links for 2009-11-12

by Brian Reich | 12 Nov 2009, 11:01am

• 5 Hot Social Shopping Trends to Watch For (Mashable)
  The Internet has already radically changed the way we shop. Googling for promotion codes, free shipping, free return shipping, virtual models, live chats with sales associates – it’s all become common place. In fact, a recent study from Burst Media found that 85% of consumers will shop online this holiday season, and the majority of those people will continue to shop online throughout the year. Now that online shopping is widespread – just try finding someone who has never purchased an item on the Internet these days – it’s about to enter whole new dimension: social shopping.
• Bill Gates’ Plan for Fixing the World (Mashable)
  Bill Gates visited the 92nd Street Y (in NYC) to talk about his philanthropy and other plans. This is a writeup from Mashable on the event.
• Paid Social Network Opportunities — Alive and Well (eMarketer)
  While mainstream social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace have always been free to users, paid social network content models are alive and well. Networks that cater to market niches have particularly thrived on hybrids of paid models and ad-based systems. Some of these, such as LinkedIn, Classmates.com and MyLife.com, are earning at least as much revenue from fee-based content and services as from advertising.
• McDonnell Online Strategy: People Matter (Mindy Finn)
  The tactics and focus employed by the campaign may not appear novel to presidential-level strategists, but for statewide campaigns, the McDonnell campaign should serve as a model. A cautionary note about any case study on political campaigning: glean valuable lessons but recognize that the political environment and dynamics vary from race to race.If ones takes just a few basic lessons from the McDonnell online effort, take these, the 7 habits of highly successful campaigns:
• The Last Campaign: How Experiences Are Becoming the New Advertising (AdAge)
  Experiences, it would seem, are the new advertising. Experiences reach and engage customers in new and more meaningful ways, they promote "trial" over simply messaging and — quite frankly — experiences are much more suited to our digital era when everything is just a click away. Our challenge now, as marketers, is to make sure that our products and brands can actually live up to the experiences that we advertise.
• Social media challenges social rules (BBC News)
  Today our social rules seem to have been overloaded by our always on, always connected culture. Behaviours developed for the industrial age simply cannot cope with the new possibilities for information sharing. We are clearly going to see a lot more inappropriate use of social media before new rules emerge.

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