A few weeks ago I published a post about the fundamentals of social media for businesses.  In this post, I’ll look at a couple examples from the other end of the spectrum-- envelope-pushing innovations in commercial social media.

Sponsored Tweets from Ad.ly
There’s a new ad medium on the block, and it’s called Twitter.  Thanks to a new service called Ad.ly tweets are the newest way to distribute a brand message.  If your business signs up, you’ll work with Ad.ly and its publishers (i.e. Twitter users willing to accept payment to post your ad messages), who will tweet your ad to be read by their followers.  (Here’s the in-depth description of how Ad.ly works.)

Ad.ly is a very new service, just launched in fall 2009, so it has yet to firmly establish itself.  And thus far, the most notorious publishers willing to tweet ads are celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Dr. Drew Pinksy, who have a critical mass of followers.  According to Ad Age*, Kim Kardashian rakes in $10,000 per tweet to her 2.8 million followers. 

But that’s the high end.  If you can’t afford ten grand for a single tweet, maybe someone like actor David Spade with his 381,551 followers is closer to your price range.  Or in the likely case that David Spade doesn’t represent your brand or your target audience, there are plenty more publisher personalities to choose from.

More interesting is that publications like Newsweek and TechCrunch are also part of the service, earning money as they tweet commercial messages for advertisers in between headlines.  Could paid tweets signal a new revenue stream for the struggling print media?

While celebrity participants like Kardashian have garnered the big attention so far, I think Ad.ly can work for smaller players too.  I see it evolving into something like Google AdSense, where anyone can monetize content based on the size of his or her audience.

Facebook Ecommerce with 'Off The Wall'
Ohio-based agency Resource Interactive has developed a way for Facebook users to buy products from etailers without ever leaving Facebook.  The new technology, called Off The Wall, allows etailers on Facebook to post product offers as status updates.  Any user who is friends with or a fan of the etailer will receive the offer in his or her news feed and can purchase the product directly from the news feed page.

Only one brand (The Limited) has used the app so far, but more etailers are expected to launch Facebook ecommerce in the coming months.  With the way brands have flocked to Facebook in search of a closer connection with consumers, it only makes sense for ecommerce to be a part of it.  As long as the user experience is clear and comfortable, I think this product and a host of inevitable imitators will be incredibly successful.

If your brand already offers ecommerce and has a healthy Facebook following, Off The Wall might be an option worth considering.


* News Publishers Start Seeking Money From Twitter Feeds, published on AdAge.com January 5, 2010