Grown Up Thinking

In the fuzzy afterglow of the Chat Roulette frenzy of the past few weeks, I find myself thinking “what’s next”? Lucky for me, I don’t have to spin my wheels on that brain buster quite yet as two similar sites have already distracted me with their unique interpretations of the random chat craze:

RandomDorm connects college students on the prowl for some dorm-to-dorm interaction (only those with a .edu address need apply).
MyChanceRomance Billed as the “fun way to find love”, MyChanceRomance is a dating site with a Hot-Or-Not mentality that’s bound to give you an inferiority complex.

Not ready to move on from the original just yet? Don’t fret. It’s  still alive and well, even spawning it’s own Chat Roulette Missed Connections site (which I can assure you is comic genius in its own right).

Happy Birthday, Twitter! As we reflect on four years of compacting our thoughts into 140 characters, social media pulse point Mashable.com is asking readers how Twitter has changed their lives, by using the hashtag #thankstwitter4. Sifting through the 140 #thankstwitter4 tweets that Mashable chose to highlight got us well-connected folks at Mr Youth thinking about what we’d like to thank Twitter for. Here’s just a smattering of our grateful gospel:

@courtneyc: #thankstwitter4 helping our generation fuel the biggest text-based fundraiser in history via the @RedCross

@laural:  For the information I learn from everyday #thankstwitter4

@kennyh:  #thankstwitter4 forcing me off my butt on #lazysunday by showing me what all my friends are doing

@jennaa:  #thankstwitter4 the most hilarious trending topics – i.e. #myfuturehusband & #dearfuturewife

@ericab:  For celebrating pithier wordsmithery #thankstwitter4

@ericab: (and for @ShitMyDadSays) #thankstwitter4

@alexisd: #thankstwitter4 giving me a place to voice all of those random thoughts that come to me on my commute to and from work

@manisham:  #thankstwitter4 helping me get hundreds of clicks a day on manishainmanhattan.com!

@laural:  For all the new friends and business contacts I have made #thankstwitter4

@giancarlop: #thankstwitter4 making human interactions, thoughts, and feelings searchable. (sorry to get all heavy on you)

“Help me fight this gang in Mafia Wars!”, “Join my wagon in Oregon Trail!”, “I’ve just found a golden egg in my FarmVille!”.

Most people have likely seen one of these updates in their Facebook news feed before, and many of them have participated in one of these popular social games. They’re fun and addicting, and millions of people all over the world just can’t get enough of them. In fact, FarmVille has over 80 million users monthly, and nearly 75% of Facebook’s 400 million users participate in online social gaming.

My question is, why hasn’t Madison Avenue capitalized on this yet? Bing recently made a push into marketing via FarmVille, but we have yet to see a real attempt at infusing marketing into online social gaming.  This raises an important question: How much marketing are you willing to put up with to play these addicting games? Will you spend money for special features, or give up screen space for ads? Will you be open to branded content, or even entirely branded games? If you got an email saying you couldn’t play FarmVille anymore unless you paid for it, what would you do?

From outlandish one-on-one encounters to themed bar nights, ChatRoulette has swept the nation with its unapologetically uncensored take on the classic internet chat. Marketing types around the world held their breath wondering who would be the first brand to tap in to the 500,000+ unique users per day.

And the winner is…. French Connection. The international clothing brand has launched a ChatRoulette competition challenging participants to use the service to seduce a woman in exchange for a $250 voucher. Risky move for an international brand, considering the proliferation of shady stuff going down on the site. But foolish or not, they’ve been getting a lot of coverage for being the first.

Only time will tell if ChatRoulette can become a useful tool in the marketer’s arsenal. Thoughts?

There are many among us who cherish the days when we get to indulge in a hearty breakfast of pancakes and syrup instead of our usual cup of coffee and too much to do. Well today is our day, because it is officially National Pancake Day according to IHOP, and the folks over at the famed food shop are taking a new approach to promoting it with a Web 2.0 spin!

For starters, IHOP enlisted Miss America 2010 to be the official spokesperson for National Pancake Day to support the nationwide promotion and tie-in with the Children’s Miracle Network. On the official National Pancake Day website consumers can share information via their social networks and sign up to receive celebrity wake up calls reminding them to celebrate with some pancakes. If you’re one of the 74,000+ IHOP Facebook fans you may have noticed that you were automatically sent to the National Pancake Day tab this morning while IHOP employees across the country took to their local IHOP Twitter accounts to spread the news about the promotion and were even triumphant enough to earn IHOP a spot in the coveted “Trending Topics” list on Twitter. Overall I’d give IHOP an “A” for effort, but a “B” overall for their Web 2.0 centered celebration. They’ve got a lot of room to make this a full-blown social media extravaganza, and this is a great step in that direction.

By now everyone is aware of the sensation Doppleganger week generated on Facebook, and a smaller buzz was created when a movement challenged women to change their status to the color of your bra to raise awareness for Breast Cancer. Both appear to have started organically.

Two new groups are getting viral traction on Facebook. The first one:  I’m With Coco, a group started to show support for Conan through the NBC debacle. The group, started up by artist Mike Mitchell,  is closing in on 1 million fans and has inspired a merchandise line featuring  a Shepard Fairey-esque image of Conan that Mitchell created.

The second meme of the month is “Can this Pickle Get More Fans than Nickelback.” It was inspired by the “Can this onion get more fans than Justin Bieber”, which had over 2-million fans before it was pulled down by facebook. This week, the Nickelback hating page reached their goal by netting more than 1,420,000 fans compared to Nickelback’s 1,413,167. The page continues to grow with pure viral pickle power.

Both social media movements have started small, but have resulted in big pay offs. Facebook is a tricky space. Their policies are ever-changing and they reserve the right to pull down pages that violate their terms. YET, if a brand approached this correctly, it could be a huge win. Conan could have put out a rally cry on the network and driven people to join a Facebook fan group, but a consumer did it instead. Who knows if there is some magic pickle man behind this viral effort. I’d put money on it that there isn’t, but you never know these days.

Back in November, a clam chowder joint’s viral stunt reported their sales tripled from a hoax campaign that put their billboard in the depths of the ocean. Damn, I’m getting hungry… gotta change my FB status.

Mr Youth has just received high honors in one of Fast Company’s annual compendiums, making our way onto the list of the Top 10 Most Innovative Advertising & Marketing Companies.

Each year, Fast Company seeks out the smartest businesses across all industries. Mr Youth was praised for taking word-of-mouth marketing to the next level and for our innovative approach to technology, with a shout out to Mr Youth’s crowdsourcing platform, RepNation.

Fast Company puts this list of game-changers together annually, focusing on companies ranging from visionary upstarts to storied stalwarts. This year we make our appearance alongside the likes of Crispin Porter, R/GA, and Goodby Silverstein.

Click here to see why Fast Company doesn’t think of Mr Youth as “just another word-of-mouth marketing agency.”

Facebook is celebrating its 6th birthday this week, which seems a good a time as any to reflect on its path to world domination.

Let us not forget Facebook’s humble beginnings as “Thefacebook”. As if they were concerned there could be another one, this was THE facebook for all your networking needs. That is- assuming you’re an ivy leaguer buried in books in the Bay State. May I remind you that at its inception “Thefacebook” was only available to students at Harvard, where creator Mark Zuckerberg held his dorm room brainstorm sessions.

What you may not know is that even before “Thefacebook” there was “Facemash”- a Hot or Not game Zuckerberg created after hacking into Harvard’s computer network and stealing his peers’ student ID photos. “Facemash” generated 450 visitors and 22,000 photo views in its first four hours online.

I still remember the Facebook buzz growing my sophomore year of college- eagerly anticipating my D2 school‘s addition to “the list”. This came around the beginning of junior year, my three roommates and I wasting hours of valuable study (and party) time polishing our profiles until they became a sharp snapshot of who we each were (on our best day, of course.)

I clearly remember my attempt to demystify the “poke” and debating with actual, legit friends what the rules were for deciding “Facebook friends”. Today, Facebook has 400 million members and anyone, anywhere over the age of 13 is allowed to join.

This tremendous growth doesn’t look to be slowing either. Membership this year is double what it was on Facebook’s fifth birthday. The social networking powerhouse also blew out the candles with some celebratory changes this week, including a shuffling of menus and an apps and games dashboard.

Last week I stumbled upon a new iPhone app called CauseWorld, which allows users to check in to places and receive Karma points. The points can then be donated to nine potential causes including Support A Classroom, Give Clean Water, and Donate A Book. The model is basically Foursquare with a charity tie-in, allowing users to gain badges while giving back to charity through small micro actions. The app is free and sponsored by Kraft Foods and Citi. There’s also a feed via Facebook Connect which allows you to publish your donations to your Facebook wall.

CauseWorld is a great example of brands connecting with causes and amplifying their message through social media. In December, Foursquare launched a cause campaign with CampInteractive sponsored by Pepsi that donated $0.04 for each check-in. While the program was a great way to bring CampInteractive’s cause into the mainstream and align Pepsi, the CauseWorld app takes it a step further by allowing consumers to choose what cause matters most to them, and amass ‘do-gooder’ badges.

Another solid example of brands aligning with causes to rally consumer participation across social media is the Chase Community Giving program, which just announced their winners (congrats to my peeps at Invisible Children, who won a $1 million donation). The program gained over two million Facebook fans, and aligned cause with 500,000 charities that participated for a chance to receive $25k, $100k, or $1 million grants. In total, Chase Community Giving handed out $5 million to a variety of worthy organizations.

The beauty of the program is it unlocked the potential of these charities’ reach through social voting, with top charities generating over 100k user votes and rallying their fans to support their cause in a central social space. Excellent use of tying together social media, cause, community and a brand under a single campaign.

A few subtle changes have swept across Facebook within the past few days and unless you are actually in the social media world, you may not have even noticed them. Facebook continues to gradually roll out new and improved functionality that keeps the site at the forefront of the industry. Three weeks into twenty-ten, Facebook has not disappointed. Here are a few of the latest and greatest changes that have recently taken place:

-Facebook Retweet: Just like the Facebook @reply rolled out several months ago, users are gaining more functionality to credit other people in their posts. Consumers can now share another user’s content on their own page and simultaneously give credit to the original source using a “via” tag. Unlike the @reply, the source receives no notification on their personal Facebook Page that their link was “via”-ed.

-Replying to status updates, photos and links via email: Even though the typical BlackBerry/iPhone user probably uses the mobile Facebook Application as a rule, new functionality allows users to respond to posts through email, without actually logging into the site (thus effectively reducing productivity in Facebook-blocked companies by a personally-projected 20%).

-Receiving application notifications via email: Beginning last Wednesday, each time you install a new application on Facebook, developers will have the ability to request your email address. What this means is that if you opt in, these applications will now have the ability to contact you via email and the communication will no longer have to solely live on Facebook .

COMING SOON- Analytics & Insights: Page administrators will soon be able to track impressions and engagements on a post-by-post basis. Currently admins are able to see a limited amount of information about their page (mostly relating to the number of fans and a basic amount of engagement information) but this addition will make each and every Facebook post that much more valuable.

What do you think of the added Facebook functionality? Are these features that will enhance your user experience?