Mass Consumption

July 29, 2010 | Written by Lucie Zhang

“What’s the most resilient parasite? An Idea.” — Cobb, Inception

Whether or not you liked the film quoted above, Leonardo raises an interesting point. In fact, the adoption of an idea is perhaps the goal of every marketing strategy out there. And if you are lucky/smart enough to create a campaign that people somehow connect to so much so that they are willing to spread it to others – virally — well, then that little idea can become pretty potent (and be worth a pretty penny).

Facezon (or Amabook?)

Amazon is one such company that’s trying to up it’s “shareable” aspect. Recently, it announced a new partnership with Facebook aimed at making its online shopping experience more social. Consumers who link the two sites together will be able to see recommendations from their Facebook friends on what to buy, have their Facebook profile picture show up on the Amazon site, and view upcoming birthdays and gift recommendations. Shopping activity on Amazon, however, will not be shared via Facebook.

Mashable has already called it “a perfect storm of recommendations” in its test drive of the new feature, while SocialBeat has noted how this partnership is a bigger deal that you might think.

Facebook Questions

In more Facebook news, the social networking site is gradually rolling out a new feature, called Facebook Questions. Like with Yahoo! Answers, users will be able to pose questions to their online network by hitting the “Ask Question” button on the homepage. Questions will also pop up on friends’ profiles.

Additionally, users will be able to ask photo questions (i.e. “Does anyone know what bar this is?”), take a poll, tag a question, browse questions based on topic, follow questions (in order to receive updates and new answers), and change the Facebook homepage. Yes, you read that last one right. Having Facebook Questions will let users add in a new bar at the top through which they can update their status, ask a question, add photos, or post a link.

LucyPhone

What’s one thing that will always kill a conversation? Being put on hold. And as someone who recently had to voice a complaint to ConEdison, I can definitely attest to the total agony of having the precious minutes of your day (your hard-earned leisure time!) wither away as you sit on the line with a recorded message that replays itself for half an hour.

That’s where the LucyPhone comes in.

Aside from just having an awesome name, the LucyPhone is built to be your savior from dreadful on-hold music. The service is free, web-based, and also available as an iPhone application. Essentially, you enter in the number that you wish to reach, give LucyPhone the number at which you’d like to be reached, and hit “**” when you inevitably get put on hold. The LucyPhone will then take over monitoring the call and call your phone back once an actual human becomes available to talk.

Brilliant. How was this not invented sooner?

Extra Bits

• Russia has blocked access to YouTube due to the site’s hosting of ”Russia for Russians,” a video they have judged to be extremist whose name comes from a racist slogan.
• CardStar has announced a new integration with Foursquare so that when a customer scans their club or loyalty card via CardStar at the checkout they will also be given the option to check in on Foursquare at that location. This integration will coincide with a few other updates CardStar is adding to its iPhone application, including having better card storage and scanning.
• The oldest Twitter user, Ivy Bean, passed away yesterday at 12:08 am in her care home in England. She was 104 years old and started tweeting on @IvyBean104 (…an oddly foretelling Twitter handle) when she was 102 years old.
• In case you didn’t know already, Isaiah Mustafa is marketing gold. Sales of Old Spice Body Wash have reportedly increased 107% in the past month and 55% in the past three months. “Since the ‘Smell Like A Man, Man’ campaign broke in February, Old Spice has month-over-month strengthened its market position,” P&G representative Michael Norton wrote in an e-mail to Brandweek.
• In honor of its fifth anniversary, Mashable did a look back on the last five years in mobile. Hard to believe that five years ago, all I wanted was a shiny, new Razr. Now, a flip phone even feels archaic. I can only imagine what we’ll be using in 2015. The geek in me is hoping it’ll be something kind of like this though:

More from RFI Studios

• Mood Swings and Pretty Things
• Show Me the Money
• Word-of-Mouth Gets Viral
• 15 Minutes of Fame – Left Brain
• Facebook. The UK