Previous backers Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital and a handful of angel investors also participated in the round.

Previous individuals who invested in the online pinboard company include PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, Eventbrite founder Kevin Hartz, Bebo founder Michael Birch, Silicon Valley super angel Ron Conway and Milo founder Jack Abraham.

In a statement, Pinterest founder and CEO said:

“Our goal is to help people discover things they love, by connecting people through their shared interests. Bringing Rakuten on board gives us an amazing opportunity to move a step closer to this goal.”

Pinterest says the additional capital will enable it to ‘improve its service’ and expand globally. The company stresses that the Rakuten investment is the start of a strategic partnership that will help it expand not only in Japan but also the 17 other markets Rakuten operates in.

Before this round, Pinterest has raised a total of $37.5 million, so this is obviously a big step up for the Palo Alto, California-based company.

Our source says the Rakuten investment values Pinterest at slightly over $1 billion; the Wall Street Journal pegs it at $1.5 billion. Pinterest nor the investors wanted to disclose the details on the company’s current valuation details publicly, however.

Rakuten continues to make a lot of noise with investments and acquisitions happening all over the world. In the recent past, they’ve snapped up companies like Buy.com, Play.com, Kobo, PriceMinister, Ikeda and Tradoria, and invested in sites like AHAlife.com and Russia’s OZON.

Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani said:

“While some may see e-commerce as a straightforward vending machine-like experience, we believe it is a living process where both retailers and consumers can communicate, discover, and curate to make the experience more entertaining.

We see tremendous synergies between Pinterest’s vision and Rakuten’s model for e-commerce. Rakuten looks forward to introducing Pinterest to the Japanese market as well as other markets around the world.”

From Drew Olanoff’s earlier post:

“Pinterest has huge potential for ecommerce firms, as I recently explained when I wrote that Amazon should seriously consider buying the service, and the implication of the as-yet-unidentified new source of money could be a huge one.

The site’s popularity has surged over the last year, with statistics showing that its traffic grew by more than 6,000 percent over the final six months of 2011, turning it into a service to rival Facebook, Twitter and other established social networks.

There are numerous examples which show that Pinterest is becoming a key driver of traffic across the Web. We’ve seen and heard reports that Pinterest gives more traffic than Twitter and serves more referrals than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined, yet it is not rivaling the competition in the traditional sense as other services are benefiting from it directly.

A report suggested that Facebook, Google and YouTube — which are very much the Internet’s key players — are the ones that are gaining the most from the service, despite it being a threat to their respective strongholds.

Our own Brad McCarty recently penned his thoughts on why Pinterest is growing so quickly.”

Article source: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/05/17/pinterest-confirms-100-million-capital-injection-from-rakuten-previous-backers/

Previous backers Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital and a handful of angel investors also participated in the round.

Previous individuals who invested in the online pinboard company include PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, Eventbrite founder Kevin Hartz, Bebo founder Michael Birch, Silicon Valley super angel Ron Conway and Milo founder Jack Abraham.

In a statement, Pinterest founder and CEO said:

“Our goal is to help people discover things they love, by connecting people through their shared interests. Bringing Rakuten on board gives us an amazing opportunity to move a step closer to this goal.”

Pinterest says the additional capital will enable it to ‘improve its service’ and expand globally. The company stresses that the Rakuten investment is the start of a strategic partnership that will help it expand not only in Japan but also the 17 other markets Rakuten operates in.

Before this round, Pinterest has raised a total of $37.5 million, so this is obviously a big step up for the Palo Alto, California-based company.

Our source says the Rakuten investment values Pinterest at slightly over $1 billion; the Wall Street Journal pegs it at $1.5 billion. Pinterest nor the investors wanted to disclose the details on the company’s current valuation details publicly, however.

Rakuten continues to make a lot of noise with investments and acquisitions happening all over the world. In the recent past, they’ve snapped up companies like Buy.com, Play.com, Kobo, PriceMinister, Ikeda and Tradoria, and invested in sites like AHAlife.com and Russia’s OZON.

Rakuten CEO Hiroshi Mikitani said:

“While some may see e-commerce as a straightforward vending machine-like experience, we believe it is a living process where both retailers and consumers can communicate, discover, and curate to make the experience more entertaining.

We see tremendous synergies between Pinterest’s vision and Rakuten’s model for e-commerce. Rakuten looks forward to introducing Pinterest to the Japanese market as well as other markets around the world.”

From Drew Olanoff’s earlier post:

“Pinterest has huge potential for ecommerce firms, as I recently explained when I wrote that Amazon should seriously consider buying the service, and the implication of the as-yet-unidentified new source of money could be a huge one.

The site’s popularity has surged over the last year, with statistics showing that its traffic grew by more than 6,000 percent over the final six months of 2011, turning it into a service to rival Facebook, Twitter and other established social networks.

There are numerous examples which show that Pinterest is becoming a key driver of traffic across the Web. We’ve seen and heard reports that Pinterest gives more traffic than Twitter and serves more referrals than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn combined, yet it is not rivaling the competition in the traditional sense as other services are benefiting from it directly.

A report suggested that Facebook, Google and YouTube — which are very much the Internet’s key players — are the ones that are gaining the most from the service, despite it being a threat to their respective strongholds.

Our own Brad McCarty recently penned his thoughts on why Pinterest is growing so quickly.”

Article source: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/05/17/pinterest-confirms-100-million-capital-injection-from-rakuten-previous-backers/

But, as impressive as the numbers may be, total users is not the only measure of success for a social network. While Facebook and Twitter may rule the roost when it comes to total users, a few surprising names pop up when you look at the equally important statistics relating to user engagement.

In layman’s terms, user engagement refers to how effective a site is at keeping users interested once they sign on. A quick scan of comScore reports from March of this year shows that, while they may be the best at attracting new users, sometimes the major players in the social networking game don’t always do a great job of keeping those users interested.

Average Minutes per Visit

Average Minutes per Visit is one of the purest measures of user engagement. A low AMpV number means users are showing up, poking around briefly, and then heading off to the next site that catches their interest. Obviously, a user signing off as quickly as they sign on is not something most sites hope for. The following chart reveals a bit of a surprise when it comes to Average Minutes per Visit. Facebook, the king of all things social networking, can only claim to be the third best in this area. Tumblr takes the top spot in this measure, with social discovery site Tagged taking home the silver in second place.

Household names like Linkedin, Twitter and MySpace fall way below, not even cracking the top ten.

Average Monthly Visits per Visitor

Average Monthly Visits per Visitor is an effective measure of how much loyalty a site garners from their users. The sites that rank high here don’t just excel at providing an experience that makes users want to return time and time again. Facebook is back on top here, but unlike other categories where they crush other social networks, the gap is narrower in this case.

At 36 monthly visits per visitor, Facebook is the only site that can claim a number that amounts to multiple visits per day. Tagged clocks in at 18 visits, a little better than every other day on average. Meet Me Media and Tumblr tie for 3^rd at 11 and the rest fall off quickly from there.

Total Minutes

Another key engagement metric is total minutes. Facebook is the clear winner here, with Tumblr and new superstar Pinterest also racking up impressive numbers.

While it’s no surprise that a site that can claim over 500 million users would dominate the total minutes metric, things get a lot more interesting in the middle of the pack, where household names like Twitter and LinkedIn fare not much better than sites like MeetMe and Tagged.

While Facebook and Twitter continue to dominate the discussion about what social networking site can boast the most users, as the user engagement numbers show, a huge audience doesn’t always equate to a richer experience for the individual user.

Article source: http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/05/17/sure-facebook-has-900-million-users-but-its-engagement-is-smoked-by-these-other-sites/

So far, Twitter is available in 28 languages, will soon be available in six more, and is already taking requests for its next batch here.

From Twitter:

Since we launched our Translation Center last year, we’ve received thousands of language requests. Currently the most requested languages are Catalan, Afrikaans, Ukrainian, Greek, Czech and Basque. Today we’re excited to announce that we’re opening up the Twitter Translation Center for those six languages.

Today, Twitter is available in 28 languages, thanks in large part to our community of nearly half a million translators around the world. We’re grateful for the work you’ve done thus far, and for the enthusiasm we’ve seen about continuing to add new languages. While this batch represents the most requested languages, we know there are still many more to tackle. To request your language, please submit your interest to translate athttp://translate.twttr.com/lang_request.

If you speak Catalan, Afrikaans, Ukrainian, Greek, Czech, or Basque and would like to join our efforts to make Twitter available to users in one of those languages, please visit the Translation Center.

Just opened up our Translation Center to 6 new languages! We’re 6 steps closer to reaching every person on the planet. translate.twttr.com/cms/node/1810

— Twitter Int’l (@international) May 16, 2012

Only back in January, TNW reported that Twitter had as many as 400,000 volunteer translators, having just launched Swedish support at that time.

Overall, this push for international accessibility continues to grow Twitter’s potential reach and thus its value as a company. Of course, it also provides new outlets for social media users all over the world.

Article source: http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/05/16/twitter-opens-up-its-translation-center-for-6-new-languages-including-greek-and-czech/

So far, Twitter is available in 28 languages, will soon be available in six more, and is already taking requests for its next batch here.

From Twitter:

Since we launched our Translation Center last year, we’ve received thousands of language requests. Currently the most requested languages are Catalan, Afrikaans, Ukrainian, Greek, Czech and Basque. Today we’re excited to announce that we’re opening up the Twitter Translation Center for those six languages.

Today, Twitter is available in 28 languages, thanks in large part to our community of nearly half a million translators around the world. We’re grateful for the work you’ve done thus far, and for the enthusiasm we’ve seen about continuing to add new languages. While this batch represents the most requested languages, we know there are still many more to tackle. To request your language, please submit your interest to translate athttp://translate.twttr.com/lang_request.

If you speak Catalan, Afrikaans, Ukrainian, Greek, Czech, or Basque and would like to join our efforts to make Twitter available to users in one of those languages, please visit the Translation Center.

Just opened up our Translation Center to 6 new languages! We’re 6 steps closer to reaching every person on the planet. translate.twttr.com/cms/node/1810

— Twitter Int’l (@international) May 16, 2012

Only back in January, TNW reported that Twitter had as many as 400,000 volunteer translators, having just launched Swedish support at that time.

Overall, this push for international accessibility continues to grow Twitter’s potential reach and thus its value as a company. Of course, it also provides new outlets for social media users all over the world.

Article source: http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/05/16/twitter-opens-up-its-translation-center-for-6-new-languages-including-greek-and-czech/

So far, Twitter is available in 28 languages, will soon be available in six more, and is already taking requests for its next batch here.

From Twitter:

Since we launched our Translation Center last year, we’ve received thousands of language requests. Currently the most requested languages are Catalan, Afrikaans, Ukrainian, Greek, Czech and Basque. Today we’re excited to announce that we’re opening up the Twitter Translation Center for those six languages.

Today, Twitter is available in 28 languages, thanks in large part to our community of nearly half a million translators around the world. We’re grateful for the work you’ve done thus far, and for the enthusiasm we’ve seen about continuing to add new languages. While this batch represents the most requested languages, we know there are still many more to tackle. To request your language, please submit your interest to translate athttp://translate.twttr.com/lang_request.

If you speak Catalan, Afrikaans, Ukrainian, Greek, Czech, or Basque and would like to join our efforts to make Twitter available to users in one of those languages, please visit the Translation Center.

Just opened up our Translation Center to 6 new languages! We’re 6 steps closer to reaching every person on the planet. translate.twttr.com/cms/node/1810

— Twitter Int’l (@international) May 16, 2012

Only back in January, TNW reported that Twitter had as many as 400,000 volunteer translators, having just launched Swedish support at that time.

Overall, this push for international accessibility continues to grow Twitter’s potential reach and thus its value as a company. Of course, it also provides new outlets for social media users all over the world.

Article source: http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/05/16/twitter-opens-up-its-translation-center-for-6-new-languages-including-greek-and-czech/

The SDK is currently available for iOS and will be available for Android soon. According to the announcement, the new SDK is a “fast and easy way to implement reliable credit card capturing into mobile apps,” and there is no need for extra hardware.

Currently, the following cards can be used with Netswipe Mobile: VISA, Mastercard, American Express, JCB, Diners Club, Maestro. Beyond the $5 million “giveaway,” standard pricing runs at 0.10 US$/scan.

From Daniel Mattes, Founder and CEO of Jumio Inc.:

Have you ever tried typing in credit card details on a mobile phone? Our SDK is a fast and easy way to implement reliable credit card capturing into mobile apps. Users don’t have to type in their card details anymore, they just quickly scan their card.

In case you haven’t stayed up to date on Jumio, the company was founded in 2010 by Daniel Mattes, employs ~50 people and has a total funding of $35.4 million to date. You can learn more about the new SDK via the links below:

➤ Netswipe Mobile SDK  Implementation Guide

Article source: http://thenextweb.com/dd/2012/05/16/jumio-opens-netswipe-mobile-sdk-gives-away-5m-worth-of-scanning-fees-to-startups/

The SDK is currently available for iOS and will be available for Android soon. According to the announcement, the new SDK is a “fast and easy way to implement reliable credit card capturing into mobile apps,” and there is no need for extra hardware.

Currently, the following cards can be used with Netswipe Mobile: VISA, Mastercard, American Express, JCB, Diners Club, Maestro. Beyond the $5 million “giveaway,” standard pricing runs at 0.10 US$/scan.

From Daniel Mattes, Founder and CEO of Jumio Inc.:

Have you ever tried typing in credit card details on a mobile phone? Our SDK is a fast and easy way to implement reliable credit card capturing into mobile apps. Users don’t have to type in their card details anymore, they just quickly scan their card.

In case you haven’t stayed up to date on Jumio, the company was founded in 2010 by Daniel Mattes, employs ~50 people and has a total funding of $35.4 million to date. You can learn more about the new SDK via the links below:

➤ Netswipe Mobile SDK  Implementation Guide

Article source: http://thenextweb.com/dd/2012/05/16/jumio-opens-netswipe-mobile-sdk-gives-away-5m-worth-of-scanning-fees-to-startups/

The SDK is currently available for iOS and will be available for Android soon. According to the announcement, the new SDK is a “fast and easy way to implement reliable credit card capturing into mobile apps,” and there is no need for extra hardware.

Currently, the following cards can be used with Netswipe Mobile: VISA, Mastercard, American Express, JCB, Diners Club, Maestro. Beyond the $5 million “giveaway,” standard pricing runs at 0.10 US$/scan.

From Daniel Mattes, Founder and CEO of Jumio Inc.:

Have you ever tried typing in credit card details on a mobile phone? Our SDK is a fast and easy way to implement reliable credit card capturing into mobile apps. Users don’t have to type in their card details anymore, they just quickly scan their card.

In case you haven’t stayed up to date on Jumio, the company was founded in 2010 by Daniel Mattes, employs ~50 people and has a total funding of $35.4 million to date. You can learn more about the new SDK via the links below:

➤ Netswipe Mobile SDK  Implementation Guide

Article source: http://thenextweb.com/dd/2012/05/16/jumio-opens-netswipe-mobile-sdk-gives-away-5m-worth-of-scanning-fees-to-startups/

We caught up with Taghreedat co-founder Mina Takla to find out more about the project.

Speaking to The Next Web, he told us that Arabic is one of the first three languages that Storify will be translated into.

Taghreedat, which we first saw last month, taking a look at the organization’s initiative to compile a ‘Web 2.0′ dictionary in Arabic, has been firmly focused on producing Arabic online content; translating Wikipedia articles, encouraging native speakers to take to Twitter in their mother tongue and was also involved in the translation of Twitter’s Arabic interface.

With over 2,500 volunteers, and the support of twofour54, an Abu Dhabi based investment group, Taghreedat’s latest initiative is all about making Storify accessible to Arabic speakers.

Takla told us how it all came together:

“Moving forward and building upon the experience it had in building and motivating the Arabic community, Taghreedat reached out to San Francisco-based Storify to translate its interface into Arabic in April. Taghreedat’s interest in Storify stemmed from the online publishing and archiving power that Storify has and the ability of users to save and publish social media content via the site.”

Storify migrated all of its strings to an open source system, giving the Taghreedat volunteer community the chance to translate it all into Arabic – including Storify’s buttons, notifications, and all website sections.

Takla said that Storify welcomed the project. “It’s expected to boost adoption and usage of Storify by Arab users worldwide,” he said.

Taghreedat will also be linking the Storify project directly to one of its original projects, with all translated items ported to its tech dictionary.

This move may, however, come as a blow to Yahki, a Cairo-based alternative to Storify, whose native Arabic interface was one of the its main selling points when we took a look at last October.

A similar attempt to bring an Arabized version of Twitter to an Arabic-speaking audience came to an end last year, before Twitter even introduced its own Arabic interface. Storify’s move to translate its own interface may prove to make it an even bigger threat to Yahki’s existence.

Within 15 hours of the announcement, over 400 translators had already translated 330 strings, with the majority of volunteers coming from Saudi Arabia, closely followed by the UAE and Egypt. Volunteers from Qatar, Jordan, Libya, Sudan, France, the UK, US, Algeria, Tunisia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine are also involved in the project, which is expected to be finished by mid-June.

Arabic is one of the fastest growing languages on the Web, as the Middle East races to catch up with its global counterparts, on Twitter, Wikipedia, and more. With this latest project, a little bit of that growth is bound to go Storify’s way.

Article source: http://thenextweb.com/me/2012/05/16/storify-working-with-middle-eastern-initiative-taghreedat-to-translate-the-site-into-arabic/

We caught up with Taghreedat co-founder Mina Takla to find out more about the project.

Speaking to The Next Web, he told us that Arabic is one of the first three languages that Storify will be translated into.

Taghreedat, which we first saw last month, taking a look at the organization’s initiative to compile a ‘Web 2.0′ dictionary in Arabic, has been firmly focused on producing Arabic online content; translating Wikipedia articles, encouraging native speakers to take to Twitter in their mother tongue and was also involved in the translation of Twitter’s Arabic interface.

With over 2,500 volunteers, and the support of twofour54, an Abu Dhabi based investment group, Taghreedat’s latest initiative is all about making Storify accessible to Arabic speakers.

Takla told us how it all came together:

“Moving forward and building upon the experience it had in building and motivating the Arabic community, Taghreedat reached out to San Francisco-based Storify to translate its interface into Arabic in April. Taghreedat’s interest in Storify stemmed from the online publishing and archiving power that Storify has and the ability of users to save and publish social media content via the site.”

Storify migrated all of its strings to an open source system, giving the Taghreedat volunteer community the chance to translate it all into Arabic – including Storify’s buttons, notifications, and all website sections.

Takla said that Storify welcomed the project. “It’s expected to boost adoption and usage of Storify by Arab users worldwide,” he said.

Taghreedat will also be linking the Storify project directly to one of its original projects, with all translated items ported to its tech dictionary.

This move may, however, come as a blow to Yahki, a Cairo-based alternative to Storify, whose native Arabic interface was one of the its main selling points when we took a look at last October.

A similar attempt to bring an Arabized version of Twitter to an Arabic-speaking audience came to an end last year, before Twitter even introduced its own Arabic interface. Storify’s move to translate its own interface may prove to make it an even bigger threat to Yahki’s existence.

Within 15 hours of the announcement, over 400 translators had already translated 330 strings, with the majority of volunteers coming from Saudi Arabia, closely followed by the UAE and Egypt. Volunteers from Qatar, Jordan, Libya, Sudan, France, the UK, US, Algeria, Tunisia, Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria and Palestine are also involved in the project, which is expected to be finished by mid-June.

Arabic is one of the fastest growing languages on the Web, as the Middle East races to catch up with its global counterparts, on Twitter, Wikipedia, and more. With this latest project, a little bit of that growth is bound to go Storify’s way.

Article source: http://thenextweb.com/me/2012/05/16/storify-working-with-middle-eastern-initiative-taghreedat-to-translate-the-site-into-arabic/

No matter what Mad Men would have you believe, advertising and marketing are far from exact sciences. There are trends, there are some truths, but the buying public is largely fickle. I’ve spent quite a few years of my life working with companies to produce advertising that is effective and if there’s anything that I’ve learned, it’s a simple truth – ads don’t matter; campaigns do.

Part of the problem at hand is a lack of realistic expectations. Brands will, quite often, think that putting a display ad on a website is going to be the singular factor between a purchase and a pass. It’s a foolish move, at best. At its worst, a move like this is akin to lighting your cash on fire.

What then is the underlying logic that supports a successful use of Facebook advertising? It actually has roots in a number of factors, so let’s take a few minutes to talk about each of them:

TOMA

Jell-O, Kleenex, Coke…we know that these are brand names for gelatin deserts, facial tissues and a carbonated drink respectively, but the brands have become so ingrained into our culture that we interchange them with the products themselves. The method by which this happens is called top-of-mind awareness. It’s your brain’s Pavlovian response and it doesn’t come cheap or easy.

There’s another, more recent, example as well. How many times have you heard “normals” referring to an Android device as a Droid? But Droid is nothing more than a brand name of a family of Android OS-based handsets from Motorla Mobility. It was the company’s massive amount of marketing that helped to raise the brand to the top of consumers’ minds, so that when they were talking about an Android phone, Droid was often the word that came out of their mouths.

If repetition is a valid tool by which we learn, the same can be said for displaying your brand repeatedly to a consumer. The hope is that, when someone thinks about buying a new car, they first consider the brand that they’ve been seeing time and time again.

The Rule of 7

Much has been written about the mythical “rule of 7″ in relation to advertising. It’s one of those truths that I talked about earlier. Essentially it is a method of advertising which understands that a consumer needs to see a brand (on average) between 5 and 7 times before choosing to make a purchase.

The behaviors that drive the rule of 7 are pretty simple. Seeing a brand time and again helps to build trust in a name, it keeps your brand in place for when the consumer does need your product and the repetition helps to filter through noise. If an ad appears once, you’re likely to not notice it. If it’s on your screen at every turn, it will eventually garner your attention.

Social Investment

There’s an argument by well-respected marketer Roy Williams that traditional retailers and service companies shouldn’t invest too much time in social. He’s not saying that social doesn’t work, but he does make the argument that it doesn’t work as well as other forms of advertising.

What Williams doesn’t approach, however, is exactly why companies such as Ford (GM’s direct competitor in the US and abroad) are seeing great response from their social campaigns. It’s a matter of managing expectations, and using social as part of a greater plan. Nobody is going to see a car ad a single time on a website and then rush out to buy the car. That’s foolish thinking.

It’s all about the execution. Our Facebook ads are effective when strategically combined with engaging content innovation.

— Ford Motor Company (@Ford) May 15, 2012

But what if you provide value to potential customers with your content, be that direct provision or through sponsored conversations? What if people become actively engaged in what your brand is doing simply because what you’re doing is worth their time? This is where the social investment comes into play.

If it’s foolish to believe that throwing an ad on a website will be the one thing that will lead to sales, it’s equally foolish to think that you shouldn’t advertise online at all. While display ads, content series and the like aren’t the right answer for every company, they are powerful tools for many companies in the right hands.

The Path of Success

To wrap it up, I’ll simply say this – No, buying a display ad isn’t going to convert and make you an overnight success. Having a great product, engaging with potential (and current) customers via social channels and giving them a reason to engage with you is the path that must be walked.

It’s probably short-sighted of GM to pull its advertising from Facebook. The problem lies in the fact of an ad’s efficacy. Should GM pull the ads that it has been running? Absolutely. They’re not producing. But they should be replaced with ads that help to further a campaign, to build TOMA, to cut through the noise and to make certain that buyers think GM when they think of a new car or truck. It’s a bit more art than science, but for those brands who are willing to take the plunge, it’s a worthy investment of time and money.

Article source: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/05/16/facebook-general-motors-and-the-caveats-of-online-advertising/

No matter what Mad Men would have you believe, advertising and marketing are far from exact sciences. There are trends, there are some truths, but the buying public is largely fickle. I’ve spent quite a few years of my life working with companies to produce advertising that is effective and if there’s anything that I’ve learned, it’s a simple truth – ads don’t matter; campaigns do.

Part of the problem at hand is a lack of realistic expectations. Brands will, quite often, think that putting a display ad on a website is going to be the singular factor between a purchase and a pass. It’s a foolish move, at best. At its worst, a move like this is akin to lighting your cash on fire.

What then is the underlying logic that supports a successful use of Facebook advertising? It actually has roots in a number of factors, so let’s take a few minutes to talk about each of them:

TOMA

Jell-O, Kleenex, Coke…we know that these are brand names for gelatin deserts, facial tissues and a carbonated drink respectively, but the brands have become so ingrained into our culture that we interchange them with the products themselves. The method by which this happens is called top-of-mind awareness. It’s your brain’s Pavlovian response and it doesn’t come cheap or easy.

There’s another, more recent, example as well. How many times have you heard “normals” referring to an Android device as a Droid? But Droid is nothing more than a brand name of a family of Android OS-based handsets from Motorla Mobility. It was the company’s massive amount of marketing that helped to raise the brand to the top of consumers’ minds, so that when they were talking about an Android phone, Droid was often the word that came out of their mouths.

If repetition is a valid tool by which we learn, the same can be said for displaying your brand repeatedly to a consumer. The hope is that, when someone thinks about buying a new car, they first consider the brand that they’ve been seeing time and time again.

The Rule of 7

Much has been written about the mythical “rule of 7″ in relation to advertising. It’s one of those truths that I talked about earlier. Essentially it is a method of advertising which understands that a consumer needs to see a brand (on average) between 5 and 7 times before choosing to make a purchase.

The behaviors that drive the rule of 7 are pretty simple. Seeing a brand time and again helps to build trust in a name, it keeps your brand in place for when the consumer does need your product and the repetition helps to filter through noise. If an ad appears once, you’re likely to not notice it. If it’s on your screen at every turn, it will eventually garner your attention.

Social Investment

There’s an argument by well-respected marketer Roy Williams that traditional retailers and service companies shouldn’t invest too much time in social. He’s not saying that social doesn’t work, but he does make the argument that it doesn’t work as well as other forms of advertising.

What Williams doesn’t approach, however, is exactly why companies such as Ford (GM’s direct competitor in the US and abroad) are seeing great response from their social campaigns. It’s a matter of managing expectations, and using social as part of a greater plan. Nobody is going to see a car ad a single time on a website and then rush out to buy the car. That’s foolish thinking.

It’s all about the execution. Our Facebook ads are effective when strategically combined with engaging content innovation.

— Ford Motor Company (@Ford) May 15, 2012

But what if you provide value to potential customers with your content, be that direct provision or through sponsored conversations? What if people become actively engaged in what your brand is doing simply because what you’re doing is worth their time? This is where the social investment comes into play.

If it’s foolish to believe that throwing an ad on a website will be the one thing that will lead to sales, it’s equally foolish to think that you shouldn’t advertise online at all. While display ads, content series and the like aren’t the right answer for every company, they are powerful tools for many companies in the right hands.

The Path of Success

To wrap it up, I’ll simply say this – No, buying a display ad isn’t going to convert and make you an overnight success. Having a great product, engaging with potential (and current) customers via social channels and giving them a reason to engage with you is the path that must be walked.

It’s probably short-sighted of GM to pull its advertising from Facebook. The problem lies in the fact of an ad’s efficacy. Should GM pull the ads that it has been running? Absolutely. They’re not producing. But they should be replaced with ads that help to further a campaign, to build TOMA, to cut through the noise and to make certain that buyers think GM when they think of a new car or truck. It’s a bit more art than science, but for those brands who are willing to take the plunge, it’s a worthy investment of time and money.

Article source: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/05/16/facebook-general-motors-and-the-caveats-of-online-advertising/

Modern moveable type consists of independent characters and ligatures, which from there are assembled into words and then lines of text with a composing stick. Then, everything is bound together into a page image known as a forme.

Yes, computers are wonderful and make this entire process wildly easier — but there is something special about the results that come from a proper letterpress.

The work:

Type City, 2012
Letter press on wood panel
2 x 11 x 14 in. (5.1 x 27.9 x 35.6 cm)
Courtesy: Hong Seon Jang and David B. Smith Gallery

For more on Hong Seon Jang, check out his statement and bio.

Article source: http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2012/05/16/this-artist-made-a-city-out-of-movable-type/

Modern moveable type consists of independent characters and ligatures, which from there are assembled into words and then lines of text with a composing stick. Then, everything is bound together into a page image known as a forme.

Yes, computers are wonderful and make this entire process wildly easier — but there is something special about the results that come from a proper letterpress.

The work:

Type City, 2012
Letter press on wood panel
2 x 11 x 14 in. (5.1 x 27.9 x 35.6 cm)
Courtesy: Hong Seon Jang and David B. Smith Gallery

For more on Hong Seon Jang, check out his statement and bio.

Article source: http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2012/05/16/this-artist-made-a-city-out-of-movable-type/