A simple execution. This is a Mini branded positive news tweet stream.
About Postitweets: "We all know there is plenty of negative news in the world and we think
it’s time to start focusing on all the good. Positweets is the
destination for all the latest positive news and updates from Twitter.
Here, you can see what others are saying and post your own
#positweets!"
It's filtering mechanism aggregates fun stats & animated graphs.The site was created by Slash7 in collaboration with Federated Media. FM represents more than 100 of the world’s most
respected websites, blogs, and social networking applications. Positweets has enlisted the help of "positributors" including @AlleyInsider,
@BoingBoing, @Trendhunter and
@venturebeat, who will be sharing positive vibes using the #positweets hashtag.
This execution demonstrates a strategy that positions the Mini brand as a filter. That is not new - but the players behind it are. Could paying social media influencers to propagate an idea or subject matter be the model that turns the ad industry on its head?
An artist's job is to rethink the boundaries of their medium. Whether it's a canvas or a web browser, our job is to improve its value and use. Since 1994 web designers, digital gurus and usability pros have debated the topic of designing "above the fold". The term "above the fold" is a print term that refers to the location of an important news story or a visually appealing photograph on the upper half of the front page of a newspaper. In the early days this print term was adapted and used in web development to refer the portions of a web page that can be visible without scrolling. When I started designing web pages most users were unfamiliar with the concept of scrolling. It just wasn't a natural thing for them to do . As a result, I would design web pages so that all content would be “above the fold”. When I was designing e-commerce sites on AOL, page-level vertical scrolling was not permitted. As AOL moved away from their proprietary screen technology to an open web experience, we enjoyed the luxury of designing longer and wider pages. That was 15 years ago! A lot has changed. That Was Then. This Is Now. According to ClickTale's scrolling research, Today, 91% of the page-views had a scroll-bar. 76% of the page-views with a scroll-bar, were scrolled to some extent. 22% of the page-views with a scroll-bar, were scrolled all the way to the bottom. As screen resolutions vary greatly, HTML design has improved and browsers have become common place in a users life the time has come for the term and the practice to die!
The "fold" simply does not exist. There is significant research, design methods and technology that renders the "fold" theory useless. Research like ClickTale's Scrolling Research Report V2.0 - Part 1 and Part 2 completely unravels the "Above the fold" myth. The most compelling test they ran was proving ‘Absolute Scrolling Reach’.
"This graph below shows us how much time visitors paid attention to each section of different-sized web pages as they scrolled through them. ‘Absolute Scrolling Reach’ measures the distance from the page top (in pixels) that a visitor scrolls down the page."
Let's think about it for a moment. If you subscribe The “fold” theory, you are assuming everyone uses the same size monitor, monitor resolution and Web browser. More over, you must also assume we all have the same number of toolbars. Obviously there are too many factors involved to identify a consistent fold location. The "fold" is just silly! scrolling has become a natural practice in surfing the web. Scrolling is also associated with most Web 2.0 design. Big, clear text and spacious content implies longer web pages.
Web 2.0 Design Today, I design my pages to use liquid layouts that stretch to the current user's window size in order to avoid frozen layouts that are always the same size. Great consumer centric design does not give equal weight to all the content in a site. It puts its most valuable messages at the top and throughout the design. If you present compelling content and use proper design queues and tools then your users will find and grab your content. Here are a few examples of mainstream sites that are designed "below the fold" for millions of uses everyday.
Where was the fold? Did you scroll? of course you did. (you are scrolling now)
Advertisers currently want their ads above the fold, and it will be a while before that tide turns. But it’s clear that the rest of the page can be just as valuable to contextual advertising.
They get it. I scrolled up and down, clicked and shared.
If its good they will scroll. It is imperative that we begin to educate our clients and account teams that this is no longer a best practice. It really never was. Open up your design and stop cramming stuff above a certain pixel point. You’re not helping anyone. If your content is compelling enough your users will read it to the end.
Educate your peers and clients with these recommendations in mind:
Your content is king. If your page contains lots of engaging content, users will scroll to the bottom to view it.
Keep important new content that helps users understand the main purpose of your site above the 600 pixel mark.
Design universal navigation and business information that can be modular. It should allow users to manipulate and control its placement. It should also appear above the 600 pixel mark.
Minimize your written text and maximize images and video, the web is now a converged 3D medium. Users would rather you engage them instead of asking them to read. Remember they do scan pages.
Use design cues like icons, cut-off images and text blocks to help users expect additional content below the screen.
Try to keep browser-less applications within a given screen space and make sure the inputs and outputs of the application appear within that space.
Join me, lets help dispel the urban design myth by sharing this data.
Which came first the chicken offer or the direct response ad format?
For the longest time Facebook spent all of its time using ads to drive people to a web or fan page where a user could get lost in the experience of it all. The newest of Facebook ad format seems to adopt some of our direct response best practices.
This ad for Chick-fil-A's free chicken biscuit samples is the most integrated
lead gen-style home page ad unit I’ve seen on Facebook. What I love about this ad is that it does not take me to a page where I have to read about your beleaguered brand.
The new DR ad unit, gives me a quick fill response form presented as a modal window over my News Feed.
A user can
easily redeem the offer by filling in the form, and with one click post it to their to their profile
and share the offer with friends. The user experience is fantastic.
According to InsideFacebook.com, Facebook has added new targeting features, including connection targeting, multi-country targeting, and birthday targeting. This test seems to fall in line with many of the new direct response driven ad formats that big brand advertisers are demanding.
As CPG and foodservice marketers look for new ways of creating lift in sales, drive new offer redemption and connect social media to in store traffic this new DR ad unit could easily be used for all types of free offer based subscription services.
I invite you to join me in for a Digital 101 at Noon on Friday. Social Media 101: Discover the power of your voice will be an introductory course and forum where we will cover behavioral trends to the technology tools and the brands and people who are using social media.
You can choose any marked location on the map to track the her trips via video, photos and read her remarks. It looks like the site aggregates images from all over the web. Follow our SOS @ http://ow.ly/hJed
This would offer a fun way for a brand to track and highlight conversations, recommendations, pics and video that people create. It might also be a new way for a brand not to be tethered to just one social media platform.
His art crossed barriers, his fashion allowed us to appear militant and
pop at the same time, his fusion of sounds and collaborative work style
saved parts of the music industry in the 80's and gave MTV an injection
of legitimacy.
His product endorsements and original scores drove fans to purchase millions of products. He helped define the cola wars. He also helped raise the bar when it came to producing advertising that had an entertaining production quality.
The impact of his death was amplified by social media. 10-years ago, we would have learned of MJ's passing via TV, or a friend or coworker. Yesterday, our knowledge was
immediate. With my tweet deck open and my iPhone on my desk the news came in waves. First it was a video from a tourist on a starline bus who uploaded a video of the ambulance leaving Jackson's home. Then it was an avalanche of tweets and links that updated his condition on a real time basis.
The global coordination of fans mourning in public was fascinating. The photo above was taken by my daughter. We used twitter to see where fans were converging in our neighborhood. (We found groups of stunned MJ fans in Harlem, Times Square and Chelsea)
Even more fascinating was the "private" behaviors that drove iTunes to slow, amazon to clog and twitter search to fail. Yesterday afternoon showed both the power and frailty of the digital medium. Celeb-news site, TMZ.com (AOL/Time Warner owned), secured the scoop when it was first to
report that Jackson had died — but the site then crashed several times,
unable to cope with millions of visitors flooding to it.
One of the most fascinating tweets today was when P-Diddy tweeted a link to a tribute song that features The Game, Usher, Mario Winans and Boyz2Men to name a few. Diddy's tweet to approximately 1.3 million Twitter followers has made “Better On The Other Side” the most popular link on Twitter today. (it has almost 2000 retweets).You can download the song at BOX.net a file sharing site.
The rapid changing information added to Wiki's across the net triggered this message to appear on Jackson's Wikipedia page: This article is about a person who has recently died.
Some information, such as that pertaining to the circumstances of the
person's death and surrounding events, may change rapidly as more facts
become known.
The firm New Media Strategies notes
that Jackson’s Wikipedia page logged 1.8 million visitors yesterday,
compared to its daily average of just 20,000. According to Mashable it also saw a whopping
650 edits as users updated the entry furiously as news broke.
If you attempted to search anything last night you probably noticed that the connection speeds felt like 56k modem slow. For 35 minutes, millions of people who googled
Jackson’s name were greeted with an error page rather than a list of
results. CNET reported that Google believed it was under attack
when the news first broke. Google said that there had been a “volcanic” surge in interest in
Michael Jackson, with most of the top 100 searches related to the singer.
Facebook reported that Jackson’s page was
attracting about 20 fans a second, and fast becoming one of the top pages in
all of Facebook. (@ 2:42AM it has 1,228,072 fans)
Once again, real people reporting a story, revealed yet another tale of the traditional news media playing catch-up with the digital. However, it took the traditional outlets to lend their credibility to real people reporting. Together, Broadcast + Digital + Mobile showed how the established players such as TMZ.com / AOL / CNN have finally worked
out how to tap into the power of convergence.
What we know for sure is that no matter your opinion of MJ's private matters (accusations of molestation, childlike behavior and plastic surgery) he never stopped helping change the way we listened and participated in the creation of his music and persona. Jackson was the intersection of art, philanthropy and social movement.
I cannot imagine a brand being able to coordinate a product or service launch, update or invention being as powerful as what Michael Jackson's persona did. We should study the trend to understand how to attempt to replicate it in our marketing lives.
Last night the mediums and the messages converged and exploded. What was your contribution or experience to the #michaeljackson effect?
LG has launched a fantastic promotional site. The new Smart Light monitor site offers you a front seat to in depth discovery while taking on a worthy cause. LG's technology works like an owls sight. Its predictive features are integrated into this well designed site.
When you play with the site's functionality and navigation you realize that the site holds the promise of the product incredibly natural ways.
The curios clue finder ties in a social media streams by taking in feeds from Flickr photo pools and YouTube content that allow the user to experience detailed discoveries. This functionality is perfectly designed as it does not attempt to "build community", which is a mistake that many brands make.
The design aggregates existing content and uses it to entertain and inform the user. In my opinion, this the way we should be looking at utilizing social media platforms and their functionality.
When you visit the showroom the site offers one of time most beautifully designed demonstrations of technology that I have seen in a long time. The Cinema mode is captivating. It made me want to trade in my Apple display for the Smart Light monitor.
What would a 2.0 site be with out a widget for bloggers? Now most of you know that I think that in the past year widgets have just been abused. A widget is there to facilitate the spread a good idea - it is not the idea. This one gives me a real reason for displaying it on my blog. If I can save one animal it was worth posting it.
The only criticisms I have of the site is that the writing could have been stronger by explaining the humanitarian reason for deeper engagement, the site and content is not coming up in search engines as well as it could have and in the widget section the drop down menu used to select your country is a bit over designed and hard to get to your country easily.
After attending a number of digital conferences during Internet week and preparing for OMMA Social, I was inspired to refresh my digital brand. The update began with the one simple idea: We are living in a Media NOW world and our work must be created with context and NOW relevance.
After unraveling myself from the presentation layer updates, running a few tests and converging my most used social media feeds, I started the brand refresh by relaunching my site at http://www.joannapenabickley.net.
2009 is indeed a year of change. Change does not need to be somber. It does have to be transparent, democratic and portable to keep it real. What about your brand will you change this year?
Who says your brand needs a big ol' web site? Evidently Skittles has realized that media everywhere applies to their brand.
The collapsible application allows you to scurry around the social networking pages and groups that skittles has set up.
This seems like a great way to organize your "earned" media. While this may be the future of the web for brands who are not transactional destinations - the execution has left out an important social component. Sharing. too bad that the app does not let you post it, embed it, or share a link to it.
Hurray for skittles! I think that this is a good way to redefine your brand by the conversations that people are having about you.
Last week the the boys from Twitter, Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey, visited the talking heads in the mainstream media after Time Magazine acknowledged them in their list of 100 Most Influential People in 2009. In the same week, the Harris Interactive Poll released a report via Media Post that has a few interesting stats as well as a few negative statements that has lead me to believe that many marketers, agencies and some social media "experts" have Twitter all wrong. As a matter of fact, I ponder if brands that are there and not tweeting relevant insider or expert information to their followers understand that they are at risk of damaging their brands.
Thanks to @ev, @biz and @jack's many interviews we have found a few facts that we can build on.
74% of those aged 18-34 years old
have a Facebook or MySpace account but this quickly drops off the older
one gets. Only 24% of those 55 and older have an account
8% of 18-34 year olds use Twitter, 7% of those 35-44 use it, 4% of those aged 45-54 and just 1% of those 55 and older
Men
and women use Twitter at the same levels (5% each), but women are more
likely to have a Facebook or MySpace account (52% versus 45%)
Two
in five people with a high school degree or less have a Facebook or
MySpace account compared to 55% of those with some college and 52% of
those with at least a college degree.
So while the mainstream media may have found Twitter, only 5% of American consumers are currently using it. That 5% are more highly
educated and potentially more influential in a general sense if for no
other reason than traditional media's embrace of Twitter.
Data from Harris:
Online Social Network Usage - By Age & Gender (All Online Adults; % of Age Group)
Age Group
Gender
Network Usage
Total
18-34
35-44
45-54
55+
Male
Female
Have a Facebook or MySpace account
48%
74
47
41
24
45
52
Update Facebook or MySpace account at least once a day
16
29
17
10
3
14
18
Use Twitter (Net)
5
8
7
4
1
5
5
Follow people on Twitter
5
8
6
4
1
5
5
Use Twitter to send messages
3
4
5
1
*
3
2
None of these
51
25
50
59
76
54
47'
Source: Harris Interactive, April 2009 Multiple responses allowed; * indicates less than 0.5%
Online Social Network Usage - By Education (All Online Adults; % of Group)
Education
Network Usage
Total
HS or less
Some College
College Grad+
Have a Facebook or MySpace account
48%
40
55
52
Update Facebook or MySpace account at least once a day
16
14
18
16
Use Twitter (Net)
5
3
7
6
Follow people on Twitter
5
3
6
6
Use Twitter to send messages
3
1
4
4
None of these
51
59
43
47
Source: Harris Interactive, April 2009 Multiple responses allowed; * indicates less than 0.5%
In my experience in creating new ideas for brands Twitter has proven to
help me reach influencers following me who are interested in specific topics such as
racing, music, the elections and movies. (there are many many more topics)
If brands are dedicated to "engagement" then they must also be dedicated to building a library of content in strategically relevant areas. This content can offer influencer's a chance to passionately evangelize the brands value over time. Twitter is the perfect platform to begin using your brand as a filter. Can you name a few brands that are using Twitter to generate new interest, traffic and response to their offerings?
If you have not done so, you should join Twitter and see for yourselves.
Photos from the road, the day, the meetings and a few ironic random finds. Catch up with me on my adventures! This is a visual time line of my life ON: The Road.
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