iphone

Creativing :: Tweet of the Week, the iPhone sandwich, and Facebook vs. Google

February 19, 2010 By Doug Schumacher

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

Tweet of the Week

PEW SURVEY: By 2012, every object in America will have its own Facebook page and an unnecessary laser pointer.

YouTube – iSandwich 4G

Found this pretty funny. Not sure I’d want to taste it, but it’s a visual treat. Wait until the end for the CG gag.

MediaShift . Best Online Resources for Following 2010 Winter Olympics | PBS

This list is an interesting scan simply because of the range of content around the Olympics. No really unexpected, but a good overview at the numerous angles from which online content can approach a subject.

30 APIs Used in 7 Days: Bing, Facebook, Flickr, Google, Netflix, Salesforce.com, Twitter, YouTube

Despite mashups having been around for a while, I feel there’s enormous untapped potential. Especially as social networking and mobile are going to generate treasure troves of data previously unavailable in any form. This list is heavily concentrated on data and web tending apps, which is no doubt a big topic right now.

Foursquare Responds To Please Rob Me: Please Shut Up

Contrasting the closed, symmetric network of Foursquare with the open, asymmetric network of Twitter.

Ajaxian » I Can’t Believe It’s Not Flash

A Flash trashing, followed by a lot of rebuking in the comments.

The Future of Flash, on FarukAt.eş

Faruk’s been writing about Flash, and it’s pending demise. But here he reconsiders the value of Flash, with a possibility of it becoming a big potential mobile play. Flash does offer development speed, but there’s always been that nagging stability thing. And I don’t think consumers will tolerate phones crashing to any degree that they’ve dealt with it on computers.

Pre-Roll Video Ads Still Hated, Here to Stay – Advertising Age

A nice overview from someone who both dislikes the pre-roll but also derives revenue from it. I agree with his assessment that branded sponsorships are going to be the real value for content developers — essentially creating a brand experience with less up front risk for the sponsor.

Farmville About To Cruise Past 80 Million Users

Some interesting findings in the numbers. When looking at active users, the shorter the time of reference (daily, weekly, monthly), the lower the growth rate. That should indicate a lot of people are trying it out out of curiosity, but not hanging with it for long. Consider that active daily users is 31m, only up from 27m a year ago. So it would seem they’re drafting Facebook’s continuing rocket trajectory of new users. Granted, 31m is still a lot of people. But I think it’s indicative of how these social games will play out. Friends pulling friends in, everyone dabbling for a bit, and then on to the next new thing.

Is Facebook Becoming More Important Than Google?

There’s been a lot of recent talk about Facebook’s growing search influence. And no doubt that searching Facebook is going to increase in both frequency and intent. But as this article points out, a lot of the behavior isn’t understood at the moment, so it’s difficult to say what’s correlation and what’s causation.

Creativing :: Tweet of the Week, Museum’s engage in trash talk, and the 10 greatest YouTube mashups

February 5, 2010 By Doug Schumacher

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

Tweet of the Week

Today’s my last day at Sun. I’ll miss it. Seems only fitting to end on a #haiku. Financial crisis/Stalled too many customers/CEO no more

Ahead Of Super Bowl, Museum Heads Trash-Talk : NPR

If you want to breath some fresh air into the brand personality of your museum, you probably couldn’t do much better than this. There’s both a transcript and the audio version. How often do you get to hear museum directors talking smack to each other (in jest, of course).

Augmented reality mirror picks makeup for the ladies (video) — Engadget

The first line says it all on this. “Ladies and rockers alike”. You could also add kids, Halloween celebrants, Mardi Gras, etc etc. While practical, this could have a lot of pure entertainment potential.

Facebook Could Eat the Web – The Steve Rubel Lifestream

With everyone talking about Google and Apple, Facebook continues to advance in ways that make a much deeper connection between our personal and commercial relationships. For a lot of people, Facebook is quickly becoming the most convenient place to do almost anything online. And that’s always been the best way to increase sales. The thing they’ll need to be concerned about? Losing consumer’s trust, in the form of scams. As we’ve already seen, it’s much easier to social-hack someone when you have them on a trusted platform where they’re sharing a lot of personal information.

AppSlappy 32: “The iPad Episode” « AppSlappy

These guys do a good job countering most of the iPad objections I’ve come across. I do think there’s still a big issue in it not having Flash, as so much rich online content is Flash based, and this device is about absorbing media more than anything.

Facebook Trends: Goodbye Doppelganger, Hello Urban Dictionary Week

Maybe we need a new category here, Facebook Trend of the Week.

So Long, And Thanks For All The Flash — FarukAt.eş

A compelling argument for the end of Flash, more from a business sense than whether or not Flash is a better experience. I have to agree where he talks about development times and universal access … two major factors for any marketing project. And IMO, it’s the marketers that made Flash, with their expansive microsites and ubiquitous Flash ads. But the key factor for Flash has always been ubiquity and impact. If those are gone, the marketers will be too.

Leaked “Lost” episode spurs surprising fan reaction – Yahoo! News

When the season premier was leaked to YouTube, the reaction was often ‘don’t ruin it for me’. While this will give the networks a sigh of relief, it’s also important to realize that Lost is one of only a couple of shows that could garner this type of reaction.

Top 10 YouTube Mashups of All Time

Because of its simple user experience, popularity, and open API structure, YouTube has always been a good way to showcase mashup capabilities. What’s interesting here is the scope of the mashups. From simplifying an already simple UX, to tracking videos like you might a stock on the NYSE.

Twitter / eMarketer: Stat of the day: 68% of on …

It’s been reported that email marketing is falling by the wayside for many heavy social media users. This stat certainly supports that idea.

Creativing :: Remarkable iPhone story from Haiti, Put yourself in a music video, and the future of mobile and social networks

January 22, 2010 By Doug Schumacher

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

Man Buried in Haiti Rubble Uses iPhone to Treat Wounds, Survive | Wired.com

Remarkable story about a documentary filmmaker caught in the Haiti earthquake and survived, in part due to a first aid app on his iPhone. Of course, this is as much about being prepared (he had previously downloaded the iPhone app, after all) and being resourceful (using your SLR camera as a flashlight), but it does show how technology makes it easier to have the right information and tools when you need them.

New NBC Logo Combines Fail Whale and Peacock [PIC]

Funny (unless you’re Conan) mashup of the Twitter fail whale and the NBC logo. Certainly fits based on what I’ve been reading about NBC lately

oneframeoffame

An interesting idea that reminds me of the $1,000,000 home page idea, in which they broke down a home page screen into something like 10000 small squares, and charged $100 to advertise in each square. This is a sort of user generated version of that, but instead of getting your logo on the page, you get your image, and maybe 1 second of fame, in the video. It looks like a Dutch group is behind this, and they have some other interesting projects on their site.

Create Your Own iPhone or Android App in Minutes With iSites

Count on me to be trying this out asap. Create your own iPhone app, for as little as $25. With nothing more than an RSS feed required. Sure, this will invite a wave of drivel, but in that pile will also be a couple of apps that might really stick. And that’s the multiple that emerging tech lives on.

Five Mobile Trends for 2010 – Advertising Age

Mobile’s making more sense by the day. iPhone apps keep getting cheaper, i.e., more abundant. Android takes off. Talk of a Facebook mobile phone. So prepare for change in this space. This is a good projection of what to expect from the mobile industry in 2010. If not the peak trends, these will all be areas to watch.

Bing to Become the iPhone’s Default Search Engine?

While this news doesn’t really shake any iPhone user’s tree very hard, it does underscore a new stage in the tech world battle of the super brands. The battle raging between Apple and Google. Two of my favorite companies. And in many ways, two of the most divergent businesses out there, philosophically. The end of the article speculates on Apple developing their own search engine … something I’ve not heard of before. The last line of the article is the best, though: “Apple and Google know the other is their primary enemy . . . Microsoft is now a pawn in that battle.”

CONFIRMED: New York Times to Start Charging for Website in 2011

Mashable has some good extended thinking on the issue. I generally agree that the value of gained subs will likely not outweigh the loss in readership. At least not for the long term. And while their announcement doesn’t seem like much, that’s clearly their strategy. Give their user base plenty of time to adjust — they can always retract — while they work out the details of something they feel is pretty inevitable.

New York Times To Close TimesSelect Effective Midnight Tuesday; Will Open Last 20 Years Of Archives

With the NY Times subscription story hot, their announcement to drop the subscriber model in 2007 is a particularly relevant read. They state $10m in revenues from about 227k subs. I don’t know their revenues, but the NY Times company and it’s 24 papers made $2.9b in 2008. Whatever the NY Times portion was, it would seem to make $10 look pretty thin.

Opticana – the 500$ Campaign

This is a fun video on a campaign tactic from Israel that’s been employed here in the states for a while. I’m sure almost all alternate spellings of our top 10 web sites have been purchased years ago (many of them by the brands themselves). Still, this is a great reminder that the ever changing digital marketing landscape always contains unique surprises and workarounds for those coming at the problem from a slightly different direction.

The Future Of Social Networks

This is a nice read, partly because it’s very graphically easy to absorb. My favorite part is at the very end, where the writer reminds us that social media is an ongoing process, and that even large brands like Wal-Mart can fail numerous times before succeeding. Another interesting note on that is that Wal-Mart isn’t exactly a beloved American brand, but that didn’t stop them from using social media.

The Pros and Cons of Hiring Contract Workers

An article on outsourcing that I was interviewed for, with some good reference sites if you’re interested in outsourcing. I think this is unquestionably going to be a growing trend for agencies, both large and small. Every day, new developments in communications, from file sharing to video communications, are minimizing the border between remote and in-person.

Creativing :: iPhone AR helicopter, smartphones and ecommerce, and a look under the hood of any website

January 8, 2010 By Doug Schumacher

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

Tweet of the Week

This is a new feature I’m going to add to this column each week.

140 Characters How Twitter Was Born

Ran across this story from Dom Sagolla, one of the original team that created and launched Twitter. Note how, despite Twitter’s relatively simple concept and technology, they went through a number of technical, UX and branding challenges. Scroll down the page past the book promo to see the original post

Parrot’s Remote Controlled Helicopter Takes Augmented Reality to the Next Dimension

This is very cool. A working mini helicopter controlled via the iPhone. If you’ve started shopping for me for Xmas next year, hint hint.

Social Media Not The Answer For Weak Brands: Branding Strategy Insider

I really like this piece on strategy v tactics. And while in many cases business strategy is, unfortunately, a foregone conclussion by the time the marketing department gets on the scene, it’s never too late to try to have an impact. As international borders vanish, production timelines shrink, and all businesses move closer to having perfect information, perhaps marketers will again get to spend more time in the CEOs office.

Ads Of Steel On Security X-ray Machines – Advertising Lab

Talk about niche targeting, these ads are recruitment ads for a security firm. The firm’s agents carry them in their suitcases. When their baggage gets scanned at the airport, the inspecting agent at the video monitor sees the recruitment ad. Not sure what the CPM is, but I’m sure these ads get noticed, as it’s certainly an attentive audience.

Marketing: Where Is Cause Marketing Headed in 2010? – Advertising Age

I think cause marketing makes a lot of sense for companies right now. Firstly, there’s our economic situation. There’s a lot of pain out there, and showing that you’re sensitive to it eases the underlying push of commerce. Secondly, tied to the first, cause-oriented messages are for the most part much less prone to cynicism and criticism. And that leads into social media. Not only are cause campaigns less likely to draw ire, but they’re far more likely to generate positive buzz in social media. And that’s something more and more brands will be considering the top reason for cause marketing.

Augmented Reality Statistics 2009

Some great stats regarding AR, webcams, video, Facebook, etc. Slide 4 is kill — 40% of Facebook vid uploads were via webcam. Though sites like uStream are hitting millions of uniques, live streaming doesn’t seem to be capturing that much attention. The 40% number would suggest it’s waiting for a ‘tipping’ event.

BuiltWith – Website Tech Analyzer

Ever wonder what techs a given site is using for their platform, analytics, ad serving, etc? Sure, you could view the source and weed through it. But this gives you the whole enchilada in a single search.

Wordle – Beautiful Word Clouds

Easy, and more importantly, graphically cool way to generate word clouds from any selection of words you chose.

TOPPS Enters The Virtual Goods Space Through Facebook

Topps moves into the virtual goods market with “Wacky Digibles”, a kind of reissue to the 70s product parodies, Wacky Packages.

37% of smartphone owners purchased merchandise via their phones in 2009

More data supporting the notion that, finally, this is the year for mobile.

Creativing :: Holiday shopping madness video, social media gains advocates, and iPhone news

December 11, 2009 By Doug Schumacher

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

Chaos inside Walmart during Black Friday 2009 [VIDEO]

Absurd chaos going on here. You’d think a gun was fired. People in some parts of the world must see this and think this entire country is insane.

Frosty the Inappropriate Snowman Mashup Creates Controversey

The video this references to has been pulled. What I like here is that the mashup was done by CBS. That means that CBS was mashing up artwork they didn’t have the rights to? And the networks are trying to put a stop to YouTube? At least for a brief moment it seems they stopped acting like legal bots and started acting like real human beings.

AT&T CEO Wants iPhone Users to Limit Usage

This is little short of mind-boggling. Just as the mobile industry a really taking off, AT&T’s De la Vega steps in and tries to threaten everyone with tiered pricing. He should read his history. The Web tried this very unsuccessfully in it’s early days. Consumers heavily restricted their use out of concern for unexpected high monthly charges. More than anything, I’m surprised that he can’t see how anyone in the mobile space should benefit from increased usage. That data they point to is interesting though: Their 3% smart phone users consume 40% of the data. I just don’t like their solution of punishing their best customers. What other industry does that (besides the music industry)?

Chrome Extensions for Mac Coming Soon

I just installed Chrome on my MacBook Pro, and am very impressed with the speed over Firefox. Extremely noticeable. But I do miss the ability to have plugins — something I used a lot on Firefrox. So this is good news to me. If you haven’t tried Chrome for Mac, though, i’d definitely give it a spin

Twitter Bombs and the Real Time Tweets on Google Results Page

I, like many others, have noticed a lot more Google Alerts search traffic. And much of it is from Twitter activity. This report could certainly explain why that’s happening. It could also be pushing up posters who happen to use a common Google search term. I can’t imagine this will last long. Way to easy for brands to drop the Twitter bomb. And you know they will. In fact, I’m sure the marketer behind the shaking belly ads is at work on that right now.

It’s Official: Auto Ads are Shifting Online

Some pretty convincing data on the increasing use of social media by the auto industry. What I find most interesting is that it’s the dealers, at the local level, that are really taking advantage of this. Here’s a great stat from a Nielsen report: “Auto dealerships dropped their overall ad budgets 27%, but increased internet ad spends 45% in the first three quarters of 2009, compared to the same time period in 2008.”

Social Media Influencing 28% of Shoppers

An early indicator of the influence of social media on consumer shopping behavior. And while I agree this is real, I’m surprised that the gap between those who say they check product reviews and those who say they are affected by social media activity is as narrow as it is. Really, I thought the majority of people would be regularly checking product reviews on sites like Amazon. Interesting that only 13% of people claim to make use of that information to inform their purchasing decision. Maybe it’s the lower price point merchandise they’re not so concerned with.

Seth’s Blog: The reason social media is so difficult for most organizations

Social media is a process, not an event. This is a big distinction, and actually something I addressed earlier this week at the iMedia Summit. So I couldn’t agree more. And company’s that want to treat social media and branding like an event, or a product, are in for an unpleasant surprise.

Top 10 Internet Marketing Strategies of 2009

What I like in this article is how they emphasize the mediums that establish credibility. This is a principle concept that’s coming up a lot in branding. And whether they refer to it as credibility, authenticity, or being genuine, it’s the same principle. You can’t just shout messages at people the way you once could. They mention these trends were big in 2009, and should be for 2010 as well. I’d say they can extend it out a lot longer than that for many of these mediums.

iPhone App Lets You IMDb on the Go

A good review of the iPhone app on Mashable. This is probably one of the most logical apps you could want, as especially among young people, a lot of movie-going decisions are out-of-home.

Creativing :: New storytelling on the iPhone, Google Chrome shows some personality, and the Xbox goes social

November 20, 2009 By Doug Schumacher

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

The PhoneBook – The future of interactive storytelling?

Perhaps iPhoneBook would be more accurate. A simple children’s story book concept for integrating the interactivity of an iPhone with a physical book. The big idea here is that one book could launch an endless stream of stories. I’d think every children’s book writer in the world has to be licking their chops at the potential around this.

Read news fast with Google Fast Flip

A common complaint about reading on the Web is that it isn’t the casual, perusal of flipping through a magazine or newspaper. This may not go quite that far, but the experience does have a more relaxed feel to it. Probably in part because it takes a web page and shrinks down all the little annoying data, so all you focus on are the big articles.

Advertising in Reverse

I completely agree with the foundational premise of this approach, that online shopping is a bad experience. Maybe not as bad as driving all over town, but still. Largely inefficient results for anything other than technology products and books. The idea here is a consumer RFP process, where people submit what they’re looking for, and a specified number of companies respond with products that meet your parameters. Clearly a system like this would have to be monitored for scammers and spammers. But I’ve heard discussed the idea of an ad network in which people are shown ads based on predetermined product categories they’ve stated interest in. This takes that to a more actionable stage.

Online gangs cashing in on swine flu

Fascinating, if not alarming. Sometimes technology actually changes society, and sometimes it just gives the same behaviors a new playing field.

VoiceQuilt Personalized Keepsake – Gifts With Voice Messages And Recorded Voice Memories

The production and presentation on this is pretty cheesy, but underneath all that dairy is a smart idea. A way of bridging people who are naturally savvy internet users (many people under 30) with someone in their life who probably isn’t (their grandparents). I know personally that, given the choice between doing a task online or offline, I’ll usually do it online. It’s simply an easier place for me to navigate at this point. And I think that’s the point here. People wanting to stay in touch with their grandparents could do something like this just because they CAN do it on the internet.

Taking Its Cue From Apple, TV Explores On-Screen Applications

Cable TV companies are looking at ways to integrate the Apple apps type environment into their set top boxes to enable apps downloaded and used on TV. This story underscores two issues. 1. There’s a lot of infighting in the cable industry, and it will likely take a lot of cooperation between TV companies, cable operators and online platforms to make this work. That’s a tall order. Furthermore, Apple has been doing this on a phone – a single owner device that people carry with them everywhere. Not the TV in the family living room. 2. There isn’t anyone in the cable industry with the vision or passion of Steve Jobs to pull this off.

Twitter and Facebook Launch on the Xbox 360

Interestingly, this came out the day after the above article. Everyone’s racing to own the living room. Xbox has already been enabling various social viewing and gaming experiences, including the new Netflix social viewing capabilities. But it’s only been social within the Xbox Live subscriber base. This blows it out considerably.

Statistics Show Social Media Is Bigger Than You Think

I saw the data presented here posted somewhere, but the video component adds a nice bit o’ drama. Some remarkable stats. e.g., 35% of the books sold on Amazon are for Kindle.

If you want a conversation, say something interesting

We’ve all met people who talk and talk and talk and never say anything remotely interesting. This is a great warning to companies engaged in social media not to become that person.

What is Google Chrome OS?

Google apparently learned quite a bit from their arduous Wave launch video. This one is fun, refreshing, and actually makes me want to go out and buy a Netbook.

What Twitter’s New Geolocation Makes Possible

A list of some great examples of how this could be applied. Anyone in marketing should read this.

Creativing :: Craziest iPhone game evah, the future of movies, and Steve Jobs’ presentation secrets

November 6, 2009 By Doug Schumacher

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

Endless Racing Game for iPhone, Next Level – Video

This is crazy. Using the compass and bluetooth, you can string together multiple iPhones to create an open-ended track that these cars race around. I’ve downloaded it, and am on the hunt for the first other 3G S phone to try it with.

Four trends that will rattle retail this Christmas

Good insights about how much mobile tech – the iPhone in particular – will change shopping this season. Mobile apps and social practices that were early-adopter technologies the past couple of years are now ready for prime time. At the core is a consumer armed with more price-checking technology and the ability to exchange shopping information at the point of purchase, thanks to iPhone apps in particular. Further driving this behavior will be financially-stretched consumers looking for price advantages anyway they can get them.

Uncovering Steve Jobs’ Presentation Secrets

A new book delves into a presentation master’s tactics.

Case Study: The NHL Uses Tweet-Ups To Energize Its Fan Base And Reach New Audiences

I’ve posted about the NHL (wisely) taking the opposite approach to the NFLs ban on Twitter for athletes. A couple of interesting things to note about this campaign: While Twitter got people involved, it was the mainstream press that generated the most noise. That’s simply about being early adopter, not about the campaign itself, although that’s becoming hard to distinguish. The second is, the turnaround time of 3 weeks. Gotta be quick to market these days.

Disney Will Give Mickey Mouse a Makeover

Mickey looks like he stepped out of GTA 4 in this screen grab from the upcoming video game Epic Mickey. A big risk? Maybe, maybe not. The Mickey brand is in decline in the US, and sometimes you’ve just gotta shake the tree. What I found most interesting in the article is that this is actually a return to Mickey’s roots. He launched in 1928 as the Bart Simpson of his day. A rather rude brute who was amorously aggressive with Minnie. I kid you not.

Amazing Fan Video

I think this is the best glimpse of the future of film making than anything I’ve seen. Taking scenes and characters from video games and compositing them with actual footage, the whole thing was shot for $500. And the potential around this is almost endless.

iphone

Chaos inside Walmart during Black Friday 2009 [VIDEO]

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