Oreo's Chances at World Record Not Wayne-ing

Yesterday Oreo announced their plan to break the Guinness World Record for most Facebook likes in 24 hours. It wasn't necessarily huge news, mostly due to the fact that it's a social media-based record rather than a cookie-based record (World's Largest Oreo? Count me in!).

Oreo worked closely with Guinness, who set the bar at 45,000 likes for the 24-hour period. Oreo was easily able to beat that mark, ending with 114,619 likes for their single post. Guiness awarded them with the record and Oreo was officially recognized on Guinness's website.

Seems pretty cut and dry right? Wrong.

Unfortunately for Oreo, the record does not come without a much-publicized caveat, thanks to rap superstar Lil Wayne, who decided to try and break the same record at the same time as Oreo. 

The issue is that Lil Wayne crushed Oreo's 114,619 likes by getting over 500,000 likes of his own. This means that Oreo still did break the record, but they only held it for about 4 hours.

The other side to this is that Lil Wayne didn't register with an official Guinness World Record adjudicator, so the record may or may not be counted. However, Guinness addressed the situation on its blog, saying:

We are, however, aware of Lil Wayne’s attempt for the same record which is currently ongoing. Guinness World Records will review any applicant’s evidence once they have completed their attempt, which in this case is at the end of the 24 hour period.

What that means has yet to be seen, but we should hear in the near future. The other big takeaway is that while promoting a social media record attempt online is usually a good idea, you run the risk of others trying to one-up your efforts.

HTC Spices Up the Mobile World Congress with a Pair of Facebook Button Phones

Remember that whole back-and-forth drama over HTC's possible Facebook phones? A couple of weeks ago I covered that mess in my Daily Axioms video post, promising to revisit the story if and when there are new developments.

Now that the Mobile World Congress I mentioned in the video post has kicked off, we have those developments. One of the early surprises from the first day of the MWC is a pair of smartphones from HTC. The phones (dubbed the ChaCha and Salsa...seriously, that's their names) don't boast a ton superior features, but they do have one especially interesting component: a dedicated Facebook button.

It's a compelling feature to add to the mid-range phones, but I'm surprised they didn't integrate the feature with their more powerful devices. Hopefully that won't affect the performance of the Facebook button, because I do think it could be useful for slower phones (i.e. mine) that make social sharing more difficult.

But there's a second component to this story, and this one comes straight from Mark Zuckerberg. When the rumors of a possible Facebook phone surfaced, Zuckerberg quickly dismissed them, saying very clearly that Facebook was not developing a phone. Now, a few weeks later, Zuckerberg claimed at the MWC that there will be "multiple" Facebook phones coming this year.

It's quite a turnaround from those earlier rumors, but it appears we can all expect to see more Facebook integration with mobile devices in 2011.

Black Hat SEO Leaves Black Mark on JC Penny

With the millions upon millions of websites out there, the challenge that businesses face is no longer to simply have a website, but to have that website show up as high as possible in search queries.

That glaring need has led to a slew of companies and services offering search engine optimization. Most of these SEO services are completely legitimate (referred to as "white hat" services), but there are many that resort to shady and ethically questionable tactics. The latter, called "black hat" services, essentially pad traffic numbers and spam their way to higher search results.

This seedy SEO underbelly doesn't garner a ton of press, mostly because of the fact that regardless of the negative implications, it isn't technically against the law. However, poor SEO practices can have very bad consequences. For instance, there was an interesting story in The New York Times on Saturday about JC Penney falling into the black hat SEO trap.

What happened is that a third party SEO service the retailer hired spread thousands of links that all redirected back to JC Penny's site. And because link-backs are a major component of SEO, JC Penney quickly rose to the No. 1 result for practically all of their product lines, from jeans to bedding to home decor. They beat out larger retailers and online shopping giants like Amazon. In fact, if you searched for a specific brand, you were more likely to see JC Penney than the brand's own website.

Many of the sites that had the JC Penney link backs weren't relevant to JC Penny's target demographic or product market, and many weren't even active websites.

While not illegal, search engines like Google and Yahoo have zero tolerance for black hat SEO tactics like this. And when the Google Gestapo (I doubt that's the official title, but I think it works) found out, they manually readjusted JC Penney's search standings...to the 6th or 7th page.

JC Penney claims they had no idea this was all going on, and promptly fired the service once the story broke. However, the damage was done to both their online presence and the company's reputation as a whole.  This situation also serves as a reminder to those looking to boost their SEO to take the time to carefully screen out the questionable services and stick to increasing their organic website traffic.

Video Post: Dawn of a New Day for Online Video?

In this week's Daily Axioms video post, I look into a recent ComScore report showing that Hulu is still getting twice as much online traffic as five major TV networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and the CW) combined. More importantly, I discuss what this may mean for the future of online video and whether or not we'll continue to see more and more professionally-produced content with Hulu and Netflix.

Did Groupon Drop the Ball with Their Super Bowl Ad?

What would the Super Bowl be without a social-media fueled frenzy? And since this year's halftime show was too boring to cause any wardrobe-malfunction-type lashing by the online masses (I'm sorry, but Fergie singing Guns N' Roses? No thanks), it was up to some poorly-planned commercial to anger viewers.

Groupon did just that with their recent ad campaign featuring celebrities pleading for a charitable cause before abruptly pitching the daily-deal giant. People were not happy about Groupon poking fun at causes such as saving the rainforest or raising money for Tibet.

The CEO of Groupon took the blogosphere to defend the company, saying that the intention was to mock themselves and not the causes. He also pointed out that Groupon does give money to various causes, including those mentioned in the ads.

Maybe Groupon approved the ads knowing the amount of press they'd get based on the backlash? Maybe there just wasn't enough concept testing beforehand? Maybe it's as simple as a disconnect between the company's intention and how it was received. However, intentions don't mean much in the online space, because people are going rail against a company they feel is in the wrong regardless of what the company intended. 

Personally, I've seen the ads and even though I'm not necessarily offended by them, I don't see how Groupon could think the commercials are in any way self-deprecating. But controversies like this are a perfect example of why you really need to have a grasp on your audience's perceptions of your ad campaigns.