Viral Community News

More wholesome blogging goodness from around the 'sphere...

1. - Marketing Profs. Book Club (Hosted by CK, natch), is back and installment #2 has none other than the legendary Al and Laura Ries! The 'First Family of Branding' will cover their book The Origin of Brands. Can't wait as I think that's about the only book written by either of the authors that I haven't read yet. CK also has news on an interesting freebie from Al and Laura for book club readers, so check it out!

2. - DA is up to something...

3. - Maura has a great story about the Terra Bite Lounge in Kirkland, Washington. The restaurant offers free wifi, and free food. Everyone pays as little or as much as they want to via 'donations'. Right now they are serving 80 customers a day, that spend an average of $3 per, and they need to hit 100 customers a day at that rate to break even. Will be interesting to see how WOM affects their business in the coming weeks.

4. - Celeste picks up a post I left here weeks ago about CBS seeding content on YouTube, and runs with it.

5. - Shouty Lady has a post up for Russel Davies Post of the Month contest, so go vote for Katie!!!

6. - Chris informs us that Google has started to 'allow' FeedBurner to start tracking Google Reader users. Methinks he's right, since my number of feed readers suddenly shot up about 30% yesterday.

7. - Then over at MMM, Chris tells us why movie studios aren't about to dump DRM. Also congrats to Chris as MMM is named 'Site of the Week'.

8. - Hypebot has an interesting look at the future of major music labels. Noticed this quote:

"Only some kind of bold move can leave the major labels looking anything like they do today. Or they could rip it apart and start all over again. Gone are the private jets - yes they still use them - replaced by a cadre of young affordable staff passionate about music, versed in the digital world and viral marketing and ready to die for their bands."

I found it interesting, because when I talked to Nettwerk's Erin Kinghorn last year about the future of music, she said the 'youth movement' would dynamically shift the scope of the industry in the coming years. She said that the higher management that had been with labels since the 70s and 80s would be replaced by youngsters that grew up immersed in social-media, and that understood how to utilize it as a tool to empower fans to market with their favorite artists.

9. - Nokia's social-media expert Karl Long asks an interesting question about bloggers receiving gifts. Karl asks:

If your a blogger and you got an Nseries “multimedia computer” in the mail what would you do with it? How would you feel about it? Obligated? Bribed? Important? Valued? I know when I get a book or t-shirt in the mail I feel like a valued person, and somewhat obligated to write something.

From my view, I wouldn't feel as obligated to write something about the 'computer', as I would want to. Now having said that, I would feel the OBLIGATION to my readers to give them my ACCURATE impressions of the product. I would thank Nokia for sending me their product, but I'm going to shoot straight about my experiences with it, because at the end of the day, my readers are far more important than the product.

For example, about this time last year, Sprint told me they were going to send me a phone to use for 6 months as part of their Ambassador program. Great! I got the email notifying me, which included a link to go to their site and activate my phone and have it sent to me. When I got to the website, I filled in all my information, then found out that I was in one of the 'select markets' that Sprint had chosen to receive the phone. So I had to get excited over receiving a phone, then have the rug pulled out from under me AFTER I went to Sprint's site and jumped through their hoops, when all it would have taken was simply mentioning the 'select markets' that the program was available to, in the email I was sent. So naturally, I blogged about all of this on BMA ;)

So to answer Karl's question, yes I would blog about the phone, but the obligation I would feel would be to my readers, not Nokia. I'm sure most other bloggers would feel the same way.


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