Girls In Tech

As the holidays are fully under way with parties, sending out holiday cards, and exchanging gifts, the same spirit can be found in the world of social networks.

Hi5, one of the world’s largest and fastest growing social networks, launches it’s International Virtual Gifts Store. Initially the store will offer an assortment of 36 virtual gifts representing a variety of the world’s customs and cultures. This will give users a chance to celebrate their culture with their family and friends.

Some of the gifts that will be available are a virtual ‘Rosca’, which is a Mexican cake that is traditionally eaten on January 6th for the celebration of the ‘Three Kings Day’.  Also a dreidel, which is a very popular toy for children celebrating the Jewish holiday Hanukkah. As well as many other ornaments and symbols from a variety of cultures around the world.

This is a great way to highlight and celebrate the diversity of the Hi5 user base. Happy Holidays! Felices Fiestas! Chag Sameach!

One of my favorite things about the end of the year is reading all the 2008 best of lists.  Here’s a couple web/design related best of lists, some found here.

Best CSS – You’ll notice a trend in the design of these sites. The design is multi-layered, presenting a tactile approach. It’s impressive because the CSS is coded so the pages still load fast and light. This will be the trend next year as well, with more 3D technology deployed, like cooliris (as mentioned here).

Best Album Art – I am still in like with the Santogold album art. Santogold also made it to a lot of the best of music lists. She is a very strong woman, one to admire.

Best Websites – Oh and Tripkick.com, a site designed by fluidesign, made it to this list!

If you know any more design/web related best of lists, please comment here!

What the heck is WOMM? For those of you non-marketing folks, this concept is the next generation, icing on the cake for big brand names and companies; sort of a social media movement on steroids.

As published in Wikipedia, Word of Mouth Marketing is marketing through a reference to the passing of information by verbal means, especially recommendations, but also general information, in an informal, person-to-person manner. Word of mouth is typically considered a face-to-face spoken communication, although phone conversations, text messages sent via SMS and web dialogue, such as online profile pages, blog posts, message board threads, instant messages and emails are often now included in the definition of word of mouth.

Here are a few solid WOMM resources out there for companies wanting to implement a WOMM program within a budget:
•    WOMMA, the official trade association for the word of mouth marketing industry, who’s mission is to promote and improve word of mouth marketing.
•    BzzAgents, a platform that allows people to experience new products and services, share their honest opinions about them with people they knew and report those activities and opinions so marketers could directly see the results. This community would be something entirely new, bringing consumers and marketers together to organize and track honest word of mouth.

Some key takeaways for your next WOMM campaign:
•    Leverage Existing Social Networks
•    Target the Influencers
•    Encapsulate Exclusivity and Scarcity
•    Micro-Market: market to the individual by providing highly customizable products
•    Industry Marketing: focus on the people who can build your brand

Sources:

http://www.doshdosh.com/word-of-mouth-marketing-strategies/

http://www.womma.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_of_mouth