Social Media Integration w. Movie Marketing: Farmville Goes Hollywood for MegaMind - Advertising Age

LOS ANGELES (AdAge.com) -- Farmville is going Hollywood. As the Zynga web property begins to establish itself as an emerging mass-reach ad platform for advertisers such as McDonald's, 7-Eleven and General Mills, the popular social-media app is integrating Paramount DreamWorks Animation's "MegaMind" as its first film partner.

--> For 24 hours -- starting tonight at midnight to promote the film's Friday release -- Farmville users will be able to interact with a virtual Mega-Farm, hosted by the film's title character, and even purchase a ticket to see the film directly from the FarmVille world.

Anne Globe, DreamWorks' head of worldwide marketing, said the promotion was a good creative fit for the film's plot but also an efficient place to reach a wide audience, given FarmVille's 16 million daily active users and 56 million monthly users.

Read full post on AdAge.com

Wow. University offers full MBA course via Facebook | New Media Age

The London School of Business and Finance has put the content of an entire MBA online for free.

It’s using a Facebook application to post the full lectures and content for the MBA course, hoping that people will then want to pay for formal accreditation and examination.

The university said it had invested £7.5m in the course, including the content and course notes.

cont..

"The course, called LSBF Global MBA, includes lectures and panel discussion groups from Accenture, Deloitte, Royal Navy Leadership Academy and Viagogo.

Aaron Etingen, founder of the LSBF, said, “There’s immense potential in the market for online education. Facebook is a real part of people’s lives and we want to promote accessibility to knowledge. The application, developed for us by former Google employees, delivers an MBA awarded by the University of Wales. It’s the first online MBA which will be free to all until the optional point of assessment for qualification.”

He added he hopes the course will appeal to those who want to do an MBA while they’re still working, or those who want to learn while saving up to pay for the final examination."

We;'ll be getting points for everything... : O'Brien: Get ready for the decade of gamification - grazie RT @GaryPHayes

Click photo to enlarge

The popularity of video games and the explosion of social networking are intersecting to redefine how we will experience the Web over the next decade.

The melding of these two powerful forces has been labeled "gamification." At its most basic level, the term refers to the idea of incorporating the elements of video games into nongaming Web sites and services that utilize social networking features. You've probably already encountered some of the most basic tools: leader boards, progress bars, badges and virtual gifts.

These may sound frivolous, but the rush to adopt such tools represents a growing sophistication on the part of developers that will lead to a profound shift in our online experiences. Developers are no longer content to simply track our behavior or passively gather data about us. By using game design, they are actively trying to direct what we do and influence how we interact with others online.

For instance, if you use the professional networking site LinkedIn, you've seen a progress bar that tells you how much of your profile

you've filled out. The company found that simple tool induces people to continue adding information, thanks to our innate desire to complete a task. That additional information creates more connections for you, leading you to spend more time on the site.

Despite the awkwardness of the term, gamification has become one of the hottest buzz words in Silicon Valley.

"It's one

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of the key layers of functionality that will start to weave into everything," said Tim Chang of Norwest Venture Partners. "Just like social is a function that goes into everything, game mechanics are a tool kit that will start to go everywhere."

Done well, developers believe game design will make the dreariest of tasks more fun and engaging. Done badly, gamification could easily come across as a creepy attempt to manipulate us.

In either case, the rush to "gamify" the Web is gaining tremendous momentum. Video games are one of the most popular forms of entertainment, and generations that have grown up playing them have been shaped by their logic and structure. They offer clear sets of rules, and rewards and instant feedback that motivate users.

The explosion of social networking over the past decade set the foundation for gamification by creating easy ways to build networks of relationships.

Gamification really came into its own thanks to the phenomenal success of social games like "FarmVille," the Zynga game that has attracted millions of users who help each other build their virtual farms. Developers across the Web began studying the underlying behaviors for those playing "FarmVille" and wondering how to apply that dynamic to increase the engagement with their own websites and services.

Ron Gutman, founder of HealthTap, a valley startup that's in early development, said his team is trying to figure out how to use gamelike tools to motivate people to share their health concerns, find treatments or providers that can help them, and then take better care of themselves.

"If you can get hundreds of millions of people playing a game like 'FarmVille,' what can you learn from this kind of engagement?" he said. "And can we deploy it in a place that it will do good? Like helping people lead healthier lives?"

Gutman is hardly alone. Bing Gordon, who was an executive at video game giant Electronic Arts for more than 25 years before

joining Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers in 2008, said it's typical for entrepreneurs who pitch the firm to have a slide explaining how they'll use game mechanics.

"I'd say half the companies that are doing something in the consumer space claim in their presentation that they're using video game design," Gordon said. "I tell people that getting a master's in video game design is the new MBA."

It's important to note that gamification is not about turning every single thing you do on the Web into an actual game. It's more subtle than that. Done well, these are features you may not even be aware are driven by game thinking. In fact, you've probably already experienced some of the basic tools for years.

For example, if you're a Starbucks customer and have one of their reward cards, then you can register your card online to see a progress bar that tracks your points as you make purchases. As you get more points you move to a new status that rewards you with something like a free drink. If you get enough points, you even get a gold card to identify your status.

Game thinking has even extended beyond the Web. Companies now offer prizes as incentive for development teams to build solutions to problems. And I've met startups that want to use the smart energy grid to create services that show people information about their energy consumption and compete against their neighbors and community to reduce their use.

Trying to measure the gamification trend is tough, because it's not necessarily about starting a company that's labeled "gaming." Instead, startups want to disrupt industries like e-commerce or health care with services designed around game thinking.

But the concept has led to companies like Badgeville, which officially launched last month and helps other companies and services gamify their sites.

Founder Kris Duggan said Badgeville has identified 40 types of behavior that can be influenced through game mechanics. He declined to list all of them but said they generally fall into three large categories: personal achievement such as collecting something or completing a task; group motivation, where you influence other people's actions; and contextual communications where a well-timed signal or message (like a progress bar) encourages behavior.

"You tell me what kind of behavior you want to drive," he said. "And we'll create incentives that drive those behaviors."

Many of the concepts of gamification have been mapped out by Byron Reeves, a professor of communication at Stanford University who published a book last year called, "Total Engagement: Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete."

"Some of the ingredients of games are absolutely psychologically primitive," Reeves said. "We know the brain responds to gains and losses, whether it's real dollars or virtual gold pieces. There's something fundamental about recognition, seeing yourself compared to other people."

The gamification movement has gained such currency that it's about to get the ultimate form of Silicon Valley recognition: a conference. The first Gamification Summit is scheduled for January in San Francisco. One of the organizers, Gabe Zichermann, who writes a gamification blog, said he's already looking down the road at ways game thinking will revolutionize larger areas of our lives such as our workplaces, the education system, and the health care system.

"In a gamified future, I don't think many companies, including the government, will be able to avoid becoming part of this trend," he said. "I think consumers will increasingly expect and demand that experiences become more fun and engaging.

"We can never ever go backward. People's expectations have been reset. This will be the new normal."

Contact Chris O'Brien at 415-298-0207 or cobrien@mercurynews.com. Follow him at Twitter.com/sjcobrien or www.facebook.com/ChrisOBrienJournalist.

Love this too - if there's time to read one thing this am: MIT Startup Bootcamp Take Aways

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Great notes from the MIT Startup Bootcamp posted by Ali Powell. I've excerpted the first set from David Cancel of Performable.

'Creating a data driven startup.

Timing is everything.

Marketing, big data, analytics.

"98 percent of the people that come to your website leave and they never come back."

3 lessons learned the hard way:

1. The middle sucks. Don't be in the middle. That is the valley of death.

2. Your "demo" is useless. No one cares about your demo. Why would you spend energy on a demo when you could be creating the real product?

3. So is your business plan. Your business plan is wrong and worthless. It will not be the same at day 1 as it is along the way and at the end.

You do not want to hear, "that is interesting." That means that the investor does not care about your product.

Your biggest challenge is making people care. Don't focus on competitors. Stop reading Techcrunch.

Sell a dream or sell traction. Don't try to sell in the middle, don't sell the demo.

Your idea doesn't matter. It is about finding a pain point, solving a critical problem.

As soon as you hear "IF"- warning sign for your product.

If it is cheaper, if it was easier, etc...

Make sure that people will care about your product and want to start using it.

The Secret= #JFDI- Just Fu*king Do It!

Stop reading- Do something.

DOES ANYBODY CARE ABOUT YOUR PRODUCT?

"You are solving to make somebody care. There are NO repeatable patterns for startup success. Stop looking for one."'

Also speaking were:

Ric Fulop of A123Systems

Kevin Hale of Wufoo

Stephen Wolfram of Wolfram Research

Alexis Ohanian of reddit

James Lindenbaum of Heroku

Bob MetCalfe of Polaris Ventures

George Bell of General Catalyst Partners

Ayr Muir of Clover Food Lab

Mick Mountz of Kiva Systems

Chris Wanstrath of github

Read the full post:

http://www.bostonwomenpreneurs.com/boston-womenpreneurs-blog/bid/44597/Startu...

my Fave from 'Lessons Learned From Startup Bootcamp 2010 MIT' - grazie! RT @christydena

James Lindenbaum (Heroku) - Be a Machete

Heroku is a beast of a company with a ton of users and a large number of paying customers as well. When looking at the live stat counter I think it caught James off guard as it increases so much everyday he didn't know what the exact number was. Very candid and very inspiring moment.

What is a machete?

A machete is a simple straight forward tool that allows you to accomplish and be many things while staying simple. The same could be achieved with a swiss army knife, but that's bloated and really 50 things crammed into one. A machete is really one thing that can serve AS 50 things. What can you discover from your product and through customer development?

Throwing Things Away

In order to be a machete, you have to be ultra lean and able to stay simple. In order to do this, you need to be able to throw things away that aren't necessary to your customers. Don't have too much emotional attachment to a product or feature.

Excerpt rom post:

On Saturday, MIT hosted Startup Bootcamp to provide a diverse group of lessons to hopeful founders and those teetering on the edge of jumping into a startup. The tagline for the event was actually "Starting a company is easier than you think." The videos will be online soon as well if you want to relive the experience. I thought it would be useful to sum up the important lessons from each talk instead of doing a direct play by play.

You can also check out more coverage at:

1) Startup Bootcamp Take Aways

2) Why I'm Going To Get A Dog, Lose My Ego, And Just F'Ing Do It"

Congrats all! Canada's Independent Production Fund Greenlights 11 Web Series

Canada-based Independent Production Fund (IPF), the funding organization behind Toronto-based tween detective series Ruby Skye P.I. from Story2.OH, has just launched Wip, the IPF Web Series Program, which has greenlit eleven new Canadian web series.

According to the IPF, nearly 170 proposals, in both English and French, were submitted by producers across Canada. A total of $1.2M was awarded to eleven selected projects to produce a total of about 16 hours of content. Wip has already debuted the tween mystery series Ruby Skye P.I., comic superhero series Tights and Fights: Ashes, and the French 11 Règles, and will be launching Dakodak, an innovative series for young adults.

Since 1991, the private, independent IPF has invested over $50M in more than 200 television series. The IPF Web Series Program was launched in March 2010 as a pilot project with the participation of Film Nova Scotia and Innovation PEI. Below is a description of the eleven IPF series:

WoWoW: First road car produced with a 3D printer

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Excerpt:

"A prototype for an electric vehicle -- code named Urbee -- is the first to have its entire body built with a 3D printer.

Stratasys and Winnipeg engineering group Kor Ecologic have partnered to create the electric/liquid fuel hybrid, which can deliver more than 200 miles per gallon on the motorway and 100 miles per gallon in the city.

The two-passenger hybrid aims to be fuel efficient, easy to repair, safe to drive and inexpensive to own.

All exterior components -- including the glass panel prototypes -- were created using Dimension 3D Printers and Fortus 3D Production Systems at Stratasys’ digital manufacturing service -- RedEye on Demand...."

Very interesting: Could HBO ‘Go’ Direct to Consumers?

Time Warner has been aggressively touting its TV Everywhere strategy, which enables cable subscribers to view certain online content from cable networks that they’ve already paid for. And it’s invested heavily in building its HBO Go and Max Go video offerings so that partners like Comcast and Verizon can give their subscribers access to these value-added services.

But on today’s earnings call, an interesting thing happened: Chairman and CEO Jeff Bewkes didn’t outright dismiss the possibility of going direct to consumers with an online offering, saying the premium cable network could do so if its distribution partners don’t roll out authenticated services quickly enough. In response to an analyst asking if HBO could market its online offering direct to consumers, Bewkes said:

“[O]n the question you raised about HBO going direct, we do have the ability to do that. And it’s not something that we have decided to do today because… we have a very good relationship… [with] all the different distributors… If that doesn’t work well, or speedily enough, then we have the option of adding a direct sale of HBO.”

While Bewkes essentially said the company had no immediate plans for a direct-to-consumer offering, what’s surprising is that he didn’t dismiss the idea out of hand. After all, Time Warner — more than most other media conglomerates — has been aggressively banging the drum for authenticated video services tied to its distribution partners’ cable subscriptions. Along with Comcast, Time Warner originated the idea of TV Everywhere, and has been a big advocate of the initiative ever since. So the possibility of a consumer-facing online video offering seems like a bit of an about-face for HBO.

What’s clear is that if Time Warner does make a play for HBO subscribers with an over-the-top offering, it won’t be doing so by partnering with Netflix, as cable networks Starz and Epix had. In fact, it would most likely be offering the service as a competitor to Netflix’s Watch Instantly streaming service. Time Warner executives have been fairly critical of other content owners for making their broadband video content available online through Netflix and Hulu. Referring to Warner Bros. digital distribution on the call, Bewkes said:

“[W]e absolutely evaluate everything… [but] we’re not going forward to sales and licensing agreements within like Netflix or Hulu in the context of what is best, in this case, for Warner Bros. on providing the most healthy revenue support for the licensing that we do because there a lot of things that have been proposed in “digital” that are really not in the interest of the studio… And as you can tell by the things we’ve done and not done, we don’t agree with some of the moves that our studio competitors have taken. We think it’s bad for the value of their content.”

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