Facebook part 2

Facebook is one of the biggest social media platforms of today. I told you that already in my 1st post about the ever popular media channel.

Why?

Well, let me tell you a story…

A couple of weeks ago, I happened to dive into my mailbox which is synchronized with several different mailboxes and adresses from different servers – amongst them is the mail adress for my other blog in Danish.

My blog’s inbox is rarely used and it’s not often I need to pay attention to it. But this particularly day I recieved a mail from the candy producer mentioned in the other blogpost about Facebook . Naturally I was curious and opened the mail. The candy company asked me if I was interested in participating as a food blogger on a special Facebook/retailer event the 12th of august 2011.

First I thought “Why do they ask me?” and more important – How did they find me and how did they pick me? Untill I recalled my loyal linking on their Facebook page every time I made something using their liquorice products. That way they already knew me, my blog and I.

By using bloggers as ”food entertainers” at the event, the company saves time AND money. The bloggers (including me) will be there as volunteers cooking and even if we’re not professional chefs, we are passionate about food. And that is what count most. Passion can lead you anywhere – into heaven even.
Why are we doing it without getting paid? Because it simply is immensely satisfying from a professional point of view to be noticed amongst all the food bloggers on the net and being chosen by this immensely cool candy company to be there – and show off your skillz in the kitchen

 

The lesson:
What Johan Bülow Liquorice company do, is simply to use the social media – aka Facebook – as their research channel. That Facebook page, my dears, are a continuous focus group with free marketing and product developement ideas. They even invite their Facebook fans to the factory once in a while to help them create new varieties of their candy. Now THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is a VERY VERY smart way to engage your users – in a straightforward, honest and sexy way, using the media in all the best ways.

And me… Well, what do you think I’m doing these days? Yup. Testing. Creating food. Combining tastes. Mixing liquorice with all types of food.

Did you know that liquorice is absolutely adorable combined with peaches? And did you know you can add raw liquorice powder to rhubarbs and experience something truly wonderful and sensational when you eat it? No?

Well, you should try it. Just once.

Why you should make Facebook your new webpage

The World Wide Web is dead.

- That’s what developers of mobile content claim.

But that’s far from the truth if you ask me.

Still, they might have a point. ‘Cause in not so many years the internet – at least as we know it – might change completely. The social web is still a kind of new experience for several people, mostly elderly people. I mean, how often do you stumple upon your granny completely immersed in the screen, typing like a machine gun and chatting away on Facebook or Twitter? If you’ve experienced that kind of behavior from your relatives, I’d say you’re one in a million. Or at least one in a few hundred…

A lot of socalled ‘experts’ claim that in five years, the webpage is dead. Dead as a dodo and forever excluded from the new century. At that time most of the surfing will be on social webpages as Facebook, Twitter and God know whichever else online community/world. Google is launching their own computer with Google as the startup-screen. No Windows, no iOS. Just… Google it.

Sure, there might be a boom in the number of e.g. African or South American webpages, as things happens to go their natural course in the global economy – but generally speaking, most of us will have moved on to other pastures and marketing hunting areas…

With an insane amount of users on Facebook, where will customers go?

For my part, I go directly to Facebook and skip the company webpage. Why? Because I simply can’t care about the all-too-fancy ever-increasing company webpage/PR channel. *gag* From a professional point of view I watch these patterns taking place even if most people are not aware of it. But as a customer I reason like this: I don’t want to write and e-mail, ’cause I want my answer TODAY – not in a couple of days. Uh-uh. E-mail? So OO’es…

If you’re not on Facebook then forget it. If it’s too complicated to get in touch with you, well, boo hoo for you. Make the effort worth my time, answer my questions, solve my problems in a satisfactory way – and do it quick. As a reward you have gained a most loyal member of your brand community. Make me proud of my brand with great service, great response times – and do it conveniently on Facebook. Then I will share my “Likes” with MY community – and I have several friends… and several friends’ friends…

Personally, I happen to “Like” a certain candy page on Facebook. When I post something on the wall or pop a question – the reply is written by the owner himself or at least one of his co-funders. I like! This company acts in a loyal and community building way, and do not see Facebook as “just another service/marketing channel”. Nope, this company actually thinks that the fans are some of the most important people on the net (which – I must say – we probably are). He even asked for our help in putting our vote on his girlfriend’s shop in an online competition and thereby get a chance to win eatable prizes. Yum! (I might have gotten the last sentence a bit wrong, but please forgive my shabby English grammar )
Call it trickery, cunning marketing techniques or whatever – I like it. Therefore I am his loyal ambassador and will continue to be so because he brings me relevant content with a personal touch. What’s not to “LIKE” in that?

There’s only one thing bugging me: Right now I’m taking a course in HTML, webdesign and CSS… *LOL*

If Christopher Columbus was a gamer…

…He would probably be a very happy man.

Vast lands just waiting to be discovered, people to interact with – or rip of riches – pick one yourself

What I’m talking about is the new video game MMO world called RIFT – an impressive multi layer world with lots of callbacks to a-certain-something-we-all-know more or less. Or even if we don’t know it – we know someone who’s playing it. WoW. World of Warcraft. Make love not warcraft and all that jazz.

RIFT is taking some of the great parts of WoW – the mapping, the quest building and the two factions fightning each other (just to mention a few) - and put it all into an oldschool – but new! – kind of setting from the EQII/LoTR/Warhammer days. A LOT has already been said about RIFT, about its playstyles, talent trees or something else from the very very immersive game. If you’re dying to know whatta f*** this game is about, you should watch this video – these guys have a great grasp of how to make a game review fun AND entertaining.

It’s obvious that RIFT is trying to catch some of the more hardcore players from WoW.

If you’ve been playing WoW for the past 5 years like me, you would agree that the game content and the world has been hugely improved. But – with more polishing and easy acces, you invite more people. Obviously that’s OK with Blizzard Entertainment – but I’m pretty sure that other and more hardcore players such as myself are getting pretty darn tired of little kids trying to play gods – and, when fails, go whining or sulking. The degree of bad behaviour in WoW has been increasing more and more these past two or three years, so obviously the more mature players have been looking for something else to occupy their minds.

Many ”old players” are right now buzzing about this new MMO. Because of the sceneplay and cinematography is rather “oldschool looking” older players will probably find themselves thinking oh, this reminds me of EQII without the annoying parts – cause that’s what Blizzard did: They took EQII and made the annoying-as-hell bits go away in a cloud of smoke. Poof!

Now we’re getting to the point, where I throw in the whole point of this blog post. Why are gamers so obsessed with new content? New games? Why do they throw away 100 Danish bucks every month to sit in front of the computer screen doing … yeah, that’s the question: What ARE they doing actually?

They’re acting like Christopher Columbus. That’s what they’re doing. The discovery of new  content (land), foreign people (players) and new ways of living (The look-like-EQII-but-with-a-new-touch-and-without-the-annoying-parts bit). Who does NOT want to be Christopher Columbus even on a ship with no women, veggies or water? These days – if not women – then at least the food comes in plenty, so no fuss at all. And as with all new communities people are being NICE to eachother. Well, mostly. If you’re not meeting the annoying people who’ve decided to try out the new hotspot on the MMO-market.

Sigh.

Driver’s hell!

You know the feeling – you’ve just discovered an old digital camera in your closet – and to your delight, you find the forgotten pics from that long lost holiday where everything was just perfect. Later you couldn’t find the camera and thought the pics from the holiday were lost – but now you’ve found them! Oh the delight!

But – and unfortunately there is a big BUT here (no BUTTs here though ) when you plug in the camera in your computer, using the standard USB cable or whatever – the damn thing won’t work! No pictures are coming up on the screen, if your computer is even ABLE to locate the stupid camera on the list at all!

That kind of thing happened to me – twice – this week. This weekend I wanted to do a scan of some important papers on my (ok, admitted, rather old) Lexmark printer. The printer is not plugged in every day, I use it only for small tasks like that – once in a while. I mean – the amount of “Very Important Papers” in one’s life should be a bit limited right?

I can’t even remember how long since I last had it plugged in when I needed those papers to be scanned. And - just so you know it was my graduate exam papers. Pretty important stuff, eh? I plugged in the cable from the printer, waited a few seconds and started the printer’s software to scan. But – alas – the *beeeep* thing didn’t do a single thing! Everything was correctly set on the printer, every button on “Scan” rather than “Print” and so forth.

The new Kindle on the blog…

So.

I’ve got it.

My new e-book reader. The new Kindle on the block.

And yes, thank you, it’s very nice. Very very VERY nice. Actually I succeeded in spending all the battery in just one single week because I was so damn happy about my new device that I couldn’t stop reading. According to Amazon the battery should last up to one month. I’ve had my Kindle for about a month – and already it has been in the charger four times or more.