I like Zappos, because they are good at social networking, online and offline. I like Amazon too, because they provide the easiest way of shopping online.

I wrote about Zappos’ social marketing activities earlier. To me, they are the one company who gets social media!

• Zappos’ Facebook page and Twitter are well integrated
• They fully leveraged all types of media (pictures and videos)
• Their employee engagement is very high: it’s a place naturally to be social - it’s personal!

People can comment on Amazon’s acquisition from different perspectives. To me, I wonder how Zappos’ social gene can be passed and emerged into Amazon. I’m not sure if that is a benefit from business value part, but I do see it would help to shape the culture and the company’s social value.

Tags: amazon, Facebook, social media, Social network service, Twitter, Zappos

ComScore recently did a research, which found that among 40 individual countries reported by comScore, Russia has the world’s most engaged social networking audience, with the average online Russian spending 6.6 hours and viewing 1,307 pages per month.

Brazil ranked close behind Russia at 6.3 hours, followed by Canada (5.6 hours), Puerto Rico (5.3 hours) and Spain (5.3 hours). The US ranked at #9  in terms of social network engagement, with an average of 4.2 average hours and 477 pages consumed per visitor.

I was surprised at once, because I thought that the Asian countries will definitely top the ranking. But neither China, Korea, or Japan is even showing up in this top-20 list. So I looked closely and found out that this data/research doesn’t include the internet Cafe or mobile web browsing…

This is really a good example of showing how mis-leading a social networking research could be. In my opinion, this research totaly ingored the big social networking factor - how it’s being social networked. In other words, in what way people are socializing. Without Internet Cafe data, China of course will not show up; without mobile web browsing, Japan, Korea, South Africa or China will probably not show up. Because that’s how people in those countries socialize. If you cut their main social networking platform, there is no way to understand how they are engaged.

Here is the list of the top 20 countries from ComScore research:

Tags: Australia, Canada, china, ComScore, mobile, Puerto Rico, Russia, Social network service, social networking, Spain

The beauty of social media is that there are so many ways of doing it. To some people, this might sounds challenging, if it’s viewed as “too many things, where to start?”. If you look at from a different angel, it actually shows how social media is powerful, and can be very easy and simple at the same time. One example that I just saw while I was looking at my Facebook page:

• Target posted a simple feed to the fans “Targets want to hear what you think about our guys’ clothing selection” and there are 3 more detailed questions within the same feed.
• Within the first 12 hours of posting, it received over 250 Likes and 800 Comments!

two screenshots:

1, how this campaign shows up on my personal profile page:

2, all comments of Target wall:

Why this is so exciting:

• the cost is so low: it’s just a facebook feed. it’s so easy & quick to implement and doesn’t even require any money!
• the response is huge: look at the numbers of responses within the first 12 hours. Comparing with your traditional campaigns or research, how can you get feedback this quick?
• it’s a great way to get customer feedback: it’s almost like open ended questions. All the comments are from the Target fans and it’s great insight and valuable data!
• it’s a great way to keep the dialogue and build communities: traditional media and research won’t give user any chance to interact, but in this campaign, people can see each other’s comments - that’s the best way of building WOM

Conclusion: don’t be scared about social media. It can be simple and easy. The point is that you need to get started somewhere now!

Tags: Facebook, On the Web, Online Communities, research, social media, social network, Social network service, Twitter

As part of iPhone creative minds this week along with Apple’s WWDC, post-it can be used for iPhone paper prototype in a fashionable way!

There is a post-it design contest around it too! Have fun designing with paper!

Tags: creative post-it, design, design contest, iphone, iphone app, iphone prototype, paper prototype, post-it

You are what you clikced on, or, you are what sites you visited… this website discovery visualization tool tells you what other sites people also visited. It’s sort of like Linkedin for websites.

Below are some of my finding. Try it out youself

• Yelp’s site network: VirginAmerica is also connected with Yelp - my biggest surprise! Maybe VirginAmerica is targeting at all food networks for advertising purposes, because people use food sites especially when they are traveling? Interesting!

• Twitter’s site network: it’s all the tools that people use around twitter. The power of having API? Or a sign of improvement that Twitter needs?

• Difference between Facebook and Linkedin site networks:

It’s fun to play around with it. Try it yourself!

Tags: advertising, Application programming interface, linkedin, On the Web, Online Communities, social network, Twitter, website discovery, Yelp

Facebook is hot within consumers and it’s  becoming hot for businesses too! Looking at all different Facebook business pages, the ones that I think are the best so far are Zappos, Target & Britney Spears (yes, it is a business page!…too bad that Facebook don’t have celebrity specific pages).

I like these pages because they utilize the most of the key elements of what a business Facebook page could do in a meaningful way. To give you some ideas, below are several reasons why they are good:

Zappos’ page has Twitter information on the Wall page, which can be seen easily. I tried to find Twitter information for other business pages and most of the time, it’s not there:

Zappos’ Boxes page is integrated with Zappos’ blog RSS feeds:

Both Zappos’ photo & video pages have lots of recent entries. Same as Target & Britney Spears pages:

Target’s Vote page has a nice campaign:

Britney’s event page lets you reserve all the concerts & events right on the page:

Feel free to share what your favorite Facebook Business pages are

Tags: Britney Spears, Business, Facebook, google, On the Web, RSS, social media, target, Twitter, Zappo

When new things come up, people really get creative. Here are two Twitter related ideas that I found interesting:

• create a dating profile in 140 characters or less.

“For people who think online dating questionnaires are just too much work, Montreal-based Radaroo offers something much, much simpler. Created by web entrepreneur Roberto Martínez, Radaroo is a free service that lets users send a tweet to create a dating profile in 140 characters or less.

Users sign up by sending a tweet to @radaroo, specifying their gender, the gender(s) they’re interested in, and which activities they’d like to participate in on a first date. People can find out if a fellow Twitterer is single by searching that person’s username, and can also search for all single members in their area by entering their zip code, or country code if outside the United States. Users have the option to keep their dating status private or announce that they’re currently on their first date, second date, third date, or getting married.

Simplicity is definitely the charm here, and it’s a fun example of how to use Twitter to forge new connections. The possibilities are endless: how about a similar service for finding a tennis partner, or fellow entrepreneurs interested in meeting up to brainstorm about new business ideas?” - from SpringWise

Website: www.radaroo.com

• job applicants to apply in 140 characters or less

“Riding the Twitter tidal wave, a Dutch marketing agency is asking job applicants to apply in 140 characters or less.

Utrecht-based Energize is looking to hire an account manager and a strategic planner, and has designed an application form that looks exactly like a page on Twitter, including an empty text field. Candidates enter a short message—their “twillicitatie”, or twapplication—describing why they’re the person for the job, plus their email address and Twitter username. Uploading a resume is optional. For privacy reasons, Energize won’t publicly tweet the applicant’s message.

While it might seem like a gimmicky way to recruit new staff members, the process highlights that Energize is looking for people who actively use social media. More importantly, by forcing them to be both engaging and succinct, it’s the perfect way to test a candidate’s writing skills. Quite the time-saver for the hiring manager, too (Related: Dating profiles in 140 characters or less.)” - from SpringWise

Website: www.energize.nl/twillicitatie

Tags: dating, job application, Twitter

As a lot of you know, I follow several companies in my library. LinkedIn is one of them.

People discuss how sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter can monitize. These sites have been trying different things to find the right answer for themselves too. One old technique is to monitize the content (hey, content is still king). LinkedIn is showing some banner ads on their more and more popular Answers pages. See my screen shot below:

Tags: content, Facebook, linkedin, social media, social network

Such a funny video about Twitter:

A young man struggles against the pressure to Twitter his life away. From: “SuperNews!” An animated sketch comedy series airing on Current TV. Every Friday night at 10 PM ET/PT.

Tune in and twit it

Tags: social network, Twitter

It sounds a very interesting topic to me: a panel of women who build, create, and work in virtual worlds. It’s organized by SD Forum Virtual Worlds SIG

Here are the panelists:

K. Estelle Dodson, NASA CoLab, on virtual worlds in science collaboration and education. Her work at NASA Ames Research Center in virtual research institutions includes telepresence, hyperwalls and meetings in Second Life and Qwaq.

Orna Michael, Arts Devt. Director at Sims Studio  at Electronic Arts, will discuss art and game development for the “Sims”, which is a simulation game of family, personal, career and personal development.

Mary Duda,  CEO/President of VirtuePlay Inc. which is releasing a game  called “The Lunar Racing Championship ” (LRC) in late Spring 2009.

Martha Russell, Associate Director of Media X at Stanford University, will discuss her experiences with remote collaboration in Qwaq Forums.

Jeska Dzwigalski (aka: Jeska Linden), manager of Customer Market Development, Linden Lab (creators of Second Life). Jeska has been a (virtual) Jill of all Trades at Linden Lab, working on everything from the new user experience to community management.

Susan Tenby, online community manager and virtual world evangelist, TechSoup Global

The room is full - we have about 70-80 people (60% women & 40% men).

The panel started with the self introduction of each panelist’s experience and what they do in their virtual world work. What impressed me the most are:

• Mary Duda: A passionate real woman entrepreneur. CEO of VirtuePlay. You can see how much she loves game. Check out the VirtuePlay Inc later in several months. They are releasing a real time simulation game using the real Moon’s data. They are partnering with NASA and their business mobile subscription based on. I can see how kids are going to go crazy with this game!
• Orna Michael: A very fun woman works at EA and the director of Sims Studio. Her work is fun - creat the games for woman. She shared with us: women who play games like changing clothes during the game; they like changing shoes really often; they like building - building a room, a garden…
• Susan Tenby: She is building a non-profit island in Second Life. They give away free offices to non-profit organizations in this island. Virtual Worlds can really help serious social causes.

It’s a fun night…

Tags: Electronic Arts, Linden Lab, live blogging, Multi-User Systems, NASA, NASA Ames Research Center, Second Life, Stanford University, Virtual reality, virtual worlds, women, women in tech, women leadership