Was the Charlie Sheen Tweet a Win for Internships.com?

The Behind the Social Media Campaign Series is supported by Oneupweb, an award-winning agency specializing in search marketing, social media and design for mid-to-enterprise level brands. Download Oneupweb’s free whitepaper, “The Bloody Truth about Social Media.”

When it comes to brand building, there are basically two schools of thought: “Build it and they will come” and “brainwash the masses.”

The latter is based on the belief that any publicity is good publicity. If you get your name out there, the rest will fall in to place. A good example of this philosophy is GoldenPalace.com, which recently bought Justin Bieber’s hair, and in the past has purchased William Shatner’s kidney stone for the free publicity.

At the moment, Internships.com fits the latter category as well. If you’ve heard of the brand, it’s most likely due to a single effective marketing campaign: An endorsement by Charlie Sheen via Twitter.

Internships.com, Charlie Sheen & Ad.ly

When Sheen joined Twitter on March 1, it’s safe to say he wasn’t a great fit with a lot of brands. Sheen had just had a major falling out with Chuck Lorre, the producer of Sheen’s hit show Two and a Half Men and gave a series of bizarre interviews. It was clear that the star was something of a train wreck, and, to many, a fascinating one at that. Sheen became a trending topic on Twitter and, when he joined, set the Guinness World Record by getting 1 million followers in about 25 hours.

That combination of public pariah and social media star had appeal for a brand that was chiefly concerned with creating awareness. But Internships.com and Sheen needed a matchmaker.

That’s where Ad.ly came in. Founded in 2009 by Sean Rad, Ad.ly sought to link celebrities with social media endorsements. The firm first came on a lot of people’s radars when it arranged for client Kim Kardashian to receive $10,000 per tweet for spreading the message about Carl’s Jr., a fast food chain. By now, Ad.ly claims more than 1,000 celebrities, who make endorsements on behalf of some 150 brands.

About the Internship

As it so happens, Internships.com’s CEO, Robin Richards, sits on Ad.ly’s board. Nevertheless, the year-old company — which connects internship seekers with companies offering internships — had some stipulations for working with Ad.ly and Sheen. “There were two things we needed to make sure of,” says Kat Garcia, a rep for Internships.com. “We needed to make sure this was a legitimate internship and it was a paid internship.”

The eight-week internship is real, but it’s a little odd — the winner gets to manage Charlie Sheen’s social media operations. It also pays — $10 an hour.

With those specifications in place, Sheen gave his tweet/plug on March 7: “I’m looking to hire a #winning INTERN with #TigerBlood. Apply here – http://bit.ly/hykQQF #TigerBloodIntern #internship #ad.”

A Win For Internships.com?

The response to Sheen’s tweet was immediate. Within the first hour, the tweet got 95,333 clicks. A week later, the offer got more than 82,000 replies. “It’s been overwhelming in a positive way,” Garcia says.

While the promotion was undeniably successful in getting responses to the internship, it’s not clear that Internships.com can build a brand off of it. The company, which had previously only run paid search advertising and the occasional print ad, is now known to most people as an extension of the Charlie Sheen brand.

Rob Frankel, a Los Angeles-based branding expert, says that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but that this appears to be nothing more or less than a publicity stunt. “Awareness for awareness’s sake never works,” he says. “Cancer has a high awareness, but how many people want it?” Frankel says he believes that an attention-getting strategy is fine as long as it ties in with what the brand is offering — for him, the fact that the promotion is around a Charlie Sheen internship doesn’t cut it.

When asked if there are potential downfalls to being yoked to Sheen — what if he dies for instance? — Lindsay Plotkin, another rep for Internships.com, sidestepped the question, focusing instead on what the promotion has meant for Internships’s brand. “It kind of propelled us from maybe not being as well known to being a contender in this space,” she says.

Potential concerns aside, Internships.com still has control of some of the message. One of the cleverer aspects of the campaign is that a single tweet launched a story arc for Internships.com. After narrowing down the field, the winner of the contest should be announced in a few weeks, no doubt providing more free publicity. After that, it will be up to Internships.com to plan what it will do with its newfound awareness. When asked, however, if anyone has successfully built a brand with publicity stunts, Frankel thought for a second. “I can’t think of anyone that has,” he said. “That should tell you something.”

Series Supported by Oneupweb
 
The Behind the Social Media Campaign Series is supported by Oneupweb, an award-winning agency specializing in search marketing, social media and design for mid-to-enterprise level brands. Download Oneupweb’s free whitepaper, “The Bloody Truth about Social Media” to learn how to cut through the clutter and be sure to catch up with them on Facebook and Twitter.

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Wikileaks crowdsources official t-shirt through 99designs

Wikileaks today posted a contest on Australian design crowdsourcing website 99designs, asking designers to try their hand at creating the non-profit’s next official t-shirt.

The contest follows Wikileaks’ launch of an online store earlier today, where the t-shirt will be sold to raise funds to keep the site up and running.

While crowdsourcing has been known to generate controversy in some quarters, it seems an appropriate way for a non-profit, particularly one that survives on the volunteer participation of sources from around the world, to give its users a hand in creating part of the Wikileaks brand.

And while many companies tout the benefits of exposure when seeking work through such channels, there’s no doubt that Wikileaks, which dominated the media for months amid the controversy surrounding the site’s release of US government files and sexual assault allegations directed at founder Julian Assange, is going to deliver.

Despite the organization’s trail of controversy and drama, 99designs isn’t concerned that Wikileaks has chosen the service to source designs.

“99designs regularly holds design contests for all sorts of organizations, and not-for-profit groups. We don’t make any judgement calls over our customers, and our designers can decide for themselves whether or not they want to get involved in any particular project. That being said, I’m thrilled that Wikileaks chose to tap into the 99designs community for their design needs and we look forward to delivering a great outcome for them,” said Matt Mickiewicz, a 99designs co-founder.

This isn’t the first time 99designs and Wikileaks have crossed paths. 99designs ran a community competition in January asking users to give Assange a new hairstyle.

“… apparently Julian Assange thought [it] was pretty funny,” said Mickiewicz.

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Spammers Can “Use Facebook as Page” to Like-Spam Posts and Comments

Facebook recently launched a “Use Facebook as Page” feature for Page administrators that allows them to assume the identity of their Page so they can Like, post, and comment around the site. However, this has enabled a new spamming technique, whereby Pages can Like the posts or comments of other users and Pages to create links back to themselves.

Since there is no option to remove Likes or ban those who Like any Facebook feed item, a victim can’t delete the links, and their only option is to report the Page as spam and wait for Facebook to address the issue. Like spam has not become a significant issue yet, but holds an opportunity for malicious parties until Facebook creates a solution.

Facebook has introduced several new wall post and comment  spam prevention systems lately, automatically hiding posts containing suspicious links and turning suspicious comments gray to alert admins. Like-spam via Pages, though, only recently became possible, and therefore Facebook may not have recognized the risk.


Until the launch of Use Facebook as Page as part of the February 2011 Page redesign, only users could post and comment on the walls of other Pages, and they could be removed and banned from Pages. There is no option for an admin of a Page to ban another Page for Like-spam. The ban option only becomes available if the malicious Page posts or comments.

We’ve heard a few reports of Like spam, particularly by Pages whose name hocks a service, such as “We Fix Slow Computers”, even though this form of Like-spam has only been available for two months. Facebook needs to provide Page admins a way to ban other Pages from Liking content on their wall before it becomes a more popular method of driving traffic to spammy Pages.

[Thanks to Bryan Person for the tip]

To learn about tools your can Page can use to fight spam, visit the Facebook Marketing Bible’s Service Provider Directory, a guide to the companies offering marketing and technical services to brands and organizations of all sizes on Facebook.

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Yahoo has sold Delicious for $5 Million [REPORT]

Yahoo has sold for the sum Delicious underwhelming $ 5 million, according to a report by a technology blog.

Citing "a solid report from a reliable and proven source," The Next Web says the service has been sold to a competitor in the space around social bookmarking.

Inadvertently Yahoo announced plans to "sunset" Delicious when a slide of an internal meeting was leaked to the web in December. Since then, many technology companies, including Google, have developed tools to import marker specifically for users of Delicious.
At this point, many startups have been able to divert Delicious users while many have wondered whether Yahoo would even be able to sell web property, waving, which was never really money in the first place, according to the founder of Delicious .

Yahoo acquired Delicious in 2005 for a reported 18 million. If both the $ 18 million and $ 5 million, the figures are correct, the whole history of service has been tremendously profitable Yahoo.

However, given the aforementioned leakage of confidential information, and bleeding under the users, we can not say that $ 5 million is an unfair price.

We have come to Yahoo for comment and update our readers more details available.

UPDATE: A Yahoo representative said recently via e-mail that although the company is unable to comment on rumors, "Part of our organizational streamlining involves shifting our investment in low-performing products or off strategy pay more attention to our facility strengths and new innovation fund in the coming year and beyond.

"We are actively thinking about the future of Delicious and believe it is a home from the company that would make more sense for the service, our customers and our shareholders. We are in the process of exploring a variety of options and report specific plans where necessary.

" Delicious undoubtedly would not be profitable Yahoo, ". A house outside the company" we are eager to learn what will happen with the service and whether to continue operating in its current form

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Ad Agency Site Analyzes the “Hell” of SXSW

South by Southwest can be heaven or hell, depending on your point of view, but now with a new site, you can see how close they are to anyone.

Digital advertising agency R / GA has developed social media hell, a site that lists # tweets Foursquare SXSW and confirmations based on the seven deadly sins.

For example, for the "lust ", the site lists "what people are loving this week in Austin" and lists "Austin", "b" and "technology. " "Debauchery" level, meanwhile, is based on the Foursquare receipts in bars in the area.

A representative of R / GA describes the site (which he says is designed primarily for mobile use) as part of the game, part experiment data visualization "and" an opportunity to make fun of ourselves. "

Analyzing tweets, of course, has become a major concern for sellers, who hope to see trends and brand awareness in the data. Twitter itself is also marketing the data to a partnership with PIG.

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Facebook adds the easily tag Other comments

Facebook has expanded its role @ Mentions, now let the friends of the tabs, pages, events or groups within the comments, so your name can click on the links through a simple menu. Try it. Start a comment on Facebook, type the symbol "@" and type the first letter of a friend or a group name, a menu and create a link for easy navigation to the friend or the group's page. When you mention and link to someone like that, it notifies the person who did it. There are more cool: According to Inside Facebook "Administrators can" use Facebook on your page 'and published the observations mentioned in the posts from other sites to attract people to your page. " In other words, this is a way to avoid spam filters often can not include URLs in the comments (well, that's how TechnooGuide), allowing you to slip in a link to your page that might actually club Facebook. What are the commentators? Will this improve participation, and promote the comments reels spam?

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Zynga allows game donations through the virtual shopping as well FrontierVille Zynga games

Social gaming giant Zynga has joined the efforts of the Internet in the donation of Tsunami Japanese tonight, allowing game donations through the virtual shopping as well FrontierVille Zynga games, Farmville and Cityville to 7 pm PST. 100% of the price of buying virtual goods will be donated to tsunami reduction. Zynga is specifically partnering with Save the Children to raise money for children in Japan Earthquake Tsunami Emergency Fund. Altruistic players can contribute by purchasing virtual goods designated as a sweet potato Cityville a FrontierVille Kobe beef, radishes in Farmville and a royal straight Zynga Poker. Dani Dudeck Zynga representative informed me that the campaign was created in less than 24 hours and is the largest charity campaign in the history of the company. It is also the first campaign Zynga.org Cityville. Players who wish to donate in the words of game not Ville With friends you can use the Save the Children in the game. Players in all games within Facebook you can also send funds by Zbar, or bar that is at the top of the game. Facebook is also donating its traditional cut 30% of credits to help alleviate Facebook. Judging by a rare tweet by Zynga CEO Mark Pincus, Zynga ambitious wants to raise two million through the efforts. Interested, but not playing can also donate out of games here.

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BMW: 2.0L 4-cylinder TwinPower Turbo will be used in 1, 3-Series

Afraid to give up its six-cylinder BMW engine of the new naturally aspirated 2.0L 4-cylinder Turbo TwinPower through its line of all? Well, do not worry. According to a recent interview with German automaker week, the new force 2.0L 4-cylinder will most of the 1 Series and 3 Series lineu

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