MiscrosoftBook

Well everyone knows that the social networking site Myspace is owned by Rupert Murdoch and it seems that Myspaces biggest competitor, Facebook is now being courted by another media giant, Microsoft.

According to this New York Times Article Microsoft and Facebook began talking yesterday. This is an interesting development in Facebooks's history as almost half a year ago the site 23-year old founder Mark E. Zuckerberg turned down $900 Million dollars from Yahoo for an outright buyout.

Now it seems that Microsoft may be offering 300-500 million dollars for a percentage of the compnay, these figures would of course escalate as Microsoft's \competitor has already expressed interest as well.

This relationship isn't entirely new either, as for the past year Microsoft has put advertisements onto the site, and for the past 4 months Facebook has opened its programming allowing any company or person to make an application or company profile (Wal-Mart, target etc. )

I guess everyone has a price

My Ikea At Home

Ikea's new branding campaign finds the company trying to switch its American Idenity.Currently Ikea is seen at those kooky swedes with their cheap and mod furniture. From a PR stance this approach work for the company and works on customers funny bones and their wallets. However this new campaign shoots straight for the customers heart.http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
My American At Home is the new project of two of Americas most famous photographers. An ambitious project, My America At Home finds the duo calling for photographs from peoeple all across the US over the period of seven days, which will eventually be culled together in a new book/project.However the duo has gotten home furnishing giant IKEA to support the project. Not only will the company highlight the project in their stores and online store. While it may be a nifty project, IKEA is using this to tie in with their new branding campaign. "Home is the most important place in the world"
Brian Solis of PR 2.0 recently poseted about this approach to marketing where consumers get into a product through conversations or dialouges such as this competition tie in.

This differs slightly from the campaign that they have launched in the Uk titled Not going anywhere. Not going anywhere finds IKEA (and they only very recently added their logo and updated the site) to have owners take pride in their homes....which means to furnish them well...with IKEA.
While these two programs offer slightly IKEA is still trying to associate an "we're all in this together" mentality, weather it be as a collective piece of art/social project or a rebellion against consumeristic real estate.

"Enthusiasts" are better than magazines

Chapter three of "The New Influencers" touched on a special breed of bloggers-those who focus on a topic that they are specifically excited about- instead of making journal-ish entries on their day to day lives.

Unless I know a person or they have a particularly interesting life (bear wrestler?) then I most likely will not read their blog. However "enthusiast" blogs I do read on a daily basis. For me these blogs basically function as FREE and frequently updated replacement's of print magazines. Only often more than not, these blogs are run by one person with a witty or biting style that may or may not of made it into a print magazine. Also because of the linking ability of the web these blogs act as portals to other material of interest, something that printed material could never do so quickly.

Over my next few posts I plan on highlighting a few of my favorite "enthusiasts" and the specific PR and social media implications that they contain.

Gothamist, Austinist, LAist, PRist, Socialmediaist

Gothamist is a New York City blog that covers news, food, events and other local happenings around the city. The blog was the first to stem from from the GothamistLLC company. Instead of just sticking to New York City, Gothamist expanded and now has 15 different city-specific blogs. Included among the other cites are U.S. big names such as LA, Philly, Houston, Seattle and our very own Austinist


The company also has international sites such as Shangaiist and Londonist

Personally I love Austinist and use it every day. In fact it was one of the first non class blogs to be added to my Google Reader account. Austinist to me is like an up to minute every changing version of Austin Chronicle, that truly makes me feel like sorta have a finger on the pulse of the city.

These type of sites are great for local PR, not only just for ads but by getting your store/business/band/whatever blogged about. Often times Austinist will offer up fee admission to movies/shows that surely garner up interest, I know it does for me.

It is also great that blogs comments are available as it truly lets the community participate in the dialogue going about the city -a local form of social media if you will.