Updates from March, 2009

• IKEA’s Eco-Friendly Car (or People-Friendly Hoax?)
  
  

  WOMMA Editor 11:03 am on March 27, 2009 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: Viral Marketing (187)

  We’ve got to be careful here, because the April Fools Day hoaxes of the past have seemed pretty real in the past. Take for example Google’s hoaxes of the past nine years. We admit we were slightly fooled by “Gmail Custom Time” last year, a service that purported to provide Gmail an ability to send messages on a past time of your choosing; pretty convenient for missed deadlines, forgotten birthdays, and the like.
  That being said, IKEA may be entering the eco-friendly car market, with an announcement for their product LEKO, an environmentally-friendly IKEA-branded concept car, to arrive on April 1.
  Fast Company’s take on the LEKO:
  There’s a distinct possibility that the LEKO video and site are the viral warning shots for someone’s April Fools’ Day hoax. The LEKO is absent from the IKEA website, and most importantly, the car will be unveiled on April Fools’ Day. But hey….April 1-7 is France’s Sustainable Development Week, and IKEA already offers “kit homes” shipped in flatpacks to customers in Northern England and Scandinavia.”
  Fast Company also asks the hysterical but logical followup question, will we be assembling this car ourselves?

  The full story at Fast Company:
  http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/ariel-schwartz/sustainability/rumor-mill-ikea-entering-eco-friendly-car-market
  

  

  

   

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• Social Media Transforming India’s Elections
  
  

  WOMMA Editor 11:03 am on March 27, 2009 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: WOM in Politics (94)

  For a massively large place, with respect to land and of course, population (a cursory Google search turned up a population of….1,147,995,904!), it may come as a surprise to hear that:
  Politics in India is essentially local and India’s voters elect their representatives based on small local and regional issues, instead of the big national issues. As a result, election rallies and door-to-door canvassing, supplemented by local hoardings and print ads in the vernacular languages have traditionally been at the core of election campaigning in India.
  Let’s add in two more data points: more than 50 percent of India’s electorate is younger than 25, meaning that since the last major Indian election, 42 million new voters have entered into the electorate. Now, more than ever, reaching the young, increasingly urban vote, will mean success for Indian political parties.
  The BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party, the Indian People’s Party), is listening. In 2004, they spearheaded the Indian political foray in the world of social media, spending 5 percent of their campaign budget on social media. The climate wasn’t just right back then. Today, in 2009, it is.
  “BJP’s India Shining campaign has set the pattern for all Indian election campaigns since then.” Replete with blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Orkut, website forums; the BJP is a gleaming example of political social media success.

  The full story at Gauravonomics Blog:
  http://www.gauravonomics.com/blog/how-internet-and-mobile-technologies-are-transforming-election-campaigning-in-india/
  

  

  

   

• Don’t Know Much About a Science Book, But I Do Know Wikipedia’s Look
  
  

  WOMMA Editor 11:03 am on March 27, 2009 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: WOM Evangelism (112), WOM Trends (738)

  Forgive us for the bad Sam Cooke reference. It’s better if you would please sing the title to this piece, thanks!
  There’s a reason we so shamelessly denigrated ourselves with that rhyme, and it’s because the United Kingdom is introducing new curriculum which will mandate the study of Twitter, Wikipedia, blogging, podcasts, keyboard skills and spellchecking.
  “The proposed curriculum, which would mark the biggest change to primary schooling in a decade, strips away hundreds of specifications about the scientific, geographical and historical knowledge pupils must accumulate before they are 11 to allow schools greater flexibility in what they teach.”
  The push for amendments to “traditional education” seem logical, and Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers in Britain pointed out that “children need to be enthused by learning, so they want to learn and gain the skills which will enable them to learn in later life.”

  The full story at The Guardian:
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/mar/25/primary-schools-twitter-curriculum
  

  

  

   

• Sydney’s Cinderella “Jacket Woman” Turns Out to Be A Fake
  
  

  WOMMA Editor 11:03 am on March 27, 2009 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: WOM Ethics (138)

  There’s nothing quite like a perusal of the Missed Connections page in your local paper to put some perspective on your world. Just think, on your trip to work this morning, you may have missed three connections with strangers who were eyeing you from afar. Remember that love interest in the yellow scarf who stood meekly near the subway doors? We don’t either.
  “Heidi Clarke” of Sydney, was a “love-struck girl who posted a YouTube video in a desperate attempt to find a handsome stranger she’d met at a Sydney café.” Clarke “claimed she’d met a mystery man at Jet Café Bar in central Sydney and after he left his jacket behind decided to try and track him down to give it back and tell him of her crush.”
  Turns out, the missed connection was all for naught. Turns out, Heidi Clarke was a fake.
  Sydney residents, however, knew it all along:
  While it has now been proven the video is a hoax many LIVENEWS.com.au readers never believed the story when it was first run on this website even accusing “Heidi” of being an appalling actor.
  “Well, what a joke, you can tell this is a hoax, for one; the opening scene, the body language, secondly; the repeated blinking of the eyes when she first starts talking followed by turning her head and body away from the camera in the opening five seconds of talking… hoax hoax hoax,” said one.

  The full story at LiveNews.Com.Au:
  http://www.livenews.com.au/your-say/cinderella-jacket-woman-a-fake/2009/1/20/169927
  

  

  

   

• Skype Dominates the International Call Market
  
  

  WOMMA Editor 11:03 am on March 27, 2009 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  Tags: WOM Trends (738)

  The future is here (we’re calling it first).
  Not only is it amazing enough that you can call someone 16 time zones away on a computer, not only is it stunningly crystal clear and eerie that the person blasting through your headphones sounds as though they’re sitting across from you — but this service is now the largest international voice carrier in the world according to market researcher TeleGeography.
  International voice traffic is skyrocketing, growing more than 12 percent last year alone.
  Skype’s usage is skyrocketing as well, with a remarkable growth of 41 percent in 2008 alone.
  “One explanation for the growth in minutes — despite the fact that the phone has to compete with, for example, instant messaging — is conference calling, according to Steve Blood, vice president in Gartner Research. Companies are putting the squeeze on air travel, and instead using conference calls to save money, he said.”

  The full story at PCWorld:
  http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/161929/.html
  

  

  

   

• Foregoing Postal in the Search of Most Wanted Criminals
  
  

  WOMMA Editor 12:48 pm on March 26, 2009 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  

  If you’ve earned yourself a spot on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, you have a lot more to worry about these days than seeing your picture on the wall at your local post office. The agency has begun to use some very cool high-tech tools to capture fugitives — and to find missing persons, too. The FBI’s overall goal is to get information to the public in as many ways as possible. Its 21st-century upgrades are all innovative, community-based technological advancements that get the word out in real time.

  The full story at Fox News:
  http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,510515,00.html
  

  

  

   

• Mobile Connectivity Expands Your Digital Horizon
  
  

  WOMMA Editor 12:48 pm on March 26, 2009 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  

  A new Pew Research Center study finds that the mobile Web is playing a growing role in peoples’ digital lives. Nearly 40% of Americans have positive and improving attitudes about their mobile devices, which in turn draws them deeper into online activities that range from sharing and creating content to increasing personal productivity. At the same time, the majority of Americans (61%) continue to rely on desktop computers for Web access (or have no access at all) and use mobile phones mainly for making calls.

  The full story at MediaPost:
  http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=102859
  

  

  

   

• Member News
  
  

  WOMMA Editor 12:48 pm on March 26, 2009 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  

  ChaCha, the fastest growing SMS mobile search service, with 70 percent of Google’s SMS search volume, announced that it has closed an equity financing round of $12 million. These investments will provide ChaCha with the additional capital it needs to expand its local and national advertising sales activities, including a newly opened New York office.
  FatWallet.com, a company that provides online coupons and exclusive offers from retailers, announces the launch of its new site design. Along with a new navigation tool, the site has added Coupon Search, which allows users to find valid coupons from retailers worldwide. According to the company, the redesign will also give users more chances to “share” and “subscribe” to the site via e-mail, social bookmarking, and RSS feeds. The site’s new design is live now.
  Faced with tough DVD sales and tougher economic times, Warner Bros. is digging into its vaults. The studio has begun releasing archived films from the ’20s through the ’80s on made-to-order DVDs and digital downloads, hoping to breathe new life into the struggling film business.
  iCrossing, a global digital marketing company, has been named digital agency of record for the Bermuda Ministry of Tourism. As digital agency of record, iCrossing will create an integrated digital marketing program that combines Web development, search engine optimization, paid search, display advertising and social media to drive travelers to Bermuda.

  

  

   

• Thirsty Plants Tweet for Water
  
  

  WOMMA Editor 12:48 pm on March 26, 2009 | 2 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  

  Researchers at New York University’s interactive telecommunications program have come up with a device that allows plants to tell owners when they need water or if they’ve had too much via the social network blogging service Twitter. The device, called Botanicalls, is made of soil-moisture sensors that are connected to a circuit board. They measure the level of moisture, and then communicate the information to a microcontroller. The new technology follows on from an earlier Botanicalls model released in 2007 that enabled plants to make a phone call to their owners when they needed water.

  The full story at Reuters:
  http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSTRE52P0KK20090326
  

  

  

   

• Leveraging the Power of Branded Communities
  
  

  WOMMA Editor 12:48 pm on March 26, 2009 | 0 Comments Permalink | Post Your Comment!
  

  You hear all the time that brands leveraging communities online are great ways to increase brand recognition. A new report from Powered, a social marketing company, has released its findings that support these claims. Conducted along with Next Century Media Global, the annual report shows that the return on investment for social marketing online delivers an average of $60 for every $1 invested - - a 10% increase from 2006. About 66% of respondents stated they were more likely to purchase products and/or services as a direct result of the learning process offered in a branded community.

  The full story at Social Times:
  http://www.socialtimes.com/2009/03/powered-roi-report/