Marketing

The XXI Olympic Winter Olympics are euphemistically being called the "Social Games." Based on sponsors vying for the spotlight, more consumers will have their eyes glued to their smartphone screens than they will to TV. If Coca-Cola can motivate 500 million Internet transactions as a result of the Super Bowl (a one-day event), can you imagine what sponsors, apps, social networks and search engines stand to gain from sixteen days of events in Vancouver. Reaching out via social media, this Olympics may rival China in attention, if not in spectacle.

Babies are cute, right?  So if you took a group of babies and put them on roller-blades, that would make for some cute advertising... right?

Location-based social networks was one of my social media predictions for 2010 and is now proving to be this year's next shiny thing. We are only into February, and we are already seeing Gowalla going toe to toe with Foursquare and encouraging API Developers to develop applications that will build onto their platform.

Oronjo is a new platform for selling your content that has a lot of people excited about how it might be able to adapt to the changing face of online media.

Valentine's Day allows advertising firms to tug at the heart strings of the consumer.  Is this blatant manipulation?  Of course it is!  But does it make for some great ads?  Decide for yourself...

Konami's latest promotional site for the upcoming video game title, Metal Gear Solid, puts you in a cardboard box and squares you off against other online competitors to see who can solve the puzzle first.

Foreign food flipping you out? The Sakasa Resuto (Upside Down Restaurant) in Nagano, Japan, bends over backwards to ensure your meal goes down - or up - easy.

The Annual TED Conference taking place February 9-13 in Long Beach, California has an elitism about it.  If you have $6000 to spend on an event - If you are an expert in the field of technology, entertainment or design - if you know how to deliver information in a new and innovative fashion - and of course there is that little matter about being invited - you might be worthy of  being considered a TED-Head with TED-Cred. If not, join the rest of us -  the club of TED-Fed D-Listers who can only witness the affair from afar, like a kid with no funds peering into the window of a candy store.

The economy has made job stability more worrisome. Many of us are asking the same questions. Will I get laid off? Is my company going to downsize? Should I be updating my resume? As some who worry too much may be doing so unnecessarily, others who turn a blind eye might be at the greatest risk. To best prepare for the unknown, there are some new social media tools and apps now available that may alleviate some of this angst.

There are some visual images that make us feel good, whether it's a natural phenomenon like a rainbow, a man-made wonder like the Pyramids of Egypt or an emotionally impactful work of art like Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel. To that list one might add logos - a graphic illustration that best exemplifies a product and is sensually pleasing to the eye. And there probably is no other design that has captured our modern-day imagination for as long as the Apple logo.

Always getting eggshells in your scrambled eggs?  Have a hard time separating egg whites from the yolks?  If so, the EZ Cracker may be for you!  But does it work?

While it was a helluva Super Bowl (Go Saints), when it came down to the ads, too many of the commercials smacked of familiarity and a lot lacked the surprise element because they were leaked to YouTube in advance of the event. However one commercial kept under close wraps rose above the rest for for not only its shock value, but also because it played off of the overexposed celebrity of two men we've all grown to love over the years- namely Letterman and Leno!

Dependent on what team you are rooting for in this year's Super Bowl (#SB44), you might be surprised to learn who is winning on the Social Media field of play. When Indianapolis Colts' Peyton Manning faces off against New Orleans Saints' Drew Brees, you might want to check out some of the stats and trends surfacing on the social networks before placing your final wager.

There is a strange phenomenon afoot in this country. The rumblings of an establishment of a "Tea Party" party can be heard growing louder and louder. The National Tea Party, a first-time convention for the group has attracted 1,100 delegates to Nashville, Tennessee for three days of protest, caucus and debate. It's a movement everyone says is people-powered to give voice to the frustrations of a heretofore leaderless party. With all this talk channeling through the traditional news vehicles of legacy newspapers and TV, why hasn't this group chosen to be represented on social networks?

Well, it was bound to happen. As popular as location-based services are becoming, it didn't take long for the Spamalot Brigade to step in for a little menace and mayhem. As if privacy wasn't a big enough issue with LBSs, now we have to worry about hackers and other insidious tactics to infiltrate geo-tagged ads and profiles on our mobile devices.