- GE yesterday announced a new social campaign called #getfit (a global competition on multiple social media platforms) - here is press release - http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20120820005560/en/GE-Healthcare-Launches-Social-Media-Driven-Cancer and their site is at http://newsroom.gehealthcare.com/articles/getfit-and-get-healthy/ - interesting combination of gamification and social but in the interest of healthcare.
- Similar to Spotify's success internationally prior to breaking in to the US, Zeebox is a leading social TV company based in the UK, who has not penetrated the US market. Insiders say (http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/20/zeebox-comcast-us-launch/) that they may have Comcast as a launch partner in the US along with some others. Social TV is certainly not a new concept, but the idea of scoping out the landscape and having companies partner with large cable providers makes for an interesting story, especially when considering the advertising implications.
- In the social CRM world, Zoho yesterday launched an integrated social media marketing application that ties in email. http://www.zoho.com/ this is an upgrade to their existing social CRM product which has "more than 6 million users" - a good story about the new product is at http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/CRM-News/Daily-News/Zoho-Launches-Zoho-Campaigns-Application-84353.aspx and in a related article from that same website is a story about a recent gathering of CRM execs to discuss the future -http://www.destinationcrm.com/articles/CRM-News/Daily-News/The-Future-of-CRM-According-to-Vendors-84357.aspx
- Even though there are plenty of stories about Facebook's stock and valuation plummeting, they are still building their advertising business and there are certainly still success stories. Yesterday EA (Electronic Arts) announced they were reallocating some print and TV advertising budget to Facebook. The story is at http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/2199680/ea-shifts-tv-and-print-budget-to-facebook
- Personal branding is another hot topic with more and more products coming out each day. Last week, BrandOp made its debut as a slick and extremely well thought out personal (and corporate) branding tool. Today GiveBrand launched their product - their website http://givebrand.com/ and a good story about the launch http://www.virtual-strategy.com/2012/08/20/givebrand-launches-free-personal-branding-service-help-job-seekers-stand-out-crowd
- Sports and social are becoming ever more tightly integrated and now several companies have created actual "sports social networks" that are beginning to gain some traction. Yesterday, efans (http://www.efans.com) launched a free online social network touting itself as a "fusion between Facebook, Twitter, and ESPN" providing news and the ability for fans to engage and interact.
- Just in this morning, is that Yammer has released their Summer version upgrade - https://sites.yammer.com/release/. Even though they have been purchased by Microsoft they are still rolling out new product updates.