Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

Idea collection tools with some required fields are pretty standard and decently implemented collectors see a lot of contributions (think: Starbucks). But when these tools ask for a login, they need to offer something that makes signing up worth the effort.

"You dream it. Asus builds it" with "Intel inside" is the promise on the other side of the forum inputs at WEPC.com. Enticing to engadget-reading netbook hot-rodders like myself who literally DO dream of having a set of top engineers build a custom machine dialed in to my exact needs.

Here's how it works:
1. The site collects ideas, designs and feedback from users.
2. Asus evaluates the posts.
3. Innovators use the top posts as inspiration for a new notebook that uses Intel inside.

The site does a great job asking customers two questions:
1. What do you want regardless of limitations (the Share track with a looser format)?
2. What do you want given what can be checkboxes and sliders?

Both let you illustrate your idea with a flash drawing application. This makes it a bit more engaging than typing out a bulleted feature list or paragraphs of circuit-bent daydreaming.

Also, both questions collect some mutually beneficial user-generated content. Intel and Asus get free marketing research and brainstorming from the customers who buy their products. Machine tweakers get to browse and vote up ideas they like.

I was gung-ho to contribute until I realized voting on designs required setting up an account. In my contemplation of taking the dive, I saw plenty of room for improvement in the WEPC site. 

Here are a few pieces of feedback I have for the site's developers:
1. Give the user a single track. Don't split Share/Create, just reveal details as necessary.

2. Show examples of what other people have said on certain topics and allow you to load their data instead of re-writing something similar. It would help users know what kind of things to post and provide Asus/Intel with less duplicate data.

3. Allow more user input (voting) without logging on. If the site didn't require login for voting, Asus/Intel would get numbers closer to what the masses were interested in. Right now they are only getting numbers about what interests people who are dedicated enough to go through the login process.

4. Put some faces and names in the About Us section. The contributors/community members are listed in the authors section, but we're never introduced to the editors of the site.

5. Give me a sitemap. The number of different pages buried in the site without any clear navigation to them makes the site seem a casualty of feature creep where pages were just tacked on without IA thought. A sitemap would help and would sit nicely next to the search box.

Despite all that, I'm still interested to see if Asus builds a machine incorporating any of the ideas collected on the site and if it's a step closer to consumers seeing custom or to-order netbooks anytime soon.

And as a creator of exceptional experiences I wonder: As a consumer, would you contribute?

Jordan Gray

Making Better Digital Experiences
If you've never met me, you might wonder how a bowl of ice cream could inspire an article about creating great digital experiences. If you have met me, I don't need to tell you that sugary treats are the motivation for a lot of what I do.

How does 1st grade math come into play? Well, here's the scoop...

As I nestled down last evening to enjoy some alone time with reality TV, I was beckoned by the calls of a tiny tub of ice cream from my freezer. But, they weren't the calls from just any old tub of ice cream, mind you. They were calls from a new product from Häagen-Dazs aptly named "five" - in "Brown Sugar" flavor. "five" gets its name from its limited number of ingredients - its basic math. Here's the equation:

milk + cream + sugar + eggs + brown sugar =
yummy goodness

But, how could five simple things make something so tasty? It got me thinking about other simple yet memorably satisfying equations in my life...

baby squirrels + a hollow in a giant oak tree + my bedroom window =
hours of peaceful nature-watching

my niece as a baby + a tiny yellow flowy sundress + her discovering wind for the first time =
limitless giggles + a really great photo op

I take another spoonful of "Brown Sugar", sink deeper into my sugar coma and posit, could the absence of an "ingredient" improve the experience? Could making the equation even simpler bring about a better result? A: Yes. And here's how I know:

giant, ripe, sweet strawberries + MGM studios, Florida minus power (following a storm outage)
minus crowds, noise and flashing attractions = uninterrupted appreciation of a perfect bowl of fruit and warm air

What do all of this and that bowl of "five" ice cream have in common? You guessed it - simplicity. It made me think of the reasons I'm drawn to certain digital experiences...

one product + one day + one price =
a singular product-focused woot.com

iPhone + ZIP code + movie listings
minus advertisements
minus the film history of Matthew McConaughey =
flixster iphone application

a thin laptop + a manila envelope + a nice little ditty
minus background visuals =
a beautiful, memorable ad campaign for Macbook Air

Throughout my Experience Architecture career, remembering this - make every digital experience do its one thing well - has kept me focused and has hopefully improved my work. No fancy do dads. No trying to be all things to all people. No smacking users in the face with things they don't need. No additives. No preservatives. Just a few "ingredients" make for the most satisfying experiences.

I can't wait to try the next tiny tub of Häagen-Dazs "five" - "Ginger"...

milk + cream + sugar + eggs + ginger =
you'd better not be standing in between me and the freezer when that tub beckons!

Sandy Marsh

A Note on the Loss of Quality in Audio, Image and Video

On September 9, 2009, EMI will at long last issue newly remastered versions of the Beatles' albums and singles in stereo and mono on CD.  On that same day will be released a version of the popular videogame Rock Band featuring the Beatles' original recordings, which very well might outsell (in volume, total dollars and profit) the CD versions.  Though nearly impossible to quantify, the Beatles Rock Band's cultural impact will dwarf that of the CD's, which as a medium is fast becoming a relic.  Teenagers and their parents will congregate to "play" the as-yet-unnamed songs, signifying interactivity's transcendence over the relatively passive phenomenon of our parents' screaming at TV screen while the Fab Four played the Ed Sullivan Show.  Of course, we will have to wait through one more holiday season of the Beatles being unavailable via iTunes and Rhapsody, though they are available via the indirect sources of Pandora (and Rhapsody artist radio stations), so EMI, Apple Corps and the publishers can have one last financial hurrah before the CD's demise.

Yet, something seems amiss.  This sunset of the CD's predominance feels like the end of an era and sensibility that I'm not quite willing to let go of.

Some intriguing developments this week, and I'm not just talking about the Facebook robot or the big-screen kindle. Watching the social media space is like an elaborate and prolonged chess game. It's fun to watch the pieces keep moving into place.

The future will be real-time, distributed and geo-targetted.

The new kid at school: Twitter
Oh Twitter, everyone wants to be your date to the prom... or be you. The rumors were hot this week as Google got denied, Apple got denied. People were talking about Microsoft, but they you came out and told everyone you weren't for sale.

You've sent Facebook into an identity crisis!! They are doing everything they can to be as real-time as you, as open as you... they added more SMS mobile integration. But they still want to protect privacy. And they still want to take over ground from MySpace and imeem in the music world. Oh Facebook, why can't you just be happy with who you are.

Other miscellaneous, but awesome news
iTunes + kiosks = movies on the go
Digg + Facebook Connect = "social news" becomes social
Google Latitude + your blog = tools for stalkers
Twitter Search + reputation rank + link crawling = watch out Google

Marta Strickland

If your favorite restaurant was on Twitter -- or maybe they already are -- would you follow them? First, what could a local restaurant have to say in 140 characters or less to whoever might be listening? Second, is Twitter really the place for them?

Some restaurants seem to think so. They have realized pretty quickly that there is a world of foodies on Twitter. It's a great fit for smaller, local single shops or chains. And some are getting it right.

How does a restaurant stand out from the growing list?

1. Reward people for brand engagement. Make it fun.
A Detroit-area proprietor does this. If you follow @MattPrenticeRG and retweet some of their posts, they'll direct message you with a coupon code. The "code" is what you say at the counter when you place you your order. The last one gave me 50% off carry out!

Likewise, a casual California Mexican food chain, California Tortilla (@caltort), has given away 800 free tacos to customers who said the "secret" word the restaurant tweeted. It not only caused a spike in online chatter, but in store traffic as well.

2. Be conversational. Provide daily value. Got any new menu items up your sleeve? What did you buy at the market today? I want to know what's fresh or what to order.
 
As the name lends itself, the Tidbit Bistro (@tidbitbistro) offers daily "tidbits" or facts about Spain and Italy -- the countries of food they serve. I'll have to remember this one the next time I'm in Italy: "tidbit of the day: Don't use the classic but incorrect phrase 'al fresco'; for outdoor dining use 'all'aperto'. Al fresco means 'in prison'!"

One of the owner's of Soup & Scoop (@soupscoop), Michigan's top soup shop dishes details about their company, what soups are on or sold out and even personal happenings.

The Common Man (@thecmannh), a family of restaurants in New Hampshire, tweet about what's they're up to. Like: "Donated $22,000 to NH Food Bank today & dedicated 100's more from the sale of our bottled water using sustainable water filtration system!"

3. Make people feel part of something exclusive.
Café Metro (@cafemetro) is one of many marginal deli/café/salad bar restaurants that blanket the Garment Center in NYC. They have a program that rewards people with gift cards for finding their MetroMan on the street. They use Twitter reveal MetroMan's location as well as announce daily specials.

Kogi BBQ (@kogibbq) in LA, a mélange of Korean BBQ, tacos and burritos, uses Twitter to notify people where their trucks are going to be. That way their fans can get their hands on the food pronto. 

4. Do something good.
Maggiano's Little Italy (@Maggianos) has used small give-aways to attract more than 3,000 followers since mid-February. And just recently they asked for follows for a good cause. They'll donate $1 per follow to Make-A-Wish Foundation up to 7500 new followers. Sort of a sly way to get followers, but it's for a good cause. They'd just better do one of the items from my list to keep their attention once they've got them there.

5. Get your fans to speak for you.
Shake Shack (@shakeshack), Madison Square Park "modern day roadside burger stand" uses tweets from fans to report wait time via line lengths as well as custard flavors. They also connect solo diners who want to share a table and conversation.

6. Make it part of your business.
Because her menu changes depending on what she's got cooking, Chef at The Sugar Mommy (@thesugarmommy), a local New Hampshire source for homemade baked goods and confections, lets followers know what she's making. I'd go a step further and recommend she take requests, suggestions or special orders.

Big chains could learn a thing or two from these little guys. Give folks a reason to check you out and follow you and they will.

Thanks to Chad Stoller (for the photo, too), David Feldt, Marta Strickland, Traci Armstrong and fellow twitter followers for sharing their favorites.

Who is your favorite restaurant Twitter?

Sarah Jo Sautter
 

Good News! Twitter search to focus on relevancy. Bad News... is it doesn't matter.

The blogosphere has a fascination with rooting for the underdog. A wanting for the new kid on the block to take out the older, established, seasoned, and extremely profitable bully. The new kid we're talking about here is Twitter and the bully is, obviously, Google.

Santosh Jayaram, Twitter VP of Operations, has ambitious plans to index web pages linked to from Tweets. This would add additional context and relevancy to Twitter search results. I love the idea and can see the value of such a move, but I'm growing wary of are those in those in "The Industry" suggesting Twitter will somehow leap the reigning champ. Before I get in to why Twitter will have a difficult time competing with Google, here's a short list of recent "Google Killers": MySpace, Facebook, Wikia Search, Cuil, Wolfram's Alpha.

Okay, so why does Twitter have zero chance of defeating Google?

1. The current Twitter search engine doesn't work well
If Yahoo or MSN told me they developed the secret sauce to beat Google at it's own game, after laughing hysterically, I would be interested in what they had say because they, at a minimum, have fully functioning search engines. Twitter Search, in its current state, appears to be a basic full-text search engine that comes standard in most database servers. Twitter has a long road ahead!

2. No one needs Twitter
I have a Twitter account and I enjoy the service. It's a fun service that has recently received very good publicity, but no one needs Twitter. We need to find directions. We need to find highly relevant information. Google has proven to be the best available solution for filling this need.

3. People don't search they "Google it"
Old habits are hard to break. Yahoo has been able to retain a respectable share of search not because they deliver the best search results but because they've retained a loyal following from their days as the leading search engine. It will take some time before we associate Twitter with Search.

4. Twitter should set their sights on Facebook first
Facebook is far superior to Twitter in terms of execution and technology. Facebook Lexicon ( http://facebook.com/lexicon/new) provides sentiment analysis, trended keywords and topics, keyword associations, pulse, and geography information based on keywords in profiles and search behavior. It's similar Google Insights for Search (http://google.com/insights/search/) but on steroids! Twitter will need to face, no pun intended, this battle before taking on Google.

5. Whatever Twitter can do Google can do better
Google currently has the ability to index social network content including Tweets. I don't believe it will be very difficult for Google to bake Tweet relevancy, ranking, reputation, and authority into their algorithms. Additionally, Google has developed the most efficient advertising platform in the world. Combining the two equals a world of hurt for those competing in the search space.

6. Finally, see the image located at the top of this article.

Damon Henry

Realizing perhaps that the female netbook/notebook computer market is steadily growing, Dell decided to launch its own specialized shop called Della. Nothing fancy here. Really, it's just your usual specialty shop highlighting some Dell products designed with the women users in mind.

Product Makeover
And of course, highlighted in the store is Dell's very own Inspiron Mini 10 netbook which sports several girly designs from well-known artists. Expect to see the pink-colored Mini 10 all over the site as well as some fashion accessories that women will surely love to have on their Mini 10.

You can find all sorts of accesories for your Mini 10 at Della. From netbook sleeves, bags, and girly-looking mouse.

But the major highlight of the site is of course the Mini 10 with various girly designs...Or so I thought. Appears they should have consulted more females in this plan.

Under Tech Tips, the site states:

"Seven Unexpected Ways a Netbook Can Change Your Life
Once you get beyond how cute they are, you'll find that netbooks can do a lot more than check your email."

Misreading the Target
Michelle Ameron finds the irony in this, commenting:

They tout that it has enough memory for shopping and can track calories.
 
For real? Maybe they should have just quietly made a pink one like everyone else and left it at that...

When the tone of all of the "Tech Tips" could basically be summarized as "You can even use The Internet on this thing!", it's kind of a low blow to anyone shopping for a new computer...online. I'd guess their target is technically inclined enough to know that you don't buy a laptop just because you can Google recipes on it, but the site sure doesn't speak to that assumption.
 
On such a targeted site, I'd assume I was being offered bare bones options and paying extra for bright colors because they've already established, in a reassuring tone, that I won't know the difference anyway. When checking out the Dell site a while ago, it did seem to limit component options and offers depending on your starting point. On a second look at the Della site, they don't even clearly offer the Mini 9 (least expensive, but most compact). It's buried at the bottom. I guess the ladies deserve an instant upgrade to the Mini 10 at $449?
 
As for the product, it's a useful and fun super-gadget for almost anyone to have around. There are just so many other ways to go with messaging that would even err on the practical side, they really didn't need to sell it, or their audience, short by likening it to OMG, the-best-make-up-compact-ever.

Enticing Interest by Usage
I like how they make the selling point to their demographic by using all those special tips. The twist is that all the apps that are mentioned are actually online tools you could use on just about any computer -- similar to the iPhone commercial advertising tons of apps. So rather than push the product, they push what you could be using it for.

Della has some social networking features. So, if you've got a techie girlfriend or wife, you may want to tell them about Della where they can participate in the discussion and join the site's social networking activities on Twitter, MySpace and Facebook.

But it looks like they may have gone a little too stereotypical with this new endeavor. Did they shift their prospects in the opposite direction with this poor understanding of their target?

Mark Shu
Michelle Ameron

 

The ITP Show is billed as "a festival of interactive sight, sound and technology from the student artists and innovators," and it is just that.  ITP, the Interactive Telecommunications Program, is an arts graduate program at NYU that continually attracts great people and delivers great ideas and work.

This past Monday night, I got a chance to attend the Spring Show and saw tons of great art mixed with great technology.  Here are just a few of the tons and tons of amazing projects that were on display.

Imagined Location re-imagines new ways to look at, use and play with geographic information.  Think of turning Google Earth or Google Maps into a kid's toy.  Rearrange states and continents, generate land with clicks, see your address rearranged as a sort of puzzle, and so on.  Digital maps have changed how we use maps forever, and these are some very forward-thinking approaches to what we might do with that data.

New controllers are sprouting up everywhere; the Wii, the iPhone, touchscreens are all fairly fairly common these days.  But one controller at the show was a new one to me in the world of computing: MUD.  As a software controller, mud is quite a bit different than the rest and this project shows us the limits that we can and will go to in interacting with our computers in the near future.

Che-Wei Wang's work with time and his clocks bring up lots of conversations around sustainability and how we interact with time.  This project reminded me of Swatch's notion of Internet Time and Stewart Brand's work with the Long Now Foundation.  Rethinking how we deal with time isn't the most obvious topic to bring up at your next client meeting;  but then again if you're talking about Hulu, Tivo or any other number of current media platforms, you're no stranger to the idea of timeshifting.

The future is now, at ITP.

Evan Cordes

As part of Google efforts to expand the use of their web browser, Chrome, they have decided to run their first ever TV commercial. This is an interesting decision considering Google hasn't really had to directly market their products, and they have been such an evangelist in the use of the internet to communicate its wares. After looking at the video that will run as the commercial, I am wondering what Google's intentions are for this particular spot. Since it doesn't really spell out what Chrome is or why to install it, it may be just to spark curiosity or interest - a buzz creator. I don't necessarily think it will resonate with casual internetters (like my Dad, a 76 year old retiree, who will use whatever browser is installed for him), but for those couch potatoes that are also active internetters, this could be Google's way to introduce a product that most don't know about. Mozilla's Firefox, who also ran TV commercials a couple years back, has been increasing in browser market share year over year, and Google sees the TV ad as just another medium to cover as part of their overall campaign for Chrome.

Google selected this clip for the TV ad:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHZFsJKlsuA

Sticking to their roots, Google is still leveraging the internet and viral tools by setting up a Chrome YouTube channel. It showcases videos submitted by various indie shops (each clip was limited to about a $10K budget) that introduce Chrome in some very innovative ways. Some are done quite well, and a refreshing way to create some buzz.

http://www.youtube.com/user/googlechrome

My favorites are "Features List" and "You and Your Browser."

Anthony Jankiewicz

image credit: Kuw Son [Flickr]

It looks like someone turned up the pressure on a little internet company known as GOOGLE this week. Almost every item in my box is about a competitor moving in on their turf and all the new launches Google has cooked up to combat them. As much as we like the story of David vs Goliath, I think this Goliath is going to continue its world domination for at least a few years to come.

What's Been Happening This Week

Google Wants To Be More Real Time, Fail Whale Included
So the first big Google news this week was the hour or so that the service was down on Thursday. Never more quickly have I realized how much of the web Google actually powers... blogs running AdSense and Google Analytics were choking, embedded YouTube videos across the social web left empty, and I actually had to start using Yahoo! search (*gasp*).

But despite the #googlefail, this week was a big week because Google launched a suite of new search tools called Google Search Options, including time-based search which attempts to in some way rival Twitter Search. People are still heated up over this Google vs Twitter battle, but Twitter didn't win ground this week, as it pissed off many of its core fans by pulling a Facebook and removing a social discovery feature that many people loved (#fixreplies).

Google Wants To Be More Semantic Driven
Besides Google's time-based search, Google Squared and the "Wonder Wheel" are two more hot items included in their new Google Search Options. Google Squared returns search results in a spreadsheet format, structuring the otherwise unstructured data on web pages. The "Wonder Wheel" is a Flash-based application that starts with your search keyword in the center, and then displays related terms around it.

While Google's new offerings are interesting, and will likely be powerful based on the sheer amount of data the Google empire indexes... there is something to be said about the more intuitive interface of the newly launched WolframAlpha. WolframAlpha is a computational knowledge engine that allows to query factual data (weather, history, currency, health). Simply, it's an "answers engine" giving you data rather than a search engine which gives you links.

The Challengers To Google's Extended Empire
Besides Twitter (and Facebook, who is also vying for the real-time empire) and Wolfram Alpha causing threat to Google's search service, there are also the booming video sites threatening to dethrone YouTube. Both MTV and Hulu's traffic have been growing at higher rates that YouTube. And despite Hulu's impending monetization problems, there is some really promising opportunities for it to make moves into the mobile video market.

Marta Strickland

image credit: Kate loves Bar Pt

I recently came across an article that had me questioning the validity of my position as an Experience Architect. A San Francisco-based Interaction Design Firm, Cooper (a la Alan Cooper) asked "Is Interaction Design a Dead-End Job?"
 
In fact, discussion around these topics has heated up of late. Jesse James Garret, the infamous experience designer who coined the term "Ajax," recently made the bold statement that Information Architects (IAs) or Interaction Designers (IxDAs) do not exist. So where does that leave people like me who hold title of Senior Experience Architect on our business cards?
 
Both Cooper and Garrett arrive at the same conclusion. We're User Experience Professionals with titles such as User Experience Designer/Architect/Planner ... However you spin it, we think about the experience.
 
So what exactly does this mean?
 
Interaction Design as function is certainly not dead. Information Architecture as a function is also alive and well. The scope, however, has changed/expanded, and the functions are performed by more than just IAs or IxDAs. As a Senior Experience Architect, I work closely with and am sometimes mistaken for an Interaction Designer. An Experience Professional considers a task and all the touch points between a user and a technology. Our goal is to plan a seamless, intuitive experience from beginning to end. This entails structure, flow, and navigation. We also look at any interactive elements and try to make them obvious.
 
Lately, I've been following Dan Klyn who, among his many interesting observations, compares our architecture craft to that of a real architect. He quotes Walter Gropius who says, "Architecture is a mastery of space." So, the question Klyn asks is, "User experience design implies a mastery of __________?"

I submit that it still implies a mastery of space, but the definition of space is expanded. Good architecture considers the structure, the space, how one enters and what one experiences in the space. Emotion and art is involved. Comprehensive architectural design affects the structure, way finding, interior design and emotion.

A writer might see my role differently than a designer. An engineer surely sees my work differently than a project manager. But, when done successfully, experience architecture serves all of their needs.

How do you define Information/Experience Architecture? Do you think it's here to stay?

Anthony Viviano
 

In honor of the Web 3.0 Conference going on in New York, I wanted to write a piece today not to answer the question "What is Web 3.0?" There are plenty of articles that try and accomplish that task, and to me the easiest answer still is: Who cares?

It doesn't matter what Web 3.0, it doesn't matter what exactly we call it. All that matters to 99% of the people surfing the web is how it is going to affect their daily digital lives. I see three ways that is going to happen in the near future.

1. Knowledge Engines (give me data, not webpages)
There has been a lot of attention paid to Wolfram Alpha, which just launched in beta last week. Do I think it's a "Google killer"? Nah. It doesn't have quite the right ingredients to go mainstream yet... a funny name, a focus on deep but niche data, no easy answers for the lazy college student. But, it's not the only "answers engine" coming on the scene. Look for Google Squared to launch shortly. As consumers become more familiar with this new type of service, they will flock to the service that offers the best answers, even if it has a really funny name.

2. Social Discovery (you're no longer browsing alone)
Start ups like Headup and the very promising Glue offer contextually relevant social information as you browse. Soon consumers will see that they have a much better option than finding out what 500 complete strangers said about a restaurant or a book... they can find out what 10 of their closest friends and colleagues said about it, without even having to ask.

3. The Open Social Graph (social goes everywhere)
With the announcement yesterday that Facebook is going to integrate with OpenID, it's a great time to start asking... what is this really open social web going to look like? Much of the magic is going to go on behind the scenes, in the secret (to consumers anyway) world of linked data. Formats that describe relationships, interests, and social activities already exist, and have the potential to infuse some relevance to the increasingly noisy social networks. As more companies latch onto OpenID, consumers are going to see their online worlds bleed together. Retail opportunities inside Facebook, social opportunities on news sites.

Why do brands and marketers need to care?
The opportunity for marketers to leverage what Web 3.0 is going to change about the web is a whole lot more than semantic advertising. While behavioral targeting and contextual ads leave a lot to be desired, semantic enabled ads along cannot fight the impending trend... online ads are losing engagement. Most solutions are failing to realize the potential of the medium. It's like bringing a radio announcer to television, and forgetting about the new addition of vision and motion. Ads often lack interaction, context, and socialization. (Comparison courtesy of Joe Marchese, SocialVibe)

No... brands and marketers need to care because Web 3.0 is going to take all the social chatter online and start piping it into relevant tools, discovery mechanisms, and applications that will actually enable consumers to make smarter decisions and inform purchases. Social recommendation (semantic enabled) will replace online advertising. And unless we do everything we can to make sure our content is part of the stream... that we are forward-thinking, open, and friendly in this growing pool of linked data... we are going to be left out of the conversation.

For more, check out our series on Web 3.0 from last year on how the next generation web will change the way you connect, discover, and share with the social online world. And how this movement is going to make marketing more relevant and measurable.

Marta Strickland

Neil Patrick Harris will be hosting the Tony Awards and one of the reasons he was chosen was because of his work on the web: Dr. Horrible Sing-Along Blog. He plays a super-villan in this low-budget yet professional, Internet-only musical production. If you missed it, you can view the first season on Hulu. It crashed the site, shot to the top of the iTunes video chart its first week and garnered quite a (cult) following. Marta Strickland told us why it was so ingenious in an earlier post back in July.

Rumor (according to i09) has it that it may become a full-length movie. Is Hollywood on its way to using more content produced for the web?  It's not a bad idea as they seem to be running out of old TV shows.
 
They should follow in one European city's path. Upload Cinema is a film club that takes the best web films to the big screen. Every first Monday of the month at 9:30 P.M. a fresh program of Internet shorts is screened at a movie theater in Amsterdam. This probably has more legs as a local draw in more artsy, nouveau communities. Think Park City for the Sundance Film Festival. Or Traverse City, Michigan for their annual film festival. But I have yet to hear of any North American cities truly partaking in such a source. If we've overlooked any, please share here.
 
Hollywood seems to be stuck in time though. MTV.com wrote about how although the Web is faster for breaking entertainment news, trade pubs get a better rap -- even though they sometimes break the same stories without giving any credit to their Web competitors.

So just as major entertainment pubs view film blogs as not as credible, polished and noteworthy, do they view web-based content the same way?
 
Like newspapers, Hollywood is not adapting quickly enough to the web influence on movies and it may be to their detriment. I'm sure the democratization of cinema is frightening because the king entertainment city has had a strong hold for so long. But if the big movie houses don't collaborate with the Web at all -- or wait too long to do so -- they just might get blogged out of business.

Kari Jo Girarde
Sarah Jo Sautter
 

My newborn wearing one of the Carter's tagless onesies

When I had my baby in 2007, I bought as much organic clothing as I could easily find in stores and afford. I made sure the rest was 100 percent cotton. When it came to which brand of onesies I would buy, I went with the "trusted" Carter's. I remember my own mother dressing my sister and me in Carter's clothing when I was little. They've been around for years, so they must be a good brand, right?

A little less than one year after my son had been wearing their tagless clothes, I started seeing people blogging about rashes their kids were having. This really concerned me as I had seen no statement from Carter's themselves disputing the issue or making amends. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a warning.

But it wasn't until many parents started making a fuss about it and spreading the word online that Carter's decided to go a step further. They still have made no official recall, but a friend of mine gave me a tip that they'd refund you for the clothes.

I emailed the company to find out what they would do about my 27 garments that I no longer wanted. The first response I received was interesting.

Thank you for emailing Carter's Consumer Affairs. The Carter's offices are currently closed for the holiday.  We will be closed from 12:00 noon CST on Thursday,April 9th through Sunday April 12th.  We'll return on Monday April 13th.  Our offices will open at 8 am CST.  We will be replying to your email on Monday.  Thank you again for contacting us.

Never had I received an out of the office reply from a company, but I was impressed at their immediate response. The holiday they were referring to was Good Friday through Easter Sunday.

My son had outgrown the clothes with the tainted tags, but I had packed them away just in case we decided to have another (something many moms do). I started going through my bins, collecting all the Carter's clothing. A little more than half had the concerning tags. But what about the others? How could I be sure that those pieces were okay?

They asked how many garments I had with the tainted tags so they could send a prepaid mailer. I expected to receive a store credit for my worn clothes. Instead they sent a check for the value of those pieces  -- $136 and some odd cents!

I was happy to get the cash, because honestly I would have given away the store credit. Carter's has done what they think is the right thing to do in this situation. But that's not enough for me to return to their stores.

They state they've switched back to a different label. But their statement is even concerning.

... the Fall 2007 labels appears to have produced a more pronounced and noticeable reaction among those children who are most allergic to the ink. For stylistic reasons, Carter's has switched back to the smaller labels for our Spring and Fall 2008 line.

"A more pronounced?" So their other tags could produce a reaction too, it's just not as pronounced? I don't think I want to chance it again.

Do you think Carter's did the right thing?

Sarah Jo Sautter

Previously, we wrote about ProtoShare, an online prototyping tool that aims to make the process of wireframing and prototyping more collaborative online. Other tools like Balsamiq also exist online, and then there are more offline prototyping tools like Axure, which has, for long, lacked Mac compatibility, but now there is a Mac version in the works.

Another online prototyper that didn't get a mention on ThreeMinds before is RapidRabb. Developed in Berlin and originally launched in December 2008, RapidRabb's very similar to ProtoShare in terms of features. The Java-based online editor in RapidRabb seems to offer a few more items/widgets to drop in the wireframes. Compared to Balsamiq, both Protoshare and RapidRabb appear a bit cleaner and more versatile.

With this many online and offline prototyping tools now out, the software tools for rapid prototyping, even if they're not perfect yet, definitely exist. What may be more of a challenge for many design teams is - after they have the tools - how to make collaborative prototyping a truly effective part of the existing process.

Update: RapidRabb has recently changed its name to pidoco.com.

Karri Ojanen

During the past week, I've been attending the Web 3.0 Conference in New York. There have been a lot of definitions of "web 3.0" used, but one of the best definition I've seen so far came in the opening keynote from Tom Tague:

"Web 3.0 is about cleaning up the mess we've made and harvesting the value we created with Web 2.0."

And how are people harvesting this value?
Answer: they aren't... at least not yet.

As Aza Raskin from Mozilla pointed out during his presentation on the Contextual Web... it's not a technology problem, it's a people problem. Nobody marks up their pages with semantic code because nobody is doing anything interesting with the code. Nobody is doing anything interesting, because nobody is marking up their pages.

People need incentives to get the movement started. This means there needs to be some mainstream implementations that make it obvious to people what value can come from this technology. This week we saw the start of a few of those mainstream applications:

1. Wolfram Alpha, a knowledge engine, launched bringing us a new way to look for information online
2. Glue, a social browsing extension, opened up it's API
3. Facebook has started allowing users to log in with OpenID

2009 won't be the year of Web 3.0. But if things continue down this path, 2009 will be the year that sets us up for the next decade of the web... when people realize they can ask for something more out of their search engines and when relevant information will break through the online noise.

Marta Strickland

Photos by Andrew Liszewski at OhGizmo!

Mobile operator Orange seems to have put together three of my favorite things - music, festivals and green energy - two years in a row. At last year's Glastonbury Festival in the UK, Orange introduced a recharge Pod tent to keep mobiles juiced with 500-watt solar panels and a wind turbine. They also gave a few lucky dancers kinetic chargers called Dance Charge, which convert the dancers' physical activity into electrical current with the help of a system of weights and magnets.

This year, Orange UK is getting ready for Glasto with the Power Pump. It's a foot pump that drives a turbine, which powers a tiny generator. They say the turbine will generate enough energy to power five minutes of call time in a just a couple minutes of pumping.

Karri Ojanen

Are you on Facebook? Twitter? LinkedIn? Any other social network? Then, you're a community manager -- managing yourself as a brand.

This is the reality of our digital life. We constantly create artifacts that others come to know us by, whether consciously or subconsciously. This is the first in our three-part series on social media monitoring ourselves. Let's start with defining yourself and your community.

What Have You Got to Lose?
Your reputation. Make one wrong move and you've blown your credibility, likability and/or your community's trust. For example, piss off one follower, and his reaction might cause you to lose many more in the process.

How you portray yourself online is tougher to do than in person. You must always put your best foot forward, because you never know when you're making a first impression or the hundredth impression. Understandably you can't always be "on." But it's worth taking the time to think twice about what you're "saying."

Who Is Your Audience?
Or more importantly, who do you want it to be? Determining who you're talking to is the first step in building your community. Get inside the minds of your followers.

1. What do they care about?
2. Why should they care? Give them something more interesting, informative, indispensable etc. than their friends can give them. Anyone can talk toothpaste. What can you say about it that either no one else has or no one else would? Be relevant enough to break through their inundated world.
3. How do you reach them? The old adage "fish where the fish are" couldn't be more fitting here. But it also means making sure your bait is visible and enticing. And by your bait, I mean your name/identity.

How To Captivate Them
Think of your community as a party where you're the host. In order to be a better host, here are the questions you should be asking yourself often:

1. Who are my biggest supporters? Recognize them both publicly and privately. Find a way to reward them. (That could simply mean giving them exclusive content.)
2. Am I being a good host/hostess? A good host/hostess will be a catalyst for dialogue.
3. Have a given people a reason to come back?

Say you do all this. How do you know if it's all working? There are tools for that. Check out Part Two of this three part series as we talk about the pros and cons of what's available to help you analyze your party hosting -- or community management -- skills.

Sarah Jo Sautter

In the first post of the series, Sarah Jo made a bold point: if you are socializing online, "you're a community manager -- managing yourself as a brand." It's easy to forget but often the what comes up on our Google results page or conversations on Twitter are the way many people are introduced to who we are and what we do.

Remember... you are a brand. So why not start acting like one, and invest in managing your digital life. Luckily there are some great tools out there to get you started.

The Facebook Toolbox
1. Facebook Insights: Right now, you can use this tool to monitor the amount of comments, fans, etc. you have on your "fan page". The upcoming makeover will provide a lot more value including interactions per post and post quality.

2. Facebook Lexicon: While you'd have to be a pretty big celebrity to make a spike in Facebook's version of Google Trends, this tool can help you understand what's being talked about the most. Content strategy needs not only be for big brands anymore.

The great words of Joel Bauer... "it isn't about being liked, it's about being effective."

Now I would argue that the greatest advantage today is in being both. In a time where our online social world is filled with endless noise, there is a lot competing for human attention. And as wrong as this may sound for some people, the truth is that in order to reach your audience (be them friends or colleagues)... it's not enough to just be liked anymore, you have to be liked and effective.

We are all brands. We are all community managers.

But, that doesn't mean that we have the budget or large staff employed at agencies or within brands to manage our online presence. No, we need to rely on useful tools to tell us the information we want to know, we need to know, and when we know it. Unfortunately, those tools don't currently exist.

Why Social Networks Need To Embrace This
In the great big battle of social networks competing for our engagement time... it will be the networks that give us relevant feedback (who likes our posts, how many forwarded my link onto their friends) that will win our attention.

This isn't so far off from what Obama discovered in his campaign for president, or what game designers have known for quite sometime: if you show people the progress of their actions, they will become more invested and engage more frequently. People like statistics, people like feedback, and people like to know that they are getting somewhere.

How Facebook and Twitter Can Offer More Value

What they can do immediately...
1. Give users access to the data they already collect. I shouldn't have to have a fan page to know how interactions on my profile trend over time. What month did I have the most photo comments, wall posts, etc. You are already collecting that data, let me have it!

2. Integrate consistent metrics into the interface. Twitter's big problem is that metrics are inconsistent and housed outside of their site. It would be nice to have an analysis panel that easily connects together my retweet ratio with the actual content that got retweeted.

What they can do in the future...
3. Base new functionality on what consumers want to know. There is already enough competing for our engagement. Facebook and Twitter don't need to add more applications or functions. Instead they should help us gain a better understanding of the effectiveness of what we are already doing.

Social sites need to realize that consumers don't want more widgets and feeds and doodads that add to our everyday noise. It's time for networks to help increase the relevance of social content, by helping us become more informed party hosts.

Marta Strickland

image credit: Bonnaf

News sources reported earlier this week that the TV networks just might be developing a series based on Twitter.

It sounds like it would be unscripted, competitive and non-professional talent. The description is vague, but it leaves me wondering how it'd really work.

The Cast
Would just anyone be able to participate or would it be only pre-selected Twitters? I'm thinking about MTV's The Hills. Before the series, the actors were simply Hollywood wannabees. It was the success of the show that turned them into full on celebrities.

Frequency
In order for it to be interesting and meaningful, it'd have to be real-time. Otherwise it'd just seem fake. Would you be able to watch the show and them Twittering at the same time?

Content
What would a televised show give viewers that Twitter couldn't? I'm already on Twitter. Even if I decide to follow some seemingly interesting "cast" of "friends," why would I devote time in front of the tube to them?

Medium
Is TV the right medium for this? It seems more fitting for the interactive sphere. More pointedly, Twitter is engaging. Unless you're on Twitter interacting in dialogue, why would you want to read static posts?

So, I'm a cynic. What do you think of the idea? What would make you watch the show?

Sarah Jo Sautter

What Was Everyone Talking About This Week?
Two stories filled up my news feed this week... one deservingly and the other not so much.

First, everyone went crazy over the announcement of a reality TV celebrity-stalking Twitter enabled television show. Considering that Twitter is about to add location-based information to each tweet, some celebs became notably concerned, including super-tweeter Ashton, who threatened to stop tweeting. Whether or not that show happens, it's clear that Twitter and television are going to merge in a variety of ways in the future.

Second, and the more deserving of attention story, was the launch of Google Wave: a real-time communication platform. The platform is much too robust and amazing to do justice in a few sentences, so I suggest you read Mashable's "complete guide" and look for a more thorough post from Threeminds on this new game changer.

What Fell Below The Radar?
Did you know Microsoft launched a new search engine? Why, you might ask? Good question. Bing (yes that is the name) hopes to conquer better search in four specific verticals: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition, and finding a local business.

The entire Church of Scientology got banned from making edits to Wikipedia due to questionable activities... like trying to remove any semi-negative reference to the church through out the entire site. Hulu and Boxee are in verbal fisticuffs over a misleading "error message" Hulu placed in their newly launched desktop version that discourages use of Boxee.

And apparently users over 55 are exiting Facebook in droves, which either shows that recent surge in users was due to peer pressure or that Facebook has failed to make the user experience as intuitive as it could be for new, less savvy users... or probably both.

Marta Strickland

Three. Wolf. Moon. If you recognize the three words, then you probably know at least part of the story. If you don't, it is the digital equivalent of a butterfly flapping its wings in the Amazon and six months later that action directly resulting in a category-five hurricane striking New York City. Well, in this case, tiny Marlborough, New Hampshire.

On November 10, 2008, Rutgers University law student Brian Govern posted a satirical review on Amazon.com. It was for a product that he hadn't been shopping for, but found its way to him by way of the site's proclivity to recommend somewhat random products. In this case the recommendation was for a t-shirt. A t-shirt emblazoned with an image that was destined for an irony-driven star turn in the national spotlight. One that appears torn from the side of a disco van from 1977. In Anchorage, Alaska. Three airbrushed wolves. Howling at an oversized moon.

Unable to resist, Brian wrote an impassioned endorsement that ended with the following words. About a product he had no intention of purchasing.

"Pros: Fits my girthy frame, has wolves on it, attracts women
Cons: Only 3 wolves (could probably use a few more on the 'guns'), cannot see wolves when sitting with arms crossed, wolves would have been better if they glowed in the dark."

Today, 859 other people have added reviews of their own. And a product which last year was trickling into the hands of consumers at a rate of one or two per day is now selling at a rate of more than 300 units per hour. Michael Krinsky and Jeff Grosner, owners of the company that produces the shirt, are now the unlikely manufacturers on the top-selling item of clothing on Amazon.com, a position that they secured on May 19th and have held since.

The story made it into the newspaper of record--the New York Times--last Sunday. It got to ABC News--and TV--on Wednesday. The Associated Press released their syndicated print version of the tale 23 hours ago. But what none have so far chosen to mention is the cult that spawned the phenomenon. Following the breadcrumbs to other "related" products for sale on Amazon.com quickly demonstrates the cult's power. As well as the talents that they wield.

I am speaking of the cult of the satirical reviewer.

They have written poetry about milk. Cracked wise about overpriced diamonds. Gotten snarky about exercise pants. And now they've got their first number-one hit. Three Wolf Moon. Remember the name. Because it may well symbolize a spiritual shift in the very fabric of hipster irony. Mock Three Wolf Moon if you must, but why? Instead, recognize the cultural moment that produced it. Celebrate the unlikely response by a student and the ensuing dogpile that now has 300 shirts an hour flying across the Internet. As an oft-sarcastic and sometimes public-facing consumer, personally, I'm finding the moment strangely empowering. A new twist on the American dream. With wolves. Which makes it inherently more awesome.

Daniel Turman

PS. Of course there's a YouTube parody that's racking up the views too.