R.I.P. Hyves

1

November

2013

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It’s the end of an era. From December 2nd, 2013 onwards the Dutch social network Hyves will no longer be a social network, but an online gaming portal. What used to be the biggest social media platform in the Netherlands, with over 10 million members at its peak, quickly lost territory to Facebook over the past three years. 

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Users are able to download all their Hyves profile data with a special tool, before the social network will be shut down. Because the number of accounts was rapidly decreasing from 2010 onwards, Hyves tried to change its approach several times. In 2011 they incorporated a news service, a hit radio channel and a soccer application, but these additions did not get the desired results. That’s why Hyves will continue as a gaming platform, which they started up in early 2013. The platform has over 400 games available and attracts around 540 000 unique visitors a month, making it the most popular gaming portal of the country.

For the Dutchies: are you sad to see Hyves go, or did you see this coming for a long time? Do you think there’s anything they could have done to prevent this from happening?

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Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day

1

November

2013

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In 1979 Ben & Jerry’s wanted to thank their customers, friends, family and supporters by handing out a free ice cream cone. This gradually became a tradition and nowadays it’s a huge marketing event that’s difficult to miss. How do they make this such a huge social media success? These little infographics show how they basically took over America’s social media for a day: 

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As you could see, they eventually reached over 700 million people worldwide, in one way or another. That’s 10% of the world’s population. Do you think these huge advertising campaigns will occur more often, or will people start getting tired of them?

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Homework Assignment; Engaging Prosumers

26

September

2013

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For this weeks’  home assignment I’ve found two brands that have tried to engage prosumers in their marketing campaign. The first is American beer brand Samuel Adams and the second is AMC’s Emmy-winning show Breaking Bad.

In January 2012, Samuel Adams created a Facebook application to let people create the world’s first crowd-sourced beer: they could submit their preferences in terms of the beer’s color, clarity, body, etc. They also included a section where the users could comment on Samuel Adams’ already existing range of products. It looked something like this: http://randymatheson.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/samuel_adams_facebook_beer1.jpg
Breaking Bad used a completely different strategy to engage the audience; they created a set of social media extensions designed to pull the viewers deeper into the Breaking Bad universe. The show is represented on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and it even has designed a digital second-screen-experience, that activates whenever a new episode is aired & contains background information, hints, quizzes about characters and references to other episodes. ( http://www.amctv.com/shows/breaking-bad/story-sync is the link, for those that are interested)

As you can see, Adam Samuels placed emphasis on co-creation; letting the prosumer create a new beer and giving them space to share their thoughts on existing products. Breaking Bad placed emphasis on audience participation; also engaging the prosumer, but in a more controlled way. Which approach do you think is the best one? Or have they both done a good job? 

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