Month: December 2007

With Bhutto assassination, Twitter comes of age

With the recent assassination of Benazir Bhutto, Twitter has gained some credibility as a useful medium, says ZDNet. Dennis Howlett commented on Dec. 27, the day of Bhutto’s assassination, that “If anyone needed convincing of Twitter’s business utility, today is that day.”

Microblogging a la Twitter could be a credible way to share breaking news and information quickly, globally and telegraphically.

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Now playing: Angelique Kidjo – Gimme Shelter ft. Joss Stone
via FoxyTunes

Friday Five (more or less): end-of-07 edition

Before the year gets away from us, let me link you up with a final Friday Five — now with even more bloggable marketing/branding/tech/PR goodness than usual.

  • LogoLounge looks at the Logo trends of 2007 and notes that “logo design has become a public sport.” Boy, don’t I know it. Via BoingBoing.
  • 11 ways to get new RSS subscribers. Great ideas. I don’t think I do any of them. Then again, I don’t have a lot of RSS subscribers.
  • Blog it but don’t flog it. Insight into how traditional ad/PR agencies try to co-opt true viral marketing with their own versions. “Viral campaigns are multiplying for the same reason as branded entertainment: the urgency among advertisers to find alternative ways to reach jaded, distracted consumers as technologies such as DVRs and iPods make it easier to avoid conventional pitches.” Via Anne Elizabeth Moore.
  • Media 2008 is a mix – get mixing, in which Chris Brogan deconstructs iEllie.

    iEllie has pictures and podcasts and Flickr and tons and tons of production just packed into this page. She’s creating all the time, and using the various formats interchangeably. This gives you a sense of the mix culture. It’s not a blog. It’s not a podcast. She’s making something and it doesn’t NEED a name because there’s a payload.

  • Teens and Social Media, another insightful report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project. “The survey found that content creation is not just about sharing creative output; it is also about participating in conversations fueled by that content.” Hat tip: SquaredPeg.
  • 10 marketing resolutions for 2008, from Church of the Customer.
  • B.L. Ochman shares Time magazine’s top 10 viral videos of 2007, as reported by MSNBC’s Countdown.
  • Attention, trendspotters: Here are 80 trends to watch in 2008. They include Facebook suicide (dropping out of Facebook, not actual suicide), eco-fatigue, the Gphone (Google’s answer to Apple’s iPhone) and higher education online. Alas, one of those listed, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated shortly after the list came out. Link via Clickz News Blog.
  • Top 10 “tangible” (maybe) PR ideas, from The|Intangibles.

    • Happy New Year.

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    Now playing: Angelique Kidjo – Ae Ae
    via FoxyTunes

    The Guardian’s pick for hot websites in 2008

    From The Guardian’s tech correspondent Bobbie Johnson: Facebook is so last year – welcome to the hit websites of 2008. Twitter makes the cut, as does Seesmic. But the one that I find most fascinating is Moshi Monsters, a social networking site for kids that allows the little monsters to adopt little monsters of their own.

    As Johnson explains, quoting Mike Butcher, the editor of startup news website Techcrunch UK, “Moshi Monsters is ‘Tamagotchi meets Facebook for 7-12 year olds, but with education thrown in.’ … Players ‘adopt’ a monster by buying a small charm which gives them an access code to the website. They then pick their monster, and look after them by solving regular puzzles.”

    moshimonsters1.jpg

    The monsters kind of look like something straight out of the mind of Maurice Sendak. Maybe that’s why I want to adopt one.

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    Now playing: Death Cab for Cutie – A Movie Script Ending
    via FoxyTunes

    Creating a Missouri S&T outpost on Twitter

    As part of the University of Missouri-Rolla’s fast-approaching name change to Missouri University of Science and Technology, we’ve been trying to get the new name out into the social mediasphere. We’ve done this in a couple of ways:

    We’ve created a Missouri S&T outpost on Twitter just to see if any alumni or students who use Twitter will join us. We plan to offer news updates from time to time on Twitter, if there is a demand for the service.

    Also, we’ve created a Missouri S&T photo-sharing site on Flickr. There, people may view and download images from campus. That isn’t anything new, as several colleges and universities do the same thing.

    After Jan. 1, we’ll probably be doing more with social media. Any ideas? I’d love to hear from you. Just don’t ask me to create an island in Second Life.

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    Now playing: Talking Heads – Warning Sign
    via FoxyTunes