew is launching a new Facebook ad campaign designed to drive people to “like” their fan page. What’s new about that? Facebook isn’t involved.

The zesty soda’s new creative will carry a Facebook “like” button that will send an update to the news feed of anyone who clicks on it and show them which of their friends already do the Dew.

The banners were created by Mountain Dew’s ad agency folks and placed on trendy websites such as The Onion, Crave and Funny or Die. According to AdWeek, this is the first time an advertiser has run an ad of this kind but they won’t be the last.

The odd note in the story is this:

Online ticket seller Eventbrite recently published a study that claims that sharing in social media can be quantified with a dollar amount. They boldly claim that their report, “Social Commerce: A First Look at the Numbers,” is the “first tangible data to quantify the value and impact of social media in driving eCommerce.” I don’t know if I completely buy either concept, but let’s take a look.

Eventbrite put together a series of tools that allowed them to look at ticket sales of a particular event before and after the event was shared on Facebook, Twitter and by email. What they found was that ticket sales rose proportionally to the number of times the event was shared between friends. Boiling it all down, they figured that Facebook was worth an average of $2.52 per share while Twitter was only worth .43. Email came in second highest at $2.34.

The latest version of the Amazon iPhone app (1.2.8) connects the offline world to online sales like never before by offering a camera based barcode scanner similar to those available on popular price comparison apps like Red Laser. The new Amazon app supports a more integrated offline-to-online shopping experience by supporting purchases directly inside the app and the ability to add items to your wish list for later purchase.

If you’re selling on Amazon, this is good news for you because you’re more likely to connect with potential customers as they engage with the real world. If you’re a brick-and-mortar retailer, you’re probably cringing at the thought of your customers scanning your products and then making the purchase with your competitor right there in your store. Ouch.

Nielsen has released a report that shows just how much more teens use texting than the rest of the population. They average over 3,300 sent or received texts per month. That’s kind of mind boggling for a dad of one of these texting titans.

The numbers drop off quite significantly the older the text user gets. No surprise there.

So what are the implications for marketers? Well, it’s easy to say that texting is the future because this is how kids are growing up. Well, at the risk of dating myself, I used to buy albums like crazy as a kids (yea those ancient vinyl things) but now I have an iPod.