Posts Tagged ‘youtube’

Monday Morning Reads: Mobile Apps; LoTR Revisited; Funky SEO

11.02.21

Lots of really interesting reads in the Monday morning reading hopper this week: a look at why dictatorships would be unwise to cut Internet access; several pieces on the latest in mobile applications; a new take on the Lord of the Rings and a couple of neat videos. Enjoy.


WSJ: Smart Dictators Don’t Quash the Internet

Amidst ongoing unrest in the Middle East, the Wall Street Journal takes a look at why some regimes are shying away from shutting down the Internet in their countries.

The Internet in dictatorships

Fast Company: Google Gives More Prominence to Social Search

Google has bumped-up the prominence of social results in its search results, making the convergence of social and search strategy all the more important.

Social rising in search

ReadWriteWeb: This is the Creepy, Super Cool Future of Smartphones & Social Networks

I’ve been fascinated by the potential of augmented reality apps integrating with social networks, in the same way that Yelp works with real-world locations. Here, ReadWriteWeb looks at the latest innovation and briefly considers some of the implications.

Augmented reality and social collide

Mashable: HOW TO: Grow Your Sales and Revenue Using 2D Codes

2D codes (of which QR codes are a common type) are in the early stages of their evolution and use by marketers, but here are a few thought-starters to get the creative thought juices flowing.

QR ideas for business

Mashable: Text a Nearby Group of Friends With GroupMe’s New Foursquare Feature

Another Mashable story – this one on an interesting use case for Foursquare – GroupMe, which lets you text groups of nearby friends. Rudimentary but another example of how location-based services can prove valuable.

Location-based texting with GroupMe

TechCrunch: Twitter Reinstates UberSocial And Twidroyd, UberMedia iPhone Apps Still Under Review

In the latest turn in the UberTwitter tale, Twitter has reinstated several UberMedia apps, saying that steps have been taken to address the ToU violations. Among them, UberTwitter is now named UberSocial. UberTwitter users worldwide, rejoice!

UberMedia apps reinstated

Salon: Middle-earth according to Mordor

Ever wonder what Lord of the Rings was like from the perspective of the other side? Now you can find out, with this free book, available as a PDF.

The other side of Lord of the Rings

Mashable: 10 Fascinating YouTube Facts That May Surprise You

It is what it says on the tin: 10 interesting nuggets about everyone’s favourite video site. Hard to believe it was only created six years ago.

Interesting YouTube facts

The 20: SEO Rapper Will Revolutionize Your Off-Site Meetings

SEO explained succinctly by a rapper in a garage. Enough said.

SEO Rapper

IGN: Dead Island – Announcement Trailer

Warning: Not for children or the faint-hearted. However, this is an incredible video for a video game trailer.

Dead Island trailer

Posted in: Weekly Reads

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A Brief History of the Web

09.03.19

Courtesy of Microsoft comes this amusing “Net History” video – “from bleeding GIFS to pointless status updates.” 

To be honest, some parts of this video annoy me, but the ‘gentleman’ is just so… British…

Since when does Microsoft do funny videos?

Posted in: youtube

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Objectives First

09.03.04

A while back I wrote a series of posts on communications planning. One of the most popular posts within that series, which still gets a few hundred views per week, was on one on setting communications objectives. As I said at the time:

“As the old saying goes, you need to know where you’re going before you can know how to get there.”

Fast forward to this week, when Skittles re-launched their website with a completely new structure drawn almost entirely from other social media sites:

Naturally the bloggerati took notice, and began passing judgement on the website. The topic quickly shot to the list of top “trending” words on Twitter. While I was bemused that Skittles didn’t seem to be engaging on Twitter despite using the service on its site (Twitter.com/skittles is currently a locked personal account with very little activity), aside from that I tried to refrain from commenting on the effort itself.

Why?

Because we don’t know their objectives. All of the people ripping into this site are doing so with no clue what Skittles was trying to achieve.

  • Is it a short-term effort to kick-start buzz and discussion online?
  • Is it an attempt to position a 35 year-old brand as youthful?
  • Is it to simply raise awareness of the product?
  • Is it a genuine attempt to embrace social media?

We just don’t know.

While I’ve fallen into the trap of evaluating communications efforts in the past without knowing all of the information, this time I’m holding off.

To everyone else out there, who seem to know for sure that the site is a huge success/failure, I say:

“Do you have any idea what equals success in this project for the Skittles brand?”

Posted in: case studies, communications planning

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Social Media Isn’t Anti-Social

08.12.17

Someone suggested to me recently that social media people are, well, anti-social. That they seem to spend all their time in their parents’ basements, and that they have no social life.

Really?

Last night – a Monday night, I might add – I watched 650 social media “nerds” cram into a nightclub in Toronto for the HoHoTO christmas party, to support the Daily Bread Food Bank.

When telephones first became common, I have no doubt that many people thought of them as anti-social. I’m sure they asked, “what’s wrong with just talking face-to-face?”

Now, people are saying the same thing when comparing the telephone to social media.

Just as before, they’re wrong.

Social media doesn’t reduce your connections; it increases them.

Yes, I’m sure there are plenty of social media users who spend way too much time in front of the computer. There are way more, though, who use these tools to supplement them.

Here are just a few ways that social media can make your life more social, not less:

  1. Enabling disparate people to organize events like HoHoTO or Third Tuesday Toronto with tools like Twitter, YouTube and Flickr;
  2. Letting geographically separated people stay in touch via multiple media with blogs and social networks like Facebook;
  3. Strengthening professional networks with tools like LinkedIn;
  4. Reduce the time you need to learn from others in your professional path or with your own interests, with RSS readers like Google Reader;
  5. Talk via audio or video with people around the world, with tools like Seesmic, Utterli, Skype and Oovoo
  6. Find new people who share your interests with tools like Facebook Groups, Meetup and Twitter.

I’ve referred to tools in each of these examples, but let’s look at what these examples are really all about:

  1. Organizing social events
  2. Staying in touch
  3. Building your network
  4. Learning from others
  5. Connecting with people around the world
  6. Making new friends

Anti-social, huh?

(On a related note, a huge thank you to all the people who used social media tools – and telephones – to pull together the HoHoTO event. What a huge success, and an amazing feat. You should all be very proud)

Posted in: social media

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Changing Nature of Content

08.03.12

The nature of content online needs to shift to match with the changing nature of the overall Web.

Steve Rubel wrote today that the future is web services, not web sites. This gels with what many people have been saying for a while now. Mitch Joel, in particular, has talked about widgets a lot. While they didn’t take off in 2007 as some people expected, the signs are good now:

  • The infamously-closed Facebook is allowing its applications to live outside the site
  • Many popular tools make great use of third-party applications
  • Site after site is opening up its infrastructure to allow developers to build applications on it

What does this mean for us on the other side – the non-developers, the people who develop the content on sites?

To me, it means we need to start to think about how we need to change what we’re producing.

This is beyond simple RSS-enabled pages. We may need to start organizing content in small, shareable chunks.

Think of Utterz, for example. Content created through Utterz fits that description perfectly.

Will all content be as small and manageable as this? No. Still, its something we need to bear in mind.

Maybe this links in with the semantic web and we’ll need to tag our content carefully. Maybe we need to start creating content differently. Maybe it’s something else. I’m not sure.

What do you think?

Posted in: social media

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