Archive for October, 2010

Vanity Fair recently launched its Republican Beefcake Calendar and our friend Michael Hogan from Vanity Fair is making lots of new friends with his effort, especially those at Fox News. (Michael Steele is our favorite.)

Ever wonder why certain items show up in your Facebook newsfeed, and others don’t? The “Most Recent” setting, which blasts all recent activity your way, seems straightforward, but what about the “Top News” option. That’s an entirely different animal. So how does Facebook decide what is “Top” and what is not? Read More…

Think Foursquare is just a game? Think again. The mobile app is quickly becoming a tool for business and marketers to reach their customers in new and creative ways. And the latest Foursquare brand promotion may surprise you. Read More…

Social media is about joining a conversation online. So if your organization needs to get a message out to a large audience quickly, there’s no better way than Twitter. The New England Patriots took to Twitter to help sell off tickets to their game against the San Diego Chargers on Sunday. The Pats, with 53,000 followers on Twitter, tapped their online fan base and were able to help make quick work of the remaining tickets. It’s a great example of just how effective social media tools can be to reach an audience. But to grow an audience that large, you’ll need to regularly engage your social networks…or win a few Super Bowls.

This past summer, Barry Diller, CEO of IAC, shocked some in the ad world by professing his love for the Facebook ad platform. “My company, which spends a huge amount on advertising, we spend every nickel we can on Facebook,” said Diller. Diller’s comments confirmed what we’ve been seeing at Common Sense. No other platform offers such rich targeting capabilities. Oh, you want to advertise to men in Boston, ages 25 to 45, who like U2, and the work of Walt Whitman? We can do that, on Facebook. Read More…

Looking for inspiration this weekend, and in the New England area? Consider the Connecting for Change conference happening all weekend in New Bedford, MA. Our friends at the Marion Institute have worked hard to make this the best Connecting for Change yet. Speakers include Van Jones, Annie Leonard and Greg Mortenson. Tickets are going fast though. Click to Executive Director Desa Van Laarhoven’s blog for more info.

Plastic is a problem. This has become clear in the last few years. It takes a long time to break down, it ends up in large gyres in the ocean, and it’s based on a non-renewable resource; oil. So it’s with great pleasure we share the news that our partners at Stonyfield Farm have switched from a petroleum-based plastic to a plant-based plastic for their mutlipack yogurt products. The move will cut down the greenhouse emissions for the mutlipacks in half. That’s impressive. You can learn more at Stonyfield’s website, and at Boston.com’s Green Blog.

Congratulations to our partners at the Family Violence Prevention Fund. President Obama recently acknowledged their hard work as part of his proclaiming October National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.  Esta Soler, President of the Family Violence Prevention Fund, was also invited to blog at whitehouse.gov to mark the occasion. She writes that educating young men is crucial to ending domestic violence. “The inclusion of men is also evidence of our steadfast focus on prevention. To end abuse we must teach the next generation that violence is always wrong.” You can read the full post here. 

At a press conference at Facebook headquarters yesterday, Mark Zuckerberg announced several new features on the platform. Taking an old idea and making it better, Facebook announced some changes with the Groups product. The changes, highlighted below, hope to make the functionality easier and more relevant to users and essentially just do a better job of integrating old products.

• Groups can register a specific email address to send messages directly to user newsfeeds.
• Group chat capability.
• All group activity appears directly to the newsfeed of users.
• Privacy controls that keep messages within the group.
• Multiple administrator function.
•  Unlimited users per each group.

Read More…