Are Facebook Apps The New Brand Wasteland? Or Why Facebook Will and Will Not Work For the Travel Industry - Part 2

...Second Life today, post-hype-apocalypse, contains scattered groupings of people in a whole sea of empty space, containing a number of eerily abandoned brand islands. When recently digging through every press release I could find about a brand launching a new Facebook App, I started to wonder if this was the new brand wasteland. At the front of the Facebook list are a myriad of highly social applications with hundreds of thousands, even millions of active users. But to the back are all of the big names (Coke, Honda, Adidas, Verizon) with applications drawing in... 12 active users? >>Full Story

Thoughts// A great post from the threeminds blog that discusses the abundance of underutilized, forgotten Facebook applications. The post ties in perfectly into an article we discussed a few months ago, 'Why Facebook Will and Will Not Work For the Travel Industry - Part 1.'

The post cites several examples of Facebook applications, created by large corporations, which do not deliver the amount of users or views of non-sponsored applications or widgets. Of course, for a lot of these companies a Facebook application is not a large expenditure, and probably viewed as more of an experiment. Still, 12 active users is a remarkably small amount.

The article is very similar to our previous post discussing how companies and organizations created Facebook profiles, hoping to gather thousands of 'friends' for their product or brand, only to be 'friended' by a few, let us say, less-than-perfect users.

Most interesting was the example of the Sony sponsorship of an already existing, already popular (vampire) Facebook application. Brilliant. A built-in audience, interested in the same subject, why wouldn't you take advantage of it?

The article also goes onto to mention the use of groups, (built-in audience!) to create 'mini-sites' for your brand / product. Not sure if I would go that far, but it is certainly a good option.

Finally, I love the App Don'ts, which could work for any new media / interactive project / website:

App Don'ts
1. Don't start a new version of something that is already popular.
2. Don't overcomplicate the concept or interface.
3. Don't extend a campaign without thinking about the social context.
4. Don't separate your fans, reach them where they already exist.

Words to live, and network, by.

Second Life: Boom or Bust?

Current issues of Newsweek and Wired offer two opposite views of the Second Life virtual world.

Newsweek's article, "Alternate Universe," is overwhelmingly positive, claiming that "Second Life is emerging as a powerful new medium for social interactions of all sorts, from romance to making money. It may be the Internet's next big thing."

Wired's article, "How Madison Avenue Is Wasting Millions on a Deserted Second Life," is decidedly negative, stating that the environment is largely empty, hindered by nonscalable technology and boring. >> Full Story

Thoughts// A great post from Computerworld Magazine on the current debate over Second Life. Many organizations, including major media outlets (such as Newsweek) and even the WTM, are praising Second Life as a major marketing breakthrough while new questions and statistics are showing a different story. Personally, I tend to agree a bit more with the Wired article that casts doubt on how powerful a marketing vehicle Second Life really is. While Second Life is certainly a very popular and cutting-edge offering for the general public, the question is, can Second Life be an effective marketing tool to spend considerable time and money on. For most marketers, the answer would be no.

If you are interested in the Second Life phenomenon and how avatars, gambling and cyber-space 'shootings' are all part of the game, I would highly recommend reading both the Newsweek and Wired articles as well as this article from TIME. They offer differing views, but all three provide a good look into this virtual world.

Who Needs a Travel Agent?

When it comes to travel, perhaps more so than any other industry, word-of-mouth is king. Travelers make decisions on where to stay, where to eat, and what to do based on recommendations from friends.

No surprise, then, that many of today’s niche social networking sites are built around travel: WAYN, TravelPod, TripAdvisor, IGoUGo, SideStep (thanks to the recent acquisition of TripUp), FlyerTalk — the list is tremendous. >>Full Story

Thoughts// A basic article from OMMA discussing the impact of social networking on the travel industry in a very high-level tone. Most of the article covers topics that are a bit old (Travelocity's MySpace page) or currently being debated (the value of Second Life)...all of which have been covered by this blog. While the article does offer a good overview, it makes too many general statements without a true objective look at the current state of social networking on the travel industry.

Travel Trends - Flagr, Silverlight, Second Life

Flagr: Using Google Maps technology, the social community site Flagr allows consumers to create and post maps of recent trips, famous locations or event sushi restaurants in New York (http://www.flagr.com/maps/315).
http://www.flagr.com/

Silverlight: While this is a ‘tech’ thing at this point, Microsoft’s answer to the Adobe Flash program has designers everywhere actually praising this new Microsoft product.
http://silverlight.net/

Second Life: After talking in a previous Interactive Trend Report post about how major corporations (Dell, Best Buy, NBA) are looking to extend there marketing efforts into this 3-D virtual world, a new report suggests that the majority of Second Life users are coming from outside of the US. According to a new comScore report, only 207,000 people from the US logged onto Second Life during the month of March. Second Life reports over 6 million total users. The accuracy of this report remains to be determined, but it is certainly a concern considering the large investment made by these US companies.
http://www.secondlife.com/

Travel Trends - Trip Sync, Mozes, Second Life

Trip Sync: A distributed booking system aimed at trip planning for small to medium sized businesses. Book travel, rental cars, hotels and manage it all via Outlook. (We would encourage you to watch the demo, it is very interesting technology)
http://tripsync.com/

Mozes: Create your own keyword, share info via text messaging.
http://www.mozes.com/

Second Life: A 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Recently, several major corporations have begun participating in Second Life, including Sun Microsystems, Best Buy, Dell, Philips, and even the National Oceanic and Aeronautic Administration (NOAA) and the Swedish government.
http://secondlife.com/ and http://secondlife.com/businesseducation/