Real Fresh TV | Specialists in Social Commerce and Social Media Marketing

Wow…!

You heard it hear first… For once, being on the UK side of the transatlantic time difference is an advantage.

Read more on Mark Zuckerberg‘s latest post on the Facebook blog.

I guess, my only question is, what happens if I don’t want my information gathered at participating sites after I’ve turned off Beacon.

And the answer is right here:

“This has been the philosophy behind our recent changes. Last week we changed Beacon to be an opt-in system, and today we’re releasing a privacy control to turn off Beacon completely. You can find it here. If you select that you don’t want to share some Beacon actions or if you turn off Beacon, then Facebook won’t store those actions even when partners send them to Facebook.” Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Facebook

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This article is the fifth in a series of articles exploring the future of social advertising.

Click on the ‘Social Advertising’ tag to read earlier posts/articles.

The last post was about the potential pitfalls of using social media.

This is rather more lighthearted and much shorter than previous posts.

Inspired by comments made by Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music Group in the December edition of Wired, I have turned to musing on the effects of ‘free music’ on the evolving social media landscape.

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Following today’s fantastically insightful comments by Imran and Chris Fleming on how to run gadget giveaways, I am currently thinking hard about revising how sponsored gadget giveaways work to make them really effective for all involved: the entrants, the sponsoring company and Real Fresh TV.

Imran made some brilliant suggestions about promoting sponsored giveaways using blog widgets via WidgetBox and by approaching respected bloggers and offering them a commission to promote the campaign to their readers.

The commission, provisionally pitched in the $50-$100 range, would only be payable if a regular reader of the partner blog goes on to win the prize.

The idea itself is worthy of merit if only for its promotional benefits. I will be approaching a handful of respected social media bloggers about this and putting forward how it could work for the mutual benefit of all involved after I’ve resolved current issues with how the giveaways work.

Which leads nicely on to my next point…

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This is the second post in a series looking at the future of social advertising.

To read all posts on the topic, click on the ‘Social Advertising’ tag.

The first post examined future trends in Social Advertising, postulating that going forward brand marketers would increasingly look to implementing social experiences offline around special interest groups which could then be promoted via ‘the social web’ using social media tools like blogs, online video and … Facebook groups.

This post examines the value exchange in the largely ‘free’ online environment of social media.

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This is the first in a series of posts exploring the future of social advertising.

The explosive growth in social networking, especially amongst the highly sought after 16-35 demographic who are increasingly immune to overt advertising, is prompting widespread experimentation in ‘social network advertising’ campaigns.

Global brands like Microsoft, Toyota and Universal Pictures have teamed up with MySpace to deploying HyperTargeting Ads on the world’s largest social network whilst Coca-Cola, Sony Pictures, eBay and more have partnered with Facebook to deploy Social Ads on the world’s fastest growing social network.

Considering it’s less than a year since the notion of ‘social networking’ became mainstream, ‘social advertising’ is certainly this year’s breakout success.

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This is the response my open letter to Facebook suggesting they implement a monthly paid subscription for those adverse to receiving Social Ads is currently receiving on Mathew Ingram’s widely read blog.

Matthew Ingram is a technology writer for Toronto’s The Globe and Mail.

The first commenter, Brian Sullivan says:

“So this would imply that Facebook is so compelling that users would pay to use it? Is that really the case? …. Maybe I am a Luddite or just an old fart but I think both ideas are ludicrous.”

Here’s the rest of his comment.

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This is an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook and the rest of the Facebook team.

First, I have to say I’ve nothing but admiration for the way you have laid the foundations for a whole new way of connecting with people online.

Facebook is so appealing because it effortlessly allows me to communicate with people I know in real life by recreating a fairly accurate virtual representation of my connection(s) with them.

I’m hardly a power user, as you can probably tell. As founder of a self-funded UK startup, I haven’t a great deal of time to spend on Facebook each day but I enjoy what I use of the service.

The status updates of far flung friends are a joy to receive and news feed niceties about how someone’s day is going are… fantastic.

All that real-time feedback, genuine and personal as it often is, is awesome and makes my time on the site worthwhile.

All the same, as a start up founder myself; I understand the very real pressure to generate revenues you are now under.

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Photo Credit: Reactee.com

So on Day 2 of our iPhone Giveaway, I’ve been exploring inner workings of the micropublishing/microblogging phenomenon that is Twitter. I’ve tried out TwitBin, the Twitter Firefox client and it’s fab. So is TweetScan, quite possibly the best Twitter Search Engine there is…

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So the Real Fresh TV site is pretty much ready now to be unveiled now. Look out for our public launch some time next week. Till then we’ll be polishing the silverware and crafting incise commentary. Look out for more blog posts…

We’ve tweaked and tweaked and even changed web host to bring you a much improved site at realfresh.tv. And we are rightly proud of how good it looks.

Sincere apologies to all who got the dreaded Internal Server Error 500 page on visiting the site over the last few days. Hopefully, that’s all behind us now.

For all those yearning for the big video player that used to live on the home page, have no fear, you’ll still be able to watch our groovy content here. Check out the ‘Watch’ Page…

You’ll shortly be able to leave comments after videos, finally. The Video Upload page will also be up soon. More video changes on the way…

You will also be able to vote in polls and suchlike. Get involved. Tell us what you think.

Over the next few days I will be sharing why we’ve re-launched and where we are up to with our multi-platform content distribution plans.

It’s all very exciting!

In breaking news, Microsoft has out bid Google to buy a stake in Facebook.

Initial reaction at Real Fresh HQ:

Poor Google.

Oh well. In the words of Aristotle:
“One swallow does not make a summer…”

Microsoft set out to prove that it has a strategy for catching up with Google in the online advertising wars and has proven this by spending more than Google was prepared to spend on Facebook. (more…)