Three Minds On Digital Marketing @ Organic

Last Sunday, more than half a million people worldwide opted to heed Nike's call and run ten kilometers. Official race events were held in 26 cities worldwide, while others were encouraged to "run anywhere" using the Nike Plus/iPod pedometer system. With online tabulation of race results for official competitors and iPod users, the event literally allowed participants to race the world, at a universally accepted distance. The promotion also involved pretty sweet micro-site action and free t-shirts.

Liking the idea of going out for a run with the world, Dawn Farrell in the San Francisco office put out the call for runners. Holiday weekends being what they are--and 10K being what it is, at more than 6.2 miles--only three of us joined the worldwide effort on Sunday. Possessing neither Nike Plus systems, nor living in one of the official race cities, we decided to freestyle it. Draw up our own courses and get at it. Three people, three stories. And a nice shared moment of zen with the planet. Viva Endorphin release. First, the words of the organizer, Dawn Farrell.

"Pacific Heights was the backdrop for my first ever 10K. My goal was to finish and I did. My course was designed to be dog friendly as my 12 year old Labrador joined me (that's 84 to you and me). She finished too, a much bigger accomplishment than anything I did that day.

I found myself far more aware of others sharing the pavement than I usually am, my competitive nature kicked in as I observed how easy they made it look, and my Nike t-shirt mandated 'Just Do It' attitude changed quickly to more of one of, 'I can totally take you.' I did managed to get myself to a more zen place at about 4K thanks to the sounds of the Rolling Stones blasting from my nano."

The Twitterverse was a-twitter yesterday due to AMC issuing take down notices to a series of fan-created accounts for the characters of their hit series Mad Men. When the accounts went up a few months ago, the characters were embraced by Twitter users, who probably skew on the side of an advertising/marketing/consulting tech-savvy audience. They didn't care whether they represented AMC or not. No, this was a new and exciting form of fan-fiction.

Twitter playing nice, upheld to the notices and temporarily took down the accounts. What came after was a series of protests from blogs, but especially from Twitter users:

stjohn Wow AMC way to hate on your Mad Men fans http://is.gd/1Wt2

pheezy @martastrickland AMC gets lumped in with Hasbro for not realizing what their digital fan-base has already done for them.

mzkagan Why has Twitter hijacked my beloved @don_draper (and friends)? Looks like i'll be drinking alone 2nite.

slange70 @martastrickland sounds to me that AMC was bummed out that they didn't think of that first.

bryanfuhr it's a shame that a show which celebrates innovation in advertising cannot embrace innovation in advertising

The irony was too much to bare and apparently Deep Focus, the web marketing group for AMC, convinced them, "Better to embrace the community than negate their efforts." And so the accounts have returned, and no worse for the wear.

don_draper Doing what I do best - moving forward with my life like today never happened.

Marta Strickland

The popular playlist sharing site Muxtape was taken down this week, because the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) found it guilty of "hosting illegal content".

You might remember Muxtape, when we covered it on ThreeMinds about 4 months ago:

"Sometimes I get lost in all of the music-based social networks and recommendation engines and I forget that a lot of my favorite next-gen Web solutions are dead simple. I'm also a sucker for wistful remembrances of old media... File Muxtape in the 'do one thing and do it well' shoebox." Dan Sicko

We weren't the only ones who loved it's simplistic beauty. ReadWriteWeb said that "the news will run chills down the spines of countless music sharers. It's a tragedy, really, and one we hope to see reversed quickly." And while Muxtape claims that no artists or labels have complained and they won't be down indefinitely, the talk around the internet is pretty bleak.

Was this inevitable? First Muxtape, next Pandora, will the RIAA and social media ever play nicely? Even though artists like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails are fighting to change the music industry from the inside, what will it really take for the revolution, Music 2.0?

"It's sad, really, to watch the RIAA thrashing like a drowning rat, biting and clawing at everything around it. All you have to do is take a look at history, going back to days of sheet music -- any time technology makes a copyright unenforceable, the solution is blanket licenses for use of copyrighted material. Whether the RIAA likes it or not, that's the way this is going to end. They should be hammering out the details of securing their revenue stream, not picking fights with the very people who consume their product."
Damien Boyes, Information Architecture

"Aggravation and sadness are definitely present, but I think my overwhelming emotion is impatience. This is all going to get worked out...eventually. Music isn't going to evaporate. And there will always be a way to make money in the industry. I just wish they'd hurry up and figure this out. TechCrunch has an interesting POV where they discuss whether or not one of the big players, such as Pandora, will need to go down before things really change. A sacrificial lamb of sorts. I think there are a lot of middle men who need to go under before things really change. Tough medicine, but necessary to really fix things."
Stephen Murray, Strategy

"I want my muxtape back :("
Eric Diem, Integrated Media

Whether you love it, hate it, or ignore it... the redesigned Facebook is here to stay. Many in the blogging world have been theorizing why Facebook has made the design choices that is has in the redesign. Are they trying to focus their efforts on becoming a new social bookmarking and sharing site? Have they been drinking too much of the Silicon Valley kool-aid? As Eric Eldon at VentureBeat puts it:

"I've long argued that the value of Facebook is in the fact that it has convinced millions to share real information about themselves -- versus the fake information you see on MySpace and many other social networks. But the thing is, it seems Facebook users want to share real information along the lines of glittery photos. It wouldn't surprise me if Facebook sees a sustained protest from millions of users who don't care about publishing, in the first place, who just want to decorate their profiles to show off to their friends."

And so they have. With bloggers pondering and Facebookers petitioning, I thought it would be interesting to see what people around the office think...

"They've improved the control you have over your profile and privacy. Who can see what of your content and so on. That is always an area close to my heart as I don't like to share personal info with my business network and vice versa. And they really start to elevate the most recent content, so it's easier to keep up with friends who update their pages more frequently. I like the refreshed look and feel, it's definitely easier to navigate. But I think they also sneaked in more ad space, I didn't notice these big ads before on my profile pages."
Sonja Scharrer, Operations

"No likie. At first I thought it hadn't finished loading, when in fact it had. My reaction was 'really?'. And when I reverted back, I felt better."
Vaibhavi Bhide, Engagement Management

"The 'new' Facebook does a good job at separating out the content of what you really want. What was once cluttered and often times kept below the fold is now easily accessible. When viewing someone's profile you can see their wall, their info, photos, or more separately; something that was cluttered into one page before. I think overall there is a cleanliness to it and I think this also has to do with the way we are viewing webpages (widescreen, better screens) then when Facebook first started. The ability to only have to look through certain amount of pages will help with how users interact with the network.

"One thing you will see is a lot of people hating it. Well remember how many people 'hated' mini feed. Now that is the most popular feature. So we are very quick to hate on something when we get familiar with it."
St. John Oneil-Dunne, Global Business Development