Jim has been selected to speak as part of a panel of experts at the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas on Friday, January 9th, 2009 at 3pm.  The panel will be speaking on the topic of Advertising Innovation! Broadband, OnDemand, In-Game, Social Networks & Mobile.  As advertising finds more and better ways to work with new media and technologies, the more cost-effective and precise its targeting will be. Ad-insertion, ad-serving and back-end technologies are fostering greater creativity and enhancing branding opportunities. Join the conversation about how evolving technologies can help advertising gain even greater traction.

Please contact jim@votigo.com if you plan on being at the show and would like to set up a time to meet.

Cool blog post and list of social media tools by Peter Kim. Most notably are:
5. Crowdsourcing/Voting (Oracle, Starbucks)
10. Online video (Eukanuba, Home Depot)
13. Photosharing (Rubbermaid, UK Government)
17. Ratings and reviews (Loblaws, TurboTax)
18. Social networks: applications, fan pages, groups, and personalities (British Airways, Saturn)
19. Sponsorships (Coca-Cola, Whirlpool)
21. Widgets (Southwest Airlines, Target)

I’m at OpenSocial’s first birthday party at MySpace San Francisco listening to the State of the Union presentation.  They just announced the reach of opensocial is now over 600 million users!!  That’s HUGE.

A few items from the agenda:
* OpenSocial: State of the Union
* OpenSocial App Highlights
* Preview: OpenSocial 0.9
* Developer Tools Demos
* Global Container Crawl Contest

Web. Good. + Social. Good. = Social Web. Better!

some stats so far:
315MM+ App Installs
85MM+ Canvas page views/day

-Jim

All of us here at Votigo are very excited to announce the launch of an amazing new art contest for Sharpie Pens called “Write Out Loud® with Sharpie and Win!”.  It’s an excellent example of how our user-generated promotion platform can be used to generate buzz around a brand.  Votigo consulted on the contest specifics as well as handled the creative design, flash animation and customization of our contest platform to create a completely branded social experience for Sharpie.  Brands like Sharpie are utilizing social media marketing to actively engage their existing customers and attract new ones.  There are already some very creative entries in the first two days.  Check it out!

Contest details:
Enter for a chance to meet David Beckham!
Here’s how.
1. Create… Show us how creative you can be with Sharpie markers - the possibilities are virtually endless. So, whether it’s your work of art or customizing your tennis shoes, get inspired and Write Out Loud!
2. Shoot… Take a digital photo of your creation (2MB or smaller).
3. Enter… Complete the registration form and upload your image. Now simply click submit. Your creation will be reviewed and posted within 72 hours. *Images will be reviewed and approved/disapproved according to the terms and conditions of the contest.

I’m going to part of a great panel discussion at Digital Hollywood in Santa Monica tomorrow. The panel is titled “Social Media as a Content, Advertising and Commerce Platform” and the overall focus of the panel is on how to build a successful user-generated media site or social network and how to leverage social media. I’m most interested in talking about how brands can leverage social media and debating the pros and cons of building your own destination social network versus building one inside of Facebook or leveraging Facebook Connect.

If you’re going to be at the show be sure to stop by the session and say hello. I’m lucky to be part of such a great group.

Mike

I was recently interviewed by Justin Smith of Inside Facebook.

Excerpt from the interview

As the Facebook Platform matures, an increasing number of social media agencies are bringing brands into the Facebook world by way of Facebook applications. Not just application developers, these agencies are increasingly working with clients directly to set strategy and design the rules of the campaign — and then manage the promotional spend inside Facebook once the application is launched.

Votigo is one such agency based in Emeryville, CA. The company has been doing social media campaigns since 2006, and since the Facebook Platform launched last year, has been building a big part of its business bringing brands into Facebook. We sat down with Jim Risner, Votigo’s President and CMO, to learn more about the company and the trends he is seeing in the marketplace.

Read the full interview.

We’re pleased to announce that Jim Risner, President & Co-founder of Votigo, has been nominated to the Board of Directors for the OpenSocial Foundation.   The OpenSocial Foundation is a non-profit corporation created to sustain the free and open development of OpenSocial specifications.  The Foundation helps facilitate the development of new specifications and ensures that the technical direction remains in the hands of the community.

Please go here to VOTE for Jim.

Here’s more information about the OpenSocial Foundation.

The (initial) Board of Directors (5 of the 7):

* Anil Dharni, hi5
* David Glazer, Google
* Joe Greenstein, Flixster
* Allen Hurff, MySpace
* Sam Pullara, Yahoo!
* TBD #1, Community Representative
* TBD #2, Community Representative
* TBD directors will be determined by the community (that’s you!)

For years, children have recited this classic schoolyard chant “Beans, Beans, the magical fruit….”. But that’s not quite right beans are actually a vegetable. Bush’s Beans along with their agency Empower MediaMarketing is working with Votigo to correct this long living error with the Magical Veggie Challenge Video Contest. Entrants are encouraged to rewrite the old tune correcting the wrong and pointing out that beans are actually a veggie.

One grand prize winner will be awarded $5,000 and a trip for four to perform the winning chant at a Times Square event on Feb. 18, 2009. The event will be hosted by Drew Lachey, multi-platinum recording artist, Broadway star, TV host, champion of “Dancing with the Stars,” bean fan and dad. You have until December 12th so put your creative caps on and get to work.

Votigo’s social media platform is powering the contest microsite including viral tools, widgets and entry pre-screening.

A report just release by Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research states that one of the main reasons that 3/4 of US online adults now use the social web is due in large part to user ratings, reviews, voting and user-generated video.  Hey, that’s what WE do!  Nice to see it’s paying off.

Executive Summary
Social technology adoption increased tremendously this year. Three in four US online adults now use social tools to connect with each other compared with just 56% in 2007. What else changed? Ratings and reviews, “voting” for Web sites, and peer-generated video experienced the largest growth, while blogs and tagging closely followed. Older adults are now also more likely to participate socially as Spectators and Critics, placing them in the active rungs of our Social Technographics® ladder. Marketers have to get on board with social now — more advanced marketers will speed up customer-driven innovation, sharpen metrics, and improve customer experience. Those who wait to join in will find it increasingly hard to catch up.

We are very excited to announce a new video promotion we’ve developed for GameFly in conjunction with AMP Agency. The “GameFly Superfan Casting Call 2008 Contest”! Entrants into the contest need to dress up as their favorite video game character and show their love for GameFly. Winners have a shot at appearing in a GameFly TV commercial.

The contest is a great example of how to engage your customers to build brand awareness and virally spread your marketing message in a safe way that doesn’t put your brand at risk.

You can enter by going directly to http://gamefly.votigo.com or by showing up at one of GameFly’s live events to be filmed in person by the GameFly crew.

Live event dates:

• September 9, 2008 - Hollywood & Highland Center Courtyard, 6801 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, CA, 12pm-6pm PST
• September 16, 2008 - ESPN Zone 43 E. Ohio Street, Chicago, IL, 12pm-6pm CST
• September 23, 2008 - Hawaiian Tropic Zone 729 7th Ave, New York, NY, 12pm-6pm EST

Here’s our Contest Widget in action: