UPDATE: As of Jan 2010, Facebook has blocked Seppukoo’s API access to their website.

If Facebook has taken over your life but you can’t find a way out, an “imaginary art group” has created a new web site that can help. Seppukoo.com allows you to deactivate your Facebook account with a virtual ritual suicide befitting of a samurai warrior.

Named after seppuku, an ancient Japanese samurai ritual in which samurai would plunge a sword into their own stomachs to escape defeat by their enemies, the web site invites users to “impress your friends, disconnect yourself” and “discover what’s after your Facebook life.” By entering your Facebook user ID and password (the site says no data will be stored on its server), you can customize a memorial page that will be sent to all your Facebook friends, who will have the opportunity to leave a farewell message.

If you later decide that life is just not complete without Facebook, you can log into the site to reactivate your account.

The creators of the site, Les Liens Invisibles (which translates to “The Invisible Links”) claims the site was not started to attack Facebook, but simply to help people “rediscover the importance of being anyone, instead of pretending to be someone.” Les Liens Invisibles even has its own Facebook page.

Karen Eisenbraun is a freelance writer and is currently residing in the Kansas City Metro. She has experience in SEO, content management, website design, and green living. When not working, she enjoys rock climbing, yoga, and occasionally throwing herself out of airplanes.

Fall 2009 has been a fascinating one for narrative endeavors on social media, three high-profile gaming experiments stand out as the vanguard of both social media and branded entertainment. Valemont by MTV and Verizon, Circle of 8 by MySpace and Paramount Digital are each standout examples of narrative storytelling rolling out utilizing social media to tell its story, create fan communities and market products.
Valemont is a webseries whose driving platform is television, first airing as Two minute thirty second spots during commercial breaks for MTV’s The Hills and The City. Valemont artfully utilized an alternate reality game (ARG) through the website, www.valemontu.com, to create a fictional world. Where their greatest achievement lies is in inviting viewers to enter that world and play along within the narrative. Creating a centralized online forum, Valemont Commons, a where fans pretended to be part of the story and worked together to create events and solve the ARG’s mysteries was essential to Valemont’s success. The game led participants to Facebook using a quiz application to drive users to a Facebook community and to further identify themselves within the narrative.  Utilizing Facebook , a robust fan community fostered by the property’s online team who masqueraded as fictional characters, grew and after three months has thousands of active members, fan fiction, and spinoff groups created by fans themselves. Valemont is currently being considered for a second season, this time televised completely by MTV Networks. The social media groups already in place have helped put pressure on MTV but regardless of whether or not it becomes a TV show, new content is going to be created in the fictional universe by fans.

Circle of 8 is a movie released in ten parts on MySpace video will be released in 2010 on DVD exclusively through Blockbuster Inc. Circle of 8’s social media presence is undeniable, with over 100,000 MySpace friends. Yielded from promotions on MySpace’s front page and other traditional online advertisements, traffic has been driven to the movie and its associated products from Green Label Studios (Mountain Dew) and Kia. The question that Circle of 8’s rollout asks is why its fans are not as active on forums or groups as Valemont? The fan community surrounding Circle of 8 is participates less actively than that of Valemont, this is likely because it lacked a fan-interaction campaign like Valemont implemented. Complimenting the movie were a variety of branded flash games, contests and trivia games that led fans to clues in the movie’s mystery but did not support personal interaction, nor did it create a fictional space for the audience to play in. More interaction with fans has certainly created a more involved fanbase for Valemont but since Circle of 8’s story is self-contained the bottom line may be that the creators aren’t looking to expand the story into a sequel but rather are testing the waters for future project rollouts.

Narrative and social media are logical match, driving the creating of social communities and giving venues for marketing that are more subtle and palatable to audience members than traditional advertisements. These two narrative rollouts show the possibilities that are just beginning to be explored in the union of storytelling and social media platforms.

Caitlin Burns is a Transmedia Producer and Editorial Lead at Starlight Runner Entertainment. To read more analysis on Circle of 8 and Valemont, read her article in Multichannel News: The Next Wave in Branded Entertainment.

Sometimes the best posts about our industry (social media and SEM) come from unlikely sources. One such example is this great article, entitled “Find out how social media can save you money” by Alison Brownrigg on nwsource, a shopping and fashion information portal owned by the Seattle Times.

Alison gives several tips to social media savvy-shoppers on how to use websites like facebook and twitter in order to garnish the best deals. One such tip is to search for different twitter hashtags (http://search.twitter.com) like #holidaydeals.

Be sure to read the full article and come back here to share more tips or let others know what you think!

For all the fellow HTML geeks out there who want more customization on their Facebook page but still want to keep the clean, standard layout of Facebook (eg. no blinking backgrounds a la MySpace), I’ve discovered an application that lets you embed HTML code into a Facebook Page. The app is called Static FBML and can be used for embedding widgets, forms, and other HTML pieces of code onto your organization’s or website’s Facebook page.

An article by clearspring explains the step-by-step process to embed HTML. Steps 1-11 are for any HTML code; steps 12-15 are for embeding clearspring’s offered widgets into a Facebook Page.

While I haven’t experimented enough to know what code works and what doesn’t (i.e. if the urchin.js code Google Analytics provides will work), this is worth a shot to at least experiment with.

Have you used or tested the Static FBML Facebook application to embed or utilize HTML in your Page? If so, let us know how it works by commenting below.

Does anyone think the boom of social media is a cause of newspapers and magazines slowly dying?

Infographic by CartridgeSAVE.co.uk

Courtesy of Creative Cloud.

Other Links on the Decline of Print Media:

The Decline of Print Media: Blame Free Access

Newsday to Charge Fees to Non-Subscribers

Newspapers fold as Readers Defect and Economy Sours

Here are two new social media/internet campaigns that depend on internet and social media users to spread the word in order to win big.

The first is Yahoo!’s yodel contest, as explained by their official blog:

Today, we’re giving the Yahoo! yodel back to the people with the launch of Yodel Studio, a global casting call for the world’s best yodels. Yodelers who take us up on this challenge will personalize and reinterpret our yodel, competing for a chance to be featured in Yahoo!’s new global advertising campaign and on one of the world’s largest stages: the Yahoo! homepage. Your yodel will also be heard through the donation Yahoo! will make to local and global charities of your choice for each yodel submitted (up to $130,000).

Even though this is for a good cause, the massive amount of buzz this will surely generate around the internet probably doesn’t hurt either.

The next is a really new campaign for Butterfinger, starring Seth Green. This relies on social media, online games, blogging, and video.  As summarized in a press release on BusinessWire:

Someone has laid a finger on Seth Green’s BUTTERFINGER®. Nestlé USA today announced the launch of “Dude, Where’s My Bar?” an innovative online narrative game for consumers to help solve the mystery surrounding the October 2 theft of Green’s vintage Butterfinger bar. The “lite” alternate reality game starring Seth Green will call upon the clever, irreverent thinking of Butterfinger fans, as they compete to find and solve clues that could lead to the return of Green’s missing bar and a one-of-a-kind grand prize: a solid-gold Butterfinger bar worth $10,000.

This is definitely a fun, interactive campaign that will surely blow-up online, especially on Twitter and Facebook. I see a possible Seth Green/Butterfinger trending topic in Twitter’s future for sure. To partake in the fun and games, visit http://www.dudewheresmybar.com/

Paranormal Activity poster

You may have seen previews for the movie ‘Paranormal Activity’ on tv, and you may have seen it promoted on Facebook and Twitter. Regardless of how you may have heard of it, Paramount’s online viral marketing efforts to promote the movie have made it a success. Users can go online to the movies website and Demand for it to come to their city. If Paranormal Activity gets 1,000,000 requests, it will open nationwide (Currently, there are over 530,000 requests). A quick check shows over 3,000 requests for the Kansas City Metro alone . Once a user has ‘demanded’ the movie, they can then choose to share the link via their Twitter or Facebook account.

The movie has only been shown in about 30 theatres, but has already grossed $780,000.  Will it become so popular online that it will be shown nationwide? We can only wait and find out.

Links:

Fox News: Facebook, Twitter Fuel Indie Movie Sales

Marketing Campaign for Low-Budget Horror Flick Paranormal Activity Causes Big Buzz (has movie trailer)

My first Search Engine Land article was published today! Search Engine Land is one of the top SEM websites and gets over 500k visits a month! My article offers effective ways to measure the value of social media marketing when it comes to business.

To read it, please visit How to Measure The Value of a Fan or Follower in Social Media. Don’t forget to comment and share!

Also, SearchCap: The daily SEL digest also included my article as the 1st one in their list of top news:

Yay!

A great article by CNN reports that Facebook has recently reached 300 million  users globally, almost the equivalent of the United States population (which is about 307 million). Facebook continues to dominate all social media sites in terms of users, but Twitter has been gaining huge growths during 2009.

Facebook reports that the fastest growing demographic of new users is adults age 35 and over. In addition, Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook founder) reports that Facebook has finally become profitable, turning a profit for the first time.

To read the full CNN.com article, please visit Facebook nearly as large as U.S. population.

The test version of Facebook Lite has been released to U.S. and Canada residents as of yesterday, September 10. Facebook Lite is just what it sounds like- a ‘lite’, stripped down version of Facebook. This basically means less distractions. So, what does this mean for your company’s facebook page, especially if your page ‘fans’ begin to use Facebook Lite as their regular alternative to the ‘classic’ version of Facebook? The following are some differences in Facebook Lite and how to best optimize your page so it still remains an active part of this new section of one of the most popular social networking sites in the world.

Main Differences:

Cleaner, Minimalistic Layout- As you can see from the screenshots below, the Facebook Lite layout is very clean and minimalistic. It strips down all colors and cuts down on the header and sidebar.

No Status Updates- Profiles (and pages) cannot update their status updates from Facebook Lite (They can still be viewed, however).

No ‘Like’ Function- Users cannot ‘like’ posted items from their friends and fanned pages. However, they can still comment on most items.

How to Best Optimize Your Page For Facebook Lite:

Must Be Active- Because it is virtually impossible to search for or find the pages you have fanned in Facebook Lite. The only way to access them is to click on their link of a post that has appeared on your homepage Feed. Therefore, in order to make your page regularly accessible, posting relevant and interesting content daily is the best way to remain active and regularly visible to your Fans.

Must Have Active Fans- As you can see with this screen shot of my favorite baseball team’s, The Kansas City Royals, page,

Facebook Lite Page Screenshot

Facebook Lite pages do not have an ‘info’ tab- just a wall. Therefore, in order for first-time and returning users to your page to learn more about your organization/website, you have to have active fans who post regular content on your page so it can act as a sample of what you are all about. As you can see, many fans posted about what has happened during recent games or have commented on the Royals’ page posts that they had posted in classic Facebook. This allows visitors to get a picture of what is going on with the Royals without ever having to visit classic Facebook.

Additionally, the ‘Fans’ tab on Facebook Lite doesn’t simply show a list of page fans, but rather their comments and interactions with the site. This is another reason why active fans are a good idea.

Facebook Lite Page Screenshot

On a side note, if you are lacking fans and want an easy way to gain more, run an advertisement promoting the page. The ad allows users to ‘Become a Fan’ of your page instantly from the ad, without ever having to actually go to your page. Users are more willing to this than spend the time actually going to your page, which would divert them away from what they were doing. Then after they become fans, your page’s updates and posts will start appearing in their homepage feed. This will in turn increase your user interaction with your page.

Post Videos and Photos When Possible- As you can see from this screen shot,

Facebook Lite Page Screenshot

the Photo/Video tab of Facebook Lite simply shows available photo albums that the Royals have posted. Just imagine what this tab would look like if it were empty! Since Facebook Lite only has 3 tabs for pages, it’s crucial to fill each of them up with as much positive information about your organization and website. Posting photos of any awards banquets, special events, new office space, or even of your staff will help make your page more personable and shows that you took the time to share more about what you have to offer.

As you can see, optimizing for Facebook Lite is simply doing things you probably would have done in your classic Facebook page anyway. However, taking the time and effort to make sure that your page is optimized for any version of Facebook will ensure that users and fans will want to interact and learn more about you.