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  1. Website Profitability through My Space? We’re not sure. Posted in Branding Online, Social Media, Concocted by Mike Perk September 25, 2006 2 comments

    I think the consensus was reached quite early on this one. The heavy chef project over the last month has shown that My Space can be used as a tool to grow interest in your product or service, however we feel it is only for specific types of product or service. Read Further

  2. MySpace Members First to See ‘Borat’ Film Posted in Branding Online, Social Media, Concocted by Mike Perk September 17, 2006 2 comments

    Borat

    I’m still battling to see how MySpace can be profitable for small businesses (unless of course you just want to drive traffic from yet another link to your website like this). Aubrey, in our studio, reckons that there are networking groups that refer business to each other, a kind of online Business Networking International (BNI) or other business get-togethers. They then only allow select people who pass the grade into their closed circles. Funny that, since the whole point of MySpace.com is to be ‘the world’s biggest social networking group’. It’s starting to sound like the closed cliques that were formed at high school.

    Anyway, it’s easy to see how bigger companies are starting to MySpace.com as a way to make themselves profitable. Parent group News Corp, who bought MySpace last year for around $450m, is now utilising the considerable numbers within MySpace communities to generate word-of-mouth buzz about their releases.

    Take News Corp.-owned 20th Century Fox’s latest movie release ‘Borat‘ for example – it is being shown on MySpace before anywhere else. Anyone who has ever seen ‘Borat’ before knows that mainstream advertising will never quite cut it for this way-out highly controversial comedic icon. The character was created by Sacha Baron Cohen, more famous as his alter-ego Ali G. Borat has raised eyebrows before for his highly antoagonistic anti-semitic rantings (Cohen is Jewish), dipped with a heavy helping of irony. Fox has set a Nov. 3 U.S. release date for the film.

    - Fred

  3. MySpace May End Marketing As We Know It Posted in Branding Online, Social Media, Concocted by Mike Perk September 14, 2006 11 comments

    As if to respond to the question in the previous post, this article came through in my Google alert.  Read it. Be anxious. Be excited.

    - Fred

  4. Take your shirt off Posted in Social Media, Concocted by Mike Perk September 14, 2006 6 comments

    Aubrey in our SA studio believes that the only way to get loads of friends on MySpace is to put naked pictures of yourself. I said that nobody would ever want to see either me or Mike wthout clothes. Ever.

    Anyway, this has brought up the question: How can MySpace be useful for anything other than dating or socialising? Is there a way to bring business into this?

    Considering that we’ve already established that relationships are critical to business success, there will be a big irony if the biggest relationship portal in the world (well over 100m people) has no benefit to a business.

  5. Maybe it’s my deoderant? Posted in Social Media, Concocted by Mike Perk September 13, 2006

    Still no new friends. For now, it’s only Tom and the weird Puerto Rican guy.

    Feel free to visit me here and say howdy.

  6. ‘Start Up Review’ Article on MySpace Posted in Digital Strategy, Social Media, Concocted by Mike Perk September 13, 2006

    There is an interesting (yet heavy reading) blog called ‘Start Up Review‘ which does something similar to the Heavy Chef blog in that it looks at new technology and researches it*.

    ‘Start-up Review’ does not, however, get its hands dirty like Mike and I, but it has posted a pretty comprehensive article on MySpace – if you’re feeling brave, go make yourself a cup of coffee and click here.

    PS: One snippet in this article really stands out for me:

    If the two largest Web 2.0 successes
    (based on number of registered users) are Skype and MySpace, I think it
    is interesting to note that each benefited from having a major
    distribution partnership during launch.

    …once again, showing that even
    with these high-tootin’, high-falutin’ tech companies, relationships
    are absolutely key. Advertising, so tempting to companies with big start-up capital, is secondary. This seems obvious,
    right? Spare a thought for the famous fashion start-up Boo.com which burnt over
    $120m in 6 months, mostly on advertising, and then closed up shop.

    *Thanks to Andrew for this link.

  7. Creating profitable websites Posted in Digital Strategy, Concocted by Mike Perk September 12, 2006 1 comment

    Regular readers will remember that in July/August we were focusing our heavy chef efforts on blogging. One of the areas of interest was optimising your blog for the search engines.

    You may recall we decided to focus our own website and blogs optimisation effort around the key phrase "creating profitable websites", which is what we do.

    I’ve just checked today and in the space of two months the www.worldwidecreative.co.za site is now on the first page of google for that search, competing with 10 millions other sites.

    Its also meant a boost up the rankings for the better phrase of "profitable websites" for which www.theheavychefproject.com is now on page 5 in google, which we are very pleased with. We’ll be looking to push this up to the first page over the next month by continuing our efforts.

    - Mike

  8. Marketing to the MySpace Generation Posted in Social Media, Concocted by Mike Perk September 12, 2006 4 comments

    I came across an interesting article yesterday that talked about the economics of social networking highlighting MySpace as a prime example.

    As a web company that works with mainly small businesses a website can be an important investment and in the main must return some form of profitability. Its therefore really important that we try and grasp the dynamics of how a new generation is interacting on the web. I believe the future of online business will be less about searching for a product and buying it, but more about a decision made due to a network of interaction with other users. Heck, its happening already!

    Personally, I love systems and the feeling it brings of control, Yes I am a control freak. But the unfortunate truth is, as someone working in the web industry, promoting particular ways of marketing I have to be more open to an organic approach. I see it a bit like being a Jedi in Star Wars. There is this universal energy, "The Force", that you need to tune in to. It’s not about trying to manipulate it but about understanding it and working with.

    Anyway, before I get to deep into the ways of the force, check out this article:

    http://www.marketingprofs.com/6/kurtzman1.asp

    - Mike

  9. Now, check THIS out… Posted in Social Media, Concocted by Mike Perk September 11, 2006

    I found out that my venerable business partner has a little headstart on me now with the MySpace challenge (who has the most friends at the end of this month). I created my profile last week, but I forgot to create a URL for it, so it didn’t show.

    So, now I understand why I haven’t had hordes of people breaking down the doors to be my friend.

    Anyway, check it out here.

    Myspacefred_1

  10. Check it out Posted in Social Media, Concocted by Mike Perk September 8, 2006 1 comment

    Screenshot_1
    I’ve just set up my account and maybe its me, but I found it a nightmare to get started and know how to change my details. Fred set his up pretty quickly so it must be me!

    I eventually sussed it and got a friend immediately. 1 friend in 10 seconds, in the space of 4 weeks that would mean zillions, this should be easy. Only then to discover that "Tom" is actually the MySpace guy that welcomes you when you join. Back to zero.

    Anyway, back to business. After playing for an hour, it actually got quite addictive and I’m starting to see some potential opportunities. It allows you to profile people like no other. So the opportunity could exist to seek out easily and befriend the type of person that fits your ideal customer profile. You can learn from them and find out exactly the things that make your customer tick. What they care about and how you can help. Anyway, thats just my initial thoughts for the day.

    By the way, come check out my profile at: www.myspace.com/perky75

  11. What is MySpace and why is it so important? Posted in Social Media, Concocted by Mike Perk September 5, 2006

    This makes for some pretty impressive reading, especially considering that the two guys who started MySpace, Chris de Wolfe and Tom Anderson, opened the company doors in October 2003 as a place for them and their friends to ‘hang out’. It is now the 2nd most popular English website, and is making plenty bucks for essentially a small start-up a few years ago.

    • MySpace is a social networking website based in Santa Monica, California.
    • MySpace offers an interactive, user-submitted network of personal profiles, friends, blogs, groups, photos, music, MP3s, and videos.
    • MySpace also features an internal search engine and an internal e-mail system.
    • According to Alexa Internet, it is currently in the world’s top 5 most popular English-language websites and in the top 10 most popular websites in any language.
    • It is the most popular website in the United States, accounting for 4.46 percent of all Internet visits pretty huge if you consider the billions of sites out there.
    • MySpace has gradually gained more popularity than similar websites such as Facebook, Bebo, Friendster, Xanga, MyYearbook, Friends Reunited, Classmates.com, and LiveJournal to achieve nearly 80 percent of visits to online social networking websites.
    • It has become an increasingly influential part of contempory popular culture, especially in English-speaking nations.
    • MySpace has only 300 employees and is owned by News Corporation (Ozzie Rupert Murdochs company which bought it late last year 2005), and does not disclose revenues or profits separately from the totals reported by News Corporation.
    • MySpace currently reports just over 107 million accounts, with the 100 millionth account being created on August 9, 2006, reportedly attracting new registrations at the rate of 230,000 per day.

    Most of the above information was plucked from Wikipedia – if you want to read more, check it out here. I’m not exactly sure how all this will make our businesses profitable, but if there’s a way, Mike and I aim to find out.

  12. MySpace Drive More Traffic than MSN! Posted in Social Media, Concocted by Mike Perk September 4, 2006

    I received this article by Jason Lee Miller from WebProNews in my email this week and was amazed by the figures. It really does highlight the changing ways in which consumers are pursuaded to buy online. It is now more than ever an interactive experience rather than just the search and find mentality of a couple of years ago.

    You expect to see Google at the top the of list in pretty much any search breakdown, followed distantly behind by Yahoo!. But would you, in any category, expect MSN to be outdone by MySpace? Online shopping just got a lot more social.

    Hitwise reports MySpace generates more traffic to online shopping and classified sites than MSN. Ouch.

    Read Further

  13. My Space it is! Posted in Social Media, Concocted by Mike Perk September 1, 2006 1 comment

    Well, after long debates and discussions about our next possible topic to investigate we decided on something we as a team know little about: My Space. Read Further