experience designer + writer
I’ve started playing with the WordPress iPhone app. So far
I’m impressed. A simple interface with enough basic features for
adding images or video. The only glaring omission is a Facebook
cross-posting capability. Seems a little obvious so maybe it’s set
for an approaching update. At any rate, here’s a screen grab of the
posting interface.
UPDATE
Not sure why the app didn’t post the image. Something to add to the Todo list.
What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:
Excellent animated video on where good ideas come from. A lot of this will ring true to the importance of conversation monitoring, which is really just a way of plugging yourself into the community, or conversation, that the author talks about in this video.
Most of the time it’s annoying when advertising creeps into every nook and cranny of daily life, but this idea comes off as clever, and really making a pretty drab event — entering CAPTCHA info — a bit more interesting. And for brands, getting viewers to actually type out their tagline or product features based on a paid impression is pretty remarkable. One of the more clever new ad units I’ve seen in a while. The only limit will be that there really aren’t that many times a user has to see CAPTCHA’s, assuming they have cookies turned on.
A couple of interesting things in this piece. For one, Google’s not happy with the way Apple’s YouTube app works, and are promoting the WAP version of YouTube mobile, instead. It offers a considerably better user experience, which shows that WAP has a lot to offer versus native app development. Secondly, Apple controls the YouTube app on iPhone, and if they can’t keep a major brand like Google up with the latest and greatest mobile experience, then it really underscores how much this brand really needs the larger development community on it’s side, and developing apps like mad for their platform.
I’m following SCVNGR closely, as they seem to be the most aggressive of the location-based apps at trying to figure out survival in a post-Facebook Places world. It’s also interesting, because they’re backed by $4m from Google Ventures. And Google would love to kill both the social and mobile birds with one stone. But I still feel like SCVNGR lacks the simplicity to really go mainstream. For one, it requires an app download, a big barrier, whereas Facebook’s mobile app already has 100m users. And then there’s that problem of less than 1% of all mobile phone users use a location-based app more than 1x per week. So driving consistent use is going to be a real challenge. But the logic behind SCVNGR’s actions are on target, as they get that it’s ultimately about making brands more dynamic on their Facebook properties.
Just ran across this list. What I find interesting is that most of them are from the past two years. I’d think having more time on to accrue views would help. My guess is that two factors contribute to the recency of the leaders. One is that companies are getting better at promoting their videos, versus just tossing them on YouTube and telling a couple of forums about it. And secondly, the metrics tracking these views are improving, as they’re extending the analysis beyond YouTube views alone.
Any involved in online marketing should be a fan of anything that dials up our broadband speeds here in the US. They’ve been rated as low as 25th in the world, or something abysmal like that. But this is great. Take some unused TV spectrum and allocate it to wireless broadband. And I like that they’re focusing on wireless. It may not have the topend speeds of cable now, but ultimately it will be the most cost effective solution to scale, and seems like the most probably path to blanket coverage.
Simply a smart way to differentiate yourself amid a battered travel industry. While it might not be enough to attract new customers, this will certainly make a strong impression on anyone who uses it (assuming no bugs, of course!). It also shows how companies need to focus on consumer touchpoints, and not media inventory, when looking at ways to make a real impression.
Etsy is an interesting company to watch, as they’re developing a reputation for interesting, community-centered marketing campaigns. Earlier, they had a UGC video contest (http://www.youtube.com/user/etsy), and now an open API contest, with cash prizes. A couple things are truly helping them in these efforts. One is having a product that naturally attracts a lot of creative, artistic people. The other is having VC Fred Wilson (www.avc.com) as one of your backers.
An overview of the post-Facebook Places location-based services landscape. As expected, this is quickly moving from fun and games to real functionality. And that’s the big opportunity for brands. Because you may need several million people to make a game fun, but good functionality can be delivered on a 1-1 basis.
What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:
Fantastic selection of work. This is a must see for anyone in marketing. (Thx to John Durham for the link.)
I don’t see any of these as having a real chance of unseating Facebook, but it’s a good read comparing their strategic approachs. Diaspora is the most interesting, as it’s open source. So many other platforms are moving towards open source, and as Facebook’s big strategy is to be a platform and not a destination, they could be vulnerable to an open source movement. Especially given the increasing amount of data they have on people (e.g., Places).
I really like the simplicity of this site. I don’t get how they’re comparing this site to a social network site, but it’s well-done none-the-less.
Like the Library of Congress putting a lot of the National Archives photos on Flickr before. While the pics have been available on the NASA site, it’s nice to see them moving to a common online photo site. As a Flickr user, I’m glad to be able to see these pics up in my rotation of photos by contacts.
The patent is for “ranking search results based on the frequency of clicks on the search results by members of a social network who are within a predetermined degree of separation”. Interesting that the patent was filed in 2004. They were focused on that very early on, and the vision is still holding strong.
I’m pretty underwhelmed. Of course, social media and open anything aren’t really Apple’s things. But really, there just isn’t any depth of content or relationship to the conversation or the connections.
Even if the ChatRoulette URL proves to be dead, the idea of randomly connecting with strangers via video will surely surface somewhere else, probably more closely aligned with a specific interest group.
Uncovered this article from earlier this year. If you’re not familiar with Jeremy Allaire, he’s had a great career charting technology trends and making products that address the changing needs. His take is that of a seasoned technologist who’s seen a lot of things come and go. Bottom line is, there’s still a lot of tumult in the industry (witness the h.264 pending usage royalties in 2014) and a clear vision of the future online content platform probably won’t emerge for at least a couple of years.
Given this works wtihin 50 meters of a business, that means a lot of potential checkins when people are just walking past. I can’t imagine how that’s good for Foursquare.
A good set of campaign metrics to follow that provide a well-rounded view of performance. This is a good read for people outside SEM who aren’t overly family with campaign analytics
What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:
so many girls leave their boyfriends over his excessive x-box playing that they should call it the ex-box.
Funny take on Apple’s brand personality, and how there aren’t enough companies like them.
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.
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.
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.
Self-explanatory title, with no additional explanation required.
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.
More wisdom from Sage Godin.
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.
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.
What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:
“There was $250,000 lining the walls of that stand, how much clearer can I say it: “THERE IS ALWAYS MONEY IN THE BANANA STAND!” #ADquotes
Admittedly, the headline got me. But it’s an interesting case for why just because a social media experience is addictive doesn’t mean it isn’t in jeopardy of competition. Remember MySpace? Me either. But they were flying high when Facebook was just starting. And Facebook took over because of a better user experience. And that’s what people are complaining about Facebook now.
I’ve long felt that QR codes will have their day. As someone who’s found all sorts of convenient life hacks around mobile phones (taking a picture of my parking deck location is a fave), QR codes provide a convenient shortcut to entering text on a mobile phone. I really like how Google is distributing codes to their businesses. Think about walking along and seeing a store that you don’t have time to visit. Or it’s closed. You take a snapshot of the QR code on the window, and have their info logged for easy access later. That’s a very functional use, and I’m sure there are a lot of creative opportunities out there, as well.
This is a great idea for people who find value in Twitter without having to constantly update the world on their last meal. It creates a magazine-style interface of all the links the people you follow are sending out. You can also filter it by lists or media sources. A much improved interface for consuming Twitter information than Twitter of any of the content generation-focused 3rd party apps.
Check out the demo video for a quick intro to the concept. This looks like it’s very well done, and like the Yahoo iPad app demonstration, makes a convincing case for why slates will dominate media consumption. Also, keep in mind we’re still in the very nascent stages of this type of content interface. The Flipboard branding is also nicely done.
A fun site. Upload a snippet of a design. Limited to 400×300 pixels. So you’re not going to see the full page here. And that’s what I like about it. Interactive design is made up of so many micro-components, and sometimes simply a great button design or rollover effect can gain as much notice as a complete page. This site forces you to focus on the smaller aspects of design, and I found that a refreshing perspective.
You may have heard about Facebook crossing the 500 million user mark. This is an amusing look at some other things that have hit 500 million, for better or worse.
Ran across this older article on Farmville’s drop in traffic earlier this year. And it’s been a continuing slide. I think a lot of game-oriented systems are going to find people’s ever-changing interests a big help at launch, but a challenge for keeping long term activity. The article does a good job breaking down the information.
Randomness of the week. Thx to @gregtypes.
Can’t say I’m shocked that the ‘happiest’ day on twitter is a weekend, and the ‘saddest’ is a workday. The inforgraphics are interesting. The west coast lags the east coast a bit even when adjusted for time zones. Possibly because west coasters waking up later?
I’ll be curious to see how well this works. Gauging sentiment is very difficult, and that’s really what this is doing. If they have a great algorithm, it could be the key to much more accurate assessment of online conversations.
What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:
If Jobs doesn’t start this press conference with “Look at your CEO now back to me now back at your CEO now BACK TO ME” he’s missed a trick.
A good overview on how the campaign was created. It’s interesting to see user generated components kicking in, which is mentioned towards the end of the article.
Have to say I think this issue is blown out of proportion. Maybe it’s because in Venice Beach all I see are people trying to darken their skin.
An excellent distillation of where to take risks, and where not to.
Shocking!
A few mobile apps from the non-profit sector. My pref on these is the simplest one, the Salvation Army “Bellringer”. A nice way to reenforce a strong brand icon.
While the contest info delivery vehicle, the video, might be what you expect from a Royal, the underlying promotion has a nice feel of global inclusiveness. Swap two people from your country with two people from somewhere else in the world.
With the recent Justin Bieber / Lady Gaga ‘most viewed’ showdown, I was curious to see the 100 most viewed vids on YouTube. Perhaps not surprisingly, the majority seem to be music videos, interspersed with baby’s laughing, people dancing, and allusions to sex. The view counts are also interesting to note. The top vid has 245m views. The 100th: 40m views. That’s a pretty precipitous drop, and if you consider that 2 billion videos are viewed every day on YouTube, it’s really a long tail play with a huge majority at very low view counts.
This pulled select from the article says it all in regards to shifting marketing forces: Former President of CBS News Andrew Heyward wrote in the Harvard Business Review last year that “every company is a media company,” summarizing the idea that marketing is shifting to an environment where advertisers need to produce compelling content in order to succeed.
What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:
Man. I could listen to Jony Ive talk about “materials” all day long. I mean—unless I had the option of doing literally anything else.
A very simple but powerful idea. Take a hi-res photo of everyone at a concert, and then enable them to zoom in anywhere, find, and tag themselves via Facebook. I’d also have added an easy way for them to drop and save their photo as their profile pic.
One of those ideas where you look at it and say “Really, nobody’s done that yet?”
More mashups. An interesting World Cup mashup that attempts to predict the score via Twitter tweets, a site to help people keep up with the latest job interview trends (you know, those trick questions!), and a match making site based on music taste from Last.fm. Interesting functionality/productivity in those last two.
A good reminder of the importance of cohesion across all your brand touchpoints. Google has an impressive lineup of touchpoints, competitive enough feature-wise, but often lacking the key ingredient. A critical mass audience.
While the headline is a little alarmist, the point is, a lot of people are finding banners aren’t driving the response rates they used to. Of course, that happens with any medium. For many advertisers, it’s most likely a matter of them not doing anything of remote interest in the banner in the first place. And then they wonder why nobody notices their ad.
Fantastic TED presentation by a British ad exec on how big ideas don’t require big budgets.
An example of how Facebook may lose social website cache, but still retain a valuable business model. Social sites could easily go niche, especially ones build around currently strong communities. But like Fabulis, they’ll likely use Facebook integration to accelerate growth at their inception. And that keeps Facebook in a powerful position to deliver relevant advertising.
I’ve mentioned kickstarter before. And out of that biz model comes an edgy cause marketing campaign that’s not only blowing away the creator’s estimated budget, but has to be generating enormous amounts of buzz. I really think there’s a lot of potential for a sort of event artists that can pull these things together in a way that people will want to support.
Mobile isn’t just for when your customer is trying to find you. It can be for when they’re standing in your store. However, while people are growing more accustomed to grabbing their mobile for product research while in store, only about 20% of Multichannel retailers are using any form of m-commerce. Looks like a lot of potential growth.
What can you take from this? That there’s likely going to be a lot of business in the area of building the experiences backing these ads. Of course, the comments would indicate that people won’t tolerate iAds. Yet again and again, people choose ad-supported over pay models. (Hulu will be an interesting case study, although news site after new site has failed trying to go paid.)