In the next month, we’ll be making some changes to the way we do support that should help us provide you with improved support. Here’s a quick overview of what you can expect.

The biggest change is that we’ll be setting up a new community oriented support site with Zen Desk. On this site you’ll be able to search to see if someone has already asked your question and if it’s already been answered. If it hasn’t been answered then you’ll be able to submit your question directly to our support staff. If we think the answer will help other users, we’ll add it to the forums section of our Zen Desk site. Continue reading this post »

The wave of social media adoption is continuing to bring new brands online and as this trend unfolds the social media eco-system is changing to absorb the new participants. In this post, I’ll share a simple diagram that can help make sense of how the eco-system currently works and how it’s evolving.

In the past I’ve written about how social media works its way into brands. In this post I’ll focus on those brands that have identified value in social media and are looking for ways to grow their investment. If you’re working for a brand and want to stay on the forefront of social media you’ve probably looked for a creative agency or a social media agency who can serve as a guide. It’s almost impossible to have an internal team lead this function because the landscape is changing so rapidly. Agencies have more experience, but even they struggle to keep up with the latest opportunities. At Sprout we’re seeing that traditional agencies rely on technology partners not only to help them understand what’s possible with social media but also to help them by building the campaigns. Continue reading this post »

The release notes for the 2.5 release are now available on our release notes page.

We’re happy to announce we’ve upgraded the Sprout platform once again. You should notice some performance improvements that stem from having turned on asynchronous calls, as well as improvements to the user-interface for the slideshow and Jukebox components. Finally, and this is a biggie, we’ve integrated YouTube’s new AS3 library into our video component. As always, if you’d like to learn more about the release, visit the release notes page.

Thanks and keep on sprouting!

We’re happy to announce the launch of Starburst’s Your Other You engagement campaign on Facebook. This Sprout powered application ask users four questions as part of the process of identifying “their contradictory self”. Once users’ unique contradictory selves been identified, they can upload a photo, or take one with their web cam, to insert in their characters’ portraits. Users can then share their creation with friends on Facebook. Check out the campaign and find your contradictory self.

Sprout Builder is now integrated with the leader in community-powered support, Get Satisfaction, to give our users a channel into the Sprout feedback cycle.  Users can share an idea, ask a question, report a problem and/or (if you like what we’re doing) give us praise. We have integrated Get Satisfaction widgets across our support section.

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Recently I was thinking about how a useful tool called “Jing” and Sprouts could work together.

Jing is a lot like Twitter at first: when you try it you might think, “Interesting, but when would I ever use it?” Then you start playing around with it, see how others are using it and you’re hooked.

This is a guest blog post by Michael Britt, host of The Psych Files podcast.

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The rush to create engaging Facebook fan pages is on, and we’re thrilled to leverage our platform to bring great brands to Facebook. Moving forward we’ll be showcasing some of the best fan page examples through our blog to get you inspired. For example, the band 311 just launched a new fan page to showcase their new album entitled Uplifter. Check it out and take a moment to listen to the entire album through the Sprout. We’re also happy to see REI’s page that features the latest deals from the REI outlet.

And, you can always see our latest examples in our Facebook fan page gallery.

I recently had a conversation with Walter Gross, the Senior Director, Digital Strategy at EMI / Capitol Music Group about how his team of Flash developers / designers are using Sprout to create interactive Flash content quickly and efficiently. Walter has been immersed in the web and Flash design tools since the late ’90s, at a time when, as he puts it, was bombarded by “big and glitzy” Flash elements. Before Walter’s team had discovered Sprout, they were creating all of the content by hand-coding each element. Sprout has turned out to be a huge time-saver and made Walter’s team more efficient.

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Sprout’s video player has been upgraded to better support YouTube videos by integrating their newly released AS3 Chromeless player.

Improvements include better playback quality and reliability. You’ll also notice there is now a YouTube logo which appears in the bottom right corner of the player (as it is does in all YouTube videos). In addition, the YouTube play button will appear in the center of the poster-frame image before the video starts playing, rather than our custom play button. When you pause, however, you’ll see our custom button.

There is one minor issue that we’ll be trying to resolve shortly involving the poster-frame. Currently, the poster frame is not showing up and the first image in the player is simply black. Also, when paused the image will be black. We’re working with YouTube to resolve this issue.

The results from the Pepsi Throwback campaign are now in and we’ve wrapped them up in a new case study about our work with Pepsi and their agency Weber Shandwick. The campaign was focused on the release of Pespi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback, all natural versions of their popular sodas.

Before reaching out to Sprout, Webber Shandwick had already used Sprout Builder to create an awareness widget to promote their product launch. Because they’d had success with their own effort, they decided to get in touch to see how else Sprout might be able to help. That’s when we popped open a can of our Sprout Engage to create a Facebook application that would get their community engaged.

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