Writing a Social Media Press Release

A good article on the dynamics of writing a press release specifically for social media...

Back in the day, press releases were the primary means of communication between business enterprises and the media. However, the advancement of the internet has made the traditional format of a press release less effective as journalists, press members and readers crave small chunks of succinct details that incorporate social media, linking and multimedia to make it more digestible and relevant. Compare this to the multi-page press releases that dominated newsroom fax machines in the past and it’s pretty clear that the way information is assembled and received has changed.

If you’re used to traditional press release formats its evolution to social media press release (SMPR) won’t be too much of a challenge. Knowing what to include and how to format your SMPR will be a big help in securing media and blogger coverage for your brand’s news and happenings....

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Myspace Revived with Social Messaging Makeover

  We thought Myspace was left for dead, in the graveyard along with Friendster and Geocities...but maybe not

MySpace is still alive, which may not be surprising, but the fact that it's alive and kicking is a bit of a shock: It's due to give a sleek revamp to its hideous profile pages, and has bought Threadbox to rejig its social messaging skills.

The news about a revamp to MySpace's profile pages first came via a tweet from a MySpace executive, but then MySpace confirmed it via a short statement: "We're testing a new look and feel of our site among users" it noted, adding that clients seemed to like the changes thus far. "As always, we're interested in hearing feedback from our community as we roll out enhancements to the user experience and look forward to sharing more details with you in the coming weeks" is a much more exciting phrase to read, though, as it points to a more thorough revamp en route.

The new changes seem to simplify and de-clutter the typical MySpace home page style, add in a Flickr gallery connection and some social networking functionality. It's all extremely welcome to those Netizens who find MySpace's current pa...

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The Future of Health Care is Social

Health care is a personal issue that has become wholly public--as the national debate over reforming our system makes painfully clear. But what's often lost in the gun-toting Town Hall debates about the issue is a clear vision about how medicine could work in the future. In this feature article, frog design uses its people-centered design discipline to show how elegant health and life science technology solutions will one day become a natural part of our behavior and lifestyle.

See the entire article at Fast Company....

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Is the Bubble Ready to Burst on Twitter?

  With a focus solely on marketing and advertising, can Twitter's model sustain itself?

With all of the press about Twitter, and its model squarely focused on advertising, marketing, voyeurism and immediate gratification, one has to wonder if the model can sustain itself.

A new service offered by Twitter allows sponsored tweets by selected advertisers, and (about time) Twitter has recently developed methods to combat the increasing amount of spam and junk found on the site and its distributed messages.

Unlike Facebook, we're still not sure if this is a real technology platform being developed, or another internet fad (remember ICQ?)...but the last year has brought an explosion in user traffic - monthly minutes of use grew 37-fold from April 2008 through May 2009 - and a growing role in disseminating news and organizing social and protest movements, from the streets of Tehran to a swimming pool in Huntingdon Valley (Philly.com)....

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Will Myspace Survive

  Report illustrates that Facebook revenues will increase, at the expense of Myspace

A recent eMarketer report says that ads are climbing at Facebook, at the expense of competitor Myspace.

Article on Business Week

U.S. advertising on social networks will drop 3%, to $1.1 billion, in 2009, led by a slump at MySpace, eMarketer says. At the same time, Facebook's ad revenue will grow 9.5%, to $230 million. MySpace's ad revenues are expected to fall more than 15%, to $495 million, and its share of the roughly $1 billion market for social network advertising will slip about 7 percentage points, to 43%. Facebook's will rise 2.3 percentage points, to 20.2%.

Over the next two years, the growing number of marketers flocking to Facebook will fuel an ad rebound, according to eMarketer senior analyst Debra Aho Williamson. "In 2010, as we start to come out of the recession, Facebook has all its guns going, and marketers will be putting more social media in [their budgets] where it makes sense," she says.

While the United States accounts for the majority of ad spending on MySpace and Facebook, non-US spending is growing rapidly at Facebook,...

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