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.
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
Via @ghensel via Thorsten Konrad: Casey Neistat’s brief video documentary on the latest online fad cultural phenomenon, Chatroulette.
chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.
(cool! new chevy ad with the new camaro)
WIRED Magazine Creative Director Scott Dadich provide a sneak peak at a digital rebirth of WIRED built to run across a variety of devices.
see the full video here
Next up: live footage.
(Don’t watch this one if you’re prone to motion-sickness, though)
(Via Mashable, some background info after the click)
I had just read this article about marketers not sure how to take advantage of Location-Based Services, specifically ones that are Social-Network based, and one of our Account people popped their head in my office to ask “What’s up with FourSquare? Is it worthwhile? And is it significant for Marketers?”
Good questions all. Foursquare allows you to “check in” to locations and awards badges for different user activities. The Article correctly states that some restaurants and bars are already embracing it, but the activities and offers are still in early days. Note the offer from Wow Bao in my building below:
Yeah – it’s a freebie offer, but I find it interesting that there is such a conversation about “is this interesting for marketers” and “how will marketers use it” – since it should make sense to pay attention to if you’ve got at least some of your audience that uses these kinds of things, and you’re worth having a relationship with in the first place (which, granted, is a big question for some marketers).
Here’s why: think about why restaurants and bars already jumped on the bandwagon. They have to develop relationships with their customers – they don’t have a choice. They don’t have a retailer that will put up POS material, or vast amounts of online ad spend (generally), and most of the places I’ve seen don’t do TV. For them, the relationship with the person in that establishment is everything, and finding new ways to prolong and enrich that relationship is the key to their success. For them the only question would be “why would I not get involved?”
Now I’m looking back over the last 12 months and thinking about the times I’ve mentioned doing something like this for a marketer, and thinking “You know what? My Client needs to break out from the shelf, their target is pretty well-connected digitally, they are not always getting the POS attention they want, or always deserve, they want more engagement, and since their relationship with the consumer is everything for them as well … so Why not?”
Bonus topic for further conversation: How different would the strategy for the marketer be from what they use for Facebook and Twitter?
Keiichi Matsuda is studying for his Masters in Architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture in London. He is a member of Nic Clear’s Unit 15, who use film, animation and motion graphics to generate, develop and represent new architectural and spatial possibilities. He has created this awesome video “as part of a larger project about the social and architectural consequences of new media and augmented reality”.
It is very interesting to see how architecture goes together with new media types. via
If you don’t have the time to read the book, Richard Florida on his theory of Creative Economic Revolution.
This is not new, but I just found this interesting lecture by Henry Jenkins of MIT on the convergence of media, media culture etc. What I find so refreshing about it is that it is, in fact, a bit more academic. That might sound weird, but with all the hype around connections planning and discussion about its future difference to experience planning, media planning and brand planning, and our industry’s tendency to create buzz words and self-congratulatory one-liners, it is nice to have an MIT professor take a crack at it.
