Social Media Update – March 9, 2011

Good morning. Who needs to run to the store to rent a movie when you’ll soon be able to rent directly from Facebook? Warner Brothers is teaming up with Facebook to make movies available for rent on the social networking site. Facebook is swiftly becoming the go to destination for entertainment and commerce. For those of you who urn for Mayorships, Foursquare 3.0 was released yesterday with a slew of new features and a whole new UX. On top of the new user features the new merchant features include options like swarm promos, friend specials, flash deals and more. Tweets and mac and cheese seem to go together, and I’m not really sure why. Kraft, however didn’t seem to care why when they took advantage of the trending topic on Twitter by wrapping a really fun promotion around it. Whether Kraft paid for the trending topic is a mystery, but the ability to play a game of digital Jinx with other folks tweeting about mac and cheese is pretty cool. Ever thought about going back to school to learn about social media? Well big brands are partnering with universities to tap into the younger, more connected demographic. The classes are doing everything from blogging, tweeting and generating content around launches or products. The students gain the experience, the universities receive funding and products, and the brands get real time, gen y content. Enjoy.

I. Warner Bros. To Offer Movie Rentals On Facebook, cbsatlanta.com, March 8, 2011
II. Foursquare 3.0 Has Arrived: Here’s What’s New, mashable.com, March 8, 2011
III. Kraft Treats for Tweets About Mac & Cheese, adage.com, March 8, 2011
IV. Here, Tweeting Is a Class Requirement, wsj.com, March 9, 2011

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I. Warner Bros. To Offer Movie Rentals On Facebook, cbsatlanta.com, March 8, 2011
http://www.cbsatlanta.com/entertainment/27119680/detail.html
Movie rentals are coming to Facebook. Warner Bros. says it is testing a service that will offer select movies for purchase or rental through the public pages of these movies on the world’s largest online social network.
Starting Tuesday, Facebook users who visit the official page of “Batman: The Dark Knight” can click a “watch” icon and pay 30 Facebook credits, or $3, to watch the movie. The movie is streamed through a Facebook application.

II. Foursquare 3.0 Has Arrived: Here’s What’s New, mashable.com, March 8, 2011
http://mashable.com/2011/03/08/foursquare-3/
Foursquare, the location-based mobile game startup that pioneered the checkin, will introduce version 3.0 Tuesday evening. The new release turns on the power of every checkin accumulated over the course of its two-year history and transforms that data into recommendations. “Our theme internally has always been that every checkin counts,” says co-founder and CEO Dennis Crowley, who speaks of version 3.0 as the materialization of that philosophy.

III. Kraft Treats for Tweets About Mac & Cheese, adage.com, March 8, 2011
http://adage.com/article/news/kraft-treats-tweets-mac-cheese/149298/
How bout some cheese with that tweet? Apparently quite a few people on Twitter are talking about mac and cheese, so much so that the favored dish has become a trending topic. (Why might be the question.) But Kraft Foods, ever the opportunist, has seized on the conversation to push its Macaroni & Cheese brand by getting fans to play an ole fashioned game of jinx.
The promotion works like this, according to a statement to Ad Age by the food giant: “When two people Tweet about mac & cheese, we send both of them a link calling their Mac & Jinx and provide a link. The first one to call “Jinx” by clicking the link and giving us their address wins free product from Kraft Macaroni & Cheese. The package arrives to the winner’s home within 7-10 days, and when they open it they’re in for another treat: an official Mac & Jinx T-shirt.”

IV. Here, Tweeting Is a Class Requirement, wsj.com, March 9, 2011
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704476604576158643370380186.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsForth
Big consumer-products companies are going back to school. Businesses including Sprint Nextel Corp., Levi Strauss & Co. and Mattel Inc. are sponsoring college classes and graduate-level research to get help with their online marketing from the young and hyperconnected. Sprint, for example, supplies a class at Boston’s Emerson College with smartphones and unlimited service in exchange for students working gratis on the company’s local Internet push. Universities, in some cases, receive funding or proprietary consumer data from companies for their research. Students get experience they can display on their résumés, and add lively classes to the usual mix of lectures and written exams.