Axiom Wines and Dines at the Arboretum

Many of us from Team Axiom spent yesterday evening at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum for their Toast and Taste in the Gardens event.

The Toast and Taste in the Gardens is a fundraising event for the Arboretum where people can sample food and drink from Minnesota restaurants, wineries and breweries.

The good:

• The Savgn Blanc and Sweet Red wines from the Cannon River Winery were fantastic.
• Schell's Brewery had a 150th anniversary dark beer that was great, and I'm usually not a fan of dark beer.
• When it came to food, the bruschetta-wrapped scallops from Crave were my personal favorite, and the food from LocoVores BBQ was a big hit with us as well.
• The biggest surprise for me was the zucchini bread cupcakes with goat cheese frosting topped with an edible snapdragon flower garnish. I don't really eat zucchini-based baked goods, flowers, or anything with goat cheese, but it was actually really good.
  

The not-so-good:

• There was a basketball-sized wasps' nest near one of the walking trails. And even though the wasps seemed well-behaved, I hate wasps and did my best not to scream like a girl when I saw them.

Wasps' nests aside, it was a fun night of wine, great food and lots of beautiful flowers and trees to walk around and look at. Add in the fact that the weather was gorgeous, and it's hard to imagine the evening going any better. Be sure to check out our Facebook page to see all of our photos from the event.

Questioning Facebook Questions

There's been quite a bit of buzz building around Facebook's launch of Facebook Questions. Currently in beta testing, the feature will allow users to post questions that can then be answered by the Facebook community.

The format sounds like it'll be very similar to Yahoo Answers or the question section on LinkedIn, but with one major exception: a few hundred million more users.

I have some reservations about how Facebook Questions will be received, because there is a strong possibility this feature will either become a platform for harassment (like we see in the comments sections of website across the Internet) or a sea of promotions and advertisements from companies.

The reason why I think the second one is likely is because most of this buzz around Facebook Questions has been from corporate and business blogs discussing its promotional potential.

Obviously, we have to wait for Facebook to open Facebook Questions to all 500 million users before we can accurately gauge its impact. And until that happens, the future of Facebook Questions will be a question in itself.

Old Spice and the Value of Video

Old Spice achieved viral status last week when their 'Old Spice Guy' videos featuring actor Isaiah Mustafa became a YouTube sensation. The videos were short, funny responses to Twitter followers, and were produced non-stop over a couple of days.

I can't say for sure, but I'm assuming the goal of this online video campaign was simply to increase brand awareness and generate a little buzz. That's because many companies are still feeling out those non-traditional styles of promotions from a financial return standpoint.

But Old Spice is one company that does know the financial value of a successful online video campaign, with the reports that sales of Old Spice Body Wash increased by 107% over the last month. And when your sales more than double, it's safe to say that there is value in video campaigns if it's done right.

Yelp-ing You Find Deals

Despite being relatively young, Foursquare has quickly surpassed competing location-based networks like Gowalla and Yelp.

Neither one seems content to go down without a fight, however. Yelp especially has tried to evolve, including the introduction of badges and a ruling system similiar to Foursquare mayorships. And yesterday, Yelp announced they are testing a deal-a-day coupon feature similiar to Groupon.

I really like this move, seeing as how Yelp is already well-established as a location-based network. That means that branching out into a deal-a-day service seems like a smart fit, because they can offer more localized deals without running into as many of the logistical problems that a startup company would.

Innovation is key in this type of social media market, and Yelp is the first of the three big location-based networks to adopt this sort of hybrid location/coupon method.

More importantly, this not only provides competition for Groupon, but could do wonders to help it compete with Gowalla and Foursquare for the location-based crown.

The Queen of Anti-Social Media

Last week Axiom took big strides to expand its online presence, including an Axiom Flickr account. Apparently we're not the only ones who want to expand, with the British Family creating a Flickr account of their own.

Now to be honest, the Flickr account itself isn't anything special, with picture sets for different Royal Family members and events. However, what is special (and not in a good way) is that comments are disabled on the account.

Actually that isn't too surprising, considering comments are also disabled on the British Monarchy's YouTube account. Also, their @BritishMonarchy Twitter account isn't used conversationally, only being used to publish stories and news links.

I applaud the effort by the Royal Family to branch out into more social media channels, but they are completely missing the point. Social media success or failure depends on the level of engagement you can generate, and eliminating the ability for others to comment eliminates the potential for that engagement.

I understand that the British Monarchy is probably worried about negative feedback or mean comments. But silencing everybody is not the answer, and will most likely only create the negative backlash that they were trying to avoid in the first place.

It's hard to categorize most social media decisions as "right" or "wrong." However, this kind of one-way social media contradicts the transparency and interaction that social media is all about.