This week our Friday Morning Laughs features an adorable wedding speech, a Mario Bros.-style scooter fail, a funny Batman sketch, Improv Everywhere’s Best Buy prank remastered, and more. So grab your morning coffee, take a seat, and get ready to laugh!
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews. 
Who would’ve thought, all those years ago, that Napster would go on to change hands more than a well-worn penny over the years. Well, maybe a lot of people with astounding foresight into the music industry’s future would have . . . but that’s besides the point. The latest news regarding Shawn Fanning’s baby is Rhapsody‘s impending acquisition of Napster, a business deal that will see the Headphoned Kitten sharing its customers with the notable social music site.
The recently signed agreement between Napster and Rhapsody will give the latter company access to the former’s subscribers and “certain other assets”. In return, Best Buy (which Napster is considered a unit of) will receive a minority stake in Rhapsody — something that could lead to substantial changes for the music service and its users in the near future.
Jon Irwin, Rhapsody’s president, expects the deal to “further Rhapsody’s lead over [its] competitors in the growing on-demand music market.”
It could very well do just that.
Rhapsody’s acquistion will give both company’s access to Napster’s existing subscriber base and the ability to bring together vastly different lessons for achieving success in the digital music marketplace. Rhapsody and Napster users can expect to see a big difference in the way they experience their services of choice later this fall as the companies begin to implement new business practices that take advantage of one another’s respective strengths. Whatever the result of the acquisition, observers can look forward to a substantial shake-up from two key industry players before long.
The agreement was announced today (Monday, October 3rd) with the actual deal expected to close at the end of November of this year.
Zynga, the leading game developer in the social gaming market, has continuously proven itself with successful gaming titles: FarmVille, Texas Hold’em and CityVille. If we took the time to break each game down, we could analyze why Zynga did so well with its titles, but social gaming isn’t the only thing Zynga does well: effective social media marketing strategy is another one of Zynga’s success stories.
The title of this post is taken from Best Buy’s social media policy. When offered up at Useful Social Media’ Corporate Social Media Summit by the company’s Director and Social Media Leader, Gina Debogovich, it unleashed a flood of tweets and retweets.
While it may seem obvious, this phrase is a reminder that, as we advance our social media programs within corporate structures, we need avoid getting lost in processes and maintain our customer focus. The tools, techniques and platforms are means to helping us create better companies.
More from brands on the social media forefront, after the jump.
One of the biggest stories in social media earlier this month was that of Brian Maupin, a Best Buy employee who faced threats of being fired because of videos he uploaded to YouTube. The most popular of Maupin’s videos, iPhone4 vs HTC Evo, portrayed a generic electronics store employee trying to convince a customer that wants the iPhone 4 that he should buy the HTC EVO 4G instead. Best Buy did not see the humor in the video and threatened to fire Maupin over it, even though there was no reference to Best Buy in the viral video or Maupin’s YouTube channel. Now Maupin is fighting back with a new YouTube clip, TweetFired.
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Ribbit has partnered with Best Buy to display yet another way in which its phone service can be integrated for a unique solution that makes so much sense in hindsight. Using Best Buy’s recently released Remix API, Ribbit has created an application Called Consumers Price that allows consumers to make shopping on Best Buy a little bit more social, and a lot easier to do. It’s called social mobile commerce, and it combines the best of both worlds for an altered approach on how to convey, access and share information regarding retail products and online shopping.
There’s a few ways in which Ribbit’s phone integration makes shopping more social. The first and easiest way is through voice comments that Ribbit enables with a call-in feature. Instead of leaving a text review of a Best Buy product, you can use your phone to call a number and leave a voice review for others to hear. Of course, such comments can convey much more emotion and manage to drive the point home, similar to how easily integrated video comments have done the same for blogs and product review sites.
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