ChasNote

Wacom’s second sponsored Graffiti contest, Objects Brought To Life, closes to submissions later this evening, but with 8300 entries it’s already bigger than the first (Graffiti Monster Contest) by nearly 50%.

(Artist credit: Jean-Sebastien Lajeunesse)

The paid promotional effort is the same as the previous contest. One explanation for the increased activity may be that 2000 participants in the first contest became “fans” of Bamboo By Wacom, allowing Wacom to send them notifications when the new contest opened for submissions.

TechCrunch reports on two advertising networks for independent blog authors, first Sam Sethi’s BlogNation and then BlogCharm, both apparently stiffing their publisher partners. In the case of BlogNation, former US editor Oliver Starr published an open letter in which he includes IM transcripts in which Sam Sethi confirms payments have been wired; Starr says this turned out to be a lie. The situation at BlogCharm is arguably worse. Member sites aren’t being paid, and it’s not even clear who owns and operates the firm (from TechCrunch):

“Ownership of the site isn’t immediately clear. BlogCharm has a powered by Blog Explosion badge on it, there are no contact details aside from an online form located on Blogexplosion and the registration details for the site are hidden by a private proxy service. Blog Explosion on the other hand is registered to West Hollywood based Live Universe and sits on the same server as BlogCharm so it would be reasonable to suggest that Live Universe may well be the owner of both sites. Having said that BlogCharm (along with Blog Explosion) has changed hands at least once, having sold in June 2006 for a reported ’six figure’ sum, then at least according to the BlogExplosion forums, someone called Chris was tasked with ‘fixing’ BlogExplosion (and we’d presume the other related sites) in November this year. Whether Chris is a new owner or simply an employee given management of the site was not detailed, indeed there was no details other than a name and a promise to fix the mess. Live Universe was founded by Brad Greenspan, best known as one of the founders of MySpace and in more recent years for his opposition to News Corps acquisition of MySpace. Live Universe runs sites including LiveVideo.com, a top 1000 site online (according to Alexa), BlinkYou.com, Lyrics Download and acquired Flurl.com in October 2006.”

The people behind the curtain at iTunes are out with their “Best of 2007″ lists. Two of my favorites (and FM partners) made the cut — Boing Boing TV in the “New This Year: Video” category, and Ask A Ninja in the “Classics: Video” category.

Last month Wacom partnered with Graffiti Wall to sponsor a Draw A Monster contest. In addition to the 515,000 votes cast on the 5660 monster drawings submitted, the contest encouraged more than 2000 Facebook members to become “fans” of Bamboo By Wacom, the Facebook Profile page for Wacom’s tablet computing kit.

Each time someone joins the Bamboo By Wacom fan club, a headline like this shows up in his or her friends’ newsfeed.

If you apply ChasNote math (I have about 300 friends in Facebook), that’s 2000 times 300 — 600,000 news headlines from one friend to another plugging Bamboo By Wacom. Say two-thirds of those headlines get pushed down the newsfeed before someone sees them, that’s still 200,000 friend-to-friend endorsements of your brand.

Eight days ago Graffiti Wall enabled comments for their users, with HP as the launch sponsor. So far 40,000 comments have been submitted (an average of 5,000 per day) under HP’s “What Do You Have to Say?” tagline and logo.

When AARP sent an IO renewing their advertising on several FM sites, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that those ads — on a handful of bleeding-edge Web 2.0 social media sites and blogs — were among the best performers on AARP’s Q4 digital plan. My colleague Kim Kochaver alerted me to a vibrant field of social media sites for seniors: Eons, EldersVoice, BoomerTown and SeniorFriendFinder among others.

A few years ago, CNET launched an RSS product called Newsburst — partly as a special service to its most loyal news-junkie readers, and partly to convert those readers from search-click-and-leave readers into opt-in subscribers. The downside of creating a deeper relationship with readers is the crow your brand must eat if and when you discontinue the service, as CNET did earlier this week. Here’s an excerpt of the email sent to subscribers.

Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch has a piece on one of my favorite topics, embarrassing moments in contextual advertising. These snafus are generally best at news sites, like this example from CNN (or this one), where news coverage of illegal steroid use in professional sports pulls along with it ads for sketchy purveyors of said steroids.

Ami Vora at the Facebook Developers site says Facebook tags and “other platforms” can now be used by other publishers on sites outside of Facebook. (I saw this first on Paid Content.)

“Now we also want to share the benefits of our work by enabling other social sites to use our platform architecture as a model. In fact, we’ll even license the Facebook Platform methods and tags to other platforms. Of course, Facebook Platform will continue to evolve, but by enabling other social sites to use what we’ve learned, everyone wins — users get a better experience around the web, developers get access to new audiences, and social sites get more applications.”

Very cool. I’m guessing this means that any participating publisher can paste Facebook tags on his or her site, and based on select Facebook Profile information serve relevant content or advertising to his or her audience. If the Facebook gang reads the same news I do (especially the over-zealous rants from the past 3 weeks, for an extreme example see Josh Quittner’s), I’ve got to believe they will be very careful about privacy, disclosures, opt-outs and the like, and will nail this one. Google must be thrilled.

The broadcasts networks are considering canceling the star-clad “upfront” events in favor of block-and-tackle sales calls with top advertisers, according to the NY Times:

“with the writers’ strike now looking as if it may extend into the new year, threatening the normal timetable for developing prime-time series, every major network is pondering the elimination of the big, garish upfront shows — which cost $3 million to $5 million a year.

“Jeff Zucker, the president of NBC Universal, is the most vocal, willing to say publicly that his network is contemplating junking its upfront event. For NBC in recent years, that has consisted of unveiling the new lineup before a packed crowd in Radio City Music Hall, and a canape-and-drinks party in and around the skating rink in Rockefeller Plaza.

“‘In light of the changing business environment, we are looking very seriously at not doing the extravaganza part of the upfront process,’ said Mr. Zucker, who acknowledged that he has been thinking for some time that the upfront shows have outlived their usefulness and cost-effectiveness. ‘Once we make it, it is not a one-year decision,’ Mr. Zucker said. ‘We do not make it lightly, and obviously we are going to consult with our advertising partners.’

“Mr. Zucker emphasized that NBC would still take part in the actual selling part of the upfront, where deals are made with advertisers to pay set prices for time on network shows. He said that the process remained ‘the best mechanism’ to do business for new network schedules.

“Those deals — the networks took in more than $9 billion in last year’s upfront — would simply be made after much smaller presentations in much smaller settings for much smaller groups of ad buyers. It would become, Mr. Zucker said, more like ‘a personal call’ on advertisers, much more the way most cable networks have sold in the upfront: small concentrated sales efforts.”

I bet that’s a relief for programming execs like Stephen McPherson, president of ABC Entertainment, who has had to dance with stars at previous upfronts.