Mar
11

Anna’s Social Media Picks of the Week

by Feedback

My top social media news picks for the week of March 6, 2011:

Facebook Streaming Movies:

Warner Bros. is testing out streaming movies on Facebook with “The Dark Knight”. The movie rental costs users $3.00 (Facebook will receive 30% of revenues) and can be watched for 48 hours after purchase.  If the test goes well, we are likely to see more video streaming options on Facebook. Read More »

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Mar
04

Anna’s Social Media Picks of the Week (03/04/11)

by Feedback

iPad 2

Apple announced the iPad 2 this week. The iPad 2 is 33% thinner, has duel webcams, and new color options. The prices will range from $499 (for 16GB WiFi-only models) to $829 (for the works) and will be available on March 11, 2011. Watch the following video to see more about the new iPad:

(For those who are TeamCoCo, watch a spoof on the commercial here.)

@CharlieSheen:

You’ve probably been following the tirades of Charlie Sheen… actually I know some of you are (on twitter, at least). Charlie Sheen joined Twitter (@charliesheen) this week, and gained a million followers in a little over 24 hours, breaking a Guinness World record.

Side note: Three Feedbacker’s made it into the list of Charlie Sheen’s top 10 followers. #Winning

Libya’s Internet Down

The government has shut down the internet for most of Libya, including the capital city of Tripoli. The Wall Street Journal reported, “U.S. firms that monitor global Internet networks reported that Web traffic in and out of Libya was disconnected abruptly Thursday afternoon local time and continued to be unavailable late Friday.” This is all too familiar to what we saw a few weeks ago in Egypt. Learn more here.

Behind the Scenes with Old Spice

Old Spice brought you the man that smells like a man, man, and now they’re bring you behind the scenes of their latest commercial shoot. Take a look at the following video, which shows the creative process behind the latest Old Spice commercial:

Healthcare Pick: Emerging Media Whitepaper

Those who are members of SHSMD, take a look at the official Emerging Media Handbook/Whitepaper from SHSMD – Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development where Feedback’s Dean Browell wrote the introduction as the Chair of the Emerging Media Task Force.

-Anna (@alucas9)

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Mar
03

Consider the Experience – Not the Buzzword

by Feedback

If you’re one of the fortunate folks like myself who have the opportunity to work with social media on a professional basis, you probably spend your days trying to enhance the profile of your company or your clients, pondering new ideas to help create a return on investment.

At a certain point, it’s easy to lose what attracted us to social media in the first place: the opportunity to have a deeper connection with the things we love and are passionate about. But in examining social media from a non-vocational viewpoint, we can uncover concepts that translate into digital success in the business world.

Take sports as an example. Beyond the raving narcissists like Chad Ochocinco (@ochocinco), a number of professional athletes have taken to Twitter and, without a publicist or PR person looking over their shoulder, embraced it like a newfound freedom to express themselves.

While this often proves controversial (@charliesheen, anyone?), it’s also very personal and real. How cool would it be to be retweeted by your favorite basketball player? It happens all the time. Or they’ll announce a meet-up or a charity event they’re involved in that you too can be a part of. But it’s not just the athletes. Coaches get involved too.

Former University of Florida football coach Urban Meyer (@CoachUrbanMeyer) and University of Kentucky basketball coach John Calipari (@UKCoachCalipari) routinely offer up little nuggets, like announcing honors for players or throw out updates on recruiting.

From the fan perspective, this is fun way to engage with our favorite sports brands and figures. The teams, companies and players become more human to us, we become bigger champions of them, and in return we watch more sports, buy more memorabilia, and buy more tickets. This is social media participation that provides us with an experience, not just a Twitter stream with the latest stats or scores, or a team having an online account for the sake of saying they have one.

Interact with the head of the NFL's PR department.

NFL PR czar Brian McCarthy (@NFLPRguy) is an active tweeter as well. Some of my favorite feeds to follow are reporters. I logged onto Twitter during the Heat/Knicks game the other night and ESPN.com’s Michael Smith (@mrmichael_smith) was livetweeting the game. All of a sudden, my experience changed and I was now watching the game with one of my favorite sports commentators.

What could be better than that? Actually being a commetator yourself. I looked up my favorite basketball team, the Los Angeles Lakers on Q&A site Quora.com the other day and saw the question, “Why are the Lakers underperforming this season?” So I crafted an answer (if so inclined, find it here) and responded as though I was working for SportsCenter.

Other people can now see and comment and add their own opinions to my post. Thanks to social media, I’m now part of the dialogue. It’s better than boxscores in the morning paper and, sometimes, even catching a game on TV.

When I think about social media for companies and non-profits, I consider the enjoying experiences I have in my personal life online. If we create this for a client, will people use it? If so, how often? How will audiences use it? When?

Don’t just jump onto the latest social media buzzword hoping it’ll help you move more widgets. Instead, consider the ways it can create an enjoyable experience that people will want to come back to again and again. Do it right, and your returns are guaranteed.

- Thomas (@thomasmcdonald)

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Feb
28

Um meme é universal/A meme is universal

by Feedback

meme – (n.) in Internet culture, an idea that is shared digitally across a culture. Also, typically funny.

When things on the Internet spread like wildfire as they often do, we might be tempted to assume that since we – the English-speaking Americans of the world – began using the web in earnest, that Internet culture is ours and ours alone.

But that, of course, is not the case.

From the cryptic blogs in the Cyrillic alphabet hosted on LiveJournal blogs to the old oekaki online drawing boards in Japan, foreigners have contributed just as much as Americans to the humorous or interesting posts we find on eBaumsWorld.com, that are emailed to us by friends, or are shared on Facebook. Digital emoticons, for example, are now used by the masses but first started popping up in international Usenet groups, one of the first forms of large-scale message boards from the 1980s. A smile or frown emoticon says the same thing no matter your nationality.

The Tenso meme, using a screengrab from Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

The principle of how an Internet meme catches on also applies to viral videos, save one crucial detail: creating memes requires considerably less skill and equipment to create, capture and share with the Internet. And unlike videos, a photo meme can transcend the language barrier. A video that begins in America may only reach an English-speaking audience; but a funny picture that requires no caption or language knowledge to understand could end up flying around the world.

Tenso, which originated in Portuguese, is a beautiful example of such a meme.

Tenso memes are typically four-panel comics that showcase something that might not have been obvious in the original image. In most cases, this is drawing attention to someone who has a less than desirable facial expression in a photograph. An example, shown right, is taken from a concert scene in the film Scott Pilgrim vs. The World where an extra has a rather absurd face that doesn’t fit in with the crowd so much.

There are several instances of Tenso photos popping up on a forum called “Fórum Uol Jogos,” a popular Portuguese-language destination primarily for Brazilian Internet denizens to discuss pretty much anything from the latest video games to silly pictures like these.

Many memes are images adapted from their original media (a music video or a movie, for example) and applied to other pictures. Take the meme simply known as Dorgas, in which a Brazilian forensics dog has its picture taken in front of a large supply of narcotics. In the meme, people place a quote bubble above the dog’s head, and meme participants change what the dog is saying. The head of the dog has even been Photoshopped into the wildly popular “Advice Dog” meme, as well.

The Drago meme incorporated into the colorful Advice Dog meme.

Memes like this cross-pollinate on a near constant basis, turning pictures of a dog with a bit of text and point-blank humor into images that are instantly sharable and almost universally understood. It’s subtle humor that makes for big laughs and, if done correctly by a marketer, gives customers a reason to pay more attention to their brand.

So, to recap, memes must be:

- Simple.

- Funny.

- Universal.

“Language” is not necessarily included. Get all three of those right and you might have just created the next big Internet sensation.

- Brad (@bcarr)

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Feb
25

Anna’s Social Media Picks of the Week (02/27/11)

by Feedback

My top picks for social media news for the week of February 20, 2011:

Google Search Update:

Google has been working to try and enhance search, and this week, their update to search will have a noticeable impact on 11.8% of queries.  The Official Google Blog describes the change:

“This update is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

eMarketer Study:

A recent study by eMarketer showed that by the end of 2010, more than half of U.S. Internet users were on Facebook monthly. In contrast, only 9% were using Twitter. By 2013, eMarketer expects there will be 152.1 million U.S. Facebook users and 27.7 million Twitter users. See the following chart for more information:

Facetime for Mac:

Facetime for Mac is now available in the Mac App Store. For $.99, Mac users can now Facetime iPhone 4 users, Mac users, or iPad users. The app even supports HD video calls. Download it here.

(Oh, and if you don’t have a Mac yet, Apple just announced their latest MacBook Pro).

“Like” Chipotle?

NBC has taken to social media to promote their new show, The Next Great Restaurant. The campaign is simple: Like “The Next American Restaurant” Facebook Page and watch the show promo video and you’ll get a coupon for Buy One Get One Chipotle (Fine print: The promotion runs through March 6th and the coupon expires 7 days after you view the video). “The Next American Restaurant” Facebook Page fan count has been growing substantially and is at nearly 150,000 fans.

Higher Ed Report:

A recent study indicates that colleges may be Facebooking students before accepting them. As AllFacebook described (in their article titled: Facebook Profiles Now Part of 80% Colleges’ Admissions Outreach),

“Recruiters aren’t the only ones looking at candidates’ Facebook profiles. Four out of every five college admissions offices look up prospective students on the social network. That statistic comes from the college admissions test-prep company Kaplan, which surveyed admissions counselors from ‘some of the top colleges and universities.’”

-Anna (@alucas9)

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Feb
23

Attention Spans and Paid Content in an Era of Hyper-24/7 News

by Feedback

As someone who consumes a lot of news (and news about the news industry), I’ve recently felt like I’m on news overload.

To be honest, I’ve actually started falling behind in my knowledge of what’s happening in the world. And I can’t be the only one. After thinking about it (even mapping it out on some paper), I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s not the news’ fault that I can’t pay attention to it all anymore. News is always happening; the problem is with technology.

Consider the political demonstrations going on in the world. I followed the Egypt crisis to the extent that I understood what bearing it had on America, but as for Libya and Wisconsin, quite frankly it’s bad timing for the American attention span. Most of us have moved on, and are hoping for the best in those places (or, ignorant as it may be, just not caring either way). There’s too much else going on (hear about Bieber’s new haircut?) to pay attention to it all (we’ll just hope the Wisconsin thing doesn’t cause a shortage in cheese production).

Point is, we are constantly hounded in an era of not only 24/7 news coverage, but hyper-24/7 news coverage. We’ve always talked about how advertising is thrown in our faces all day long. Now it’s the news.

We’re all aware that we live in a time where simply pulling up a social network will cause an onslaught of the latest news coverage, giving us accessibility that we didn’t have even a year ago. Furthermore, if you own a tablet or iPad or browser-capable handset, you’ve likely stumbled upon the numerous apps available at your disposal for news consumption, with cool names like Flipboard or Zinio.

It’s out of control. News aggregators and apps and social networks are supposed to make it easier for us to find, read and share the news, but technology is starting to make news consumption and distribution more complex. By now, most Americans are starting to settle on a small number of ways to get the latest scoops: they may read a newspaper, or browse a news website. Some also rely on interactive media, be it a morning email, a shared article by an acquaintance, or an RSS feed. The tech savvier of us will use a combination of these services for news, including some of the more niche apps for iPads and iPhones. I’ve started narrowing the services I use to get news to simplify my own news-getting life, which I hope makes it easier to stay on top of things.

The concept of news services oversaturation is going to further complicate the news industry for media companies, some of which are starting to – for perhaps the first time in years – experiment yet again with paid-content models. A decade or so ago, when news companies hopped on the web and thought it’d be cool to charge for content or made people register to read, the model failed hard, due to the fact that people simply think news from a website should be free, they could perhaps find it elsewhere, or there was a paper with the same article nearby.

It’s a different world now. Newspapers and magazines aren’t sitting around homes or offices like they used to, giving publishers an open door to charge for content. If the process is kept simple, people will register on a website these days, but really only to allow them to comment or perhaps get a daily email or restaurant deal.

Yet asking people to pay could be an even harder sell this time around, as there are multiple ways to consume and various places to find news. Add on top of that our waning attention spans (who reads an entire article anymore?) and news being thrown at us constantly, and the idea of pressing the Pay Button for one story becomes one heck of a daunting click. The concept of sharing through interactive media is new, too. Media companies are seeing higher traffic to their websites because of shared articles through social networks, which means more impressions for advertisers. But you ever click through a shared news story only to find that you have to pay to read it? Back Buttons have never been hit faster.

Richmond-based Media General will be one of the first news companies in the nation to use Google’s new One Pass service, allowing the company’s flagship paper, the Times-Dispatch, to set terms and pricing on select content.

Charging for a single news story is going to prove unsuccessful, as – let’s hope – I’m sure any media company is well aware by now. Even charging for in-depth investigative pieces is going to be a stretch for many readers who don’t have the time or interest to read or the desire to pay, unless the cost can be kept to mere pennies. My hope is that paid content at Media General or other companies would be stuff like vital public court documents that are of value to business owners (as Richmond BizSense does), or stories about public officials’ salaries. It’s content you may desire, but would take lots of legwork to find on your own.

For most people, the concept of being charged for online news is a frustrating and an even alienating concept. Unfortunately for the publication paying lots of money to create valuable content, it comes off as greedy if other media outlets are giving away similar news for free. The money problem for newspapers is that they aren’t just paying the cost of running a website, they’ve still got to pay for the print edition’s production and the costs of running a newsroom. Online ad revenue can support a website, but it can’t support a website and a newspaper’s overhead.

Worse still is that the individual news outlet no longer matters to news audiences. Consumers aren’t going to a single place for the story anymore, they are visiting aggregators that have multiple versions of the same story for their choosing, using apps, or being referred by friends from their Facebook pages. Audiences already pay hundreds of dollars each year for Internet access and applications, they don’t have the attention spans they used to, and rarely does anyone sit down and read entire articles anymore. Many of these behaviors for consuming news are not what they were even six months ago.

News creators are focused on how much their news is worth. News audiences are concerned with how much their time costs. Hopefully, the two can meet in the middle.

-Jeff (@jephkelley) Note: Jeff was a business and tech reporter at the Times-Dispatch, reads it online and on its iPhone app, and has faith that the T-D and other media outlets can make the paid content model work.

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Feb
18

Anna’s Social Media Picks of the Week (2/18/11)

by Feedback

My top picks for social media news for the week of February 12, 2011:

Twitter Translation Center

This week, Twitter launched a translation center that uses crowdsource translations to quickly translate Twitter into different languages. The translation center will be used for French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Indonesian, Russian, and Turkish translations.  Visit the translation center at http://twitter.com/translate and follow @translator for updates.

A Win for Watson

“I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords,” Ken Jennings wrote on the screen in the final Jeopardy round this week.  This was in reaction to a three day series where top Jeopardy players Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter went up against… a computer. Not just any computer, IBM’s Watson computer was equipped with servers that equaled the size of 10 refrigerators (loaded with around 200 million pages of text). After the three day battle, Watson’s earnings totaled $77,147, Jennings’ winnings totaled $24,000, and Rutter’s earnings totaled $21,600. Watson was awarded $1 million dollars for the win, 100% of which went to charity.

National Broadband Map

The National Broadband Map, an initiative of the Obama administration, has gone live today. All Things D describes the initiative: “Nestled within that amount was $350 million to draw a map showing a detailed, block-by-block inventory of the existing broadband infrastructure in the U.S. It took two years, but the results were unveiled by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration today on the Web site Broadbandmap.gov.” It was found out that 68% of American households have access to a cable modem, a DSL Line, or a home fiber connection, 28.3% do not use the Internet (Woah!), and 5% to 10% do not have access to acceptable broadband speeds.

Social Bing…

This week, Bing announced a social toolbar update. The Bing Bar 7 allows web users to view Facebook, email, weather and other favorite sites without having to open a new tab. Facebook is Bing’s latest toolbar integration, allowing Facebook users to get information quicker and easier. Watch this video to learn more.

…Vs. Social Google

During the same day that Bing announced their new social toolbar, Google announced additions to social search. Contrary to Bing, one thing you won’t find in Google’s social search is Facebook. However, Google is integrating other popular social channels into search. When you are signed in to your Google account and search, you will now see results from people you’re connected to on Blogger, Twitter, Flickr, and Quora. Watch the following video to learn more.

-Anna (@alucas9)

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Feb
11

Anna’s Social Media Picks of the Week (02/11/11)

by Feedback

Facebook Page Updates:

Facebook has Upgraded Pages. The new page design looks similar to profile pages, with latest photos showcased and navigation links on the left (tabs have been done away with).  Other new admin features worth mentioning:

  • There is now a profanity blocklist, which you can set at none, medium, or strong. If you choose to use this feature, Facebook will block commonly reported profane words and phrases from posts or comments.
  • There is now a moderation blocklist, in which you select words you want to be blacklisted. If someone posts or comments with blacklisted words, the content will be marked as spam and hidden from the wall.
  • Page administrators will now be able to login to the page itself, which will allow them to comment on other Pages and profiles on behalf of the Page.
  • Admins can now get notifications when fans interact with a page or post.
  • You have the option to change your page category.

Facebook Ads:

Facebook has also upgraded their advertising options.  This week, Facebook rolled out a new kind of ad called sponsored stories, and updated their ads to allow for tab selection. Learn more:

  • Sponsored Stories
    • From Facebook: “Sponsored Stories are stories that your friends published into your News Feed. These show up on the right hand side of pages on Facebook. The types of stories that can be surfaced include: Page Likes, App interactions, Place check-ins and Page posts.”
  • Landing Tab Selection
    • If you are directing those who click on your ad to your Facebook Page, you can now select which tab you would like them to land on. You can now choose whether you would like visitors from the ad to land on the wall, information, a custom tab you have created, etc.

Book Reservations with Yelp:

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, you can now book dinner reservations through your Yelp app on your iPhone, iPad, or android phone. This is part of Yelp’s integration with Open Table, the real-time online reservation network. Yelp already integrated Open Table with their website, but making reservations will be even easier with the new app update.

Email Use Decreases:

You may not want to send your Valentine’s cards via email this year. A recent study by ComScore shows that email use is on the decline. From 2009 to 2010, overall email usage decreased by 8%. Email usage decreased 59% among 12-17 year olds, 1% among 18-24 year olds, 18% among 25-34 year olds, 8% among 35-44 year olds, and 12% among 45-54 year olds. Email usage actually increased in the older demographics, with a 22% increase among 55-64 year olds and a 28% increase among those 65 years or older.

Google for Weddings:

Also just in time for Valentine’s Day, Google has launched a page dedicated to weddings. As Mashable described it ,“The site is the latest attempt by Google to insinuate itself into consumers’ lifestyles.” Teaming up with renowned wedding planner Michelle Rago, they have created wedding specific templates in Google docs, Google Sites, and Picnik. Google wants this to be the place brides-to-be gather tips and tricks, create a wedding website, create save-the-date cards, and use tools to simplify wedding planning.

Getting hitched?
Google is hosting a wedding sweepstakes, where you can enter to with $25,000 and help from wedding planner Michelle Rago.

-Anna (@alucas9)

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Feb
07

Why Tumblr is Gaining Steam

by Feedback

As traditional, sit-at-a-computer blogging slowly passes away in the shadow of social networking services that cater to uniformity such as Facebook and Twitter, Tumblr stands out as a lesser-known platform that is attracting more than just the creative user, but those who are craving for simplicity – and speed – in the blogging experience.

At Feedback, we’re looking forward to watching Tumblr mature as a web and mobile content creation service, both as a personal platform and for businesses, particularly companies in the media world with a steady stream of words and pictures to post online. We believe that Tumblr’s power will be fully realized within the next year with new features and support that will give even the casual-est Internet users who may not have a lot to say a rather personable community to express themselves. (We would be remiss not to mention that New York-based Tumblr recently opened its second office here in Richmond.)

Founded in 2007 just as Twitter began collecting its initial momentum, Tumblr’s ease of use was pretty unparalleled considering the other blogging services that were out at the time. It made the blogging process simple, but on the back end, it also incorporated a feed where you can follow other “Tumblrs.” It looks much like a Facebook wall or Twitter stream, but it’s even more simplified – and that has made all the difference.

Composing posts with the Tumblr interface much easier than blogging services like WordPress or Blogger with the ability to categorize the types of posts that users make. For instance, if your post is expressed through words, you compose a Text post. If you found a great picture that you want to share, a Photo post would be appropriate. Not near a computer and want to leave some thoughts on your blog? Found a thought that someone else articulated so well that it stands without context? The Quote or Chat option can handle that with ease.

Tumblr is also made for posting from mobile devices, so if you’re an iPhone, BlackBerry or Android user, it’s never been easier to pop content up on the fly.

The Tumblr backend, which looks not unlike a Facebook wall.

In addition to becoming a nexus for content of any nature — magazines like GQ, The Atlantic and the National Post have accounts on the service — Tumblr promotes popular and trending blogs within its own network based on recommendations of its users into the Tumblr Directory. Directories – which are in the process of being overhauled to be more easily searchable, according to Tumblr founded David Karp – is a listing of the most influential blogs categorized into keywords such as “historical,” “fashion,” “cute,” “gaming” and more. Every Tuesday, hundreds of users place their seal of approval on popular accounts and moderators add the best to the hall of fame-like status of the Directory.

The social aspect of the service has been simplified as well. All posts have a heart icon akin to Facebook’s Like button, and, as we opined earlier, such feedback is key to any online community. You follow users that have interesting thoughts by clicking the plus sign that appears in the top right corner of all Tumblr blogs. Reblogging, a term that’s become pretty common across the services, is less a sharing mechanic and more of a conversation tool. Posts become threaded conversations and not just a means to copy and paste someone else’s writings to your blog.

Today, the network has broken through the top 100 most trafficked websites on the Internet and continues to grow as it stands its ground against long-standing blogging and interactive media alternatives. Tumblr is also experimenting with a super cool ad model to maximize how attractive the service it is to users who might call it their new blogging home, too.

An "advertisement" on Tumblr, if you can even call it that. Tracked #cars tags aggregated onto a page sponsored by Top Gear. Sweetness.

The only ad campaign that I could spot is one highlighting the BBC’s Top Gear program in the #cars tag channel. It advertises the show, sure, but it does so in a way that you almost don’t notice. It’s nothing but a page full of car posts and pictures, curated by volunteers who pick the best posts to be delivered to those who wish to track the #cars tag. There are then two reasonable, standard-size banners opposite the content timeline that are not intrusive and ultimately relevant to just about every motorhead that might venture onto that page. But seriously, if you’re a fan of cars and you haven’t heard of Top Gear, I have doubts about your fandom.

Anyway, enough talking about it. I encourage you to check out Tumblr and get to know it before everyone else does.

-Brad (@bcarr on Twitter, and carrtrubl on Tumblr)

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