Brand Tags - Crowdsourcing Brand Perceptions

Published
by
Karl
on May 9, 2008
in Marketing
. 1 Comment

My good blogging friend and burrito fiend Noah Brier has created and interesting tool called Brand Tags. Essentially visitors to the site are shown a page with a brand on it and asked to tag it with the first word that comes to mind. Brand Tags then shows “tag clouds” with all the words people have typed, the bigger the word the more people typed that word, simple really and the results are going to be fascinating. Even in this early stage some trends are emerging.

Google
Google

Yahoo
Yahoo

What does that say about Yahoo’s branding?

Amazon
Books

Adobe

BMW
Bmw

LOL!

If you want to see other brands added just twitter them to Noah at heyitsnoah

Social Capital and The Whuffie Factor

Published
by
Karl
on May 6, 2008
in Marketing
. 2 Comments

Interesting video/interview with the Threadless founders. Tara (blogger at HorsePigCow) put the video together and has written a book recently called the Whuffie Factor about businesses that are succeeding by leveraging web2.0/social media and of course the community. Threadless is probably one of the best examples of a community driven company.

The book that will catch the crest of Web 2.0 and show how any business can harness its power by increasing their Whuffie, the store of social capital that is the currency of the digital world.

I think the real key word here is Social Capital (I’ve talked about Social Equity here before but I think Social Capital works better even) and the more I think about it the more I think it is the secret sauce, or at least a way to think about secret sauce.

Social Media and Gutenberg - Hyperbole?

Published
by
Karl
on April 25, 2008
in Co-Creation
. 3 Comments

I just got quoted in the Marin Independent Journal from a panel I was on this week. The quote they chose to use was:

“The move toward social media is as big a change as Gutenberg and the printing press,” said Karl Long, a product manager at Nokia. “Social media is the ability for anyone to publish anything without any cost.”

and of course to potentially reach anyone online.

So what do you think? Hyperbole?

Interestingly Steven Fry and the BBC recently put online a 60 minute show called The Machine That Made Us that is all about the Gutenberg press and how it changed the world.

see part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, and part six here.

So in 50 or 100 years will there be a documentary about how the internet changed us? I wonder what it will be called? The Machine That Distracted Us? The Machine That Got Us Laid? The Machine That Got Us Jobs? The Machine That Connected Us? The Machine That Democratized Everything? The Machine That Made Culture Global?

Thanks as always Kottke

Is google shutting down email accounts if they suspect hijacking?

Published
by
Karl
on April 22, 2008
in Marketing
. 2 Comments

I just got a very worrying phone call from my Dad today about his Gmail account which he’s had for several years. Essentially he tried to log into the account and it said his password was incorrect, so he went through the various processes to try and get it reset, unfortunately he didn’t have a secondary email account, but he went through the process of answering security questions etc. At some point one of the security questions came up with Chinese charicters in it, which of course prompted him to think that this was a phishing attack. Anyway, he emailed google to say that someone might have got access to his account and he gave them a new yahoo email they could reset and send the password, and the email he got back from google was chilling (for anyone who has thousands of emails and contacts)

Thank you for your report. We’ve completed our investigation. Because our
investigation was inconclusive, we’ve disabled this account for your
security. If you used orkut with this account, we’ve deleted the orkut
profile. At Google we take the privacy and security of our users very
seriously. For this reason, we’re unable to reveal any further information
about this account.

To continue using Google Accounts, please visit
https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount and create a new account.

We apologize for any inconvenience and appreciate your cooperation and
understanding.

Regards,

The Google Team

Note: if you use AdWords, AdSense, or Google Checkout with your
account, please contact AdWords, AdSense or Checkout support directly
at these URLs:

AdWords:
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=45086&topic=7033

AdSense:
https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/request.py?hl=en&ctx=accounts_hc&contact_type=adsense&submit=Continue

Checkout:
http://checkout.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=29076

—————-

Please don’t reply to this email, as we won’t be able to review your
response. If your question wasn’t answered, please search or browse the
Google Accounts Help Center at http://www.google.com/support/accounts/

Is this a legitimate email from google? are they really going to delete years of email and contacts? Anyone know anything?

Business Social Media - How B2B companies and business professionals can tap into Social Media DATE : April 23, 2008 - 6:30 PM

Published
by
Karl
on April 16, 2008
in Marketing
. 0 Comments

I’m going to be part of a panel discussion hosted by Softech on April 23rd on how B2B and Business professionals can tap into and leverage social media. Should be a great discussion and for my part here’s what I hope to be able to elaborate on:

  • Social Media provides a multitude of ways to build your personal brand and taking control of what employers find when they “google you”
  • Career blogs/Business Blogs are a powerful tool for networking and connecting with like minded people in similar/complimentary industries or disciplines
  • The resume is becoming increasingly irrelevant for knowledge workers

Discussion Topics:

Join us for an exciting night with a panel of social media experts who are helping leading companies (Sling Media, Nokia, Wells Fargo, Sutter Home,Plantronics<), organizations and individuals capitalize on social media. Most of the panelists have popular blogs (e.g. experiencecurve.com, emergence-media.com
, livedigitally.com, /metzmash.typepad.com) with a strong following and use social media tactics and strategies on a daily basis.

You will learn:

  • What is social media, the tools, the people, the stats
  • Why has social media exploded
  • How is social media changing the conversations companies have with prospects, customers and partners
  • How professionals can use social media for personal branding, and career development
  • How B2B companies can capitalize on social media
  • How social media is changing market research, PR, marketing, sales, product development, and customer support
  • How social media is changing search engine optimization (SEO)

Moderator:

  • William Gaultier – CEO of e-Storm International www.e-storm.com

Panelists:

Date:
Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Location:
San Rafael Corporate Center
750 Lindaro Street
San Rafael, CA

Agenda
6:30-7:15 Registration and Networking
7:15-7:20 Welcome and Upcoming Meetings
7:20-8:15 Panel Discussion
8:15-8:45 Audience Q&A

Registration Cost
This meeting is free to SofTECH members
Non-members pay $15 to pre-register, or $20 at the door. Register in Advance for Business Social Media- 4/23/2008

Sign up for a Trial or Full Membership to SofTECH at: our Join Page

Here’s a bit about SofTECH
SofTECH is a non-profit trade organization committed to fostering communication and cooperation for business and technology professionals in Northern California’s Marin and Sonoma counties. Its goal is to identify and showcase technology leaders and support the technology user community.

Stop Motion Block Breaker Game

Published
by
Karl
on April 15, 2008
in Advertising and Viral-Persuasion
. 2 Comments

get out and play

Nokia has put together a quite ambitious stop motion video involving a cast of thousands, which included a very cool stop motion block breaker game using people as the gaming pieces. I’ve seen plenty of stop motion games reenacted, like the famous space invaders in the theater but I think this is the actual game you can play using stop motion people as the characters. The Block Breaker game shows up in the middle of the video and you can navigate directly to it by clicking on the middle section of the time line.

I think it would be really fun if they did another version that enabled people to swap in pictures of themselves, possibly friends, and maybe had a bit more of a high score component to it.

Happy Belated Birthday Internet

Published
by
Karl
on April 13, 2008
in Fun Stuff
. 2 Comments

Apparently April 7th 1969 is a contender for the birth of the internet, who new it was so old. Here’s a pretty funny video from Canadian CBC news, not sure when this was broadcast but it is pretty damn funny.

Via

Another wonderful throwback news story is this Newsweek piece from 1995 called “The Internet? Bah! Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn’t, and will never be, nirvana

Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth in no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

The thing that continues to blow me away is still how early and nascent internet technology is, I don’t know what the future holds but i’m certain that in 10 years we will look back on the hype around social networks like facebook and myspace, thinking “oh how naive we were”.

New Book - Personality Not Included - and Party In SF

Published
by
Karl
on April 10, 2008
in Marketing
. 1 Comment

pniRohit Bhargava, blogger at the Influential Marketing Blog and leader of the interactive marketing team at Ogilvy Public Relations has written a new book called “Personality Not Incuded -Why Companies Lose Their Authenticity And How Great Brands Get it Back“. I think the topic of the book is a very interesting one that relates to companies challenges with branding, customer experience, marketing and PR in this emerging age of radical transparency. The point being that a company’s image and brand is not longer built through the tight management of structured communication, but is now forged and co-created through the conversations in the marketplace, the artifacts that are created by customers, and the experiences customers have with the company through formal and informal channels. I think Rohit is correct that companies some how lost their personality in through the monolithic command and control brand management theory that came along with mass production, and are now struggling to get it back.

Faceless companies don’t work anymore. PNI is a guide to finding the real voice of your organization and using your personality to become a brand that people love rather than one they just buy from. The book features more than 100 case studies, a forward by Guy Kawasaki and lots of SF based brands including Personality Hotels, Timbuk2, Virgin America, and SF based non-profit Kiva.org.

Rohit is organizing a book release party in San Francisco on April 18th, which i am planning on going to and i’m sure it will be an interesting evening for anyone interested in social media.

Friday, April 18, 2008
6:30pm - 9:30pm

Sugar Cafe
679 Sutter St.
San Francisco, CA

Here’s a link for the Facebook event for the book release party.

The Department Of Internet Money

Published
by
Karl
on April 3, 2008
in Fun Stuff and Viral-Persuasion
. 1 Comment

All of your favorite internet stars including Chocolate Rain guy (Tay Zonday), Star Wars Kid, Laughing baby, Sneezing Panda, Tron guy, Numa Numa, and Chris Cocker (Leave Britney Alone), and possibly LonelyGirl15 in the background.

Via Fimoculous

Bay CHI Focus on Social Software

Published
by
Karl
on March 31, 2008
in Customer-Experience
. 2 Comments

The April Bay CHI (Computer Human Interaction) group meeting looks fascinating this month. I wrote about Amy Jo Kim’s “putting the fun in functional - Game Mechanics in Social Software” before on experiencecurve here and am really interested in seeing it presented. There is also a dinner planned before the meeting starting at 5.30.

B a y C H I

The San Francisco Bay Area ACM SIGCHI Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction announces its monthly program meeting:

Tuesday, April 8
7:00-9:30 p.m.
http://www.baychi.org/program/

7:00-7:30 p.m.
Tea, Coffee, Socializing, Joining BayCHI …

7:30-9:30 p.m.
Putting the Fun in Functional:
Applying Game Mechanics to Social Software
Amy Jo Kim, ShuffleBrain
+
Social Design and the Yahoo! Pattern Library
Christian Crumlish, Yahoo!

PARC’s George E. Pake Auditorium
3333 Coyote Hill Road
Palo Alto, CA 94304

BayCHI program meetings are free and open to the public. BayCHI may
publish audio or visual recordings. BayCHI does not permit recording or
photography by attendees.

ABSTRACT of Putting the Fun in Functional:
Applying Game Mechanics to Social Software:

An explosion of interactive services have harnessed the collective
efforts of users. Services like MySpace, YouTube, FaceBook, Flickr, and
Digg provide game-like entertainment to millions of people. Amy Jo will
review the psychology and system thinking behind game design and explore
how to use game mechanics to create experiences that are fun,
compelling, and addictive.

AMY JO KIM is an internationally recognized expert on community
architecture and social systems design and author of Community Building
on the Web (Peachpit, 2000), a design handbook that’s required reading
in game design studios and university classes worldwide.

ABSTRACT of Social Design and the Yahoo! Pattern Library Christian
Crumlish, Yahoo!

New social media aggregrators appear every day, and venerable old sites
are adding social features. The interaction patterns that drive social
relationships on-line are becoming clear–as are nasty “antipatterns”.
Christian will discuss social patterns in the works for the Yahoo!
Design Pattern Library and “in the wild.”

CHRISTIAN CRUMLISH is the curator of the Yahoo! pattern library and
director of technology for the Information Architecture Institute. He
studied philosophy at Princeton and painting at the San Francisco School
of Art. He is the author of The Power of Many: How the Living Web is
Transforming Politics, Business, and Everday Life (Wiley, 2004).