Archives for posts with tag: social advertising

Should Craigslist Be Doing More to Stop Misuse?

March 8, 2009 //
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Craigslist was in the news this week after Cook County Sheriff Thomas Dart in Chicago filed a federal lawsuit calling for a ban on the Erotic Services section of the website.  He claimed that the owners of Craigslist facilitated prostitution by failing to block clear offers to trade sexual acts for money.

“Craigslist is the single largest source of prostitution in the nation,” Dart said. “Missing children, runaways, abused women and women trafficked in from foreign countries are routinely forced to have sex with strangers because they’re being pimped on Craigslist.”

Reading an article about the case on the times online it appears to me that, whilst I’m sure they don’t condone the activity, Craigslist haven’t done much to prevent these posts being made on the site. They have recently placed some restrictions on entries into the erotic services section but these are only based around the provision of contact details, allowing the authorities to track the advertisers should their actions be deemed illegal.  This appears more of a token gesture by Craigslist to appease the authorities, rather than a true intent to crack down.

In some ways I sympathise with the Craigslist team, there is no way they can vet every posting, there are however ways of using technology to prevent those of a dubious nature and these don’t appear to be in use.  You have to believe that Craigslist are scared of losing the traffic volumes which come via this section of their directory otherwise they would have simply bowed to pressure and closed the erotic services category before it got to this point.

In my opinion Craigslist have to be held responsible in some way for the content placed on their site and whilst they are not themselves, pimping out adult services or activity faciliitating the activities advertised, they are providing a medium for those that are, and they don’t appear to have done much about it.  It will be interesting to see how this one pans out.

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Categories Social Media

twitter’s unimaginative idea for monetisation

February 12, 2009 //

The latest rumour circulating of how the twitter owners plan to monetise their recent surge in users comes curtousy of Marketing magazine, which in itself, is evidence of twitter gaining further mainstream coverage.  In an interview with Biz Stone, cofounder of twitter, Fiona Ramsay quotes Stone as saying, ‘We are noticing more companies using Twitter and individuals following them. We can identify ways to make this experience even more valuable and charge for commercial accounts.’

Reading between the lines of the article it sounds to me Stone said it more as an idea than the definitive solution to monetising twitter, but is this the best he can come up with?

Obviously there is value in twitter for businesses.  They gain access to their customers in a conversational manner, something you don’t get outside the realms of social networking.  The ability to push messages at your consumers in real time, and more importantly, gain feedback on your product/service from an engaged audience, certainly has some value.  But how much value?  and is it enough for companies to want to pay for an account?  I have my doubts.  Especially when individuals at said company could set up personal accounts and act on behalf of the company without any associated costs.

A much simpler model would be ad funded, maybe not in the traditional way but in a more flexible, targeted way, as Facebook has started doing.  Everyone on twitter expresses an interest in one thing or another.  Through the small bio they write to accompany their profile, through the website link they choose to list, but more importantly, through the updates they make, some up to 50 a day!  Due to the way in which people use twitter, they constantly refer to products and activities which they use or partake in as part of their every day life.

People tweet about their phones (mostly iPhone and Blackberry at the minute but others will catch up!), they tweet about their laptops, their lifestyles, and just about everything else that is going on in their life.  A search on twitter for “valentines day” for example reveals that hundreds of people who have mentioned it in their recent tweets.  Now imagine being a flower company, wouldn’t you pay to hit these guys with a targeted advert around now?  You could even use smart technology to interpret the senitment of the statement to avoid hitting those with an “I hate valentines day” sentiment so as to avoid compounding their misery!

In fact, keyword level targeting with a sentiment filter could be awesome (can you tell I am writing as I think!?!).  Imagine being able to target those who were mentioned your competition in a negative way.  Hitting somebody who writes “broadband provider X sucks, I have been on the phone for hours!” with an ad for your alternative broadband package with 5 star customer service, priceless!

The continually evolving conversation of twitter could make it a highly exciting prospoect for advertisers (there have been 41 more velntines based tweets since I wrote the above!).  As an advertiser you could track tweet trends in real time and evolev your campaigns to match.  Facebook’s targetting platform is great, but it is pretty static as it is based on profile information more than anything else.  Twitter would have a potentially endless stream of inventory for topical products and services and this would make the advertising platform a hugely exciting prospect.

Im sure the top dogs at twitter are consider these options as we speak, but I sure do hope that charging for commercial accounts isnt the best thing they come up with!

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Categories Social Media

Engaging the social phenomenon – does it work for everybody

November 2, 2007 //
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Social media and networking is the new buzz word in online marketing and everyone wants a slice of the action.  It could be through blogging, customer discussion or other means businesses are sitting up and taking note of the power of the social internet community.  But does it work for everybody?

This is a question I asked myself in the face of a company who were very keen to enter this sector and asking for guidance.  The problem is that people take this buzz word, hear the hype around it and decide, “we need to be doing social”, without thinking about what that means to them as a company.  I imagine what they think it means relates to myspace, facebook and bebo, but how do you engage these audiences when you are selling something which doesn’t fit, pensions maybe, of life insurance.  That’s not to say that some of the audience would not be interested but the vast majority aren’t going to be. 

The first question a company should ask itself is, “does my product fit with social media? What am I going to achieve by getting involved?”  If the answer to the first question is no, then stop, look for other ways to achieve your goals.

This example relates directly to the common perception of what social media involves, i.e. social networking sites.  When looking at the broader scope of social it may be you can find a small element which will work for you, customer discussion boards, integrated blogging, community engagement, they are all forms of social media and all have a use.  Social media has a much broader reach than the websites people automatically quote when the phrase is uttered.  So look further afield, engage an social media expert and take their advice on board.  And at the end of the day, if social media isn’t for you, walk away.  Just because something is the flavour of the moment, doesn’t mean its going to taste sweet to everybody.

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Categories Social Networking