Topics That Are Igniting : 8/26/11


Klout Wants to Turn Social Media Influence Into Revenue

Joe Fernandez, the CEO of the social influence startup Klout, said the company is ready to get serious about making money and pursuing advertisers. The new chief revenue officer, Tim Mahlman will oversee the Klout Perks program, where advertisers pay to offer deals to the most influential users on Facebook and Twitter. The company has run more than 75 Perks campaigns so far, with companies like Nike, Audi, and Virgin America. Currently, most brands are treating those campaigns as experiments, but the goal is to turn them into a significant part of their online advertising budgets.

Edmodo Brings Social Media Back into the Classroom

The education-based Edmodo just launched a slew of new features. For those of you aren’t familiar with the education-based social network, it’s a Facebook-style site for teachers and students created in 2008. Teachers can pose questions and challenges for extra credit, and students can ask questions and interact with one another. To keep it safe and professional, web users can’t simply log on and create a profile.  They have to be invited, using a special classroom code that the teacher gives out at his or her discretion. The new features include badges, which allow teachers to incentivize engagement with games and personalized rewards; quizzes that teachers can create and assign, themselves; student profiles that are generated by students’ activity on the site, and more.

New Social Media Site Fampus Debuts at University of Iowa

Officially launching at the University of Iowa this past Monday, Fampus provides college students with a private forum to post announcements, photos, and other details about events happening around campus and in the local community. The website was created by Brittany Brody, a student who came up with the idea after being overwhelmed by everything going on at her school and being frustrated by the fact that she couldn’t keep track of it all. The site’s goal is to become the go-to place on the Internet where students can find everything they need to enhance their college experience. The network is only available to a few schools right now but is taking requests.

Dunkin’ Donuts Brews Battle of Fans

Dunkin’ Donuts is launching a national contest using location-based social media to encourage customers to “check-in” to its stores and hopefully buy more coffee and doughnuts. Each week for the next five weeks, the customer with the most check-ins the most on Foursquare or Facebook will win a bunch of great prizes including a $200 gift card and a 50-inch LCD TV. As you probably know, someone who checks in to a location on Foursquare is dubbed the mayor. Dunkin’ Donuts is going a step further by making you the president.



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