Until this morning I had never heard of a CokeTag. From what I understand after doing some research, a CokeTag is a widget that runs on your Facebook page, presenting people with a list of links you recommend. The company is working to make the widget compatible with other social networking sites like MySpace, in the near future.
The CokeTag is a product of the Coca-Cola company and really serves as a branding tool for them, since it puts their name in front of the people viewing it. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have any use for a bluegrass band though. Once you’ve created a CokeTag, other people can embed it on their own Facebook page. This allows fans to post a band’s CokeTag on their personal page. And your links spread around the social network that way.
The product is in public beta at this point, but one of the early adopters was the bluegrass band, James Reams & The Barnstormers. Reams put the CokeTag on his facebook page and then discovered that his was being used as an example on the CokeTags homepage.
…it seems that I’m a poster boy for this new product. Coca Cola is using my band (yes, bluegrass, not rock, not hip hop, not jazz but BLUEGRASS) in its worldwide promotional material to show how a band can use this new product, called a CokeTag, on the Internet social networking site Facebook (and, eventually, elsewhere) to allow an easy way to keep friends and fans up to date on what’s going on with the band and what’s important to us.
The neat thing about this is that if I update the information on my CokeTag, it will be updated anywhere that the CokeTag has been posted — initially, just on other Facebook profile pages but eventually on other sites on the Internet as well. So you can link to shows, CDs, videos, etc and then if you change it the next day or the next month, it will be updated everywhere that the CokeTag is posted.
You can see how it looks on a a Facebook band page by visit Reams’ Facebook page. You don’t have to be a member to view the page.
And you don’t have to be a band to find a use for this nifty little widget. You can create one for your hobby and put links to all your favorite bluegrass bands, or whatever you want. There are no guarantees that Coca Cola will notice you though. If they do, your mom is sure to be proud.
So, there I am, featured on Coca Cola’s CokeTag website. My mom is proud because she thinks I’ve finally amounted to something in the music business. Don’t tell her otherwise, ok?
We’ll vouch for ya James, just have her call us if there’s ever any question about your somethingness!
