Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

"Navigating the site definitely feels like stepping into the mind of a teenage boy - air guitar contests, skateboards, doodles - but in a bold move, no shots of attractive girls.  Is it specifically targeted at underage drinkers?"

Masterminded by AKQA, London, NIKE PHOTOiD is a brand new mobile application which allows users to customize their own set of sneakers according to their physical surroundings. You simply take a picture of something on your camera phone (it could be anything from a piece of graffiti to an ice cream sundae) and then send this pic off to a shortcode via MMS. The NIKEiD website then picks out the two strongest colours from your image and uses them to colour your custom sneakers. Within a minute, you are sent a link with your design superimposed over the original source of pantone inspiration.

You can then save this image as wallpaper for your mobile, send it to a mate or, by entering the unique DESIGNiD at NIKEiD.com, link directly to your design to complete and actually purchase the sneakers. As one particularly over-excited sneaker-freak in our office inquired with a faint hint of dribble at the corner of his mouth: 'So I could take a picture of a grassy meadow and then it would text me a link to buy my very own Nike Grassy Meadows?' Yeap chap - that's about the long and short of it...

Webster's just added a slew of new words to the dictionary. For fellow lyric-maker-uppers, be sure to check out "mondegreen", if you haven't heard of it before.

It seems someone can just make up a word, work it into everyday language and wait a few years. Eventually, it may end up in the  big book of words.

What words will you coin?

I'm working on my personal favorites:
1. Confuser - a confused user of the internet
2. Modifly - modify on the fly; make a change during an existing process or operation

...both of which were born from usability testing :)

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080707/new_dictionary_words.html

Sandy Marsh

I cannot claim to have come up with the catchy phrase or this great simple, engaging, and to the point presentation on social media. But nevertheless, I have to do my part to support Marta's in Social Media, and thus I am putting my seal of approval on this great presentation from Marta Kagan.

Is it revolutionary? No. Is there anything we haven't heard before? Probably not. The important thing it's fun and that it's right. It's all the stuff that we have been blogging, preaching, reading, and tweeting for the past few years, only to the point with fun graphics and those great top-level gut-punching numbers.

Marta Strickland

(image credit: FCW Insider blog)

Web 3.0 has been a fairly exciting subject in the industry for many of us. Over the past few years, we've been watching what Web 2.0 has done to our daily lives, the way we talk with our friends, the way we find information, the way we shop, the way we navigate the web, and even the way we navigate the world we live in. It's empowering, and it seems only natural to ask... well, what's next?

Still, there is one fairly large area that influences our lives that has been left off of the list in the Web 2.0 Awards. While there are many remarkable examples in the categories of education, health, and real estate, there hasn't been an award given for a best US Government 2.0 website. The revolution just hasn't happened yet, and considering the philosophy of Web 2.0, it is easy to understand why. Richard MacManus of ReadWriteWeb describes the philosophy as "letting go of control, sharing ideas and code, building on what others have built, and freeing your data." While that doesn't sound like something the government would ever embrace, there are some major signs that the revolution is approaching.

The Signs...

image credit gizmodo

The decision to get an iPhone might seem like an easy choice to most people. The fact that this decision has been so hard and so long coming (since February) has more to do with how much I use my phone, strangely, and not how little. I would rather hold out with my frustrating, but familiar Motorola Q for the right phone, than jump into another 2 year contract with the wrong one. My love for all things Google certainly hasn't helped in the matter. I had recently changed my mobile signature to say "still holding out for the Android", but with the Android release delays and developer drama, I just can't hold out any more.

I'm going to get an iPhone. When my current cell contract runs out (coincidentally on my birthday), there will be no more debating, I'm just going to do it.

Now that I'm convinced, I've already begun shopping what apps I'm going to fill my phone up with from the first day. The two I'm most excited about: Google Mobile and Where™. While I'm terribly frustrated that yet again Google did not integrate Google My Maps into their new app, the usefulness and intuitive interface cannot be denied. Google Maps is just meant for a fast touch screen interface. Where™ is another location-based application that delivers local information via Eventful, Yelp, GasBuddy, Zipcar, ShopLocal, Starbucks, Buddy Beacon® and more. While I am yet to find a mapping application that feeds in my custom GPX data, both of the options listed above are a great start in that direction. And, best of all, they are both free. Something I won't soon be taking for granted.

Marta Strickland

While I don't understand the craze behind Joss Whedon, I have to respect the major Web 2.0 embracing that is demonstrated in his latest project, Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. This is not another viral video, this is not another web sitcom. It's an event, a moment in time, a quickfire community assembled around valued content.

Dr. Horrible a three part series releasing every two days and then coming down for good. All acts will be available until midnight, Sunday, July 20. Then they will "vanish into the night, like a phantom (but not THE Phantom - that's still playing. Like, everywhere)" according to Letter from Joss Whedon available on the site.

It's ingenious. In a time of disposable culture, grassroot advocacy, and niche social networks, Joss is tapping into the vein of Web 2.0 in a way that most of traditional media has yet to comprehend.

"It is time for us to change the face of Show Business as we know it. You know the old adage, "It's Show Business - not Show Friends"? Well now it's Show Friends. We did that. To Show Business. To show Show Business we mean business. (Also, there are now other businesses like it.) "

And it looks like it's already working. The first installment released on Tuesday crashed the website.

So why is this important? Again, I'll defer to Joss who explains it best in his letter...

"Do what you always do, peeps! Do what you're already doing. Spread the word. Rock some banners, widgets, diggs... let people know who wouldn't ordinarily know. It wouldn't hurt if this really was an event. Good for the business, good for the community - communitIES: Hollywood, internet, artists around the world, comic-book fans, musical fans (and even the rather vocal community of people who hate both but will still dig on this). Proving we can turn Dr Horrible into a viable economic proposition as well as an awesome goof will only inspire more people to lay themselves out in the same way. It's time for the dissemination of the artistic process. Create more for less. You are the ones that can make that happen. Wow. I had no idea how important you guys were. I'm a little afraid of you."

Marta Strickland

image credit regelzam0ra (Flickr)

Searching for "street photography" in flickr groups returns 6,497 groups. It appears people around the world are drawn to capturing the urban lifestyle.

In a similar fashion, Blurb, an online book publisher, recently hosted a photography book contest. Anyone can use Blurb's site to put together books using their own photos. Sure, anyone can take photos. But has the advancement -- and nearly norm -- of digital photography allowed anyone to become a photographer? Maybe it's that the medium simply allows for us to share our captured moments more easily. And what defines a true photographer anyway? It's all in the eye of the beholder.

Sarah Jo Sautter

There was an interesting article in the New York Times about how there has been a shift in new teen romances, "brands are more important than romantic relationships to the female protagonists' popularity." Dr. Naomi Johnson, a communication professor at Longwood University in Virginia wrote her dissertation on female characters' obsession with being pretty, thin and stylish. She did this by reviewing three popular teen series, "Clique", "Gossip Girl", and "A-List". What she found was interesting.

In these new teen romances, she wrote, "Heroines no longer become women through romance, they become feminine through consumption" On average, there was more than one brand mentioned per page and the bad guys are often indicated by their unfortunate brand choices. Although all the representatives of the "Clique" series were adamant that there had never been any paid product placement in these books, cross-promotion or barter exchange, the books are represented by Alloy Entertainment. One of Alloy's biggest revenue streams is product placement and they are "very good" at reaching the pre-teen and teenage audience.

This goes into the face of the rise of the Alpha Girl. Alpha Girls have an "emancipated confidence" that is raising self-esteem, reducing depression, and altering gender roles among girls and young women.

So what does this mean? Maybe the difference with the girls coming of age is that they want the same things girls have always wanted, but now they will provide the clothes, fun and happiness for themselves versus looking to a boy to make it happen for them.

Full article in the New York Times:
In Novels for Girls, Fashion Trumps Romance

Embarrassingly as it is to admit I have recently become obsessed with teen romance novels (I like vampires, fairies, witches rather than the mean fashionable girls).

Kari Girarde

It's Digg meets Yahoo! Answers. It's IdeaStorm meets Wii's Everybody Votes. Sure, Edopter is taking from a lot of things that already exist, but that is part of what makes it so easy to use.

Placing themselves in a new bucket called social trendcasting, Edopter claims to "combine your insight and worldwide buzz to tap into the next big thing. Create and follow trends, share and discuss them - then watch as they spread across the world." It's an innovative concept that combines user generated content, social voting, influencer data, and internet buzz measurement to track the popularity of trends over time.

There is a lot to like about Edopter. The interface is intuitive and there are many useful graphs to help you track your trends. I also like the idea of users gaining not just points, but a portfolio of predicted trends and an opportunity to acquire recognition and "exclusive stuff". However, just like many other start-up web applications, the site is attracting early adopters and thus skewing the accuracy of the trend measurement. In what other world could Semantic Web be on the top 10 most popular trends across all categories?

Marta Strickland

Every day, the web sees the announcement of another avenue for communication. It could be a new social network, a new microblogging tool, or a new aggregation platform that allows you to start wrangling your social content stream into one space. Even with the move towards more aggregation, the sheer amount of information available is overwhelming. Just thinking about my own digital lifestream in the course of a year, the record of my activity, the content I as a single web user produces, can give me a headache.

It's only getting worse. It's not just the data. Now the tools themselves have become cluttered. I have Twine, Facebook, Twitter, Friendfeed, and MySpace all supposedly providing me a useful feed of top level information, many with their own set of apps and tools to make creating content and sorting through information easier. It's too much. I'm fatigued and I don't think I'm the only one.

We need better social tools. We need applications based on user empathy, applications that understand the mindset we are in. They need to understand when we want to open the social floodgates and when we want to turn them off.

Image credit: http://www.privcom.gc.ca

I recently posted an article about how there was a Revolution Still In Store For Web 2.0. Although, I still feel that enthusiasm to "let the revolution begin", I thought it would be worthwhile to post a counterpoint article. After all, the transparency of Web 2.0 is not all positive and helpful. Sometimes it has quite negative, even dangerous implications for all involved.

The Political Dangers of Transparency
There has been some recent drama over the way Congress members should be allowed to user Twitter. The argument for using Twitter is that transparency will "shine the light on every dark corner" of Congress, which in turn will rebuild American trust in the institution. Twitter should be treated like the "new town hall". However, the argument against is based strongly in the desire to keep politics separate from commercialization. The idea is that a political message, whether through Twitter or a social network, could be placed out of context next to an advertisement. This might create an undesirable connection drawn between the politician and the content of the ad.

That taps into a larger problem about creating new conversation and opening up existing data, two major components of web 2.0 transparency. Ultimately you cannot control who has access to that information and how that information is contextualized and reused.

After the jump... the dangers for business and individuals and can we actually avoid the move towards transparency?

I'm a big fan of wine and would love to say that I spend my free time jetting off to the various regions of Italy, Spain and France to taste the latest offerings from the wine producers there. In fact, I would love to say that I spend my free time just making it to a tasting somewhere here in NYC. Unfortunately, my schedule mostly doesn't permit it. If you find yourself in a similar situation at times, you can thank Twitter for helping to change all that for you.

Twitter has been used by a new wine company, Bin Ends, located in Braintree, Massachusetts, to facilitate online wine tastings. Dozens of people, armed with their Twitter accounts, participated recently in the now-monthly tastings that will be held on the third Thursday of every month.

To do this, Bin Ends first sent out the list of wines that were going to be tasted weeks in advance to allow the oenophiles the chance to go out and buy them - preferably through Bin Ends' online or brick-and-mortar store. Then, tweets were sent by Bin Ends from their Twitter account to the other Twitter users that were "following" them to spread the time and date of the tasting. Finally, when the day arrived, additional tweets were sent out from Bin Ends telling the tasters which wine to taste next as well as thoughts from the distributors about the wine.

As each wine was tasted, the comments started pouring in. Overall the response from the tasters was positive. Craig Drollett of Bin Ends said that "there wasn't a single negative comment that came across." To ensure that people were not isolated in their tastings, Drollett says, "[w]e encouraged people to get a group of friends together and pop the laptop up on the table with the bottles of wine."

For more information, or to sign up, check out http://www.binendswine.com/tastings.

Chris Patten

CollegeHumor

A bit of Tuesday afternoon fun. If fonts were people and there was a "font conference" this is what it would be. Enjoy!

Baron Conway

Yesterday, Google launched a beta feature called "walking directions" on Google Maps. While the directions are limited to routes shorter than 6.2 miles (or 10 kilometers), they provide a few useful advantages for walkers over regular driving directions. First, the walking directions ignore the direction of one-way streets. Second, it supposedly takes into account terrain, giving pedestrians a more flat and walkable route when possible.

Google acknowledges that the feature is clearly in beta, even adding this warning: "Use caution when walking in unfamiliar areas." It's obvious from a quick query on walking from the Ferry Building to Organic San Francisco that Google must not know the layout of the sidewalks around the Embarcadero Plaza, or it might have given me a slightly more direct route. Hopefully, they will be adding more information about sidewalks, pedestrian bridges, traffic, and even crime statistics.

Another feature missing that seems like a given is that there are no walking directions on Google Maps various mobile versions. This feature would be far more useful than its online counterpart, so you would assume it is a feature on it's way. Then again, I've always assumed the same thing about Google My Maps, and I have yet to see results.

Marta Strickland

Facebook just had their annual developers' conference and announced a few interesting changes to their empire.  The New York Times reported on a few of these that are especially interesting - Facebook Connect and the Great Apps program.

Facebook Connect makes Facebook users' credentials and their friends portable.  This is pretty powerful in that it allows small companies and opportunity to develop services external to the Facebook domain that take advantage of the fairly significant existing user base (and their networks).  So it's advantageous to independent developers and as such should spur more innovation, and probably more meaningless clutter as well.  It's advantageous to Facebook as they can start to open up the walled garden in a very controlled way. 

As for the user themselves? Well, in some ways it's a step in the right direction. On the other hand it doesn't go the complete distance that adopting OpenID would in giving users ownership of their social graph.  At the end of the day it's all about balancing user needs against business needs and this will continue to be a work in progress for anyone trying to drive profit from social networking.

On the other side of the coin, Facebook also announced the "Great Apps" program - essentially a certification program designed to elevate 'meaningful' applications up out of the vast sea of mediocrity that makes up the Facebook application collection. Obviously not their words. 

Anyway, there's obviously a ton of completely useless Facebook apps out there and as a result a continually increasing likliehood of application burn-out and backlash.  There are ways to filter, but some sort of "seal of approval" isn't a bad idea, provided the results resonate with the user base.

The nice thing is that, in theory, the "Great Apps" won't be limited to the big players.  Applications will be considered when they exemplify all ten of Facebook's guiding principles for a social application.  These principles are actually a pretty good representation of best practices for creating a successful social networking marketing program.  At the end of the day, how well something exemplifies the ten principles is probably quite subjective.  But gaining "Great Apps" status seems like a worthwhile bonus metric.  At the very least, making an honest effort to exceed the criteria for each principle can only benefit the program.

The principle I think many marketing-born apps miss out on is "useful" - although Facebook includes "entertainment" in that category, kind of a big loophole and likely to be one many gravitate towards.  And I'd add something that seems missing from Facebook's ten principles - creating a "find".  iLike, one of the first Great App selections, does meet Facebook's ten principles as well as providing an engine for one of the classic "finds"- new music. Users can share music they've discovered and ideally garner appreciation.  Maybe that's covered by Facebook's "useful" principle, but worth explicitly keeping in mind IMHO. 

David Lewis

Image Credit: dro!d (Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo, Mexico)

Neatorama posted a fun article today about the Strangest Internet Cafes From Around the World. While the growth of cyber cafes is declining in some parts of the world, others are seeing internet access pop-up in more interesting locations and with "unique" branding. I guess everybody needs a hook.

Marta Strickland

levelHead v1.0, 3 cube speed-run (spoiler!) from Julian Oliver on Vimeo.

New Zealand artist Julian Oliver's latest work, levelHead, allows viewers of the piece to interact with a 3D world by simply moving wooden blocks around in front of a web cam. How his work differs from most motion capture controlled art installations, is that the physical item that one uses to control the experience is replaced with a tiny digital world. Through moving and rotating coded blocks, the "player" attempts to move a tiny trapped man through an elaborate, interlocking labyrinth stretching one's spatial memory and logical reasoning skills.

A nice gallery of shots of levelHead is available here:
http://selectparks.net/~julian/levelhead/images/play-shots/

James Vreeland

Image Credit: weblogcartoons.com
As part of my duty as a contributor (and now Editor) for ThreeMinds, I have to inundate myself with blogs about social media, emerging technology, and digital culture on a daily basis. Not all of the insights from these blogs are enough on their own to make it into a ThreeMinds article. However, the pattern they create together, especially over the course of one week, can be a great snapshot into what is going on in the digital space.

For those reasons, from this week on I am going to begin a weekly digest of interesting articles from around the web. Please feel free to continue the conversation and post articles that you have found interesting this week. This is a social medium after all.

What's Been Happening This Week...

Is Corporate Social Media A Failure?
It started with a post last week on the WSJ entitled, Why Most Online Communities Fail, which stated that less than 25% of corporate online community have over 1000 members and that 60% of them cost over $1 million dollars. Follow-up posts exploded all over the blogosphere from ReadWriteWeb to Social Media Today, each with their own explanations why the sector is underperforming.

At the same time, many articles were published about how White-Label Social Networks are exploding and lists of the corporate social networks that are succeeding (on Social Media Today and Mashable). So is the sector really failing? What are the biggest mistakes being made? Does it have anything to do with a need for a community manager that possesses the essential skills to get consumers involved with the brand?

Later the Wall Street Journal came back and announced that the 60% figure was really 6% of communities over $1 million, a pretty big typo. But the discussion still rages on... is social media succeeding or failing for brands? Sounds like a topic for Opposing Views, a new site that allows experts to wage a debate on both sides of important issues.

Which Social Network Is More Open?
Talking about cloudy issues, first ReadWriteWeb announces that while Facebook is growing, it is still far behind MySpace. At the same time, MySpace pushes it's announcement about supporting OpenID only a day before the big Facebook announcement about letting users port profile data to other sites. It's a war of "Data Availability" vs "Data Portability", and every network is wanting to be the one that appears the most open.

It's a complicated topic that you can spend hours reading about:
MySpace Aims To Win Developers
What Facebook Connect Means For Corporations
Why Facebook Connect Matters & Why It Will Win

Speaking of hours of reading, I have a feeling next week is going to spark a great debate about two newly launched applications: Google Knol versus Twine.

Anyone else's brain hurt yet? Well the Informaiton Overload Research Group offers some scary statistics and a few solutions on how to deal with the seemingly endless flow of information.

Marta Strickland

When I moved recently I was confronted with the fact that I have apparently been hoarding books, CDs, and DVDs my entire life. While this has afforded me a nice collection of these items, it has made my small NY apartment quite cluttered and made moving about 450 lbs more expensive than it needed to be. Still, I couldn't bear parting with all of my items for that reason alone. Enter Swaptree.

This free site allows you to enter in your inventory of goods as well as things you want and then will match those lists against lists from other users. Creating the lists is easier than you might think - you can use the title, ISBN, or UPC code of the item or you can upload a list of items from a file, Amazon wish list or other lists such as "Best Books of 2007" by Amazon.com or "Best Selling DVDs" from barnesandnoble.com. And for the items that you have, you can enter in status ratings and descriptions so that other users will know what condition the items are in.

Once a potential trade is found (they'll even find three-way trades), you're notified via e-mail and given the opportunity to accept or reject it. If you accept it, you simply ship your item out. Swaptree.com even gives you the option to print a USPS shipping label directly from their site and have it billed to a credit card at the end of the month. Shipping charges have run me anywhere from $2 to $5. If you don't want to deal with the shipping, you can even tell Swaptree.com that you only want to deal with users in your neighborhood and then you can simply handoff items to one another. When the trade is completed, you can provide feedback on the user (very much like eBay) that other users can then read to determine if they want to make future trades with that person.

Chris Patten

Mentos just launched a fun advergame called Mentos Kissfight, a head-to-head Mortal Kombat style fighting game where you throw kisses instead of punches. It comes are part of a larger campaign emphasizing the kissability of Mentos-freshened mouths. Other examples include their Kiss Cam web game, and the latest TV commercial for Mentos gum.

The game play is fun, but overall I think that the campaign misses a big opportunity by not integrating any social components. Mentos seemed to understand the importance of social media back when they were trying to reap the rewards of the Diet Coke Mentos phenomenon. However, this campaign seems to miss the boat.

They are not promoting the game to the game-obsessed social network demographic. They are not tapping into the fact that gamers like to share tips and brag with each other. You can't even play against other people!!

Cute concept, but ultimately shouldn't kissing be more of a social experience?

Marta Strickland

image credit: exactitudes

Is our quest for individuality in vain? This topic has been under exploration by Rotterdam-based photographer Ari Versluis and stylist Ellie Uyttenbroek for the past 13 years in a series called Exactitudes. Ari and Ellie drew inspiration from the dress codes found in various social groups. They decided to systematically document the multicultural street scene in various cities around the world

Exactitudes, coming from a contraction of the words exact and attitude, shows subjects with similar attire striking similar poses. The effect of which can best be described by the artist's statement on their website:

"Versluis and Uyttenbroek provide an almost scientific, anthropological record of people's attempts to distinguish themselves from others by assuming a group identity. The apparent contradiction between individuality and uniformity is, however, taken to such extremes in their arresting objective-looking photographic viewpoint and stylistic analysis."

image credit: techrepublic

It has been about a week since the launch of Google Knol, a user-generated knowledge-base project that some have referred to as a Wikipedia-killer, while others put it more in the boat with a Squidoo or Mahalo. Since then, there has been a great amount of press around whether or not Google is making dangerous steps into the content business. People in the web industry are growing increasingly uncomfortable with the way recent Google launches (Knol) and acquisitions (YouTube) have set Google up in a position to own valuable real estate in their own search results.

I wanted to get an Organic perspective on the topic, so I asked our resident search guru, Damon Henry, what he thought about these recent developments:

"Anytime Google throws their hat in the ring I take them seriously. Wikipedia is still a leader in this space and will continue to lead for the short term. Google's official stance is, as always, that this isn't a competition. But with Wikipedia typically owning the #1 spot on the SERP, Knol may have the same affect on Wikipedia that Google business listings had on Yelp (and other local listing services). As you mentioned, Google could potentially dominate prime real estate on the SERP with Knol, local listing and maps, and Youtube. Scary.

Knol offers a few things that Wikipedia doesn't such as revenue sharing, private Knols, and Knols based on your experiences as opposed to being non-biased. This may also hurt Knols adoption. The "non-biased" nature of Wikipedia makes it my top source of information.

Finally, I love what Google has been able to accomplish, but I've been questioning their motives, particular when it comes to agency relationships. Google is known for directly engaging clients that may not be interactive savvy, and aggressively pushing their agenda. I believe they could be major threat to agencies. I just haven't figured out exactly how yet. I could go on forever about Google."

So what's your take? Is Google adhering to their "don't be evil" motto or diving head on into murky waters of web evilness?

Marta Strickland

image credit: Mario Amaya

An article I was reading the other day pointed me to Mario Amaya's blog, a graphic designer from Brazil. Though I don't speak Spanish the content is easy to appreciate. What he's done is taken two major brands/corporations & blends their logo's together. It's a simple & fun idea that was very well done.

Part 1 http://marioav.blogspot.com/2008/04/just-for-fun.html
Part 2 http://marioav.blogspot.com/2008/05/logo-mashups-part-2.html

It's kind of like those Brain Age puzzles where the word is blue but it is written in red font. Your brain knows something isn't right, but it is hard to put your finger on exactly what. My personal favorites are Google/Coke & Unilever / Unix.

Patrick Dunphy

Increasingly we are all using rich internet applications - be it Facebook, gmail, Pandora or the dozens of others out there. However the downside is that you still have to get to them on a browser - wouldn't it be great if you could experience an RIA as a full on desktop application. Well you can through an application called Fluid and its model of Site Specific Browsers (SSBs) which provide a great solution for your WebApp experience. Using Fluid, you can create SSBs to run each of your favorite WebApps as a separate Cocoa desktop application. Fluid gives any WebApp a home on your Mac OS X desktop complete with Dock icon, standard menu bar, logical separation from your other web browsing activity.

It is a small application that you basically type in the URL's you want to link to and it does the rest. It is a really great app. and a very interesting take on how to integrate a web app. into a desktop experience. BTW - it is only a MAC experience for now.

Check it out at: http://fluidapp.com/

Baron Conway