In case you haven’t heard, last night TechCrunch announced that Pinterest hit 11.7 million UMVs, becoming the fastest standalone site ever to surpass 10 million monthly uniques.

The #1 driver of consumer purchases is word of mouth recommendations from friends, and Pinterest holds the power to drive authentic “word of eye” recommendations in a way that is changing the landscape of social commerce.

How? The landing page for Pinterest is an endless visual stream of subtle product recommendations from the very people who influence your purchasing decisions - friends and strangers with good taste. This means that there is an endless opportunity for your brand and its products to be seen by Pinterest’s 11.7 million unique monthly users as endorsements from friends in the form of repins.

Currently availably stats show the average Pinterest user spends 98 minutes per month on the site, compared to 2.5 hours on Tumblr, and 7 hours on Facebook. Pinterest is most popular in North Eastern states, among females (estimates range from 58% to 70% female), and with people ages 25-44 (59% of visitors).

How it Works

In case you haven’t already joined the millions of others pinning products, here’s a quick overview of how Pinterest works: Pinterest enables users to “pin” images found around the Web into categorized collections, or boards. Think of it like an interactive, shareable scrapbook. Or as I like to say, it’s your virtual high school locker. Pinterest can capture the brand essence, personality, inspiration for product design, or company culture through visual boards. It could also be used to organically grow your brand’s reach through an influencer re-pinning strategy, to further engage with fans through themed boards, and to inspire consumers to action, perhaps through a “best board” or a “most pins” contest.

Why People Love It

“It’s lovely from a visual perspective,” says my colleague (and Pinterest addict) Sophia Aladenoye. Apart from Pinterest’s tactile and user-friendly experience, it helps people make visual mental notes of a life they aspire to, like a vision board. “Pinterest is personally helping me my 2012 vision board exercises… helping me to more easily remember the images that represent my goals, wants or benchmarks for 2012,” say Sophia. Others claim that the site is helping them to “de-stress,” to plan their wedding, or help redecorate their home. And some say they honestly just like the fact that’s invite-only and feels exclusive (or perhaps felt exclusive before its recent boost). Men are also jumping on the Pinterest bandwagon - my friend and colleague Maury posts vintage cars, and Grassroots Modern blogger Creede Fitch posts photos of modern furniture designs he finds inspiring.

How Brands Can Leverage Pinterest

1) Create a new social commerce touch point

With 11.7 million UMVs and counting, Pinterest presents an opportunity for brands to expand their audiences by going where the masses are. Consumers are always a step ahead of brands and its important for brands to follow behavior rather than dictate it. Your brand’s presence on Pinterest will create another consumer touch point and a way to be discovered by new people. The visual Pinterest boards would help invite new people into the fabric of your brand by setting a mood or encapsulating a lifestyle, helping users to imagine how your brand’s products, services or culture fit their lives.

2) Grow influencer networks

Brands can leverage Pinterest to find influencers with whom to engage. You can expand your influencer networks by following influential Pinterest users and boards, and repinning items to our own Pinterest boards, giving credit to the influencer. Brands may also choose to engage with influential bloggers and have them curate a board on their Pinterest page. Ask Ogilvy for advice on who to follow and repin, and who might be right to engage offline or on another brand platform.

3) Identify and engage super fans

Pinterest may also be a way to identify natural brand advocates or “super fans.” You can search for your brand’s products and discover who is most frequently pinning about your products and engage with those people. Surprise and delight super fans by rewarding them with products they pin to their boards. Eventually you may create a fan-curated board that allows super fans to add their pins.

4) Increase brand loyalty by sharing your brand’s culture

Pinterest is a fun, inspirational and highly visual atmosphere and your brand has an opportunity to engage fans in new and creative ways. Consider creating boards that align with product or service themes, for example, West Elm categorizes its boards by colors from its design palette, such as “Aquamarine.” Or create a board that reflects your company’s dedication to a CSR initiative. Or, compile pictures of everyday fans and influencers engaging with your brand, such as a board that features pins of people across the globe wearing a retail brand’s clothing.

5) Host contests for further engagement

Perhaps you can host a contest for fans to create the best Pinterest board with your products, and reward the winning fan with items from her board. Or, invite other users to co-create boards on your page around certain themes, and reward the winning team with product or a brand experience. For example, a travel brand can ask Pinners to create mood boards that reflect a destination like the French Riviera, and then reward the winning board with a trip.

7) Inspire repins (and purchases) through bold visuals

As mentioned earlier, the #1 driver of consumer purchases is word of mouth recommendations from friends, and Pinterest holds the power to drive authentic “word of eye” recommendations through a repin endorsement. To accomplish this, you’ll want to make sure that you have high resolution, professional quality, close-up photos to leverage. Photos of products should be taken in a way that enables the viewer to imagine herself wearing the product, engaging with an item, or taking part in the setting. Photos should taken in a way that makes them stand out in the visual stream that is Pinterest. For example, a bold-colored photo or a gray-scale photo might set itself apart from the photo stream.

Promote your culture first, products and services second

The trick with Pinterest is to leverage the “soft sell” and promote your brand culture over the products or services themselves. Pinterest is committed to maintaining a non-promotional atmosphere, and the hard sell could get you kicked off the platform. So to create the right atmosphere, think about what your brand has to offer and what the images say to people and what you want to ask, for example:

• A tech brand: “Do you like innovation? We’re innovative too, and here’s a photo of our developers making our first-ever app for iPhone.”

• A fashion brand: “Do you like bold, basic colors? We love everything bright and bold, and this painting by Matisse captures our upcoming line’s color scheme.”

• A home furnishings brand: “Do you enjoy a clutter-free living space? So do we, and here are three books we love that talk about a clutter-free home.”

• A credit card company or bank: “Do you imagine yourself living a lifestyle of luxury? Here’s a picture from the beach in the Virgin Islands where you could be right now.”

Through play and inspiration, Pinterest might just empower you to become the architect of your brand’s culture.

What do you think about Pinterest for brands? Do you think users will stay engaged once brands join?

Special thanks to Chris Heydt and Sophia Aladenoye of Ogilvy for their contributions.

Consumers that wanted to gain clout (and Klout) passed it along as quickly as possible. But will two weeks of conversation or two minutes of 1.5 million tweets (like those amassed around Tim Tebow’s heroics this season) sway opinion, increase favorability or drive sales? Or are brands just trying to be “part of the conversation”? The answer to both is yes.

Sometimes we overlook the power of social media to actually drive business. We spend time counting tweets, status update comments and blog posts instead of sales. But with #SuperBowl being a promoted trend on Twitter all day and the social media command center created by the Host Committee in Indianapolis, this Sunday’s investments in more than just television airtime surely sound like a ringing endorsement from CMOs across the country that social media isn’t a nice to have, but a need to have.

That’s because social media makes the viewing party and the water cooler the next day exponentially larger. As we all look down to our phones rather than up to our neighbor to share our instant opinion of that play or that ad or that tweet, social media allows messages and implied endorsements travel much farther than Neilsen ratings on TV. Based on ever-increasing platform usage, consumers have told us that the size of our circles matter. And that’s why every star uses Twitter (and why the NFL has invested in a player’s application so they can own the content instead of Twitter).

Since I don’t really have a favorite in today’s game, I’ll be watching to see if Twitter crashes. And then I’ll see how long it takes for this giant conversation to fade. According to Google Trends, although the search volume peaks the week of the event and then subsides into the ether until the next year, the overall conversation volume continues to climb year over year. The goal of social media is for brands to take advantage of those event peaks to increase their baseline of online conversation. Intuitively, that should work better for those with lower brand recognition, rather than the behemoths that can afford to pay. We look forward to finding out how long the proverbially tail can actually be not just in the social media conversation, but also for sales, awareness and preference.

In case you missed it, Ron Paul supporters, ASU students, and VFX artists were among those that joined the fray since my last post. The variations continue to proliferate further down the tail, satirizing - and entertaining - more niche audiences. What does this add up to? Segmentation.

While I easily enjoy Sh*t ASU Students Say even though I’m not a Sun Devil - and haven’t even been to the campus - the video resonates better with those who were. Beyond that, the video’s arc is more relatable to students who enrolled in the past 5-10 years and drink socially - perhaps even deeper for students who were in the Greek system and enjoy campus takeout.

The point is, there’s a clear difference in the type of viewer who’s going to watch the video halfway through for a chuckle and a viewer who’s going to share across social networks. Those pearls of info are demographic, psychographic, and behavioristic qualities - in some ways digital has obscured their importance.

As segmented as some brands' social media programs get these days.

On-platform segmentation

On Facebook you can get granular with ads - age, gender, interest, etc. - but what’s the deepest a brand can go with a non-paid Wall post? Zip code - better than nothing, but hardly ideal. What’s the most specific you can get with a non-promoted tweet? Well, there isn’t any targeting at all. A brand can use hashtags, but hardly a guarantee it reaches the right followers and non-followers. The list goes on.

When considering the lack of earned and owned targeting, should we have been so shocked by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s recent study showing 1.3% of users who Like a Page also engage with it? There are a host of reasons - and it’s not panic time - but a lack of targeted relevance is likely a large factor.

Is there hope? You probably saw the Pinterest infographic shared far and wide yesterday. The standout points are a 429% traffic increase since September and a higher referral rate than Google+. The larger question is how we account for the platform’s explosion - my takeaway is self-segmentation. Users can very specifically choose what content they consume from brands. For example, a user may be more interested in HGTV’s Design Happens Blog board than its Party Planner board - and the user can choose.

Of course, we can’t always expect audiences to do all the work - that’s kind of our job - but content segmentation is likely a contributor to the platform’s growing popularity. This is also why diligent brands should use Google+ to group users and serve-up relevance by the Circle-full.

What are the lessons?

Segment your influencers - While mega-buckets like green and lifestyle are easy defaults, your influencers should be as refined as your audiences - and pitched with the same specificity. This involves additional research, but is worthwhile in the long-run. This principle is emphasized in our and freshly-updated Ogilvy Social Media Engagement Code. We will always work hard to have good reason to connect our brand or program with a particular influencer or fan.

Diligent application of paid - Sometimes paid feels like a dirty word in our idyllic world of social media and word-of-mouth comms, but it’s a huge value-add when used properly. If a brand has a strong, relevant message it feels will resonate with ASU students or VFX artists, paid could be invaluable in getting the value exchange to a receptive audience.

Be targeted in your research - Broad statistics about social media won’t get you far. You may see large trends, but it doesn’t say much about your audiences. Believe it or not, MySpace is still relevant to stand-up comedians and forums are strong in industries like health care. Research + expertise for insight. As quickly as the digital world changes, intelligence must also be refreshed regularly - and with rigor.

As we continue to hear what sh*t all kinds of people say, more lessons about marketing in a digital world will come to the surface. Including when a campaign has run its course. Exhibit A @ 1:29. (It’s still hilarious.)

Are there other lessons you took away from this meme? What niche do you think is underserved in social media?

Facebook report from: http://www.marketingscience.info/.*Image credit: Despair.com. +Inspiration credit: @AlexisPond.

The updated code covers more contemporary circumstances. Facebook for one. We have learned that there are principles that can guide our behavior in community management as well as influencer management. We have made a choice to embrace the principles of clear disclosure in our work everywhere even while only one consumer protection body that I know of, the FTC, requires it.

I wanted to share with you and certainly ask for input and feedback. This is a living document and can hardly ever be called “done.” Still, it will guide our global teams as we continue to design and execute complex, multi-market programs around the world. Check it out:

The Ogilvy Social Media Engagement Code

Great relationships are built upon trust. From the start, the value for marketers to use social media was to earn the attention, advocacy and action of customers, influencers and stakeholders. While there are ways to improve our odds at “earning” all of this, there are also perils at short term tactics that can undermine the circle of trust and effectively poison the well.

The relationships we grow online between brands and customer or stakeholders are the future of our business. The digital age has changed the marcom world. Our ability to grow healthy relationships, earn brand advocacy, earn a place in someone’s social graph, earn people’s precious time and attention - will define marketing and communications effectiveness.

Trust, transparency, and true value exchange are not clichés nor empty buzzwords. They are the difference between effective use of social media and word of mouth marketing and harming relationships between organizations and their customers and stakeholders.

We, at Ogilvy, have had a social media code of ethics to guide us since 2005. It began as the Blogger Code of Ethics and spoke to our commitment to doing things right. It’s grown but never wavered from what we know from experience is the right way to run our business and provide value to our clients.

So here is the latest generation of our engagement code. This is foundational to how we do things. It has been informed by the Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) Code of Ethics as well as consumer protection laws such as the United States Federal Trade Commission’s Guidelines on Endorsements and Testimonials. This is a living document and will be refined periodically.

Beyond our commitment to doing things right in social media, never forget how David Ogilvy captured our approach to business, “Only first class business, and that in a first class way.”

Disclosure

• When reaching out to a Influencers & fans (these could be bloggers, journalist-bloggers, Facebook fans, Twitter followers, message board members - all of the influencers we might engage) on behalf of a client, we will always identify ourselves as Ogilvy working on behalf of our client, clearly disclosing who we are and who we work for.

• Within an initial outreach email, tweet or other communication, we will always fully disclose the purpose of the email as it pertains to the program or campaign, our disclosure requirements including a link to Ogilvy’s Social Media Engagement Code.

• In our communication we will convey why we think an influencer or fan, in particular, might be interested in our client’s product, issues, event or message.

• When blogging about Ogilvy, an Ogilvy client, or products and services, an influencer must clearly disclose their relationship with Ogilvy and the Ogilvy client, including any ‘material connection’ between Ogilvy or the client and the influencer (e.g. a product loaner, an event experience, travel expenses to a brand event, etc…). We follow the WOMMA Guide to Disclosure in Social Media Marketing for Disclosure Best Practices. This approach outlines our responsibilities in enforcing clear and prominent disclosure. http://womma.org/ethics/disclosure/

• Ogilvy staff will not publish (blog, tweet, Facebook post, etc…) about a client without the explicit agreement from the client that we can do so and then only with full disclosure of our connection to the brand (e.g. adding (cl) to a tweet about a brand to signify that they are a client) and in compliance with Ogilvy’s Social Media Guidelines for Employees

• In working with employees of brands as ambassadors, we will always enforce their full disclosure of their employee relationship in their external communications.

Transparency

• Whatever the influencer or fan chooses to write or produce should always reflect their honest and truthful opinion and actual experience.

• At the same time, we are responsible for the claims a blogger, whom we engage, makes about a product and when they make incorrect or false claims, we must correct the record

• When we engage with influencers or fans specifically about a client product or service, they are never required to create positive content about that product or service, no matter the type of experience they may have with us or our client. That is their choice and their opinion is their own.

• We won’t pretend to have read an influencer’s blog or other content if we haven’t, and we’ll always get to know an influencer before we reach out to them.

Relevancy

• We will always know who we are trying to engage and respect their position with their audience or community. If they are a professional journalist first and foremost, we will understand that role and treat them accordingly. If they are a busy mom blogger, we will be sensitive to their issues and needs. If they are a customer, we will treat them with care and respect.

• We will always work hard to have good reason to connect our brand or program with a particular influencer or fan. We know that everyone’s time is precious and will not indiscriminately contact influencers.

• We will seek to present influencers with a range of opportunities to work together around a campaign, so that he/she can create the best experience possible for their audience. We acknowledge that, when it comes to knowing their audience, they are the expert.

Value Exchange

• We will always be conscious of the value that an influencer or fan will receive for engaging with us (and how the brand will benefit) and work hard to make it relevant, inspiring and right-sized. And whenever it is something of value from a product loaner, to travel expenses in order to have an experience with the brand or dinner and drinks, we will enforce our disclosure policies.

• If we reach out to an influencer about a product, campaign or issue, we will not provide monetary compensation (e.g. cash, cash cards, similar cash-like offers) for them to produce positive content about the product, service or brand, because we believe it is bad practice to “buy” favorable reviews and do not want to appear as if we are.

• If we ask a influencer to review a product and, therefore, provide the influencer with the product to enable him/her to “experience” it, we will ask that he/she be transparent and reveal that he/she has been given the product temporarily, or permanently.

• If we engage the influencer or fan as an advisor or consultant on a specific project, we will consider providing compensation (agreed upon at the start of the project). This compensation will solely be for time as an advisor or a specific job and will not include an expectation that they will write favorably about the project, product or brand.

• If an influencer has advertising opportunities on his/her blog or media site, we will counsel our client to consider purchasing advertising as a way to reach their readers. We will make it clear, however, that paying for advertising does not mean that the influencer will post about the campaign or that, if the influencer does, he/she will do so in a way that is favorable to the brand.

• If we involve people in a contest that rewards sharing or posting of content, we will avoid any conditions that would promote people spamming others or falsely supporting a brand, topic or issue.

Privacy

• Unless specifically requested or opted in, Ogilvy will not send email newsletters or other material that could be considered as SPAM to any influencer or fan.

• Before we email an influencer, we will check out the site/blog’s About, Contact and Advertising page in an effort to see if he/she has said he/she does not like to be contacted by PR/Marketing companies.

• If an influencer tells us there is a specific way he/she wants to be reached, we’ll adhere to those guidelines.

In accordance with consumer protection laws (we use US law as a global baseline) we will not directly contact children under the age of 13 for any social media or word of mouth marketing program and will comply with all applicable laws dealing with minors and marketing, including the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (”COPPA”).

Consider the famous exchange from Pulp Fiction in which Jules and Vincent debate the rationality of abstaining from pork. Jules just doesn’t dig on swine, that’s all, because they’re basically dirty, like dogs.

VINCENT:     Yeah, but do you consider a dog to be a filthy animal?

JULES:          I wouldn’t go so far as to call a dog filthy, but they’re definitely dirty. But, a dog’s got personality. Personality goes a long way.

VINCENT:     Ah, so by that rationale, if a pig had a better personality, he would cease to be a filthy animal. Is that true?

JULES:          Well, we’d have to be talkin’ about one charming #@$#%& pig.

Indeed, we would have to be talking about one charming #@$#%& pig. Sure, people can “like” a brand. But most people don’t really like brands. Brands need to be more charming. For that, they need personality. Without it … well, we wouldn’t call them dirty. Just invisible. Like a ship passing in the night, to quote our founder.

In fact, I think to feel human might be the greatest feat a company can pull off. But letting your “you” come through is not an easy switch to throw. It takes knowing the central truth about your offering, and identifying the one cultural tension it can speak to. It takes a team of smart, honest people leading the dialogue.

And it takes a social platform that helps these people shine. To be personable is to be in dialogue. The consistency of traditional media is critical, but social media offers opportunities to be carefully inconsistent, like all humans. How? For starters, by not yammering about yourself all day. By listening. By developing a dynamic social cadence that steps away from your textbook tweets, and dabbles in your fans’ interests and even their voice.

Maybe then they will a) always know what to expect and b) be pleasantly surprised at the same time. Charm can run the gamut, from funny to sincere to Arnold on Green Acres. Some varied examples, below.

That might not mean much to you, but it probably made you chuckle if you fall into one of the two groups:

1. Current or former D.C. residents
2. Viewers of Sh*t People In D.C. Say

Of course, this video is one of many variations of the Sh*t Girls Say series - which has a cumulative YouTube viewership of 20+ million and growing. You know the premise: Stereotypical expressions from people of a certain ilk, organized by gender, hobby, lifestyle, or geography. There are takes on skiers, hipsters, suburban moms, and even sh*t nobody says (a personal favorite) and the meme’s ’success’ reminds me of basic marketing program goals: generating word-of-mouth, stimulating co-creation, and targeting segmented audiences.

$1,400 for a converted sunroom? Not bad - better than an English basement.

First: Why do we care about sh*t other people say?

As a meme - both intentionally and by accident - these videos satisfy several of the 7 Drivers of Word of Mouth synthesized from Emmanuel Rosen’s work: there’s a good story, people can show their involvement, there is an implicit invitation to participate through their involvement, ’supporters’ can be creative, and, most crucially, there’s a clear value offering - comedy.

The power of these elements is not only clear in the 20+ million video views of the original - and millions more on the variations - but the number of amateur aueters who created their own. An absurdly unscientific calculation using YouTube shows 200+ videos using a basic search - let’s safely presume 50 are duplicates and 50 are spam. Even at 100 and with absolutely no prize, that’s higher participation than most branded video submission challenges get - save Survivor applications and Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl.

What’s the lesson?

This concept - again, presumably by accident - encourages marketers to revisit basics about constructing effective programs to generate word-of-mouth and cultivate co-creation. Here are a few quick ones:

• Establish a proper barrier to entry for a desired output - if you’re inviting the masses, you better make it low.
• Make it real - do a participants’ efforts really matter or is this just a marketing program? The former will help cultivate stronger long-term benefits.
• Allow for creativity - while some of the videos are mocking groups, I would confidently presume that most of them were created by skiers and D.C.-ites themselves.
• Let your co-creators own it - while everyone involved knows this is a marketing effort, no one’s interested in making a 6-minute branded video - nor does anyone want to watch one - so ensure the brand is seen through the lens of its fans, advocates, and consumers, not the opposite.

In Part 2, I’ll explore the concepts of segmentation as it applies to long-tailed messages and why - even if you don’t live in The District - Sh*t People in D.C. Say is still funny.

Why do you think this meme has become so popular? What are the other takeaways do you see that apply to marketers?

In a recent Washington Post article, Polarized News Market has Altered the Political Process in South Carolina Primary, we peak into the news consumption habits of a South Carolina voter. Two election cycles ago the South Carolina native would read newspaper for political news, now she “settles in at her desktop to fire up Facebook.”

“Selective Exposure”, described by researchers from UCLA and Stanford suggests to that consumers are “tucking themselves inside information silos” and that this is compounded by the speed and like-mindedness of social networking.

New research from Facebook suggests that - despite what many instinctively believe - social networks actually expose us to new, novel ideas and information rather than polarize us. While politics indeed may be more polarizing than ever, social networks like Facebook actually perform the opposite effect. According to a massive experiment, rather than polarize us, Facebook brings us together.

In the study, Facebook researchers modified EdgeRank such that two different groups were created focusing on how links are shared. First, a control in which the EdgeRank functioned as it usually does: sorting out all of your friend’s activity and serving up the links it thinks you’d like to read. And a second group that had a select number of links removed from their feed. From there, the researchers were able to track how information (in this case, links) spreads in social networks.

They found, as one might expect, you’re more likely to share links posted from your closest friends or strong ties. Not surprising. However, weak ties - the vast majority of our Facebook friends - were more likely to introduce us to a new or novel links - ones we wouldn’t have otherwise come across. Proving, as the authors suggest, that social networks actually introduce us to new sources of information, and not reinforcing the links, ideas and news we already consume.

Jury Still Out on Diversity in Networks

It’s an interesting study and certainly nothing comes close in terms of the total sample size (the experiment involved 250 million users). The message from Facebook is “[t]he research suggests that Facebook isn’t the echo chamber that some might expect – online social networks actually increase the spread of novel information and diverse viewpoints.”

The question remains, however, if weak ties represent diversity with respect to the level of exposure to new ideas, not just new links to the same point of view.

Real World Application

For marketers, it’s important to under how information spreads in networked communities online. We know head of tail influencer engagement programs don’t always scale up to the level that justifies the spend. Understanding the way word of mouth works - the art and science - is a critical step to reliability predicting the impact of a social media program.

A helpful question to ask in planning sessions is: do we expect our target audience to share with their close friends (e.g. social booking engines sharing your flight details) or more widely across weak ties (what you’re currently listening to on Spotify)? Building in a weak or strong tie designation into a brief helps to focus the program.

Resources

Facebook Data Team Blog

Blog from Facebook Researcher and Designer, Paul Adams.  His new book, Grouped - How small groups of friends are the key to influence on the social web is a deep dive into this topic and is excellent.

The Strength of Weak Ties. Mark S. Granovetter. American Journal of Sociology, Volume 78, Issue 6 (May, 1973).

Connected - The Surprising Power of our Social Networks.

(Photo credit: Flickr user dylan20)

We all survived the blackout, but how effective was it? The question may take some time to answer, but support for SOPA/PIPA appears to have weakened in its wake.

The biggest light shed this week may have been that on the rift between Hollywood and Silicon Valley. And why not? I mean, we have content creators and content access providers – and they both have their interests. But when Bills are drafted that seemingly only protect the rights of one, surely the other will see a few ruffled feathers.

We ‘Creatives’ are lucky. We get compensated for our ideas and the intellectual property that we create. In our industry, much of what we create isn’t tangible. But the creation and ownership of that product is just as real as the cake your local baker prepared. Art is art, content is content – though the form may take many shapes, it’s all creation – and the rights of those who create content should be protected. So, how can we have our cake and eat it too?

The answer lies in the way these Bills are written. We all agree that we must protect IP – this has been a challenge in our industry for a long time. America is a place of tremendous freedoms – and with the freedom to create also comes the right to protect. But, we also need to protect the rights of those who provide the access. After all, without an audience, who would consume the content?

By and large, the tech giants support the bills in theory – but take issue with it as drafted, stating that they expose law-abiding web and tech companies to uncertain liabilities, calling for monitoring of web sites. Thus, infringes on the rights of the content providers.

Rights should be protected, but censorship is not the answer. In order to draft a proper Bill that manages to protect the rights of content creators, but isn’t a gateway to censoring the web, one needs understand the architecture behind the internet. Backers of SOPA/PIPA do not appear to fully appreciate the unintended implications critics are citing. So, in addition to the great web blackout, the tech giants have thrown support behind the Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) Act in an open letter to Chairman Issa and Senator Wyden.

Could the OPEN Act be the solution we are all looking for?

We need both the creators and providers – and we need to protect the rights of each. So, we need to find a middle ground. The day the web went dark is only the beginning.

How did the blackout affect your January 18?

And indeed, change was in the air (and over the servers) yesterday. In protest of a pair of laws now before Congress that address online piracy, some of the most highly-trafficked websites in the U.S. made their sites inactive, dark, or otherwise blocked access in some way. Sites like Wikipedia, Reddit, Boing Boing, and those crazy catz at Cheezburger all participated. Furthermore, companies like Twitter and Facebook joined in expressing their opposition to the proposed legislation and urged their users to reach out to Congress.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate are both similar in scope and address the same issue-namely that of illegal content piracy. The problem of content piracy is not a new one, but it has proliferated in recent years with high-speed internet and bit torrent sites.

The supporters of this legislation-media companies and perhaps most notably the Motion Picture Association of American (MPAA)-have made the case that the current system is untenable and unfair. On that point, the opponents agree. The disagreement is rooted in the way the bills seek to curtail the illegal behavior, potentially threatening the vibrancy and character of the Internet itself.

Today, many Americans (and brands!) live and make their living online. Yesterday, the blackout exercise proved to be an astonishing feat of PR and opened another chapter in the story of digital activism. More than 162 million Americans saw the Wikipedia blackout page, and more than 8 million contacted their Congressman through the website’s tool.  4.5 million people signed Google’s petition, and Twitter saw more than 2.4 million SOPA-related tweets.

As Brendan Daly, EVP Ogilvy Washington Public Affairs noted, “Sites like Google and Wikipedia have enormous reach to make their users aware of what’s at stake in this debate. And with the pervasive use of social media, it’s easy for people to spread the word to their friends and colleagues. I saw it firsthand among my Facebook friends today, including a number of Members of Congress who posted their strong opposition to SOPA.”

And the results speak for themselves.  Senators and Congress people, including former sponsors, abandoned both bills in droves yesterday. Along with a strong statement from the White House issued last week, there is little-to-no chance the bills will pass in their current state. Yesterday’s events demonstrate once more just how powerful a tool the Internet is and the profound effects it is starting to have on the nature of our democracy. It is even predicted that when the dust settles, and the surveys come back, we’re going to see a large percentage of people who were moved to contact Congress for the very first time about this issue.

When I asked former Mashable editor-at-large Ben Parr what the most important lesson was from the day’s events, he said, “banding together works.” Just imagine what we can all do together (with a little help from Google)….

How did yesterday’s blackout affect you? Were you moved to contact Congress or sign a petition? Let us know about your thoughts and experiences in the comments section.

I was certainly not surprised to read that Twitter is calling this the year of the Twitter election; former White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs had said as much in a PRWeek interview last October that stated: “political campaigns, governments, and businesses face a “unique” environment with a completely new set of rules: no-one is immune to society’s doubts and everyone has to be accountable to their users, who are now the ones in control.”

Moreover, we see the impact of users’ voices on Twitter every day - whether occupying Wall Street or voting for The X Factor winners. As social media professionals, we advocate that one of the regular benefits of social media listening for any organization is the opportunity to take a pulse of the community, but in the upcoming election, that pulse can impact media coverage, debates, and candidates in real time.

Last night’s Fox News debate in South Carolina invited audience participation not just through submitted questions and comments, but also by having them hold candidates accountable. In addition to using the #scdebate hashtag, viewers were asked to tweet with #answer when they felt a candidate directly answered a question and #dodge when they didn’t. By our tracking, nearly 8,000 people “voted” using these hashtags in the debate last night.

Twitter then partnered with Mass Relevance to show minute by minute viewer tracking of #dodge v. #answer based on what was happening on air and produced timelines like the one above.

Moderators, including Juan Williams and Bret Baier, both very active on Twitter, not only asked questions from Twitter, but also used the Twitter feed to reinforce the need for more thorough and accurate answers.

So the question is: what does this mean for this year’s election?

• Candidates will be accountable to everyone all of the time - whether you’re in the room or not, a Twitter election is always on. Candidates who want to win can’t just look like Boy Scouts, they always need to “be prepared,”.
• A web army is a powerful army - Romney may have won the first two primaries, but his audience was not with him last night. It’s one thing to be ganged up on as the front-runner on stage, but another when 4,000 Newt supporters are emphasizing you dodged the question in real time.

Beyond elections though, last night’s debate showed me that creative use of hashtags can open up new opportunities for data - instead of a “who won?” web survey, we have minute-by-minute user response available. Last night was just one example that the focus group has been democratized.

In or out of an election year, what are the possibilities for your brand or organization?

Read Twitter’s recap on the campaign here.