Tag: LinkedIN

BBM Channels

Who has 1 Billion users and is about to overtake Facebook? It’s not Twitter, Google+ or LinkedIn. It’s a company that most people in the West don’t know. That, however, is set to change, with the explosive growth of China’s Tencent and its mobile messaging app WeChat…

Source: WorldOfCEOs, JPMorgan, Credit Suisse, Bloomberg & company announcement

On November 13th, Snapchat rejected the $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook. These are all signs that tell us that the battle for social dominance is going to take place via mobile chat apps. Brands however are finding it difficult to reach their audience through these apps as most of them don’t allow in app advertising. This has lead to creation of experimental campaigns as seen on WhatsApp from Klick Chocolate and Absolut Vodka.

Now BlackBerry has announced that it is bringing BBM Channels into open beta. BBM Channels is going to be a separate part of their BBM app where users will be able to follow and converse with their favorite brands and businesses. Users will be able to like, comment and share content posted by a BBM Channel, or enter a one-to-one private chat session with the owner or manager of the page. It will also be possible to subscribe to a BBM Channel and receive notifications when new content is uploaded.

The update is available as of yesterday on handsets running BlackBerry OS 5 and above. It will hit iOS and Android in the coming months.

I think this will simplify things drastically for brands, as reaching and engaging with the target audience in their favorite chat app will help them achieve a top of mind presence. This for sure will spur on the competitors like Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Viber, WeChat etc. 😎

UPDATE

KLM “Meet & Seat”

Most brands are using social channels on a tactical level i.e. just to reach people with their social ads. KLM however is taking social way beyond advertising.

Last year KLM announced it would be launching a social seating service in 2012 which would allow Facebook and LinkedIn users to meet interesting passengers on their flight…

This “Meet & Seat” service has now gone live and details are available on their website. It is currently available only on KLM flights between Amsterdam and New York, San Francisco and Sao Paulo. Stay tuned as they will be extending this service to other sectors soon.

Volkswagen LinkedUit

Volkswagen has released a first of its kind LinkedIn based campaign which takes full advantage of the new LinkedIn API. The campaign is based on the idea that the new Passat is as full of features as your LinkedIn profile is full of information.

The campaign is called “LinkedUit” (LinkedOut) and gives anyone who challenges a friend on LinkedIn a chance to win a Volkswagen Passat.

The game is really simple. After signing in using your LinkedIn profile, the app lets you choose others in your network to challenge. A LinkedIn victor, and a LinkedOut looser is then chosen based on education, experience, recommendations and connections.

New Age Business Cards Part 2

In part 1 we had seen simple business cards being integrated with Microsoft Surface to give more details about the person / company. The major restriction here was that the extra information could only be seen using Microsoft Surface which is not yet commonly found.

But now similar information can be shared with the use of augmented reality and all you need is a web cam. 😎 Here are some cool examples…

How to design your own Augmented Reality business card?

For those who have limited budgets for customized AR business card…you can make do with Visualcard.me which lets you download a black-bordered “marker” to add onto your business card, which a webcam then uses to recognize your card and display simple AR features such as links to your contact information and social media profiles, as demonstrated in this brief clip…