“We live an increasing amount of our lives on-line, but what happens after we are gone? What will happen to all our photos, blogs and social network accounts? Until now our digital identities have lived on without us, leaving our loved ones powerless to control them or wind them down. Webwill is a new service to change that, putting you in control even in the afterlife.”

This first iteration of Swedish startup MyWebwill.com gives users the ability to edit their online profiles after they are gone: deleting accounts, editing status, removing blogs, and even emailing last messages to family and friends. Social media experts anticipate a new digital phenomenon: More and more people will use online sites to dispatch messages to one’s "personal village"… even from beyond the grave.Continue reading...

Mexican QSR chain Del Taco recently launched a Facebook-based entertainment webisode platform, "The Del Taco Super Special Show," and grew its fan base from 20,000+ to 43,000+ in just five weeks according to VP, marketing John Cappasola. And that fanbase grew by another 15 percent since the brand released the second webisode in the series.

Aimed at hungry people with a sense of humor, the tagline is, "Eat it here; watch it online." The campaign ads appear on TV and radio, and offer consumers a coupon for a free Classic Taco redeemable at their next purchase. Del Taco is a major national Mexican quick-serve chain with more than 500 restaurants in 18 states and $568 million in annual revenues.Continue reading...

With over 400 million active users, the world’s most popular social networking site has set its sights on the Middle East in an attempt to capture more of the Arab market.

In what they described as a “massive” opportunity, Facebook has announced its partnership with the Middle East digital advertising firm, Connect Ads, to launch acquisition campaigns similar to what they did in Europe and Asia. This time though, the socially conservative Arab market will dictate more of their strategy as Facebook looks to expand on its existing Arab customer base of 10 million users.

Acknowledging that they need to be culturally sensitive where strict government controls typically block websites and communication around political, religious, and moral issues, Facebook’s strategy head for Europe and the Middle East, Trevor Johnson, told the Associated Press, "It's whether or not we can continue to deliver on the local market experience people expect, but within the rules and regulations. That's one of the biggest challenges, is building that side of things."Continue reading...

Here’s the good news AND the bad news: social networking platforms allow everyone to know where you are, and when. That could be useful information for your wife. And your wife’s former boyfriend who just got out of jail.

Boy Van Amstel, creator of PleaseRobMe.com, attempts to prove that very point with his creepy-named website. Van Amstel’s site proves how easy it is for people of ill-repute and dubious intentions to track down and locate houses where the owners are not around, for one reason or another.

The advent of new technologies, such as Twitter and Foursquare, are often greeted with a spectrum of reactions from utter naivety to outright paranoia. In this case, we’re dealing with naivety. The amount of private up-to-the-moment information available about individuals revealed on social networking sites is staggering – and Van Amstel saw the inherent risk in this.Continue reading...

Social media is quickly becoming just as relevant, if not more so, than traditional media, but are brands – and their advertising campaigns – keeping up?

Savvy marketers know how to balance defined, actionable goals with the inherent flexibility needed to achieve them. But in the brave new world of social media where the possibilities for both success and failure are overwhelming, competing brands are quick to recognize the success of others, and implement similar objectives. When this happens, however, brands begin to lose their edge, uniqueness, and focus.

Establishing a presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Delicious, FourSquare or blog posts isn’t enough. Brands must back up their social tools with timely, influential content that consumers will respond to – content specific to particular brands distributed via various forms of online platforms from videos and interactive images to networking groups and empowered brand advocates. Does this sound familiar?

It should. Here comes that word we all hate to love: synergy.Continue reading...

Amidst the land of email, tweets, status updates, text messages, and IM’s comes yet another social networking tool – this time from Google.

In a quest to capture more of the social web market share, the Internet search leader has launched Google Buzz – a new networking service for their Gmail customers which gives users an opportunity to network and share updates, photos, and videos with their current email contacts through their computer, hand-held device and mobile phone.

And even though Buzz was just announced yesterday, it already has fellow industry techies buzzing about the potential for customers to get stung with this service.

With no separate set-up or establishment of a new friend list required, Google Buzz allows consumers to automatically share updates with the people they already email and chat with the most. Similar to Facebook, users can communicate with one person or their entire network at a time.Continue reading...

Foursquare fans – those who find Facebook updates too static and oh-so-2009 – will soon “check in” to learn that the geosocial networking site has executed partnerships with several media brands, according to Mashable.

Foursquare, which runs on mobile devices and leverages their GPS locators, takes status updates to another level: As the New York Times describes the service, it’s not about what you’re doing right now, but “Where are you, and can I come join you?”

A Foursquare user “checks in” at her current location so friends know where to find her. Foursquare encourages frequent check-ins by presenting itself like a game, offering virtual badges that are unlocked by visiting particular venues. Many of these venues, along with their related brands, offer their own badges, as well as tangible rewards such as discounts or freebies.Continue reading...

Who knew that a little site for Harvard students would become a worldwide phenomenon?

Facebook founders Mark Zuckerberg, Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes probably had little idea that their brainchild would eventually become a global platform for connecting friends, spreading political and humanitarian causes, posting cute cat videos, and hosting time-sink applications like Farmville and Mafia Wars. But here we are.Continue reading...

People are more likely to trust information that comes from people they know. So, not surprisingly, the clever folks at Google have created a new type of “social” search engine that includes personal online networks.

In a tutorial on YouTube (above), Google gives the example of “wanting to know more about Zurich.” In the video, Google outlines how in past searches, one could only find information about Zurich on the usual travel sites – but with Google’s new “social” search, your friend’s Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other social networks will pop up if they’ve mentioned “Zurich” in the past.Continue reading...

As brand-owners worldwide brainstorm to figure out how to leverage social media to their advantage, Tasti D-Lite thinks it has its answer: Put a bounty on brand-promoting Tweets.

The potential flaw in the brand's scheme? It involves math. Continue reading...

Vitrue's second annual ranking of social brands, which studies the "share of voice" of particular brands, was recently released. The survey's methodology involves measuring Internet conversations over a spectrum of social networking sites, blogs, photo and video sharing sites, and other online media.

The top ten "social" brands (in order) are iPhone, Disney, CNN, MTV, NBA, iTunes, Wii, Apple, Xbox, and Nike. Of course, there are several interesting observations, and even more questions, that arise from an examination of the results. (The full list is available at Vitrue's site.)Continue reading...

MySpace is negotiating to acquire film-centered social media network Flixster. The deal, which comes after Myspace's recent acquisition of music service sites Imeem and iLike, represents a major expansion for the brand. In addition to tens of millions of users, Flixster is also a top-rated iPhone app, so the value of the site itself is not in question. But the intent behind the purchase raises some questions.

Myspace's parent, News Corp., already owns the film rating site Rotten Tomatoes, though Rotten Tomatoes isn't as focused on social networking as Flixster. Apparently, Myspace aims to combine, in one form or another, Flixster and Rotten Tomatoes. Yet the melding of two different film service and information sites could end up ostracizing both sites' audiences.Continue reading...

After years of branding itself as the safest, most friendly social network, Facebook appears to have turned suicidal. Worst of all, in its race to undo all it has achieved, Facebook is taking down some other iconic brands in the process. 

Facebook buried Myspace and Friendster and the other upstart social networks by maximizing user expectations. Facebook was your group of friends and you were in control of the network. Not anymore. In a now ironic letter, Facebook's CEO informed users of changes to the brand's privacy structure, supposedly implemented so users could have "even more control of their information."

These measures, however, immediately erased most of the privacy protections Facebook had in place, more or less exposing every Facebook user's information -- including photos, friends, and fan pages -- to anyone on the Web, including employers. Users can protect themselves by setting their accounts to fully private; but this fix needs to be done manually and is hardly, in the CEO's words, "simpler."Continue reading...

What a difference a decade makes. Just ten years ago, brands were given huge headaches by cyber-squatters: users who had beat them to registering their brand-name Internet URLs and were misrepresenting the brand.

No such problems today. Now, brands are given huge headaches by cyber-squatters, users who had beat them to registering their brand-name Twitter accounts and are misrepresenting the brand. Continue reading...

Photographer/blogger The Sartorialist (real name: Scott Schuman) may have tried to keep the project secret (well, FT -- and we -- reported this in September). But Burberry's “Art of the Trench” has finally launched, leaving other fashion-related social networking sites shaking in their well-made boots.

Aptly named, CEO Angela Ahrendts explained that the website focuses on the brand's signature coats, initially offering a library of photos of different people in coats.

“It’s our differentiator,” Ms. Ahrendts said. “It’s not so different from what competitors do. Maybe one was born from shoes and another from luggage; we come from a coat. It’s our job to keep that category hot and cool and relevant for all ages.”

Interested parties may sign up to leave comments about ones you like or dislike. People can be searched by gender, style, coat color, and, even more useful, you can sort the pictures by weather, to view the trenches in their natural habitat.Continue reading...