DOUG SCHUMACHER

experience designer + writer

Fascinating

Creativing :: A breakup test from Bjorn Borg, the problem with Web reputation systems, and iPhone app development gets easier

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My weekly update of what’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

Break Up Test

One of the funniest things I’ve seen all year. And from Bjorn Borg (he of the frozen tundra demeanor). In truth, this doesn’t really come from Bjorn. Actually, it’s from his underwear.

Building Web Reputation Systems: The Blog: The Dollhouse Mafia, or “Don’t Display Negative Karma”

If you spend any time on sites where the reputation system is a key part of decision-making (ebay, elance), this is a good read. It’s also an interesting look inside community behavior. The theory is, Reputation or Rating systems are flawed, because of what the writer calls “karma bankruptcy”. Once someone’s reputation drops to a low level, they either head to a different community, or start a new account. Sometimes you can’t beat picking up the phone and calling an old friend for a reference. There’s also an interesting example of how people were being shaken down for loot in the game Sims, by a group appropriately calling themselves the Sims Mafia.

PhotoSketch: Photoshop Image Recognition = Awesome

Remarkable. You sketch a scene, label what the primary images are, and it scans the web for like images that also work well together, and automatically composites them into a single image. The results are pretty crazy.

MediaVest Diverts Broadcast Budget to Hulu

I’ve long been surprised that more advertisers aren’t jumping onto Hulu, as reports were going around that their inventory wasn’t even close to sold out. Being a big fan of Hulu, I can vouch for the memorability of the placements. Of course these days, content publishers never meet an ad they don’t like. So we’ll see if we end up with the same overly-saturated ad marketplace that network TV has become.

Will the FTC’s Blogging Rules Slow Endorsements?

This is probably no big surprise, but starting Dec 1, marketers will be responsible for accurate compensation disclosure in product reviews on blogs. It seems they’re primarily holding the marketer responsible, which may sound diverted, but I think makes sense, since it involves the decision to provide compensation. That should also help keep this can of worms from opening too wide, although I can’t imagine there won’t be a slew of lawsuits ensuing from this.

Knowledge Genie – Making Publishing Web Content For Profit Easier

Ecommerce model that makes it easy to sell your digital-based work online. You can enable content purchases or subscriptions across a range of media types. It’s a pretty slick model, once you have the content to sell. Setup is fast, although the store itself is a little bland looking. They need to build this out into a much more customizable widget that could be embedded anywhere. But the core idea is great, and the UX is simple.

twtapps :: simple and useful business twitter applications

If you’re marketing on Twitter to any degree, you’ll likely want to know how to do things via Twitter, such as conduct polls, exchange business cards, give out coupons, create contests, or send gifts.

Agencies Need to Think Like Software Companies

As branding and marketing venture into product development, about the only common denominator among companies in terms of product development is online technology. Thus agencies that want to play in that sandbox are going to have to solve problems from a technological point of view as a key part of their service offering.

Adobe Labs – Adobe Flash Professional CS5: Applications for iPhone

Soon you’ll be able to crunch out iPhone apps from Flash. Feeling like there just aren’t enough iPhone apps out there for you? Get ready for a new wave of them.

Flexible Love

Amazing bit of product design ingenuity in Japan. Makes sense that this furniture idea would come from a places with serious space challenges.

Creativing :: Great Google mashups, Craigslist postings as artworks, and fans ‘recreate’ Star Wars

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My weekly update of what’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

87 Things from Google’s API’s

Eye and mind-opening overview of things you can do with Google’s API. This ranges from YouTube to Maps. Some of these you’ve seen, but overall a great span of mashup capabilities. This was presented at AdWeek in NYC last week.

Nightmare on Elm Street Remake Trailer Goes Viral on MySpace

MySpace’s EKG is showing some movement again. Their reposition as an entertainment portal may not be clearly defined or understood yet, but they’re showing progress where it counts — good content and visitors. Now, the “Nightmare” trailer is pulling a lot of viewership. The movie looks good, too.

Car Insurance: Comparethemarket.com’s Meerkat Is Brit Star

If they had award shows for strategies — well, at least exciting award shows for strategies — this would take home the gold whatever. The marketer is a car insurance comparison shopping site. Historically, a rather creatively bland category. Their challenge (besides a boring product) is that the keyword for ‘market’ cost $8 a click. Hard to get a good ROI at that level. So in comes a ‘meerkat’, which sounds close enough to ‘market’, and costs 8 cents a click. See where this is going? Now they just need TV spots to help people remember the term “meerkat”, associate it with “car insurance”, and voila, you’ve got visitors for 8 cents a click (and of course whatever millions you’ve spent on the TV spots). You can judge the TV spot for yourself, but this campaign has not only gained entry into pop culture in England, it has some very impressive brand awareness metrics behind it.

The NHL’s Latest Social Media Push: A Twitter Contest

Another great strategy, this time from thugs who ice skate and favor bad haircuts. While the NFL (No Fun League) is shutting down Twitterer’s, the NFL pulls a contrarian play and hosts a Twitter contest among it’s fans. Guess the winning teams each weekend, and win prizes. Simple game plan, smart strategy.

XPACS Dream Job Challenge

We’ve seen the ‘hiring via social media’ angle before, but this is definitely a new wrinkle. Like previous efforts, it’s focused on how well contestants can drum up buzz as qualification for the position. What I like here is, they’re quantifying the participant’s efforts much more thoroughly and more in line with what the real job will be like. And they’re also paying people who participate but don’t get hired, based on the impact they generated while competing. This not only seems like a smarter screening process for hiring, but is also fairer to the participants. Which only reflects back on the credibility of the brand.

Full Coverage: Apps for Brands Conference

Mobile’s hot. And probably getting hotter. And this is a good outline of how some brands are using mobile effectively.

Xtranormal | Text-to-Movie

If you can type, you can create an animated movie. The technology and interface is impressive — you’ll get the idea immediately in the 2 minute video. I think the application for this in terms of UGC contests, whether it’s for shows or commercials, is readily apparent. Right now a show like Family Guy could upload backgrounds, characters, and voice types, and have a UGC contest for show creation. Or at least a funny scene.

Internet Art: Craigslist Missed Connections Become Gorgeous Visuals

These are fantastic. If you’re not familiar with the “missed connections” concept, it’s people posting notes in hopes of connecting with someone they had a brief encounter with. These are public on Craigslist, so a children’s storybook illustrator has taken the text of the listings and created illustrations of the situation they describe. The artworks are beautiful — and the storybook style feels perfect for these missives of hope and fantasy. As a side note, the fact that people who want to randomly connect with someone out there turn to Craigslist is perhaps the single biggest testament to that website’s pervasive presence.

Star Wars: Uncut

Different groups of people joining together to recreate Star Wars, one scene at a time. The power of strong entertainment brands and User Generated Content.

Human Tetris

A crew of freeborders take over an SF street to create a real life version of Tetris. Simply fun.

Creativing :: The first Augmented Reality app for the iPhone in US, multi-perspective storytelling on HBO, and a font that wants to lick you

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My weekly update of what’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

Yelp Brings First US Augmented Reality App to iPhone Store

Crazy good, if you have an iPhone with GPS. IMO, the most impressive thing I’ve seen on the iPhone yet. If you don’t have an iPhone, the vid at the bottom takes you through the experience, which for me included the 9 times shaking the iPhone before “Monocle”, the AR app, kicked in. Well worth it, though.

Mobile Marketing: Brands Can Build a Successful App Strategy

With the Yelp AR as inspiration for mobile apps, here’s a good overview on what that can entail. While apps have been over-hyped — at least from a revenue standpoint — they can still be great solutions for brands, when done right. I think the right perspective is to view them not as a big idea by themselves, but as part of an overall, cohesive brand strategy.

BarTab – Facebook gifting hits the bars

Facebook’s first move to take their gifting and e-com platform off the web and into, in this case, a bar. There’s a bit of a ‘why hasn’t this been done before’ factor for me, which is a good sign for the developer. I like this idea. Especially when people use it to buy me a drink.

HBO Imagine – The Affair – multi-perspective storytelling

I’m not sure when this came out, but it’s an impressive take on alternate storytelling methods. Personally, I find a lot of explorations in this area to be intriguing, but not engaging. This one pulled me in.

“I Am A”, where the mundane becomes fascinating and the outrageous suddenly seems normal

A funny meme going on over at Reddit. It’s basically a post in the form of a statement about yourself, truthful or otherwise. Many of them end in AMA (Ask Me Anything), adding a new dimension to the thread. These range from “I worked at a major record label for years, AMA” to “I’m on acid, AMA”. You can imagine where it goes from there.

Ad.ly – In-Stream Advertising on Twitter

The idea is, as a Twitterer, you sign up with ad network Ad.ly and they insert one post a day into your Twitter stream. I like the concept in principle, but think the fact that it’s a paid post, and not even posted by the user, should be more readily identified. Ideally, this would go into the stream without even appearing to be from the user. Perhaps not technically possible, because like most of the technical developments involving Twitter, this one doesn’t involve Twitter. It’s all developed by a 3rd party. Strange? Welcome to business in the 21st century.

Social-Media: Is Seth Godin Protecting Your Brand?

Interesting idea involving Seth Godin and his Squidoo property. He’s pulling together a lot of public and open source data feeds to create a dashboard of a given brand’s online conversation. And for $400 a month, brands can have a hand in what consumers see by editing some of the surrounding text, highlight certain posts, redirecting visitors to their site, etc. If this was a stand-alone service, it wouldn’t be a threat to brands, because it would be mostly invisible. The individual conversations themselves would be more likely to rise to the top of Google search results than the dashboard page. But this site is contained within Seth’s Squidoo site, who’s content is doing very well in Google’s rankings. Thus brands may be forced to play. That’s why one source in the article calls this “brand hijacking”. I’d say it’s either that, or smart product development.

Google Introduces Sidewiki For Annotating Webpages

The concept is simple. In the Google toolbar is an option to leave comments in a sidebar that pops up on any given webpage. Something interesting to note is that this concept was done about 10 years ago. I think it was Gator. And it actually caused lawsuits over the idea of enabling users to make comments visible when other users come to your webpage. (The comments are visible in a sidebar in the browser, not the actual page. There’s a good video here on how this works.) This time, I wouldn’t be surprised if the idea really takes off. What’s different this time? 1. There’s definitely a heightened sense of community now more than ever. 2. There’s a lot less trust in government and corporations now than ever (the previous lawsuits centered around people leaving negative comments on corporate sites). 3. This time, it’s Google.

The Pioneer Woman, an Internet and publishing sensation

Fantastic story about a woman who “moved out of LA to marry the Marlboro Man and live on a ranch”, as she puts it. A couple of years ago, she started blogging, mostly to give her mom something to read abut their lives. Today, she has about 13 million page views a month. At the core of it all is not a fluke, but someone with a distinct voice writing about something people have a curiosity in.

Swing City – Wild customized font for editorial

Crazy example of typography in editorial. This brings up an interesting dilemma. As publishers slash costs, there will be less budget for developing visuals like this. And beyond budget, as publishing moves online, a font treatment like this will likely cease to exist, because headlines for articles just about have to be in HTML for any sort of search engine compliance. And publishers will be less inclined to spend money on something that has diminishing odds of driving interest and readership.

Creativing :: Another reason not to count clicks, video monitor in a print mag, and Jack Daniel’s raises a glass

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My weekly update of what’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

Study: Half Of Ad Impressions, 95 Percent Of Clicks Fraudulent

This sounds pretty alarming at first, but for those using legitimate campaign evaluation methods, they’ll be able to identify the fraudsters quickly and cost effectively. It’s all about using the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). If you haven’t heard by now, forget clicks. Click’s aren’t even last week. They’re last century. Focus on metrics that can’t be gamed near as easily by a bot. The major KPIs include: Visit rates – how has the campaign effected your overall site traffic? Engagement rates – are people actually finding your site relevant to your marketing messages? Conversion rates – are visitors actually doing something to impact your bottom line? The deeper you look, the harder it is for scammers to skew your results.

Timing Is Crucial To Maximize Exposure With Social Media

Timing in social media is key from a cultural point of view, but also tactically in terms of what time of the day or day of the week you launch the campaign. And while much of this focuses on what I consider digital PR rather than social media, the principles apply on a broad scale.

Google’s Ad Exchange Honcho Joins “Real-Time Advertising” Startup

When I saw this headline, I immediately thought of what Doug Weaver from Upstream has been writing about for the past several years. That the process of buying and selling media is due for a major streamlining. The Cliff Notes version of this is to think of Google Adwords for display advertising, industry-wide. And potentially video units, as well. As a creative, I generally favor anything that streamlines the non-creative department part of the business, because it tends to shift emphasis to the process of creating the ads. Of course, the challenge for creatives will be the overall commodotization of the advertising business. To date, when one part of the business reduces friction, it affects the whole industry. As an example, when media buying became detached from creative and handled by separate agencies, there were cost savings for clients. But there was also a struggle to get the two groups working together conceptually. And the creative process became more akin to filling out a job order.

Evolving Beyond The Banner Ad – Digg’s new ad unit

Speaking of ad units, this is interesting, if not clearly overdue. In social media, why not let the community evaluate the advertising the same way they evaluate the content? That’s what Digg is doing. And this could be great for your Nike’s, beers, and on Digg, Ron Paul. The big question is, What about the brands that don’t have lifestyle cache or emotional relevance to the audience evaluating them? And if that can’t be created in all brands, which I think is a challenge, then how will Digg be able to sell ads to those companies?

Really great Demo of new experiment from Mozilla

A good, early stage peak into the future of the semantic web. And, unlike so many concepts in beta, this one’s ready to go.

Technology to run video ads in print magazines

This is certainly attention-getting, and at this point anything that gives that advantage to magazine advertising will probably help them sell ads. But print publications are going to need to become a lot more than low-grade video display units. Instead of feeling like a print breakthrough, this feels more like an obvious indicator that all content will soon be digital. What this misses is the idea that the online video content experience is so much richer than just a page with video. There’s sharing, favoriting, commenting, etc. If anything, viewing these small screens only makes me realize how much better the experience would be online. So hopefully they can use this to sell some ads, but I don’t think it’s even close to a long term solution for print publishing.

Twelp Is On The Way!

A good breakout of Best Buy’s Twelpforce, and how the real power of this is not just being on the latest new media bandwagon, but about taking thousands of employees and making them feel like a bigger part of the brand story.

Jack Daniel’s ‘Toast’ Application Going Strong

This is a great campaign idea – send a toast to your friends. And it’s pulling strong results early on. But having tried it, I’m surprised that it isn’t easier to select a single friend to toast, versus the system’s recommendation engine. Secondly, I can’t figure out why they wouldn’t prominently promote this on either the default page of their Facebook Fan page, or their website.

Ford’s Fiesta to Party on — Without the Fiesta

I really liked this campaign when it came out. Take 100 top YouTube video stars, and give them the new Fiesta and a gas card, with an agreed number of blog posts they’ll write about their experience with the car. And some of the bloggers actually exceeded the minimum posting requirements, partly because they found their posts about the vehicle were getting more views than their regularly-scheduled content. That speaks volumes about the effectiveness of social media and sponsored blogging. But they ran the campaign a full year prior to the vehicle’s availability in the US. And now there’s a time gap in which they have to maintain momentum. My only guess to this is that they were afraid the social media campaign might not work, or even have a backlash, and by running it so far in advance, everyone would forget about it by the time the car launched. Any better theories?

Burglar leaves his Facebook page on victims computer – gets busted

One of those stories almost too good to be true. I’ve read of burglars doing all sorts of things during their robberies. Napping. Fixing themselves a snack. Watching TV. But this trumps them all.

Creativing : Air Jordan flies again, trends in social media, and a nice mobile campaign

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My weekly update of what’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

Jordan’s History of flight

A stylish, hip run-through of the various shoes he wore throughout his career, as well as the continuing line of Air Jordans. While Jordan’s skills were undeniable, he also made an enormous impact on the fashions of the game. And of course, wearing a uniform of not much fabric, the fashion statements ultimately came down to the shoes (later to be overtaken by tats, perhaps). At any rate, a fun recap of his career, and introduction to the latest line of Air Jordans.

Top Consumer Trends: Trust, Control, … Playfulness?

I like where consumer’s heads are, at least according to this survey. Basically, it looks like consumers are running everything through one big BS filter. But interestingly, they’re not against having a little fun. What these five trends say to me is, consumers are looking for straight-shooting companies that aren’t trying to sell them on traditional marketing tactics like bandwagon and products with bloated feature sets. In exchange for that dose of reality, they’re willing to engage and participate in a little fun. Oh, and if they don’t get this from their current brands, they’re ready to jump ship.

What Execs Are Thinking About The Social Media Channel

After reviewing what consumers are thinking, it’s interesting to see how the views of marketing execs compare. For the marketers who get social media, it looks like they’re on the right track. Emphasis is on building better relationships and extending their brand awareness. For those who aren’t interested, it’s typically because of low ROI tracking, and a lack of control over their precious brands. And from what consumers are saying, if that’s their mindset, they’re probably not going to succeed in social media anyway. Once again, it looks like the marketing industry is going to offer big rewards to early adopters.

Basics Of Social Media Roi

A good breakdown of how to apply some traditional marketing evaluation metrics to social media, and move a little bit closer to the holy grail of marketing. Perfect data. However, this will probably never address the issues of the ROI-bent marketers surveyed above, and they’ll likely sit on the sidelines until they’re well behind in the game.

I am T-Pain Autotune App for iPhone

Saddled with the ignominy of auto-tuning, T-Pain comes back like a great social marketer should. He takes the criticism head-on, and even turns it into a point of engagement that he can profit from. An auto-tuner iPhone app. And with the app, he’ll likely demonstrate that even with auto-tune, you still need some skills to sell a million songs. Or ringtones.

MockFlow – Easy Wireframing for Software and Websites

My new fave method for tossing together a quick sketch of a site layout. This is almost as fast as drawing on paper. (Especially when I have to spend so much time explaining what I’ve drawn.)

Moviegoers Protest ‘The Cove’

Great premise behind a campaign for what’s being touted as a very good movie. As the movie ends, theater goers are ENCOURAGED to turn on their cell phones and send a text to stop the killing of dolphins in The Cove, the subject of the movie. Cool way of turning a taboo into a call to action.

Burning Man 2009 Photos

What’s certainly one of the most photogenic events anywhere is captured with beautiful interpretation of the desolation of the environment combined with the inspiring transformation it goes through every year.

Creating Free Websites

I haven’t really dug into exploring this yet, but on the surface it looks impressive. Build good looking flash sites in a flash. With optional e-commerce shopping carts, and other advanced features like auto-coding Google Analytics. It’s remarkable where templatized site building is going.

Circular Website Navigation

Check out the nav on this site.

Creativing :: Video content with amazing range, and a UGC site making fun of Wal-Mart

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My weekly update of what’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

The Myth of “Great Content” Marketing Itself

One of the common misconceptions of good content is that it drives itself via social media. Successful social media marketing needs two things. Good content, and a significant sized audience to launch that content with. If either of those are missing, you’ve got to do some work, spend some money, or both.

Twitter is Now Bigger than MySpace in the UK

This is pretty amazing. Of course, MySpace isn’t exactly on the rise, but none-the-less, a good example of how fast things change in technology. 140 characters taking over MySpace. Murdoch has to be stewing.

22 Facebook Funded Startups to Watch

A good glimpse of where Facebook is headed. Or at least where the money thinks it’s headed.

Twitter Search Queries

An example of some of the more interesting search queries in Twitter’s advanced search. As Gary V said, the most interesting thing about Twitter is the Search. I tend to agree with him. To see this live and test your own, just enter anything into Twitter’s advanced search.

Coca-Cola Zero Face Profiler game

Love this idea. Using photo-matching technology, they’ll use Facebook Connect to find other people on Facebook who look like you. But they’re only doing this with people who’ve opted in. So they first need to compile the database of images, which seems to be taking a while. I’m not sure how long ago this went live, but the database is still only 15% full, and hasn’t changed much in the last few days.

Video from Red Bull Soapbox Derby Atlanta 2009

This is just great content for a lifestyle brand. Humorous event, good music bed, and fun slide show commentary about what’s taking place in the video. What’s also great for the brand is that it was done by a 3rd party. More authenticity combined with zip for cost.

IKEA Heights [VIDEO]

A 5 minute short film shot in the IKEA in Burbank, during work hours, and presumably without authorization from IKEA. It’s hysterical watching them act out the various scenes, in the appropriate settings around the store, while random shoppers are walking by in the background. I’m sure somewhere an IKEA lawyer is cringing, but this is fun and creates a positive association with the brand in a highly-memorable way.

People of Walmart: Viral Blog Showcases Retailer’s Clientele

And now, the underside of UGC for a brand. Like the previous two cases, something completely uninitiated by the brand. In this case though, it pokes fun at the brand’s clientele. Which is arguably worse than making fun of their products. Like other popsites such as fmylife.com and latfh.com, I’d guess this will have a short life, and won’t warrant a response from the brand.

Stunning time lapse footage of the LA fires

Amazing footage of a tragic event.

Brazilian Graphic Artist and Illustrator

Another example of a cool mix of photography and illustration.

Creativing :: The IRS and LAPD give social media the stamp of approval

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My weekly update of what’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

Scale: The Importance of Cafe-Shaped Experiences

A good excerpt from Chris Brogan’s new book “Trust Agents”. It speaks to how the scope of much product development and it’s related marketing is downsizing, or going niche. And with both products and marketing going less mass, it requires a more personal touch. That effects profitability for sales and cost-effectiveness for marketing. The challenge of doing more for less is all-too-familiar in marketing circles today. This article is a bet that won’t be changing any time soon. It’s an interesting dilemma, because the big question many marketers have for social media is its scalability. Companies accustomed to running national mass media campaigns who then try social media as a more personal approach to marketing often report the lack of a blip on the radar screen of sales or traffic. Perhaps the mass media model will need to take further hits in acceptance or credibility for this trend to completely play out. Or, maybe social media will find new ways to scale the impact of more personal conversations. Whatever the case, a more personalized approach takes time and diligence. And companies accustomed to mass media who try to bring that mindset to social media are likely in for a difficult transition.

Apple – Movie Trailers – Art & Copy

I’ve seen this going around the web, and apparently it opens today in a few small markets. While Mad Men will broaden the appeal of this, it’s still likely to be a special interest movie. I’m curious how soon films like this will go straight to online viewing. If they could get 5% of the ad industry to see it for $2, I can’t imagine there aren’t profits to be had.

New Site for CMO’s

CMO.com. Curious what they paid for the URL. Launched by Omniture, they’re accepting content submissions, but seem to be mostly aggregating at the moment.

New Facebook Privacy Policies Will Have A Significant Impact On Platform Applications

I’ve been writing a lot on privacy issues lately, which is odd for a creative guy. But I’m confident these issues are going to have a strong bearing on creative capabilities, particularly in social media, over the next several years. Seriously, most people have no idea what information is out there on them, and how easily it can be dug up. Facebook seems to be taking the self-regulatory approach that the alcohol and tobacco industries have taken for years. But they have their challenges. Reading Facebook’s Privacy Settings section reads like the Ts and Cs of most websites. So I’m not expecting people to really take this over for themselves. Facebook in general isn’t known for it’s great user interface, so I’m curious how they’ll handle such a complex issue with a mass audience in time before this blows up.

Is ‘Friending’ in Your Future? Better Pay Your Taxes First

On the subject of Privacy, you may be surprised to know that the IRS is hanging out on social media sites, looking for confirmation or contradiction of your latest filing. Seems like small potatoes stuff, but tax revenues for the government are at devastatingly low numbers due to the economy. They’re looking behind the sofa cushions for loose change.

LAPD releases security cam vid of break-in at Lindsey Lohan’s house

Speaking of government agencies using social media, LAPD released this break-in video. On YouTube. While this makes sense, I think the big story is, the IRS and now LAPD are both using social media to improve their performance. Yet as recent surveys have shown, there are still CMOs of major corporations that aren’t convinced that social media has a role to play in their marketing efforts. Interesting.

New campaign for CWs “The Vampire Diaries”: Tying cause marketing with for-profit business objectives

Not every marketing story can have an ‘green’ or ‘socially conscious’ angle to it. But here’s a TV show tying into the Red Cross as a way to promote both. I like this as a way of bringing a heightened social awareness to the campaign, which feels compassionate and relevant in troubled times like this.

Justin (shitmydadsays) on Twitter

A pretty good story. A simple daily Tweet of what a 28 year old overhears from his 73 year old dad. And the growth has been remarkable. I first noted this last Tuesday, when ‘Justin’ had 53,000 followers. Earlier this morning, it was at 149,000. It’s now over 151k. Like Daily Candy, it’s simple in structure — just one posting a day. A good reminder that an impacting message doesn’t have to have large budgets or extensive production timelines. There was a rumor that this was tied to V Australia, which I’ve not been able to confirm. However, if this does turn out to be marketer-driven, I’ll be curious to see both a) Who it’s for, and b) How people will react.

Cheese and Burger Society

Fun site from the Wisconsin Cheese council. I’m always up for a new burger or sandwich recipe. I do think there’s a lot more they could have done in the way of social interactions around this site, though. But good content all the same.

Photoshop Artworks

Striking photoshopping applied to portrait photography.