CANDIDATE OBAMA'S DIGITAL STRATEGY VS PRESIDENT OBAMA'S

Obama ran a legendary general election campaign. Social media was a key part of that strategy. It's a shame he didn't carry through from his candidacy to his presidency, the same spirit of inventiveness, and focus on social media. He seems to have abandoned his social media tools, and now just seeks to spam people with email.

One of the smartest things he has done with digital recently is the Final March initiative, where his team invited people to call Congress:

After months of hard work, the final vote on health reform in the House of Representatives is expected to be this Sunday.

But it's shaping up to be incredibly close -- so whether you've called your representative before or haven't yet spoken out on health reform, it's now time to raise your voice.

Healthcare seems to be a turning point for him, but if he would have used social networks to mobilise grassroots networks earlier (as he did in his campaign) he might have been able to counter the "Tea Party" movement much earlier, which is itself a grassroots network that uses the web.

Obama's use of social media changed campaigning forever, but what he perhaps didn't realise is that he had also changed governing forever as well. Obama needs a new digital strategy.

FACEBOOK VERSUS GOOGLE: THE NEXT PHASE

It's been widely reported in the news this week that Facebook has finally overtaken Google, according to Comscore, on pageview figures. This is a real milestone, but many of you could have guessed this by simply walking around your offices, and seeing the Facebook pages opened.

If you don't have Comscore, check out the Alexa data below, which tells a similar story. I've split the charts into pageviews, time spent, and reach. Facebook wins by a long margin on time spent, but the race is much closer on reach and pageviews according to Alexa. Facebook is the blue line, Google is red, and Twitter is green.

Twitter is still a long way behind, except on time spent, where it is close behind Google.

This first chart is reach. Google is ahead.









This second chart is time spent. Facebook is ahead.

The third chart is pageviews. Google and Facebook are fighting to the death, switching positions over and over again.

WILL TWITTER BE RUINED BY THE PRESENCE OF PAID-FOR ADS?

Will Twitter be ruined by the presence of paid-for ads?

Marketing Magazine posed this question to me and three others last week. See my answer below and follow this link to get the other answers The Marketing Society Forum.

Ads will benefit Twitter. Last November, it changed its key question from 'What are you doing?' to 'What's happening?' The answers form a unique searchable database. Twitter is a real-time search engine - the fastest and most relevant way of finding out what's going on right now. This forces Google - worth £114bn - to reappraise its strategy. High stakes indeed.

Twitter knows that in the past, brands like Yahoo! got it wrong, by over-commercialising their online real estate and not balancing user and business needs. Google launched as its antithesis and honed its design, shunning banners for pay-per-click text ads. Discrete sponsored links are now an accepted part of the visual language of search.

Each web innovation creates a fresh generation of purists who gradually or grudgingly accept mainstream commercialisation. This is no exception.

Twitter has learned from its predecessors. It will emerge more useful, and the incremental income should fuel a new wave of innovation.

THE PHENOMENAL WORLD OF FACEBOOK GAMES AND OTHER SOCIAL GAMES

Carnegie Mellon University Professor, Jesse Schell, dives into a world of game development, which will emerge, from the popular "Facebook Games" era. If you do not know much about the phenomenon that is social games then watch this. His insight that there are more Farmville players than there are Twitter accounts is powerful. He also explores how games are breaking out of the confines of fantasy and moving more into our day-to-day realities. What he sees as glorious future gets slightly dystopian at the end, but very much worth watching.

Xbox 360 Games - E3 2010 - Guitar Hero 5