If you go to the iTunes store homepage, you’ll see a box from the Red Cross encouraging you to give in support of Hurricane Sandy victims. With the click of a button, iTunes will transfer 100% of the funds to the American Red Cross. Just select the button listing your desired gift and you’re done. This isn’t anything new—the Red Cross has worked with iTunes multiple times in the past, raising money to support victims of the 2010 Haitian earthquake and those devastated last year by the tsunami that struck Japan.

“You win some, you lose some,” as the old saying goes. Recently, a Kickstarter campaign lost. It’s aim was to raise money for a book about Kickstarter. The book, Crowdfunding: A Guide to What Works and Why by Glenn Fleishman, was put on Kickstarter with the intention of raising $35,000 (meeting $3,878 of its goal). Fleishman’s next step? Learn and move on.

This situation isn’t unlike many mobile attempts to succeed yet end in failure. After all, there are over 700,000 apps for Apple’s iPhone, with more being created every day. And as app developers know all too well, not every app gets to be an Angry Birds.

I love Facebook just as much as the next guy. I’m logging in daily to see what my friends are up to, and I’m always sharing and liking the “good stuff” I come across while browsing the web.

I grew up alongside the internet and I even made the jump over from Myspace as the tides were changing. But somewhere along the line, the simple website changed from a hobby of mine to daily ritual. It was no longer just for fun- it was a medium for connecting to the world I know. As strange as the idea seems, Facebook became a staple in my life. It also happened to become important to the other 900 million users worldwide. In fact, If all the users were in the same country, it would be 3^rd largest in the world.

On Thursday, the Vatican announced that Pope Benedict XVI would soon be tweeting from his own personal account, perhaps before the year’s end. But does this news mean anything to marketers? 

Some might consider whom they voted for to be a personal matter, not something to be displayed for their friends and family to see. Yet a substantial part of the population has revealed their political convictions and encouraged others to take part of the democratic process.

Recently, the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project released a report which states “22% of registered voters have let others know how they voted on a social networking site such as Facebook or Twitter.”  The report goes on to say that 30% of registered voters have been encouraged by family or friends via social media sites to vote for either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. In addition, social media has been used by 20% of registered voters to encourage others to vote.

What I’m about to share with you is a simple, nerdy way to send a message to a company in a way they’ve never seen before.

It’s all related to 404 pages. In case you don’t know, a 404 page is something that is shown when you reach a dead-end on a website where there is nothing to show. They can be funny and creative, or the typical bland “We can’t seem to find what you’re looking for” page that suggests you or turn back or search for something new.

Most companies have a way of tracking when a visitor hits a 404 page. Whether it’s through a WordPress Ap or Google Analytics,  they have the ability to see what URL delivered the dreaded 404 page.

American Apparel sent the advertisement below via e-mail to its subscribers on Monday, October 29, as Hurricane Sandy ravaged the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states of the USA. The clothing retailer was subsequently attacked via social media sites and blogs, with individuals expressing disdain for the company.

Everyone has a story. Since the dawn of man, storytelling has become an art that evokes emotions and compels action and empathy from the direction of the artist. In many ways, the medium is the message and the true art is opening the hearts and minds of the listeners and turning them on to engagement. Once in “story mode,” people tend to let their guard down and begin to shape opinions and beliefs around the information they are given. And timing is everything- The window of opportunity to engage story mode can be as small as a tweet or as long as a meeting. After all, there can never be a connection without that initial acceptance of possibility and desire to continue down the path.

There’s so much noise in social media today, it can be deafening to the outside observer. Looking in from the outside, the social landscape can seem like a crazed bazaar of people fighting for attention. However, for anyone actively participating in online communities, they find solace inside silos of their choosing. From selective twitter streams, customized news aggregators to content specific blog, people are tuning into what interests them and congregating as groups. Noise outside these silos is of little importance to the community member and the collective mind acts as a shield, protecting from unwanted intrusions and posers. There’s a proven process to gaining entry that relies on the scientific method, and if you want to get inside, you have to get real.