How are you talking to your audience?

A “swarm” is a group of 1 to 15 people who commit to buying a Dell computer at an increasingly reduced price over 72 hour period.

E.g if a Dell Mini is priced at $899, the first person who join the Swarm will be paying about $869 for it, but if that person managed to get another 14 people to join their Swarm, the price will reduce to $799.

The 72 hour timeframe brings the purchase within the “gotta have it now” acceptable period for acquiring shiny new things.

The value for Dell here lies not in the bulk sale, but using the natural tendency of peers and online communities to influence purchase. Think of the little extra push you’re going to give a mate, a colleague or even a stranger online to commit to purchasing the exact product you want, so that your whole group benefits.

Dell also encourages swarmers to use Facebook groups, widgets, twitter, IM & forums to spread word of their sale. And the opportunity is there for ambivalent consumers to be pulled to one offer or another by influential peers (or posts).

Group buying isn’t new. Car enthusiasts and computer geeks have a history of group buying exotic parts in quantity enough to make shipping or wholesale prices feasible. Collective buying site Groupon has sold over 1.2 million group lots for local and enterprise businesses in UK and USA. But it’s interesting to see the world largest computer manufacturer experiment with different models of not only selling, but marketing via the social space.

I’ve been researching Facebook’s Promotion terms and compliance for a number of clients lately and always run into the same question – if it’s not technically allowed and everybody does it anyway, is it still a good strategy?

The key ingredient in most Facebook promotions is the “Incentivised peer promulgation” – ie. Tell-a-friend. I discovered the Westfield promotion through (many) friends’ status updates. In fact, status updates are part of the entry mechanic:

When the Westfield Facebook application has been uploaded, individuals must then update their Facebook status to read as “All I Want for Christmas is a Westfield Gift Card” using the application functionality.

BUT: Based on my reading of the Facebook Terms & Conditions of promotions, requiring ANY action on Facebook (becoming a fan, status updates, wall posts) as a condition of entry is a no-go? Or am I confused (as others seem to be)?

4.2 In the rules of the promotion, or otherwise, you will not condition entry to the promotion upon taking any action on Facebook, for example, updating a status, posting on a profile or Page, or uploading a photo.

I’m not saying Westfield is in the wrong – more power to them for promoting a very successful campaign and raising awareness of their Gift Cards as a Christmas gift option – but perhaps it’s time for Facebook to step in and clarify their guidelines to agencies, so that compliance-focused maraketers can rest easy that their promotion won’t be yanked a la section 6.4:

6.4 We may remove any materials related to a promotion at any time, regardless of whether the promotion was approved, where we determine the continued marketing or administration of such promotion may be unlawful under applicable laws, rules, regulations or guidelines or may cause unreasonable liability for us.

If only so that I get my chance to win $10,000 to spend on puppies at Pets World.

[UPDATE] Just wanted to clarify my post above: At 369,000 + users, I don’t think anyone can argue this has not been a successful promotion. For a $10,000 wholesale cost, plus ~$2k – ~5k to build the app, I’d say this stands up as an excellent example of how you can engage 1/3 of a MILLION people in less than 5 days through Facebook.

My issue isn’t with Westfield’s (or the app’s users) SPAM ACT 2003/4 compliance, as my reading of it certainly includes this kind of activity within compliant action.

My question, rather, is around the murkiness of Facebook’s promo T&Cs. Is this app promotion legit, and if yes, how exactly so? This would be a good test case for all digital marketers to know the right way (or maybe, the wrong way) to go about marketing via Facebook within regulation.

For me, the aggregate price of moving to a tropical paradise (Bahia, Brazil) to concentrate on a few personal-professional projects was a much easier investment than balancing work/life/rent/startup back in Sydney.

Flights to South American countries like Brazil, Colombia or Bolivia have dropped significantly in price over the past 6 months, with returns under $1000 pretty easy to find.

I’m currently working in Morro de Sao Paulo, a tropical island in the north of Brazil, where there are no cars, only donkeys and wheelbarrows. Suffice to say, the tranquility is pretty conducive to long but pleasant work-hours.

My office:

• Rent, food, booze & broadband wi-fi for around AUD$50 per day total. This would suit up to 4 people. What does your office space, plus home rent, plus utilities for both add up to?
• Seclusion and serenity, with the most virulent distractions being small long-tailed monkeys on the balcony and the occasional chirping gecko.

Think about the essentials for your startup and why exactly you need to be in the city you’re currently in? If you’ve saved a bit of money, or secured some initial investment, would that money go further somewhere else in the world that might additionally benefit your business?

Who is responsible? Who runs the online dating service (more of a data acquisition mechanic than anything else) that they direct to? Why are they here?

Robert J Moore, (whose excellent data and analytics blog I’ve just discovered) has discovered the secret. His tale goes via New Jersey, Houston, India and Panama.

He researched and purchased webhosting and IP address archives on DomainTools, ran some numbers through Excel, wrote some RegEx queries and used a lot of Google to find out.

It’s a great story, as much for his explanation of good online research tools as anything else.

Read the full tale here: “Single?” : The Metric System

I have a massive hard-on for crowdsourcing. I talk about it to anyone who will listen, and there’s at least one or two slides in any Powerpoint deck I present dedicated to it.

It’s saved me time and made me money, and continues to do so.

Jeff Howe, who coined the term “Crowdsourcing” in a Wired magazine article in 2006, has a new book out. He’s pimping it out in this cute video.

Crowdsourcing: The Trailer.

10 Reasons It Would Rule to Date a Unicorn

[ UPDATE: Double-cute. They have quite a forthright little "How Many People Have You Had Sex With" Quiz. And apparently bloggers fare just as well as non-bloggers. Puh-lease. We all know bloggers are drunkards and sluts. ]

Networked sites on the same webhost

Being the paranoid bunch they are, SEO Marketers speculate that Google’s algorithm takes the webhosting location of sites in a link network into account. Basically, if sites are on the same C-block IP, there’s a chance they’re on the same hosting account, and being managed by the same person. Google may view this relationship with suspicion.

Whether google checks C-block IPs is debated. Whether google penalises for it, or not, is also contested.

SEO Marketers trick Google by hosting on different C-Block IPs

Regardless, there are webhosting companies sprouting up capitalising on this speculation, offering hosting packages with different C-blocks. This way you can manage all your networked sites via the same provider, but Google won’t know it’s you.

But don’t use the same Google Analytics account

Putting on my aluminium foil hat, I wonder whether tracking your link network sites with the same google analytics account is a dead giveaway to the omniscient one?? Does Analytics data be fed into Google’s algorithm. Or are the index, ranking and analytics dbs totally silo’d??

What do you think? Am I just being paranoid, or is google able to take advantage of owning the world’s data to reduce the effectiveness of sneaky seo marketing tactics?

Your conspiracy theories, hearsay and rank speculation are all welcome.

A smorgasbord of non-usual, interesting short format talks (in the vein of TED) about topics that interest the speakers – and in most cases – the audience.

The talk that interested me most was Russ Tucker’s review of his year-old “Viral Waistcoat” experiment.

What is the waistcoat?

The Viral Waistcoat is literally a faux-leather waistcoat that Russ rescued after a particularly seedy fancy-dress party (or particularly seedy night at Manacle?). Russ (or whomever handles the waistcoat at the time) encourages random aquaintances to wear the waistcoat, take a photo, sign it in white ink, and pass it along. The coat itself has run out of signature real-estate, but Russ has found room for a NTT Docomo-friendly QR code, ready for when it next tours Japan.

Russ exerts very little control over the proceedings (and doesn’t even have insurance!) yet has managed to document on his Viral Waistcoat blog hundreds of individual wearers and passers-on.

Why is it viral?

The object of the experiment is to make a physical object “viral”. That is, for the idea to be interesting enough that it becomes contagious, and the wearer will gladly pass it along. Of course, unlike digital media, the faux-leather physical object can only be transmitted at a one-to-one ratio. It follows a decidedly linear progression of exposure, not able to be copied and transmitted exponentially.

Why is it interesting?

I was intrigued by the de-virtualising of the idea of “viral”; solidifying the concept and studying it, like a bug trapped in resin. So often, it takes an unhealthy obession with a discarded piece of fetishwear to highlight the curious nature of viral marketing online. This is no exception.

Big props to Ian, Katie, Emily and enthusiastic MC Tim Longhurst for a well-organised, well-directed and above all interesting night.