Items of Note from Around the Web
FACEBOOK KETCHUP, NOT CATCH-UP
Condiment superpower Heinz planned to launch a new tomato ketchup flavor in the U.K., balsamic vinegar. Rather than hand out samples on street corners, it opened a pop-up store in Facebook and offered fans who “liked” the page the chance to buy one of 3,000 bottles for $2.40, including shipping. With 130 Facebook friends per user, that should mean 390,000 pre-trialed users by the time Heinz rolls a million bottles into U.K. supermarkets.
NOCTURNAL PROMOTION To push February’s “Clean Sheet Week” and the sleep benefits of sweet-smelling bedding, P&G fabric softener brand Downy had comic Mike Birbiglia spend a full week living, eating, sleeping and posting from a window in the New York flagship of retailer Macy’s. Birbiglia, who jokes about his sleepwalking in his act, spent the week under glass learning yoga, inviting spectators to breakfast, and talking with Downy scientists. His main question: “Why not pizza-scented softener?”
The large-scale collection, analysis and storage of personal information is becoming more central to the Internet economy. These activities help make the online economy more efficient and companies more responsive to their customers’ needs. Yet these same practices also give rise to growing unease among consumers, who are unsure about how data about their activities and transactions are collected, used, and stored.… A recent study found that 36 of the 50 most-visited websites state in their privacy policies that they allow third-party tracking. In other words, to fully understand the privacy implications of using a particular site, individuals will often have to begin by considering the privacy policies of many other entities that could gain access to data about them.
— LAWRENCE STRICKLING, Asst. Commerce Secretary, speaking at a U.S. Senate Subcommittee hearing on online privacy in March
The decade of games is starting now because cultural and technological shifts have led us to a perfect convergence of reach, relevance and demand. We’re able to reach people anywhere at any time, thanks to the powerful mobile devices that now travel everywhere we go. Facebook’s Open Graph enables us to provide relevance to anyone with instant access to the social graph of connections. And there’s the demand. Traditional forms of entertainment are in a rapid decline. The demand for entertainment hasn’t decreased, it’s just shifted to a more interactive, pervasive form of entertainment. It’s shifting to games.
— SETH PRIEBATSCH, chief ninja of challenge-based social network SCVNGR and deal-based spinoff Level Up. Priebatsch delivered a keynote address at the South By Southwest conference in Austin, TX, in March.
