Rue La La's "Quick! Buy It." Button Enables Instant, Simple Purchases

In an effort to expedite checkout and prevent shopping cart abandonment, retailers like Amazon have pushed "One Click" purchasing and recently introduced "Amazon PayPhrase". That focus is even more important for time-sensitive e-commerce sites like Rue La La and Gilt Group - where the sale has limited inventory and time... such that a delay between "shopping cart" and "checkout" can lead to expired and empty inventory. To prevent this, Rue La La introduced the "Quick! Buy it." button... and it's terrific. See an item you like? Just click "Quick! Buy it." and it's your's in all of one click. Rue La La takes advantage of the:

- emotion: time sensitivity, buy-it-now, limited inventory; and - customer database: your billing and shipping information are on file - so one click is sufficient The result is instantaneous shopping that is easy and fun - which is what these deal / time-based shopping experiences are predicated on. It's yet another way for Rue La La to take advantage of the time sensitivity that they work so hard to ingrain in shoppers - between the limited inventory and the ticking clock, there is a pressure to purchase now... and the transaction speed (along with the language / branding - Quick!) reinforce the behavior.

Rue La la's "Quick! Buy it." Button

Each item has two options: Quick Buy or Add to Cart

One click - it's that easy

Zynga's 6 Core Values Help Create a Culture of Success

In a recent New York Times article, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus said that all employees need to "be a CEO of something." Its a terrific mantra and speaks to the importance of ownerships, responsibility and incentive structures. It turns out that it - specifically "Be CEO: own outcomes" - is just one of Zynga's six core values. Here is a picture of Zynga's core values, all of which speak to culture (ownership, responsibility, growth, people) and success (innovation, speed, gameplay).

At eBay, each employee was awarded a "core values" badge card that was worn atop the security card... and therefore all the time. It was a simple, constant reminder of company-wide behaviors and themes. Consequently the values were engrained in everyone's head and that's a powerful driver of culture.

Has Your Facebook News Feed Slowed Down? Here's Why...

Have you noticed that your Facebook news feed has come to crawl since the new homepage rolled out? Here's why: in addition to various layout changes, Facebook seems to have altered the Facebook news feed settings for a significant portion of users.

Instead of showcasing updates from your entire network, Facebook has defaulted to showing just 250 friends. It is unclear how those 250 friends are determined - but it is clear, based on my personal usage, that interactions with posts (clicks, likes, comments, etc) have been dramatically affected.

To make sure that you are seeing posts from your entire network, scroll all the way down and click the "Edit Options" button:

You will then get a pop-up that will allow you to increase the "maximum number of friends shown in the live feed" above 250:

Two messages are actively passing through Facebook (just copy and paste into Google or public Facebook search to see!):

HERE'S THE DEAL w/ THE NEW FACEBOOK LIVE FEED: They are blocking all your friends' news feeds except 250 that it chooses. TO UNDO: From HOME page, select MOST RECENT & scroll to the absolute bottom of page, click EDIT OPTIONS. Select NEWS FEED SETTINGS. Reset 250 to 5000 for FB's max friend limit & your feed w...ill work right again! Pass it on!

And

FB is blocking all your friends’ NEWS FEEDS except 250 THEY CHOOSE. TO UNDO BLOCK: Go to your HOME page. Make sure your news feed shows LIVE FEED. Then scroll to the bottom, click “Edit Options”, You will then see your NEWS FEED SETTINGS. Change the 250 to 5000 for Facebook’s friend limit and your feed will work right again. COPY & PASTE THIS & PASS IT ON

7 Reasons Google Buzz Matters

Mind you, this is coming from a someone who does not profess to understand Google Wave (after several attempts)...and from someone who believes that Facebook is the bigger than most give it credit for.

Here are seven unsorted reasons Google Buzz matters:

1. Buzz integrates directly into email.

One of the failings of Wave is that I had to repeated return to see new activity... that's asking too much for a new service with still sporadic usage. The email integration gives a large population (Gmail users of course) immediate and continued access to Buzz - all within a setting that is stickier than any other: email.

2. Buzz is familiar.

Combine email, Google Chat, Facebook status updates, Google Reader, etc... and you have Buzz. A familiar combination of web activities. Wave is too complex - this is simple enough to bridge us from email to Wave (or whatever is next).

3. Email contacts are the original - and perhaps most powerful - social network.

The ability for Buzz to connect you with people you already contact on a daily basis is powerful... it also means new users never are lonely.

4. Content is public. Conversations are defaulted to being public and have their own URLs. In anyone else's hands, this is not revolutionary. But Google has worked hard to integrate blogs and Twitter into search results... it is a powerful way to accelerate Buzz and to reward / incent active users with traffic (much like SEO).

5. It is versatile. The ability to pivot conversations through Buzz, GChat and Email is slick, simple and powerful because activities can also pivot between public / private and one:one / one:many.

6. It beats CC'ing The public functionality makes Buzz a powerful tool for group activity and chat. People can jump in and out of threads.

7. ... And it therefore makes sense as a Google Docs Tool There are clear benefits for team usage and it fits within the Google Docs suite of corporate products.

New YouTube / Google AdSense Unit?

I cannot tell if these are:- new YouTube ad-units, or - bizarre / sneaky advertiser units

... but they are appearing more and more across the Google AdSense network. The below screenshots are taken directly from advertisements appearing on my blog:

1. This is what a standard YouTube unit looks like: big play button in the upper right corner and the standard YouTube footer beneath (play, sound, progress bar and "Ads By Google logo").

2. This is an example of a different "YouTube" unit... whether official or not: an image, a smaller Play button that prominently displays "YouTube.com" and text that looks like a text AdSense unit.

3. The unit is fishy for three reasons: A. When clicking "play", it goes to the YouTube URL rather than playing in-line, and B. The unit's size is slightly off - if you highlight through the text, you notice that it scrolls within the unit (see the difference between these two screenshots) C. Google is very particular about showing the "Ads by Google" graphic... which is hidden unless you scroll down

Here are two more examples... suggesting that it is in fact a new unit:

Facebook "Credits Balance" Make Way to New Homepage

My Facebook redesign took effect some time early this morning... and the only big 'surprise' (for lack of a better word) was the prominence of "Facebook Credits" in the new header. Three links (Home, Profile and Account) now sit persistently across the upper right of your Facebook experience. When you click "Account", it reveals traditional account links (ie settings, privacy and help) - but it also includes a link to "Credits Balance". Until now, this was relatively buried on Facebook (you had to peck through advertising or birthday gifts, etc). It is as much of a sign of what is a priority (the Facebook Gift Store) and what is coming (Facebook Payments).

Clicking the "Credits Balance" link takes you to your credits homepage... which will invariably look different once Payments is a bigger part of the experience.

Dockers, Volkswagen and ETrade Integrate Super Bowl Ads with Facebook Campaigns

For many, the Super Bowl is more about advertising than football (though last night's game was far better than the ads). Last night was about integrated ad campaigns: - In real-time, Dockers rain a Facebook premium ad campaign to match their Super Bowl TV spots, "Wear the Pants" - Volkswagen did the same with their VW PunchDub spot - ETrade released "Baby Outtakes" from their successful TV spots... and got thousands of "likes" within hours - Dorritos, one of the largest advertisers, ran their ads from crowd-sourced ads and creatives The days of using the internet to merely gauge ad popularity are over...

We are now in the days of using the internet (and social networks in particular) to engage beyond the thirty-second spot. Facebook, Twitter and other social mediums are enabling fully integrated, social ad units. In a way, it makes the job of the marketer easier as there is flexibility to move beyond the thirty-second constraint (of course, that does require larger, integrated campaigns and therefore more work).

This also shows the power of Facebook as an advertising platform and the role it is playing within big marketers' budgets / mindsets. Examples below:

Dockers "Wear the Pants"

The Facebook ad unit

The Facebook ad with video playing

Dockers Facebook Fan Page

The Dockers website integration

VW PunchDub

ETrade Outtakes

TechCrunch reviewed the Super Bowl ads here and FT.com did here.

SEO: Content is King; Social Media: Context is King

While leading natural search strategy at eBay, we had a motto: Content is King. It wasn't a unique tagline - even CKX, Inc (American Idol, Elvis Presley, etc) stands for "Content is King". While at the Polaris Digital Media Summit in Jackson Hole this past week - several folks (including myself) referred to social media as the "new SEO". When it comes to traffic acquisition and product marketing strategies, Facebook is indeed the new Google - it is top of mind for marketers in much the same way that natural search was a primary focus over the last several years.

And if SEO is driven by content... Social media is driven by context.

Google :: Facebook SEO :: SGO Content :: Context

In fact, context is so critical to social efficacy that it has been billed as SGO: Social Graph Optimization. Meebo founder Seth Sternberg is credited with the term: "Search has been great traffic driver. Now social media drives [traffic] and needs to be optimized." Much of the conversation at the summit was focused on driving traffic through social media and optimizing content across the social graph. The consensus was that context drives relevancy... and thus virality... and thus efficacy. Consider social sites like Quora and Aardvark as examples: using Facebook Connect and algorithms, questions are delivered contextually based upon your social graph, knowledge and activity.

And as the world of friends / followers, status updates and 'check-ins' grows - context helps stand out among the noise and therefore alleviate users from being overwhelmed.

This is further complicated by Facebook's "News Feed" - which itself is akin to Google's black-box search algorithm. We have a general sense for how it works and what Facebook values: activity (comments, likes, shares) results in content being "news worthy". As it has been described by Alex Shultz before, it is about "interestingness squared":

- content that is considered "interesting" is rewarded (highlighted in newsfeed with better chance to becoming viral) - and content that is uninteresting (ie irrelevant) is punished (relegated to "live feed") and consequently has difficulty gaining visibility

As you think through social media and optimization, think through how it relates to your brand and product experience... and how the outputted content relates specifically to users (both the publishers and consumers). The more relevant and closed that loop is, the more effective the experience will be and the more likely your users are to engage / share.