I hope that the rumors of Facebook allowing users to sponsor their own posts to make sure they are seen within their networks turns out to be true, not because I think it’s a good thing for the ecosystem, but on the contrary because it might finally allow me to leave Facebook. Continue reading
Check out the audio from my Snackable Content panel from SXSWi this year. I forgot how close I was to losing my voice at that point. I’m so glad it didn’t totally collapse until this was done. :)
And here’s the deck that was used to introduce the talk. If you have the time, I hope you can listen – it’s a great discussion.
The conventional wisdom has been for some time that QR codes are a waste of time and money. Just for example, this gem that was passed around the JESS3 office to hearty guffaws: http://picturesofpeoplescanningqrcodes.tumblr.com/. Well, things might be changing.
Many continue to argue that the only thing QR codes are good for is to communicate to the viewer that you and your brand or whatever you represent are savvy enough to use QR codes. And what does that tautology earn you? A big fat pat on the back from yourself, and maybe a short stint in one of these fine publications:
Believe it or not the joke may be losing steam. No – SRSLY!! TechCrunch reported on a recent survey by Accenture that showed that on-screen social media icons during commercials actually worked – prompting viewers to go online and follow brands even though they had to do so on a completely separate screen (up to 20% conversion for Facebook). Surprising.
But there was a second, and maybe even more surprising finding:
11% of viewers scanned a QR code while watching TV
Stunning. Really. In the grand scheme of things that is a pretty large convergence rate, even if they were doing so to retrieve discounts or coupons or other incentives.
I’m still not bought into the QR code, but I am willing to give it a second glance. And I will certainly be on the lookout for more figures like this as the smartphone revolution continues and people and apps grow more comfortable dealing with QR codes. And one day, just maybe, I might even recommend them as a solution to something.
So SXSW wasn’t all fun and games… in fact it mostly wasn’t fun and games as I was there working on an installation for Samsung most of the time, but I did get to break away to moderate the panel I organized about the phenomenon of shrinking content and shrinking attention spans on the web today.
Here’s the deck I presented as the introduction for the panel, but in this version I’ve also included an addendum that contains a brief and simple summary of some of the conversation had on the panel and online via Twitter contributions from the audience.
Everyone had a good time, and then everyone had bar-b-q.
I have finally recovered from the trip to SXSW. Thankfully there’s a post that covers some of the details of the experience over at the JESS3 Blog so I don’t have to rewrite that and throw my barely achieved and seemingly unstable equilibrium back into chaotic disarray.
Very little sleep was had, but the project turned out well. Much was learned, some of which was applied on the spot, and some of which will only get a chance to be applied the next time we do a similar project. Hopefully that will be soon. I’m going to get started on the training montage so I can come to the next one like a champ.
Here are a couple of images I liked from our time there – more are available by following the link to the JESS3 blog post above.
And you can’t see it. What if that most interesting thing ever were the internet, or whatever it is that you were trying to find on the internet today? This censorship would be the reality.
SOPA and PIPA are two bills made by old congressmen who don’t understand young technologies. Lots of money has been thrown at them by special interests who are trying to make money by limiting access to information. That’s anti-American. If you think the government has no place telling you what you’re allowed to read, see or think, then you should be aware that these bills are an audacious and insane over-reach of power.
Here are some places where you can find more information about them and other sites supporting the SOPA/PIPA blackout and awareness day today:
Check out the deck that Leslie and I presented at Intel’s “Be Social” conference last week. It’s a great deck that addresses some big principles that it’s important to remind yourself on while working with social design. At almost 25,000 views already it seems to have struck a chord with at least a few people. Check out more about it on the JESS3 blog.
It doesn’t have all the answers, but it’s a good list of questions to consider if you’re in this line of work.
A special thanks to everyone at Intel for such a great conference!
You should undertand why the gamification of our reality is important – something to be aware of to both leverage it to your benefit as well as our societal benefit, and also to protect yourself against its potential to manipulate you. In any case, Jesse Schnell is the guy to listen to…
Part 1
Continue reading
Ever late to my own party, I wanted to post the deck that Jesse and I presented at the Nonick Conference in Bilbao a couple of weeks ago.
Here’s the blog post about it on the JESS3 blog.
It’s already over 14,000 views in 6 days since it went live, and I’m proud of it. It’s always tough to tackle an abstract subject like encouraging better thinking about how to create interactive and shareable experiences online and through social platforms, and even more so when most of the audience speaks English as a second language. This presentation was extremely well received, and I hope to continue spreading these ideas into the future… starting now, with this embed! :)
As always – love to hear your feedback. Try me here: @supnah on Twitter.
Permalink to The World of Social Objects deck on Slideshare.
This is going to be my headshot for a new Eloqua social media playbook coming out soon. Excited!
I’ll be heading to Bilbao to speak at the Nonick Conference next week. Jesse Thomas and I will be representing JESS3 and speaking about the importance of social objects and storytelling in successful social media strategies. Looking forward to jamon, pintxos and tinto.
Joe Hewitt leaving Facebook may be one of the best things to happen to HTML5 in a long time. He’s taking off to return to his roots (as in Firebug) in order to focus on solving problems for developers working with the nascent and developing languages like HTML5, the cloud and mobile.
“Technologies have a way of growing faster than the ecosystem of tools needed to support them.” – Joe
I have no doubt that in this role as a meta developer, a developer developing for developers, Joe Hewitt will have a significant and sustained impact on helping new platforms be used to their fullest extent. It’s a lofty goal. Good on ya. Here’s to not just making a great app, but making tools that help an army of others make a volume of great apps – for all of us.
Good luck, Joe.
Color, the new geo-social-media-sharing app is being underrated by all the haters. I’m all for some good hilarious snark like the much lauded review of the app on iTunes. But we’re all forgetting that just because something does happen to contain all of the hottest trends and social elements doesn’t mean it doesn’t also have some really interesting stuff going on.
The most recent TWiT had a pretty even-keeled discussion of Color by Leo Laporte, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Xeni Jardin and Baratunde Thurston that managed not to totally pan the app, but couldn’t foresee many applicable use cases. Kirkpatrick brought up the idea of music festivals as somewhere it might become useful, and all could agree that nobody knew what the hell Twitter would be good for either when it first hit, and also that there’s a high likelihood that Color is going to have a serious data mining aspect that leads to revenue tucked somewhere into its back end in order to take advantage of the data all the prophesied users are going to be pumping into it.
Here’s the thing – I don’t think it’s all that hard to see the potential utility of this app. Continue reading
I bet you keep saying to yourselves that you want to get in on that whole new Kickstarter trend where artists and makers of all types crowdsource the funding of their projects. Sometimes they’re projects that would never otherwise be made, but other times this becomes an investment/lending strategy that alleviates a lot of the pain for smaller and independent artists (like Matt the Electrician).
