Through Microsoft’s Looking Glass
“Allows marketers to manage the conversation around their brands…”
Microsoft is planning to launch “Looking Glass” soon, which will enable brands to do some War Games monitoring of the “chatter” bouncing around this new advertising frontier of social media. Ironically, even though they have their own Silverlight and Windows Live platforms, Microsoft opted to open up a YouTube channel pimping this development. Today, who cares about using a competitor’s platform – when Google search engine indexing is at hand?
Remember the Metallica “Black Album” backlash? It used to be people were protective of their personal space and little niche interests. During this by-gone era, the last thing anyone wanted was “the mainstream,” or worse “corporate America,” encroaching on their conversations or infiltrating their “scene.” Which I supposed is tied into the whole hipster thing, of someone’s identity being construed not by what they do - but by things they buy, follow or subscribe to. As in – “the vegan, chain smoking, fixed-gear kid who’s into Italian disco vinyl and Townes Van Sant…” – who apparently lives everywhere in the Pacific Northwest and Brooklyn.
Now back to Metallica and the idea of what “selling out” construes. What if in addition to try get greater appeal, they signed on to some sponsorship deal and also went on stage wearing Pepsi shirts and oh wait…
I guess, what we’re trying to say is that the idea of “selling out” has evolved from one of instant revulsion, to one of apathy and now it’s sort of embraced. We went from being afraid of Big Brother and people reading our diaries, to showing everyone on Facebook what we did last night and agreeing to GMail scanning our private stuff for anything to build an advertising profile on (aka – the fine print).
The great news is that the metrics don’t really exist yet – definitively – for tracking the advertising potential within the realm of social media. Which is what makes this site’s day. Because it’s a situation of ad dollars being available, without trackable proof that it’s working or an accepted audit method is in place. In other words - you can get rich by pretending to have an impact, while in reality achieving nothing. Which is sorta the impetus to hijack this postboomer cash cab and take it all the way to the bank – before someone else does – with our “Get Rich Quick” category of tips and digital tricks.
Posted in: General, Get Rich Quick