Social media sites present a variety of marketing opportunities that are growing in popularity. “It is the Wild West with a new generation of marketers testing the waters and their limits,” said Joe Laratro, chief technology officer for MoreVisibility/Boca Raton, FL, which released the Social Media Marketing white paper last week.
The white paper lists a wide range of social media sites where marketing occurs, far beyond the leading social networking sites MySpace and Facebook. Also included are video sharing sites YouTube and Google Video, picture sharing sites like Flickr, news aggregators like Digg, forum sites like TripAdvisor, social book marking sites like del.icio.us and other social sites, including Second Life and Twitter.
The white paper says, “If you meet someone on a vacation in Disney World, you may keep in touch with them on MySpace or Facebook. That same relationship could be continued by sharing pictures on Flickr. You may even write about your meeting in a trip review on a forum.”
Among the ample marketing opportunities on the social media sites are videos that play at YouTube. “Social media sites can embed videos on YouTube and do it for free,” Laratro said. “It’s easy to customize social media sites for video.”
Marketers can also take advantage of video targeting solutions that will enable their sites to be found through search. Speech recognition technology can be used by social marketing sites to find their viral videos, Laratro said.
Supreme Court Allows Multibillion-Dollar Class Action Lawsuit To Proceed Against Meta
The Supreme Court is allowing a multibillion-dollar class action investors' lawsuit to proceed against Facebook parent Meta, stemming from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.
The justices heard arguments in November in Meta's bid to shut down the lawsuit. On Friday, they decided that they were wrong to take up the case in the first place.
The high court dismissed the company's appeal, leaving in place an appellate ruling allowing the case to go forward.
Investors allege that Meta did not fully disclose the risks that Facebook users' personal information would be misused by Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump 's first successful Republican presidential campaign in 2016.
Inadequacy of the disclosures led to two significant price drops in the price of the company's shares in 2018, after the public learned about the extent of the privacy scandal, the investors say.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the company was disappointed by the court's action. "The plaintiff's claims are baseless and we will continue to defend ourselves as this case is considered by the District Court," Stone said in an emailed statement.
Meta already has paid a $5.1 billion fine and reached a $725 million privacy settlement with users.
Cambridge Analytica had ties to Trump political strategist Steve Bannon. It had paid a Facebook app developer for access to the personal information of about 87 million Facebook users. That data was then used to target U.S. voters during the 2016 campaign.
The lawsuit is one of two high court cases involving class-action lawsuits against tech companies. The justices also are wrestling with whether to shut down a class action against Nvidia.... Read More