We Are Organized Chaos

If You’ve Ever Played RISK, Facebook’s Global Domination Map Might Look Familiar…

Win or lose, you’ve probably seen this before.  This is total global domination by Facebook (the light green color) and doesn’t appear to be letting up anytime soon… (via Techrunch)

What’s New in Mobile Marketing – Holiday Edition

Have A Happy New Year!!!

• Mobile Advertising: 5 Things You Need To Know To Succeed in 2010
• Will 2010 Be The Year Of The Mobile Coupon?
• 8 Mobile Technologies To Watch In 2010
• Top 10 Mobile Phones, Sites Through Q309: iPhone Ranks #1
• iPhone Now The Most Popular Phone In The US
• Background Checks For All With BeenVerified’s iPhone App
• iPhone And Android Users Spend More Than Half Their Time In Apps
• It’s Droid, Droid Baby
• Consumers Making Wi-Fi Hotspots Hot
• Forrester Predicts Android Will Have 10% Smartphone Market Share in 2010
• Qik, Ustream Compete For iPhone Live Video Streams
• Will The Mobile Web Kill Off The App Store?
• iPhone Sews Up Nearly Half Of Japan’s Smartphone Market
• iFart Launches First Farting Social Network For The iPhone
• Millennial Media: 2009 Was The “Year Of Mobile,” Predictions For The Top 10 in 2010
• Morgan Stanley: Mobile Internet Market Will Be Twice The Size Of The Desktop Internet
• Coca-Cola’s 50-Cent Vitaminwater App Sees 250K Downloads In 2 Weeks
• iPhone Users, Get Ready For Flash Games
• VC Predictions For Cell Phones In 2010: Virtual Revenues And App Store Wars

What’s New in Interactive Video – Holiday Edition

Have A Happy New Year!!!

• First 3D Television Channel To Launch In The U.S. In 2010
• Streaming Olympics Coverage Foretells More Sports Specials – And Fees
• Where To Watch The Times Square New Year’s Eve Celebration Online
• We Got That B-Roll
• Engaging Shoppers With Interactive Video – 10 Examples Shared
• Muziic Plays Vevo, YouTube Music Without ‘Obtrusive’ Ads
• Steve Nash Uses Reverse Psychology To Garner Fan Votes For All-Star Game
• Will Hulu Become A Blockbuster?
• Warner Music Videos Land At Hulu, Not Vevo
• Web Series Branding Opps To Be Auctioned Off, Starting At $50,000
• YouTube Is The Social Media Innovation Of The Decade
• Fans Make New Nine Inch Nails Concert Video – Release On Bit Torrent
• Can We Stop Talking About 3D TV’s Already? It’s Nothing But Hype
• StayTunedTv.net – Full-Length Webisodes From Independent Filmmakers Online
• YouTube Becoming A Social Net, Google Becoming Humble?
• Justin.tv Rolling Out Pay-Per-View Next Month
• Minitube Streams YouTube Videos To Your Desktop, Without Flash
• Muppets YouTube Channel Hits 10 Million Views In Just 3 Weeks
• Ashton Kutcher’s Live Webvids: Genius New Format Or Celeb Desperation

What Happens When You Mix Mythbusters With Gaming?

You get these very creative and entertaining videos from Defend The House.  In a nutshell, the video creators prove or disprove myths in popular multiplayer games.  If you’re a fan of Halo or Modern Warfare, then you’ll definitely enjoy the series.  I posted the first 2 videos in the Modern Warfare 2 series below:

Episode #1

Episode #2

UPDATE: See all videos from the Halo 3 series here

I Want My Old Real-Time Google Search Back…

One of the drawbacks to the always evolving real-time web is the constant integration of different hubs that utilize real-time content.  The most recent?  Google allowing for real-time search that pulls in tweets from Twitter (and soon to be even more Facebook content.)  You would think that having all this information at your disposal would make you feel like you were on top of Mount Olympus.  But, alas, this wealth of information at your disposal quickly becomes a burden versus a blessing.  Put quite simply – there’s too much information now to sift through and all that indexed content is getting less and less relevant.

I’ll walk you through one such instance of how the “Old” Real-Time Google Search was quite effective:

MY GOOGLE ALERTS SCENARIO

Google Alerts is a god-send when it comes to finding up-to-date info on yourself, clients, competitors, and  just about any person, place, thing that is identified by a keyword.  If you’re not using this function on Google, you should be  It’s a great resource to have search results on a predefined topic delivered to you daily or in real-time as it’s indexed by Google.

Previously, I was content getting a nice little email that summarized all the relevant keyword search updates for that day.  Over the last few months though, I changed a few of my alerts to ‘as they happen’ to tap into the more real-time nature of Google search indexing.  However, this still wasn’t ‘real-time’ in the same way Twitter and Facebook updates were.

Then, over the last few weeks, Google decided to get serious about ‘real-time’ and started to integrate Twitter and Facebook into the search results.  Sounds great right? All real-time data delivered right to your inbox.  Well unfortunately what sounded great on paper absolutely sucks in practice.  Here’s why…

When I was using Google Alerts, I was getting great info from brand sites, news outlets, etc.  I’m going to assume that most people who use Google Alerts use(d) it this way as well (if not, call me crazy in the comments…)   I was searching for information that I felt I could trust or at least get a link to a site for to get more information as needed.  However, now my Google Alerts are being infiltrated by tweets, Facebook posts, etc. that are just mentioning a keyword and don’t have any real relevance against my initial Google Alerts keyword intent.  The way I’m looking at it is that I’m now getting the ‘conversation’ along with the ‘research’ and I’m not digging it.

I used to have a very clear separation of church and state:

For ‘official’ research, I would trust Google Alerts to index blogs, sites, etc. for the content I needed.

For ‘conversation’ research, I would just search Twitter and used Tweetdeck or Twhirl to track what I wanted.

Now, everything is a mess. I’m getting almost 3X the volume of Google Alerts delivered via email and most of them are filled with nonsensical partial tweets, status updates, and incoherent babble. Unfortunately, now I don’t even bother checking most of the alerts I initially setup as it’s too time consuming to even start going through them all. Keep in mind, I have about 75 alerts setup and whereas I used to get maybe 25-30 emails with relevant info daily, I’m now getting over 100 because some searches are pulling up multiple times throughout the day when someone ‘tweets’ a keyword I’m tracking.  Am I the only one that thinks this is a mess now?

I’m a huge proponent of the real-time web and feel that the way we find and interact with information now has fundamentally changed forever. It’s exciting to see how this evolution will continue to occur but can somebody please bring my old Google Alert functionality back? If not, I’m going to have to go back to getting my information the old school way…

Being Pitched An Augmented Reality Execution? Here Are Some Questions To Ask

So, your agency is pitching you on an Augmented Reality (AR) execution. And as much as you’d love to move forward with something, the fact is you might not know that much about AR. And why should you? It’s rather “cutting edge”, especially in terms of its marketing implications, and you have a ton of other things to worry about.

As a marketing agency (Zugara) that also develops our own proprietary AR technologies (and seeing as how it’s the holiday season and all that jazz) we thought it might be nice to arm you with some important questions to ask your agency. This way, you hopefully don’t end up paying for an agency to simply have an AR execution that looks great on their reel, but never actually engages a consumer. Noted below, are a few questions/issues you should be cognizant of, and the reason they should be included in your thinking. HAPPY FESTIVUS!

The Question: Will this be built in Flash (if online)?

The Reason: One word: “Downloads”. We’ve harped on this before, proprietary technologies require downloads and a significant number of consumers drop out of a process when faced with one. So why do it? Flash’s install rate is nearly 100%. If you’re going to put your budget and time into AR, the least you can do is give your consumer the opportunity to enjoy it.  Below, you’ll see a tweet that was sent to me.  I track the term “augmented reality” on Twitter, and whenever someone tweets that term, I see it.  @woscholar tweeted about an unpleasant experience he was having with a Avatar cross-promotion that McDonalds is running.  I engaged him in a conversation, and here’s his feedback regarding the download that AR execution required:

The Question: Why aren’t we just creating this experience within the browser (i.e. Why isn’t this just a traditional web site?)?

The Reason: Is the idea you’re being pitched to just have a 3-D model pop out of a marker and essentially push your message to the consumer (be it via a key-ed out video or the like)? If the AR doesn’t truly add anything to the experience, why put the budget against it and limit your campaign’s potential reach (due to the need for a web cam)? Ask your team if you’re using this technology just to use it. Think about your goals. Think about your objectives. Think about your consumers. If AR can be a natural extension of the story you’re trying to tell, then perfect! If not, just keep it in your arsenal/thinking.

The Question: Will you walk me through the entire consumer experience?

The Reason: Taking the time to answer this question can expose fundamental flaws with the concept. Sometimes an idea can sound fantastic on the surface, but when you go step by step through the consumer experience you begin to realize something: no consumer would ever do everything it takes to participate (e.g. you may realize that the user would need to put their computer or web cam on the floor to get the necessary camera angle). Seeing as how you want consumers to “do stuff”, this can be a good way of vetting ideas.

The Question: Why do you think a consumer would do this?  What is their payoff?

The Reason: Obviously, the days of the consumer sitting there patiently listening to your entire message/ad are long gone. It’s the consumer’s world, and we’re just living in it. They need a compelling reason to interact with your engagement… to give you their time. One good litmus test is to put your “consumer hat on”. Odds are (unless you’re working for Nike, Apple, or a few others) most of your consumers “like” your brand, but aren’t passionately fanatical about it. So, think about a brand you “like” (not yours), and think about whether or not you would interact with it if they launched an execution similar to the one you’re contemplating. If the answer is “no”, then think about what it would take to make you participate. If you can’t find anything to make the offering compelling, perhaps this execution is not “the one”.

The Question: Why are you pitching me a mobile idea, versus an online idea?

The Reason: A mobile execution would be cool and cutting edge, granted. But for the near term, it’s limited in its reach (do more people have computers or iphones/blackberrys?), and functionality. Although not widely publicized, the fact is the hardware running on smartphones is not ready to deliver the consumer experience you’re expecting (I wrote more about this back in June), and the much beloved iPhone’s API still remains mostly closed to developers (which means you can’t have an iPhone read a marker like online unless it’s been jail-broken – which most consumers would never do). Not to mention, there’s apparently no rhyme or reason as to how Apple accepts/declines apps for the app store… so there’s the potential for your investment to never see the light of day.  To be clear, in our opinion mobile AR will be huge in the future, it’s just not there yet.

The Question: What’s the experience for the consumer that doesn’t have access to a webcam?

The Reason: There aren’t any publicly available, industry standard metrics on web cam penetration rates. This much is certain though, as of today, a significant number of your audience doesn’t have a webcam and you can’t ignore them because they will come to the site looking for an experience.

The Question: Are you sure this is even possible?

The Reason: Odds are, you’re being pitched by someone who’s not an expert in the technology. They’re creative, and smart, but most of the time their ideas just flat out aren’t doable (either in the near term or without a ton of R&D). Before you get your boss excited about the idea, it’s probably prudent to make sure that it’s technologically feasible.

So, what do you think? Agree? Disagree? Are there other questions that brand managers should be asking their agency? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

You can find me on twitter @jack_benoff

Funny Holiday Mashup Videos

Mashup Videos continue to gain traction on the web and the holiday season usually bring out the best of them.  The most recent Holiday mashup video? Santa vs. Jack Bauer which you can view below:

SANTA VS. JACK BAUER

Last year, we created a few Santa Mashup Videos to show how to create a Choose Your Own Adventure video using Annotations on YouTube.  I’ve listed the 3 most popular videos from that CYOA below:

SANTA & INDIANA JONES VS. THE CLUELESS SWORDSMAN

SANTA VS. CHUCK NORRIS

SANTA VS. AGENT SMITH FROM THE MATRIX

Though Santa and Elves are always popular Mashup material, the reigning Holiday Mashup champ (in our eyes at least) is still this hilarious video featuring the Easter Bunny kicking ass!

THE EASTER BUNNY HATES YOU!

Know of any other great Holiday Mashup Videos? If so, let us know in the comments and we’ll post ‘em! Happy Holidays!!!

Google Goggles is the Real Deal

There’s been a lot of buzz the last few days about Google’s foray into Augmented Reality territory, but it’s the non-AR (technically) side of their new app, Google Goggles, that steals the show. I downloaded Goggles to the company Android phone today and gave it a test run. Actually, test run is an understatement – I ran around the office taking pictures of everything, amazed by the power of its photo recognition engine. One must assume that Goggles is, at least partly, the outcome of Google’s purchase of Neven Vision, an image recognition startup, back in 2006. It just might wind up being the company’s smartest aquisition, since it’s becoming safe to say that Google will own location AR once they get Goggles analyzing off a real time video feed.

While Goggles can recognize logos and graphics (it even recognized a painting in our office), upon use it’s obvious that it gets most of its power from text recognition – really good text recognition. The only thing it had trouble with were the words “BIG BOY” on my piggy bank, which it read as “BIG SOY” and then “BIO SOY,” both of which yielded interesting search results. As Google refines the engine to work faster and more reliably, though, it could wind up being the basis for true hyper-location AR.

Imagine this – a mobile app gets your relative position and direction from GPS and compass data (which Goggles already does), then behind the scenes, takes a snapshot from the camera. The image is analyzed by the recognition engine and matched with Google Street View images within your vicinity. Based on the scale and angle difference of the Street View image and the snapshot, the application is able to find nearly your exact location and place digital objects accordingly. No more will location AR be vague popups of information, but accurate modification of a real world view. To let up on processing and data transferring, the app could make this call every ten to twenty seconds and still produce results that would put every other location based AR company out of business.

I’m sure that someone at Google has already thought of something like this, so be ready for each successive update to Google Goggles bringing us one step closer to the ultimate vision of Augmented Reality.
For all you folks that don’t have an Android phone, here’s a video of me using Goggles around the office.

Follow me on Twitter, @blakecallens

What’s New in Mobile Marketing – 12/11/09

• Ustream Broadcaster App On iPhone – Festivus For The Rest Of Us! Qik soon to be live as well!
• AT&T: 3% Of Wireless Users Eat 40% Of Data
• Today’s Vision Of Tomorrow: Apps With Everything, Everything With Apps
• 8 Medical (Useful) iPhone Apps You Should Prescribe To Your Health-Care Professional
• Consumer Warming Up To Mobile Video
• 7-Eleven Tries Out Mobile Marketing With Free Drinks
• Mobile Couponing Catching On?
• Apple Kicks Cheating Developer Out Of The App Store That’s 1,000 Less Useless Apps Now…
• How The iPhone Could Reboot Education
• Put On Your Google Goggles And Visually Search The World
• Booyah’s Mobile App My Town Turns The Real World Into Monopoly
• All Hail The iPod Touch
• Don’t Create An iPhone App For The Online Buzz Factor

What’s New In Social Media – 12/10/09

• Gartner points to untapped potential in workplace social networks.
• Dell has posted $6.5 Million in sales thanks to Twitter.  Twitter has posted $0.0 Million in sales…
• Facebook hits 100 Million monthly uniques in the U.S.  That’s nearly 1 in 3 Americans.
• Remember Friendster?  They were to MySpace what MySpace is to Facebook.  Well, Friendster just sold for $10o Million.
• Cisco thinks vlogging is better than blogging.
• What Google’s real-time search means for businesses.
• How events can use social media.