Mediaboss Marketing

The lifeblood of college football fandom is changing.

The painted faces crammed into the student section of stadiums nationwide have turned away from newspapers and talk radio toward social media to get stats, scores and even messages from coaches and players in real time. As social media infiltrates stadiums and clubhouses, teams are scrambling on and off the field to reach students and young alumni an audience that constitutes 12 percent of game attendance, a figure that will only grow over time.

To understand the growing role of social media in collegiate sports, consider a 2011 study by Galen Clavio (.pdf) at Indiana University. It found 18- to 29-year-old fans are significantly more likely to rely upon social platforms like Facebook and YouTube for sports info than those older than 30. Although Clavio acknowledges the survey may self-select for a group of tech-savvy, high-earning respondents, the findings jibe with those of Pew Internet, which found 86 percent of adults aged 18 to 29 the highest percentage among all age groups use social networking sites on a regular basis.

Athletic departments have felt this shift, and some are struggling to navigate the changing landscape.

Pleasing students is one thing, but running a business (and college sports is a business) is quite another. The boosters who fill athletic department coffers typically are older than students and, according to Clavios study, beyond social medias influential reach. That may lead some athletic departments to figure, Why bother? Attendance stats support this view, as the greatest number of fans at college football games are aged 45 to 54. Theyre followed by the 35 to 44 set. But the number of fans who rely upon social media for much of their news will only grow.

No less a problem are television networks, which are quick to say social media can infringe on exclusivity contracts. Thats led to some effort to rein in social media. In 2009, for example, the Southeastern Conference briefly considered banning social media at all sporting events, an idea that seems absurd, if not impossible to enforce.

If the Iranian government couldnt cut off Twitter in the middle of country-wide riots, the SEC certainly wasnt going to be able to cut off social media at an Alabama-Tennessee game, said Clavio. The SEC got that message and settled on a not-for-profit social media policy where fans could post updates, take pictures or shoot video as long as they made no money doing so.

The relationship between sports and social remains occasionally tenuous, but it is a commanding player on any athletic programs roster so much so that a teams website, once the dominant digital domain for team information, pales in the shadow of its Facebook page.

Among Top 25 NCAA football teams, social media pages are built around a few core principles: fun, short, engaging messages and pictures. Lots of big, beautiful pictures. Take the University of Michigans Facebook page, a destination engineered to prime a daylong fan-gasm in the virtual Big House. The site is built for fans, not boosters or networks, and with nearly 1 million faithful followers, director of digital marketing Jordan Maleh delivers what users want. The page features high-res images that easily stockpile 20,000 Likes or more. Updates featuring game scores or rally calls accumulate thousands of comments ranging from a simple Go Blue to armchair quarterback criticism of the teams performance. Every sport gets its own social site, with 29 in all.

I view Michigan athletics almost like a league. Major League Baseball or the NBA has 20-plus teams; we are now focused on 29 [Wolverine] teams as opposed to just one, Maleh said.

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College Football Fans Go Social for Sports News

Social networking sites are gaining more popularity these days and now in this race Worldfloat.com has also been added. The idea-tor behind this site is Pushkar Mahatta, Director of Mahatta Towers. In a candid chat with Dataquest, Pushkar Mahatta talked about the company's journey towards becoming biggest virtual billboard company.

Brief us about your website.

Worldfloat.com is a pure software retail product which no one in the country has produced and is getting global acceptance. Signups by users worldwide has made worldfloat.com a potential front runner in the social networking arena. With the float technology a user can travel and communicate with anyone in the 1600 cities that have been created by the website virtually. There is freedom of communication as anyone can ping or tap on someone's picture and start chatting whether one is a friend or not. People have the ability to walk around in a virtually created real world on worldfloat.com. This sort of movement and technology was used only in virtual gaming before worldfloat.com pushed the idea in to the social networking arena. It gives a user the freedom to walk with one's friend, travel to different cities and chat also at the same time. Worldfloat.com is the virtual replication of real life in motion. The user base is currently more than 5 lakh people from all over the world.

Every 3-6 months we are planning to introduce a new module on worldfloat.com for eg a user will be able to do a virtual event in any city of the world at zero cost while sitting at home. The no of cities will be increased gradually and steadily to about 30,000 cities on the earth created on worldfloat.com. There is a plan to open an online education university for students all over the world to take forward the concept of educating a child at home.

How it is different from other social networking website ?

Worldfloat is the first of its kind to generate ad revenues through geotagging. The revenue will be generated by provision of billboards provided in every city to the users to advertise their product. Currently all other websites are generating revenue through the profile page model whereas worldfloat.com is planning to create most of its revenue from being the biggest virtual billboard company.

There is no comparable product available in the world today developed by an Indian which is not for just for the Indian market but the whole world. With the float technology a user can travel and communicate with anyone in the 1600 cities that have been created by the website virtually.

How did you get this idea to develop such website?

As a student of philosophy, inter disciplinary application of philosophy, psychology, metaphysics which gave me the ability to innovative thinking. That led me to think in terms of virtually replicating life on the Internet. World float emerged as a combination of several ideas patterned on real life which has been virtually created to go digital where individuals can connect to each other seamlessly across the world, without limitations of present social networking sites.

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Emerging trends in social networking

The Canadian Press - ONLINE EDITION

By: Maria Cheng, The Associated Press

24/09/2012 6:53 AM | Comments: 0

LONDON - The World Health Organization said Monday it is too soon to say whether there could be an outbreak of a SARS-like killer respiratory disease after health officials in Britain announced they detected a related virus in a severely ill patient from the Middle East.

British officials alerted WHO on Saturday of the new virus in a man transferred from Qatar for treatment in London. He had recently travelled to Saudi Arabia, where another man died of a similar illness earlier this year.

The man in the new case was sickened by a coronavirus, from a family of viruses which causes most common colds but also includes the virus that causes SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome. In 2003, SARS killed some 800 people, mostly in Asia, in a short-lived epidemic.

"It's still very early days," said Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman. "At the moment we have two sporadic cases and there are still a lot of holes to be filled in." Hartl said it was unclear how the virus is spread and there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission.

Coronaviruses are typically spread in the air but Hartl said scientists were considering the possibility that patients were infected directly by animals. "All possible avenues of infection are being explored right now," he said.

So far there is no connection between the cases except for a history of travel in Saudi Arabia. SARS was first spread to humans from civet cats in China.

Hartl said no other countries have so far reported any similar cases to WHO.

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WHO monitoring SARS-like virus in 2 men who had travelled in Saudi Arabia; 1 has died

CHICAGO, IL--(Marketwire - Sep 24, 2012) - The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) announced the keynote and general session speakers for the WOMMA Summit 2012 conference in Las Vegas, Nov. 12-14. Hear incredible success stories from celebrity keynote Pawn Stars, Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., Coke, Facebook, IBM, and American Express.

Rick Harrison, the star of the hit History Channel series Pawn Stars, will keynote our opening session at WOMMA Summit 2012 where he will discuss his word of mouth journey from Pawn store owner to Pawn Superstar.

WOMMA Summit 2012 features over 40 innovative and trend setting case studies on the best word of mouth and social media campaigns -- and fans of the hit History Channel television series "Pawn Stars" are in for a big surprise.WOMMA Summit attendees can look forward to hearing from their favorite hard-bargainer Rick Harrison live and in-person on opening day at the Wynn Las Vegas.

WOMMA Summit 2012 is all about the best practices and emerging trends in word of mouth and social media marketing. The fall conference will provide the resources and skills brands and agencies alike need to stay relevant in the ever-evolving social media and word of mouth marketing realms.

"Whether it's called word of mouth marketing, brand advocacy, or just advocacy, it's increasingly important for brands in today's marketing mix, in which consumers are more important than ever before," said David Witt, WOMMA Chairman and Director, Global Digital Marketing and Brand PR, the Hershey Company. "That's what the WOMMA Summit is about and why it's a must-attend event."

This year's agenda will feature an out-of-the-box approach to word of mouth marketing with Nestl's Pete Blackshaw, Facebook's Sean Bruich, Social@Ogilvy's John Bell, word of mouth marketing research expert Brad Fay, Turner Broadcasting, Inc. Chief Research Officer Jack Wakshlag, and many more.

At WOMMA Summit, marketers will learn how to:

Below are other key topics and notable brands presentation that will take the stage at the Wynn Hotel Nov. 12-14.

"Social TV, social advertising, and advocacy all play prominent roles in driving word of mouth," says WOMMA President Suzanne Fanning. "WOMMA Summit will deliver exciting case studies, emerging trends, and thought provoking ideas that will equip marketers with everything they need to make their brands or products the most talked about in their categories."

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Pawn Stars to Headline WOMMA Summit 2012 in Las Vegas With Nestle, Coca-Cola, 3M, MasterCard, and Turner Broadcasting ...

Posted at 2:21 pm September 24, 2012

Tags: Technology Industry, Telecommunications

By Alexander Villafania

MAKATI CITY, METRO MANILA It seems the National Telecommunications Commissions (NTC) benchmark report on two of the countrys mobile telecommunications companies is causing a furor as both Globe Telecom and Smart Communications counter each others claims of being the better network.

In a press conference held last September 20, Globe executives led by its President Ernest Cu argued about the interpretation of the NTCs recently released benchmark, which showed that its rival company having a lead in several areas, including network signal strength, voice transmission quality, call setup time, and dropped calls.

Cu insisted that Globes legacy network remains to be more stable compared to Smarts upgraded infrastructure. In fact, Cu cited that its call setup failure rate (CSFR) is placed at 4.45 percent, which is closer to the NTCs benchmark standard of 4 percent.

In comparison, Smart showed a 9.95 percent CSFR in the NTC test.

Cu stressed that Globes drop call rate is at 1.6 percent, which is well within the 2 percent standard. Cu also countered that its rival firms negative marketing and advertising claims of dropped calls by Globe subscribers has no basis.

The Globe official also argued about signal quality rate. While the NTC standard put average signal quality at 4, Globe has a signal rate of 0.72, slightly lower than Smarts modernized network rate of 0.63. Cu insisted that this very small difference still does not deserve negative claims by the rival network.

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Word war heats up between telcos over NTC report