My weekly update of what’s going on in new media marketing, pulled from social bookmarking site Creativing.com:
Demi versus Perez? See Twitter
So celebrity angst is blowing up on Twitter. Let’s see, you take a group of people flush with cash and big egos from getting lots of adulation, a good percentage of them are relatively unstable, and, they’ve had handlers taking care of most of their public presence and interface with the media. Now let’s suddenly give them a line of communication direct to each other yet in front of millions of gawking fans and make it a format that practically encourages short, shout-like bursts. Hmmm.
Flickr Co-Founder Caterina Fake on the Value of Viral Loops
Some interesting points in this peek behind the curtain of the inception and launch of a quintessential Web 2.0 site. For one, like a lot of great internet companies, it started out as something very different from how it went big. The idea sprang, not from photography, but from conversations. Adding photos to conversations, versus making photos sharable and viral. By contrast, the other major photo sites at the time, Ophoto, Shutterfly and Snapfish, all came with baggage about how photo sites should behave. As online experiences continue to become a key part of many company’s complete brand package, remember that it’s not only about conceiving and developing these experiences, but also improving them over time. In some cases, radical changes are needed to make things happen.
Visualization Lab at The New York Times
It’s nice to see a paper like the Times — going through one of the biggest economic struggles in it’s history — continue to push ahead on the innovation front. The Visualization Lab lets you take content from data sets, articles, and speeches (like Obama and Lincoln Inaugural addresses), and crunch them into various visualizations. The options include visualizing text, comparing values, relationships among data points, maps, and assorted charts. Perhaps the best example is a chart mapping religious affiliation to political party membership. In a time where much news is formulaic and regurgitated, this is a great way of adding impact and meaning to their content.
50 Years of Space Exploration in a cool info graph
More ways to work with information. This pops graphically, and also shows how extensive our space exploration has been. While 2001: A Space Odyssey made space feel remote and empty, this makes our trips to space feel like a habit trail of errands and shopping trips around town.
Pew Internet Reports Future of the Internet III – Selected quotes
If you’re even remotely interested in the future, this is a good read. A selection of quotes from various industry leaders on where things are going. Topics covered include the future of connectivity, social tolerance, intellectual property law and copyright, privacy and transparency, and virtual and augmented reality. What I like best is that these projections are for the year 2020, not 2050. Blink and you’ll miss it.
4 Ways Social Media is Changing Business
While the future can seem so, oh, futuristic, these are changes going on right now. There are a lot of attempts at summarizing what’s currently going on in the business world — and this certainly isn’t exhaustive — but these four boil it down concisely: 1. From “Trying to Sell” to “Making Connections”; 2. From “Large Campaigns” to “Small Acts”; 3. From “Controlling Our Image” to “Being Ourselves”; and 4. From “Hard To Reach” to “Available Anywhere”. All of which are reflected in From “Broadcasting Messages” to “Engaging In Conversations”.
Average Internet User Now Spends 68 Hours Per Month Online
While the average is still well below television, it’s gaining steadily. And in a few years, the line between the two could be impossible to draw, making the whole comparison a moot point. (I’d say watching Hulu on a big screen far more emotionally tied to TV than the Internet.) Perhaps most striking is that in those 68 hours, users visit an average of 2,700 sites. Yes, that means they spend an average of 57 seconds on each site. Marketers, there lies the challenge.
New App Tries to Fill the Need for a Dislike Button on Facebook
How many times have I wanted to ‘dislike’ something? It even feels weird ‘liking’ a good story about a tragic incident. I’m not sure we need to break down our stream of emotions into a digitized ranking system (like pretty much the rest of the Web?), but here’s one company’s take on it. One problem I see here is the overbearing presence of the threadsy brand name in the post. Takes the punch out of ‘abhorring’ something.
Simple, Fluid Navigation System
This takes about a minute to check out, and is worth every second. While some of it is in Portuguese and the content seems random, it’s not difficult to imagine how this could be applied to a number of situations. I do think the UI’s hot zones and responsiveness needs a little tweaking, but the central idea is there.
Alice in Wonderland Pictures
Tim Burton’s latest work looks amazing.