Social and Community with one button

It amazes me how I get this question popping at every web-app meeting. Can we just go social & add up a community? It’s so easy, add that button that shares the page with other apps and web-portals. So simple?

As much as most of us hate Social Software, the title that is, it is often tossed as the end-solution for every portal’s misery. Just add that button and we’re set.

What got my attention back to this is:

It’s more to social than just a badge, a button, or a Facebook group. And sure is more than a Weyak. I’d like to call that the “Online Viral Model”

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Domains of Branding

How much could your brand suffer if it didn’t own the domain name that reads its name? Obviously the number is out of reach. What brought my attention back to this issue is by dialing Showtime.com. It’s a domain name with an automated landing page at Network Solutions. I’ve never dialed Showtime, I’ve always been taken by a link to apparently Showtime Arabia instead.

A quick look at the whois records of the domain name, it reads that Showtime Tours Incorporated, a company in GB owns the domain name since 2003. But then again this website is down.

Now the interesting part, the website showtime.com has a ranking of 157,224 on Alexa and according to Compete Rank it has 64,427 U.S visitors a month. Now you might think 64K ain’t that a big deal? Okay, how about 64K showtime seekers/followers who have to either click/search/type elsewhere and get frustrated till they find the domain name that actually takes them to their beloved cable network Showtime?

Now I wouldn’t say Showtime couldn’t effort the price, that’d be underestimating their size, uninformed marketers? That wouldn’t be true either, in all the cases, that’s a miss!

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Light in Silver, a New Flash

Microsoft announced the Beta v2 of SilverLight, the upcoming New media plug-in. The first impression on the tool was greatly negative as Flash has dominated the space for a decade now, Java Applets went down, Shockwave went down(the bigger brother), and Flash kept on rising, unbeatable.

Adobe Air vs. XAML & Vista, Flex vs. Visual Studio, and Flash vs. SilverLight, that’s what it is about.

While XAML was introduced by Microsoft, Adobe Air was introduced to shift Rich Internet Applications to Desktop, Visual Studio could not integrate seamlessly with Flash and since it’s non open source Adobe got its own DE; Flex. Now that Visual Studio could not integrate better with Flash although there was an Extension of the Remote Components made for ASPX, but still. So Silver Light was born, a new Multimedia plug-in that integrates with Visual Studio and allows developers to make applications using Visual Studio and Designers using Expression.

One thing though, it’s so obvious, Flash is every where, web multimedia means Flash, how long would take Microsoft to start competing?

If Microsoft was to bundle SilverLight with Vista or whatever the next OS is, this would do nothing but what it did to Flash V5 plug-in, world-wide spread and fast penetration. Would the user base of Windows users dominate the decision based on plug-in penetration then? Quiet simply yes.

But then, the other end of the story are the Content Providers. How fast would they adopt SilverLight development? But then again the user base of Microsoft Development Tools would boost that.

Check what others have said on the same, it’s interesting, check’em out here.

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Microsites, what kind?

Microsite debates have always been going on and never stopped. Be it between Designers and Developers or Media Planners and Clients or even the poor web-masters in the background.

John W Eliss, a seasoned online ads consultant, denies the need for microsites, he adds:

The Microsite, at least the original definition, is dead. Creating multiple, smaller websites for segments of the same brand only confused the customer and extended the purchasing process.

John continues the debate and adds a little +ve points too:

An advantage of microsite was search engine dominance. By creating multiple sites, a brand was able to dominate natural search rankings. No matter where the customer clicked, it was still the same company

There have been two types of microsites as of my observations, those that melt within a big site contents, and those that stand alone.

Excluding John, online marketers and for this case even the folks at online agencies would prefer to go with standalone microsites, because they’d want to have a clear shot, they often don’t want to mingle with existing websites and their Information Architecture & interactivity.

Clients on the other side don’t like to have their base website or corporate brand website touched by every campaign or product launch given that every campaign/project would have a different winner(agencies), think about conflict in style & message.

On the contrary, bigger picture believers, and those who give power to online agencies or perhaps have a big online department do go with microsites within their websites, name changes there, it becomes a section or a product page instead!

Good examples of inner microsites are the beloved Sony Ericsson and Nokia websites.

That’s right, I’m with John, Microsites are dead, but when it comes to cars? Bigger projects/products that are not daily consumer accessory, information that should not be confused with other information?

Every movie gets its own microsite, so? Should we put every Sony Pictures movie in one huge website that includes all the Sony movies?

I take my word back, it ain’t dead. It’s a relative thought, depends on three ends:

• Advertisers’ website & decisions
• Online Agencies or In House Department involvement
• Type of Product and Advertisers’ business & consumer habits injected over years of feeding.

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