How successful can a B2B business be using social media? Fairly successful, at least in the case of IBM. We recently chatted with Ed Linde II, whose team is responsible for building Web assets to support the IBM.com sales channel and organic Web visitors, about IBM’s social media efforts and successes. He spoke about their Listening for Leads program, which he says has “uncovered millions of dollars worth of sales leads” so far, and is expected grow even more. Here’s a clip from the full interview available on eMarketer Total Access. (Read more…)

The tweets were predictable: “Somebody just dropped an H-Palm,” “HP saves Palm,” my own “New lease on life for WebOS,” and some contrarian views, including noted tech blogger Om Malik’s assertion that “hp buying palm makes no sense to me.” Yes, the news about Hewlett-Packard’s $1.2 billion acquisition of struggling smartphone manufacturer Palm (official transcript from HP conference call available here) temporarily gave mobile industry watchers something to tweet about other than Apple (which made smaller waves of its own yesterday and signaled its intent to take on Google in mobile search by buying mobile assistant app maker Siri).

The HP acquisition is certainly a game-changer for Palm, saving the company from the looming prospect of oblivion, but it’s not yet clear whether it represents a dramatic realignment for the industry. As Forrester Research’s Ian Fogg and Current Analysis’ Avi Greengart pointed out yesterday, the combined HP/Palm is a stronger entity, but faces the same competitors as before, in the same increasingly heated battle over the growing overlap between computing devices and mobile devices.

This is a battle in which Apple arguably retains a significant lead. In a well-argued post, Creative Strategies president Tim Bajarin succinctly described Apple’s advantage as follows:

Apple did not just come out with a new smart phone. They delivered a complete solution that included hardware, software, and services. More importantly, they controlled the complete customer experience. This is very much at the heart of why Apple is so successful with the iPhone.

Yes, HP now has hardware and software expertise under one roof, and yes, there are personnel synergies (Palm alumni in HP’s Personal Systems Group), but hardware and software are still just two sides of the mobile triangle. The missing piece is content, and that’s a key part of what generates Apple’s appeal. On the HP conference call, JPMorgan analyst Rod Hall asked Todd Bradley, the EVP of HP’s Personal Systems Group, to talk about HP/Palm’s content strategy, and Mr. Bradley responded as follows:

Our focus is to provide connected devices that enable people to safely and seamlessly connect to that information that is important to them, be that entertainment or work or personal data. So I don’t think we are content creators, but we are access providers.

Better distribution and stronger marketing support will certainly help Palm’s prospects, but they only get you so far these days. As InformationWeek’s Eric Zeman put it:

HP’s buy-out of Palm does not improve the developer story at all. Without developers who are committed to writing apps, webOS can’t have a future — or at least can’t have a future that is as full and rich as its competitors.

Therein lies the challenge. Now the industry will wait to see how successfully HP/Palm can meet it.

Two clearly related stories emerged within hours of each other this week.

One: Hulu, the online video powerhouse (it served 912.5 million videos in the US in February 2010, according to comScore Video Metrix) will not be launching in the UK. This brings to an end months of speculation about whether Hulu’s North American success could be duplicated in the world’s second main English-speaking market.

According to The Telegraph, Hulu’s UK expansion ground to a halt because local broadcasters were not prepared to make their content available. Some (including the BBC and ITV) are concentrating on their own catch-up services; others (including Channel 4 and Five) have already signed up to contribute programming to aggregators SeeSaw and YouTube. But Hulu has not closed the door entirely to the notion of UK activity— “when the broadcasters realize they need to be more flexible with their business models,” according to one source.

Two: Judging by new figures from comScore, online video viewing in the UK grew by 37%  in the year to February 2010, and over 5.5 billion streams were watched in that month alone. YouTube served almost one-half of these, reported MediaPost blogger Steve Smith, while the number viewed via the BBC iPlayer rose 143%, to just under 140 million in February 2010.

Viewing via Facebook was up a phenomenal 205% during the year, however, making it “clearly the one to watch” in Smith’s opinion.

Conclusions to draw? The UK’s online video market really is unlike any other, thanks to the power of the BBC and the quality of its output, still considered by many to be the world’s best overall. Hulu hasn’t spotted a viable gap in the marketplace, and will likely be kept at arm’s length by UK broadcasters for years to come. Meanwhile, though, those broadcasters need to keep a firm grip on their business models. Hulu won’t be a threat, but Facebook could be another matter.

When Facebook announced its new social plug-ins, Levi Strauss & Co. was one of the more unusual launch partners. The company has remade its Website to let people shop the traditional way or in a new “Friends Store” where they can choose products that they like and share the information with their Facebook friends.

I wanted to learn more, so I got in touch with Megan O’Connor, director of digital and social marketing for the apparel company. She and I also spoke on a panel at ad:tech San Francisco, where she detailed how Levi Strauss integrated Facebook into its annual sponsorship of the Levi’s Fader Fort at the SXSW music conference.

eMarketer: Why did Levi Strauss team up with Facebook for this?

Megan O’Connor: We were so excited be the only apparel company to launch the social plug-in with Facebook. We feel that this experience will truly revolutionize the way our consumer shops for jeans online.

eMarketer: What do you hope to get out of it in terms of traffic, new users, likes, etc.?

Ms. O’Connor: We’re hoping to empower the people who love our jeans to find and share their experiences with friends.

eMarketer: What does the Open Graph mean for marketers? What is the biggest value of having a socially open Web?

Ms. O’Connor: The open graph puts even more control in the hands of the consumer. By allowing our shoppers to publicly “like” their products, they are influencing the current product and future product assortment. Additionally, it makes shopping more fun. Imagine shopping for your back to school jeans with your best friend who lives 2,000 miles away. [Note: The privacy aspects of this feature are still being debated.]

eMarketer: How might your Facebook integration evolve?

Ms. O’Connor: The great thing about social media is that everything changes quickly. We’re excited to constantly innovate and apply our learnings to the next project.  I think this is only the beginning of exciting innovations you’re going to see on Levi.com.

eMarketer: Tell me about the advertising you’ll be doing on Facebook.

Ms. O’Connor: Of course as part of our social media strategies, we advertise on Facebook. In fact, we had a very successful program last month promoting the Levi’s Fader Fort, which brought an offline concert to thousands of people online, matching their interests where they are.  We’re going to continue to be innovative in our digital marketing so we can have authentic conversations with our consumers.

With the launch of their Video Values program last August, Rite Aid hoped to build customer loyalty and drive sales by offering short informational videos on select products to customers, who would then print coupons for in-store purchases. We recently spoke with John Learish, who is responsible for Rite Aid’s marketing, including advertising, promotion, point of sale and special events, about the success of the Video Values program, the evolution of Rite Aid’s video strategy and how the chain plans to leverage video even further. Here’s a clip from the full interview available on eMarketer Total Access. (Read more…)