Sandrine Plasseraud

Twitter lists

Woke up yesterday morning with a smile [I'm a geek] when I discovered I was part of the 'few' people (well I'm sure there are tons of us but still) who were granted access to the cool beta "Twitter List" function:

Spent some time yesterday afternoon setting up a couple of lists including a We Are Social one, and joining the official LeWeb09 bloggers one. Was about to write a post about it last night when I came accross this message:

So yes, I was pretty upset - not sure what happened? Maybe this tweet? But I doubt it - probably just a technical glitch. Oh, yes, actually it was a technical glitch as I now seem to have regained access to the function :D

Pretty interesting how Twitter has deployed this new interesting feature considering that until now, as far as I'm concerned, most of the useful functionality around Twitter were developed by third parties rather than Twitter itself. I use Tweetdeck and of course you could already create lists there - however, not sure if I'm the only one but I usually missed out on 4 out of 5 tweets in my Tweetdeck lists...

My hope? That I'll be able to export my Twitter List to Tweetdeck easily (and that the tweets will appear).

Google doodle celebrates Astérix & Obélix 50th birthday

I've never been so much of a comic strips fan, with the exception of Astérix & Obélix - I probably read the 33 volumes altogether... Anyhow, a very cool Google doodle to celebrate their 50th birthday.

Lufthansa's MySkyStatus

If you read the brilliant Springwise magazine, you've probably heard about Lufthansa's MySkyStatus app? 

"While you're in the air, MySkyStatus sends altitude, location, departure and arrival updates automatically to your Facebook and Twitter pages. It's travel made social and it's easy to set up. Let's get started."

2009 is definitely the year of Twitter but also more generally the year of the "real time web" and the year where individuals online update their status (1) to let their network find out about "what they do" in real time. So what better way to get noticed for a brand than to develop such an interesting real time application, which I'm sure will ignite online conversations!

 

(1) a brand new study by Pew Internet shows that one in five internet users are now on Twitter or another status update service.

Éstée Lauder: get a photo for your Facebook profile

I've been meaning to check this last Estée Lauder marketing campaign since Willem mentioned it to me so here it is, slightly late but still worth noticing...

Estée Lauder recently launched a campaign in New York that offered women a complementary makeover and a photoshoot by a professional photographer so they could upload a great photo of them on their Facebook page, MySpace or else. I find it very clever the way they managed to find a simple yet very strong call to action to get women to come to a store and experience the brand. Very very clever!

 

You can find out more more about the campaign here.

Never estimate the power of a great story

And here is a great ad for Canal+ to illustrate it!

Google to include Twitter updates in search results

If you're following Google on Twitter, you might have seen their last tweet "Tweets and updates and search, oh my!"?

There's been many talks about the relevance of Google Search versus the one of Twitter Search in the past few months and this is a very interesting news...

Twitter Search obviously features the tweets as they appear in real time search whereas Google will list the sites with the most 'search equity' first, ie, sites who are the most popular for example - but these sites are probably popular because they've been here for a while (I'm simplifying here of course!).

Ok, let me give you an example, that'll be easier. Let's search for Obama:

• on Google, link number one is a news one (Afghan troop decision) and link 2 is his site, 3 is Wikipedia

• on Twitter, I'm getting live feed updates as I'm writing this post about his position on Afghanistan again but also about his comments on small business support, on the Canadian health system, about the fact that his wife was running and jumping like a teenager during his interview and basically live impression about his speech from the Twitter community

The integration of Twitter updates in Google' search results is definitely an interesting move!* It'll be interesting to see the impact in a few weeks/months.

* on a personal level though, I might be more careful about I write on Twitter from now on ;-)

Fiat 500 New Times advert

It's been a long time since I've talked about traditional advertising and even longer since I talked about car advertising but last time I came across this brand new ad for the Fiat 500 and I found it so refreshing I had to share it:

Credits: Leo Burnett Brazil

Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2009

Technorati have just released their 2009 "State of the Blogosphere" report and if you haven't read it yet, I recommend you also watch the video along with the report below:

Check out Michael Arrington's quote at the end of the report: "If you're not blogging about what you love, you're probably not going to be successful, no matter what you do".

Prototype Experience: great use of Facebook Connect

A few months ago, I translated Jeremiah Owyang's post about The Five Eras of the Social Web in French (here for 'my' French version, here for his English version) and something I found interesting in his post was his analysis on how nowadays, the Internet experience is somewhat incoherent for all of us because we all have various identities online. Take myself as an example: on Twitter I am @metoo, on Facebook I am Sandrine Plasseraud, on most other sites/network like Dopplr I am Sandrine.

From a consumer journey point of view, it doesn't make sense and it's all very confusing and frustrating. I hate having to sign in/out of Facebook/Twitter/Yahoo & Flickr/etc. It would obviously all make sense to have a single identity and although I'm not saying Facebook Connect is the answer, it clearly can provide some interesting benefits.

Which bring me to the subject of the Prototype Experience and Facebook Connect... Most of you might have already come across the Prototype Experience as it dates back from June 2009 but just in case - and as I was amazed by the experiment myself - here is what it's all about...

To advertise the new Protype video game, here is a 'simple' website asking you to connect via Facebook, which I've done - and the results is I am fully immersed into the experience (vi Facebook images & info from my personal profile). Check out some of the screen grabs from the video:

 

 

 

Check out by yourself on the Prototype Experience website.

NB: of course this is not my real credit card number ;-)

I'm testing Google Wave...

I was lucky enough to get an invite to Google Wave a couple of days ago so I'm currently testing it - will feedback soon but in the meantime, if you haven't seen the intro video, check it out:

ps: and if you're already using Google Wave and know of any interesting tips, please let me know ;-)

Skype is now offering live feed updates

Not sure if you've noticed but it seems that Skype is one of the latest entrants to the "live feed update" scene. You could obviously already follow the whereabouts of your friends (real or virtual ones) via Facebook, Twitter or Friendfeed - now can you do the same with your Skype contact!

As you can see in the image below, a "Mood Messages" window now appears on my Skype interface, letting me see the latest status updates of my Skype contact.

   

On a slightly different note, whilst we're talking about "live feed update" and therefore "real time web", if you haven't read Robin Grant's article [ie my boss] about the real time web in the latest edition of Contagious, make sure you check it out: "People now live in a world where constant interaction is the norm" and the "real time web" is now having an impact on people's online behaviour...

Link of the day: social media - you need to pay to play

How many times have you heard the word ROI this year in a conversation related to social media? Chris Lake from E-consultancy recently drew a very interesting parallel between e-commerce a decade ago and social media these days: you need to invest if you don't want to miss out on the next big thing. Here is a post I wrote about it on the We Are Social blog:

In English: Social media: you need to pay to play

In French: Médias sociaux: achetez votre ticket d'entrée

The Battle of Big Thinking 2009

If you live in the UK and read Campaign you might have come accross a full page ad this week for "The Battle of Big Thinking" featuring a few names including mine... Organised by the Account Planning Group and Campaign Magazine, this 4th battle of Big Thinking will take place on the 26th of November at the British Library. 51 days to go before this very exciting yet scary event.

  

The format?

• 7 categories (Global Thinking, Innovation Thinking, Thinking in Social Media, Planning Thinking, Mobile Thinking, Thinking in the Free Space, Marketing Thinking)
• 3 speakers in each category fight for their "Big Thinking Idea" with a 15 minutes slot per speaker
• The audience vote at the end of each round with the winner going into an eliminator to find the supreme champion at the end of the day.

So as I said, a pretty exciting event yet a slightly scary one, so if you have attended one of the Battle of Big Thinking in the past, any advices would be welcomed!