Monthly Archive for September, 2007

Rockyou - Facebook application developers (the bastards behind the Zombie app)

Published
by
Karl
on September 5, 2007
in Co-Creation
. 1 Comment

If you’re on facebook no doubt you’ve been assaulted by the zombie, werewolf and vampire attacks from these viral games. Well I was just watching the scoble show as they were interviewing Rockyou, a social-network widget development company, and it turns out they were behind it. They started off on myspace making all kinds of bling and things that glitter and have moved on to developing full blown widgetized applications for facebook, bebo, myspace etc. To give you an idea of the scale, Rockyou applications get viewed about 150 million times a day, now that’s some serious eyeballs and we know how in love everyone is with eyeballs. Anyway, they are quickly evolving and in the short space of the interview talk about how they are moving from “self expression” applications to “engagement applications”, really interesting stuff, highly recommend watching the video interview, things move fast round here.

Rough Guide To Myspace and Online Communities

Published
by
Karl
on September 4, 2007
in Customer-Experience
. 1 Comment

myspace guidebook

Saw this in a bookshop in Berkley, CA., what an interesting idea, tourist guides for virtual places. Interestingly if they were publishing it today it would have been titled “Rough Guide To Facebook and Online Communities”, things move fast around here. Somewhat related is this Read/WriteWeb article Myspace: Hot or Not.

Blogging Is Good For Your Career

Published
by
Karl
on September 4, 2007
in Marketing
. 6 Comments

I just got an email tip about this Job with Mosh, the Mobile Sharing Network that Nokia recently put into beta. It sounds like an amazing job and one that almost requires first and foremost that you be a blogger, and a cross between product manager, spokesperson and evangelist. So why is blogging good for your career? Well I can see jobs like this, where blogging and social media savvyness are becoming more and more prevalent, very much along the lines of like the “geek marketer” that Steve Rubel recently wrote in Ad Age.

To apply for the job go to this job search form and search on the term “Russell” (I don’t know why the Job is called Russell, maybe they are looking for someone like Russell Beattie)

BTW they have an interim Russell who is blogging here: mosh.nokia.com/askrussell - Hmmm, first thing Russell needs to do on that “blog” is turn on trackbacks and comments, otherwise it’s not much of a blog is it :-)

UPDATE: the role would ideally be based in: White Plains - NY, London or Finland with a ton of travel and telecommuting ability.

Russell

Position Description

Nokia seeks a media, technology, and wireless-obsessed individual to be the global eyes, ears, mouth, and fingers for its new user-generated content platform MOSH.

MOSH (Mobilize and Share) is a user-generated channel for the global distribution of mobile applications and content. It is currently in private Beta at http://mosh.nokia.com.

Russell will be a face and voice in the virtual world charged with connecting the service to the community. That means you’ll be blogging daily and serving as the main interaction point between Nokia and the MOSH community. Primarily, you will make sure that what the users want and need is reflected in the development of the service.

Given that your role will be to help drive change with this initiative, this position runs counter to most corporate culture… so if you’ve never imagined yourself working for a large corporation, you are probably right for the job. You don’t have to be named Russell to apply, but we’ll probably call you that anyway. (It’s a long, strange story.)

So here’s what you — Russell — will actually do:

  • Serve as the most visible member of the MOSH online development community, acting not only as the community’s editor and public face, but also as a regularly contributing participant and liaison to the outside world and media.
  • Work closely with the UX team to grow MOSH into a fully-fledged mobile content-sharing platform by gathering the user’s communities requests and driving them into the roadmap and development cycle. If necessary, fight for what you believe in to be included.
  • Communicate daily to MOSH community members using personal messages, video and blog content (working knowledge of mobile programming languages and Web 2.0 tools strongly recommended)
    • Identify and promote exceptional user submissions
    • Encourage innovation, creativity and collaboration
    • Develop the sites FAQs, seek out answers, and feedback to users
    • Lead by example as a top rated MOSH contributor
  • Partner with marketing teams to develop outreach strategies and materials, generating maximum buzz
  • Embody the spirit, principles and functionality of MOSH in both online presence and daily activity. (We have no idea what that actually means, but it seems like something we should say in a job req.)
  • Break with traditional processes to drive demonstrable growth and development of the MOSH community within a frenetic, highly compressed time frame
  • Make sure Nokia gets it right with MOSH.

A few of the things we can assure that you will not do is partcipate in exercises such as “trust falls” or be required to explain common sense in PowerPoint slides.

Requirements

So how do you know if you’re right for Russell? You have:

- At least 3-5 years experience.

- Demonstrated passion for mobile content/applications. i.e. You use your phone for more than just talking, text messaging, and snapping photos of your cat.

- Familiarity with the mobile devices and communications sector with respect to recent developments, mobile technologies, device capabilities. Deep understanding of mobile users’ needs and aspirations.

- Ability to explain complex new media concepts and strategy to broad, possibly skeptical audiences.

- You are a citizen of the world. You appreciate different cultures, can relate to all, eat strange foods, and don’t mind spending valuable chunks of your life on an airplane.

- Demonstrated experience in blogging and passion for online community involvement. If someone has actually read your blog, that would be even better! (Writing samples will be required)

- Demonstrated ability to turn strategy into executable tactics. This is the serious part of the job that makes it, well, a job.

- Willingness to fail in a public venue. An even greater willingness to succeed.

- Ability to weather pressure and backlash in pursuit of building a change initiative. We’ll explain later.

Of course, we’d also like to know that you have held related jobs before, received a degree, and can get along well enough with others to not make us regret hiring you.