Great Google project gallery

"A collection of awesome Google-related projects from people around the world" - thanks PSFK

http://goollery.org

Social media stats

Nothing new here, but a nice video summary of some of the more interesting social media stats. Thanks Digital Buzz Blog



By Eric Qualman from Socialnomics. This is another great visualisation of the latest social media statistics that always makes for a few minutes well spent watching! It provides a range of great stats like these…

• By 2010 Gen Y will outnumber Baby Boomers
• 96% of them have joined a social network
• 1 out of 8 couples married in the US last year have met via social media
• Facebook added 100 million users in 9 months
• If Facebook would be a country, it would be the world’s 4th largest
• 80% of companies are using LinkedIn as their primary tool to find employees
• 80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices. People update anywhere, anytime. Imagine what that means for bad customer experiences?
• In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshmen
• YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world
• There are over 200.000.000 Blogs. 54% of bloggers post content or tweet daily.

6 best job lessons

Nice outakes from Rohit Bhargava's Influential Marketing blog on Fast Company.

1. Make it believable. Many marketing groups would never make a claim if they can't provide substantial evidence. How might Tourism Queensland prove that their job is the best in the world? They can't. But it is believable because it is a beautiful place and fits what many people's definition of a dream job might be.
2. It's not about how much you spend. One of the major benefits of smart public relations and social media is that it scales in a way that advertising typically doesn't. In other words, you don't have to pay more to get more. The real trick is to have something worthwhile to say that people can't help talking about. You need a good story.
3. Focus on content, not traffic. The typical marketing campaign focuses on traffic to some kind of site. For Tourism Queensland, the biggest payoff of this campaign was having over 34,000 videos on YouTube from people around the world talking about how much they love Queensland. Aggregate the views of all those videos, and multiply them over the long term and you'll start to understand the true impact of their campaign.
4. Create an inherent reason for people to share. Another element of this campaign that worked extremely well was the fact that there was voting enabled on the videos. What this meant was that after someone submitted their video, they had an incentive to share it with everyone in their social network online to try and get more votes.
5. Don't underestimate the power of content creators Most recent statistics point to some number between 1% and 10% of the user base of any social network are the active content creators. Though these percentages may seem small, the potential impact of some of these individuals are vast online. It could easily become the secret weapon for your next marketing campaign.
6. Give your promotion a shelf life. The best thing about this campaign may just be the content yet to come. Ben, the winner, just started blogging and sharing videos and photos, but the content is already engaging, high quality and inspires you to dream of making it to Queensland yourself. Over the next six months, his itinerary will take him across the state of Queensland and unlock many other unique opportunities. Best of all, this content will live on far beyond the time span of the campaign.

Want to Tweet? Do It From an Ad Unit Nearby

Thanks Adage for this post on twitter breeching the media divide

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Nestle's Juicy Juice isn't the first brand to try to integrate Twitter in to an ad campaign (see Skittles and TurboTax). But it may be the first to allow users to post tweets within an ad unit that can appear anywhere on the web.

Juicy Juice's Twitter display ad

Juicy Juice is testing the unit, from SocialMedia, for one month on mom-targeted sites BabyCenter and CafeMom. The units ask questions such as "How do you stimulate your child's mind?" or "How important are vitamin-enhanced foods to you?" and users can answer the queries as short messages, or tweets, directly in the ad.

If users are logged on to Twitter, the answers will be posted to the ad directly; otherwise users are first directed to Twitter.com to sign in. Posts, which also appear in users' Twitter feeds with a "hashtag" (the symbol #, used to group keywords or events for simpler searches on the site) are moderated by Nestle, but there's the option for that to be turned off.

Clicking on the ad unit, meanwhile, takes the user to Juicy Juice's YouTube site, which is chock-full of helpful videos, including a scary one about how many more germs per inch are on a water fountain than your average toilet seat.

The difference between this campaign, dubbed "Twitter Pulse" by SocialMedia, and other recent attempts is that it allows a conversation to be instigated by -- or occur within -- the ad unit, rather than just syndicating tweets already posted on Twitter.

"The ad unit is paid placement but the additional impressions are effectively earned media," said Seth Goldstein, CEO of SocialMedia, a technology company, noting that the hashtag then reaches the follower base of those who have entered tweets, and potentially sparks more attention and conversation.

SocialMedia is tracking a number of metrics for Juicy Juice, including traditional views and click-through rates but also number of tweets posted and the number of followers exposed to the hashtag on Twitter. Like other executions with Twitter, there is no revenue involved with the microblogging service, but, as Mr. Goldstein pointed out, it could be a potential source of new sign-ups and increased usage.

Brands tap do-gooder impulse to encourage consumers to pass along marketing messages

Thansk Matt for shiring this from Adweek

May 18, 2009
-By Brian Morrissey

NEW YORK Target is no stranger to cause marketing. The retailer is unusual in that it dedicates 5 percent of its income to charity. It's also no stranger to social marketing, having more than 260,000 fans on Facebook.

Last week, it brought the two together by kicking off "Bullseye Gives," a campaign that invites users to choose from a list of 10 charities to which Target will donate $3 million. The social twist: After voting for a charity, users are invited to broadcast their selection to their Facebook friends via their news feeds, the running summary of updates that is central to the Facebook experience. In less than a week, Target tallied 40,000 votes, which translated into tens of thousands of peer-to-peer impressions.

The effort is one of several undertaken by companies recently that use charities to give people a reason to share brand messages. In the social world, the central front for brands is what's been called "the stream," the real-time feed of updates, links and bits of content that has become the defining characteristic of Facebook and Twitter. Entry to the stream is coveted by brands desperate for the word-of-mouth appeal that comes close to a personal recommendation to friends.

"What we've learned is it's not the cause but it's the idea of a brand truly doing good that has a significant impact through social media," said Joe Marchese, CEO of SocialVibe, a Los Angeles-based startup that runs cause-related social campaigns for brands like Kraft, Sprint and PowerBar. "When you do something good, it used to be that you had to buy a bunch of media and tell people or do PR. Now, the potential is for people to tell each other that you do good."

For brands, particularly those in low-consideration categories like consumer goods, charities can become a cheap way to get access to the megaphones everyone has in social media. Take Colgate. It created a Facebook application called Smiles that languished for months, with just a few hundred people sharing it. Then it hooked up with SocialVibe to recast the tool to tap into the do-good vibe. The brand offered charitable donations each time users shared Smiles. The result: The widget was shared 500,000 times in five weeks.

Kraft is in the midst of a "Share a Little Comfort" campaign that offers to donate 1 million boxes of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese to needy families based on the number of messages people share via Facebook and Twitter. The added bonus of such programs, according to Marchese, is that brands can simply redirect some of their media budgets to cover the donations. It can turn out to be cheaper to offer donations in exchange for people-powered media than buying ad space for promotion. So far, more than 23,000 messages have been posted in response to Kraft's effort.

There is a downside, of course. Efforts can cross the line into social-media spam. Giving people an incentive to pass along messages from brands could come to be seen, reasonably, as an alternative way for brands to buy their way into conversations.

"If it's viewed as a front and that you don't really care, then it can be a setback," said Steve Rubel, svp and director of insights at Edelman. "If it's viewed as a tactic to build buzz, not as a tactic to solve problems or effect change, then you're going to lose all credibility."

This has caused Procter & Gamble, for instance, to shy away from incentivizing sharing with its Tide "Loads of Hope" program, which donates clothing to disaster-stricken areas. It dabbled in the tactic during its "Digital Hack Night," when social-media experts tapped their networks to sell "Loads of Hope" T-shirts. But P&G has not chosen to promote the program the same way with consumers. "There's always a balance of inspiring authentic conversation and being too promotional," said Kash Shaikh, a Tide rep. "We don't want to be too promotional."

To get over that, and to give the marketing programs legs, SocialVibe in some cases sends participants evidence of what their pass-along did. For instance, charity: water, a cause devoted to providing clean drinking water in impoverished areas, takes pictures of the wells dug and sends them to participants a few months later. "People think back to the brands supported over the months and connect it with a specific action," Marchese said. To date, SocialVibe has raised $500,000 for three-dozen charities.

Charities are also a handy way to ensure that "viral" efforts don't completely fail. Sun Products brand All Small & Mighty used the lure of charities to goose distribution of YouTube videos it created last month. It linked up with NBC's Celebrity Apprentice to drive viewers to an All Web site to see videos created by Joan and Melissa Rivers. Each time a video is forwarded, All donates 50 cents to charity. The gambit fits with the Apprentice construct of awarding a winning team with a donation to the charity of its choice.

"We wanted to test how big of a role this would play," said Shiv Singh, social-media lead at Razorfish, the agency that created the program. "You can only create so much passion around a detergent."

The charity game has even gone in an unusual direction. Unemployed copywriter Chris Kahle is trying the approach in the hopes of getting his dream job with Crispin Porter + Bogusky. Last week he posted an offer to donate $1 to charity for the first 200 people who sent Twitter messages to Crispin co-chairman Alex Bogusky and interactive creative director Jeff Benjamin, urging them to hire him. That part of the gambit worked: Dozens of people sent messages to the execs. Bogusky was impressed, calling the idea "really smart," although he didn't commit to interviewing Kahle.

Heidi Cohen Eight Ways to Use Video to Boost Your Marketing

Thanks ClickZ for this:

Online video is white hot. It's being used in many ways and delivered anywhere your target audience is. The U.S. election was a watershed mark for streaming video in terms of the length of time and number of viewers. Marketers should be device indifferent since users may view your content on mobile devices, computers, and flat-screen televisions.

To better understand the state of online video, consider the following:

• Almost 80 percent of U.S. Internet users watched videos for roughly five hours in December 2008, with an average duration of 3.2 minutes per video, according to comScore.
  
  
• 65 percent of online video views were streamed between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, making this video primetime due to the faster Internet connections available at work, reported Nielsen Online.
  
  
• In 2009, online video advertising is projected to grow 45 percent to $850 million, according to eMarketer's latest forecast.
  
  
• 5 percent of mobile subscribers accessed mobile video on their phones each month, according to Nielsen in its Q3 2008 Mobile Video Report.
  
  
• About one-third of online retailers offer video on their sites, according to Vovici Corp.'s September 2008 research for Internet Retailer.

Online Video's Five Subject Categories

Consider your target market's needs when creating online video content because they can have a major impact on the video's optimal length and its shelf life. An SIIA Information Industry Summit panel advised attendees to think about whether their audience snacks on short videos or engages with longer formats. Here are five popular types of video content you can use:

• News, including weather. Viewers often look for short tidbits to be informed about what's happening in their world. Think about the type of news most relevant to your target audience.
  
  
• Sports. Typically, these videos consist of clips highlighting a single sports play where the audience is highly engaged.
  
  
• How-to and research information. Viewers often look for answers to specific questions, so make it easy for your videos to be found. This content can be evergreen.
  
  
• Entertainment, including comedy, music, TV shows, clips, and movies. Everyone looks for fun diversions. While entertaining content can be short, users are also watching longer formats, such as complete television shows and movies.
  
  
• Social media, including user-generated content. These videos often focus on humor.

Eight Ways to Use Online Video

Regardless of whether you're a retailer, media company, or brand marketer, think holistically about how to incorporate video into your communications strategy. Here are eight ways to use online video to extend your marketing mix:

• Extend news coverage and other media events. While established brands like CNN dominate, any Web site can create its own channel.
  
  
• Provide product-related information to aid use, including how-to for complex products that require training or further help. For example, Janome sewing machines partnered with Threadbanger
  
  
• Create videos for product placement. Develop or partner with a video series that highlights your product and engages your target market, like Starburst has done with Nite Fite
  
  
• Portray products in a real environment to help customers experience the product without seeing it in person. Extend your Web site to give customers a more retail-like environment.
  
  
• Show real customers giving their honest reactions, like an infomercial.
  
  
• Sponsor an ongoing video series created by a third party to associate your brand with special personalities or other brands, such as Degree's integration with TMI Weekly's Little Black Dress episode.
  
  
• Extend other forms of content you're already creating, such as Webinars, analyst presentations, and quarterly meetings.
  
  
• Use video to connect with remote staff or customers.

Keep in mind that you need to drive traffic to your videos. Matt Cutler, VP, marketing and analytics of Visible Measures, suggests releasing related videos at the same time and cross-promoting them to help concentrate views over a short period to optimize distribution of related videos. The goal is to help your video reach top-viewed status that increases video views.

Four Ways Online Video Contributes to Profitability

Media companies, brands, and e-tailers can benefit from using online video. Here's how it can add to the bottom line:

• Advertising vehicle. From a consumer perspective, quantity and length are an issue. Product placement and sponsorship are other ways to create revenue on media sites.
  
  
• Paid products. Depending on the availability of the information or event, viewers may be willing to pay for downloads.
  
  
• Product sales support. Retailers can gain by using videos to better illustrate product use prior to purchase and to support product use and community building after purchase.
  
  
• Branding enhancement. You can enhance branding through the use of online videos that engage viewers, like the Blendtec blender videos.

Seven Online Video Metrics

To ensure that online video meets your marketing goals, track the following factors to ensure you're on track:

• Viewers. How many people have seen your video? What's the pass-along rate? Is it going viral?
  
  
• Views and Time. How many times are the videos viewed? How much of each one is viewed?
  
  
• Interaction. Since online videos tend to drive user interaction, assess comments for frequency and content and watch how viewers are using the video to create mashups and the like.
  
  
• Branding. Have your branding metrics improved as a result of online video use?
  
  
• Revenues. How have the videos helped support sales in terms of supplying direct identifiable sales leads or adding to the prepurchase research phase? Also, consider whether videos have helped reduce returns through post-purchase support.
  
  
• Costs. What is the expense of developing the video and related Web site support? How does this compare to the benefits you are realizing?

As online video evolves, there are bigger audiences to be had and increasingly more exciting ways to get their attention. The cost of creating and serving video has come down. It is time to get creative by using video to extend your marketing reach and complement your marketing plan

Some great stuff from Sony

Sony chief executive Howard Stringer has declared that the electronics industry must continue to innovate despite the economic downturn... and then showed he is prepared to back up his words with actions. Stringer used his address at CES to unveil a series of prototype products from the boffins at Sony (thanks to this Smart Company article):

- A pair of eye glasses with tiny video screens that are able to show full length movies

- A bendable video screen and a Wi-Fi camera that allows the user to download pictures and video straight to a computer without the use of a connecting cable

And then there was this just before Christmas thanks to engadget:

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-G3 launches: world's first WiFi camera with web browser

The planet's first WiFi camera with a built-in web browser, enabling users to upload images and video directly to popular sharing sites wherever a WiFi connection is available. Of note, the camera comes with complimentary access to Sony's Easy Upload Home Page via AT&T WiFi, which provides easy entrance into Shutterfly, Picasa, YouTube, Photobucket and Dailymotion. Other specs include a 10 megapixel sensor, 4x optical zoom and Face Detection. It's yours to grab right now for around $500.

What do YouTube's top 20 clips tell us about user-generated content?

Thanks to The Guardian for this

Given its reputation as the home of online user-generated material, YouTube hosts a lot of corporate content these days. Of course, it always has done, from vintage archive material to pirated recent output. But rather than trying to stamp it out, more and more entertainment industry players are getting into bed with YouTube and Google, its parent company: MGM and FremantleMedia, for instance, have entered into deals with the site in recent weeks.

A look last week at the site's current 20 most viewed clips of all time - all with more than 50m hits - offered a snapshot of the corporatising effect. A good half of them were professional music videos, including work by Avril Lavigne, Chris Brown, Leona Lewis and a saccharine Asian pop number complete with karaoke subtitles, whose popularity has been attributed to its misleading title, xxx.

Bafflingly, more than 60m hits have also been clocked up by Lezberado: Revenge Fantasies, an impassioned viewer response to the lesbian-themed TV series The L Word, and particularly the despicable behaviour of a character called Jenny. Although it appears to be user-generated, the clip comes under the branding of Showtime, the channel that shows the series.

Even among actual user-generated content, many of the most popular clips are based on bestselling pop culture, albeit in creative ways: the evergreen Evolution of Dance plays on its audience's familiarity with dance crazes, while Crank Dat Soulja Boy Spongebob is a cunning mash-up of the infectious dance hit and the infectious cartoon series. Potter Puppet Pals in The Mysterious Ticking Noise is part of an entertaining series of puppet-based fan fiction - this particular episode offers an a cappella song made up of the characters' names, and ends with a bang.

The only exceptions are moments of home-video larking about involving laughing babies - see Hahaha and Charlie bit my finger - again ! - and a virtuoso guitar solo delivered by an adolescent with his face hidden by a baseball cap (guitar).

When it comes to wholly original content conceived, executed and uploaded by a YouTube user, one video is in a league of its own - the Spanish-language short Lo que tú quieras oír (Whatever You Want to Hear) shown above, by Guillermo Zapata. It's a cute little story about a woman, Sofía, who returns home to find her husband has dumped her by answerphone; she re-edits the message, turning it into a plea that she take him back - which she then rejects. Whether it deserves more than 77m hits is arguable, but it's notable that the film engages with creative editing as subject matter - Sofía essentially creates a mash-up of her husband's message - and was posted under a Creative Commons license, which allows for wide redistribution of the material rather than attempting to assert conventional copyright control. In these ways, it shows both where user-generated content is, and where it's heading.

Video Content Booming

Thanks to Digital Media for this article on how online video is growing in popularity so rapidly its now legitimately competing with regular TV viewing.

Video Content Booming

Online and mobile video consumption is moving to mainstream usage patterns with around a quarter of the Australian population watching online video two or more hours a week.

According to the Consumer Video Insights research report from Pure Profile and Venture One, digital video viewing is no longer the domain of just early-adopters, with 15% of Australians watching online content on their main “television” screen.

The 18 to 24 demographic continues to lead the trend as the heaviest consumers of online video, with 30% averaging 2-4 hours per week. 62% of that segment lists music videos and clips as the content most watched followed by news, comedy, sport and TV shows.

Other content such as webcams, user-generated content and short films are also being watched, but there is no willingness to pay a premium.

The research also indicates a number of significant growth areas, particularly in mobile content as more consumers take up premium content and data packs.

Claudia Sagripanti, VentureOne director, said the Consumer Video Insights report highlights the importance of online and mobile video as a vehicle for connecting and interacting with younger demographics and increasingly the broader Australian population. But warned: “Most consumers accept the advertising supported quid pro quo but will not stomach a forced approach.” Meanwhile, consumers are increasingly turning to their mobile phones for information such as maps, TV listings and restaurant and café guides in addition to traditional services such as news, sport and weather, a survey by the Australian Interactive Media Industry Association has revealed.

Demand for location-based services such as maps on mobile phones has increased by 347% over the past year, while interest in lifestyle information has rocketed by 174%, with television listings up 93%, according to the fourth Australian Mobile Phone Lifestyle Index.

The online survey of 2000 Australians also found that 33% of respondents had purchased mobile content in the last 12 months, down on last year.

However, the number of units bought has risen with purchases of SMS alerts and games up 50%.

The top three types of content bought by mobile phone users over the past 12 months were games 43%, true tones 42% and wallpapers 33%.

The most popular content demanded by consumers in the future is digital music downloads 30%, games 27% and wallpapers 25%. Strong demanded is also expected for maps 31%, news 29% and weather 28%.

Commenting on the survey, Dr Marisa Maio Mackay, director of Research m.Net Corporation, which sponsored the survey along with Ideal Interfaces said:

“This survey indicates clear popular growth areas, such as the way that the content is purchased and shared amongst mobile users especially games, ringtones and wallpapers indicating a growing market and uptake of 3G services.” Over half of those questioned said they did not have a 3G phone, with a further 20% saying they didn¹t know if their phone was 3G.

“The mobile sector is on the cusp of an extremely exciting 12 to 18 months and our results show the growing uptake and interest in mobile technology.

We have reached a point where you are going to go beyond a group of high level users and early-adopters to the masses,” Maio Mackay added.

Visits to social networking and community service sites is still in its early stages according to the report, with 16% of respondents using their phones for this purpose with Facebook, MySpace and MSN Messenger the most popular sites.

Almost all Australian mobile phone users are creating content on their devices, with 96% having taken a photo on their phone.

Some 33% of phone users have created other content. Of those, over 70% had also created videos or music and 50% are sharing that content with MMS (63%) being the most used channel, closely followed by Bluetooth (61%).

The use of Bluetooth demonstrates a preference by consumers to avoid incurring data costs from their carrier when they share content. 55% of respondents had used content on their phones created by others, with 90% viewing photos. Those under 25 years were more likely to have created content to share with others.

http://www.digital-media.net.au/Article/Video-content-booming/203511.aspx

Fox Mobiseries

Fox buys rights to Cell mobiseries

Posted by Teresa von Fuchs, on MobileCrunch.

Fox International, in its quest to expand its mobile content offerings, has bought the rights to Mobstar’s made-for-mobile series Cell.

First aired in the UK on O2, Cell consists of 20 two-minute ‘mobisodes’ about a man locked in prison with a mobile phone and a mystery caller. The show is produced by Endemol and was originally played in the U.S. on Sony’s crackle.com.

Fox plans to broadcast the mobisodes on a UK-only mobile channel, thecell.tv; Fox also has plans for more UK-only mobile sites coming in the fall.

Mobile Entertainment

Facebook in 50yrs time

Pot Noodle - the musical

Thanks to Gerry for sharing the musical love, found at The Guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/21/advertising

Now it's Pot Noodle: The Musical

The world of Pot Noodle, a brand that made a virtue of the catchphrase "slag of all snacks", is to be turned into a musical comedy at this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Pot Noodle's ad agency Mother London has been developing a stage production - Pot Noodle: The Musical - based on some of the creative concepts used in advertising the snack in recent years and aims to dish up a "smorgasbord of comedy".

The show is set in the "idyllic all-singing, all-dancing Pot Noodle factory", where workers "pluck Pot Noodles fresh from trees, bottle feed and show them a whole heap of tender loving care".

It follows the story of the hero Steve, who tries to woo Sandie and overthrow the "bloated overlord" of the Pot Noodle factory, Allan Little, who has killed his brother in a bid to siphon off money to "spend on fast cars and loose women of virtue".

Little has a "beastly asthma suffering henchman" called Flick Ferdinando.

The show, which will run at the Assembly in Edinburgh from July 31 to August 25, has drawn creatively on the songs and themes that have run through Mother's recent un-PC Pot Noodle TV campaigns.

In the musical Digger, who has just fled from his wedding, and the hero Steve walk down the street singing the "Pact song" from the Pot Noodle ad about never putting a woman before mates.

"We can stay up late till dawn, watching classic vintage porn," the duo sing. "We can scratch our balls with pride, our man breasts don't need to hide."

The idea of a benevolent Pot Noodle world first appeared with a TV campaign featuring a fictitious Welsh town of noodle miners.

And the irreverent songs that will feature in the Fringe production have come from the recent "Pot Noodle says" ad campaign.

The campaign also featured two crooners spoofing Meatloaf's Bat out of Hell and a 1980s power ballad with lines praying for women to be "easy, simple and hassle-free" like the snack.

Mother is no stranger to extending brands beyond traditional TV advertising. Earlier this year the agency produced a feature film funded by Eurostar with Shane Meadows, the award-winning director of This Is England, which won top prize at the Edinburgh Film Festival.

The film, entitled Somers Town, is named after an area near King's Cross in north London and tells of the friendship between two teenagers, one of whom is the son of an immigrant working on the new Eurostar terminal.

TiVo & Amaon team up

In the words of Simon; a future business model for TV. This article is from the NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/22/technology/22tivo.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin

TiVo and Amazon Team Up

By BRAD STONE

SAN FRANCISCO — TiVo, the Silicon Valley company that introduced millions to the joy of skipping television commercials, is trying to crack a decades-old media dream. It wants to turn the television remote control into a tool for buying the products being advertised and promoted on commercials and talk shows.

The company, based in Alviso, Calif., will introduce a “product purchase” feature on Tuesday in partnership with the Internet retailer Amazon.com. Owners of TiVo video recorders will see, in TiVo’s various onscreen menus, links to buy products like CDs, DVDs and books that guests are promoting on talk shows like “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “The Late Show With David Letterman” and “The Daily Show.”

In the months ahead, TiVo plans to begin offering this feature to advertisers and programmers, so that the chance to buy products and have them delivered will be presented to viewers during commercials and even alongside product placements during live shows.

The move highlights TiVo’s attempt to shift from being a creator of set-top boxes, competing with copycat devices, to being an advertising innovator that is trying to develop advertising technologies for the television industry.

“Just a few years ago, we were viewed with great paranoia as the disruptor,” said Thomas S. Rogers, chief executive of TiVo. “Our goal now is to work with the media industry to come up with ways to resist the downward pressure of less advertising viewing and create a way for advertising on TV to become more effective, more engaging and closer to the sale.”

“What we are trying to do is to create all the underpinnings of a future business model for television,” he said.

For years, interactive advertising on television has been characterized by risky experiments and high-profile failures. Most famously, Time Warner took a shot at the concept with its pioneering but expensive Qube box trial in Ohio in the late 1970s.

One problem with all previous experiments in this area, Mr. Rogers said, was that buying a product through the television took the viewer out of the experience they had actually settled in for — watching a program.

But on TiVo, if a viewer chooses to buy an advertised item during a broadcast, TiVo records the rest of the program so the viewer can easily return to it after the purchase. TiVo users will also be able to save their intended purchases in their Amazon account and return to the site later to complete the transaction.

TiVo and Amazon, based in Seattle, have an existing relationship. Since last year, owners of broadband-connected TiVos have been able to download movies and televisions shows to their set-top boxes from Amazon’s digital video store, now called Amazon Video on Demand. The two companies have not disclosed the financial details of their newest deal, but in general Amazon’s affiliates get a 15 percent slice of a sale when a customer they referred makes a purchase on the site.

But the media world may not be so quick to jump at TiVo’s new buy-it-now feature. More than a decade after it altered the fundamental experience of watching television, TiVo’s base of users remains relatively small.

TiVo’s purchase feature “is a harbinger of what television ultimately should become,” said Timothy Hanlon, senior vice president for Denuo, the media futures division of the Publicis Groupe. “But TiVo is only in around four million plus homes. From a national advertising perspective, if it doesn’t get beyond that base it remains nothing more than a curiosity.”

TiVo knows that, which is why the company is trying to branch out of the set-top box business and into building software that it can license to much larger media companies. For the last three years, TiVo has been working with the cable operators Comcast and Cox to put its user-friendly software in their set-top boxes. Comcast has introduced its service in Boston, while Cox is still holding trials.

Mr. Rogers also said TiVo’s deal with Comcast includes a provision for TiVo to provide its interactive ad technology for the cable company’s other, non-TiVo digital video recorders. Though Mr. Rogers says “this is not our focus today,” becoming a broker for the next generation of interactive ads may be TiVo’s ultimate goal.

Possible customers for its interactive ad technology include the cable and satellite companies and their consortiums, like Project Canoe, a joint effort by six cable operators to create a technology platform to sell customized and interactive ads.

To publicize TiVo’s efforts at creating this new advertising model for television, Mr. Rogers is not above sowing a little fear about some of the grim trends in the business, which TiVo itself helped to unleash.

As DVRs get more popular, “the majority of commercials in home will be fast-forwarded through,” he said. “It is critical that there be a form of advertising and a transactional solution that underpins the DVR, or the economics of television are going to be substantially undermined.”

Brands punk'd by social media sites

This is a neat list of brands that have been brand-jacked by social media... in other words, when online turns bad. Let's learn from them and hope we never join them:

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/05/02/a-chonology-of-brands-that-got-punkd-by-social-media/

Obama as the First “Wiki-Candidate”

Thanks next great thing for this run down on how Obama understood and utilised social media and technology in his campaign.June 25th, 2008 by David

During the primary election, Barack Obama rocked his own shortcode, Twittered to supporters and even created his own social network. Major publications are crediting Obama’s embrace of digital innovation and social networking as key to his success this election season. Here, we recap the highlights:

• The New York Times’ Noam Cohen suggests that Obama’s approach to politics mirrors the ethos of social media and the structure of the Internet itself. In a roundup of media coverage on the topic, he cites Obama’s success in mastering “Facebook MySpace, Twitter and YouTube. politics;” the parallels between his rapid success and that of a “classic Internet startup;” and how his highly successful online fund-raising has leveraged the social networking potential of sites like
• Andrew Sullivan, writing for London’s Sunday Times, says social networking was fundamental to Obama’s win over Clinton: “She was still AOL; Obama was Facebook. Clinton was the PC; Obama was a Mac.” Sullivan notes that Obama’s use of the Internet to attract smaller donations and from more contributors than his Democratic rival helped him build an unstoppable fundraising base.
• Rolling Stone magazine cites the Obama campaign for having “shattered the top-down, command-and-control, broadcast-TV model” in favor of a grassroots strategy aimed at leveraging online social networks to generate campaigning by the masses offline. Obama’s social network, known as “MyBo” and available at my.barackobama.com, claims more than half a million members and more than 8,000 affinity groups, and lets users organize by state, profession, or hobbies to find and create events, organize caucusing, and download phone lists of potential voters.
• Joshua Green of The Atlantic Monthly magazine recognizes the Obama social network —as well as Obama ringtones, text-message updates, and regular e-mails from Obama staff —as successful examples of tools that encourage voters to “give money, volunteer time, bring in new friends, and generally reorient [their lives] in ways that were made to seem hip and fun.” Green points to Obama’s courting of successful Silicon Valley upstarts who are creating new technology and fundraising tools that have helped Obama raise nearly $200 million online.
• Marc Ambinder, in his The Atlantic Monthly magazine article “HisSpace,” says that “online fireside chats,” Google-like databases detailing federal spending, and blogs enabling citizens to comment on legislation will likely be the norm in an Obama presidency.
• New York Times columnist Frank Rich opines, “You could learn a ton about the Clinton campaign’s cultural tone-deafness from its stodgy generic Web site. A similar torpor afflicts JohnMcCain.com, which last week gave its graphics a face-lift that unabashedly mimics BarackObama.com and devoted prime home page real estate to hawking ‘McCain Golf Gear.’ (No joke.) The blogs, video and social networking are static and sparse, the apt reflection of a candidate who repeatedly invokes ‘I’ as he boasts of his humility.”

Euro 2008 Fan Kit

Google’s euro 2008 effort - A nice example of aggregating existing content, and a little bit of development work to create something new:

The 2008 European Championship lasts for 23 days this year, which means 23 days of thrills, hopes, tears and cheers.

To celebrate those 23 days, Google and YouTube have put together a fan kit, so you can share your passion for football with thousands of other fans from around the world!

The Google Fan Map

Explore all the locations for the European Championship and view the latest news and information about your team. Find your favourite spot to watch, play or celebrate football, then share it with the world!

YouTube Fan Diary

Be a part of the YouTube Fan Diary:  http://youtube.com/23days

http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/23days/