BandwidthCamp

Stephen Davies at PRBlogger.com has a great piece about using social media to achieve your end goal. Creativity and having that great big idea is important. Guy kawasaki has a great ditty about DIY PR. The two articles reflect the future of our always-on and connected cultural. I’ve been meaning to write a piece about twitter all week.. but I think I need more time with it. The potential is huge, but can I tap into it?

Late Thursday night Facebook launched its new platform initiative (read about it on TechCrunch). The platform allows third-party developers to create pieces of software (widgets) that can be added to any Facebook users profile. So far we’ve everything from music, video, audio, business, education, gaming and dating widgets. Redbull is the first brand to enter and use this new platform. When a user adds a widget to their profile, it displays what music they like or in the case of Redbull, how good they are at the game. It also enters their news feed and lets everyone know they added it, which is a mini-viral effect.
As a side note, iLike is the hottest widget right now and Games by Bunchball is second with 41,551 users. The platform also allows the developers to display advertising and find unique ways to monetize their widget and keep 100% of the revenue. Facebook isn’t asking for a dime, which is an interesting move as it reminds me of how Google first got into the advertising business by giving away all the profits to the publishers.It’s the gaming aspect of this platform that got me thinking.

What if a game developer or consumer product company found a way to monetize and use the widget to make a game that integrated into the platforms flawlessly. Games is currently doing this with a first move advantage, the widget isn’t perfect but with over 40,000 users, it’s a starting point. They are currently just offering social online multi-player games like cards and poker. However, I think we are beginning to barely scratch the surface. So my question is this: Could the future of gaming be part of Facebook’s Platforms? It has everything a game needs to be successful; marketing, a user base and people who are inherently social with each other.

[update] I’ve added both widgets to my Facebook. I’m going to challenge some of my friends and see how they play out.

IMediaConnection talks with vice president of operations and business intelligence, John Broady from CNET Networks Entertainment. The conversation revolves around in-game marketing as well as how it’s evolved over the years and how it’s making more sense if you want to reach a targeted marketing. Check out the conversation.

The advantage to in-game marketing is that it offers marketers three great ways to reach consumers:

1. An innocuous advertisement in the form of a billboard or kiosk (much like the ads you see behind home plate on televised baseball games).
2. A key product placement that actually moves the story forward. Afterall, your race car driver has to drive a car… it might as well be the latest, greatest Chevrolet!
3. A real-time opportunity to take an action based on something that’s just happened in the game. For instance, a player could choose to purchase a solution to solve a particularly difficult puzzle, or alternatively to buy those jeans that the main character is wearing.

The above quote, along with;

I hope marketers out there will see that there’s nothing to be scared of here. Only opportunity.

really starts to sum up what gaming can do for your marketing plan. The landscape has changed over the last 20 years and we’ve barley begone to scratch the surface of what is possible. I remember with the America army made America’s Army to help with recruitment and as funny as that sounded at the time, it actually worked in bring their enrollment numbers up. They even went as far as making a sequel. I’ve been thinking about Twitter a lot lately and how indirectly it’s related to in-game marketing. That’s another post for another day.

Dave Karraker, director of Sony Computer Entertainment America’s corporate communications sad down with GamePro and had a nice little chat. They talked about his job, Sony PR and the PlayStation 3. Dave you’ve a tough job and I sincerely wish you good luck.

Mitch Joel over at Twist Image and the Six Pixels of Separation podcast brings up the Nintendo Wii. He admits to not being a gamer, but seeing the power of what the consoles can be in the future as a media hub. He found the Wii a powerful and changing experience as he turned it on and had it find his WiFi connection. Then to have the Wii grab images and let him browse the web, use Google reader and do things beyond gaming. This showed him how video game consoles are going to be a game changer. He feels marketers need to know about the different consoles and learn how people are using them beyond in-game advertising. If you don’t want to listen to his whole podcast, then listen at the 29 minute mark as that’s when he brings up the Nintendo Wii.