Daily Links: (25.05.2010)

• Domino's launches Foursquare campaign
• Twitter to begin charging publishers
• Best Buy advertising higher than regular prices as sales?
• Online election campaigning influenced 40 per cent of voters

Domino's launches Foursquare campaign I can't wait to see how the logistics of this work out on a National level. Checking in to get rewards (free pizza for mayor, free sides for check-in) should get people using Foursquare for the incentives, but the policing of how its implemented will be the really interesting point. Check-in fraud and tying purchase to check-in should be key to getting this working successfully.

Twitter to begin charging publishers After yesterday's announcement that 3rd party advertising networks won't get access to the network, Twitter's latest move, claiming a share of ad revenue from gadgets & viz using network data, isn't that surprising. They have managed to quickly lock down access to their greatest asset, user generated data, and the moved on to taking a share of the derivative product. These moves should definitely silence some of the lingering doubts about the network's profitability, but I can't imagine some developers are happy about the pace of it (at least those that are still developing after the company turned their sites on traditionally 3rd party functionality).

Best Buy advertising higher than regular prices as sales? Posted: 24 May 2010 11:11 AM PDT This might be the best example of illustrating the power of a sale sign ever created outside of a social psych lab. Best Buy apparently took a regularly priced item, raised the price and then advertised it as on sale 'as advertised'. While its not the most effective use of 'premium comparison pricing', it does highlight the power that information asymmetry & visual cues have on purchase decisions. Logically it seems like some stocking/coordination error, but interesting implications.

Online election campaigning influenced 40 per cent of voters Interesting that while the UK General Election wasn't the digital PR fest that some predicted, the channel was rather effective at changing intentions in some target segments. I'm intrigued that only 5% of respondents said they engaged with political content on Twitter, but This may stem from possible biases towards Facebook/other more established platforms and those with a greater depth of presented content. Facebook tends to present a greater amount of content that exists within the perceived page, while Twitter's external linking may mean respondents believed in a disparity between the political content & the network. Regardless of details within the digital channel, data like this shows that the next election could possibly be much more digital in its comms.