Archive for May, 2010

iPhone, Facebook, oAuth 2.0 and the Graph API. A Tutorial.

25 May 2010

NOTE: The source code for this tutorial is still linked below, however the FULL Facebook/iPhone Graph API can be found here:  http://github.com/reallylongaddress/iPhone-Facebook-Graph-API

The new Facebook Graph API looks to be the cat’s meow, the bee’s knees, the coolest thing since sliced bread. Ok, that’s a bit much… but it is a whole lot more powerful, easier and cross-platform consistent than the previous plethora of Facebook APIs.  The Graph API was announced at Facebook’s F8 conference just over a month ago.  At the time of release, I was surprised no iPhone SDK was made available. I fully expected that at least an unofficial SDK as well as full blown tutorials would be out en-mass by now, but to no avail.
Not nearly patient enough to wait for an official SDK or iPhone API from Facebook, I asked Google how to “Facebook oAuth 2.0 iPhone” and was disappointed with the results. It turns out,…

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Focus On The Aggregate Influencer

25 May 2010

I believe that you need to properly identify and reach out to individual influencers. It’s something we do for all of our clients. It’s an extremely important part of building relationships, and it’s a nuanced art. But people often miss the importance of understanding and reaching out to the groups or mediums most influential for a brand. Understanding the aggregate influencer is crucial to creating, honing and sharing content that really matters, and getting others to share it for you.
A Complicated Journey
When a brand creates a piece of information, that piece has a twisted, convoluted and often times unexpected set of adventures across the vast world of the interwebs. Once upon a time, this was the simple vision for the internet.

40 years later and things are not so simple. Interesting information about a brand can be shared on blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, email, Buzz, text and a wide variety of…

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Who Takes The Blame For The Internet Overshare?

13 May 2010

Sharing/Oversharing
I vividly remember my first Facebook status update; I felt like I was crossing a dangerous threshold. This past January, I had an acquaintance tell me he enjoyed that I was always in his news feed, regardless of time of day. I took that as a bad sign, and had flashbacks to reading Emily Gould’s piece Exposed, which detailed her addiction to sharing online. Her job, and thus her life, was online, and over time her sense of privacy crumbled to a point of no return; every action was chronicled via blog, and every reader comment became part of a life-defining feedback loop.
The New York Times did an interesting piece this weekend on the “Tell-All Generation”, chronicling a small shift as early 20-somethings realize their online persona is also their virtual resume. Yet, just as some freshly-minted college grads are realizing the discrepancy between their resume interests (volunteering, photography) and their Facebook…

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Calculating Social Media ROI, Part One

07 May 2010

ROI is consistently the hot topic in social media. Everyone wants to know the magic formula, the mathematical equation that will produce (justify?) effective online efforts. Metrics in any program need to be focused on an end goal, and those end goals can normally be found in quarterly or yearly strategic business goals. This should come as no surprise; any marketing effort should be focused on driving a bottom line.

There are ways, however, to put some measurement into your online activity. Our Entertainment Group Practice Director, Wendy Hofstetter, came up with a way to get at this. This method takes the standard ROI analysis for a media buy (think banner ads), and applies it to social media efforts. You will be able to show how much your brand would need to spend in order to buy the equivalent amount of impressions you are generating in social media, and determine…

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