Emma Brooks | Digital Media Enthusiast

ONCE UPON A TIME…

For those of you who haven’t been following my tweets in the past few weeks, let me get you up to speed: I have recently joined a club I have termed “The #TinyTowerAddicts.”

It’s not a prestigious club; in fact, anyone can join. But it’s a dangerous club to be a part of. As you can see by its name, Tiny Tower, a newly released iPhone app, is incredibly addictive. Employing just the right mix of fun, strategy and gaming practices, you’re instantly hooked and find yourself staying up late to play. And I’ve seen its addiction spreading like wildfire, through my social networks and beyond.

This is - sadly (but also funnily) - not the only text or tweet of this kind that's been sent to me.

So it came as no surprise that with such incredible growth, NimbleBit – the makers of Tiny Tower – decided to strike while the iron was hot and find a way to monazite their large database of users. Their first stop? Somehow convert their players into fans of their Facebook page. So they decided to do this:

"Like" Their Page

Now, I work a lot with my clients on Facebook strategies. And this screamed, “RED FLAG! RED FLAG!” to me in regards to breaking Facebook’s rules.

IS THIS AGAINST FACEBOOK’S POLICIES?

We’re consistently told over and over from our Facebook reps that a Facebook Page cannot incite liking (or any other “authentic action”) as it’s against Facebook rules and regulations. Which is fair: They’re trying to keep those authentic actions a user may do out of pure self-interest as credible as possible (these actions may include: liking a page, writing on the page’s wall, commenting on a status update, liking a status, inviting their friends to “like” a page, etc.).

Tiny Tower launched their “Like our Page in Exchange for Bux” campaign two days ago and already their Facebook Page has over 152,000 fans. That’s a spicy meatball!

And so I’m trying to figure out if this is against Facebook policies or not, because I’m curious on both a personal and professional level. On one hand, yes, I would very much consider this incenting a user to perform an action on Facebook that Facebook would deem “authentic.”

On the other hand, I don’t believe there’s a way NimbleBit could actually track that a user has clicked “Like” on their Facebook page, as there isn’t currently a way the user’s Tiny Tower game is connected to their Facebook account. So it’s more like a very false condition presented (which might be worse?) as I’m assuming if you click “Visit Page” your game is automatically credited the 3 Bux. [If you are smarter than me in the ways of the internet, folks, please feel free to correct me on this paragraph.] So it’s not an actual requirement the user likes the page to be rewarded.

Or if the initial contact regarding the incenting or the reward of the action takes place off Facebook, does this even count?

I’ve gone through the Facebook Ad Guidelines, their Pages Terms, and their Promotion Guidelines and can’t find nary a word on this supposed incenting a user to “like” a page. So perhaps we’ve been misinformed?

SIDE NOTE TIME:

NimbleBit is hitting it fast and hard. Just today they launched what appears to be their first partnership with Apple in which users are rewarded with checking out Harry Potter content on iTunes in exchange for more Tiny Tower Bux. I believe it when I say us #TinyTowerAddicts will soon be seeing bigger and better partnerships coming our way within our game. Should be interesting.

Harreh Potteh

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

So back to the question at hand: I would love your input on this. Do you think this is against Facebook policies? Or is this well within the realm of allowable promotions? Please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments section.

EDITED TO ADD ON JULY 17, 2011

My source at Facebook has confirmed that the above Facebook “liking” campaign run by Tiny Tower is in direct violation of their promotions policy. So that’s the answer to my question, then. Not that Facebook seems to do anything to those who break the rules – but that’s a whole other blog post.

Molson Canadian’s got a good thing going with playing into our wee Canadian heart’s love for …well, us.

It started off with the “I. AM. CANADIAN.” spot all us Canadians know probably off by heart:

Then, during the Olympics, Molson did it again. This time, with epic LOTR/Requiem for a Dream music too!

And now this. This little gem:

I know. I’m a simpleton Canadian. I like it because it makes me proud of Canada. Not because I like Molson Canadian. Oh no. I wouldn’t ever drink that stuff. We all know I’m a Keith’s girl at heart. But at least I like the brand. That’s got to count for something right? That might justify, oh, 0.000005% of their budget, no? No? Oh.

Of course, I’m more interested in their Seize the Summer contest right now. Looks similar to Foursquare, no?

Available on Facebook now, with a mobile app coming July 1, 2010. They’ve even created a video to explain the app. I’m sure that’s been done before, but I can’t think off the top of my head of another brand who has. A Canadian brand, at that.

Looks like Canadian digital ad agencies are growing up, getting better.

I think I might actually try it out. See how it goes. After all, I wouldn’t mind winning 1 of 16 cross-country trips from a brand I don’t even drink. Hmm, do you think this blog post will help or hinder my chances?

In case you didn’t see this on Mashable:

[Source: Online PhD Programs for MashableMashable.com]

I admit it, I freaking love the Knorr Sidekicks commercials as of late. Created by DDB, Toronto, it all started with this gem:

Adorable. People liked it; they felt sorry for poor ol’ Salty. It conveyed the message well (thanks to Knorr, you won’t need Salty around anymore) but kept it lighthearted. And Salty was so cute!

But it seems the ad idea is now bigger than the product it is trying to sell. Let’s take a look at an ad I found today:

The product isn’t even mentioned. Heck, you don’t even see it until a minute in, in the final lockup. And the copy doesn’t even speak to the brand benefits. Is this an issue? Well, no, I don’t think so. Because what it does speak to is the ability to get your own FREE salt & pepper shakers by visiting their website (sidekicks.ca) I can’t lie, I’m now checking this out to see how I can get them. I’m sorry, they’re just so cute!

So… clearly the high value task here has shifted between the first ad (buy our product) to this ad (visit our website). Upon looking at the site though, the user has two options: buy the s&p shaker now for $14.99 plus shipping (an additional $7.29) or buy 3 packages of Knorr Sidekicks plus shipping.

Hm. Pay more monies ORRRR get tasty foods and pay less monies. Gee, wonder which one most people will go with. Just another indirect way to sell Knorr Sidekicks. But with the added bonus of a unique hit to their website. It’s win-win. Also win for consumers who will get a cute Salty’s in their daily lives. I’m seriously considering buying these. I wish I was joking.

Some other cute Salty’s ads can be found here and here.

In any case, you can check out Salty’s Twitter, Facebook fan page or his YouTube channel. Few items I need to off shoot and rant here about regarding these properties:

1. Most of the Twitter stuff pushes to product pages, which is fine – IF labeled as such. Instead, they’re just teaser copy and links, without disclosure of what the link is. Kind of annoying, clicking on a link thinking you might see something funny or of value to you only to find yourself on a Knorr Sidekicks product page.

2. The Facebook fan page wall is linked to the Twitter account, so all status updates on the wall are the same content as on the Twitter account. This basically says to me, “Why bother following Salty on Twitter? You can get the same content and more (ooohh, a photo album with 8 photos, if you could call that more, so impressive) on Facebook.” Don’t duplicate content. Doesn’t work in SEO, doesn’t work in SMO. Give users a reason to follow each individual account if you’re going to be on these properties – an incentive, if you will: exclusive content, funny tidbits, etc – that you can’t get already on another property. It’s fine to link out to the other social media properties, totally fine, but offer more than what is basically a RSS feed. And if that’s the case: Don’t bother signing up to that property.

2. No sharing of YouTube videos? Are you kidding me? What’s the point of putting it on YouTube then? You might as well just embedded a Quicktime video onto your site and called it a day. Lot of good non-embeddable content on YouTube does me, or anyone other fan out there. I don’t want to link in my blog posts, I want to SHOW.

Ok, rant over. I’m done now.

So what do you think? Think this ad idea has enough legs to stand on its own and support a product it barely talks about anymore? Let me know in the comments.

I am going to do my best and not get all CAPS HAPPY when writing about the following article. Must. Control. Rage.

<Deep breath.> Ok.

Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook.com, recently told a live audience that the age of privacy is now over and if he were to create Facebook again today, user information would be publicly available rather than private, as it has been for years.

And what is his reasoning, you might ask? Why would users be perfectly fine with anyone accessing their private information? Why, because WE ALL BLOG, OF COURSE!

(Oops, sorry, the caps slipped out.)

Yes. Society is one big giant blogger and it’s Facebook’s duty to follow suit. Don’t believe me? Words from the wonder kid himself:

And then in the last 5 or 6 years, blogging has taken off in a huge way and all these different services that have people sharing all this information. People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time.

We view it as our role in the system to constantly be innovating and be updating what our system is to reflect what the current social norms are.

OK, Facebook, listen up! You’re missing three very key important points here:

ONE. Yes, blogging is big. Pretty big, in fact. But Facebook-worthy big? Hells to the no. As Marshall Kirkpatrick writes, “Not very many people write blogs, almost everyone is on Facebook.”

And he’s right. I can think of numerous friends (Facebook friends, fancy that!) that do not blog, nor have any interest in blogging. Ironically, I can even think of privacy-zealot friends, who rightfully freaked out about the Facebook privacy changes this past December, who blog.

TWO. Which brings me to my second point: The difference between blogging and Facebook’s outlook on privacy is that with blogging we 100% control the information. I’ll say it again for emphasis: I ONE HUNDRED PERCENT CONTROL the information I put on any blog I own. Whereas, where it looks like Facebook is headed, they could completely take away that control. They could give my personal information to whomever they like, whenever they like, however they like and not tell me. And some things, like my profile picture, I can’t do anything to stop them from sharing that with the world. Does that make me feel comfortable? All warm and fuzzy on the inside? Absolutely not.

THREE. My last point: I expected better from the world’s largest social networking site. Facebook, really? Do you hear the tone of disappointment in my voice? Because it’s there. It’s really, really there.

You are not a follower. You shouldn’t be a follower. You didn’t get to where you were by following trends but by breaking through with something different and new. So don’t go trying to conform to “social norms” (which I would still argue, as who the h-e-double hockey sticks would find giving away their privacy, no problem, “normal”?)

What you could have done (what you should have done) was become a LEADER in privacy. Show the rest of those silly social networks how IT IS DONE. Boom goes the dynamite, done. Give your users somewhere they can feel safe, where they can interact with their friends and not have to worry about who is seeing what. And who is selling what.

TO WRAP UP. I think there’s any opportunity here, for some young whippersnapper, to seize. If a respectable Facebook competitor would emerge, built on a platform of trust and privacy, I could really see many people, including my lovable privacy-zealot friends, switching over immediately and completely purging their Facebook accounts.

The problem right now is there is no real competitor to Facebook, and this results in users having very little choice and say in what happens with their accounts, as we’ve seen over and over with the Facebook redesigns and policy changes in the last couple of years (seriously, how do they manage to NOT LISTEN AT ALL?!).

So, young whippersnappers: hop to! Give Facebook a run for its money! And leave our information to us. We know what to do with it. Trust us.

(I think I did maybe a B+ on the “Avoiding Caps” scale. I’ll work harder next time. Maybe.)

My friend noticed a neat little Facebook feature as he was playing around with FB today. Apparently, if you want to deactivate your account, Facebook tries to really lay on the guilt trip! See screen grab below:

Not only does it grab some of your friends into this handy little app – it grabs photos of you tagged with your friends! And! From what I can tell, it grabs friends that have recently written on your wall in a somewhat recent past. Whoeever thoughts this up is good.

I was trying to think of why I hadn’t heard of this application before when I realized, duh, all my friends are Facebook Freaks and we would rather die a thousand times over rathe than deactivate our account. So that’s that.

Anyway, the point of this blog post was that I wanted to point out some good strategic thinking on Facebook’s part. I’d really love to know if the deactivation rate decreased after implementing this. I’m sure it must have.

So tell me, bloggy bears, would this deter you from deleting your account? Or would it not make a different at all? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.

If you’re behind the game, here’s a link explaining The Great Write Off of 2009. You can find links and discussion to all posts by checking out the Twitter trending topic, #WriteOff09.

For Day 10 of the Great Write Off of 2009, Dan of DanHocking.com writes about how social media aggregated uninformed opinions really well. He says:

Creating this strong movement of uninformed opinions and groupthink really leads to some interesting interactions. It also acts to turn me off of social media. I’m not really interested to listen to the same message over and over again; let alone the same incorrect message.

OK. Sure, I suppose that social media does push these kinds of uninformed opinions on you, whether you want it or not thanks to Twitter or your Facebook news feed. Before the push of social media to you, one could avoid this kind of ignorance by simply avoiding certain spaces online. However, I wouldn’t say that social media is really to blame for pushing this in your face. Wander down to the nearest watering hole, and if you get enough (sorry, stereotyping) guys, in their 20s or 30s, who have been drinking for a while, soon enough you can find the exact same thing being yelled at the top of these guy’s lungs. Stupidity and a feeling of having a right to any opinion – right or wrong – is hard to avoid, sadly.

However, I like the points brought up by Dan and think that it is true – social media has this really great (and awful) way of repeating incorrect information at lightning speed. Think of all the rumours that fly around when any kind of accident or tragedy occurs. The social media-sphere is more concerned with getting the information right now but not the right information now.

I remember a case study on the Toronto Propane Explosion that happened last year. It concluded that while Twitter, Facebook and blogs had information on the incident over two hours before any reliable news site had a mention of it, at the end of the day, the news sites were by far more accurate in the information they reported. This is one of social media’s great failings.

Great blog post, Dan and some great discussion happening in the comments! Everyone should head on over and check it out.

I saw the following video pop up on my Twitter feed this afternoon at 1pm on the Leo Burnett Twitter account, with the tweet, “#culturalfuel Vendor-Client relationship in real life situations: Just found this on FB. No comment..”

I watched this video, laughed and marveled at how true it rang and then re-tweeted it on my account.

Since then I’ve seen it pop up at least 4 times on other accounts I follow on Twitter and on advertising blogs, such as AdJoke.

As of 5.47pm, this video has been viewed over 2,500 times and my guess is the majority of them were today. Already it’s received well over 63 comments – a much higher view/comment ratio than one would normally find on a YouTube video. It’s also been favourited 524 times, so clearly the video is clearly hitting a nerve in the ad industry.

Comments include things such as, “This made my stomach hurt. I have had this same type conversation three times this week alone” (shawngoesgreen) and “Five stars isn’t enough” (jforrest55).

This video was added to YouTube 5 days ago on an account that was made 6 days ago. Sounds like someone’s trying – and succeeding – in making this thing viral. Should be interesting to see what the numbers are like in a few days. I’m also curious to see whether “Mr Bennett” really did see this thing on Facebook or whether it was actually created by Leo Burnett itself.

Ok, so lately I’ve had a major crush. HUGE. I can’t stop thinking about this crush. When I close my eyes, I see my crush. I can’t help it. It’s the first thing I think of when I wake up and the last thought on my mind as I drift to sleep.

I – what? A boy?! Ha. Hahaha. No, no, dear friends. I’m clearly talking about only the best game ever out there on Facebook: Pop Cap’s BEJWEWLED BLITZ!

So I’ve played a lot. Obssesively, one might say. I have the 2nd highest score of my “friends group” in this application and I’ve been trying my hardest to beat silly Katie for aaaaages now. I’m not going to even try to count how many hours I’ve spent looking at this application. But I will say: it’s a lot. And I’ve been wondering: What is Bejweled doing with all these minutes?

I think these are lost minutes. Sure, I know now that Pop Cap is the creator. That’s been drilled into my head by the opening credits. But beyond that, what are they doing to gain an advantage over other applications? Eventually, I fear, I will lose interest. And then I will drift away. And what is Pop Cap left with? An ex-user who used their application for free for many hours and then walked away. What did Pop Cap benefit from that?

There is a small link to Bejeweled 2 at the bottom of the end credits. Is this what their aim is? To get users to buy Bejeweled 2 $19.99? Becaue unless you visit the site, I had no idea the software was even for sale. I think they should really ramp up that marketing message because unless you accidentally clicked on the link (which I’ve done, many times, and then immediately closed the window without even looking at the content), how will you know about this?

On the other hand, I do like what they’re doing here:

See at the bottom there? The more you and your friends play, the better prizes you could possibly win? Every week, the game starts anew. I like this for three reasons:

1. I like free things. A lot.
2. It makes me want to invite as many friends as possible so the chances of winning the better prizes is larger.
3. It appeals to my competitive streak to see my progress right there. If I only play 600,000 points worth of games in the next 4 days, I could win a laptop! Holy smokes, right?!

And so when I log in today to play the ever-addicting game, I see this:

Eeee! I can’t wait! I want way more awesome. I want to go to that place. (As Liz Lemon would say.)

I’ll let you know if the way more awesome Bejeweled Blitz is an improvement over the current one. And if they do anything useful with all those minutes I’m throwing their way.

So what do you think? Any applications on Facebook that are doing some things right? Or maybe some that are wasting away good opportunities? Please share your thoughts in the comments!