This has to be one of the best examples of viral video advertising I’ve seen. I know this is technically branding and not direct response marketing like we talk about in this blog, but this seems like one of the more effective ways to brand considering it’s a youtube video and they didn’t pay one penny to upload it. It really gets the gears turning!
We’re all familiar with the Facebook “like” button that we can integrate into our websites or blogs. However, when somebody “likes” something, on Facebook it shows up in their news feed for all to see. Sometimes it’s something that we don’t want to have just show up on our news feed. Setimes we would rather send that content to an individual or group of people specifically. Well, now we can. Today I’d like to introduce the new “send” button, “the easiest way to privately share things with groups and individuals”.
“The Send button is a social plugin that websites can use to let people send a link to a friend through Facebook Messages, post it to a Group, or email it to an individual. For example, if you see a Mother’s Day gift idea on 1-800-Flowers.com, you can now send a message or email to your family members to discuss. Or say you’re training for a marathon and you come across a great article about running shoes on The Huffington Post. Now you can share it with your entire running group in just one click.
The Send button drives traffic by letting users send a link and a short message to the people that would be most interested. They don’t need to leave the web page they’re on or fill out a long, annoying form. Compared to the alternatives, the Send button has fewer required steps, and it removes the need to look up email addresses by auto-suggesting friends and Groups.
We designed the Send button to be used alongside the Like button. By including both on your website, people will have ability to broadcast the things they like and also send it to specific people.”
(UPDATE: I now switched back to WordPress’ native comments so I can use the Comment Luv plugin. See this post.)
So I’ve decided to give DISQUS a shot (pronounced Discuss). If you’re not familiar, DISQUS is a comments platform that has a few distinct advantages over the normal WordPress commenting system. AVC names a few here:
“1) Threaded discussions – When you want to leave a comment that is actually a reply to someone else’s comment, you click on the reply link and the comment/reply is indented right under the original comment. On any comment thread/discussion with a lot of action, this is absolutely necessary to make sense of the discussion. I am shocked that a popular blog like Techcrunch doesn’t have this feature in its comments. Certainly it’s possible for commenters to use an @sign to signify a comment that is actually a reply, but threaded discussion is so much better.
2a) Email Replies – DISQUS emails every comment to the blogger. If the blogger wants to reply to the comment, he/she simply replies to the email and it is posted as a reply (with the indent described above). This feature, which I requested the day I met/saw DISQUS for the first time, is the single best thing about DISQUS and has transformed my blog comments because I can now participate in them in real time throughout the day as the conversation develops. This is a BIG DEAL.
2b) Email Replies for Commenters – It works the same way for commenters. If you leave a comment in Disqus and have given DISQUS your email address, you will get an email when anyone replies to your comment. You can reply to that just like the blogger can. This is also a big deal and leads to much more active commenting and replying – ie discussion.
3) Shared profiles. As more and more blogs add DISQUS (over 10,000 at this point), the profiles that commenters create in DISQUS are shared across blogs. This is an important network effect that benefits the blogger and his/her community. For example, if you have a blog that is read by a similar audience as my blog, and you add DISQUS to your blog, most of my commenters will already be recognized by DISQUS the first time they show up in your comments. They don’t need to set up a new profile. They”ll have the same avatar/icon and identity.
There are literally a dozen more reasons why DISQUS is great (this guy lists 25 of them), and maybe you all will add them in the comments, but these are the big three.“
There are a few cons of course, but I feel the pro’s out weight the cons. Especially when you consider the fact that DISQUS allows visitors to comment on your site using their Facebook profile or Twitter profile. Also, it’s not too difficult to switch back from DISQUS later if I decide it’s not for me.
Here are a few cons to think about if you’re thinking about switching over to DISQUS.
The first thing you should know is DISQUS literally overrides all of your existing comment related plugins. For us WordPress users, that means Askimet (the spam comment system) is gone. It also means some of the plugins you may have added (like subscribe to comments) are also gone. You literally see a window in your control panel to the DISQUS website, where all controls happen and comments reside.
Some other BIG things that are missing include:
No hotlinks on names: In the past, when a commenter enters a comment, their name was hotlinked to the web address they entered (allowing folks to check them out). Now that capability is shut off by default UNLESS that person registers with DISQUS. Once the email is registered, only then will the name be hot linkable.
Names often come out wrong: When a user does register with DISQUS, they need to pick an ID (like mikestelzner). When that person leaves a comment, the ID replaces his or her name by default. I learned this the hard way. I needed to go back in and change my name to be something other than my ID in DISQUS in order to change what was displayed. However, one trip over to Mashable.com and you can see that most people don’t know to do this. The result is no longer a personal name, but some short nickname that is not personal. The good news however is that if you ever change your name, all posts are updated.
Comments and control reside atDISQUS: You will notice that everything about your comments and their moderation is actually residing on DISQUS servers, not your own. Thus, if they ever decided to charge you OR if their servers go down, you are in big trouble. Now it does seem for WordPress at least, that the comments are also mirrored (meaning a copy seems to reside in WordPress). However, all the moderation actions are not mirrored back into WordPress. So the real big question is what will happen to DISQUS down the road and how will that impact your comments (which are a rich part of your site). Also, if you tag a comment as spam inside DISQUS, it does not also tag it that way in the WordPress database. So, if you uninstall DISQUS, you will need to go back through all your comments and remoderate them…“
Remember the article above is a year old, so DISQUS has had some time to resolve some of the issues. I think it’s going to work great for TrueWebPresence.com. Feel free to leave a comment to test out DISQUS yourself!
This could get very interesting for both advertisers and consumers alike. This just may open a whole world of opportunities especially if you’re in the fashion industry.
“So what is Stipple now? Well, there’s still the people-tagging element for sure. And that’s still really cool. If you tag a person in a photo on the web, you can enter their Twitter name or Facebook name and then anyone can see their most recent updates as overlays on that picture. But the much bigger idea is that Stipple is teaming up with photo services, fashion brands, publishers, and others to possibly alter the way people browse and buy things on the web.
Think of it this way: right now when someone is browsing the web and they see a shirt they like on a random photo, they probably resort to doing a Google search for something similar. Or maybe they open the website of their favorite store to see if they have anything to match that look. But what Stipple offers is a way for each photo to show you exactly what piece of clothing the person in the photo is wearing — to show you who makes it, how much it costs, etc. And it allows you to “Want” it (save it to look at later) or “Shop” for it via two overlay buttons right on the picture itself.
It’s an idea that clearly resonates with web browsers. How do I know? Because Stipple co-founder and CEO Rey Flemings had some data to share with us. Stipple has actually been serving these product dots (the overlay used to show an area of the picture contains more information) for a while now — enough for over 10 million data points. He says that people mouse over a photo with a dot 46 percent of the time. And those users touch the product dot 12.48 percent of the time — that’s actually more than people use the people dot (4.9 percent of the time).
Think about that for a second. That mousing over the dot is basically an ad impression — with a strong level of intent. And it’s happening 12.48 percent of the time on Stipple-tagged images. Further, 1.75 percent are clicking the Want button. While 1.9 percent are clicking the Shop button. Advertisers would kill for those types of rates…”
Hi, my name is Steve Longoria. Thanks for stopping by my site.
I strive to bring you only the freshest, most relevant marketing content from all across The Internet Tubes!
I also enjoy playing the drums, riding my bike, and pretty much anything wrapped in a warm, cripsy tortilla!
