Is the Spotlight on Social Media Scaring Off Guerrilla Marketing?

Just a year ago, social media hadn't quite exploded into the thing we know it as today, especially with regards to marketing. Now every major news station has a twitter and every company has a Facebook and a blog. Major companies having an open presence on social networking sites is the norm now, but what happened to subtly?
I first saw the "guy catches glasses with face" video during a presentation a year ago when I was highlighting the benefits of using social media marketing. Someone asked "How come we don't see all major companies using this kind of thing if it's so successful?" I said a lot of companies are to which he replied "Okay, search... Ray Ban. See it they're using it." So I did. I clicked on the guy catches glasses video and everyone at the meeting slowly realized it was produced by Ran Ban as a guerrilla marketing video. Ray Ban's Never Hide Film campaign continues today with videos like Super Chameleon, (brought to my attention via Neatorama) which got me to start thinking about how few guerrilla marketing campaigns I see these days.

Around the same time last summer, major car company BMW had a wildly successful viral video series on YouTube on "Rampenfest," which was a fake documentary on how a small town in Bulgaria planned to launch a car across the ocean to the United States. This fake documentary was never directly linked to BMW until months after when the car company claimed responsibility for the series. When it was covered by CNN, it was looked at like a more experimental form of guerrilla marketing on a fresh new media outlet. (watch CNN's coverage here) Now CNN has a YouTube. And a Twitter.

With the spotlight on social media marketing, users expect that anything that looks well put together is probably an advertisement of some kind or is put together by a company. Have guerrilla campaigns been replaced with open and thoughtful social media content by companies? Not that well done, entertaining content from companies is a bad thing, but with lots of companies putting this kind of content on the web now, it's nice to have a guerrilla video sneak up on you, camouflaged in the colors social media.

Facebook Changing Faces Again?

Let's talk about what's on every social media user's mind, feed, and status update: the new Facebook layout. Although I kinda like the new layout, (for reasons I'll go into in a sec) this bumper sticker seems to be the general opinion of the new homepage. I've yet to see anyone post anything even close to positive about the new layout. Most people are confused about the change, not understanding how to use familiar features and even more confused about why the layout of the homepage was changed again. When Facebook changed the format of the home page the first time, many people at first didn't prefer it, but understood how to use it and grew to accept it. This time around, people are threatening to just stop using fb if these constant unwanted changes are a sign of how the site's services will continue to pull the carpet out from under them. The new unwelcomed change adds to the negative snowball forming from a few months ago when Facebook suddenly changed it's terms of service, claiming all content posted on the site was theirs to use. This was revoked shortly after due to a storm of controversy.

Now for the part you're going to boo at. I like the new Facebook format, with some definite exceptions. The requests moving to the top of the page in more of a verbal list is kind of a messy pain, especially if you have several requests for different things. The new real time stream down the middle of the page is the real big change, along with the stream filters on the left. This, in my opinion and many other's, is trying to imitate Twitter. The live feed, above which is the "What's on your mind?" status update is definitely rooted in Twitter design. But I like Twitter. I agree that we don't need two social sites doing the same thing, but Facebook's filters make it a easier to narrow down the content you want to read, and the status updater has now been upgraded to the full publisher which was previously only on profile pages. This is the main improvement in my eyes. I typically post lots of pictures, links, etc for my friends to see, and the redesigned publisher on the main page definitely makes that a little easier. Facebook has always been about networking with people, as well as sharing content with friends, and I think the new stream and publisher allows for that. However, the "highlights" section is kind of similar to the feed, only it includes events you weren't invited to, or having anything to do with you directly. Makes the whole idea of a highlights side stream kinda questionable in it's usefulness.

But to say that the update has some improvements in a sea of discontented users isn't enough. If the users ultimately don't think it's easier, more integrated, and overall better, than it's not. I do take into account that people are usually going to complain and be reluctant to change at first, but this overwhelming consensous of disapproval says one thing: Facebook isn't listening to the users. While my humble preferences for the new format lay few and far between, I agree that Facebook needs to listen to it's users in regards what's easier and better.

A lil Ketchup

Let me first start by apologizing for not updating regularly; The lack of updates doesn't stem from me not paying attention, it's from me paying too much attention.
In my drafts, I have 3 or 4 posts in the works that were meant to be as long as that first one. But with all the goings on in the social media world, everything can't be given that kind of length- at least not yet.
Anyway, here's some ketchup.

Okay, I promise the next post won't be about Twitter. It's just hard not to write about it; Twitter is the hot newness.

A few weeks ago, Twitter turned down Facebook's 500 mil offer. The many people (me included) think Twitter did this because it has great potential as a real time search tool. Searching Tweets by keywords and #hastags to get a real-time snapshot of opinions as they're formed could be a tool Twitter's not ready to put up for sale just yet. While Twitter keeps working on their search functionality, users are finding their own ways to use Twitter. Social Media guru Waynesutton uses Twitter via Tweetgrid to watch basket ball games by running searches with the team names, score is, and other tags to get a real time reporting of the game while people watch and Tweet about it. I think this kind of innovation is a great idea and hope to see more things like this developed by users and Twitter in the future.