DOUG SCHUMACHER

experience designer + writer

mobile

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

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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

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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.

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 :: Twitter for event marketing, Foursquare is serious gaming, and Minority Report here we come

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What’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:
Tweet of the Week
As CNN demonstrated it’s impact during the Gulf War, it’s tragic events like the Hattian earthquake that perhaps most demonstrate the power of Twitter. And it’s not Twitter per se, but rather the direct form of simple, unfiltered, and most importantly, immediate information that feels like we’re getting a personal view of the writer’s experience.
NYT: Following Venture Capital for Signs of Technology to ComeThe underlying thread here is simplicity and speed. No surprises there. Of course, whether that’s an iPhone app or a Facebook app, that’s easier said than done.
Tracking hands, Camera & Projection // The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology –Video | Digital Acting
At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data. Minority Report, here we come. But what’s best about this IMO is that it simply looks fun. And what better way to sell a new technology? Note that he’s making his technology Open Source to accelerate innovation. Also note the great stage set.
Amtrak to Add Free Wi-Fi on High-Speed Trains
I’ve long been jealous of the east coast’s ability to take trains between cities. Especially with the declining experience of air travel. An extra hour or two on a 3 hour trip is, IMO, entirely bearable if you have full access to productive technology. And, can cut out an hour of getting into and out of the downtowns of cities. I’m only surprised Amtrak didn’t do this earlier.
Real Time Ads Coming to Google Street View?
This is one of those unfortunately rare times when a new ad platform actually adds relevance and value to a user experience. When you’re using Google Street View and see a billboard for a movie that hasn’t been in theaters for 12 months? Imagine that instead it’s for a movie now playing just around the corner.
NYT: Typeface Designers Wrestle With the World of Pixels
An amusing account of the challenges of designing fonts for the web, and other difficult environments. Reading this, I was reminded of Steve Jobs’ story about sitting in on typography classes for the fun of it — after dropping out of his main curiculum. This article taps into that duality of creativity mixed with intellectual problem solving.
The Wittery: Killer Content from Witty Freelance Writers
There are a lot of bland companies out there in need of good writers. The Wittery is a sort of online matchmaker for just that situation. This seems like an obvious (in a good way) idea that I hope takes off. The writing on the site is in full support of their brand promise of adding personality to your company.
Foursquare Changes the Game … Literally
If there’s an intersection of mobile, gaming, and emerging platforms, it seems to be located very close to Foursquare. I can’t think of any other app that’s been consistently getting as much buzz as these guys. These upgrades won’t impact anyone but the hardcores, but I do think the new borderless structure will only increase Foursquare’s popularity and growth. As I’ve previously reported, it’s being used as a promotional device by various bars and coffee shops. And what better to identify your most vocal brand advocates in your area?
Is This KFC Ad Racist? [YOUTUBE VIDEO]
There are a couple of interesting things happening here. There’s the issue of globalization of media, and ads from one culture being viewed and judged in another culture. And then there’s the online debate forum, played out in video, from around the world.
#MFU10 – twazzup
This is a marketing event that, everytime someone signs up, they Tweet the person’s company and title as attending. Interesting tactic for generating buzz in search due to what are probably relatively popular search topics, although possibly revealing public info the indviduals might not want to send out?

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

Tweet of the Week

As CNN demonstrated it’s impact during the Gulf War, it’s tragic events like the Hattian earthquake that perhaps most demonstrate the power of Twitter. And it’s not Twitter per se, but rather the direct form of simple, unfiltered, and most importantly, immediate information that feels like we’re getting a personal view of the writer’s experience.

NYT: Following Venture Capital for Signs of Technology to Come

The underlying thread here is simplicity and speed. No surprises there. Of course, whether that’s an iPhone app or a Facebook app, that’s easier said than done.

Tracking hands, Camera & Projection // The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology –Video | Digital Acting

At TEDIndia, Pranav Mistry demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data. Minority Report, here we come. But what’s best about this IMO is that it simply looks fun. And what better way to sell a new technology? Note that he’s making his technology Open Source to accelerate innovation. Also note the great stage set.

Amtrak to Add Free Wi-Fi on High-Speed Trains

I’ve long been jealous of the east coast’s ability to take trains between cities. Especially with the declining experience of air travel. An extra hour or two on a 3 hour trip is, IMO, entirely bearable if you have full access to productive technology. And, can cut out an hour of getting into and out of the downtowns of cities. I’m only surprised Amtrak didn’t do this earlier.

Real Time Ads Coming to Google Street View?

This is one of those unfortunately rare times when a new ad platform actually adds relevance and value to a user experience. When you’re using Google Street View and see a billboard for a movie that hasn’t been in theaters for 12 months? Imagine that instead it’s for a movie now playing just around the corner.

NYT: Typeface Designers Wrestle With the World of Pixels

An amusing account of the challenges of designing fonts for the web, and other difficult environments. Reading this, I was reminded of Steve Jobs’ story about sitting in on typography classes for the fun of it — after dropping out of his main curiculum. This article taps into that duality of creativity mixed with intellectual problem solving.

The Wittery: Killer Content from Witty Freelance Writers

There are a lot of bland companies out there in need of good writers. The Wittery is a sort of online matchmaker for just that situation. This seems like an obvious (in a good way) idea that I hope takes off. The writing on the site is in full support of their brand promise of adding personality to your company.

Foursquare Changes the Game … Literally

If there’s an intersection of mobile, gaming, and emerging platforms, it seems to be located very close to Foursquare. I can’t think of any other app that’s been consistently getting as much buzz as these guys. These upgrades won’t impact anyone but the hardcores, but I do think the new borderless structure will only increase Foursquare’s popularity and growth. As I’ve previously reported, it’s being used as a promotional device by various bars and coffee shops. And what better to identify your most vocal brand advocates in your area?

Is This KFC Ad Racist? [YOUTUBE VIDEO]

There are a couple of interesting things happening here. There’s the issue of globalization of media, and ads from one culture being viewed and judged in another culture. And then there’s the online debate forum, played out in video, from around the world.

#MFU10 – twazzup

This is a marketing event that, everytime someone signs up, they Tweet the person’s company and title as attending. Interesting tactic for generating buzz in search due to what are probably relatively popular search topics, although possibly revealing public info the indviduals might not want to send out?

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

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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 :: 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 :: YouTube educates reporters, more proof of Facebook’s impact, and mobile continues building momentum

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

YouTube – reporterscenter’s Channel

I mentioned YouTube going local with video news reportage last week. This is a support site providing tips for those content producers. Smart way to increase quality of content and build community.

Facebook Search Improved for Everyone

With the attempt at buying Twitter and then acquiring FriendFeed, Facebook has made it clear they’re serious about real-time search. When I think about how often I’ve seen something on Facebook and couldn’t find later to reference, I don’t think there’s any question this is going to be a great improvement. And Facebook’s highly-customizable privacy settings are part of the capabilities: I’m  convinced online privacy issues are going to be major. But most importantly, there’s little doubt at this point about the value of friend and network-based information. With Google search results, it’s a great place to start researching a product or service, but certainly not conclusive or that trustworthy. That gave way to user reviews like Amazon and Yelp. But we’ve seen how easily those can be gamed. The value of being able to rely on people you know and trust is obvious. It’s also interesting to see a marketing tactic come along that’s closer to the purchase decision point than Google Adwords: Assuming marketers have been able to get into those search results. And therein lies the greatest potential of social media.

Facebook’s Click-Through Rates Flourish … for Wall Posts

On the subject of the value of friend referrals: Striking new data out on how people respond to Facebook wall posts. Apparently, quite well. Of course it matters what’s in that wall post, but the online world hasn’t seen 2-40% click-through rates since oh, maybe the first banner in 1994? Of course I have to cringe at seeing the CTR as the metric of evaluation. This is a mixed bag. Social media needs metrics to convince a large number of CMOs, according to a recent survey. Yet the click-through dragged online marketing’s branding potential down to a DR mindset from which it’s never fully recovered. I’d like to think marketers are more sophisticated about the online space at this point, but when the battle is between clearly-defined data like the CTR and more nebulous inferred data, the case is anything but closed.

“Augmented Reality” Is Also A Form Of Search

Search is quickly becoming a lot more than typing a few keywords into a search engine. From voice driven search to location based filters to augmented reality interfaces, it’s good to keep in mind that people are finding out about information in continually-diverse ways. The mobile phone has already driven much of this, and we’re only in Act 1 for that technology. Given that search in whatever form it’s employed is so central to a campaign’s performance, it’s not something creative marketers can ignore.

Chris and Malcolm are both wrong | A continuing discussion about freemium content

Great expansion on the debate between Chris Anderson of Wired and Malcolm Gladwell of Outliers on whether or not the future of content is free or paid. This post, by Brad Burnham, Fred Wilson’s partner at Union Square Ventures, sees truths and flaws in both views. At some point, the whole discussion moves into a debate about the economics of abundance, particularly in terms of content development. It’s ultimately a debate about the scarcity of resources, which has been written about as early as 1971.

From the post:

“In a world where facts are readily available, from multiple sources, basic information will be commoditized. But the explosion of sources will create a real burden for the consumers of information. Raw information will become not just a commodity, it will be a nuisance. In that world, consumers will value scarce, relevant insight over abundant facts.”

An interesting point is that users of a site like Facebook, or even Twitter, are not just using the system. They’re adding value to it. They’re the filters that help people sift through the mass of information being created. So should every user of Facebook or Twitter be paid?

Need to Deposit a Check? Try Your iPhone

I’m all over this. Take a photo of your check and email it in. Get the deposit. Destroy the original check. It seems fraught with fraud opportunities, yet the cashed check always leads back to an account that someone has set up with identifying information that banks have to be vigilant on. There’s no question they’ve thought that part of it through. I hate using cash because it means going to ATMs, and only periodic checks aren’t auto deposited. We’re getting closer and closer to never having to go into a bank. Which has to be a big help to their profitability.

Wells Fargo Labs

Given the previous link, no wonder Well Fargo has a Lab. This is their attempt to create what Seth Godin calls a purple cow. Adding the remarkable to a product or service. Give people something to talk about (presumably on their social network sites). For many companies, this is the new marketing.

LocaModa – Mobile posting to Out-Of-Home displays

The concept of posting to a large public display from a mobile phone has been done before, but now it’s transitioning from a customized experience to something you can buy more like media placements. Wiffiti is another player in this space.

ddɐ ʞooqǝɔɐɟ ʇxǝʇʎɯdılɟ s,ʎɹɹǝɾ & uǝq

Thought this was a fun app, by Ben & Jerry’s. Simple, intriguing, and highly visual. This technique was used on IMs a year or so ago, but with social media now hitting on all cylinders, there are still legs in the idea.

Thinking Space

With so much emphasis on social media, a lot of the attention in marketing has moved away from Flash. And certainly the large Flash sites of the past 5 years. But Flash can create powerful experiences, now more than ever. This is an exceptionally clean site that combines what few sites can: A beautiful, elegant and distinct navigation that’s also intuitive.