Companies are reading and listening to what is being said online as they seek to take advantage of new marketing opportunities evolving on social networking Web sites

The biggest problem is the lack of transparency. Facebook is right in that I would really like to have some things that I do on third party sites to conveniently appear in newsfeed, e.g. events I’m attending from Evite or eBay/craigslist listings so that my friends know about them. That’s the promise of Beacon. But I need to be in control and not get blindsided as I did in the example above.

360workspace is setting to open up very soon in the Twin Cities: Minneapolis!

The ‘famous’ episode that was redone for Conan and Ellen.

Fun and distracting.

The average American is exposed to about 3000 advertising messages a day, and globally corporations spend over $620 billion each year to make their products seem desirable and to get us to buy them.

But some warn against combating the cynicism with trickery. For example, in a Time magazine article titled “It’s an Ad Ad Ad World” (July 23, 2002), Keith Reinhard, chairman of marketing services agency DDB Worldwide, stated, “I’m against any form of deception. In the end, it’s bad business.”

Word of mouth is the #1 influence on business purchase decisions and is best leveraged through face-to-face marketing efforts, according to a new study of US and UK executives conducted by market research firm the Keller Fay Group and sponsored by experiential marketing agency Jack Morton Worldwide.

67% of all consumer purchase decisions are primarily influenced by word of mouth (Source: McKinsey/Thompson Lightstone)