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by: Nancy Baym
Information Week has an interesting article up about Lost fandom. It talks about Second Life recreations of Lost spaces, ABC’s official sites, and Lostpedia, the wikipedia for Lost fans:
Continue reading "The Lost Librarians of National Defense?" »
by: Matt Rhodes
When people talk about new media, social media or Web 2.0, there is often one thing in common: user generated content (UGC). This is really what the essence growth of Web 2.0 is. Web sites are crammed full of videos, photos, reviews and articles written by users. This reflects a shift not only in the amount of time people are spending online (more), but also a change in the reason for going online.
Continue reading "Social Media Beginners: Lesson 3 - User Generated Content" »
by: Sigurd Rinde
The buzz around Enterprise 2.0 / Office 2.0 is palpable, one conference after the other with $ 50 k stands offering yet-another-wiki-version trying to snag the enterprise CTO/CIO.
Today is the final day you can vote for us on the Webby Awards. So if you haven't done so, here's your chance to give us that little piece of encouragement or appreciation. Go to http://pv.webbyawards.com, look for the category Best Business Blog, and cast your vote.
In honor of Earth Day, Adam Richardson, Director of Product Strategy at Frog Design has shared a presentation he gave to introduce Frog Design during the “Design Green Now” panel discussions.
As Adam mentions, comes across a little light little without his supporting talk, but it does give you an idea of what Frog is doing to save the earth. Thanks for sharing it Adam.
by: David Armano
So here's a presentation I gave recently to a client. I'm thinking through the concepts of "Micro Interactions" and "Direct Engagement".
by: Joel Makower
Some of the most important voting of the year doesn't involve candidates or political parties. It's taking place between shareholders and the companies they own.It has become an annual rite of spring: a bumper crop of shareholder resolutions filed by activist investors aimed at compelling companies to address any of a wide range of social and environmental issues. This year is no different.
by: Ilya Vedrashko
67 Best Practices for On-Screen Communication
Press release (Apr.17, 2008): "NeuroFocus has distilled and compiled its findings into 67 key points, or "best practices", designed to serve as a roadmap for ensuring that visual communications on a screen match what the brain desires to see the most, and what it responds to the best."
Continue reading "Best Neuro Practices for Visual Communications" »
by: Roger Dooley
Why do people do things that will gain them social approval? It turns out that the same parts of the brain are activated for a positive social outcome as for a monetary reward. In other words, the same reward circuitry is turned on both by social and monetary gains. Corporate marketers as well as non-profit fundraisers have always known that most individuals crave social approval, but these new findings show how our brains process these social rewards and how they relate to money.
by: Rick van der Wal via Business and Games Blog
I was really disappointed when I had to miss Nic Mitham’s (of Kzero) presentation at the Clever Zebra vBusiness Expo two days ago (Last day today!). Thankfully Nic was kind enough to post his excellent presentation online. I really love his take on the ‘corporate islands’. Most brands who have entered Second Life have bought their own island, developed a playground and tried to attract visitors to their virtual places.
by: Ilya Vedrashko
All these people in A&F behind Obama - not a product placement.
Which brings up an old question: what's the effect of news photography on a brand?
by: danah boyd
Last Wednesday, I gave a talk in Palo Alto as part of the MacArthur Forum "From MySpace to Hip Hop" alongside the rest of the Digital Youth Research Team. I'm still waiting on the videos and as soon as I have them, I will post them. In the meantime, I thought that I'd share my crib from the talk. For those of you who know my work, much of this will be familiar. Still, it's a pretty good overview of my project. Enjoy!
Original Post: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2008/04/27/macarthur_forum.html
by: Roger Dooley
In my time as a catalog marketer, I almost always priced products just below the next dollar increment - a cheap item might be $9.97 rather than $10, while a more expensive item may have been $499, or even $499.99, instead of $500. My strategy was based on a couple of assumptions.
by: Nancy Baym
With my colleague Andrew Ledbetter at Ohio University, I’ve been finishing up a paper looking at relational development amongst “friends” on Last.fm. Our paper’s been accepted for presentation at the Association of Internet Researchers’ annual meeting in Copenhagen in October. Here’s the abstract. Forgive the heavy academese:
by: Matt Rhodes
Your devoted customers are your most active advocates. Positive experiences in the past have taught them to have high expectations of you - they expect a great experience and they’re devoted to you because they get what they expect. But just as these customers are you most active advocates, they can also be the easiest to disappoint and can quickly turn into detractors.
Continue reading "What Happens When You Disappoint Your Devoted Customers?" »
by: Lynette Webb
I’m only surprised it’s not lower. :-)
Continue reading "In Quarter of Homes Only One Person Can Control Technology" »
by: Scott Goodson
Today's NY Times Magazine has a wonderful story about Flickr and the potential for very talented people to rise above the networking and nomenclature of the established photo schools. In her article, Virginia Heffernan points to an Icelandic amateur photographer named Rebekka Guoleifsdottir as one good example of the rise of talent over the Flickr photo-sharing site. And in my opinion, Guoleifsdottir is very good indeed. She would certainly catch my eye if her book crossed my desk at StrawberryFrog. It's a good article. Have a read here and have a look at Rebekka's photos if you have the chance.
Continue reading "Forget the Art School. Photo-sharing Sites Have Their Own Ideas about Beauty" »
by: Karl Long
Is the web really moving so fast that the recently, bold, innovative, interactive marketers are now the “traditional” media? Are they obsessed with RIA/Flash based “orgies” for the senses and missing the boat a little on the “new” marketing, the conversational marketing, the blog marketing, the social software etc.
Continue reading "Interactive Marketers, the New Stick in the Muds?" »
by: Rick van der Wal via Business and Games Blog
The Association of Virtual Worlds released a useful 40 page eBook listing all Virtual Worlds available, completely free for download:
by: John Caddell
WorldBlu, the organization headed by a friend of this blog Traci Fenton, has unveiled its second annual list of democratic workplaces.
Workplace democracy is still a rare concept, but a growing number of companies are allowing workers a voice in their company, encouraging dissent, and otherwise involving the entire employee base in shaping and running the organization. WorldBlu evaluates companies on these factors:
Continue reading "WorldBlu 2008 List of Democratic Workplaces Released" »
by: Roger Dooley
I love research findings that run counter to intuition, or are at least unexpected, and the idea that you can get more for your house if you market it with an odd price is certainly unexpected. That’s what University of Florida researchers found, though:
Continue reading "Get More for Your House with an Odd Price" »
by: Eliane Alhadeff
Spy Museum - Your Mission: Learn the Craft of Espionage Through Top-Secret, Interactive Exhibits.
In an age of Google, YouTube and Sony's PlayStation, museums have to work a lot harder to make subject matter culturally relevant to young people.
Continue reading "Spy Tech: from Interactive Museums to Serious Games" »
by: Alexander Osterwalder
This week I participated in a high-level panel on strategic and operational private banking models in the 21st century in Zurich Switzerland. I talked about business model innovation in private banking (not meaning the innovative financial products that provoked the current financial turmoil, of course).
Continue reading "Video: Business Model Innovation in Private Banking" »
by: Mark Rogers
This definition of social media is hard to beat. It boils to three steps:
by: Scott Goodson
Perhaps they are equally sexy. And that's a marketing challenge if one portfolio of product is a great deal more expensive. How do you feel the luxury and fork over thousands of dollars more for one shirt vs another?
Continue reading "Who's Sexier - Tom Ford or Dov Charney?" »
by: David Jennings
Marc Cohen writes a challenging post on The Myth of Music Discovery. Citing a Digital Music News report of two venture capitalists agreeing that "the next big thing is going to be music discovery", Marc says this ought to be enough evidence that it won't be.
Continue reading "The Myth, Science and Craft of Music Discovery" »
by: Ilya Vedrashko
A fascinating reading for experience designers comes this week from The New Yorker that has obtained and published time-lapsed security camera footage of a man who, in 1999, spent 41 hours stuck in an elevator, and accompanies it with a detailed feature about the history and specifics of the "vertical transportation" industry. The article also has a few great paragraph of observations on human behavior and how elevators are designed to accommodate for it:
by: Rick van der Wal via Business and Games Blog
I was writing a reply to Dusan Writers (great new design by the way) article on the ‘Sheeps Sweet Spot’ called ‘The Thinner the Client, the sweeter the Pie‘- Overall a good article and as it triggered a line of thoughts I’d been having myself lately It ended up a rather long reply and wanted to keep it documented on my own blog. Maybe to laugh at it at a later point, maybe to get back to in the near future (Why is it some realizations can seem so ‘right’ at some point, and a couple of days later lose all meaning…)
by: Roger Dooley
Consumers must like lots of choices - why else would there be hundreds of shampoo brands and variants on a typical supermarket shelf? Actually, its been known for years that too many choices can reduce consumer purchases. A 2000 study at Columbia University compared consumer behavior when confronted with a selection of either six or 24 gourmet jams in an upscale grocery store. The bigger selection did indeed cause more customers to stop and check it out - 60% vs. 40% for the limited selection.
by: Scott Goodson
The quality of search engines will change and get better and more user friendly.
Here is one that I LOVE. Feels a little like the nav you get on Apple itunes. But it's very cool.
Check it out here.
Original Post: http://scottgoodson.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/04/better-than-goo.html
by: David Armano
"Call them information architects, experience designers or Jack or Jane -- they are the design geeks who love to sweat the details. They care about "micro-interactions" and toil away at the building blocks of what actually results in a "lovemark" in the end. We love to use applications that help us do things like plan vacations, find old friends and share our passions with the world. The ad industry has made a big mistake in the past by thinking technology was for geeks. Technology, in fact, is a love affair."
by: Scott Goodson
How many people out there feel a lot like Michael Arrington below in this article from today's NY Times? Last week, I wrote about the problems facing the advertising and communications industry in simply producing more spam. The tables are going to turn. Simply creating and sending out more spam isn't going to work. The smart brands won't do this. They'll do the opposite. They'll help you edit out the spam and keep only what's important. The good stuff. The relevant stuff. People just can't humanly react to all this eletronic stuff being sent their way.
Continue reading "Email Has Become the Bane of People's Professional Lives" »
by: David Polinchock
On the subway this morning and my car has one side taken over by the Change Is campaign by Delta airlines. Change Is: The only U.S. airline flying to Capetown or Change Is: Flying to Heathrow. I'm sure you've seen the ads. Someone actually pointed out to me that the Greek sign for change is delta, but I guess I never really got that. But the thing is, the changes they listed don't really seem all that big. I mean, is the airlines such a patriotic industry that we would be excited that Delta is the only US.airline flying to South Africa? Didn't do that much for me!
by: David Armano
Are your marketing initiatives insight led or trend driven?
by: Nancy Baym
Swarmteams is a project led by Ken Thompson exploring whether the same sorts of processes that insects and other biological entities use to organize group behavior through short term low range signaling can be applied to human social groups such as fans.
This little video excerpt by Allan Chochinov (of Core77 fame), during his presentation at the PSFK Conference New York 08, talks about his observations he made of his students after he asks them to design the perfect pooper-scooper.
by: Scott Goodson
Last week Google reported an unprecedented profit surge during a recession in the US while everyone else was reporting the opposite. And now this news from my friend Nishad who gave me this tip.
MSNBC Reported today that online ad spend will overtake TV in 2009 in the UK.
Here is the full article:
Continue reading "Internet Will Overtake TV as Biggest Ad Medium in 2009" »
by: Joel Makower
It's time for my (second) annual survey of surveys — the bounty of public opinion polls on green topics that seems to sprout every spring in time for Earth Day. A half-dozen or so years ago, there were perhaps a couple such surveys. Today, there are more than a dozen, ranging from substantive to silly to self-serving.
Continue reading "Earth Day, Green Marketing, and the Polling of America, 2008" »
by: Scott Goodson
Brian Morrissey of Adweek quotes a new survey that says the US lags behind many other countires in Social Media.
Here is his article:
Consumers in the U.S. and Western Europe are more likely to be passive participants, while those in emerging markets often create content
April 18, 2008
-By Brian Morrissey
Continue reading "US Lags in Social Media Creation, per Survey" »
