Lenovo, a Chinese computer brand that bought out IBM, seems to be a big fan of social media campaigns that has been backed up by the recent success of its Lenovo S10 that I mentioned previously.

This time around, Lenovo is embracing the sci-fi fan base of the Trekkies for the newest Star Trek movie that will be coming out in May 2009. I ran across the ads on Facebook about a week or so ago, but for whatever reason when I clicked on the link, the resulting page was blank. I tried again today on an ad that look as the following:

Ironically, I was not interested in purchasing a new laptop as much desktop provides all that I need at this point, but was more interested to see how the “Star Trek” Lenovo laptops looked. Suffice to say, it is a Thinkpad/Ideapad and that means ugly, RECTANGULAR, and no sense of StYlE.

Personally, I would have recommended using the money to build a better laptop with a sci-fi look rather than a viral campaign, but regardless, let me tell you what they did.

As you may have noticed with the Facebook Ad, it talks about the Lenovo Ideapad, but when you hit the page, the first computer they show is a Lenovo Thinkpad. It is minor, but thought I would mention that regardless. In any case, there are some sweet sweepstakes you can sign up for called the Intel Lenovo Seek New Frontiers Sweepstakes where you can win an Ideapad or a really sleek Star Trek messenger bag. There are even greater prizes later on in 2009 with going on the zero gravity flight or showing up for the premier of the Star Trek movie.

If you are not a fan of signing up to sweepstakes, feel free to play the really easy four questionaire (that gives you the answer anyway if you answer incorrectly) to get a nice Star Trek background desktop image.

Once you are done having fun there, head on over to the Intel viral Starfleet Shipyard site to trailers, desktop backgrounds, the USS Kelvin, character snapshots, and much more.

Man, how I wish I could have worked on a Star Trek buzz campaign.

Freebie–here’s a picture of a Beta Quadrant alien called a Monchezkian (I’ll let the canon concept of a Beta Quadrant alien in Star Fleet aside for now):

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A few days ago Google announced a new feature called Google SearchWiki, allowing you the ability to move and comment on search results. Though called a wiki, SearchWiki is really a misnomer considering that you cannot actually fully customize the search results and what each page says. A better name would have been SocialSearch considering that you can see comments made about various pages by other users logged into their own Google Account.

The idea of a social search is nothing new considering the plethora of social media sites around the web that have taken off with many fans of Digg, Reddit, Sphinn, HaoHao, etc (feel free to submit this to any of those of course *winks*), but what is new is a major search engine actually testing and using the concept of social media to affect the results you see. Both Yahoo and Google had actually tested this over a year ago, but required searchers to download an add-on to actually see truly wiki-like results, and as such never caught on.

If you want basic information about the ups and downs of using the new Google Search Wiki, please check SearchEngineLand and check Graywolf for a more… entertaining example of the downsides. I will be covering the SEO and online advertising aspect that could develop from Google’s new SocialSearch (as I will henceforth be referring to it as).

What SocialSearch could do to SEO:

Currently, the new feature rolled out by Google does not play a factor into the search results, but expect that if Google finds the use of it to be beneficial, then it will certainly do so. As a Search Strategist myself, this additional feature would likely force the industry to adopt social media with a stronger embrace as the human equation plays a stronger part beyond the standard on/off-site SEO. As if SEO is not nebulous enough with tracking the value of organic search, the inclusion of having to use social media will only make matters more indirect. Brand reputation will become exponentially cumbersome as comments will continually need to be made to knock out negative commenters.

And that is where things go from useful to spam-ish. Ironically as Google tries to move away from links playing a part in SEO, Google may be choosing the same, if not worse, path in deciding how organic results should rank. I can guarantee that if SocialSearch plays a part into how organic results rank across the board that spam in the comments, spam in emails (”please rank this site” instead of “please link to me”), and spam Google Accounts (with broken Captchas) will inevitably become the norm.

Yet, why do I say it could be worse with social media playing a part? Social media is mob rule at its best and worst. The nice side is you can find unique and strange stuff and share it to large groups of people; the downside is the credit goes to sites that have the largest following. Posted a hilarious picture and Gizmodo found it? Guess which site is going to show up at the top of social media. Minor newspaper outlets that use the AP? Guess which site is going to show up (even though the AP should almost never show up since they do not create their own content). Basically, social search is about those with the largest followings; you have a huge fan base, you win, regardless of what is relevant, correct, or fair.

Heck, I even expect to see a “RankUp” social media button to come about if Google implemented SocialSearch into its algorithm. You could simply post an article, and provide an automatic ability for your fan base to “Rank [it] Up” on their results.

What SocialSearch could do to advertising:

I see the most impact really on the advertising end, along the lines of what Facebook has done. As someone who finds the load times of pages unacceptable when half the load time is of ads that do not interest me, the system that Facebook has set up actually is working rather well. As I mentioned before about Facebook’s feedback advertising, the ability to place feedback on the ads have made them a lot more relevant to me and therefore worthwhile for myself and the advertiser. Theoretically, this could work in the same way for SocialSearch if Google uses the information to help further optimize its search for more relevant sites per keyword (what better way to understand the very general phrases or information only keyword searches) or through Google providing the thumb up/down information to the websites organically ranking.

It is an interesting concept, but the problem really is Google’s foundation of basing sites on popularity algorithms that will always favor those who are popular (whether through links or social media fans).

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Facebook has come up with what I believe is a very creative way to get more information about their ads by allowing Facebook users to judge their own Facebook ads. They use thumbs up and thumbs down at the bottom of the ad, and then lets you provide a reason for your vote with options. Here is one example of what this new ad looks like:

When you thumb down, you get the following options:

• Misleading
• Offensive
• Pornographic
• Uninteresting
• Irrelevant
• Repetitive
• Other

When you thumb up, you get these options:

• Interesting
• Relevant to me
• Good offer
• Other

If Facebook has not patented these ad styles, I highly expect to see this style of ad feedback coming to many ads in the near future, and thereby rendering them useless as people begin to ignore them as they become too common.

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Not that many people use Facebook in China when you can make the same service such as Xiaonei (how many times must one say this, in today’s world, the minute an online company plans to go global, you better actually go global or choose the nations that have the highest Internet population–and that means China), but seems China is currently blocking Facebook,as Danwei notes:

Danwei readers in Beijing reported earlier today that Facebook seemed to be blocked. It was accessible in Shanghai this afternoon, but now seems to be blocked nationwide.

Creating a large frustration for presumably many young people who helps provide pictures for Engrish.com

The Wall Street Journal China’s Journal:

Beijing’s Olympic organizers have said that the Internet will be uncensored during the Olympics, a dubious claim. If Facebook still is running into interference in Beijing come August, organizers can be fairly certain that at least some of the half million foreign visitors expected here this August will notice.

Wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook has problems for awhile, just like Youtube before it, and Google before that.

Update (07/02/2008):

Aw provides some backend blocking pictures for the proof.

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Looks like a battle royale for the Chinese social networks will soon come to head with QQ launching its own service:

QQ soft launches a new service called QQ Xiaoyou, which is a social networking service targeted at students in universities and high schools. Actually, Xiaoyou is the Chinese Pinyin for alumni. Currently, only invited QQ users are allowed to test the service.

Obviously QQ want to make Xiaoyou another China’s Facebook, it also has the similar UI as Facebook. However, The net culture of Facebook is quite different from that of QQ. In Facebook, people tend to use their real name in offline life, and bring their offline connection online, while in QQ, almost all users take online ID not real name, use avatar not their own photos, and make online friends. Now, QQ Xiaoyou requires its users to use their real name and real photo, and will verify it strictly. Now you need to let QQ Xiaoyou approve your information within three days.

I’d be interested in seeing how they would actually verify it so strictly–there’s no real way unless you’re meeting them in person or having them fill out a form that scares people into being real on it. Otherwise, I would not call anything else very strict.

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Craig Hordlow put forth an interesting concept publicly that he’s been working on for awhile noting that Google’s growth is slowing as more and more people go directly to other sites such as Craigslist or Youtube or Wikipedia to find information within their respective niche as those sites become the authority over time and as such, people begin to not use Google’s search engine as much. He explains it as such:

What I mean by that is that, for example, people are less likely to go to Google and search for “apartments in San Francisco”, or “cleaning services in San Francisco”. They’ll either go straight to Craigslist.org, yelp.com, cityspace.com, or another destination.

This is because as people become more familiar with the web’s flora, they don’t need search to guide them to obvious destinations. So they use search increasingly for eclectic reasons and less for simple navigation.

[...]In 2005, the top 5 sites were all search engines. Now there are only 4 search engines in the top 10, and we have 4 social networking sites (none in 2005).

As much as I dislike having to disagree with him, here are the basic reasons why his facts are off:

• Graph does not directly show a correlation
• He’s using Alexa for the data
• One graph cannot show that the reason for peaked growth is due to a change in search habits

More details after the jump.
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Ran across an interesting mixture of social bookmarking site that brings together some of the most worthwhile sites on the net (in my opinion) called Doggdot.us:

why doggdot.us digg, slashdot, and del.icio.us/popular - this is a constant browsing cycle for me. So why not combine them into a unified format without all the extra chrome? We can eliminate dupes and add some extra niceities

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Over at Americablog, John Aravois noted that Facebook is taking things from external sites and putting them into your Facebook notification network:

From what we’ve been able to glean, Facebook automatically opts its users in to this privacy-violating pyramid scheme and the only way you can get out of it is by visiting every single one of Facebook’s corporate partners (whoever they are, we only know about Fandango at this point), and telling each and every one (if you can figure out where to tell them this) to stop publishing your private information on Facebook.

At first I wanted to laugh as usually this entailed the user of Facebook specifically having to add applications, widgets, etc. to opt in on their own accord (Anybody who’s big on privacy and the Internet, those of us who love Slashdot for example usually have an idea of what we’re opting in on). (more…)

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