MTV has clearly elevated the concept of socializing while watching television to an artfully modern parlor game. It’s called Backchannel.
Here’s the nutshell. Micro-blog funny or snarky comments in real time with others online while watching The Hills on MTV (you probably already do that). To play, log into a specialized MTV Backchannel game “chat room” while you are tuned into the tv show. Viewers make comments (called tags) about what is happening in the show to the 100 other people or so in that room. Other people click on the comments floating around that they like - a la an arcade game. Players get points as both a clicker and tagger with the goal of becoming a Backchannel superstar. It is all timed and limited pretty ingeniously so the tagging and clicking isn’t overwhelming. It’s way more compelling than it might sound, trust me.
The commenting goes on right through the commercials – yes, I hear the ad-people gears turning on the potential advertising metrics on that one…. Advertisers, are you ready to hear what people think of you?
Social media concepts personified. MTV connects the audience to each other (one of our well-worn mantras here), and makes their TV shows interactive, more fun and socially powered. But just think about the insight MTV is gathering from the audience on the content of the show – not to mention a new value they can offer their advertisers.
MTV has mashed up TV with Twitter with gaming with social networking – they’ve done equally interesting things with virtual worlds, but that's another story.
I tell you. MTV are ones to follow (even if their programming may not always be).
Wine tasting together on Twitter – that’s Twitter Taste Live!
Okay, first you need to know about Twitter if you don’t already. In a blurb, it is a social network site that gives you 140 characters to answer the question: “What are you doing?” You can “follow” other people and get their updates. People have micro conversations. Anyone can tune in to the conversation. That’s it. Simple and modernly powerful.
Yeah, well, you gotta use it to really get it…but once you do….
Bin Ends Wine is using Twitter to hold wine tastings. A brilliantly modern marketing technique, if you must know. Here is how it works.
You sign up for Twitter, you “follow” Bin Ends Wine (search for: “binendswine” on Twitter), and you order the wines from Bin Ends Wine that will be tasted and discussed the night of the tasting. Wine arrives. You grab a bottle and a laptop (a wine glass might be good too) and Twitter away as you join in on the conversation with international wine experts on the live stream.
For you it is wine, laptop and tweets. But here’s a peek into last week’s event from the Bin Ends Wines end:
"Twitter Taste LIVE took over the “Twitterverse” once again last night to taste the wines of Hugel et Fils along with Etienne Hugel “tweeting” from his home in Alsace and countless bloggers around the world.
My head is pounding and my eye’s are adjusting from staring at three PC screens, holding a skype call to Alsace, IM’ing with our web guy, holding an in-store tasting, streaming live and of course tweeting all at the same time, but I can say that the event last night was amazing!"
We’re not surprised Bin Ends is up-to-the-modern-moment. They’ve been going “wine 2.0” all over the Internet with their blogging and podcasting and video-ing and Flickring and Del.icio.using since 2004.
Check out Bin Ends Wine’s blog and winecast, join in on Twitter Taste Live and get some tweet ideas of your own.
Sign me up!!
Advertising really gets a bad rap in today’s “social” mediasphere. Fact is, we consumers need it, and we want it – especially those ads from our very own in-town local merchants who generally offer us unique products or better yet, a shopping experience that is person-person social while keeping us close to home and eco-friendly.
Problem is those ads are generally dead trees in our mailbox or on our doorstep – and we wind up sending it back into the recycling loop, which inevitably increases our carbon footprint anyway which doesn’t help the planet….
Pubeco has a model I’m totally up for. Members of the Pubeco service can get all their full-color, personality-included local ads and promotional flyers online – plus they can manage personalized RSS feeds for their local businesses, selecting and searching by categories of interest.
Social networking features allow customers to add merchants as favorites or trusted connections, which serve to build the merchants’ business relationships as well as their “socially networked” reputation within the community. Pubeco has a Facebook page as well.
Pubeco users put a sticker on their mailbox that refuses advertising: “ No advertising, I look on the Internet. I protect my planet.”
But there’s more! Members earn points for visiting the site and the points are converted into grants to eco-friendly causes.
Pubeco is a project launched last February throughout France by Sustainable Development Multimedia. Their mission: “More promotions, less pollution.” We say: Modern media well executed and very “socially” responsible.
Now, anyone know of such a service in the U.S.?
Cozi’s getting some big press these days.
Cozi is an oh-so-simple, but oh-so-happy-making family calendar done Web 2.0 style. It offers a family journal, lists, and reminder service and is a general keeper-and-organizer-of-family-details. Its user interface is a thing of pure beauty – and its ability to sync automatically with your calendar at work is simply brilliant. But, being able to call or text message to get my shopping list sent to my mobile phone – that’s music to our modern media ears!
Newspaper publisher, Gannett is feeling warm and cozi too. After launching a strategic partnership with Cozi in April to offer locally co-branded Cozies on three of its newspaper sites, Gannett has just announced a full-on investment as a minority stakeholder in Cozi.
Speculation is that Gannett will go modern by integrating Cozi into their newspapers’ Calendar listings. Since they also have a seat on the Cozi board in the deal, we’ll be seeing the Gannett Cozi modernness being promoted across Gannett’s print and online newspaper sites. Well, like this:
From Me-Everything to the We Generation. The creation and sharing of multimedia is a hallmark of the “We Generation.” Here are just two new services, among the many cropping up, that let us be “we.” These are the modern media equivalents of the post office and Community Square on a global scale. They are simple and brilliant examples of connecting customers with each other.
Ourmedia.org offers free storage and bandwidth for video, audio, photos or text. Their mission: provide a place alongside big media to “gather, inform, entertain and astound each other.”
Dropload is an online place to drop off files and have them picked up at a later time by someone else (or yourself). Upload any type of file, up to 100MB each. Just specify the recipients and they receive an email with instructions for downloading. After 7 days, the files are deleted. As handy as UPS.
Social networks and services built around our digital self-expression - modern media on the rise. Modern marketing opportunity. Are you creating, contributing, enabling or participating in social networks?
 NetHoods are as local as they are
global. Wholivesnearyou.com
allows you to get to know your neighbors (assuming you live in Singapore). Its
purpose is to revive the village spirit.
Neighbors are categorized by proximity
to you and you can chat, arrange to meet or find someone to share a car. The site
currently has more than 50,000 subscribers after only 6 months.
Are you
considering how NetHoods can benefit your customers or how to partner with new
niche players
 Blogging is big in the news
and is the buzz in journalism, marketing and PR. For very good reasons. It is
more powerful, and not as new as you might think. It isn't just simple text entries.
Self-publishing is as multimedia and as mobile as media can be.
Photo blog
and video blog via your mobile phone. For an example, see Foneblog. http://foneblog.ie.
Are
you encouraging your customers to create?
 Exclusivity
and modern media converge. ASmallWorld.com is an
invitation-only online community with "chapters" all over the world.
While their home page doesn't say it, it is aimed at high income/high style members
who are already connected to each other. You must be "sponsored" by
another member, but being part of the community gives you access to a great deal
your next jet airplane or personal island.
Unless you're "in"
you can't get past the home page but…http://www.asmallworld.net
MTV has clearly elevated the concept of socializing while watching television to an artfully modern parlor game. It’s called Backchannel.
Here’s the nutshell. Micro-blog funny or snarky comments in real time with others online while watching The Hills on MTV (you probably already do that). To play, log into a specialized MTV Backchannel game “chat room” while you are tuned into the tv show. Viewers make comments (called tags) about what is happening in the show to the 100 other people or so in that room. Other people click on the comments floating around that they like - a la an arcade game. Players get points as both a clicker and tagger with the goal of becoming a Backchannel superstar. It is all timed and limited pretty ingeniously so the tagging and clicking isn’t overwhelming. It’s way more compelling than it might sound, trust me.
The commenting goes on right through the commercials – yes, I hear the ad-people gears turning on the potential advertising metrics on that one…. Advertisers, are you ready to hear what people think of you?
Social media concepts personified. MTV connects the audience to each other (one of our well-worn mantras here), and makes their TV shows interactive, more fun and socially powered. But just think about the insight MTV is gathering from the audience on the content of the show – not to mention a new value they can offer their advertisers.
MTV has mashed up TV with Twitter with gaming with social networking – they’ve done equally interesting things with virtual worlds, but that's another story.
I tell you. MTV are ones to follow (even if their programming may not always be).
Wine tasting together on Twitter – that’s Twitter Taste Live!
Okay, first you need to know about Twitter if you don’t already. In a blurb, it is a social network site that gives you 140 characters to answer the question: “What are you doing?” You can “follow” other people and get their updates. People have micro conversations. Anyone can tune in to the conversation. That’s it. Simple and modernly powerful.
Yeah, well, you gotta use it to really get it…but once you do….
Bin Ends Wine is using Twitter to hold wine tastings. A brilliantly modern marketing technique, if you must know. Here is how it works.
You sign up for Twitter, you “follow” Bin Ends Wine (search for: “binendswine” on Twitter), and you order the wines from Bin Ends Wine that will be tasted and discussed the night of the tasting. Wine arrives. You grab a bottle and a laptop (a wine glass might be good too) and Twitter away as you join in on the conversation with international wine experts on the live stream.
For you it is wine, laptop and tweets. But here’s a peek into last week’s event from the Bin Ends Wines end: "Twitter Taste LIVE took over the “Twitterverse” once again last night to taste the wines of Hugel et Fils along with Etienne Hugel “tweeting” from his home in Alsace and countless bloggers around the world.
My head is pounding and my eye’s are adjusting from staring at three PC screens, holding a skype call to Alsace, IM’ing with our web guy, holding an in-store tasting, streaming live and of course tweeting all at the same time, but I can say that the event last night was amazing!"
We’re not surprised Bin Ends is up-to-the-modern-moment. They’ve been going “wine 2.0” all over the Internet with their blogging and podcasting and video-ing and Flickring and Del.icio.using since 2004.
Check out Bin Ends Wine’s blog and winecast, join in on Twitter Taste Live and get some tweet ideas of your own.
Sign me up!!
Advertising really gets a bad rap in today’s “social” mediasphere. Fact is, we consumers need it, and we want it – especially those ads from our very own in-town local merchants who generally offer us unique products or better yet, a shopping experience that is person-person social while keeping us close to home and eco-friendly.
Problem is those ads are generally dead trees in our mailbox or on our doorstep – and we wind up sending it back into the recycling loop, which inevitably increases our carbon footprint anyway which doesn’t help the planet….
Pubeco has a model I’m totally up for. Members of the Pubeco service can get all their full-color, personality-included local ads and promotional flyers online – plus they can manage personalized RSS feeds for their local businesses, selecting and searching by categories of interest.
Social networking features allow customers to add merchants as favorites or trusted connections, which serve to build the merchants’ business relationships as well as their “socially networked” reputation within the community. Pubeco has a Facebook page as well.
Pubeco users put a sticker on their mailbox that refuses advertising: “ No advertising, I look on the Internet. I protect my planet.”
But there’s more! Members earn points for visiting the site and the points are converted into grants to eco-friendly causes.
Pubeco is a project launched last February throughout France by Sustainable Development Multimedia. Their mission: “More promotions, less pollution.” We say: Modern media well executed and very “socially” responsible.
Now, anyone know of such a service in the U.S.?
Cozi’s getting some big press these days.
Cozi is an oh-so-simple, but oh-so-happy-making family calendar done Web 2.0 style. It offers a family journal, lists, and reminder service and is a general keeper-and-organizer-of-family-details. Its user interface is a thing of pure beauty – and its ability to sync automatically with your calendar at work is simply brilliant. But, being able to call or text message to get my shopping list sent to my mobile phone – that’s music to our modern media ears!
Newspaper publisher, Gannett is feeling warm and cozi too. After launching a strategic partnership with Cozi in April to offer locally co-branded Cozies on three of its newspaper sites, Gannett has just announced a full-on investment as a minority stakeholder in Cozi.
Speculation is that Gannett will go modern by integrating Cozi into their newspapers’ Calendar listings. Since they also have a seat on the Cozi board in the deal, we’ll be seeing the Gannett Cozi modernness being promoted across Gannett’s print and online newspaper sites. Well, like this:
From Me-Everything to the We Generation. The creation and sharing of multimedia is a hallmark of the “We Generation.” Here are just two new services, among the many cropping up, that let us be “we.” These are the modern media equivalents of the post office and Community Square on a global scale. They are simple and brilliant examples of connecting customers with each other.
Ourmedia.org offers free storage and bandwidth for video, audio, photos or text. Their mission: provide a place alongside big media to “gather, inform, entertain and astound each other.”
Dropload is an online place to drop off files and have them picked up at a later time by someone else (or yourself). Upload any type of file, up to 100MB each. Just specify the recipients and they receive an email with instructions for downloading. After 7 days, the files are deleted. As handy as UPS.
Social networks and services built around our digital self-expression - modern media on the rise. Modern marketing opportunity. Are you creating, contributing, enabling or participating in social networks?
NetHoods are as local as they are
global. Wholivesnearyou.com
allows you to get to know your neighbors (assuming you live in Singapore). Its
purpose is to revive the village spirit.
Neighbors are categorized by proximity
to you and you can chat, arrange to meet or find someone to share a car. The site
currently has more than 50,000 subscribers after only 6 months.
Are you
considering how NetHoods can benefit your customers or how to partner with new
niche players
Blogging is big in the news
and is the buzz in journalism, marketing and PR. For very good reasons. It is
more powerful, and not as new as you might think. It isn't just simple text entries.
Self-publishing is as multimedia and as mobile as media can be.
Photo blog
and video blog via your mobile phone. For an example, see Foneblog. http://foneblog.ie.
Are
you encouraging your customers to create?
Exclusivity
and modern media converge. ASmallWorld.com is an
invitation-only online community with "chapters" all over the world.
While their home page doesn't say it, it is aimed at high income/high style members
who are already connected to each other. You must be "sponsored" by
another member, but being part of the community gives you access to a great deal
your next jet airplane or personal island.
Unless you're "in"
you can't get past the home page but…http://www.asmallworld.net
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Here’s the nutshell. Micro-blog funny or snarky comments in real time with others online while watching The Hills on MTV (you probably already do that). To play, log into a specialized MTV Backchannel game “chat room” while you are tuned into the tv show. Viewers make comments (called tags) about what is happening in the show to the 100 other people or so in that room. Other people click on the comments floating around that they like - a la an arcade game. Players get points as both a clicker and tagger with the goal of becoming a Backchannel superstar. It is all timed and limited pretty ingeniously so the tagging and clicking isn’t overwhelming. It’s way more compelling than it might sound, trust me. 
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