Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog

by: danah boyd

The NYTimes ran a piece today called Text Generation Gap: U R 2 Old (JK). (Note: the article is very American-centric - in the States, older folks tend to be texting illiterate.) The article begins with an anecdote of a parent shuttling around his daughter and her friend. They are talking and dad butts in and they roll their eyes. And then there is silence. When dad comments to his daughter that she's being rude for texting on her phone rather than talking to her friend, the daughter replies: "But, Dad, we're texting each other. I don't want you to hear what I'm saying."

Continue reading "how youth find privacy in interstitial spaces" »

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Continue reading "Twitter in Plain English (and Visual Thinking)" »

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Continue reading "Marc Laperrouza on Mobile Telephony in China (LIFT'08)" »

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by: David Polinchock

If you want to know what's wrong with advertising and why it has so many problems, take a look at the list of reasons that mobile advertising isn't working. You'll notice that not one person mentioned there's no real value for the consumer. That's why mobile marketing isn't working right now.

Continue reading "Being Peter Kim: What's Wrong with Mobile Marketing" »

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by: Ilya Vedrashko

Not too many of those. Actually, just one.

Continue reading "Advergames for iPhone " »

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by: danah boyd

As everyone knows, Kenya has been in a state of unrest since the corrupt elections in December. Interestingly, a surge of homebrewed cyberactivism has emerged to aid in information flow and resource sharing (as well as political organizing). As an example, take a look at Afromusing's Twitter stream which contains regular updates from Kenya.

Continue reading "mobile phone credits as currency in Kenya" »

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Continue reading "Phone quest, or Please be less creative" »

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by: Idris Mootee

Social networks are finally converging with mobile connectivity and eco-friendly concepts. Nokia is at the cutting edge of innovation again (Motorola, what are you guys doing?) with this visionary concept of Eco Sensor Phone System. This new design concept consists of a cell phone and compatible sensing device that allows you to stay connected to your friends as well as to your health and local environment.

Continue reading "Nokia's Eco Sensing Cell Phone Brings New Meaning to Connectivity" »

Posted by Futurelab at 6:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

by: danah boyd

For peculiar historical business reasons, Americans and Canadians pay to receive text messages. This creates a stilted social dynamic whereby a friend forces you to pay $.10 (or use up a precious token msg in your plan) simply by deciding to send you something. You have no choice. There's no blocking, no opt-out. Direct to jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Continue reading "Gluttonous Texting" »

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by: Karl Long

So this is some early experimental thinking here so feel free to poke holes, call bullshit, or add your own take in the comments.

I’m using the term co-creative marketing here as I think it’s a better more holistic term than “viral”. I still think viral is a totally valid tactic, but I don’t think it’s a strategy. Viral in most cases is not much better than a 30 second spot except it’s distribution is cheaper, I guess that’s why marketers and advertisers are so generally comfortable with the concept.

Continue reading "Beyond Viral: 3 ideas for Co-Creative Marketing" »

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Continue reading "Digital Marketing's Dirty Little Secret" »

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by: Guy Kawasaki

My buddies at Avenue A | Razorfish provided me this copy of a study called “Fast Forward: Designing for Constant Change.” It consists of thirteen essays and research that explore how consumers’ digital media habits affect the ways that companies should design user experiences and digital brands. The company wrote the report for marketers who are trying to design more effective online ads and websites in the face of rapid technological change. It is the result of 500 interviews conducted in July, 2007.

Continue reading "“Fast Forward: Designing for Constant Change” Study" »

Posted by Futurelab at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

by: Ilya Vedrashko

Last August, a start-up Pelago filed for a patent for a "a method and system for providing a pay-for-visit billing model for advertisements."

Continue reading "Future: Pay-Per-Visit Advertising " »

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by: Yann Gourvennec

Yesterday, I got an e-mail by Stan Relihan, an extremely well connected user of linkedIn. In a recent podcast, he explains how we uses linkedIn to generate business relationships. His description of his usage of linked in is different from what we hear ordinarily, that is to say that you have to invite only people that you know beforehand.

Continue reading "a globalised economy, but socially diverse behavioural patterns" »

Posted by Futurelab at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

by: David Armano

Many of the senior folks who work at a variety of agencies (design, advertising, PR,—take your pick) are actually digital immigrants vs. digital natives.  This means folks like myself (30-somethings) knew what life was like before the digital revolution.  Digital natives, however have grown up with digital technologies from birth—some have never seen a tape cassette.

Continue reading "Questions For The Agency Executive" »

Posted by Futurelab at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

by: Ilya Vedrashko

The newest batch of MIT Comparative Media Studies grad theses is up. Lots of good stuff on transmedia storytelling, engagement, convergence, and mobile MMORPGs. Great job, guys, and good luck.

Original post: http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2007/08/mit-media-studies-grad-theses.html

Posted by Futurelab at 9:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

by: Ilya Vedrashko

Kameraflage: "context-sensitive display technology, encodes a layer of information that can only be viewed by the human eye when looking at an image of the scene taken by a camera.

Click image to enlarge.

Continue reading "Digital Cameras Reveal Hidden Images " »

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by: Dominic Basulto

Is anyone else getting the feeling that Google is turning its attention away from Microsoft to focus on a potential rivalry with Apple? Nearly a month after Apple announced its groundbreaking new iPhone, Google casually leaked rumors to the press of an upcoming Google Phone release.

Continue reading "The Google phone: myth or reality?" »

Posted by Futurelab at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

The idea of mobile social networking first came to my mind three years ago when I was traveling with my colleague Keith Liu from Dulles after meeting with AOL. I was preparing a speech for an upcoming conference on "social computing". We talked about the business idea of launching a dating service based on some social network ideas and location-based services. We were so excited and thought that it'd be a killer idea to use a cell phone as a device for matching that's linked to a social network database. Imagine you walking into a Dean and De Luca and your cell phones scan the database and prompt you how many people there are your type. You can instantly check their profile and decide whether you want to send them a short message.

Continue reading "Mobile Social Networks - Random Thoughts" »

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by: David Polinchock

This is a work in progress, so I'll try to add to it over the next couple of days, but I thought that I'd get my rough thoughts out here and see what conversation it started.

Continue reading "What Does It Mean to be Digital?" »

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by: Ilya Vedrashko (via Business & Games)

Sci-Fi Tech writes about Megaphone, a company that turns mobile phones into controllers for games that run in public spaces on large screens. Call in a number to join the game, then control your piece of action by punching buttons on the dialpad or by simply barking out orders.

Continue reading "Mobile Phones as Game Controllers" »

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by: C. Sven Johnson

While reading something yesterday concerning marketing in virtual worlds I resisted the urge to comment. Last night and again early this morning, I further resisted the temptation to post something here regarding what I’d read. And I’m now resisting the urge to slip something in. I won’t.

Continue reading "Personal Entry: Pre-Alpha" »

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by: Dominic Basulto

One result of the popularity of Wikinomics has been the number of collaborative wikis that have been launched by organizations and corporations in order to share ideas around the world.

Continue reading "Nokia and Vodafone: Mobile Knowledge for Social Change" »

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by: Lynette Webb

There’s not much more to say about this beyond what’s on the slide. It’s from a recent blog post www.tripleodeon.com/?p=54 I stumbled across and liked the matter of fact tone . The whole mobile internet thing has been on such a rollercoaster ride - overhype, then backlash, then hype again… it’s all too easy for some to dismiss it.

Click image to enlarge 

Continue reading "Evolution of the web to mobile is inevitable" »

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by: David Polinchock

This is what's wrong with the whole advertising industry, they just won't let go of the past. CPM's are not the only way to sell advertising and worse then that, we love to take the lowest cost CPM thing and compare everything new with that. Wait, I take that back.

Continue reading "Advertising Age - Digital - Video Report: Mobile Marketing Stymied by High CPMs, Small Audiences " »

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by: David Armano

Doing a little housekeeping and I've updated my visuals in a single slideshow.  Every 4 months or so, I'll update the slideshow and re-post here.  Gotta love slideshare.

Continue reading "Visual Library" »

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by: Lynette Webb

I’ve held off posting about Twitter until now. Mainly ‘cos I didn’t have the time to do it justice.  Click Image to Enlarge

I find Twitter intriguing for a number of reasons, not least because it’s fun watching the debate - from the sidelines it seems pretty polarised… people either love or hate it. Whatever you think about Twitter, the fact that it can stir up such a storm means it’s hit a nerve. :-)

Continue reading "twitter is like walking to school with your friends" »

Posted by Futurelab at 9:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

by: Ilya Vedrashko

I still can't understand why everyone's so excited about Twitter, which looks like a pinnacle of narcissism and is more boring to read then The Dullest Blog in the World, but in case you care, here's how an online shop Woot is using it to send out alerts about its new products.

Original Post: http://adverlab.blogspot.com/2007/03/advertising-with-twitter.html

Posted by Futurelab at 9:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

by: danah boyd

I'm often asked what "Web 3.0" will be about. Lately, i have found myself talking about two critical stages of web sociality in order to explain where we're going. I realized that i never succinctly described this here so i thought i should.

Continue reading "web 1-2-3" »

Posted by Futurelab at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

by: Karl Long

Over the last couple of months i’ve started to become convinced that the concept of games is going to evolve over the next decade blending more and more the real world and virtual.

Continue reading "Three Trends Driving Big Games - Social Un-tethered Games With Computers In Them" »

Posted by Futurelab at 7:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

by: Karl Long

I’m currently at GDC (Game Developer Conference) and have just listened to Trip Hawkins, CEO of Digital Chocolate a mobile game development company, and considering he founded EA (Electronic Arts) he’s probably worth listening to. His keynote speech was titled “Making Mobile Phones the Ultimate Game Platform”.

Continue reading "GDC Mobile - The Future of Mobile Games Will be Social" »

Posted by Futurelab at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

by: Alain Thys

Exactly a year ago this blog went "live" and we just wanted to thank everyone who's been part of making it something much more successful than we ever thought it would be.  Today, we've got about 25,000 regular readers, over 1,400 posts, and more importantly, our base of daily feedburner subscribers keeps growing by the week (currently at 2,500).

Continue reading "Happy Birthday Futurelab Blog" »

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by: Sebastian Campion

Jan Chipchase is Principal Researcher in the User Experience Group of Nokia Research Center. A part of his fascinating job is to observe and describe how different cultures use mobile technologies differently - often in ways unintended or unpredicted by the industry that he represents.

Continue reading "Phone Battery Street Charching Services" »

Posted by Futurelab at 7:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

by: Lynette Webb 

OK, so this hasn’t launched yet. But the fact that ITV are serious enough about doing it to have announced it publicly is interesting.

Continue reading "ITV are launching mobile coupons" »

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by: Lynette Webb 

I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this, having not visited a Target in years… they don’t seem to exist in the UK. But, I can well imagine it’s true. It’s another indication of how far mobiles are spreading.

Continue reading "now you can buy phones for 5 year olds at Target" »

Posted by Futurelab at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

by: Joseph Mann 

Does your business have a mobile version of its client-facing web site? If not, are you ready to go mobile in 2007? You'd better be, if a survey and article by Information Week late last year is any measure:

Continue reading "Upwardly Mobile" »

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By: David Armano

Now that some of us have woken up after a full day of product lust drunkenness (very understandable)—Bruce Nussbaum makes some excellent points asking if the iPhone is an "ecosystem" or an ultra cool, innovative product.

Continue reading "The iPhone Ecosystem" »

Posted by Futurelab at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

By: Ilya Vedrashko

A few thoughts on where new Apple products can take interactive advertising:

Continue reading "Apple TV, iPhone, and Advertising" »

Posted by Futurelab at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)  • Email this article to a friend

by: Alain Thys

As I compiled the most read posts on this blog, I couldn't shake the feeling that "there was a lot of great stuff missing". That's why I decided to do the "old media" thing and make a selfish editorial selection of what I thought were the twenty strongest thoughts expressed on this blog since its inception (one per contributor).