So, personally I feel chatroulette is a bit of a wanky phenomenon. However, Peter Kirsch sent me this video today, of a piano player trying to make people smile on chat roulette. The guy is pretty persistent in trying to impress people and make them smile.
Have you heard about flattr.com (@flattr)?
It’s a site currently in closed beta which tries to take on the problem of making money with user generated content. It is only logical that, in a world where old content business models are failing due to people’s behavior of not paying for content, they would also come up with a way to solve the problem of content creators not being paid for their efforts.
This idea is based on the existing behavior of voting (or liking/disliking) content, only that a “like” by flattr users will bring money to those whose content is liked. The amount is based on how much you decide to pay into your flattr account divided by the amount of “likes” you clicked.
Let’s see what happens. Is the social web generation really as stingy as always assumed, or is it just that there hasn’t been an adequate way of doing it in the social web? We will see.
This is an old BBC documentary from 1967 about New York ad man Steve Frankfurt. I had the pleasure to work in his agency Frankfurt Balkind, when he had just left for new endeavours and only met him once. Anyway, this documentary is an amazing piece of advertising history, or nostalgia (depending of where you’re coming from). Apart from being a trip back in time, it lends itself greatly for some awesome quotes you might wanna use in your next client presentation. 
Thanks Andreas Combüchen for sharing!
Here’s Bruce Sterling’s transmediale 10 keynote on Atemporality:
Here (in case you care) is the German translation: FAZ.net - Unser quälendes Unbehagen / Denken im Internet-Zeitalter (thanks Andrea).
AND HERE is the perfect camera to go with that state of mind:
Between Blinks & Buttons: A Blind Camera
Too bad the video does not embed, but go view it here: Documentation video BUTTONS, hi-res. Now run and remember someone else’s future.
Facebook (apparently) plans to drive brands away from its site and (back) to their own online platforms (this just in via @planoma and Silicon Alley Insider quoting WSJ Blogs and the Facebook Developers Wiki).
One of the new features Facebook is currently playing with exploring is the Open Graph API that will allow webmasters to deck out any website with the tools previously reserved for Facebook fan pages. The API will extend Facebook Connect while being easier to implement.
From Facebook’s perspective, this move will strengthen its position as your one-stop gateway to the internet as well as lay the groundworks for a potential advertising network. For the user, it may not change all that much (except add to the confusion of your average non-geek onliner who thinks of their GMX webmail interface as “my internet”).
For brands … well. Of course, if you believe in the branding power of custom URLs, having that AND Facebook’s full feature set would be nice. And if your business model is in web-based services, content or ecommerce, driving traffic to your own site(s) is vital. But do I see the likes of Coca-Cola or Pepsi doing the full-stop u-turn to reallocate social marketing budgets to build a plethora of branded microsites? Erm. And even then, I wonder which of Facebook’s features are really intersting for owned media. Probably not the kind of applications that allow custom designs, discussion boards or payment within the limits of a Facebook page. Maybe tracking and analysis features - if they integrate well with or fully substitute existing free or commercial solutions.
From a marketing point of view, I don’t think that as long as Facebook is a relevant medium, brands can do without their own page. A social marketing strategy is very much an embassy strategy. If you want to communicate with people, you can wait till they come to you, but it’s better to have a premanent representation wherever they are - and to make sure you welcome them in and make them feel at home. And this includes Facebook as well as Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, wer-kennt-wen and any other place where your people hang out.
Check out these photographic records of the heroines of the burgeoning women’s movement on indicommons.
As more pressure is put on marketers and their agencies to do more with less, some of the most interesting opportunities for connecting with people come not from creating marketing campaigns, but finding new ways of creating value for consumers outside of the delivery of marketing messages. This situation is an exciting new charge we feel today in our agency, as we look to find creative ways to have Brands participate in society with our consumers. It’s not just reinventing ourselves as an advertising agency, but actually reinventing this reinvention into our begin a whole new kind of partner for our clients and their business.
Razorfish recently grabbed such an opportunity in their participation of a venture with Citigroup and Microsoft - linking content (in Citi’s case consumer data), with computing power (in Microsoft’s case) to create Bundle.
Interesting and inspiring - and I can’t wait to see where they go with this! It also raises some fascinating questions in terms of what an agency model should be when the output is not a creative asset, but a business strategy, or even a new company. I have had the chance to work on some projects like this with our clients, and I can honestly say it is as challenging and eye-opening as it is rewarding. Check out the Bundle beta here.
Read about the venture here.
Source: AdWeek
Kind of related to the previous post about Peter Kruse, now Rishad Tobaccowala reminds everyone how the digital age has brought on the need to look for talent in a different way. It’s builder talent. I love this sentiment because it strikes at the core of how I would define the difference between traditional thinking in communications versus the new thinking. You don’t just need people who are talented at saying something, but rather building something that delivers experiences for people.
So-called creative agencies which are not emulating this strategy will be left with an aging workforce that will try to be good at saying things that no one is interested in listening to.
