Orsiso (or Organize, Simplify, Socialize) offers a functional approach to manage the deluge of your social networking and messaging online. It acts like a social streams dashboard, which aggregates and organizes status/photo streams (from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, Bebo, Friendster) and messaging (from popular IM networks like Messenger, Yahoo!, Google Talk). In the past weeks, Orsiso has been quick in releasing new version; each version update with new interface design and performance. Previous versions, buttons were lumpy, design was noisy and user-interface was not so, shall I say, spritely. Using it for the past 4 months, I must say the latest version 1.1.36 spot a more organized interface, more minimalist and much more perky.

Orsiso version 1.1.26 (screenshot dated August 21 2009)

Orsiso version 1.1.36 (screenshot dated October 23 2009)

Albums section is where you get to view your friends photos, from both Flickr and Facebook. This is probably the stand-out feature and it does feel as if Orsiso is designed for this purpose. No other client, so far, allow user to search and view photos. You can search photo with keywords. You can share each photo easily on your social network e.g. Twitter and Facebook. View photo of friends, based on user-defined closeness filter.

Search and View Photos on Orsiso

Kinks and The Road Ahead

Orsiso is ambitious in scope but still far from perfect. Grouping is relatively inflexible. You can only group your friends, based on Closeness (using 1 to 4 scale). It would be great if it can offers the flexibility like Twitter List. I also find the updates streaming is not as real-time, as I want it to be. Although I set ‘check for updates’ to 1 minute, the updates stream (at times) doesn’t seem to refresh automatically. And no, it doesn’t have a refresh button. Orsiso’s Friend Merge feature enables you to combine the multiple ‘social’ profiles of your friends. This only work for some of my friends, but not others.

Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to more improvements in coming weeks, for it to seriously challenge social streams aggreggator like Tweetdeck and Seesmic Desktop. On commercialization, Orsiso has banner ads on its Contacts’ profile page (although, I think, this is still in experimental stage).

Orsiso Is Getting Good At Aggregating Status and Photo Streams originally appeared on GreyReview on October 24, 2009.

Skittles candy from Mars has taken its brand to a level where many brands have not gone before. Instead of delivering controlled brand messages on its website, it is transforming the site into a navigator for its social media universe. Particularly impressive is its home page shows chatter about ‘skittles’ on Twitter Search. In such laissez-faire environment, real-time updates streaming on Twitter Search can be both positive and negative mentions.

Here are its social media outposts linked from its navigation menu:

• Product Information links to Wikipedia
• Chatter to Twitter Search
• Friends to Facebook Page
• Videos to YouTube

Skittles on Flickr

This branding initiative will certainly go ‘viral’, based on its novelty and possibly, PR mileage. It will be an interesting case study on branding in today’s conversational web. It is an experiment on how far a brand can push the social media envelope to engage its customers; also, understanding its challenges and how to best deal with them. Well, let’s see how far this rabbit hole goes.

Let’s Continue the Discourse on Twitter

What do you think this Skittles marketing stunt? Come chat on Twitter; find me @limyh

Skittles Brand Goes Anarchy with New Website originally appeared on GreyReview on March 2, 2009.

Social technologies enable the creation of conversational platform for businesses to engage in richer interactions with customers. Traditional mass media lacks interactivity and information flow is dominantly unidirectional, from brand owners to consumer.

However, the new social media enables consumers to connect with one another and brand owners to co-create brand experience. Global corporations like Procter & Gamble, Dell, Coca Cola and many others are already adopting social media as part of their brand building infrastructure.

What about Malaysia’s biggest brands? Are they using social technologies? How are they using the conversational media to listen and interact with their customers?

To answer the questions, I’ve investigated social media plays of companies listed in Malaysia’s Most Valuable Brands (MMVB) 2007, created by the Malaysian Association of Accredited Advertising Agents, in collaboration with Interbrand. This exercise involves searching for the brand names in social networks (Facebook, Friendster, MySpace), video-sharing site (YouTube), online photo-sharing site (Flickr) and microblogging (Twitter, FriendFeed). The results are presented in the “Social-ize the Brands” table below.

Notes to the table:

• “Rank” is the actual ranking in MMVB 2007.
• Giant and Dutch Lady, which appeared in MMVB 2007, were omitted as both are non-Malaysian brands.
• Only initiatives created by brand owners are considered to provide a better indication on the importance of social media marketing to the brand owners.
• For more on how MMVB’s Brand Value is calculated, read here.

Social-ize the Brands: How Malaysia’s Most Valuable Brands are Embracing Social Media

Some Observations

1. Big brands adopting social media marketing
   • About 60% of Malaysia’s most valuable brands are leveraging social utilities like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
2. Conversations with AirAsia
   • The budget airline has the most interesting and purposeful usage social media marketing tools and are ‘designed’ to engage with its target audience.
3. User-generated content
   • AirAsia is tapping into the power of bloggers with its blog, “Just Plane Thoughts.” Besides contents posted by 16 AirAsia bloggers, the site also encourages its readers to post their travel stories and comments. Although the blog is moderated, negative customer comments also get posted. Newspaper The Star also allows its readers to post up contents on its Citizen’s Blog site.
4. Conversational vs Informational
   • AirAsia’s blog is more conversational than its competitor Malaysia Airlines’ Living Malaysian Hospitality, which is geared towards providing corporate news.
5. Facebook rules
   • The fast-growing social network is by far the most used social utility among the biggest brands in Malaysia, followed by YouTube. Facebook ranked 8th in Malaysia’s Alexa Top 100 Sites; YouTube ranked 4th (as of Oct 19 2008).
6. Tweet with Astro
   • The use of Twitter is gaining popularity among enterprises. Astro, the subscription-based satellite TV provider, is the one and only Malaysia’s big brand on Twitter.
7. Bank with blog
   • Malaysia’s largest bank, Maybank, is the first Malaysian bank with a blog; uses its “AllYou” blog to complement its online banking site, Maybank2u.com.
8. Blogging CEO
   • Tony Fernandes of AirAsia is the only Most Valuable Brand’s CEO with a blog.
9. Not-so-social lifestyle
   • Consumer-oriented retail brand, Parkson and apparel brands – Bonia and Padini – are notably missing in the social media sphere.
10. Financial-ly not social-able
    • Financial institutions dominated the MMVB list, with 32% representation. However, out of the eleven big brands that are not using social media, six of them (or 54%) are from the financial industry.

Social Media Marketing and Malaysia’s Biggest Brands originally appeared on GreyReview on October 20, 2008.