Archive for the ‘Emerging technology’ Category
Virtual sex too Lively for brands?
July 17th, 2008
I was watching a rerun of the Mighty Boosh a couple of nights back and one bit clicked in a new way. It’s the moment when the Crack Fox plays Vince some Foxy Porn – “for the fuzzy tingle times” - instead of his life story.
I’d been back on Google Lively Beta that day for another underwhelming virtual experience and had trawled through the list of user rooms, a lot of them offering Foxy Porn (er – or similar). The Boosh gag was laced with that uncomfortable truth of the ubiquity and motive power of sex in all media.
Since then Google has responded to the harrumphing about porn rooms on Lively but I wonder how many brands will risk visibility in virtual spaces where an accidental click can associate them with, let’s say, humping foxes.
Meantime, has anyone else tried out Lively and has positive, smiley results? I love the virtual experience when it pings but I’ve rarely found it on the community worlds so far. I’m too old for Habbo and WeeWorld (even with its own new-ish virtual world). They keep growing and BarbieWorld now has 10 million registered users, so maybe it’s the more controlled, youth spaces that will win the brands’ respect and trust.
The timeline makes a timley come back!
July 7th, 2008
Timelines have been around for years but it seems just recently they have made a bit of a timely comeback, with a number of new timeline apps doing the start-up rounds. From a PR perspective, they can be a great way of telling a company story in a format that can be shared socially.
There used to be a time when to create a timeline you had to go through the rigmarole of setting-up Excel to crunch the numbers.
Here is a list of some of the better timeline applications out there:
Lifehaps - Simple to use drag and drop life timeline.
timetoast - Easy on the eye timeline that can be edited in minutes.
xtimeline - Make your timeline then add it to a group. E.g if your timeline was about Sony mobile phones then you could add it to the Mobile phones group.
viygo - Simple looking timeline with some excellent features, including your own Twitter timeline. Input your username and get a timeline of all your Tweets.
caplez - This has to be the best looking timeline interface, and it gives you the ability to add multi-media content to your timelines.
Dipity -Is another good addition with a great homepage that has its timelines in categories making them easy to search.
If the above is all a bit easy and you want to create a timeline the old skool way, you can always do it in Excel. Click here to find out how to do it.
Don’t be a social media optimisation (smo) H.E.R.M.I.T
June 30th, 2008
Social Media Optimisation (SMO), not to be confused with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has been around since 2006. A gent called Rohit Bhargava was credited with inventing the term SMO according to Wikipedia. View his orginal blog post here.
If you want to learn more about Social Media Optimisation, I can recommend The Beginner’s Guide to Social Media Optimization.
Here are some other relevant posts I have read on the subject:
Ultimate Social Media Optimisation List
SMO (Social Media Optimisation) and Social Media Marketing - Case Studies in Viral Marketing
New Rules for Social Media Optimization
Just to recap the smo is an optimised site that can be more easily linked to and bookmarked, is highly visabile in social media searches, and has added and extra user generated content like embeddable videos, photos and podcasts ect.
Most of the blogs we follow in the technology field have got their Social Media Optimistation down to a fine art, resulting in small blogs being catapulted into massive, mainstream, must-have RSS feed subscription and go-to sites. Getting your SMO strategy right can launch you into mainstream media and beyond!
So remember if you don’t want to be a social media optimisation H.E.R.M.I.T you should:
H: Help your content travel
E: Encourage the mash-up
R: Reward inbound links
M: Make tagging and bookmarking easy
I: Increase your linkability
T: Think about great content
This diagram below sums up smo very well:
Is social media now mass media?
June 25th, 2008
Is the cross-over complete? Is social media now a part of everyone’s day-to-day lives, and does everyone now know what it is and how to use it? Has social media reached mass media status?
What I mean by mass media is TV, radio and the press etc that are common communications platforms. Mass media is traditionally one dimensional in terms of communication, and social media of course is the complete opposite.
Over the past couple of months, social media references seem to be wherever I look, being highlighted in varied aspects of everyday life. For instance, on the radio you hear musicians such as Maria Carey singing about YouTube and other social networks, mainstream TV programmes are mentioning the use of blogs in their storylines (Eastenders), and mobile phone company advertisements (billboards) with social networking features are now a powerful way of selling handsets. As I saw yesterday in Waterloo London train station, Vodafone has massive banners hanging from the terminal building promoting the social networking functionality on its handsets.
That’s just a few instances I have noticed, and I bet you have noticed some too!
Is social media mass media yet or just a flash in the pan?
Here is a little slide show with more on the subject.
Top Followed Tech Twitters And Their Tag Clouds
June 20th, 2008
Today I have been delving into the top followed Twitters Twitter statistics to find out what they talk about and the best way to visually do this is via a tag cloud.
First off, in no particular order we have Robert Scoble or the Scobleizer as he likes to be called, his Twitter bio says “Bio Tech geek blogger”
Click on the tag cloud to see the full size preview:
Next up we have Guy Kawasaki his Twitter bio reads “ Alltop, Garage, and Truemors”
Chris Brogan is next, his Twitter bio reads” Social media type, but love the emerging enterprise tech space too”
Jeremiah Owyang Senior Analyst at Forrester Research: Social Computing.
Loic Le Meur serial entrepreneur & blogger
What do these tag clouds tell us:
After a quick review of the tag clouds some of the most popular words seem to be Twitter, Google, Facebook, and Friend Feed. Other prominent words were related to their own products e.g. Seesmic for Loic Le Meur. There was also a lot of @ loving between each other!
If you want to find out about other Twitter tag clouds go to Twitter Stats