‘Surf and Win’ launches today
Stretching the idea that your average person is gunning for an endorsement deal from their products and services - Shortbord launches today!
It has good integration with Twitter and Facebook (but who doesn’t?) but I’m not sure that the people who do these kinds of things for money are really the right people to represent brands. How many times would you read the status updates of someone who was more interested in getting paid for their endorsement than connecting with you? For how long would they remain your friend?
For Cause Marketing, I think it has potential, simply because the updates are less annoying and interruptive, but Brands should remember that in order to get good ‘friends’ online you have to _act_ like a good friend.
via Thrillist
Thanks for writing about us - much appreciated. One quick point of clarification: Shortbord’s endorsement value is not the status update that you push to Facebook/Twitter, but rather the Shortbord Affinity Badge that lets you promote things that are interesting without interrupting your message. You can implement blogs or websites to display Shortbord Affinity Badges (and coming soon – Facebook, if they let us!), and based on the exposure you provide through your endorsement, get targeted by brands with paid offers. It’s a new (visual) way for celebs, bloggers, brand enthusiasts, supporters of non-profits and cause marketers to build awareness without changing their message.
If you want to get in the network early and help us get off the ground, please implement your blog with shortbord Connect code: http://www.shortbord.com/apis
May 11th, 2010 at 4:40 pmThanks for reading!
Don’t get me wrong - I don’t have an issue with the technology - and I do see potential for it to be a cool idea for cause marketing specifically - but I guess I see the direction of display of the badge as a placeholder for an ad. Add to that - I’m a big believer in context. There are the right contexts to have your messages seen and there are other places. With a badge that represents authority next to my content, and pushed to my social net - who’s to say I’m not a spokesman? What if a hater decides to get the badge for a Brand he wants to destroy?
What’s cool to me about digital today is that normal average people are really talking about brands with their newfound publishing power. And what I REALLY like to do is find ways for the Brand participate in discussions (rather than just sponsor them), but doing so in a credible manner.
I guess at the root of it I like the idea of independant bloggers and social media fanatics so that people can rest assured that their opinion is real.
I will say that it’s a pretty cool way to have Google AdSense without Google involved.
May 12th, 2010 at 2:50 pm