@BarackObama joins Instagram
Social media savvy President Obama has furthered his online presence yet again this time by joining Instagram as @BarackObama. The president and his team are no strangers to utilizing various social media platforms (most recent forays being Tumblr and Flickr), although Instagram is their first mobile only platform. While it’s hard to figure out how the photo sharing nature of Instagram plays into the upcoming 2012 campaign, it’d be foolish to dismiss it completely either as more news organizations – such as the Washington Post and NBC World News – have opened accounts to share behind-the-scenes snapshots. Take a look at Obama’s first photo here and leave a tip on which filter would suit him best!

Facebook App Profile Pages to Disappear on February 1^st
Page managers should be noticing banners on their application pages  kindly notifying them that:

“By February1, 2012, we are removing app profile pages. You can migrate likes and the vanity URL of this page to an existing Facebook page with the same name and product/app category.”

These banner notifications come six months after the initial announcement that Facebook would phase out its App directory  and it appears to be an effort to encourage both app developers and users for more search-friendly (and search reliant) apps. A Facebook Developer blog post credited the move to inconsistencies between app profile pages and regular pages concerning insights, APIs, and distribution channels. Admins will be able to transfer likes to new pages, but unfortunately this does not apply to content. You can read further on the matter here.

Google + Sees Member Growth
Google +’s growth in 2011 hasn’t been as fast as some had initially speculated or hoped. Although Plus  has yet to gain footing as a serious Facebook contender, December saw its strongest month, member growth-wise, with US visits reaching over 49 million, and up by 55% since November, according to Experian Hitwise.  According to analyst Paul Allen, Plus just passed the 62 million mark, compared to Facebook reaching 60 million four years after its debut. While Facebook still reigns with a whopping 800 million active members, Allen predicts that Plus will reach 400 million by the end of 2012.

Post Your Instagram Pics to Facebook
Candid photographers rejoice! Thanks to a small tweak on the mobile photo platform, users can share full sized Instagram photos in all their filtered glory directly onto Facebook, utilizing Timeline’s aesthetic value to the max. While all Instagram photos end up in a designated “Instagram Photo” album, they’re published onto Timeline with its original caption and a public URL. If you want to get a headstart and start sharing photos you’ve already uploaded, follow these instructions. For more old fashioned users who want the print experience, you can check out these services that’ll print your Instagram pics in various ways.

Groupon Introduces a New Merchant Center 
Groupon rolled out a new merchant center that’ll allow for more transparency concerning customer deals, available to all merchants. Features include real time percentages of customers who’d recommend the business and their comments, although data on satisfaction rates is a little scarce. The dash also includes the deal statistics that launched last month, and aggregates buyer demographics such as zip codes, genders, and ages. To read up further on Merchant Center’s features, you can read Techcrunch’s breakdown here.

Facebook’s Daily Deals, Revisited
When Facebook announced the end of its daily deals service back in August, it was a quiet concession to Groupon’s dominance in that area. It seems however, that the Daily Deals Agency is reattempting another go, launching a Facebook Marketplace Network  in over 40 U.S cities with over 500 sources of daily deals, offers, and steals – all sortable by category and location. Better luck this time!

Did we miss anything? Let us know here and join in on the buzz!

In thinking about ways in this new year that I could better contribute to Affinitive’s blog, I got inspired by the blog over at everyone’s favorite minimalistic housewares company, SimpleHuman.

Their blog has become a must-read for me, not because they dish out the inside scoop on their latest and greatest, which I enjoy, but because their employees share their favorite finds in projects, web 2.0, other blogs, stories and articles, gadgets, movies, etc.

In reading their blog I feel like I really get a grasp of what an awesome company culture they must have and it definitely increases my affinity for their sleek (and often pricey) trashcans.

Taking a tip from the Simple Human employees, I am hoping to share from time to time some applications, case studies, videos, sites, products, gadgets, articles, and other random finds that I love.

I fully believe that when you are working in a creative environment, inspiration can come from so many varying sources. I do a daily scavenger hunt around the internet and think I am much better at my job for taking those few minutes out of every day to read my favorite blogs, check in on social networks and sites that I love, and new inspirational finds.

Without further ado…

I have been a sporadic Vimeo user for the past year. I don’t shoot much video personally, so I don’t have much to contribute to the artistic and creative Vimeo community but I enjoy watching videos on Vimeo and appreciate the format and what it provides versus the much more popular YouTube.

To explain the difference between the two in very simple, non-technical terms (and from my own personal experience), YouTube is where I would go to watch my favorite music video or try to find an awesome scene from Big Love that I want to watch again. Vimeo is where I go to get inspired by original content, created by aspiring videographers, directors, and Kanye West.

I was happy to discover yesterday that the White House has setup a channel at Vimeo and will be sharing Obama’s weekly video casts via the site.

After watching the tech savviness of both Obama and McCain’s campaigns with their utilization of social media tools, it shouldn’t be surprising that the channel has found it’s home at Vimeo.

But it still feels very refreshing and validating that the very tools that we assist our clients in leveraging as they spread their brand message or empower consumers to share User-Generated Content are platforms that are also being used by our new President.

Our internal company servers nearly flat-lined as we all watched the Inauguration Address online, as did the clients that we spoke to during that monumental time. It is nice to watch it again, on Vimeo, shared to us directly by the most well known white home in America.

No matter what your political affiliations are, the mainstream usage of social media platforms and tools such as Vimeo is inspirational to me as a marketer, and in this case, also as an American.

I guess that is why I am not surprised at all by this blog post on GigaOm that verifies that the rumors are true, Obama’s media placement team has in fact placed advertisements for him within Xbox games.

Last week they reported unconfirmed sightings of an “Obama for President” billboard in the Xbox 360 racing game Burnout Paradise.This week they have confirmation from Obama’s camp that those were placed as part of the overall strategy.

Interesting? Yes. Surprising? Not really.

No matter what your political affiliation, it is hard to deny that this Presidential campaign, like any other modern media campaign, has a mix of the traditional and the non-traditional.

John McCain’s daughter, Meghan, has a very regularly updated and family driven blog (I’ll admit, I love it!) that draws an impressive monthly readership. If you Google it you get over 1 million hits.  Not too shabby.

Obama was going to announce his VP via SMS prior to the AP blowing it for him.

Both Obama and McCain have their own “official” YouTube channels.

Obama’s site has a blog, a tv channel, various download and share tools, and a “My” section that allows people to aggregate in groups based on location and help him campaign. Political street teams, if you will.

Providing consumers with the tools to be your advocates is the same whether you are Pepsi, the Gap, or perhaps the future President.

Possibly inspired by some of the tactics employed in many of Affinitive’s brand-based community-driven programs, McCain’s site allows people to join the “team,” “recruit” friends, and earn currency for donations and recruits.

What is the verdict? Companies (and candidates) who aren’t deploying various non-traditional media outreach and tactics and involving “web 2.0″ and social media into their mix are missing the boat.

I am only sad (talk about missing the boat?!) I didn’t pitch a full-fledged Obama (or McCain) community a year ago,  both have resulted in an insurmountable pile of User Generated Content, a very high Word of Mouth reach (I’d love to look at those graphs!), and would be millions strong…and counting.

Disclaimer: the point of this post was to simply address the level of influence certain personalities have over consumers and is not an endorsement of any particular party or candidate.