In the heated battle for digital and social loyalty, Facebook is squaring off against Tumblr, which is growing in size and as a platform for brands to have a different kind of voice, one that relates better to millennials in particular: more tongue in cheek, a little more freewheeling and more visual.

With more than 80 million blogs across its network, Tumblr is inspiring online (recently passing "blog" as a search term on Google) and offline buzz, as witnessed in a flurry of Tumblr to book publishing deals, such as Suri's Burn Book.

The microblogging site has hired a full-time literary community manager, Rachel Fershleiser, to help connect Tumblr bloggers to agents that could lead to a book, TV, radio or web deal — or some combination of those platforms. "I'll give them advice or I'll take a look at their book proposal," Fershleiser commented to the PBS MediaShift blog. "Sometimes I'll pass something along to an agent. Tumblr gives them a place to put their work and if it's great, we will get it discovered."

While clearly embraced by the younger creative community, Tumblr founder and CEO David Karp faces the task of monetizing its success by working with brands and marketers while not turning off its user base. Karp isn't a big fan of advertising, so he's looking for subtle ways to engage brands and his community.Continue reading...

The International CES show in Las Vegas put branding on the main stage on Wednesday.

The "Brand Matters" keynote focused on the social media aspects of marketing. Moderated by Michael Kassan, chairman and CEO of MediaLink, the keynote began with a one-on-one with Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com. Benioff discussed social marketing, the explosion of consumption and sharing of content thanks to the proliferation of wireless. “The mobile revolution has taken over everything,” said Benioff. “When you walk the show floor like I did yesterday, you see in real-time that everything is connected.”

The keynote then broke into a panel discussion with executives from AT&T, American Express, Coca-Cola and Unilever to explore the magic of unlocking a brand. As CNBC noted, Benioff quipped: "It's amazing that a software professional is on a panel with CMOs; that's never before happened at CES," Benioff said, chalking it up to a shift in CMOs' spending. "These marketers are going to spend more on technology than their Chief Information Officer counterparts in a very short amount of time."

The Brand Matters SuperSession (watch above) then focused on how consumers are really engaging with digital media.Continue reading...

As traditional media brands continue to be disrupted by digital aspirants, BuzzFeed and Tumblr have emerged as robust contenders for dominance in the arenas of social content-sharing and socially-driven advertising.

Buzzfeed just raised $19.3 million in a fourth round of funding led by existing investor New Enterprise Associates, resulting in a war chest of $34-million to hire new writers, expand the network globally and begin an acquisition shopping spree.

Tumblr, meanwhile, counts more than 200 million monthly visitors and 18 billion pageviews and is also looking for revenue-generation to justify its valuation, and visual ads are a seamless and organic fit. Which is better positioned to win the Interwebz?Continue reading...

The 2013 Buick Encore is powered by a 1.4L turbocharged engine, has an EPA-estimated 33 mpg highway fuel economy, and standard six-speed automatic transmission with front-wheel drive. It also features personalized technologies well-suited to the desired demo such as Intellilink and QuietTuning with Buick’s first use of Bose Active Noise Cancellation. 

That's all well and good, but it's not very exciting to non-car buffs. So how to excite the social web with those features? Excite bloggers to become inspired by the brand and become social ambassadors, for a start. With 71% of Pinterest’s nearly 25 million users under the age of 45, (50% age 25-44), the “Pinboard to Dashboard” program has generated 17 million plus unique visitors, followers or users across Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and blogs.

“Knowing the Encore’s target audience spends a great deal of time online, and on Pinterest, we created a social strategy to reach them where they ‘live’,” said Lloyd Biermann, Buick Crossovers marketing manager. So In October, Buick selected 10 influential design, fashion and food bloggers to create pinboards on Pinterest showcasing how the all-new Encore speaks to their personal style and life passions.Continue reading...

One sign Ford believes it's really going to turn around Lincoln this time is that it is trying to make a big splash for its new vehicle-design language and brand repositioning on America's coasts.

At the press preview at the Los Angeles Auto Show this week, Lincoln is displaying the all-new MKZ midsize sedan that will be sold beginning next year, and a hybrid version of the car, as part of a brand exhibit that also features a handful of classic Lincolns from over the decades.

The Lincoln brand has declined to more or less a rounding error in sales in California recently even though the brand's headquarters was located in Southern California for a few years.Continue reading...

First it was LinkedIn, then Instagram lost its friend-finding privileges on Twitter, and now it's Tumblr whose users lost the ability to connect with Twitter friends in “a veritable third-party relationship killing spree by Twitter, which is on a mission to assert more control over its ecosystem.” 

Within hours of BuzzFeed’s Matt Buchanan's prediction that Tumblr was a primary target on Twitter’s third-party “hit list,” the option to locate Twitter friends disappeared from Tumblr's site.

Tumblr issued this unhappy statement:

To our dismay, Twitter has restricted our users’ ability to ‘Find Twitter Friends’ on Tumblr. Given our history of embracing their platform, this is especially upsetting. Our syndication feature is responsible for hundreds of millions of tweets, and we eagerly enabled Twitter Cards across 70 million blogs and 30 billion posts as one of Twitter’s first partners. While we’re delighted by the response to our integrations with Facebook and Gmail, we are truly disappointed by Twitter’s decision.

But as Svbtle founder Dustin Curtis commented in Digitaltrends, the repercussions for Twitter are potentially much greater: “Twitter was built on the backs of the very developers it is now blocking.” Continue reading...

The escalating battle over digital displays in public has reached new heights…or lows…depending on your position on personal freedom versus a modicum of civility. Between texting, tweeting and Instagram-ing restaurant meal photos, "distracted dining" is the latest scourge on the most basic of manners, the art of face-to-face conversation.

Eva Restaurant on Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles is offering diners a five percent discount on their bill to check their tech at the door. "For us, it's really not about people disrupting other guests. Eva is home, and we want to create that environment of home, and we want people to connect again," said owner/chef Mark Gold. 

About half the customers at Eva, a 40-person restaurant with European nuance, take the discount. "I think once the server approaches the table and they're presented with the offer, they like the idea of actually talking to each other again," adds Gold.

Interested in wooing business in a challenging economy, and accommodating a younger, wired clientele, many restaurants now cater to diners who have morphed into "food paparazzi." Continue reading...

The newest kid on the media block is Medium, somewhere between a social network and a collaborative publishing tool, and given the pedigree of its founders, Twitter co-founders Ev Williams and Biz Stone, it’s well worth attention.

Obvious, Williams and Stone’s post-Twitter startup that was announced at the Aspen Institute festival in July 2011, has already given the world Blogger as well as Twitter, and describes itself as “more of a philosophy than a company or product. We focus our long term view on ideas and technology that can be generally described as 'world positive.' When opportunities resonate with our worldview, we do what makes sense to help them succeed.”

Medium is their “world positive,” lightweight tool for self-expression with text and images. Users — anyone with a Twitter account — can post once or several times a day, and create original collections. Posting is presently open only to those who register.

Medium is a fervent democracy and posts are ranked by ratings rather than chronology. The nascent promise is that everybody should be able to publish without the dual pressures of becoming a full-time blogger and amassing a following.Continue reading...