Sunday, October 28th, 2007
People like us who understand social media, or pretend to, often spend all our time with other people like us. Which means that we often forget that we are part of a very niche sub-culture and most other people are not like us, and don’t understand the references we often take for granted.
I was reminded of this reality when I was reading chapter 11 of Chris Anderson’s brilliant book ‘The Long Tail‘. To prove the point that snippets of culture that are ubiquitous to us are often obscure to everyone else, Chris lists down 10 famous Internet viral memes and wonders how many people have heard of them. I had heard of 4 out of 10, but could be sure about only 2.
- Ellen Feiss
- The Star Wars Kid (original video)
- Dancing Baby
- Bert is Evil
- Bonzai Kitten
- Tourist Guy
- MC Hawking (website)
- 1337
- Subservient Chicken (website)
- First Post
Do leave a comment and let me know how many you have heard of. I suspect that most of you would have heard of less than 5, and it won’t be the same 5 either.
Filed in Internet, Marketing
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Also tagged 1337, Bert-is-Evil, Bonzai-Kitten, Chris-Anderson, Context-Sensitive-Ads, Dancing-Baby, Ellen-Feiss, First-Post, Hugh-McLeod, Internet-Phenomena, Landing-Pages, MC-Hawking, Memes, Micro-Culture, Niche-Culture, Star-Wars-Kid, Subservient-Chicken, The-Long-Tail, The-Next-Marketing-Guru, Tourist-Guy, Wannabe-Web-Millionaire
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Sunday, October 28th, 2007
When 18 year old English student Nick Haley created a commercial for the iPhone using video clips taken from Apple’s website set to a song titled “Music Is My Hot Hot Sex” by a Brazilian band CSS, he didn’t know he had struck user generated content gold. Marketing executives at Apple saw the commercial on YouTube and, in the typically Apple ‘Think Different’ way, asked their agency TBWA/Chiat/Day to invite Nick to work with them on a broadcast-ready version of his spot. The commercial is now ready for worldwide release and Nick is a mini-celebrity (New York Times via Epicenter).
Apple and TBWA, of course, are milking the maximum possible PR value of the episode with Lee Clow, chairman and chief creative officer at TBWA Worldwide, making Steve Jobsesque statements like:
People’s relationship with a brand is becoming a dialogue, not a monologue.
Filed in Internet, Marketing, Trendspotting
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Also tagged Apple, Asides, Commercial, CSS, iPhone, Music-Is-My-Hot-Hot-Sex, Nick-Haley, Steve-Jobs, TBWA, The-Next-Marketing-Guru, Trendspotting, Wannabe-Web-Millionaire, YouTube
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Saturday, October 27th, 2007
Michael Banks is a brilliant man! He interviews thirty top bloggers, packages the interviews into a book called Blogging Heroes with a few paragraphs of his own, then offers the bloggers the opportunity to give away the chapter they’re in as a free pdfs on their site! So far, Chris Anderson at The Long Tail, Mark Frauenfelder at BoingBoing, David Rothman at TeleBlog and Steve Garfield have bitten the bait, but I’m sure more bloggers will follow suit.
By the way, I had the same idea as Michael when I started my Desi Blogging Cafe series (and yes, the series will be back soon with the dozens of interviews I haven’t published yet).
Filed in Internet, Marketing, Novice Blogger
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Also tagged Asides, Bloggers, Blogging, Blogging-Heroes, BoingBoing, Books, Chris-Anderson, David-Rothman, Desi-Blogging-Cafe, Mark-Frauenfelder, Michel-Banks, Novice Blogger, Steve-Garfield, TeleBlog, The-Long-Tail, The-Next-Marketing-Guru, Wannabe-Web-Millionaire, Wiley
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New York Times wonders if the Tom Sawyer model for Web 2.0 content creation -
Tom Sawyer got it right. Why paint a fence when you can get your friends to do it for you for free? He would have been the perfect new-media mogul. Spending time and money creating content on the Internet is so hopelessly dated, so dotcom, so very, very 1.0. The secret of today’s successful Web 2.0 companies: build a place that attracts people by encouraging them to create the content — thereby drawing even more people in to create even more stuff.
- is sustainable. It isn’t.
Online video site Magnify already shares ad revenues with users, YouTube is planning to, and everybody else is likely to follow. Web 2.0 businesses looking for free user-generated content will soon see users migrating to their competitors who have implemented a revenue sharing model.