The comedy video website, created by Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and Chris Henchy, has always been focused on developing talent and creating offbeat content. “Think of it as Saturday Night Live for the web,” says Reading.

To that end, the site has created tons of memorable videos, including the recent “Drunk History Christmas.” Videos tap into both established and up-and-coming talent, which is facilitated by the website’s relationship with talent management agency CAA. I love that the content is made even more sharable by including specific hashtags within the actual video.

FoD’s most successful video continues to be “The Landlord,” one of the site’s first-ever videos with more than 78 million views. As Reading mentions, “If I ever run into anyone who asks me what I do and I say, ‘I work for Funny or Die,’ and if there’s a question mark, I say, ‘Did you see the video The Landlord with Will Ferrell and Pearl?’ Literally, there has never been somebody I’ve talked to who didn’t know that video.”

Brands can look to FoD’s most successful videos to pick up best practices for creating entertaining branded content:

- A trusting, collaborative relationship with Funny or Die. Mentioning CEO Dick Glover’s philosophy, Reading advises, “Let the content drive the video, as opposed to anything else.”

- Trust the talent. Zach Galifianakis’ show, “Between Two Ferns,” is sponsored by Speed Stick, but he has complete creative freedom to do whatever he’d like between those two ferns.

- If you have celebrities you can bring to the table, that’s a plus. A recent successful branded video features Snoop Dogg, LL Cool J and others for Halo: Reach, and won a Webby Award for best branded entertainment video.

Up next for FoD is more original web-based content, a movie (Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie), a new show on Fuse (Billy on the Street), various other television partnerships and more branded entertainment.

See the complete interview with Reading below, and also check out the recent Hollywood Reporter cover story about FoD.

Jennifer Hudson’s Whitney Houston Tribute So Moving People Stopped Tweeting
While not quite as impressive as the Super Bowl’s record of 12,233 tweets per second, the Grammys peaked at 10,901 tweets per second during the live broadcast. More interestingly, Twitter was nearly silenced during Jennifer Hudson’s tribute to Whitney Houston as she sang “I Will Always Love You.” Instead of live tweeting her performance, Twitter users watched and opted to tweet about it afterward. [via AdAge]

Facebook to Release Timeline for Brands This Month
While Timeline has been available to Facebook users for some time now, brands continue to await the release of Timeline for brands. While Facebook has declined to comment on the product or timing, sources are indicating a late February release that will be rolled out in brands in stages. Brands can look forward to Open Graph apps that allow custom verbs as well as the ability to populate content throughout the brand’s history. [via AdAge]

The session kicked off with an old-school video on the etiquette around Facebook. Panelists, @Danielle_VBF, @TomfooleryTM, @cablight, @TheRobJudge and @loribizz
then chimed in with their experience and insight on the subject of online dating and social media. Here is some of their advice when it comes to finding what could be your soul mate online:

- Do not, we repeat, do not change your social media relationship status without consulting the other person.

- Make sure that your social media/online dating profiles are honest and transparent (and absent of embarrassing photos) – someone can do a background check in just a matter of clicks.

- On the flip side, don’t be afraid to Google someone – it’s okay to find out as much as you can, just don’t admit it to them : )

- Refrain from friending/following a date too soon.

- Leverage online dating/social media platforms as a tool, but make sure there is actual chemistry in the real world.

- Commit 15 hours a week to dating, 3 of which can be online; find creative offline ways to be social (athletic clubs, charities, etc.).

- Once you’ve both committed to being in a monogamous relationship, remove your online dating profiles.

- Breaking up via social media? Don’t do it!

- When things go wrong? De-friend on Facebook, un-follow on Twitter, delete phone numbers, ASAP.

The social web has certainly redefined the terms of dating where becoming “Facebook official” now signifies the legitimacy of a relationship. Match, Jdate, OKCupid, eHarmony – whatever your vehicle – take a deep breath, be yourself, and carefully follow the rules of online dating etiquette –Mr./Mrs. Right may just be a click away.

In short, people love coffee. It’s that passion that’s at the heart of Zocalo Group’s most recently released Recommendation Index – a study created to understand not only which are the most talked about brands across social channels, but also the level of positive recommendations.

Probably no surprise to anyone, Starbucks is the most talked-about coffeehouse chain online. But despite being the leader in online conversation volume, it’s Caribou Coffee that earns the most positive recommendations, among an analysis of the top 10 largest national and regional coffeehouse chains based on sales figures and number of locations in the U.S.

Essentially, according to the findings, Starbucks is recommended in about 1 in 200 conversations. However, Caribou Coffee earns a recommendation once in every 20 conversations – a sign that those that talk about Caribou were more likely to recommend it.

The Recommendation Index also provides insight into the positive and negative keywords and/or phrases used to trigger recommendations. Top drivers of positive recommendations in the coffeehouse chain conversation include such items as Product Quality & Freshness, Brand Loyalty, Brew Consistency, Skilled Baristas and Physical Location.

Meanwhile, top drivers of negative recommendations include Poor Product Quality, Unskilled Baristas, overall dislike of the brand (called detractors), Exaggerated Comparisons and Physical Side Effects.

What does this mean?

• Recommendations affect buying decisions people make as well as the way the public sees brands. As Paul Rand, president and CEO of Zócalo Group noted: “Recommendations drive not only brand perception, but more importantly, purchasing decisions. By making the important distinction between a cursory mention and a positive recommendation, we were able to glean more penetrating insights about the role that recommendations played within the ‘brick & mortar’ coffeehouse chain industry.”
• High Volumes of Conversation don’t necessarily increase the likelihood that someone will make a recommendation. “The Recommendation Index illustrates that while a brand’s volume of conversation is important, a high volume doesn’t necessarily increase the likelihood that someone will make a recommendation,” Zach Mesenbourg, manager of Zócalo Group’s Insights & Analytics Team, pointed out – a situation made clear with Caribou and Starbucks. “While people talked more about Starbucks overall, those who talked about Caribou Coffee were stronger advocates and recommenders.”

For more information on the Recommendation Index, visit our website.

A study was conducted by HP Labs in order to determine how to increase views or re-tweets of an article on Twitter.  HP Labs analyzed articles, approximately 40,000, during one week in August and had some interesting findings. According to the study, sentiment or tone does not increase the popularity of the article. A few factors that increase the likelihood of an article being shared include: reliable source, stories related to popular topics or trends, and mentions of well-known organizations, locations, or people. [via readwriteweb.com]

Tag, You’re It! Shazam is Super Bowl XLVI Mobile MVP

Shazam, the popular music recognition app, played a major role in 1 million giveaways during the Super Bowl due to its partnerships with advertisers. Shazam worked with roughly 50% of the all advertisers that aired ads during Super Bowl; some of these include Best Buy, Cars.com & Pepsi. This article also includes research related to the ads and their utilization of social media, mobile marketing, and integrated marketing. Surprisingly, only 16% of the advertised brands linked or included their own social networking accounts. Take a look at some of the other insights! [via brandchannel.com]

Lady Gaga’s New Social Network Resembles Pinterest, Reddit

LittleMonsters.com is a fairly new (launched nearly 4 weeks ago) closed beta social network for Lady Gaga fans. Once a Gaga fan’s invite is accepted he or she can share or create content related to the Pop superstar. Members can also publicly display whether they like other users’ posts and interact with one another. Approximately 10,000 invites have been sent out so far. Author Brian Anthony Hernandez believes the social network has, “A look like Pinterest and a popularity-vote feel like Reddit…” Hernandez also feels that the social network is following what is currently popular on the internet, rating content and sharing images. Do you think other stars will follow in her footsteps? (Bieber or Miley Cyrus?) [via mashable.com]

Twitter confirmed that Super Bowl XLVI became America’s most tweeted sporting event, with an average of 10,000 tweets per second in the final few minutes of the Big Game.

While a few ads included QR codes (GoDaddy) or Hashtags (Hulu #MushyMush), it doesn’t appear that most of them had much of call-to-action to get online. As reported by Mashable this morning, Zeta Interactive reported that Honda’s CR-V ad featuring Matthew Broderick was the most-buzzed about ad – - but it didn’t have any social media activation within the ad itself.

Nissan, a Zócalo Group client, did not run a Super Bowl ad but did participate in the social conversation with a relatively straightforward Twitter campaign aimed at competitive blunting.

Nissan (@NissanNews) posted reactions of the ads in real-time as they aired, encouraging users to check out relevant Nissan ads from the past few months. Searches for terms in popular ads including “Jerry Seinfeld” popped up with a Nissan response, and users favorably reacted to the Nissan tweets generating a high engagement, strong click-through and a couple hundred new followers for the brand. Overall, it cost less than $0.19 per impression.

Why this worked:

• Simple execution to not bombard followers – The goal was to create relevant conversation around the brand during a peak conversation event.  Goal of the small budget program was to always be relevant to the conversation rather than hijacking it and annoying followers.
• Humorous and timely tweets – As with most things that catch-on in social, adding a bit of humor to the responses prompted more sharing of the content.  And, timing our posts to the appearance of our competitors’ ads was key.

Check out some of our favorite tweets below, and the tweet responses complimenting the campaign! What do you think about this approach?

On Wednesday February 1^st, Facebook Inc. filed for an initial public offering (IPO) and experts believe the company could be valued somewhere between $75 billion-$100 billion. Facebook is expected to surpass Google’s 2004 IPO which brought in $1.9 billion for the popular search engine that was valued at $23 billion. If Facebook does succeed, it would set the record for the largest U.S. Internet IPO. Facebook has set its minimum expectation at $5 billion and has a chance to raise more than $10 billion. The only American companies that have obtained IPOs greater than $10 billion have been General Motors, AT&T, and Visa. [via wsj.com] Mashable did an interesting word analysis of Facebook’s IPO filing with the SEC. It’s a great shift away from financials.

Reuters’ New Social Dashboard Charts CEO Influence, Chatter About Companies

Reuters has created “Social Pulse”, a social dashboard that connects readers to journalists. Social Pulse allows users to follow specific categories of news or individual Reuters’ staff members such as editors, blogger or reporters. In other words, a user can find technology writers in China or editors in Italy.  In addition, it tracks the top 100 social CEOs which are categorized according to their Klout score. Lastly, Social Pulse also tracks sentiment against stock performance in order to showcase when brand perception affects business performance.  Check it out! [via adage.com]

Super Bowl Viewers Expected to Use Facebook, Twitter at Record Levels This Year

Advertisers are striving to make the Super Bowl even more social. 1/3 of advertisers will utilize Shazam to ensure that viewers access their websites without entering a url. Facebook and USA Today have teamed up for an “Ad Meter” app that allows users to rate commercials during the big game and share ratings through Facebook. More importantly, as a result of the app, viewers’ ratings will influence USA Today’s yearly commercial ratings which were previously determined by a much smaller panel of only 300 people. [via time.com]

Among the many approaches that are important to understand when developing an effective Hispanic social media strategy, resisting the urge to lump all Latinos together is critical. The importance of valuing and acknowledging the diversity in the Latino culture is not a maybe… it’s paramount for success. And today’s social media tools can make this happen effectively.

Reaching today’s Hispanic consumer needs to focus on a commitment that goes against the grain of traditional outreach to this community. After segmenting based mostly on language proficiency, most brands approach outreach with a one-size fits all approach. Make the campaign all in Spanish and call it a day. Or drop in a word or two in Spanish from commonly used phrases into an English language campaign and feel effective. The failure in these approaches is that they miss the vast diversity of today’s Latino population and the varied and nuanced ways they interact with each other, and ultimately make brand selections.

There are more than 21 different countries of origin making up today’s Latino population in the U.S. Each group has a rich array of cultural distinctives that make the one-size approach meaningless. From diverse idioms, historical backgrounds, approach to style and engagement, even a literal, vast array of physical appearances, a successful social media marketing campaign needs to focus on these differentiations and be built on a nuanced and targeted approach. Even more so than in the mainstream population, what works for one will most definitely not work for the other among Latinos. By taking the time to develop a deep understanding of the culture, values, and origins of a targeted group, the opportunity to more effectively activate Hispanic recommendations comes to life.

As most of us are aware, Wikipedia shut down for a day on January, 18^th. The blackout was done intentionally in order to protest two anti-piracy bills known as Protect IP Act (PIPA) and Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). The designed tactic by Wikipedia was very effective in terms of demonstrating the negative effects of the proposed bills. The blackout frustrated 162 million visitors according to Wikimedia Foundation and 8 million of those visitors searched for the contact information of their Senate and House representatives. Over the span of one day, 71 members of Congress switched sides and opposed both bills. In fact the people have spoken; the House and Senate recently announced that they have delayed voting on the two bills. Hopefully when they decide to vote on both bills, neither of them get put into law.  [via readwriteweb.com]

Pinterest for Brands: 5 Hot Tips

The popular virtual pinboard network, Pinterest, is continuing to grow. Roughly 3.3 million people have generated over 421 million page views and approximately 70 percent of Pinterest’s users are women. Brands are starting to “pin” themselves to the online pinboard and Mashable has provided some tactics for brands to follow. Some of the tips include using it to run contests, as an internal company board, and as an additional focus group. Check out the other two tips! [via mashable.com]

New Google Accounts Require Gmail and G+ Account Creation

Google has altered the process involved in its account creation. Google now requires a new user to create a Google+ account in addition to a regular Gmail account. This is frustrating for individuals that just want to sign up for Google’s other services and view YouTube videos. The author, Devin Coldewey, explains that Google doesn’t explicitly state that a new account leads or links to a Google+ account on the sign-up page. Google+ has been growing rapidly but will this skew their user base?  [via techcrunch.com]

The board of directors have agreed upon a set of core principles for protecting privacy across all marketing and communications channels. WOMMA’s Guidance on Privacy are not meant to be required guidelines, but are meant to be best practices.

WOMMA believes that transparency and choice are crucial to establishing and sustaining meaningful connections between brands and consumers.

Read more on WOMMA’s Privacy Guide here: http://www.bulldogreporter.com/dailydog/article/word-mouth-marketing-association-releases-guidance-privacy-womma-encourages-transpa