Not Your Father's Napster: Sharing Music With NapsterLinks

Napster released a feature to allow the spread of tunes and (hopefully) the acquisition of subscribers. Here it is in the Plain-Old-HTML version. Also comes in IM/Email and Mini-Player flavors.

Wolvesville - Manuel Barrueco (with Steve Morse). An Improvisation On Etude No.1 by Villa-Lobos

(And, btw, that's one of the worlds sweetest/toughest classical guitarists in an improvised duet with the former lead guitarist of The Dixie Dregs)

Unfortunately, as a viral-driven acquisition tactic, it's so heavily laden with Napster Free Trial up-sell, that much of the fun, let alone the utility, of sharing media has been sucked out. Whether the goal was to leverage viral effects to boost subscriber acquisition, or generate lots of in-bound links, it won't make a dent.

One more thing, depending on your browser settings, you may have to "allow pop-ups from Napster.com" in order to hear the track I've linked to above. I could have posted the Mini-Player right in this blog post, but Blogger doesn't allow javascript functions to run in this, or any, blog.

Blogging At The Speed Of SMS: Twitter Releases An API

I'm sure SMS blogging will soon take its place next to web-based blogging and perhaps one day render it obsolete. SMS blogs have the potential for so much more urgency and immediacy - the universe of applications for sending dispatches from the heart of whatever-scene-you-like (once bloggers realize the potential of severing themselves from the computer) is mind numbing. And now Twitter has released an API to speed the process along. Best Twitter-based application so far? Twittermap.

Portable Storefronts Plus Social Networking Sites Equals Viral Sales

The Canadian tech company Musicane.com is promoting their twist on digital content merchandising - hosting the storage, display and transaction using a player that easily embeds in your blog or social networking web page - cool! But why not expand that to all Ecommerce!

From: MARKET WIRE | Date: September 26, 2006

Musicane (www.musicane.com), an online service that provides content creators and producers with the capability to market, virally distribute and sell digital content directly from their own Web sites, blogs and online social networks, today announced the release of its upgraded online media transaction service offering viral storefronts with e-commerce capability that works anywhere on the web. Fans can easily embed storefronts on their personal spaces.

Breaking News! PR is not three times more effective than advertising, at best it's one to one.

Katie Paine from MeasuresOfSuccess.com reported on a study that puts PR into perspective and makes a whole lot of sense: Breaking News! PR is not three times more effective than advertising, at best it's one to one.: "For years, there’s been a myth out there that there is some sort of multiplier for PR that assumes that PR is x times more effective than advertising. The most frequent number used was three, but for years organizations and their agencies have been multiplying their PR “impressions” by whatever number they chose to indicate how much more effective PR is than Advertising. The only problem is that there has never been or will never be any statistical evidence to support this assumption. Dr. Don Stacks of the University of Miami and David Michaelson proved this initially in 2004 and this morning presented the results of phase 2 of their study at the 4th Annual Summit on Measurement. So just to set the record straight: THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE IN IMPACT BETWEEN PR AND ADVERTIISNG. But this is not necessarily bad news. The study was conducted in shopping malls in five suburban locations around the US. A total of 351 people participated. I won't"

Snakes On A Plane - The Accidental Viral

OK, so there is actually something to say - in pre-release, this movie is a kind of tabula rasa on which people may say, think or create anything they please. Rob Thomas, writing for the Madison WI Capital Times, makes the observation: >> It's a phenomenon that also must have studio heads scratching their heads and wondering how it happened, how a film essentially created its own viral marketing campaign out of thin air, without New Line Cinema having to spend a dollar. And those same studio heads are probably trying to figure out how they can replicate it. But here's the wonderful, frustrating thing about such Internet brush fires like this: You can't start them deliberately. "Snakes" was an accident, something film fans discovered for themselves and figured out how to have a good time with, like an inside joke shared among friends. >> 'Snakes' cult hit before release http://www.madison.com/tct/entertainment/index.php?ntid=78820&ntpid=0

Snakes On A Plane

After you've typed the phrase Snakes On A Plane what is there left to say?

Harnessing User Generated Media in Viral Campaigns: Watch Out For Potholes

As reported by Barry Graubart at Content Matters - Chevy launched a viral campaign relying on users to edit and post their TV commercial based on pre-produced video objects. Given the current user-gen-media environment, where satire and humor is king, I imagine Chevy entertained the notion that perhaps, just perhaps, some users might leverage the opportunity to create something more (or less) than the intended glorification of the Chevy Tahoe. You have until Monday to have at it yourself. >> The good (or bad) news is that, as designed, these commercials have spread virally, as users share their creativity with friends. Unfortunately, most of them do not contain the mom, apple pie and Chevrolet message that might have been originally intended. >> http://www.contentmatters.info/content_matters/2006/04/chevys_viral_ma.html

Grassroots Marketing - Political Season Heating Up and Public Affairs Marketer Finds That Now Is The Time

Grass Roots Enterprises is leading the PAC in public affairs marketing, with some interesting accomplishments last year, including Viral, International, Podcasting, Persuasion Online Ad, Humor and Blog Ad. I guess it's time to start the "Interesting Political Marketing" blog category at Viralsphere leading into 2007. Oh, and since my Mother-in-law Marian Harris (www.marianforohio.com) is running for State Rep in Ohio, I could maybe try my hand at a thing or two. >> WASHINGTON, March 28 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Grassroots Enterprise, a firm specializing in building grassroots support for causes, products, and companies, today announced that it has won six of the highly coveted "Pollies," awards bestowed by the American Association of Political Consultants for excellence in political and public affairs communications. Equally impressive, Grassroots took the top prize awarded in a stunning 4 Internet categories, more than any other firm. >> http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=63077

Relationship Marketer Releases Hosted Viral Campaign Builder

Marketing service provider Responsewave released a hosted solution for quickly setting up and deploying viral campaigns focused on acquiring leads using friendly viral email tactics based on "recommendation principles" - complete with automatic incentive reward and utilization tracking. The company says: >> Responsewave’s viral marketing campaign builder enables the user to easily build, test and deploy viral marketing campaigns based on Responsewave’s recommendation marketing principles. Recommendation marketing is based on empowering people to recommend products or services to their friends. The recommendations can be motivated by putting in place an incentive scheme for successful recommendations. >> Read the press release: http://www.responsewave.com/index.cfm?id=2795

Ironic Run-Of-Network Search Listing Of The Day

Run of network search ads automatically insert your search query into the text of a generic ad. They end up being a calculated risk on behalf of the advertiser, running the gamut from the silly to the sublime. Somewhere in the middle they're unintentionally truthful and randomly instructive. I think I'll start collecting them - here's the first in a series:

Viral Marketing 2006 - Report Released By MarketingSherpa.com

This year's article, complete with circles and arrows. Entertaining, and primarily a survey of what marketers are doing, what they think they're doing it for, and what they think it's doing for them. >> SUMMARY:Viral marketing online is a decade old this year and it's getting hideously same-old, same-old boring. Which spells trouble, because viral's all about not being boring. Here's some help to fight your viral creative yawns, including * 8 data charts featuring results & budgets from 790 viral marketers (thanks guys) * 5 practical tips to improve your viral results * Plus, the #1 biggest year-over-year change in the viral world >> http://www.marketingsherpa.com/sample.cfm?contentID=3221

From The Archives - The John Cleese Experiment

Someone recently asked me to dig this up - great example from last year. Irony and comedy and the infamous "third button" (don't press it, ok?) combined to make this effort successful on behalf of data backup service provider LiveVault.com http://jon.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2005/5/4/649821.html