Archive for the ‘social media’ Category

Are you Fucking Awesome?

Monday, October 5th, 2009

befuckingawesome

Sitting somewhere between tongue-in-cheek and overtly serious is newcomer to the social web, Be Fucking Awesome. Enter every awesome thing that you do and everyone else in the system can vote on it, creating your “Awesome Quotient”. You have 150 characters to enter each deed (no idea why they opted to make it 150 instead of 140 for easy Twitter integration, but I digress). You can then sort your own (and everyone else’s) deeds by “most recent” or “most awesome” and sort by everyone, or just your friends.

Useful? Eh, maybe not. Fucking awesome? Yeah, gettin’ pretty close.

Missed Connections done right…

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

Blinka.me

We all know and love Craigslist by now (especially here in NYC where it trumps even eBay for finding…anything). And, of course, one of the more humorous aspects of the old Cl is the Missed Connections section. Unfortunately, if you want anything further than a humorous respite from your day, you’re probably relatively SOL on Missed Connections. It’s a jumble of difficult to navigate listings that are poorly described and lack much chance of making any real connection.

That’s what newcomer Blinka.me aims to fix. While they try to bill it as a bit more, Binka.me seems to be - at its heart - a more robust version of Craigslist’s Missed Connections:

blinka.me helps you meet people you’d like to meet again. By sharing your moments on blinka.me you get a second chance to connect.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. If Missed Connections had a better shot at working, it’d actually be a pretty cool savior for all of those moments when we can’t stomach up the gumption to speak to the person we’ve been eyeing for the last fifteen minutes of our commute.

The site seems to be in its infancy and is still collecting “moments” from around the world - for example, I was surprised to find that there’s nothing in NYC. But as it grows, it certainly has the potential to start connecting people in ways that only dumb luck might have managed before. It would be nice to see them integrate data from Craigslist as well since (despite its humorous nature) it’s still the de facto dumping ground for these moments. Between it’s own robust system and everything being sucked in from Craiglist, they might well have a winner on their hands.

Social Media Revolution

Monday, August 17th, 2009

A while ago, this video called Did You Know? made waves across the interwebs. It put some startling data in front of people in a compelling, digestible manner thanks to the work of Karl Fisch and Scott McCleod. If you haven’t seen it, it’s well worth watching:

And now, it appears the pair have taken their expertise into the realm of social media. Challenging traditional media’s view of the social world with the question “Is social media a fad?”, the newest installment uses the same impactful presentation style to demonstrate the value of social media for brands today and in the future:

via Socialnomics

All-you-can-eat airfare?

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

JetBlue is regularly at the forefront of the air travel industry. They were one of the pioneering brands on Twitter. They recently launched a deals-via-Twitter feed, @JetBlueCheeps. And now…well now they’ve raised the bar even higher. I just noticed the following tweet via @JetBlue:

JetBlue

At first I had to wonder why it would be worth it. But that lasted for all of about 3 seconds when I realized that I’d just paid $335 for a single round-trip flight in January. For a few bucks more, the All-you-can-jet pass would cover that trip and another weekend jaunt to wherever I want that JetBlue flies (according to the fine print, the pass includes domestic taxes and fees, though international flights will incur a extra cost to cover those).

It appears that this might be a test-run for a further program as it’s only available for travel from Sept. 8 to Oct. 8, 2009 - I’m going to venture a guess that perhaps this is a slow season for the airline. But regardless, for the cost of a ticket-and-a-half, you could take a serious vacation. Or fund your business travel for the entire month.

Personally, I think it’s a great idea. Go JetBlue!

How Teenagers Consume Media

Monday, August 10th, 2009

Excellent article from Morgan Stanley. It was written by an intern (yes, a teenager). Well worth the quick read.

Blogger Samuel Degremont has put together an impressive post (read the Google translation to English here) outlining the proliferation of information on Twitter, and how this new medium has changed the game. His analysis is based on this post by Jeff Jarvis which used the spread of the news of Michael Jackson’s death to explore the idea. Degremont has taken the idea a step further, applying the same notion to the news surround the Iran elections.

More interesting in my mind, though, are his infographics of the before and after (Twitter) view of information proliferation (perhaps this is the beginning of BT and AT?):

Before Twitter

info-flow-beforetwitter

After Twitter

info-flow-aftertwitter

There’s no question that Twitter has changed the info stream. I get most of my world news from Twitter now before it ever hits the major news networks. Degremont does, however, raise an interesting question around how trustworthy this crowdsourced information is, and the manner in which information gains context when it comes from a variety of (often disconnected from one another) sources. Thoughts?

Mag.ma

Tuesday, July 14th, 2009

Let’s face it. Video sites are a royal pain to sift through. When was the last time you went to the YouTube homepage and actually found a worthwhile video by simply searching? And then, of course, if you factor in all of the other places you can find video - other sharing sites or social bookmarking sites - it’s pretty clear that the world of online video can become messy pretty fast. But now there’s a new site that aims to sort it all out for you.

Mag.ma

Mag.ma collects video content from all of the major sources and allows you to rate it, share it, etc. in a dashboard that makes it easy to see what’s on top. And it doesn’t just pull from the biggies, but from the New York Times and TED as well (to name a couple). Throw in a bookmarklet for good measure and you’ve got a solid video collection point that’s clean and easy to use. Have a look here.

coinpocket

Have you heard of Fitbit? It’s one of the up-and-comers in the fitness-meets-physical-computing world. If you want to learn more, give a quick look at my ThingsAmongMany post on Fitbit and their competitor, GoWear Fit. This post isn’t about the devices themselves, but rather the social media experience/mistake that they’re demonstrative of.

Fitbit has been “in production” and available for pre-order for months now - they originally stated a target launch date of Dec. ‘08 (I ordered mine in mid-January). They’re now predicting a launch in “late spring or early summer”, much to the chagrin of those who have pre-ordered. They’ve done a decent job of keeping buyers looped into the production process on their blog which has featured in-depth progress posts at a rate of around one per month.

So what’s my complaint? Simple: we want more. A monthly update with the information offered in their blog posts is fantastic. But how about a quick sentence more often about the state of the state? Twitter is the perfect outlet for this kind of communication, and it seems that this fact hasn’t gone entirely unnoticed by Fitbit. They’ve already created an account @Fitbit_Inc that has 350+ followers - not bad for a company that hasn’t even launched its product. BUT they’ve only updated the account twice, the first of which appeared in November and stated

We’ll be making more frequent updates on the Fitbit here

Well…where are said updates? The only follow-up came six weeks later and then silence. The silence speaks volumes, and it’s begun to create some backlash (something a new brand can hardly afford). And, worse-yet, it’s given me (and other Fitbit_Inc followers) the opportunity to stumble onto two viable competitors who’s products are already available for purchase: GoWear Fit originally came to my attention because they followed me on Twitter (though it appears they’ve either given up or there’s something wrong with their account since it’s now empty). Bodybugg is another version that uses the same hardware, but runs a proprietary software.

In my research for this post, I also came across James Park’s Twitter account. James is apparently the CEO of Fitbit and has recently offered some responses to Fitbit-related tweets. BUT he hasn’t told anyone about those updates! There are 350 people follwing @Fitbit_Inc who are anxiously waiting for news (myself included), and here James is offering it only to people who he happens to find talking about the product. Get out there and connect the two accounts James! Give the people what they very clearly want, and in return they’ll be that much more interested in spreading the word about your product.

The point? This is pretty basic as far as social media involvement goes. Smaller brands have much to benefit by getting involved directly with their fans/consumers - conversely, frustration mounts quickly when those brands ignore their customers. A six month delay after I’ve already payed for a product is almost inexcusable…almost. With something truly unique like the Fitbit (there are some distinct differences that separate it from the GoWear Fit and Bodybugg), people are willing to go out on a limb and put up with more. But there is a limit to that willingness. It seems like Fitbit is on the brink of stepping over that limit.

The Conversation Prism

Thursday, April 2nd, 2009

Came across some Twitter dialogue about The Conversation Prism this morning. Of course, my infinite well of curiosity got the best of me and I had to check it out. For whatever reason, the link that I clicked on to get to the site didn’t take me to the home page - which I didn’t realize at first - making it very difficult for me to decipher what I was supposed to be looking at. Once I figured it out though…

The Conversation Prism

The Conversation Prism is a pretty sweet looking poster that would be right at home in any agency setting (or at least any agency that has an eye on social media). It’s probably one of the most comprehensive, carefully thought out visualizations of the social media landscape I’ve seen to date. Want to know more? Check out the site or give a shout out to the creators, Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas.

LendAround

So, I guess I’m on a lending kick or somthin’. My last post highlighted ICanLendYouThat.com, a site that allows you to connect with your Twitter friends to share your books, CD’s, and DVD’s. Well, not long after that post, I came across LendAround, a perfect alternative for those of you who haven’t migrated over to Twitter yet (and what the heck’re ya waiting for??).

Though limited to specifically DVD sharing - and really, who has CD’s anymore anyway - LendAround offers a pretty slick web interface for listing out the DVD’s in your library. Plus, it has an integrated FaceBook app to make your lending and borrowing chores even easier - once you manage to get it set up that is. As with everything FaceBook, getting the tab up and running on your profile requires a little bit of hunting. Or you can just stick to their web interface. However, my big complaint there is that there doesn’t appear to be any means of connecting with friends who might already be using LendAround without just sending an invite.

Regardless, this would be a great thing to set up in your office, for example, to create a personal Netflix service. After all, how often do you really need to re-watch The Matrix? If you want it that badly, you can borrow my copy.