(6) 
This is a clear sign of the move away from corporate web destinations in favor of the locations where consumers are spending most of their time. This is a big shift and one that must be quite a challenge for companies to get their heads around, but it reflects the new reality.
This is just the start because it forces the agencies hand to work out how best to Facebook and looking at the Barclaycard example there are certainly some challenges.
Interestingly, the experience seems just like a corporate web site and not the organic, fluid experience you expect on Facebook.
While it's smart understand where your customers are, getting the experience right is critical .
Posted by Ed Cotton
(1) Farmville, Zynga's game wasn't launched until June 2009 and has grown rapidly to reach 10 million active daily users by August of 2009 and onto 27 million where it stands today.
It demonstrates how building on people's existing ideas can be a succesfull formula, but more than that, it shows how gaming is evolving from high powered consoles to social experiences. The Wii showed us the power of social gaming in a physical context, but Farmville shows us how mass social gaming can truly become a phenomenon.
Disecting the elements that make Farmville such a success would be a lesson in how things become social and something a number of brands could learn a lot from.
Posted by Ed Cotton
"Conceivably the next great media company will be all spokes and no hub. It will exist as a constellation of connected apps and widgets that live inside other sites and offer a full experience plus access to your social graph and robust community features. Each of these may interconnect too so that a media company's community on Facebook can talk to the same on Twitter.
Facebook might be the first venue where this starts. It could become a mini news reader for millions who don't care about RSS or Twitter. Over time this may obviate the need to create large news sites. It's easier to create a rich interactive experience there than start a new news site and hope that people come to you. They won't have time to find or visit."
The implications of Steve's suggestions are significant.
If media companies don't have websites, what's the point of any brand having one?
Is the future all about applications and ideas that lock brands into social media?
If so, this will have huge implications for digital agencies who will no longer be needed to build web experiences and sites.
The bottom line is if you are an agency and you aren't playing in social media now and adding value to your client brand's experience, you are going to be in trouble.
Posted by Ed Cotton
(1) Kevin Kelly has spent some time thinking about this, as is his style and sets the magical number of 1,000 which he believes are the number of fans required to support an artist. He defines them as true fans, which is probably not the same as Facebook fans or Twitter followers.
"Other than aim for a blockbuster hit, what can an artist do to escape the long tail?
One solution is to find 1,000 True Fans. While some artists have discovered this path without calling it that, I think it is worth trying to formalize. The gist of 1,000 True Fans can be stated simply:
A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author - in other words, anyone producing works of art - needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.
A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can't wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans."
While most consumer brands aren't artists, there are clearly some opportunities for brands who can find their niche super fan bases in social media and then offer up unique products and services that are limited only to those super-fans. It's a new way to think about limited edition. We are already thinking about brands as media, so brands as artists, is yet another lens to use.
Posted by Ed Cotton
Back in December, Razorfish authored a presentation (thanks Dave Knox) which does a very good job of explaining how Facebook's Connect program could change the internet as we know it. While the deck examines the potential impact for big e-commerce players like, Apple's iTunes and Amazon, it's clear that there are also huge implications for brands and it's best of all, it's a very simple solution to implement.
Posted by Ed Cotton
(1) Looking at the world of viral, it seems to have shifted into a new gear recently. The LED sheep film for Samsung is evidence of the sophistication of viral. It's no longer a one hit gag wonder, it's layered and detail and full of lots of elements.
Recent work for the MINI Clubman (not done at BSSP), also hints at a new sensibility. One where the tricks of the viral trade are so well known, that it's now time for an ironic wink and a nod at the medium.
With social media's accelerated rise thanks to Facebook and Twitter, clients are now all over these worlds and looking for answers. This new world is incredibly labor intensive and involves all kinds of discrete skill sets from monitoring and analysis, through to smart strategic responses.
It's now clear that creating a great viral or building and executing a smart social media strategy are very specific skills that demand subtle and nuanced understanding of the medium. They also require bandwidth and speed of response.
Ad agencies aren't that well equipped to play in this space, given their fundamental skills are all about creating commercial messages, not bare bones, message free entertainment. In social media, it's about having specific tools, data sets and people skilled in the media who can create responses and ideas with social applicability.
In the short term, this will force agencies to identify and work with third parties to engage in this practices, where strategically relevant.
In the medium term, agencies with an eye to the future to re-inventing themselves will be wise to bring these new and very different skill sets in-house.
Posted by Ed Cotton