For a while now, I have been talking to clients and people in the interactive industry about preference-based advertising and preference-based entertainment and how the opt-in experience model could be the way of the future for content channels. The idea is out there, and a company called Blyk is creating a unique advertising model around user preferences.

Blyk is a free mobile network for the 16 to 24-year-old demographic (the hardest demo to market to). Blyk is only currently available in the UK and by invite only. Looks like they are taking cues from popular social networking communities.

Users fill out a form online and list their interests. It’s preference-based advertising, and it involves the end user, giving them more advertising choices within their cell/multimedia experience.

Users get 217 text messages, which in my opinion, will be used up in exactly 217 seconds, and 43 minutes free call time. Again, kids will blast through that with no problem. It’s pay as you play after that.

How do they get away with giving away free service? Blyk partners with advertisers who want to reach the 16-24 demographic and charges them for it. It’s similar to free newspapers paid by local advertisers except more targeted. Because kids in this demographic are already using short message service (SMS) as a real means of communication, it makes sense to develop an advertising strategy wrapped around messaging and images. The advertising also has a bit more depth to it as well, since the adverts involve users by asking questions and suggesting products that correspond with their answers. Nothing is really free in life, so Blyk sends targeted text and picture messages to your phone as advertisements.

Blyk also did a unique social branding experiment where they ran a competition with the London College of Communication and asked students to develop a Blyk brand based only on a few buzzwords. Finalists were posted online, and the winning mark was chosen online. There are no plans to turn Blyk into a social network or link to other social communities; for now it’s purely a distribution model.

http://www.blyk.co.uk

How can preteens and teens chat online with their friends in a completely safe environment? This is something that toy and media companies have been fumbling over for the past several years. Well, Mattel has a pretty smart solution—it’s called Barbie Girls, and it’s a copasetic convergence between consumer product and online brand experience. Truth be told, I’m not sure why other consumer product and media companies haven’t made this connection sooner.

The process is simple—you go to the store, buy a Mattel Barbie Girl, and connect it to your computer via a docking station. When your girlfriends catch on and get one, you can authenticate your doll on their computers and vice-versa. Your child is now ready to communicate online with her friends and only her friends.

The online play experience is very Sim-like, in terms of game play patterns. Girls can go online and design their own rooms, check out their friends’ rooms and their objects, chat, play with their virtual pets and, of course, no little-girl pretend-play online experience would be complete without the all-important trip to the mall (where kids learn about online transactions). I’m only half kidding—I wouldn’t be surprised to see new Mattel products contextually placed inside the Barbie world, in-game advertising, or online conditioning for tweens.

The offline experience is not as robust as the online play experience, but the doll itself is an actual MP3 player; a good place to store Barbie tunes you downloaded from the website (note to Mattel: That one’s a freebie).

The technology is simple, and my guess is that this product will go a long way. Parents will be buying these toys for their kids and as presents for all their friends.

What is social media?
At the basic level, social media provide the tools to develop a relationship between one and many users. It’s a conversation. A brand site is “social” if it allows and inspires conversation as it appears in the “comments” section. If it uses “rating and reputation” and tools to facilitate engagement, social media will allow and encourage a dialogue to develop. Some social media provide tools for people to contribute online, like YouTube, while others are intended for rating and criticizing, like del.icio.us and Digg. Still others are tools for questions and answers, such as YahooAnswers and HelpShare. These days the most headline-grabbing are MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and, of course, Second Life—a content-providing and community subset of the social media. Just using a blog, videolog (vlog), or podcast format doesn’t automatically qualify something as a social medium. Genuine social media depend on running commentary, criticism, and conversation. In short, social media are about participation. In our digital democracy, social media are the public forum. In our actual democracy, social media are the newest frontier of the First Amendment, as we see in citizen journalism sites like NowPublic and Current.tv, which inspire users to report news and events.

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A BRAND IS SOCIAL IF IT ENCOURAGES DIALOGUE, PARTICIPATION, AND RELEVANCE.

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What are social media tools and how are they used?
There are many different types of social media tools, with more being developed every day. Social media tools fall into roughly four categories:
+ Social Networks: MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, InnoCentive, Second Life
+ Tools: Blogger, YouTube, PodcastNation, Twitter
+ Rating and Reputation: Technorati, del.icio.us, Digg.com, NowPublic
+ Questions & Answers: YahooAnswers.com, HelpShare, Wondir

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