Community 2.0: Hurricane Gustav Information Center

A collective assembly of Gustav Information. Using Ning platform, the site aggregates content from a variety of social media resources, including; Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, Utterz, Technorati, etc.- all you have to do is tag the item gustav.



*Hopefully, this will be a merely academic exercise in pre-caution.

via Social Media Club

Mass Interactive: Cymbolism

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

Social 10: Facebook’s New Social Video Ad Unit is an Engagement Magnet

A few of us noticed a curious new ad unit pop up in our Facebook feeds yesterday. The unit is a video that also displays open comments from your friends circle about that ad. Real-time, ongoing conversation about the ad - which potentially gives advertisers a peek directly into the sentiment of the audiences receiving the ad. I think this is a game-changer for social ads.

Inside Facebook notes: Facebook will fill the sponsored home page slot with this kind of unit.

The behavior:
1)Clicking on the ad image opens a video player in-line
2)Comments on the video are visible to your entire friend list.

The comments around the ad dramatically increase engagement with the unit, as the highly visible comments provide an opportunity for users to simultaneously draw attention to the ad by drawing attention to themselves.

*While this could backfire if comments degrading the advertiser are abundant ("this movie is Lame"-type commentary could overwhelm - but hey, the comments are from your friends so it has a certain relevance to you), the ad comments take powerful advantage of Facebook’s social dynamics to draw attention to an ad in a way that is impossible without the social graph. When is the last time you heard 9 friends talk about an online ad in the same day?

Ad comments are an interesting step forward in the evolution of “Social Ads.” While this kind of ad may not work as well outside of a few advertiser verticals, expect that early advertisers will be pleased with its performance.

Aki's quick takeaways:
1) Ads will need to become more engaging and comment provoking or risk flaming commentary (or worse, not being worthy of notice and comment)
2) Advertisers will need to become reactionary to response...maybe change the ads up, or try 10 ads - monitor feedback/response/actions taken and let the top 2 effective ads move forward
3) Advertisers will need to become choiceful about what they put in this channel...relevance and interestingness will matter now more than ever
4) EVERY MEDIA will soon be made more accountable to results and data of this nature for every ad media buy

Leave Twitter ALONE!!!

Imagine that title in the voice of the weird dude from the Brittany video...

Mass Interactive: Nokia Productions

Nokia Productions says: "Most films are made for the masses. This one is made by them. Join a production crew of thousands and play a part in creating Spike Lee and Nokia Productions’ latest film collaboration."


Check to all the boxes: big participatory idea and user co-creation blahblahblah, BUT the really important (smart) distinction here is Spike Lee has been hired to "direct" the crowd and conduct this orchestra with very thorough and paced "briefings" that detail what user co-creation should deliver on, creatively. This whole format reminds me of an agency process - Spike isn't hindering creative output from the crowd, but nor is he just leaving it up to some teen to submit any ol' piece of video nonsense and we call it "brand passion". Spike/Nokia Productions is deftly briefing in a creative strategy to the crowd (translate: he's keeping all the submissions ON BRIEF and not just random cheese from the masses).

Brilliant answer, Nokia, to the whole "losing control" debate that always come up with regard to user co-creation. Or...I think its a brilliant answer. We'll see, I guess. Fingers crossed.

*My Age of Conversation submission delves into this burgeoning opportunity to "outsource the agency" by recruiting users as panelists and advisors to the creative idea. More on this soon.

Fallon Brainfood: Social 10 *UPDATE: Scrabulous vs Hasbro

In my Social 10 trends in social media presentation a few months ago, I recounted the cautionary tale of Hasbro's Scrabble versus Scrabulous


Well since then, Hasbro finally beta launched their official Scrabble app on Facebook. And Scrabulous unexpectedly closed down their app last week - only to then relaunch as Wordscraper.

The numbers are in from Adonomics, and Wordscraper has almost matched Scrabble Beta's usage numbers - in only a few days since launch.


Some lessons to learn:
-Again, at the Social, you're competing with the crowd as much as you're competing with "competitors"
-Collaboration may be a better option. So, what Hasbro has created is a new enemy, a formidible competitor more nimble and effective than you (I hear word of tech glitches with the Scrabble Beta, Worscraper is further along and has groundswell)