Tom Green Hosts Talk TV Show From His House

Tom Green has been getting all web 2.0 social media on us with a decent enough show that he broadcasts live nightly from his house. The Tom Green channel on the web displays his real home phone number for any and all to call and ask questions on air. Celeb guests like Perez Hilton, Tony Hawk, Dr Drew and Kenny+Speny come on over to Tom's house and bring items for later resale on eBay to raise funds to keep the show on the air. Viewers get to vote on what the funds are actually spent on (necessary vid equipment or a useless stuffed bear, for instance). Podcasts on iTunes, yep. Blog, yep. Mass calls to submit user-gen YouTube vids of you watching him.

All he needs now is a groundswell of viewers and paying advertisers and he has a disruptive model for the giants to be concerned about (or mimic).

Tooble Comes With The Goods

Tooble is a new program that allows you to download any of the content on YouTube to your computer with ease. No video editing or IT skills necessary. It's free and has a very slick and user friendly interface - it can even function as a standalone YouTube browser. Tooble downloads, converts and imports any YouTube video into MP4 format to play on your computer, iPod, iPhone, Apple TV, etc., with just a few clicks. You can even take the MP4 video file and drop it into PPT - perfect for all of those times you wanted to drop that YouTube video into a deck. Finally, my one complaint about YouTube has been solved.

Currently you need a Mac. You can also sign up to be a Beta tester for the PC version.

The Whopper Freakout

This is genius.

(and in response to Seth's comments, I guess I'm doing my best to respect the Media Snacker).

Wigetization: Daft Punk Promo Widget

Daft Punk, the French electronic duo known for making music that scares your cat and using robots for live shows, have decided to promote their new live album, Alive, with an embeddable widget, which allows visitors to listen to previews of new tracks, buy the single, read Daft Punk’s biography, read the newsletter, and see a photo gallery of the band.

“Standard” promotional tools are giving way to user-syndicated web based promotion and social networking - at costs that are next to nothing.

via Mashable and Brand Republic

What's Next: The New Keyboard for the Texting Generation

Given I'm just a couple years out and, as many who know me would agree, still as prone to immature humor as ever, one of my favorite sites continues to be College Humor. While running through the RSS feeds today, caught this article on what a keyboard redesigned for the texters and IM junkies among us may look like. Silly as it might be, makes me wonder if this would actually be met with success...


The left...

and the right side...

can't forget that number pad

Brave New Media: How Facebook Users Spend Their Time

Compete.com blog discusses "how Facebook users spend their time".

Not unsurprisingly, people spend most of their time browsing profiles, but using applications is getting up there in terms of number of users, and the time spent is almost as long.

And speaking of Facebook Apps...Compete data show that Facebook activity grew 32% from May to August, 2007, with more than a third of the growth coming from the new applications.


And furthermore...O'Reilly released a report The Facebook Application Platform and it has good and bad news. Good: there are nearly 5000 Facebook applications, and the top applications have tens of millions of installs and millions of active users. Bad news: 87% of the usage goes to only 84 applications! Only 45 applications have more than 100,000 active users. "This is a long tail marketplace with a vengeance -- but unfortunately, the economic models (for developers at least, though not for Facebook itself) all rely on getting into the very short head."

Here's the distribution of active users among the top 200 developers. (Some developers have multiple popular applications.) As you can see, the drop-off is extremely steep:


Doh! Tim O'Reilly says: "This doesn't mean that Facebook won't become an important platform for developers, just that a throwaway Facebook app is not the ticket to quick riches. Embracing the Facebook opportunity requires more than just optimism."

via O'Reilly Radar and Compete.com Blog

Virtuality: Google Planning to Launch "My World"

Ars Technica (Art of Technology blog) reports that Google is prepping it's own entry into the field of Virtual Worlds, potentially named "My World". Students at ASU (a school Google has a strong working relationship with in the past) this weekend received questionnaires that "hinted strongly" at the possibility that they would be among the first to test such an app later this year.

(Screengrab of the questionnaire courtesy of the MacRumors forum).


A logical step for Google, given that they've already made a foray into Virtuality with Google Earth.








And a significant move, not because it's just another virtual world for people to choose from, but because it is a mainstream tech giant adopting what some decry as little more than a passing fad, and it's yet further evidence that a 3D internet is the next logical progression of our digital lives.

A few snippets from the article:

"The notion that Google might test the new service with ASU students isn't very outlandish, then, so the question is more a matter of what the service will be rather than if it will come to fruition."

"To us, it seems that a virtual world is natural progression of Google Earth and its 3D representations of... well, the Earth. Users could create avatars, like those in Second Life. The "street view" feature of Google Maps could be incorporated, as well as Google SketchUp, with avatars being able to walk around on actual streets and enter real buildings to check out what's inside and socialize with other avatars. But the purpose wouldn't be to rival Second Life and all of its fantasy, sex, and moneymaking schemes."

"Whatever "My World" ends up being, we think that Google will go much further than just competing with Second Life—if the company makes it functionally useful and ties it in with services that people already use, it may have a chance of succeeding at getting average Internet users to participate."

Virtuality: Social Media in 3D

Caught a post over on adverblog about the launch of a new social networking site for your virtual self, Koinup. The site allows you to connect all of your virtual world experiences in one network- your activities from Second Life, World of Warcraft, The Sims all in one location, where you can post content of your adventures (video of a recent SL trip for example) and browse through the virtual lives of the sites other members.

This brings an interesting new layer to all of the talk around virtual worlds. KoinUp elevates the discussion above "worlds" and highlights the trend that our online activity is increasingly becoming virtual, so much so that we now need a social web to bring together all of the virtual identities that define us in the digital space.

I just came across this (thanks Aki) and while interested, still haven't quite decided where I see this going and how "big" it may be. Any readers out there more familiar and care to weigh in? For those of you in virtual worlds, do you see yourself social networking your virtual identities? Are you so dedicated that, in addition to maintaining Facebook, MySpace, and your other real world social webs that you would start a virtual side?

Cult of the Amateur

Dan Meth created this video homage to all the viral video superstars (to-date) evolved from our YouTube era.

Internet People - Watch more free videos

Social Media: This One Time, When I Googled Myself...

On a random curious tangent during an otherwise productive (hm...for the most part) day, decided to Google my name and see what popped up. Before I started at Fallon, I remember doing this same search and, while I expected the result, was disappointed that it returned nothing. While I'm no Aki Spicer (my paltry 52 web hits is childs' play), I'm doing a bit better than I once was.


Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace...whatever. All of this social media comes up in conversations all the time, and I for one often take for granted the impact all of it has because it's such a natural part of my everyday life. I check Facebook multiple times a day, and barely think twice about how amazing it is that I'm able to stay tapped into friends lives who otherwise I would've lost all connections to.

But as I scrolled through my Google search results, I quickly realized that without social networks, my name would fall into the category of "having no documents matched this search." And while this may be due to my age and level of experience, I wonder what a similar search reveals for the rest of you.

And I don't think it's really a bad thing. For one, I know that all of the superficial Google results on me were, in some way, influenced by me, so there's no surprises. That's not to say that someday, I wouldn't like to have some quotes from big shot sources to my credit (AdAge, still waiting for that phone call).

In the interim though, just happy that I'm Google worthy.

Short History of YouTube

Nevermind...

Nevermind...2 Days later...TubeStop is an extension for Mozilla-based Web browsers that disables the new overlay system of advertising, as well as the autoplay function on YouTube videos.

Doh!


via Digg

YouTube InVideo Overlays - 1st Stab At Monetizing Viral Video

In a significant first, YouTube has decided to let advertisers inject their messages inside the video frame for select content on its site (see ClickZ or MediaPost), or
NYTimes. For an example of the approach, see this Smosh video and watch Homer Simpson at 15 seconds in.

...sorta like TV networks do already.

Some key points about the ads — lifted directly from the ClickZ article:

The new offering, dubbed InVideo Ads, mimics the clickable ad overlays introduced in recent months on ad networks like VideoEgg and YuMe.

Ad product consists of animated bars that obscure the bottom 20 percent of the video frame for a given clip. They initiate 15 seconds after the beginning of a clip

InVideo overlays are “80 percent transparent” and remain visible for approximately 10 seconds before shrinking to a small button users can later click to view the marketing message again.

YouTube has set a $20 CPM for InVideo ad buys consisting of an InVideo ad accompanied by a tiny in-player companion ad and an adjacent in-page unit.

Clicking on an overlay ad pauses the current video and launches one of two experiences brands can choose between. One is a new clip superimposed over the video in progress via a player-within-a-player interface. When the paid clip ends or is closed, the original automatically picks up where it left off. Shiva Rajaraman, YouTube Product Manager, said 76 percent of those who click the overlay and watch the video ad viewed the entire trailer for NewLine’s “Hairspray.”

During YouTube’s research process, Rajaraman said, “One of the key things we found, not surprisingly, is that when a video is playing on YouTube their attention is [locked in to the video frame]. When we came up with an ad format, we realized that… it needs to be in the player.”

Yet when the Google-owned video portal tested pre-roll placements, YouTube users abandoned video clips at a more than 50 percent rate. The overlay, by contrast, results in an abandonment rate under 10 percent. Not only that, but click rates are five to 10 times greater than standard display click-to-video ads, according to Rajaraman.

via Nalts and Clickz and MediaPost and NYTimes.

Live Blogging the AAAA Conference

Check my livestreamed Twittr feeds @ http://twitter.com/akispicer

*Check other Tweets from the AAAA Planner Conference, too:
http://twitter.com/elgaffney
http://twitter.com/mmilan
http://twitter.com/mrgingold

Mass Interactive: Infinite Cat Project

Cats do Web 2.0, too!



MC Escher Cats. Looking at cats. Looking at cats. Looking at cats. Looking at cats. Looking at cats. I think you get the idea... Nice (AND DAMN SIMPLE) way to hook cat lovers into a participatory web game. Kittenwar still reigns, though.

Mass Interactive: GMail Does Web 2.0

Help Google imagine how an email message travels around the world.

Post your clip as a response to this one. They'll edit a selection of submissions together to make a final video, which will be featured on the Gmail homepage and seen by users worldwide.

Respond to this video with your own clip by August 13, 2007 to be considered to the final collaborative video. Learn more about the project at http://mail.google.com/mvideo

Segmenting the Social Video Platforms

Web 2.0: WidgetCon 2007

Postcards from Second Life: Crayon's Virtual Branding Event

Yesterday, a few of us gathered around my computer and watched as my avatar made his way through SL to the Crayonville Amphitheater- virtual home to new marketing firm Crayon which was hosting a panel on Marketing in Virtual Worlds.

Much of the panel discussion hovered around what the panel members respective companies had tried so far to build their in-world brands (such as Coke's Virtual Thirst contest).

A central theme that emerged- not so different from discussions around here- was that companies have thus far mistakenly hedged their bets on simply having a presence in Second Life as the end goal- setting up shop in the same fashion as the do in the real world and assuming people will just come to them. Now, those companies are left with often times barren landscapes as residents gravitate elsewhere...

...towards brands/companies that view Second Life for what it is: a tool used to ENGAGE people. Coldwell Banker is a recent example of a company that gets the need to provide value to be relevant. Other (relative) success stories include Pontiac's Motorati Island, HBO's island for the L-Word (which holds recreations of the show in it's lobby), and IBM (company island includes tutorials on open source coding). These three have some of the highest weekly unique visitors in SL among real world brands (+4000 according to SL demographic experts).

Despite these few exceptions, it's not a surprise that the most trafficked areas in SL are those created by residents- they offer more than a slick logo and building, and bring some value to the table and the experience of being in-world (such as Amsterdam Island, a recreation of the real thing...complete with many familiar Amsterdam activities).

The panel discussion appeared to be one of those places residents respected as adding to the experience and not just "being there"...


Well, it's not bursting at the seams, but compared to the largely empty buildings of most companies, this is pretty good. And, according to Crayon, the sim was at max capacity and they actually had to turn away some last-minute sign ups.

Perhaps just as interesting as the panel itself was watching how the audience of avatars engaged with the presenters. While one might assume that, in this world where the laws of physics can be broken, and one has the ability to create objects from nothing, keeping people's attention would be tough. But there we all sat, pointed at the stage, listening intently to the words of these virtual branding experts.


We also started to see how closely this virtual world can mirror the experience of First Life. Just as you would lean over to a friend who was at a conference with you, whispering side-conversation back and forth, avatars were doing the same. (In Second Life, you can chat with basically anyone within earshot- simply start typing, hit send, and your words appear on screen for all to see. Think chatroom- with a visual component).

As we sat in our Minneapolis conference room, discussing the panel's comments, many of the same comments were popping up on screen from the avatars in attendance- some questioning the need or use for Second Life, and many other's pouncing quickly in defense of the world. The general consensus from the audience was that, while SL is important and shouldn't be ignored, it is still too complex, too vague, and not user-friendly enough for adoption by the masses.

Overall, a good event to take in. It was the first in what will be a monthly thought-leadership series. They also have weekly informal chats- Coffee with Crayon- every Thursday @ 9AM EST at Crayonville for more new marketing goodies.

Brave New Media:Surface Computing

Microsoft has debuted a new touchscreen computer—a coffee table "surface" that will permit its user to actually manipulate the information hands-on - no keyboard, no mouse.

Go inside its top-secret development with PopularMechanics.com.

Oh, expect to see it at retail and hotels and casinos THIS YEAR.

Get more at http://www.microsoft.com/surface