I’ve just learned that a Twitter TV show is in development.

“The show would feature players using Twitter to follow their favorite celebrities while competing in an interactive challenge. Producer Noah Oppenheim said the show would be the first to bring immediacy of the site to TV.”

I would say more, but I just vomited on my keyboard.

I came across this the other day on a blog somewhere and thought it was a great example of clever interactive marketing: It seems Charmin has become the “sponsor” of a little site called sitorsquat.com. Essentially, this site (which has existed in some form since ’07) uses Google maps to locate the closest public restroom to an address entered by a user.

Now, thanks to Charmin, users can download free mobile applications for iPhones and BlackBerrys that use GPS to show you the way to the nearest public pit stop. Not only will you get location, Sit or Squat also lets users rate each restroom based on ick-factor (an average rating above 2.5 is “sit,” below “squat”) so you can avoid less than stellar accommodations (if you have the luxury of being picky).

Being a toilet paper company, this is obviously a great fit for Charmin, and it’s getting them a lot of buzz on blogs and other traditional media outlets-which is the point, of course. What’s so interesting about it though, is that Sit or Squat was a pre-existing site – the lesson being that you don’t necessarily need to be a corporate giant for a good, common-sense interactive site or application to pay off. Certainly, Charmin’s saving some cash by avoiding the cost of custom application development and Sit or Squat now has a corporate sponsor to finance their brainchild and tell the world about it. It’s a win-win.

I’ve got two kids, and while they’re not quite Facebooking it just yet, I’m sure they will be soon enough. CNN recently had an article about teenage usage of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. Nothing most of us don’t know, but they make one point that I rather liked:

Beyond keeping a watchful eye on risky interests and pictures, parents should also use social networking sites such as MySpace — which had about 120 million users as of this summer — as an opportunity to learn about their childrens’ favorite movies and hobbies, as well as their top friends, she said.

“You so often hear parents say ‘I don’t even know my kid anymore.’ Here’s a very easy tool to get to know your kid again,” she said.

Here’s the whole article: http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/01/05/myspace.teens/index.html

This is pretty darn funny – especially given that it was put out by a company who I can’t say I’ve seen anything fresh and creative from in quite awhile. I hope we see more of this light-hearted, youthful flair in their brand during the next year. In times like these, you’ve got to find a way to reinvent yourself and get noticed.

http://bewareofthedoghouse.com/

And can I put a plug in for their spend $25 get $10 off coupon they’ve been sending out lately. Another great way to pick up some much needed foot traffic.

According to The Economist, online advertising will be relatively unscathed during the economic downturn. EMarketer agrees that we will still see growth in online ad spend, but has revised their growth projections for search advertising from a predicted 14.5% growth in 2009 to a 8.9% growth rate in the new year.

Some of the arguments: “Online marketing increasingly aims for awareness, consideration, preference and loyalty all at once…Marketing managers can therefore defend their online budgets as being both above and below the line.” And in relation to traditional forms of advertising: “All this makes spending on [online] advertising much less speculative, so that it starts to be treated instead as a cost of sales.”

Or as this author puts says, search as we know it is dead.  Search becomes social, essentially:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4259135.html

And apparently Microsoft is working on just this thing, with collaborative searching:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/industry/4292830.html?page=2 (see #7, collaborative search)

My mind’s too simple to make sense of it all, but it looks like there are some big things coming.

I found the following article interesting. SilverPop is an email marketing company that has apparently developed a new product that bridges the gap between email marketing and Social Network Marketing.

http://www.silverpop.com/news/press/10_02_08.html

A good example of a pointless app that uses social networking features to go viral, and to get people to actually pay to use it.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/26/what-is-the-deal-with-this-stupid-lighter-iphone-app/

http://www.google.com/friendconnect/

This is a pretty cool opportunity for website owners who don’t have the budget or the technical expertise to build social features into their site. It’s a free gadget/widget based way to implement social features such as rating systems, user community, comments, photo sharing, etc onto a site. It helps a site grow virally by allowing you to invite friends from other social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. As with other open source projects, independent developers are contributing new social gadgets all the time, so the library is growing.

It’s still in beta invite only mode, but I’d expect to see heavy use of these gadgets in the near future.

The Growth Partnership may be interested in checking out Yammer. Yammer functions like Twitter but it’s geared towards businesses. Any company can create it’s own Yammer network for free, and they also offer an inexpensive paid version that gives a business/firm admin controls. It’s getting some pretty decent reviews so far. There’s a video demo here:

http://www.yammer.com/

They also offer Yammer iphone, blackberry and desktop apps