User-generated content (UGC), engagement and interaction allow brands and consumers to connect and build relationships that develop and create loyalty that is extremely valuable. However, it doesn’t always help with your search rank - So how can we combine these two? (more…)

Yahoo is giving back its famous yodel to its fans as a part of its new marketing campaign It’s Y!ou, which launched last month. The campaign intends to generate buzz and revive the Internet company’s image which is beginning to lose steam and advertising dollars.

The Yahoo yodel that is part song and part celebration shout is a long time trademark of the company. First created in 1996 by a yodeling cowboy named Wylie Guftason from Montana. His voice has become synonymous with the brand and is one of Yahoo’s most recognizable brand assets to date. (more…)

Butterfinger has launched a new video contest on its Yahoo! video channel, the Butterfinger Comedy Network. The contest, Nobody’s Gonna Lay a Finger on My Butterfinger, is soliciting clever and comedic entries that may be featured in a live TV commercial spot.

Butterfinger has come up with four categories for entries: workplace shenanigans, epic fail, best use of a gadget and sweetest Kung Fu moves. Participants can enter one or all of the categories and are encouraged to use the contest name as a tagline. (more…)

Hunch.com helps users search for answers - but it’s not a search engine. Having spent the last year in development, Hunch aims to supply participants with user-generated advice on lifestyle and consumer.

The detailed profiles of each participant, generated from a list of hundreds of questions, will provide Hunch with in-depth demographic profiles that it hopes will, “provide a kind of shortcut through human expert systems,” says Hunch founder Caterina Fake. (more…)

An interesting court battle has been decided, sort of, in Oregon over who is responsible for illicit, harmful or generally unsavory content appearing on a website. The Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has said companies are responsible for user-generated content (UGC) on their websites only if they state that they actively monitor and remove content of poor taste. (more…)

Disney is promoting its first 3D animated film from Pixar Studios, “Up,” with a digital marketing sweepstakes set in the social media space, MySpace. The movie, set to open on May 29, is about a man who goes on adventures flying around the globe in his house. (more…)

The flood of user-generated content (UGC) that came in the wake of Tuesday’s inauguration ceremony was astonishing, especially if you consider how undeveloped social media applications were the last time the U.S. capital staged an inauguration just four years ago. Facebook and MySpace, for example, had much smaller numbers of users and Twitter didn’t even exist.

From the number of online campaigns that were run leading up to the inauguration, to the traffic on the sites that streamed the event, to the status updates and wall posts, yesterday might have been the busiest day in online history.  (more…)