We are delighted to announce the launch of Coca Cola Ireland’s new Facebook application in support of Coke’s global sponsorship of the FIFA World Cup. While sadly Ireland did not qualify for the World Cup, Coke decided to develop this great application to give Irish teens a digital platform in which to celebrate a team of their choice competing in the World Cup. Come on Argentina!

Given the continued growth, Facebook was an obvious choice for us to promote Coca Cola’s World Cup sponsorship, especially among teen audiences. This presented Coke Ireland with a unique opportunity to fill that gap and address the specific needs of the Irish audience – to give them a reason to engage with the World Cup even though Ireland was not participating in the competition.

The application acts as an interactive hub, where teens can follow the progress of the World Cup, vote on the outcome of games, and share in the excitement with their friends. Take the time and check it out now on Facebook.

The extraordinary growth in mobile within the last few months will no doubt encourage more and more people to get involved with the latest online, or more to the point, offline trend of Mass Mingling. According to Trend Watching’s June briefing ‘reality’ is back in Vogue.

Mobile is already liberating people from the shackles of the desktop and allowing them to get back in touch with their locality. The butcher, the baker, and rumor has it, the candle stick maker are all going loco about local as the rise of location based services like Foursquare continue to grow. In a recent TechCrunch piece Mark Zukerberg hinted that location based features are coming to the platform and set to put location on the map.

Meetup recently launched a service for organizations, companies and movements to launch global events via the web. Meetup Everywhere is an open and free platform which aims to spark offline events amongst communities of like-minded individuals, across the globe. The website enables organizers to map the meet-ups and share announcements and updates through users Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Online communities like ReadyMade and Etsy.com are working with DIY crafters to host their own local “craft ups” where organizers receive a free downloadable Craft Party Kit containing crafty project ideas, instructions and templates, along with tips and ideas for hosting their crafty meetup party.

June 14, 2010 if you didn’t know was the worldwide-meet-the-tribe-of-Linchpins Internet guru Seth Godin. If you are part of the Tumblr tribe then you now have the opportunity to put a face to the interesting tumblog you’ve been following.

The power of the Mass Mingling cannot be under estimated from and business and marketing perspective but more importantly for its power to affect real and positive social change in the ‘real’ world. Are you aware of any Meet Up events in Ireland? If so please let us know.

http://www.admongo.gov/
Get yourself Aducated! Admongo is a fun game which aims to educate a younger audience about the wonderful world of advertising.

http://tweettrumps.com/
The old school favourite playground game Top Trumps has been digitalised! This clever project was developed in 24hrs at WarbleCamp (expect a few bugs…) and pits mutual Twitter followers against one another.

http://offices.colgate.edu/SeniorProfiles/SeniorProfiles.asp
With an increase in the number of Irish graduates seeking work abroad in recent years replicating this digital yearbook, created by Colgate University and incorporating Google maps, could be the way that Alumni keep in touch in the future.

http://www.youtube.com/wearefordogs
Pedigree’s adoption drive campaign is continuing with the release of a new video. Pedigree have pledged £1 each time this and future instalments are viewed, so get watching!

Facebook’s F8 conference kicks off today in San Francisco with the social network company likely to announce its plan to not only socialise the web, but to marginalise the pre-social web. Earlier in the week, we’ve seen Facebook change its ‘Become a Fan’ button to a ‘Like’ button. Among other exciting changes, Facebook is expected to unveil a ‘Like’ button publishers can embed on their websites to let users share content with their Facebook friends.

More details of Facebook plans are expected to be announced by Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive. We’ll be watching online and posting any major updates here on the Cybercom blog.

Ireland’s Digital Media Future by Minister Eamon Ryan. from Cybercom on Vimeo.

Cybercom’s insights from the 2010 National Digital Media & Marketing Summit. from Cybercom on Vimeo.

Luxury brand Louis Vuitton Moet Henessy (LVMH) recently launched Nowness, an online magazine. The online project blends luxury brands with what LVMH is calling information reference.

This move is the latest example thought to provoke more debate on how the difference between editorial and promotional content is becoming ever more ambiguous. It also highlights how more and more brands are going into the business of content creation.

Nowness includes content around art, photography, fashion and design, created and put together by an international team of contributors and editors in LVMH. It has a simple minimalist design, features a daily multimedia story – today it talks to Viviane Sassen famed photographer; yesterday it exhibited Rodartes Haute – Tech Astral Projection.

Luxury and fashion industries have been notoriously slow at adopting the web 2.0. Nowness, however, demonstrates another case of how luxury brands are gradually opening up to the idea that luxury can exist online. The internet now ranks above print, television and radio in influence over consumers. The rise in online magazines, social media and blogs in particular is rapidly changing the established order of the fashion industry underlining the fact that luxury brands can no longer afford to ignore this space.

Facebook has crept up to be the fourth largest distributor of news content on the Internet. Last year less than 0.5% of visits to news and media sites came from Facebook, according to Experian Hitwise. Just last week, 3.5% of visits to sites in the news and media category came from Facebook.The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times are already publishing content to the platform and it is likely that other news and media sites will adopt the Facebook platform. Facebook is behind primarily Google, Yahoo! and MSN where people go to get their news online. Last year Facebook overtook Google News rising from just over 1% in January 2009 to 3.5% last week.

Data released from Nielsen recently showed that in December 2009, Facebook had close to 120 million US users and that average time spent on the site increased by 200% over December 2008. This increased time on the site is having repercussions on how people consume media and as result an increasing number are learning about breaking news through friends’ status updates. Malorie Lucich, a spokeswoman for Facebook, blogged: “As news quickly travels, your friends are often the best filters you have for surfacing meaningful news. They are how I heard about Michael Jackson’s death, President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize and even ‘Balloon Boy’. Facebook is now encouraging users to set up personalised news channels – yet another reason why we should watch this space.

Sources: Brand Republic and Digital Beat

Since the dawn of digital marketing, a brand’s website has been the single biggest online focus for brands. However, with the evolution of social media growing at unheard of rates the era of the destination web seems to be drawing to a close – as the graphs below demonstrate, branded websites and microsites are losing traffic to social media destinations.

Today, to have an effective online presence requires a near omnipresence – an active presence across the social web. This means the creation of active profiles on popular social media sites with high reach (fish where the fish are), as well as the creation of (or “unlocking” of) content so that it’s easily distributable across networks. Freeing content to sit on or flow through “off-site” sources and platforms will enable web users to access unique content where they want to experience it and ensure they have the means to carry the message further – i.e. share the content with new audiences.

For brands, measuring success online will be less about measuring unique website visitors and more about measuring the flow and reach of content. Facebook has also recently added the functionality to allow brands to incorporate fan features directly on to their branded websites. Subsequently website content updates can be sent directly onto fans’ Facebook pages.

Through this kind of development we are likely to see the greater harmonisation between branded websites (hubs) and supporting social channels (spokes). One thing is for sure, we will stop creating content simply for websites and create content that will live across the decentralised web.

Branded Websites:

Social Platforms: