Monthly Archive for August, 2006

First Likely Presidential Candidate Mark Warner, In SecondLife

Published
by
Karl
on August 31, 2006
in Marketing
. 0 Comments

Gov Mark Warner Apart from being the first US politician to publicly create a character in secondLife, the former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner will be announcing the first-ever “virtual town hall on American politics,” scheduled for later this year.

“In Second Life,” said Warner, “distances and time differences vanish. It will allow us to reach people through a whole new medium. Social technologies can be great tools for political change, and virtual worlds like Second Life might be the next tool for engaging people in the real world democratic process. We want to use Second Life to continue the conversation about the direction of our country. My avatar is also pretty funny looking. That alone makes it worth checking out.”

Tip of the hat - gamepolitics blog Yes there is a blog for everything! Additional hat tip to the madfinn

Update: Interesting coverage of an in-world press conference from the WP

YouTube 2.0 Is Eyespot.com - Mashup heaven

Published
by
Karl
on August 31, 2006
in Marketing
. 1 Comment

Eyespot is a browser based video editing and mixing tool that enables you to easily create and edit video clips online, and IMHO an important site to watch over the next year or so. If youtube is like a Video Blog, then Eyespot is like a Video Wiki.

I used a bunch of clips from Robin Good’s WeblogProject, which is an open source documentary on blogs and blogging. Interestingly the WeblogProject has got over 130 clips so far, including of course Robert Scoble and Robin Good. I made this clip in about 30 minutes of messing around:

(permalink to the video)

Already some great bands have been uploading their videos and music for fans to mashup. Bands include The Streets, The Stills, Five For Fighting, and Three Days Grace.

The potential for this site is huge, and not to be too mercenary about it, but it’s a great platform for advertisers brave enough to put some ads out there for users mashup.

Flickr update - 1.2 million photo’s geotagged in 24 hrs

Published
by
Karl
on August 30, 2006
in Marketing
. 0 Comments

File this under the co-creative power of passionate users:

When we were doing our projections for how many photos Flickr members would geotag, we though that we’d hit a million in the first month, maybe even as fast as two weeks. Instead, 24 hours in, there were 1,234,384 geotagged photos (and now more than 1.6 million geotagged photos as I write this, about 9 hours later).
Geotagging - one day later

The question to all you web 2.0 companies, or VC’s investing in these companies, are you still measuring eyeballs? If you are you are going to get crushed by the companies that are measuring engagement and co-creation.

Cheers,

Karl

Viral Redux - All The News Fit To Spread

Published
by
Karl
on August 30, 2006
in Marketing
. 2 Comments

Viral Whistle Blowing

The 41-year-old Lockheed Martin engineer had complained to his bosses. He had told his story to government investigators. He had called congressmen.

But when no one seemed to be stepping up to correct what he saw as critical security flaws in a fleet of refurbished Coast Guard patrol boats, De Kort did just about the only thing left he could think of to get action: He made a video and posted it on YouTube.com.

Starbucks viral “friends and family coupon” too successful

Unfortunately, it has been redistributed beyond the original intent and modified beyond Starbucks control. Effective immediately, this offer will no longer be valid at any Starbucks locations.

Press release

Viral Conversations

- David Armanos excellent “influence ripples” diagram

Ripples 2 01

7 Deadly Sins of viral video

from the aptly named “will video for food”

Show me a marketer without “viral” on her marketing plan and I’ll show you an online video site that’s profitable.

JupiterResearch Opens Social Marketing Lab

Published
by
Karl
on August 30, 2006
in Marketing
. 1 Comment

Jupiter Research has announced that it is launching a new service called “social marketing research service”. As Rohit points out on Influencial Interactive Marketing, Jupiter has made a poor nomenclature choice with “Social Marketing” as that term is already in wide use for socially responsible marketing. I’m surprised they didn’t research that term, seriously google it, I did, and that’s why I choose to use the term “social media marketing”.

JupiterResearch’s Social Marketing research aims to provide marketers and site owners with recommendations on how to profit from the use of consumer-generated content, blogs, podcasts, and other emerging media tools.

Jupiter moving into this kind of research certainly makes sense, as companies are desperately trying to figure out all aspects of social media from networks, blogs, podcasts, wikis, vlogs etc. Unfortunately Jupiter has a rather spotty record in social media, from it’s famously bad blogger relations fiasco, or kerfuffle, to the fact that it’s analysts “blogs” or podcasts don’t have comments or trackbacks.

I have a few questions here:

  • Can analysts be experts in social media if they are not fully participating in social media?
  • Does the fact that their analyst blogs have no conversational tone, and no conversational functionality hurt their credibility in this area?
  • Does it matter if bloggers are skeptical of their move into social media, assuming their clients know less than they do?
  • When is Forrester going to move into this area, especially as Charline Li is a far more respected blogger with her finger on the pulse of social media?
  • Is there an opportunity for a new business model for analyst research that is based on openness, transparency, driven by social media?

Thoughts?

zefrank On Brand and Customer Experience

Published
by
Karl
on August 29, 2006
in Marketing
. 0 Comments
A brand is an emotional aftertaste that is conjured up by but not necessarily dependent on a series of experiences

Ze uses an interesting series of examples including, your Grandma, old people, and Jon Benet, to argue that everything has some sort of emotional aftertaste and everything is potentially a brand. His point is also that as mass media platforms fracture and it becomes harder and harder to reach a large audience, the shared experience of brands can transcend mass media, and engage the attention of a large audience.

the shared emotional aftertaste of brand are platform independent

go watch the episode

Ze makes my brain hurt, fucker :-)

Fuck You H2 (FUH2.com) or Consumer Generated Integrated Marketing

Published
by
Karl
on August 29, 2006
in Marketing
. 0 Comments

FUH2.com is a photo blog where people submit pictures of themselves giving the finger to H2 Hummers.

Fuh 281 01

What should we call this, Consumer Generated Fuck You (CGFU)?

Fuh 280 01

Fuh 279 01

There are over 3600 photo’s on the site, you should check it out, there really is a FU for everyone

Oh, and there’s 435 photos tagged on Flickr with FUH2… Oh and there’s a video as well:

What the hell, this is a better example of integrated marketing than most marketing.

UPDATE: and a Haiku

Hulking black Hummer
Purchased in rank atonement
small peckered driver

User Experience Designer (temp) - McLean, Virginia

Published
by
Karl
on August 29, 2006
in Marketing
. 0 Comments

SAIC’s Corporate Creative Services is looking for a User Experience Designer in McLean, Virginia. If you are interested, please respond
via this Web page: http://tinyurl.com/zbcmc

Thank you!

Jimmy Chandler
Director, Internet Services
Corporate Creative Services
Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC)
chandlerja at saic dot com

Do you have what it takes to be a part of our award-winning Web team?

* A passion for improving user interface designs

* A drive to make UIs effective, efficient, and a better overall user
experience

* An ability to match your designs with the business goals your client

* A desire to share your user experience and passion with others
through presentations and mentoring

* A want to grow a UX team that creates great Web sites and Web applications

If the above statements apply to you, you want to join SAIC’s
Corporate Creative Services division as a User Experience Web
Designer. We need help from someone who always advocates for the end
user in order to integrate UX considerations into all of our projects.

Corporate Creative Services is SAIC’s in-house marketing and creative
resource. From simple graphic support and proofreading jobs to rich
multimedia projects, complex proposals, and dynamic marketing
campaigns, we make SAIC look smart and professional.

*The Job*

Candidate will assist Web designers and developers create and improve
Web sites and Web applications, as well as other user interfaces
(including Flash). Develop and share an expertise in usability,
user-centered design, user experience, interaction design, information
architecture, and accessibility (Section 508). Develop documentation
to support these efforts (usability reports, user testing scripts,
wireframes, personas/scenarios, style guides) and present findings and
recommendations to the client.

Candidate may also design, document, and publish Web sites supporting
our corporate creative services department and contract for SAIC line
organizations.

*Your Background*

Education: High school education or equivalent, Bachelors degree a plus.

Required Skills: US Citizenship required. 3 plus years of related
experience, including Web page development using HTML and CSS.
Individual must have the ability to work on multiple tasks with
minimal supervision and interface with customers on a daily basis.
Strong communication skills are a must. This position requires a
self-motivated individual who can work closely with team members.

Desired Skills: Experience in using Dreamweaver desired. Ability to
code HTML and CSS using only a text editor a plus. Demonstrated
knowledge and skill in remediating Web site files in compliance with
Section 508 standards, and familiarity with a graphics package such as
Photoshop to create and manipulate graphics desired. Experience in
scripting languages such as JavaScript helpful. One year of experience
in customer requirements gathering, budgeting, project management, and
process development a plus. Experience creating wireframes in Visio or
similar program a plus.

This is a temporary position and will not be an employee of SAIC. This
position does however have the possibility of being converted to an
SAIC employee.

Flickr Adds Geotagging

Published
by
Karl
on August 29, 2006
in Marketing
. 3 Comments

Not long after a geotagging focused upstart Zooomr hit the scene, flickr has added a slew of geotagging features. Geotagging means that you can add geographic metadata to your photographs so people can see where your photos were taken, and it adds a fantastic dimension to the wonderful “folksonomic” feel of flickr.

The details of the new features are all laid out in this blog post, Great shot - where’d you take that? , and in some screencasts: how to geotag your own photos and searching and exploring geotagged photos.

Surfview 02

I think this is a tremendously exciting addition to an already amazing service, and as more of this information gets captured more possibilities emerge. Imagine the intersection of the already rich, co-created metadata, time, tags, groups etc. and combine that with rich geographic information. Even more interesting will be when Geographic data is captured automatically, which is already available on mid-level SLR’s. Take a look at this story on MAKE! on how to add GPS to a nikon D200. Can geographic data on cell phones with GPS be far behind?

When you see what amazing things people are already doing with the data available on flickr (like the top 10 camera models and manufacturers), it makes you wonder what the future will hold.

Maybe an “uncommon-uses” post about flickr is in order, any suggestions?

Cheers,

Karl

Ridiculous Item Of The Week: RSS For Emergency Updates

Published
by
Karl
on August 28, 2006
in Marketing
. 0 Comments

Imagine my pleasant surprise when I saw the National Hurricane Center/Tropical Predication Center (http://www.nhc.noaa.gov) actually provides an RSS feed for a particular storm.
Hurricane 77 01

What a brilliant use of RSS… except of course when they just provide headlines and no frikin content (screenshot from my news reader):

Come on, a partial feed for essentially an emergency broadcast system? Reminds me of network news “coming up after the break, what you don’t know might kill you”.

They even have an “about RSS” page and on that page it says:

The idea is to give users the ability to quickly obtain the latest news and updates from a site in a headline or news digest format

(Emphasis added).