I am currently working on my presentation for the Golden Dove conference in Budapest. The title as you see is ‘Applications in the service of the community’ in which I will talk about how the rise of applications or functions within social networks are fuelling brand interaction, campaign awareness and in some cases public pressure. Last year’s presentation talked about the rise of the networks themselves and how smart brands were harnessing these networks in more of an integrated way than ‘just advertising’.

This year’s presentation will be assuming that social networks are a given and so we can focus on how people are actively using them to achieve their goals, commercial, political or otherwise.

With the rise of Twitter and continued growth of Facebook, it would be too easy to focus on what has been done in this space alone, but what I interact with is not a true cross section of what is happening ‘out there’. Below I will add the elements I plan to highlight (NB this is still work in progress) and would welcome any suggestions of innovative marketing, promotions or campaigning that I may have not seen in the past 12 months. They need to have happened on social networks ideally in Europe. I intend writing up each example in the presentation as dedicated blog pages so I will ensure that you are credited in the presentation and with links on these articles.

This is still work in progress and I may find better examples to replace them but here we go:

1. Twitter – #hashtag promotions.

Over the summer we have seen the hashtag promotions trending with varied response. Some people love them, others hate them. I personally think they have limited shelf life before users get hacked off with them but I am confident the idea will evolve as users tweeting habits change, and therefore it is valid for inclusion. Examples I plan to include are: #nanobreaks for competitions and awareness and #breastcancer for revenue generation/’campaigning’.

2. Facebook Farmville – Seeds for Haiti

This is a dangerous time sink, relatively simple but horribly addictive. The reason it appears in this list is the ‘Seeds for Haiti’ campaign they are running. If you play Farmville you have to buy crops with virtual money which can be topped up with ‘real’ money. One of the crops is Sweet Potatoes, which you can buy for virtual dollars. These virtual dollars are turned into real donations for Haiti. To date the campaign has raised almost half a million dollars in donations from the game.

3. Er… Its still work in progress! I haven’t seen anything special on Flickr for some time. What about YouTube?

I’ll keep adding to this presentation as I do it, but any ideas would be welcome.

Thanks

Jamie