PMOG, the Passively Multiplayer Online Game, has come out of its 15,000 player beta (of which I was a part of) and is now open to the public.

In a nutshell, this game requires you to install a Firefox toolbar (a la stumbleupon) that enables you to plant ‘mines’ on sites, entrap other players, and otherwise generally score points.

You’ve seen passive games before, but maybe didn’t realize it. Like Scrabulous, for example. Action in the game may happen while you’re away, but you can always come back to it — it’s just that gameplay probably advanced while you were away.

This non-committal style of gameplay can be the perfect balance for the average busy (or just multitasking) individual.

So while PMOG might not be a full-blown revolution in online gaming, its fundamental strategy of being ‘just enough’ to challenge, entertain, and engage over an extended period of time may be something that you and your brand can take a lesson or two from.

So go ahead. Give it a whirl.

Share on Facebook

My latest advisory, yet still optimistic tale contribution to Advertising Age’s Digital Next is live. Hopefully it will be in the next print issue as well.

Here’s a sneak preview:

When Habits Change Faster Than Ad Models
Venture capital and big-media acquisitions can’t bankroll social media forever

Posted on 05.02.08 @ 09:32 AM

Ian Schafer Ian Schafer also blogs at IanSchafer.com.
Technology is a funny thing. It enables humans to be capable of so much. It raises our potential to improve our lives and the lives of those around us.

But so much of technology is hidden from plain view because it doesn’t make money. Financial gain is arguably the most important aspect of technological innovation, because without it, all but the most altruistic of reasons cease to exist.

We are living in a time in which the media we consume are undergoing the most rapid technological transformation since the advent of TV. Back then, there was a lot for companies to gain by having a TV in every home in America. It gave advertisers the ability to pitch their wares to TV’s captive audience. And over the years, those advertisers have shelled out billions upon billions of dollars continuing to do so because it was perhaps the best-performing media, but one that delivered a passive audience.

We are now witnessing a migration of ad dollars from lesser-performing media to online’s active audience.

Even within a rapidly growing medium such as the web, there is a still more-quickly growing form of online media that we call social media. This includes social networks, blogs, virtual worlds, widgets, applications, communities and any other format where the individuals who use it create or distribute the majority of the content.

Read the rest over at AdAge.com by clicking here.

Share on Facebook

As you may have read in today’s Advertising Age, Deep Focus is the sole beta partner in MySpace’s new ’self-serve’ platform.

According to the article:

A few months after opening its platform to outside application developers, the company plans to announce today that it will let advertisers directly manage, through a self-service tool, their branded profiles on MySpace.

This is a vast change from the tightly controlled, often laborious process brands previously had to endure to have a presence on the social network. It’s also a reaction, MySpace said, to advertisers’ desire to use the community more as a standing customer-relationship tool rather than a three-months-and-split campaign tool.

The move “is a fundamental shift in the way we view this business,” said Bryce Emo, senior VP-head of sales at MySpace. “We want advertisers and clients to have control so they can have a more active relationship with clients.”

Here’s the part of the article that had me scratching my head, though:

When asked about the importance of such a move, several interactive-agency execs suggested it was a good one in theory but questioned MySpace’s relevance. The social network’s growth has started to flatline, and the buzz around social nets has migrated to Facebook and other properties and tools.

Questioning MySpace’s relevance? How can you question MySpace’s relevance right now? They got 73 million unique visitors in March (according to ComScore). I’d say that any property that gets 73 million users in a month is pretty darn relevant. This is a classic case of people starting to think about ‘what’s next’ before they’ve figured out ‘what’s now‘.

MySpace is very relevant. And I think this move is a great one in terms of improving their product — for advertisers at least. If you didn’t read my AdAge DigitalNext blog post about what social networks need to do to be more relevant for advertisers (written before Deep Focus’ participation in the beta, BTW), now would be a good time.

Deep Focus will be using this tool to enhance our position as the leader in using social networks to successfully help brands build relationships with their customers (and find and grow new ones). In order for these tools to be effective, you need to have agencies that know what they are doing using them. As the sole beta partner in this program, we’re acquiring all of our intelligence now, and helping to shape this product into what we feel is the best possible conversational marketing solution for brands that are (and have yet to be) managing communities on MySpace.

Historically, brands have been forced to run ‘campaigns’ on MySpace. With this tool, we’ll be able to build better relationships for those brands.

This is what I meant when I said we need need to move from “impressions to lasting impressions.”

Want to know more? Email me at ian(at)deep-focus(dot)net, or just ask in the comments below.

Share on Facebook

Kind of.

The IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) has made a document (PDF) available to help you help others understand the world of user-generated content and social media. It’s a basic primer that attempts to take someone from zero to dangerous in 17 pages.

According to the IAB:

“User-Generated Content and Social Media Advertising Overview, is a milestone document that helps marketers, agencies and publishers better understand how these platforms have fundamentally altered the digital experience for consumers and advertisers. The report defines UGC and social media, provides a detailed overview of the latest advertising opportunities, and details case studies of campaigns that have successfully utilized UGC and social media.”"

The document gives a very birds-eye view. What you can find in there will be within topics such as “What is User Generated Content?”, “What is Social Media?”, “Impact on the Advertising Landscape”, “Trends in UGC Advertising”, and “Challenges and Opportunities”.

If you’re new to interactive marketing, this PDF’s for you. It’s a 101 on opportunities out there.

I question many of the ‘case studies’ and examples used in the document, as they are not exemplary, nor are they even representative of the typical campaign. For example, why use “Fred Claus” as an example of a fan page on Facebook? Strange.

I can assure you that the content at the IAB Leadership Forum: User-Generated Content & Social Media
on June 2 in New York will have much more meat.

Share on Facebook

Occasionally you stumble across something that makes you go hmmmm…this could be interesting.

For those of you that didn’t like IM because of the ‘trail’ it left when discussing ’sensitive’ topics, this might be for you.

Apparently, BigString (historically, providers of free email) will be launching an AIM plugin on Wednesday that will ’self-destruct’ IM messages sent, on demand. It deletes traces of them on both computers, as well as any server.

While this doesn’t seem directly like an advertising or marketing opportunity for advertisers, it could probably be co-opted, or sponsored, if the right brand was out there.

I bet there are plenty of IMs that you’ve wish you never sent. Would’ve been nice to have this then.

More information is available here.

With all the talk about Twitter, it seems that there is still room for technological advancements in the world of instant messaging.

Share on Facebook

So the cat’s out of the bag — I’m going to be a frequent contributor to Advertising Age’s new collaborative blog, DigitalNext. Many of the blog posts will also be featured in the print edition of Advertising Age as well.

My co-contributors will be David Armano, Craig Daitch, Collen DeCourcy, Darren Herman, Reuben Steiger, Troy Young, and Mat Zucker. This is going to be a heckuva blog.

My first post is a doozy, and is meant to be incendiary. I want the conversation about the structure of advertising sales and offerings of all social networking websites to start now.

Here’s a brief excerpt:

Dear [insert social-network CEO name here],

I recently spoke to Silicon Alley Insider about why social-networking sites still haven’t begun to realize their revenue potential, and I said: What the social-networking properties should have is a relationship expert or a user advocate who would also work with the advertisers.

Banners alone aren’t going to cut it. Regardless of how much inventory you have, CPMs are going to continue to decrease because those banners lack effectiveness. And the advertisers that are willing to buy only that inventory are not going to be the brands you want to have long, big-revenue relationships with. Not that revenue from the same dating-site-shilling, mortgage-brokering, free-iPod-offering advertisers you’re getting (and consumers are ignoring) now is a bad thing, but it won’t be the difference in helping your property fulfill its true potential.

You need a new position: chief relationship officer. The fact that you’ve had chief revenue officers without this position is, frankly, disturbing. If you want major brands to commit to long-term relationships with you, you’re going to need to commit to long-term relationships with them — and help them create relationships with your users.

Now click here to go on and head over to read the full post. Let the conversation begin.

Share on Facebook

David Armano, of Critical Mass, recently posted a list of made-up words that inspired me to post a list of my own. I do this all day in meetings, and figured I’d share a few with you, loyal readers.

Crapplications: Annoying facebook applications. Usage: “No, I don’t want to take your Dr. Phil test. What a crapplication.”

Groupsydaisy: Accepting an invitation to join a Facebook group, only to realize it was for something completely different, then leaving immediately. Usage: “I just joined the ‘I love animals group’ on Facebook. Turns out it was for people that really ‘love’ animals. In that way. That was a heck of a groupsydaisy.”

Feedbrag: Purposefully doing something on Facebook that you know will be posted to your newsfeed, thus letting everyone know about it. Usage: “John rented Fellini’s ‘8 1/2′ from Blockbuster just to make people think he’s smart. That was such a feedbrag.”

Viraelian: One who believes that every online video they post to YouTube will be seen by millions. Usage: “Just because he made a video that looks low-budget but has special effects doesn’t mean people are all-of-a-sudden going to find them and email them to everyone they know. He’s such a viraelian, and he’s converted his entire department.”

Flackipedias: Articles on wikipedia created by or contributed to by PR firms.

Twitzer: Using Twitter to attract women. Usage: “Man, he’s totally sending out tweets that are designed to make him seem rich and single. What a Twitzer.”

Memicide: To kill a meme through overusage. Usage: “It’s becoming pretty apparent to me that coverage by mainstream media has killed RickRolling. A clear case of memicide.” Or, my blatant copying of David Armano’s blog post, is an official act of memicide.

Statustician: One who updates their Facebook and/or Twitter statuses habitually.

Twends: When something starts becoming oft-tweeted about in a short period of time. Usage: “I keep getting tweets pointing me to Brian Morrissey’s twitter feed. This is a definite twend.”

Invinsible: The feeling of setting your instant messaging application to “invisible”. Usage: “Ain’t no one going to bug me on IM today. I’m in control of who I chat with. I’m invinsible.”

Bonus Words!!!

SMainstorm: The process an agency goes through when instructed by a client to deliver ideas for a Facebook/MySpace/Blog campaign. Usage: “Smainstorm! Conference Room A! 10 minutes!”

Share on Facebook

Nothing is important until it gets the South Park treatment.

South Park knows this all too well after billions of un-monetized views of their content online. Recently, that changed with the launch of the new SouthParkStudios.com, home of shareable, linkable, and most importantly, embeddable South Park content. What’s also on display — but not embeddable — includes full episodes.

One of the best things about the site though, is the intelligence behind making individual clips of the episodes available. That’s often what people want to share. They may consume full episodes on their own time, but they want to share only portions of it with others.

Here’s an example, featuring many of your favorite ‘viral video’ stars:

And here’s the FULL EPISODE.

Trey & Matt (and of course, the brilliant minds at Comedy Central [full disclosure: clients, but we were not involved with this initiative]) built a destination that didn’t just give them a reason to sue YouTube, but a way to do it better than YouTube, and custom-built for their content. And in a way that allows them to make money showing the highest-quality content, immediately after airing on TV. Consumers will get used to going there first for the content.

That doesn’t weaken YouTube, but it goes to show you that it’s a phenomenon that’s not impossible to recreate yourself if you’re the rights-holder on great content. The easy part is the technology. The tough part is doing enough to make your site a better centralized distribution point and user experience then the alternatives.

There’s not many doing it as well as SouthParkStudios.com. Take note.

Share on Facebook

AgencySpy asked:

“Hey, Ian? What’s the mission statement for Deep Focus when approaching social media? The definition of social media and its associated technology is always being debated, so what are you defining that as? What are you offering clients and what are you working on right now?”

And I responded with a diatribe that started with:

“We believe that Social Media is actually a medium within a medium. Social Media is not search, nor is it direct response, nor is it ‘branding’ or ‘awareness’. This is a medium where most of, if not all content is created by the people that use it. It is involvement. Passion. Influence. Passive and active recommendations. Connectivity. Collaboration. Our simplest definition of Social Media is any area of a digital experience where a majority of the content is either created or influenced by users. There is a very different set of consumer behaviors that occur when reading, writing, or responding to a blog post, or sharing thoughts, actions, and experiences via social networks. Social media is dificult-to-control participatory media, which makes it an environment that makes advertisers uncomfortable.

And you know what? Good.

Uncomfortable situations have the potential to bring out the best in us. They can keep us on our toes. They can sharpen our communication skills. They can improve our relationships by understanding what got us into those awkward relationships to begin with. Advertisers that can accept that they are in an uncomfortable relationship with their customers (and want to improve those relationships) are the ones that are most ready for a foray into Social Media.”

Want a good look under the hood at Deep Focus? Read the rest by clicking here.

Share on Facebook

Brian Morrissey @ Adweek writes a fantastic, thorough, and sorely-needed piece on the state of social media metrics. I weighed in on the matter, and so did many others.

Here’s the intro to the article:

What’s a friend worth? It’s the question marketers are asking more and more as they plow into social media in the hopes of finding new customers in welcoming environments while going beyond simple messaging to the fuzzy notion of “engagement.”

But with the rapid growth of social media has come the challenge of measuring the new ways consumers are interacting with and sharing advertisers’ content and brands. In many cases, the biggest difficulty is not just figuring out what to measure but what to ignore — and how to square the need for metrics-driven accountability with the more qualitative feedback endemic to conversation-based channels.

The pressure to justify whether these stabs at so-called “conversational marketing” are paying off against business goals is increasing. Yet the immaturity of the space means few accepted definitions of success, which means many programs are judged more qualitatively, experts said.

Read the rest, and I strongly suggest that you do, by clicking here.

Share on Facebook