Remix of an iconic 80's sneakers

http://www.nike.com/jumpman23/becomemars/

To celebrate the relaunch of an iconic 80's sneakers. Nike has launched this awesome retro site that connects an old campaign from the past with a fresh mix of 2.0.

Many years ago Mars Blackmon and Michael Jordan changed the way that advertisers marketed sneakers to consumers.

Hit the bitch

Powerful, anti-violence campaign from Denmark, Thanks Adverblog

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Sorry for the strong language, but this is the title of a new social campaign from Denmark. The campaign is literally in your face as you have to punch the featured girl to get the message. Most disturbing is that you want to go all the way through, which make you feel like a 100% idiot once finished. But the message, even though it's in Danish, is very clear.

Losing To The Social Web: Visualized

Interesting post from Digital Buzz Blog. I guess my only real argument against this 'everything going social' idea is that just as we've all foreseen the death of TV and print, the reality is that these media, just like websites and microsites, have roles that they will continue to fill for the near future at least, even though these roles may well change. To my mind, there is never a single answer and smart use of digital will involve multiple presences and activities that cater to the myriad of ways people want to find, absorb, engage and share information. Marketing via content, utility and distributed services... hell yes, but don't rely on me wanting to check out your products in public while i hang out with my friends.
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A brands website has been the single biggest ”online” focus for 99% of businesses over the last 10 years apart from banner campaigns and microsites here and there, but with the evolution of social media growing at unheard of rates (Twitter is up over 3500% alone this year, while Facebook increased over 700% to finally overtake MySpace and then turned them to dust!) businesses really need to think about what’s happening to their website traffic…

I recently read a great post on Supercollider by Geoff Northcott (via Martina on Adverblog) that talked about the end of the destination web, along with adage, we are social and adweek about how the times are fading for websites and microsites are dead – Geoff posted a few good Google trends graphs, so I thought I might take that a little further, find a few additional graphs and look at why and where this traffic is going…

What you’ll notice from the graphs below (you can see them here) is that some of the biggest brands, websites and portals are loosing unique visitors hand over fist for the last 3 years. Doesn’t make sense right? More and more people are connecting online, brands are spending bucket loads of cash on digital campaigns, so website traffic should be the complete opposite? (note. the graph below with out a heading is the BBC.co.uk)

So with such dramatic declines in website traffic and rapidly increasing numbers of Internet connected people, where is all that traffic going? The Social Web – the emerging networks where everyone is connected, everything is relevant, and everything can be shared with a single click and browsed, summarized or bookmarked with ease…

There are 2 key reasons why website traffic is declining.

1. Social Networks (obviously) are growing and most people prefer to hang out there instead of searching the big brands websites for content to interact with. Your friends on Facebook and Twitter share what you’re already interested in. Everything is relevant and you don’t have to leave to get the best content from 10 of your favourite brands / websites.
2. Off-Site Content Distribution is rapidly growing, I’m talking RSS Feeds, Twitter, YouTube Channels, Facebook Fan pages and so on… All the best brands and websites now actively push their content (the same stuff you use to get from their website and still want to access) to as many various “off-site” sources and platforms as possible.So naturally this removes unique visitors from their main sites, channeling them into a maze of various networks, feeds and tweets…Oh, and ofcourse, widgets/apps – we’ve only just seen the start of these.

Over the next few years, brands will need to re-structure they way they deliver experiences to their customers online (the best ones are already doing it), and that means delivering unique content to anywhere customers want to experience it.

Maybe that’s the latest offers by RSS feeds, new product demos by YouTube, campaigns by iPhone apps, online shopping via widgets in facebook or branding exercises by seeding stopmotion viral videos (they seem to be all the rage!)?

The fact is, agencies and brands will need to work out how to deliver the relevant content, branding and experiences they are currently achieving on their own websites, into highly competitive social networks, feeds, apps and widgets, where every “campaign” or “offer” has to be groundbreaking just to get noticed… and then there was tracking…!

I don’t think websites & microsites are dead yet. There are still years and years of usefulness ahead for them, we’ll just need to come up with better ways to connect them and their content into the social lives of customers online…

Free steak, if you're smart

Thanks to Media Post Publications bringing this piece of work to our attention...

In this down economy, upscale restaurants suffer greatly now that expense accounts are closely watched.
How can one enjoy a nice, juicy steak without looking irresponsible?
Enter ExpenseASteak.com, a site promoting Maloney & Porcelli, an upscale NYC steakhouse
Here's how it works.
Enter the cost of your meal into the generator, wait patiently for numbers to crunch, then download a PDF of various receipts totaling your meal amount. Genius.

Walrus created the site.

Be more human....pleeeeease

Thanks a bunch to FutureLab and David Armano for this post. Lets never forget to be ourselves first and foremost.

How to Be More Human

This morning a couple of things came together for me. The first, was that I unfollowed a company/individual on Twitter because the volume they were producing felt automated and not human even if there were college interns manually updating it (or maybe just a script). It just didn't feel right. The second was reviewing a deck where it talked about the need for "being human" on the social web.

But it didn't get into how exactly, and that's where my gears started turning. Right now the biggest challenge to being successful on the social web is through high quality micro-interactions with high quality human beings. But organizations will find this difficult to embrace. The industrial revolution has taught us to mass produce and move away from human dependency. ATM's have replaced the need for that local bank teller in most places and call centers are known as cost centers, so companies face a bit of a problem here. But if they can figure out a way to make the numbers work, organizations who put a human face to themselves stand to become the industry leaders in a space that's still in it's early phases. Here's a few ways to be "more human".

Don't Automate
Automated interactions are done by machines and people know it. Right now, we're flocking to the social web because we can get a personal touch that cannot be gotten elsewhere. While the "masses" deal with terrible automated phone services etc, we feel privileged to be able to interact with the real people behind an organization. This presents scaling issues to the organization, but the average customer we just like it and will come back for more.

Don't Strive For Perfection
People aren't perfect, and that's expected in the social web. In fact, the more perfectly something is written, produced, or executed—the more suspicious it becomes. Communication and interactions on the social web should be similar to those in real life. Imperfect, messy, spontaneous, and occasionally personal. Zappos understands this well. After a conversation with one of their representatives from their call center, we received a handwritten note that referenced something personal that was discussed during the call. You don't get more human than that.

Talk Back
In a scene from "I Am Legend" Will Smith talks to a mannequin to try to emulate human contact. Of course this fall short and it's exactly the same dynamic that exists on the Web when organizations refuse to talk back to the people who they want to talk to. The substitute doesn't work and all that's left is something that looks alive from a distant, but really isn't.

Talk Like A Human
People can spot robots, artificial intelligence and a fake a mile away. Talking like your legal team, your PR agency or a computer will get you unfollowed, unfriended or ignored. If we wanted to hear from machines, robots or legal eagles, we'd watch more advertising or interact with your organizations mainstream touch points. We're on the social web because we want to connect with other human beings and we want them to act like them. Being human means talking like a human. Conversational style trumps dictation because human beings only dictate when we're in very specific situations. If people walked around all day dictating as opposed to being engaged in human conversations, it would come across as very odd. Interestingly enough, many organizations don't have people who know how to communicate like this. In the coming years, you may have to find some.

Avoid Artificial Additives & Preservatives
Until someone invents the perfect android, there's not much that's artificial about being a human being—we make mistakes, are fragile and the good ones know when to say "sorry" and try harder. Anything else comes across as artificial and less than human. Being more human on the social web means doing all of these things because it's likely that you'll make mistakes and that's part of the process. It's OK, because you'll be interacting with other humans who also make them. An artificial presence is unlikely to succeed because it will feel too much like the way your organization presents itself traditionally, and again—that's not why your customers are engaging on networks. They want a more human approach.


Original post found here

No leave, no life

It’s official – Australians are just no good at taking holidays. Thanks to Smart Company for letting us know.

A new study of Australia’s holiday habits by the Federal Government’s Tourism Australia organisation has revealed that nearly 60% of full time workers will not use their full four weeks of leave this year and have eight weeks accrued.

Men aged between 35 and 49 have the biggest leave balances, despite the fact that half of them have children under 12 years of age.

According to Tourism Australia’s calculations, Australians have a total of 121 million days of annual leave owing, which equates to a leave bill of $31 billion for the business community.

Tourism Australia has used the research to launch its “No leave, no life” campaign to encourage workers to take leave and hopefully stimulate the struggling tourism market.

Now piss off and go get some rays.

DIGITAL CHARITY TOOLBOX: 50+ Ways to Get Your “Give” On

Thanks Mashable for this extensive list of digital charitable initiatives

Qui Diaz is director of strategy at Livingston Communications and specializes in social media for social causes. She proclaims ‘the good’ on her blog, Evange.List.

As the economy goes, so goes giving to causes that need donor dollars to keep doors open. While we bemoan sacrifices of luxury goods, our global social sector is faced with shortening the line or thinning the soup – neither of which are acceptable options.

Because charities are rising to the challenge to engage us online, it’s a breeze for us – the cash-strapped consumers – to meet them halfway.

Why not buy gifts that give back when shopping online, or take a minute to sign and forward a Facebook petition? Those of us who have a penchant for technology and digital matters can go one further by integrating the “social” good into our “social” media discussions.

If you have a few dollars – or minutes – to spare in the next couple days, kick it to one of the digitally-adept causes listed below. Micro-giving trends prove that a little goes a long way, so you can rest assured that whatever you invest – time, talent or treasure – will yield a return. And of course, you get what you give: By changing the Web, you actually are helping to change the world.

Know of other “giving” opportunities with a social or digital play? Please add them to the comments!

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Free! Give Without Spending a Dime

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YouTube Project 4 Awesome - Today Only! - YouTube is dedicating its powerful platform to charity for a full day, and winning nonprofit videos can win $1,000. All you need is a video about your favorite cause.

Feed A Need with Reddit – Add your qualifications to Reddit’s “Database of Awesome” and be ready to give 2 hours of your time to one of the project’s partnering charities.

Crowdsource Ideas for Change in America - Submit, discuss and vote on ideas at Change.org. The top ten ideas will be presented to the Obama administration and developed into full-court press national campaigns.

Click for the Cure - Click daily at The Breast Cancer Site and sponsors pay for mammograms. After 300 mammograms are secured, the site will donate $20,000 to help fund the cure.

Be A Voice For Darfur - The Save Darfur Coalition’s Facebook petition application ushers in a new era of accessible advocacy. Most importantly, adding your name can help draw attention to - and end - the tragic six-year-old genocide in Darfur. (Disclosure - my agency is currently helping with this campaign.)

SocialVibe - Select your charity (e.g., One Laptop Per Child), your sponsor (e.g., Apple), grab and display your badge on your social profiles, and earn points for donations to your charity.

Search for Good - Pick your charity, use GoodSearch as your search engine, and Yahoo! gives for you.

Dress Up Your Reader - iGoogle themes for poverty, environmental and education groups (etc.) abound. Almost 1,800 readers are currently sporting the theme for Action Against Hunger.

Instant Message for Good - The more messages you send, the more ad revenue Microsoft Live Messenger kicks to the charity of your choice (American Red Cross, National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and more).

Map Your Play - More than 15,330 playspaces are already mapped on KaBOOM!’s Playspace Finder mash up, and you can help by adding the good, bad and ugly play spots near you.

Teach Your Granny to Text - And one day she might be donating to her favorite charity through SMS (WeAreWhatWeDo.org).

Fundraising Templates - More nonprofits are offering DIY fundraising pages, making it easier for evangelists and supporters to become rainmakers (charity: water).

Free Giving Campaign Site - Use Givvy.com’s free campaign page for your workplace giving program. FirstGiving.com offers a free template that is useful for fundraising with friends and family.

Friend and Follow - More than merely setting up camp in social networks, nonprofits and individuals are running campaigns through Facebook Causes and Twitter (@nonprofitorgs). The Nature Conservancy, the Humane Society of the United States, and last month’s TweetsGiving are great examples of community engagement to raise dollars and awareness.

Spread Your WOM - Word of Mouth still prevails as the best form of communication, so use your causes’ “sharing tools” to get the word out (e.g., Girl Effect, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Power Shift ‘09).

Try a Niche Network - Join a “do good” socnet for a more tight-knit community of people and nonprofits collaborating on similar issues - Change.org, Idealist.org, Care2.c0m, Razoo.com, Nabuur.com and The Big Give to name a few.

Tell Your Story - Good stories help nonprofits raise money, so lend your tales. (American Cancer Society, Road to Freedom, and the1010project.org. And Every Baby Has a Story at March of Dimes)

Change the Web 2009 - Join a new initiative to “transform the web through social change,” complete with a contest which kicks off in January.

Meet the Changebloggers - You just might be one, too.

Just Be a Geek Who Gives - This Slideshare presentation from Beth Kanter - a leading voice for nonprofit tech/social media - will illuminate and steer your online influence in new ways.

Find more “free” ways to give at #GiveList, Social Actions, and We Are What We Do.

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$35 or Less

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One Dollar Nation - An online community focusing on education and poverty, built on your pocket change. Cost of entry: $1 per month.

#Tweetmasfuture - This Twitter-based fundraising campaign starts today. The goal: get North Americans to re-allocate a portion of our massive Christmas spend to help eradicate poverty.

The One Dollar Give - Each day in December this group blog is featuring a post from - and asking you to donate $1 dollar to - a different charity.

Help Feed 100 People for only $3.29 - Glenda Watson Hyatt (a.k.a. The Left Thumb Blogger) is leading a drive for the Union Gospel Mission’s Christmas dinner fundraiser. You can chip in by “buying Glenda a cup of coffee” via PayPal.

Text to Give - Causes are mobilizing through mobile, and mgive makes it easy to give $5 through SMS. Partners include Toys for Tots, Special Olympics, United Way, AmberWatch Foundation, ASPCA, Starlight Foundation and more.

StopPovertyNow.org – Buy a pixel for $10 to help the Grameen Foundation end global poverty. It’s the Million Dollar Homepage with a heart.

Social Actions - This site helps you wade through thousands of volunteer and giving opportunities on the Web (aggregated from more then 40 different sites). Donate $20.09 and to help them reach $20,009 by 2/9/09. And connect with their 33+ Twitter action channels.

Add a Place at Your Table - For the cost of another guest at your table ($35) you can help end childhood hunger in America. Donate and download your free place cards.

Triple Your $10 - Through December 31, all donations to PATH will be triple matched by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, McKinstry Company Charitable Foundation and an anonymous donor. Look for other matching gift “specials” - up to $1 million in online donations will be matched by a donor for the International Rescue Committee.

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Get Something for Your Money

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Ammado Video Contest - Win up to $2,500 for your video production of ammado.com’s Giving Circle (cash prizes for top three submissions).

Indebted Digital Challenge - Win $10,000 for best video game idea that addresses the fiscal crisis, and work with mtvU to produce your vision.

Wireless Innovation Challenge - Do you have brilliant ideas about how wireless technologies can address social issues? Vodafone Americas Foundation is awarding $600,000 to top ideas for U.S. nonprofits and universities.

Call for Human Rights - Join Amnesty Wireless, get a free Samsung M300 Camera phone ($199 value), and Amnesty International will buy out your current contract (up to $175). Plus, 10% of your monthly charges will go back to Amnesty.

Nothing But Nets –The UN Foundation’s bed nets are helping to prevent malaria – a leading killer of children in Africa. Buy your “Buzzkill” T-shirts and other swag from their Nets Store using the promo code “Holidays” and get 20% off your purchase. Or just buy a net.

Take the KnowH20 Water Quiz - And when you’re finished, you get a Think MTV/PlayPumps International badge.

. . . or Play an Online Game in Exhange for Water Donations - Warning: Not for the geographically challenged (World Wildlife Fund). See more Games for Change here.

Have a Green Holiday - The Pollutions Solutions enviro-tote comes filled with $25 in coupons for green living, 6 glass containers, a Klean Kanteen and other goodies . . . and cookies . . . all for $135 (Environmental Working Group).

Buy the Soundtrack - Call + Response is a nonprofit “rockumentary” exposing today’s slave trade - an industry that annually rakes in more than Google, Nike and Starbucks combined. The 17-track soundtrack is newly available on iTunes.

Subscribe to Good Magazine - 100% of your payment goes to the nonprofit of your choice.

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Give Gifts That Count

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Shop Like You Mean It - New online marketplaces make it possible to buy fair trade and eco-friendly gifts while supporting the people who make them (Nest, WorldofGood.com, iGive, Global Goods Partners), or give supplies, toys and loans directly to the people who need them (Oxfam America Unwrapped, Heifer International).

Bidding for Good - cMarket’s online auction site enables you to bid on or sell everything, from toys and tickets to electronics and jewelry. Proceeds go to schools and nonprofits nationwide. eBayGivingWorks.com is similar.

Coupons - We-Care.com is an online store of 700 merchants (e.g., retail). Click their coupons and a percent of your payment goes to your preferred cause.

Gift Cards for Good - Buy and send these e-gift certificates online. Recipients cash them in as online donations to any project featured by GlobalGiving. Network for Good and CharityNavigator provide similar gift cards, redeemable for donations to any nonprofit.

Kiva Gift Cards - For microfinance fans, give these gift cards to friends who will redeem them for microloans. Lend4Health offers gift certificates towards microloans for biomedical treatment of children and adults with autism spectrum disorders.

Changing the Present - Create a wishlist or gift registry out of charitable donations.

Two Books for the Price of One - Give one to a friend, one to a child in need (First Book).

Four Shoes for the Price of Two - Help TOMS Shoes give 30,000 pairs of shoes to kids in need (buy one pair and a second is donated).

Ornaments from A.R.T. - Make a donation in the name of a loved one to Art for Refugees in Transition and they’ll send your friend a holiday ornament, too.

Check out additional gifts targeting nonprofits and social change via the Case Foundation’s Guide to Good Giving and the Social Edge Holiday Gift Guide for Social Entrepreneurs.

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In Person a.k.a. Off-Line

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Do it Pro Bono - Join a network of professionals making a difference in your community through the Taproot Foundation or Idealist.org. Or volunteer directly through a nonprofit like HELP USA or AARP’s Create the Good community.

Host a Star Party - An off-line gathering to plug into the night sky, and get in the know about light pollution (International Dark-Sky Association).

Hit the Streets - To Write Love on Her Arms is seeking street team members (via Fancorps.com), and you can rock out to TWLOHA’s music player while you’re browsing.

When you contribute to one of the above causes - or any other cause - multiply the effect by telling others. Your blog, Twitter and social network real estate is the best gateway for advocacy, influence and word of mouth - the greatest gifts you can give.

Your Site On Android

Thanks mobile insider for this post on the G1 and, more importantly, some clear light of day on the realities of the mobile web.

by Steve Smith , Tuesday, November 25, 2008

NOW THAT HTC ESTIMATES IT will sell through over 1 million Android-powered G1 phones this year, Apple and RIM may have a contender on their hands. Everyone I have let test-drive the phone likes the operating system, even if they don't come back with the dazzled google eyes of new iPhone converts. And cool appreciation may be all that the Android OS needs in the end to give it an opening in the market. With multiple carriers and handset OEMs on board, Android has a larger addressable audience than the iPhone and likely appeals to a broader audience than the BlackBerry. After using the G1 for a week, and after more than a year in Apple's orchard, I do not feel I would be giving up much by switching platforms.

But how nicely does this thing play with Web, mobile Web and marketing? I spent a few hours surfing and clicking with the browser to see how it handled a range of sites and ad formats. If the G1 is going to reach the scale HTC is claiming in such a short order, then publishers and marketers, too, should see how their brands look and interact here.

Sites sniff out the Android browser in various ways. In every case I just put in a straight main Web URL into the address bar but got diverse results. Time Warner properties were inconsistent. Time.com and People.com kicked me over to the mobile iterations, both of which scaled their images nicely in portrait mode. CNN, however, pulled in its full site rather than its very usable mobile alternative. As a result, much of the Flash-enabled interactivity and video are broken. The same was true with NYTimes.com, which also served the full site. In both cases, the main page was simply too large and memory hungry to make a smooth full browser experience. Zooming in and out was halting, at best. I mention this not to scold either brand but to underscore just how over-hyped the mobile full Web experience is. For my money, a well-done mobile version of a brand's main site is almost always preferable to the full site in a mobile browser. In an ideal mobile world, sites could detect your browser and offer to serve either version. Or the browser itself could toggle an option that makes it seen online as a mobile device.

Except when the mobile version does not show well on a smarter phone. Going to Alpha Media's MaximOnline kicked me over to the mobile version, which became a miniaturized menu of barely perceptible links into the site's content. Worse, clicking into the text link that invited me to take a Coke vs. Pepsi test simply landed me in a bunch of un-rendered HTML code.

In fact, the mobile conundrum over Web design in a more mobilized world also holds true for advertisers. Full Web browsing on mobile can lead consumers quickly to dead ends. I clicked through on a Disney vacation ad at CondeNet's Concierge only to get dropped onto the Disney Online home page -- all Flash, all broken on this phone. And by the way, if your site uses a large Flash carousel to rotate in feature content, expect it to look like the kids got to the newspaper first and cut out the good stuff. Of course, these same sites look just as bad on the iPhone's full site browser, but in my random testing I found many more sites sniffing the iPhone effectively and redirecting me accordingly.

Curiously, USA Today proved to be one of the most flexible destinations. It served Android an iPhone version of itself that worked exceptionally well, and even gave me the sliding navigation effect. USA Today is among the sites serving advanced iPhone-specific ads that expand over the page and offers direct access to video. On the G1, the special Ford Motors unit couldn't play, but it politely kicked me over to Ford's main site. A specific micro-site alternative to the iPhone ad would have been preferable, but this solution beats the hell out of a link to nowhere.

Mobile ads themselves had mixed performance. A few ads just broke altogether and sent a hash of code. The click-to-call button on People Mobile's Samsung Behold landing page clicked into gobbledygook. Video links are iffy because the native video player doesn't seem as seamlessly integrated as I have seen in some smart and feature phones. CarandDriver.com served its mobile site to me and a text link ad for the Slingbox. The video link to the now-ubiquitous TV-in-Russia Sling ad couldn't decide whether it wanted to run in portrait or landscape mode or just give me a half a landscape image in portrait mode. A Transporter3 video trailer coming off of links on ESPN's mobile site just refused to play.

The obvious lesson in all of this is that marketers and publishers had better grab a G1 and test all of their assets. And don't forget to check all that email marketing. One email marketer recently told me they are seeing a remarkable amount of landing page traffic come from email opened on mobile clients. How many of your email marketing landing page links can sniff out a mobile device? At the very least they should serve this browser a WAP or iPhone version by default and let the user elect to go to a full site. Personally, I think the mobilized full Web experience should be opt-in on most sites anyway.

But more than that, I suspect developers and marketers are going to have to wrench themselves out of their iPhone daze at some point and wake up to the wider range of rich mobile experiences that will have a market impact in coming months. As the G1 promises to sell 1 million units in under three months, and the BlackBerry Storm inspires iPhone-like lines at Verizon stores, clearly something is afoot. What the iPhone helped jump-start -- the real prospect of satisfying and usable mobile data -- others will drive into other lanes.

The Vital Importance of Links

Thanks Chris Brogan

November 4, 2008

Some of you know about how links work on the Internet. Others don’t. If you’re in column A, nothing to see here. Watch this instead. For the rest of you, let’s dig in.

Search is a very important part of online communication. I know you don’t normally think of it that way, but think about it for a moment. When you ask Google for something, it’s a query and a response. It’s a communications path. Think now like a marketer. Every communication is a chance to build a business relationship (or a nonprofit relationship, or an education relationship, etc). Now, with that in mind, you need to understand how search is impacted by links.

The Vital Importance Of Links

First, a disclaimer: I don’t suggest that I know all the ins and outs of link authority and stuff like that. For that stuff, read SEOBook. Smarter folks than me. But here’s what I do know. If I’m wrong, this post is all yours for ripping apart and making better in the comments. I’m betting ahead of time that the comments will be better than the post.

How Links Move Traffic Around

Links tell Google (and when I say “Google,” assume I mean “anyone searching for something using the Internet) what is important. If I link to Jon Swanson, Google assumes there must be something useful there. Further, because my site is reasonably trusted by Google, it presumes that I’m not sending you to something spammy and yucky. Thus, just by adding a link to Jon Swanson or anyone on my blog, I’m telling Google that people searching for Jon Swanson might be better off going to http://levite.wordpress.com.

What Link Text Means to Search

Look at the previous paragraph. I made the word link the hot text to click. If I had put modern church as the clickable text, that would have told Google that, to me, someone searching for “modern church” might want to find Jon (by the way, Lord knows whether that’s what I’d send people to Jon for, but he’s MY modern church, so there).

So, if someone is searching for writing copy that sells, then I’ve just told them Brian Clark (and his army of other authors) is the way to go. The more times someone links Brian’s site to the text “writing copy that sells,” the more likely someone typing that set of terms into Google will land on Brian’s site. Make sense?

The top seaches on my site, by the way are for “Chris Brogan,” which makes sense, and then “blog topics,” and then “topics to write about.” This all came from 100 Blog Topics I Hope You Write, which is still a popular post on my site, months and months later. I wish I had some better search terms to get people to find me here, but so far, that’s what people link to when they think of me.

The important point I’m making here is this: the words you highlight as the linked text matter to how people find resources on the Web. Google knows when you’re trying to game this system, or do something devious, but for the most part, they also understand that enough pointers from lots of sites saying similar things probably means it’s accurate. (Again, feel free to disagree if I’m wrong.)

Takeaways

• Be conscious of how you link to other sites in posts.
• Consider what people are searching on to get to your site.
• Are there ways to guide people to link to you using the terms you’d prefer?
• Take the time to link to other people’s stuff. Linking in to your own articles and materials is greedy.
• Links are communication/conversation/conversion. Treat them with respect.

And now, far more importantly, what else can we add on this topic? You’re smarter than me, many of you. Help educate people further, will you?

Jeremiah Owyang's - Recommended Web Strategy Reading

Thanks Jeremiah

October 18th, 2008 | Category: Social Media

I started my social media career at Hitachi Data Systems (I’ll actually be speaking to Hitachi in Tokyo this coming week) and eventually become the online community manager. One of the keys to being a successful community person is to be a resource (or lethal generosity) to the entire industry you want to serve –rather then just a vendor pitching jockey.

In the spirit of sharing, over the past few weeks in client calls, I’ve referenced these posts several times, one of the challenges of my blog layout is that it’s difficult to find the most visited or commented posts, here’s some I think you’d enjoy.

The Many forms of Web Marketing for 2008 (translated into 5 languages): A large index, be aware of the toolset before you begin crafting a strategy. I’ll be updating this for 09, so please leave a comment, I’ll credit you.

The Irrelevant Corporate Website (translated into 10 languages): “Blasphemy!” A marcom manager told me yesterday.

The Many Forms of Web Monetization: an important post for startups in today’s economic times.

A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk’d by Social Media: This is the list you want to stay off of.

List of Social Media Strategists and Community Managers in enterprise corporations: Unlike a wiki, I vet each submission and check their profiles to the best of my ability.

Impacts of Social Media on Customer Reference Programs: If your company harvests positive brand mentions and make case studies and toss the negative ones, they need to read this.

Social Media by Industry: Auto, Finance, and Insurance. Need to find examples for your boss or client? These lists can help.

List of Communities, Virtual Worlds, and Social Networks for Youth, Boomers, Retired, and Beyond: Need to reach a specific demographic, this list is a start.

Applying Social Computing to the Entire Product Life Cycle: If you’re thinking about social media for marketing only, you’ll need to expand further.

How to Successfully Moderate a Conference Panel, A Comprehensive Guide: I’ve been moderating quite a few panels, and have found some patterns that work for me. I still need to self-check to make sure I live up to my benchmark.

How I use Twitter: I often tell people I don’t mind if they unfollow from on Twitter as I’m very high volume, but there is a method to how and why I use the tool.

If these resources were helpful, I’d love to hear your feedback in comments. Recently I conducted a survey to find out what readers wanted to see more of, and it’s case studies, but I’ve found them too laborious to write for a blog post.

I’ll write you from Japan, (I’m traveling 4 out of 5 weeks) I’m going to enjoy a little big of quiet time on the plane to settle my mind, and hopefully write up my findings from last week’s roundtable as well as provide a status on the upcoming wave report on community platforms. Following Japan I land for a night back in SF then depart to Dallas for Forrester’s consumer forum, where I’ll be leading an interactive session with some of the world’s top interactive marketers, if you wanted to schedule time to talk with an analyst, here’s the lineup.

Follow the path of the unsafe

Here's some inspiration and a relevant quote for our times, for those thinking about the future, about where to invest their energy and time in the coming months ahead:

"Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of crackpot than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost."

Thomas J Watson

Thanks FurtureLab. Original Post: http://scottgoodson.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/09/follow-the-path-of-the-unsafe.html

Is your website ready for a handheld world?

Thanks again to iMedia Connection - breathe in, this is a long one but worthy

Is your website ready for a handheld world?

Handheld devices are more capable than ever, but their capabilities remain extremely limited in comparison to the kind of desktops and laptops most commonly used to browse the web. With their relatively tiny screens and slow connections, sending a handheld device the code for your normal website is likely to produce confusion and frustration in those you're trying to serve, leading to severely curtailed responses.

In theory, of course, any website can be accessed by any mobile device. But in reality, many websites are coded with much more robust devices like desktops and laptops in mind. The trends to rely on network- and CPU-intensive technologies -- and to have the web browser in continuous communication with the web server (a la Ajax) -- further limit the compatibility of many standard websites with mobile devices.

Important differences
The three main differences between handhelds and larger computers are the:

1. Much smaller screen size
2. Relative scarcity on handhelds of support for advanced browser-related technologies like cookies, Java and Flash -- without which many standard websites just don't perform well or look good
3. Intrinsically slower and sometimes spotty nature of the networks serving handhelds
All this is why the most successful websites aimed at mobile browsers are now being optimized for this class of equipment.

Why is this important? One reason is the sheer size of the opportunity. For example, more people have internet access through cellphones than through computers. In addition, Nielson Mobile reportedly tabulated some 9 million purchases from cellphones during the month of April. That's up more than 70 percent, year over year.

Not everyone agrees on the best designs and technological underpinnings for successful websites targeted at mobile users. But there are broad swaths of concurrence on what's best and what's not. 

Focus on minimizing website size

Because of the slower speeds and smaller screens associated with mobile devices, every bit of data you attempt to serve deserves consideration. That's why it's vitally important that you reduce the amount of content on your mobile-optimized site, removing extraneous information, animation and all other eye candy. Tables, so handy for coding standard websites, require too many bits to be beneficial for mobile websites.

With bit rates for 3G handhelds hovering under 15 Mbit/sec, there's a strictly limited amount of data that can be transmitted if your website is to load in 10 seconds or less. Think "dial-up" rather than broadband.

Fortunately, most handheld browsers show the incoming material bit by bit as it arrives, and mobile browsers that use proxy servers tend to load whatever data the screen is trying to display at the moment. Still, users won't sit still for long delays at home, and they feel even less inclined to do so when they're on the go. So cutting website sizes to the bone is central to optimizing for handhelds.

Serve only the most important content

On mobile-oriented websites, it's critical to keep content concise so the need for users to scroll is minimized. Content developers and marketers often have a desire to overkill -- they want to make literally everything available. But for mobile websites, right now that's just not practical.

The quantity of content you should offer on your mobile website(s) obviously depends on your reader base. For example, experience shows that "pop culture" content doesn't captivate users enough to keep them scrolling through long articles on their cellphones. Articles that are 200 words or fewer are the most likely to be completed. On the other hand, travelers seeking specific details about a locale have shown themselves willing to scroll the small screen as many as 20 times or so. On many mobile websites, checklists with only half-a-dozen items have proven to be particularly well received.

It's also important to understand the kind of information your mobile customer wants. Why are they accessing your site from their mobile, rather than their laptop or desktop? Usually, it's because they're not browsing for deep learning, but looking for a quick hit of specific information. Many mobile users simply want a phone number or address, directions, a schedule of events, perhaps a restaurant menu.

Understand why users come to your mobile website rather than your standard website, and put the information they are most likely to want up front.

Layout and graphics

Go for practical layout. Design is critical because mobile devices vary so greatly. The iPhone and 3G devices are much faster than older technologies, of course, but when you're optimizing for mobile, you must consider and cater to the lowest common denominator. For example, with less real estate available on a mobile screen, websites optimized for mobile should generally look very different from their desktop cousins. Ideally, you want your mobile content in a more vertical format, minimizing overlooked information as well as the need for horizontal scrolling -- frustrations that tend to drive people off your site. Putting everything in more of a columnar format leaves users with the more natural task of scrolling down, rather than across.

Pare graphics

Specific capabilities for viewing graphics vary greatly from one handheld to another, with the iPhone leading the charge toward a whole new generation of graphics-friendly mobile devices. But even there, the largest screen size is just a few inches. Next generation devices may have 5-inch screens, but that's still pretty small. While there is no hard and fast limit on the graphics you can attempt to deliver, these days most optimization experts suggest you limit all images to no more than about 120x120 pixels.

RSS and .mobi

Enable RSS Feeds. RSS is designed to deliver the newest content on a site, stripped of graphical elements and other impediments to transmission. It's often the easiest and fastest way to send your content to handhelds. For some websites, enabling RSS may be all you need to do to convert your website for mobile users.

Consider whether or not to go ".mobi"

Companies looking to serve the mobile market should design a version of their sites for these devices, and many argue that implies switching to a ".mobi" domain name. The top-level domain ".mobi" was conceived and launched at a time when many felt the need to separate websites for mobile from standard websites. As a result, a lot of big name advertisers now support sites on the ".mobi" domain.

But with growing technological sophistication, others now argue that ".com" can serve just as well. For example, today it's possible for a server to do a browser detection every time a user hits it and then deliver an appropriate website for each class of device. For what it's worth, however, the W3C says that staying with ".com" for mobile sites breaks the web's convention because not all ".com" sites are suitable for handhelds.

As handhelds evolve from today's 2.5G and 3G into tomorrow's 4G technology, the gap between handheld and desktop user experiences will certainly narrow.

Navigation

Standard websites have evolved toward placing navigation along the top and sides. For mobile optimized websites, this just doesn't work. Mobile screens are so small that top navigation could easily cover much of the screen and force users to scroll before seeing the first elements of your site's content. It's counterintuitive, but in most situations mobile websites play better with navigation at the bottom of the page. This way, users see the vital content they want with the very first screen full of information. And because they are used to the idea of scrolling down to see more, scrolling to find the mobile site's navigation makes more sense than it does on a standard website. In many cases, that first screen can display a content menu with links to half-a-dozen sub-topics or categories of content that mobile users are likely to want.

Incidentally, users of the standard web are far more forgiving of "under construction" or "coming soon" signs than mobile users, who absolutely hate broken links. Even if you have plans to expand or modify your mobile website very soon, make sure everything you put up for mobile users actually works. Add any new or changed links into the site's navigation only after you flesh out their content.

It's also useful to include a "mobile site map" somewhere on your site. Having one from Google helps your ranking in Google's mobile directory, and it also helps Google keep up to date as you change your website's pages. With the link in place, Google will often register page changes in a couple of days rather than a couple of months. Similarly, Yahoo has a "yahoo mobile submit" page where you can register your site and help them track your mobile pages more closely.

Designers, testing and going local

Work with a mobile site designer. A substantial number of designers believe they can design and develop for any device. You'll hear arguments that it's unnecessary to develop an additional site for handhelds, and that it's better to come up with one site that displays nicely on desktops, laptops and handhelds. Sad to say, designers' beliefs are not always accurate. The limited capabilities of handhelds should not restrict what you do on other platforms. That's why, in many cases, it's more fruitful to have one designer creating your standard websites and another working off that design to optimize different coding for handhelds.

Test extensively before launching

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that testing a site -- any site -- is very important. There are lots of testing services available, as mentioned on the next page. Point some of these tools at your mobile site and you'll quickly discover whether or not it meets all the applicable standards. It's also possible to use handheld emulators to make sure that pages load correctly on each of the devices you expect to be serving.

Plan to exploit localization

One of the most exciting aspects of the mobile web is its capability for localizing each user. Right now, Google Maps can pinpoint a user's location within about 2500 feet (the distance to the nearest cell tower), but GPS-enabled phones are far more accurate. Why not explore the best ways to leverage this technology? From a marketing perspective, localizing can be incredibly powerful because it allows you to compete for a person's business as they walk or drive down the street. The trick, of course, is to get people to opt in, so you have their permission to deliver localized offers to their phones.

Conclusions

As smartphones become more advanced, the need to optimize your websites specifically for mobile devices will become less and less critical. In the future, mobile users will be able to see the same websites as any other device. For now, however, failing to optimize for mobile users is a great way to hamstring your company's online efforts.

What's more, because cellphones often work when and where laptops do not (or are not available), the mobile web can provide an opportunity to offer content to customers and prospects when they are not willing or able to visit your standard website.

Fortunately, it's a lot easier to optimize for the mobile web than a lot of people believe it might be.

Years ago, advertisers were wondering if they should have a website. Now, of course, we all recognize that we need one. It's the same with mobile. Whether you build a new site or retrofit an old one to make it compatible, getting involved in the mobile web can benefit every advertiser. While many think the mobile web is a marketing tool for the future, others are discovering that it is here -- and viable -- right now.

Additional info

One simple and useful way to check the readiness of your website for mobile users is to submit it to the Ready.mobi testing tool. Free of charge, the site thoroughly evaluates any submitted site's mobile-readiness, based on industry standards and best practices. A free report on your site includes both a numerical score (from 1 to 5) and more detailed analysis of individual pages to help you gauge how well your site is likely to perform on most mobile devices. Recently, an upgraded version of this mobile website testing tool was launched, adding new mobile phone emulators, more reports with color-coded scores, and analysis of about three dozen website attributes.

http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/20542.asp

Six degrees of separation is now three

We all agree that the world is shrinking and with the increase in social networking sites which serve to link people with shared interests together, 6 degrees of separation may actually be a little too lenient.... This is a neat article that challenging the original theory of 6 degrees, thanks to FutureLab.

Six Degrees of Separation Is Now Three
by: Matt Rhodes

I have just read a report by O2 which looks at ‘degrees of separation‘ and shows that where once there were six degrees of separation connecting any two people on the planet, that number was now three. We are more connected than ever before, the theory goes, it is easier than ever before to build and keep a network of connections.

The original theory of six degrees of separation was developed in 197 by US psychologist Stanley Milgram. His Small World experiment choice people in three US cities (Omaha, Nebraska and Wichita) and asked them to make a connection with people in Boston, Massachusetts. They had to send a package to the target person only by sending to people they knew and asking them to send it on to people they knew. The work showed that the number of connections needed to pass the parcel to its destination was six. Thus was born the theory of six degrees of separation, which has been tested many times, including by countless people proving that they are only six degrees from actor Kevin Bacon.

Image via Wikipedia

The O2 study tried to replicate this making use of modern technology rather than the postal system. The researchers asked people selected randomly in unknown destinations across the globe. The people had some connection to their target (a shared hobby, interest, sport, music or sexuality) and it was found that on average only three degrees separated the two people. O2 give an example of the connections they studied:

One of the respondents Katrina, 27 from Brighton, is a classical musician and leads a jazz band. She was asked to make contact with a Japanese jazz singer, Natsuo Murakami, halfway across the world. She contacted her record producer in Berlin via an email. He called his opposite number in Tokyo who had a register of all jazz singers in the country. Therefore making the link from Katrina to Natsuo in three personal steps.

O2 suggest that this reduction is due to people being more connected now than ever before. I think that this may be partly the case, or at least that there are now more ways in which I can stay connected with people. Whereas in Milgram’s day I could have stayed in touch only with those people I saw regularly, wrote to or had telephone numbers for and spoke to, now it is easier for me to have many ‘friends’ and to stay in touch with them. I could meet somebody once, make contact with them on Facebook or LinkedIn and keep them in my friendship group.

So to some extent it is true that we are connected to more people now than ever before, or at least that it is easier to stay in touch with people. But I think the real reason may be the fact that the O2 study looked for connection between people who shared similar interests. We have seen before that online communties and social networks help people with similar interests to connect with each other (see post here). So not only is it easier to keep in touch with people through these online communities, but they are more likely to be people that you share a common interest or experience with. I am not surprised that two musicians can find each other with only three degrees of separation, and would expect the proliferation of issue, experience and interest online communities to mean the same closeness is felt for people with other shared experiences or interests.

So social networking and increased connectivity is making us closer, but more importantly, it is making us focus more around issues and experiences rather than locations. This is really the power of online communities and something that the report from O2 shows. Our friends and connections no longer have to be based on mere geography, but can be based on experiences and interests, shared goals and passions. I may not know the people who live on my street, but I do know people who share the same interests with me. And in the end I can probably have a more meaningful friendship based on shared interests than on mere geography. It’s good to know from this O2 study that such people are now closer to me than ever before.

Some more reading

It’s a small world, after all
More on hyperconnectivity and six - or three - degrees of separation
How hyperconnectivity really could eliminate degrees of separation
‘Six degrees of separation’ not far off: study
Six degrees of separation theory true
Microsoft prove there are just six degrees of separation between us
Reducing the six degrees of separation
Social Media Cuts Six Degrees of Separation to Three
Six Degrees Of Separation Already Cut To Three? Not Really…
Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon = Scientific Fact

Original Post: http://blog.freshnetworks.com/2008/09/six-degrees-of-separation-is-now-three/

Cymbolism - Mass Interactive

Cymbolism is a new website that attempts to quantify the association between colors and words, making it simple for designers to choose the best colors for the desired emotional effect. Taking web 2.0 folksonomy to the next stage, users are invited to organize the definition of color itself with word associations and tags.

And here is the site: http://www.cymbolism.com/

Thanks to Fallon Planning for this post:
http://fallontrendpoint.blogspot.com/

Some sexy banner ads

That's right - even banner ads can be sexy (with the bonus of a product demonstration too). Thanks to AdRants for this post.

Zippo Banner Campaign Ingeniously Inventive
It's not often online banners excite. Gone are the days a banner would evoke anything other than "Will that friggin' thing stop flashing?!" But Pittsburgh agency Brunner has created an ingeniously inventive banner campaign for Zippo which makes humorous use of the product's primary function.
In three version, a skyscraper banner is cut in two. The top half is a fake ad. The bottom is the actual ad for Zippo. The top reacts to the bottom and then the two come together to deliver more information about the lighter. You can see the three versions here, here and here.

Introducing the Hype-rbola

An interesting way of ranking trends and displaying information... also a great resource of hot and hyped websites - thanks again to NGT. 

Anyone who follows “trends” can tell you that not everything is worth its buzz. So what differentiates a one-hit wonder from the “next great thing”? Well, is it useful? And are people using it?

From the top-left, proceeding counter-clockwise:

1. The Jonas Brothers: Like fellow Disney-backed superstar Hannah Montana, the Jonas Brothers blasted onto the pre-teen scene (or thereabouts) with all the force of a candy-coated hammer. Sure they’ve got talent, but, like Ms. Montana, there’s quite a bit of hype involved, like a lot of hype. Sorry boys, see you in Tiger Beat.

2. Muxtape: Muxtape sure did have a lot of hype, and then it got served - legally. The hype for sharing personal music mixes survives, though, and it is undoubted that Muxtape is part of a larger trend in mixtape discovery sites.

3. Loopt: This location-based service beat others to the punch with an iPhone app (and popped neon collars.) Too bad it spammed everyone and showed their whereabouts without permission. Any social network-based LBS needs to have numbers to be useful, and Loopt just isn’t there yet.

4. Tumblr: Microblogging met macroblogging with this innovative platform, but Tumblr needs to improve their skinny interface and confusing citations to really win us over.

5. Face Your Manga: There’s not a lot to Face Your Manga, but you’ve never had as much fun wasting time either. So, yeah, it’s mostly hype and you’re not going to get a lot of utility out of it, but you will get a sweet avatar for your Twitter account.

6. Urban Spoon: This iPhone app even made the New York Times coverage when it launched, and while its fun to use the motion sensor, its restaurant recommendations will leave you hungry for a real guide.

7. Twitter Spam: JDE287uh9w8 is following you. Sweet! First random facebook friends, now robots spamming you on Twitter. Not that we have anything against robots, but they often don’t have many interesting things to say.

8. Blanka: If you enjoyed Street Fighter as a youth, or if you still do, chances are - at one point - you took a chance on Blanka. Were you rewarded? Maybe, but it was probably by accident. Sure, Blanka looks tough and if you mash the right buttons, he electrocutes his opponent, but everyone knows that Chun-Li is the best, and Blanka only matches up against Zangief and his inexplicable shin hair …

9. Emotes: They’re not getting a lot of attention and we’re not sure they deserve it yet, but Emotes are an interesting idea. A social site for youth, Emotes allow youngsters to work through their emotions in third person (via the aptly named “Emotes”). There’s a story in there somewhere, but for now it’s an interesting take on the common theme of social networking.

10. Placefav: The unique thing about Placefav is that it cuts to the point with location, location, location. Of all the things we snap on film, place is perhaps the most binding, as it sets a context. Placefav could be big for those who just want their images served up simply.

11. Instapaper: You see a thousand articles a day that are worth reading (RSS - noooo!) but you just don’t have time. While Instapaper isn’t offering you the best-case scenario - a time machine - they are offering the next best, which is a way to read it later. Which we still never did…until the Instapaper iPhone app! Genius.

12. Dodgeball: This LBS is an oldie but goodie that is dead simple to use. While Dodgeball’s time in the spotlight may have passed, we’ll keep “checking in” until something better comes along.

13. Drop.io’s Drop It Toolbar: Drop.io is awesome and if you don’t know, now you know. Even more awesome is Drop.io’s “Drop It” toolbar for Firefox. All you have to do is drag the file to be transferred over to the red dot on your browser. Once it’s done uploading, it will pop up in a new window. It’s easier than cake and twice as sweet.

14. Nokia N95: Speaking of time machines, we’re not sure the Nokia N95 isn’t one. It has everything else: pictures, movies, browsing, texting, barcode reading, video ringers, GPS… At a whopping $900, it’s supplanted the iPhone as THE status symbol for mobile youth.
Full posting at:
http://www.nextgreatthing.com/wordpress/2008/09/03/introducing-the-hype-rbola/