DOUG SCHUMACHER

experience designer + writer

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Creativing :: Twitter the movie?, Mafia Wars goes guerrilla, and the future of the Internet is ‘things’

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What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

Zynga Runs Guerrilla Mafia Wars Campaign In Hermosa Beach, CA

I like the use of QR codes in this game. I scanned it off the blog image using I-nigma on my iPhone and it had no trouble reading and taking me straight to the site. QR codes have made a lot of progress in the past couple of years.

Advertisers flocking to Facebook: eMarketer – Yahoo! News

Facebook’s taking a page from Google’s playbook. There’s a lot of money in automating the ad process, even if it’s small amounts from a lot of advertisers. Or perhaps especially if that’s the case.

Twitter Movie Trailer:  Rated Awesome

Very well-done parody of the trailer for the Facebook movie, which is here if you haven’t seen it. http://www.thesocialnetwork-movie.com/

Where Else in the World Will Kids Think to Put the Web? [VIDEO]

Interesting that when kids 6-12 were asked about what they want from technology, it’s to better connect them with the physical world. And they’re the ones who should be most comfortable with technology. Refreshing.

China Moves to Dominate the Next Stage of the Web

Interesting that while a recent survey of kids pointed to a future demand for bridging the technical world with the future world, and here China is setting themselves up to the the future of the Internet of Things. Pretty telling. A great stat at the end of this article, too. Earlier this week it happened for the first time that there are now more objects connected to wireless data plans than human subscribers.

Facebook Pages Become Customer Support Centers

There’s been recent buzz online about Facebook’s — and social media in general — ability to function as a customer support resource. Scalability is often at the core of the discussion, but then, customer support has never been any more scalable outside of social media. The objective for customer support technology is always to provide helpful information as fast as possible. Ideally faster than calling and talking to a CS rep. Facebook’s big advantage is familiarity. Even within an app, people may feel more comfortable using it to gather information versus a site visit. So speed and relevance will be the litmus test for this new CS tech, Parature.

Behind the Scenes of MTV’s Twitter Jockey Competition [VIDEO]

Twitter seems more like a content channel than a media platform. While arguably still outside the mainstream compared to most media vehicles, it has a large user base that wouldn’t be considered early adopters of new technology, while at the same time many traditional early adopters find little use for the service. In that sense, it’s a source for the truly influential to get those first bits of information across a range of subjects that most new techs never scratch the surface of.

Whrrl: Living In Foursquare’s Shadow

As my use of Foursquare continues to flatten, I’m interested in what’s next for location based services. Whrrl is the one I’m checking out lately. It’s more complicated than Foursquare, but offers extended value in the form of community. I guess those badges are wearing off, and if I wanted deals, I’d go to Groupon. Right now, my network isn’t to a point where I’m really getting the value, but as Whrrl is adding 2-3,000 users per day and I live in a fairly early adopter area, hopefully the value will emerge.

Gowalla CEO: Sorry Mobile Web: Users Prefer Apps

Start with this quote from the CEO: “Many people perceive the web as source for content rather than a source of services. An app puts the illusion of packaging around a web-delivered service so people feel like they are buying functionality, not merely visiting a site to perform a function or access content. This subtle perception not only explains why apps are popular, but it might also be a clue as to why folks can charge for apps while still unable to monetize their web-based services.”

While marketers are typically focused on building website experiences — for reasons ranging from cost to seo — there are distinct advantages to building apps. For one, once an app is installed, you have ongoing awareness every time the user scrolls through their apps. We all know how easily bookmarks get lost in normal web browsing. That has to increase 10x for a mobile experience. But well beyond that, there’s the perceived value of an app that the CEO is talking about. It’s packaged.

Fact: Most People Have Never Heard of Location-Based Apps

The harsh reality of leading edge technology is that it’s often very difficult to reach a mass audience. This study shows that less than only 1% of those surveyed use location-based services (LBS) more than 1x per week. Not the rate at which you can build a market. This leaves brands with two options at the moment. 1. Determine if you have a key influencer group using LBS and if so, plan for a ripple effect. 2. Do something to generate word of mouth buzz that extends well outside the LBS user group. Unfortunately, neither option is a high-odds play.

Creativing :: Apple’s fantastic arrogance, Facebook and Amazon friend each other, and two excellent augmented reality apps

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What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

Tweet of the Week

so many girls leave their boyfriends over his excessive x-box playing that they should call it the ex-box.

The ever-arrogant Apple « Observatory

Funny take on Apple’s brand personality, and how there aren’t enough companies like them.

Facebook And Amazon Join Forces For Social Shopping

This brings together two online giants in a way that clearly demonstrates the power of Facebook Connect to a major retailer like Amazon. Perhaps no other category is more tied to our friends than books, music, and movies. And when you think about how many people have their preferences in those categories listed in Facebook, the value to Amazon becomes obvious. But it goes beyond that. Where else can a retailer like Amazon tell you which of your friend’s birthdays are coming up, while also knowing their product preferences. Check it out.

iButterfly=AR(Augmented Reality) × Motion Sensor × GPS × Coupon [VIDEO]

This is an exception demonstration of the potential around AR. I think this specific example is a little misdirected. Very kid-focused, but on iPhones with GPS? And with coupons? Seems like a great core idea — collecting things that are all across a country and only visible through your phone — waiting for a brand to give it the perfect context.

Chatroulette.com cracking down on perverts – Yahoo! News

So, who’s going to be left using the service? Seriously, though, the question is, What’s the long-term potential for this type of online experience? YouTube pulled down sexual content, but users found a lot of other creative ways to use the service. That may be possible for ChatRoulette, but could require them to invest time and money into showing the way to that. A large user base is a great place to start, though.

This Week’s 10 Most Explosive Facebook Pages

Self-explanatory title, with no additional explanation required.

Augmented Reality: PlanningAlerts Uses Mobile to Reveal Undesirable Real Estate | MobileBehavior

Perhaps the most practical augmented reality application I’ve seen. You simply hold up your phone to view a real estate property, and it shows you all the potential problems in the vicinity. If this were offered in my area (it’s in Australia at the moment) and I was house shopping, this would be a given.

Seth’s Blog: The problem with unlimited

More wisdom from Sage Godin.

How To Make Your Blog Popular On Facebook In 5 Seconds

Beyond the simple advice about increasing your activity rate for posts is the foundational reason for doing so. It increases the odds of your story appearing in the newsfeeds of your Fans.

MediaShift . Your Guide to Next Generation ‘Content Farms’ | PBS

This should be an interesting series of articles on the growing area of content farming, one of the major challengers to the publishing industry as we know it.

Creativing :: Social Media’s World Cup, Ridley Scott directs YouTube, and social media meets the offline world.

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What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

Tweet of the Week

Come on, city of Cleveland, you’ve been on top for years. Give another city a chance.

The World Cup of Social Media – Advertising Age

While there’s been a lot of talk the last couple of years about the need for global marketing, perhaps nothing drilled that message home like the World Cup. A good read as much for the prose as the content.

Ridley Scott and YouTube Want You To Film One Day in Your Life

I’m quite curious about this because it seems to intersect a lot of different things that already exist. I mean, isn’t YouTube really an ongoing day in the life? So then this is just an edited version of that, with even less contest to what each of the video clips is about? I’ll be very curious to see how they bring a bigger POV to this and make it more than just a mashup of video clips. Perhaps this is the Internet version of Powaqqatsi.

What Is The Value Of A Facebook Fan? Zero! | Forrester Blogs

This line pretty much sums it up: It is what companies do with fans that creates value, not merely that a brand has fans.

Seth’s Blog: Payola

A lot of SEO people spend their lives trying to outsmart a campus of Google geniuses with PhDs. Kinda like going 1-on-1 with LeBron James. You might get a lucky basket now and then, but he’s just going to come back even stronger. If you want good SEO, don’t think like a Google engineer, think like a consumer. Bottom line is there are always games going on to goose online performance. But long-term value tends to align with consumer interests.

NYTimes Shows How Civic APIs Should Be Built

I like how often we see data going from rote facts to entertainment value. The idea of taking voting district information and attaching that to landmarks in NYC is exactly the type of way brands can take data and create interesting stories about what they or their customers are doing.

Google’s Display Advertising Plans Include Gmail, YouTube – Advertising Age

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard someone suggest the online display game is on. And if Google’s piling money into it, that’s a pretty strong indicator.

The Real Life Social Network: How Facebook Affects Offline Relationships | MobileBehavior

This highlights a major challenge of social media at the moment. Sharing the same posts with vastly different networks of people in our lives. This includes a nugget of insight about where Google’s going to be aiming to penetrate Facebook’s armor.

Why Google’s Launching ‘Me’ and Facebook’s Real Future – Advertising Age

If you’re not familiar with Facebook’s Open Graph or why Google is gunning for Facebook, this is a good quick read.

Creativing :: Mary Meeker’s online advertising predictions, Flash ads on iPhone, and 600 shopping mashups

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What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site
Creativing.com:

Tweet of the Week

I say, “Someone I follow on Twitter said…” way too often in normal conversation.

@CMSummit – Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Presentation

Probably the single best predictor of the future of the ad business I’ve seen in one place.

Record A Song On The Subway… Or Anywhere : NPR

Yes, there’s no shortage of tech wonders as of late. And yet, sometimes things really stand out amid a wave of innovation that reminds us just how absurdly advanced things are becoming. This did that for me. I’ve been playing with multi-track recording for years, and to think that technology that you can record a studio album on could be something you carry around on your phone is remarkable. As if we need yet another reminder of really how crazy this mobile revolution is going to be.

Bros Icing Bros

Latest in the ‘creative meme’ department. This would seem to have all the earmarks of a brand-driven meme; especially the seemingly way-too polished website. Then again, the whole thing is an insult to the brand. Interesting, but I’m not ready to carry around my “Ice Block” just yet.

BP buys Google, Yahoo search words to keep people away from real news on Gulf oil spill disaster

Just pathetic. This isn’t the era of transparency because someone thought it was a good idea. It’s because the free flow of information is such that it’s more and more difficult for companies like BP to lie.

Live, From Deep in the Gulf – NYTimes.com

While I haven’t found much to credit BP for in this mess, this is one instance. It really plays to a much deeper approach to handling this problem. Instead of trying to spin everything, acknowledge the problem, and give people access to information so they don’t feel like they’re being played. Of course, they haven’t done that across the board, and thus this feels more like an aberration for the brand versus a genuine effort to level with the public.

IfItWasMyHome.com – Visualizing the BP Oil Disaster

This smart data/map mashup places a region equal to the BP oil spill on a map in the area your most familiar with: Your home area. What I find really smart about this is that the title “If it was my home” adds emotional relevance that just the technology mashup alone wouldn’t do.

Adobe to Bring Flash-Based Ads to iPhone

I wouldn’t think Apple would oppose this, because unlike their previous blocking of using Flash to author iPhone apps, the authoring of banner ads isn’t where the money is; it’s in selling the ad units. That’s a very different scenario from apps, where it’s all about the sale of the app, and so Apple would have a much more vested interest in controlling that process. Whatever the case, though, it’s odd to see a company like Adobe — which via Flash played such a large role in bringing a richer experience to online advertising — being relegated to this sort of workaround to keep their technology relevant. Another reminder of how fast things change in this biz.

Best Buy’s Movie Mode Enables Second Screen Interaction | MobileBehavior

As we’ve seen, the future may not be so much about the merger of the proverbial three screens as it is the integration of them. This is a mobile app that gives you a peak into what characters are saying during the end credits of a movie. Seemingly a small sliver of the real potential here.

Seth’s Blog: Paperback Kindle

It’s interesting to see how Seth’s recommendation to the Kindle team for warding off Apple is all about user share. That’s something every mobile manufacturer and carrier should be taking notes on, as well. But the crux of the story is in the last line, when he tells of seeing a kid in diapers operating an iPod Touch. One of these days people will stop underestimating the importance of good user interface design.

600 Shopping Mashups

One of the things I recommend is reading about marketing-oriented technology, even if you don’t understand much of what they’re saying. So while the site is Programmable Web, don’t let that scare you. What’s readily noticeable is that the vast majority of these are shopping comparison tools. And while they may be full-screen tools right now, most are probably a fairly simple conversion away from being a mobile app. The list is definitely worth a quick scan.

Creativing :: Great Steve Jobs video on Apple and Flash, Second Life’s second life, and 3-D printing comes home

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What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site
Creativing.com:

Tweet of the Week

Ray Kurzweil needs to get the singularity happening STAT, while we still have time to make Betty White immortal.

D8 Video: Apple CEO Steve Jobs on Adobe Flash | D8 Conference

I’ve posted a lot on Apple and Flash lately, but this is the read all to end all. Steve Jobs do a great job explaining why he doesn’t like Flash. Beyond that, he explains it in a way that anyone in the business of “using technology to market to people” should understand.

FRONTLINE: digital nation: virtual worlds: second lives: inside a virtual meeting | PBS

Watch this just for the scene about how IBM is using Second Life for virtual meetings. And before you dismiss what sounds like a goofball idea, listen to the research reports around how virtual meetings can impact future business dealings, virtual and in person.

IMVU’s Virtual Cash Cow: Doubling Revenues, Focused On Gaming (Video)

This on the heels of the post above. Second Life has found a … second life, and now there’s news of another virtual world that’s not only pulling registrants, but making profits. Maybe I’ll see if my Second Life account is still active.

Voice of BP Twitter Parody Beats Industry With a Stick – Advertising Age

This guy’s doing a great job of lampooning BP PR on Twitter. And he notes the online marketing media are asking the question: “How should BP respond to him.” Really, BP shouldn’t be wasting any of their time responding to this. That’s taking their eye off the ball. They need to focus on the problem and let the surrounding noise take care of itself. Companies need to worry less on how they’re going to spin all their problems, and focus on solving those problems.

The HTML5 Video tag, built for SEO | VideoRetailer.org

So HTML5 already is (ostensibly) less buggy, requires less bandwidth, has a higher image quality, loads faster, and is easier to develop in, and now it’s also considered more SEO friendly. That’s a pretty big dagger in the heart of Flash.

Homicide Report Map – Los Angeles Times

This type of thing has been done before, but of course, being an Angeleno, this is more relevant. It’s great to see publishers delivering information in ways that acknowledges their readership’s intelligence and curiosity.

VW Punches Up Kimmel’s Intro

This is a really well done product integration. Picking up a simple theme from their recent Super Bowl spot and applying it to an intro for Jimmy Kimmel. Well done.

Quit Facebook Day Fails To Spark Mass Exodus

No surprise here. If anything, it shows how quickly hot button issues can both rise up and fade. Especially with other events in the news. When our coastal beaches are turning into oil slicks, it makes privacy settings on an opt-in social network lose some of it’s urgency.

3-D printers are poised to enter home electronics market – latimes.com

Think about printing, only out of the printer comes a physical, 3-D object. The home versions of these compositors start at around $750, which makes them remarkably accessible. These low-end machine’s kick out simple plastic objects. But Jay Leno has an industrial version ($27,000) that kicks out actual car parts. There’s an interesting site called Shapeways that features a lot of art for sale. It’s interesting that this technology could be a boon for sculptors and other types of 3-D artists who’ve never really been able to mass market their products before. And interesting that technology could enable them the same way digital recording and distribution impacted the music industry starting about 15-20 years ago.

Creativing :: Tweet of the Week, Craigslist TV?, and Foursquare links to print ads

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What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

Tweet of the Week

RT @hodgman “Just out here retweeting.”

Craigslist TV: Just as Awkwardly Entertaining as You Would Imagine [VIDEO]

Craigslist never ceases to amaze me. For one, it’s ongoing popularity, despite a horrible user interface. But even moreso, the way it frequently extends directly into popular culture. The personals are read for entertainment, artists do visualizations of the “Missed Connections” sections, and now this. There’s a fairly personal nature to much of Craigslist content, from personal ads to what people are selling out of their garages, that helps people identify with the content.

Facebook to Simplify Privacy Controls – NYTimes.com

Facebook responds to the privacy blowup. Given the speed of change Facebook’s been going through, and the Apple-esque disregard for outside opinion (some that’s both asset and liability for both), this whole scenario isn’t surprising.

More than anything, this really points to the role user experience plays in app and site development. Ignore it at your own risk.

Earthjustice Uses Foursquare to Make Print Ads Actionable | MobileBehavior

With Foursquare all over the news, the big question is, What are the different ways brands will be using technologies like this in their campaigns? This example links print work to mobile, with mass transit posters prompting riders to ‘checkin’ on a give subject to support an environmental cause. One great feature is that they’ve taken a print piece and given it a highly-trackable action.

Mobile creation – the Japanese way – Popwuping

The Japanese have long been ahead of us in mobile usage, and this is a good topline of their user behavior and why it’s different from the computer-based Internet.

YouTube Launches Platform for Crowdsourcing Suggestions

I’m seeing a lot of activity around the crowdsourcing/answers site format lately. Here, YouTube demonstrates again their value to Google in the way that Google can so quickly integrate many of their broad span of features into the largest video site in the world. In this case, I’m not sure video adds that much to answers, although given the power of video, it’s certainly worth Google trying. Bottom line is, there’s a lot of potential in answer sites, and that’s what Google’s trying to tap.

5 Ways To Turn Your Traffic Into Valuable User Data

Clearly your site visitors are a valuable source of insights and information about what interests them and others like them. The question is, How do you gather that information? This is a list of 5 tools that can help you ask them questions, process the information, and even compare it to competitor sites for relative value.

Google Rolls Out More Tweet-Based Ads

Using a Twitter feed to create the content for a Google AdSense ad is a great idea not only because it’s new and innovative, which generally tends to do well for online marketing, but because it does two things at once. It provides the advertiser with an extremely simple content management system for piping fresh messaging into their ad, and it also prominently promotes their Twitter account, which is a strong conversion action for many marketers.

Flash Enthusiast Sends a Hidden Message To Steve Jobs

This is quite clever. A creative at McCann built his website in Flash, and for the image that loads incase you don’t have the Flash plugin, he’s inserted a photo of Steve Jobs giving you the finger. He’s offering the image to anyone who will install it, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find this image popping up across the Web.

Yahoo Announces Deep Integration Partnership With Social Gaming Start-Up Zynga | AllThingsD

Social gaming is red hot. And it seems such a natural for brands to get involved. An existing, highly-active audience. Relatively low production costs. And of course, it all ties in to their social media networks for sharing.

Here’s What Google TV Looks Like (PHOTOS)

I’ve posted several things recently on Google TV, which is probably the most interesting happening around TV technology. Here are some early screen snaps from the experience. This is classic Google. Throw something out there early, it looks kind of ugly, but the upside potential is clear and massive.

Creativing :: Tweet of the Week, Facebook’s privacy blowup, and Google’s version of TVs future

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What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:

Tweet of the Week

From writer Kathy Hepinstall: “what happens in the gulf of mexico does not stay in the gulf of mexico.”

Here’s What Google TV Looks Like (PHOTOS)

I’ve posted several things recently on Google TV, which is probably the most interesting happening around TV technology. Here are some early screen snaps from the experience. This is classic Google. Throw something out there early, it looks kind of ugly, but the upside potential is clear and massive.

Can One Man Communicate Solely Through Social Media for a Month?

A remarkable story for anyone interested in cause-related marketing through social media. It really underlines the fact that successful social media campaigns are about big ideas. The ‘social media’ tools are just the distribution channels.

ESPN to Launch Social Games for Sports Fans

If you consider the popularity of sports, sports-related gaming, and social viewing (which is really best for live events, like sports), this seems like enormous territory. Actually surprised I haven’t heard about this before.

NBC Turns Television into a Social Media Game

Several interesting things about this. 1. Foursquare is featured along with the heavyweights of social media (and note there’s not a single Google property), 2. The Facebook rules and regulations say you can’t pay people to “Like” something, but they’re offering rewards for liking things, and those rewards have value. Maybe they’ve found a loophole with “Rewards”, but it seems like a thin line. 3. The article speaks of “Liking” doing a makeover on the Nielsen ratings system. That’s a big indicator of the power of the “Like” button.

Facebook Knows That Your Relationship Will End In A Week

A lot of people wonder what the value is of all the behavioral data Facebook can track. This example of Facebook’s supposed ability to project the end or beginning of a relationship is all they should need. Imagine just from this info, the number of related businesses that could want to target messages to either party, going into or coming out of a relationship. Then extend that across all behaviors in your life, and there quite a lot of potential for marketers. All of this potential isn’t available to companies yet, but if Facebook’s recent trends about selling your info play out, then it likely will be.

Mayors of Starbucks Now Get Discounts Nationwide with Foursquare

More interesting events on the mobile front. While Foursquare only has about 1 million users, they’re certainly the type of people Starbucks wants. Early adopters, socially active, and willing to broadcast much of their brand loyalties throughout social media.

Booyah Hits 2 Million, Stealing Foursquare’s Thunder

Booyah’s MyTown. The biggest mobile game you’ve never heard of. Already about 2x as many users as Foursquare. It’s interesting to contrast/compare with Foursquare, which is sort of a game, but not really taking the social gaming concept head-on, which MyTown is definitely doing.

The Big Game, Zuckerberg and Overplaying your Hand « The Jason Calacanis Weblog

A very well written lambasting of Facebook from a number of angles. Of course, right after this, Facebook inked a long-term deal with Zynga, the Facebook whipping boy in this article. Beyond the vitriol, Jason makes a far-reaching point about the very essence of the Web’s progress being about openness and existing outside any single company’s motives, that single company being Facebook.

Well, These New Zuckerberg IMs Won’t Help Facebook’s Privacy Problems

Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t seem very concerned about privacy. At least not yours. However, it’s interesting to see people digging up all sorts of things from his past, like these 5 yr old IMs where he literally calls people ‘dumb fucks’ for trusting him with their information on Facebook. If he’s not responding to reporters questions about this, does it mean they’ve uncovered something he’s not comfortable with? i.e., Information he thinks should be private? Privacy advocates could start targeting him in much the same way they exposed Justice Scalia’s personal information after he opposed privacy laws.

Facebook Enters into Five-Year ‘Strategic Relationship’ with Zynga – IndustryGamers

At times, Facebook seems like a company moving so fast they’re going to meltdown, but then they pull moves like this and show how far ahead they’re thinking relative to the other majors, including Google and Apple. Social gaming isn’t even close to being tapped out, IMO. That’s why I’m impressed by Facebook putting together such an unprecedented (for them) long-term deal with a social gaming company.