We’re extremely excited about powering McCainSpace. As a business this isn’t about politics for us. This is about being part of potentially the most important use of social media thus far. The conversations between now and November are some of the most important that Americans will have this year (OK, the 0.001 second win by Michael Phelps was pretty well discussed too). Social media, McCainSpace and my.BarackObama are at the heart of facilitating this.
This represents a MASSIVE milestone for our industry. Social media has become a must have component in the communications portfolio. This campaign has given it a seat at the table with large media buys on TV, radio and print, local and national events, door-to-door campaigning, etc. Social media’s not just about hooking up, tagging pics of your pet dog and poking each other anymore. It’s about facilitating real conversations. This rings true whether you’re a politician, a sports team, a media & entertainment brand or non-profit.
Yes, it’s a little ‘heart on his sleeve,’ but you have to admit that facilitating the most important conversations that Americans will have this year is an amazing thing!
Widgets aren’t just for viral syndication and distribution. They can be excellent tools to use when creating a website. One great example of this application of widgets can be seen at OnCapeweddings.com.
OnCapeWeddings is a site dedicated to the wedding industry in Cape Cod and is simply one of the most attractive sites I’ve seen in a while. Who powers their content? KickApps of course.
They used our highly customizable widgets to deploy the various components of their homepage including photo slideshows, articles, uploaded photos and video and more. They are also using KickApps’ social media tools to power their vibrant community. Social media is a great way for local and regional community websites to bring together people around common interests such as weddings.
Users can sign up, create profiles and share stories, video and pictures of their big day.
They even have some players signed up and blogging! Manny Lawson and Joe Staley are both involved in the community. Check out this post Staley made a few days ago. It gives an intimate look into his life that you could never hope to find elsewhere. This is a great way to jump start a fan community because it makes the users feel like they’re part of the team and can interact directly with their favorite players.
Another smart move on their part was getting Staley to record hilarious video to kick off their Put Your Game Face On contest. Interactive contests like this one that encourage using the video tools available to them within the community are a perfect intro for new users. Plus what fan doesn’t want to win free tickets, pre-game tailgate passes, and sideline passes to a 49ers game?
All these great examples emphasize the need to program your new community with content, activities, and also people. Kudos to their community manager Cmauck.
Social Media Camp NYC on August 7th was a major success. With around 150 participants the free, the one day bar camp spanned topics such as: What Old Media can Teach New Media, How to Make Love To Your Clients, Ad Hoc Social Networks, Social Media Marketing 101, Half Baked and my personal favorite, Widgets led by Justin Thorp of Clearspring.
Participants signed up to lead talks using the open grid format:
On top of interesting and educational talks, the camp also served as a great networking event. Internet superstars such as Jeff Pulver, Howard Greensteinand even the Schwag Addict/Mashablewriter Tamar Weinberg were in attendance.
Check out this short video that includes a snippet from the widget talk where Justin from Clearspring recommended KickApps for widget building. Thanks to @zenosdog for the music.
TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld blogged about Lehman Brothers’ August 2008 Internet Data Book today. He cites some very interesting stats that Analyst Doug Anmuth reports on about the projected growth in online advertising and video growth over the next few years.
“Video ads are the hottest area of growth. Analyst Doug Anmuth thinks that online video ad spending will reach $1.1 billion this year (up 63 percent), and more than double to $2.4 billion over the next two years.
He also thinks that total advertising spending in the U.S. will go from $26.1 billion this year to $45.5 billion in 2012 (consequently increasing from 8.8 percent of total advertising spending to 13.7 percent).”
We’re starting to see this trend play out on our ad inventory network. Over the last few months we’ve been part of Google’s Video Adsense beta and the results have been very impressive (we’ll have more about this soon).
How KickApps Plays Into This
Using the Video Player Studio you’re able to create, manage & deploy an unlimited amount of custom video players. We simply start by choose from a full player, video player lite or a video playlist player and you can customize every aspect of the player, from size, to colors to adding a watermark. In short, we’re putting true video publishing into the hands of everyone. No more having to borrow from video sharing sites like YouTube. You have your own branded, viral video channel.
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