Facebook to launch “Facebook Stories” | Data Viz on impact of social network on your life

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via kara.allthingsd.com

Exclusive: Facebook Will Announce 500 Million Users Next Week With “Facebook Stories” | Kara Swisher |

Facebook confirmed that it expects to announce its 500-millionth user next week, and will mark the occasion with new consumer marketing initiative called “Facebook Stories.”

Last week, BoomTown got wind of the effort–which will center on a variety of life stories from users about the impact of the social networking site on their lives–and asked Facebook about it.

The company said it was readying its launch for next week and put Randi Zuckerberg on the horn to tell me the story behind “Stories.”

“As we anticipated our 500-million milestone, and we wanted to find a different way to announce and celebrate it.” said Zuckerberg, who has spearheaded the site’s creation, in an interview this afternoon. “In the past, it’s been all about the numbers and milestones and we realized we had never taken the opportunity to celebrate users.”

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http://bit.ly/9Kt9Mi

How technology can help spread literacy - mentions Conspiracy for Good

new tech-inspired social benefit entertainment experience created by Nokia and Heroes creator Tim Kring.
Try saying that really quickly!

Excerpt:

By Benjamin Snyder, contributor

"With over 10,000 libraries opened worldwide and 7.4 million books already distributed to children in its 10 years, Room to Read -- a nonprofit that promotes global literacy -- aspires to curb the staggering figure of 759 million illiterate adults living in emerging nations.

"If every charity was run with more of a business focus, the world would be a better place," says John Wood, a former senior executive at Microsoft before founding Room to Read in 2000. "We've created what I consider to be a hybrid organization -- the best of charity merged with the best of business."

The organization's goal is to raise $30 million in 2010. In 2009, Room to Read raised $28.3 million in cash and stock -- well above its $23 million goal and a 28% increase over its 2008 contributions.

Technology is key for the company to achieve its goals. The Salesforce.com Foundation has donated Salesforce CRM licenses to help Room to Read build their Global Solutions Database (GSD), a tracking system for the nonprofit's projects in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Laos, Nepal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Zambia. The GSD keeps tabs on Room to Read's implementation timeline, the number of students and teachers being supported, and the percentage of community contribution. This technology helps the company report figures to its donors.

"Technology has been an invaluable tool that's allowed us to reach out to our current investors as well as introduce ourselves to new supporters," explains Wood. "Twitter has opened the door to an entirely new base of supporters for us -- now almost 430,000 strong -- and we like being able to reach out to them on a real-time basis about our latest news or stories they may find interesting." Room to Read was Twitter's first corporate social innovation sponsor.

Room to Read recently announced involvement with the "Conspiracy for Good" initiative, described as a "new tech-inspired social benefit entertainment experience created by Nokia and Heroes creator Tim Kring." Through this project, Room to Read and Nokia will build five libraries in Zambia, while also funding the education of 50 Zambian girls."

read more:

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2010/07/14/how-technology-can-help-spread-literacy/

Storytelling is the Future of the Web - nice graphs & great blog

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By Chris Butler

Most of the successful marketing campaigns that stand out in my memory all revolve around characters. Some of them are simply charismatic spokespeople, like Geico's gecko, Nationwide's "Greatest Spokesperson in the World, or, I suppose, Burger King's creepy king. Others keenly represent the intended customer—think way back to Wendy's "where's the beef?" lady, or more recently to Apple's mac and PC guys. In all of these cases, it was decided that a more compelling message could be created by using characters to tell a story, rather than putting the product itself front and center.

Relating to characters and their stories is essential in order for people to make an initial connection with brands. Sure, some brands eventually transcend the need for connection and become themselves defining characteristics of people. In fact, Apple's "I'm a mac/pc" was somewhat self-referential in that way. But in the beginning, people need to connect with a story in order to believe that a product or service matters to them.

Of course, this isn't news. This has been established marketing thinking for a very long time. But somehow, the concept of storytelling doesn't seem to have worked its way down from the worldwide mega-brands to the next tier of businesses in which you and I work. But why shouldn't it? After all, we're endeavoring to speak to the very same people they are!

This month I'd like to explore storytelling, dispel the myth that we can't tell stories on the web, and identify some ways we can hone our craft as web-based storytellers.

Telling Stories, Capturing Attention
We've heard quite a bit over the past few years about how the web has changed the way we read, even the way we think. In particular, the often publicized worry is that the change has been a negative one—that we no longer read deeply, and that we can no longer focus our thinking as we did before. There are plenty of voices in dissent on this opinion, though they don't tend to dispute the fact that the web has changed us rather than the judgement that said change is for the worse. As a result, those of us in the digital marketing space are caught up in a quite tumultuous time, seeking out any trick we can find to get people to pay attention to our messages online.

But I don't think there is any "trick" to be discovered. While I may personally worry about the effects of the web on our brains, the reality seems to be that we do not actually have an attention problem. The problem lies in our failure to imbue marketing with information worth paying attention to.

What We Pay Attention To
No matter what happens with the web, people still fervently seek out entertainment. Every year, more books, television shows, movies, music and the like are created and voraciously consumed. But if that is the case, why do we believe this idea that the web has killed our attention? Perhaps the volume of content is increasing but the demands it makes on our attention spans are less? (In other words, is it possible that the web is helping us to create and sell more books, for example, that people aren't actually reading?) I decided to take a closer look at the books, movies, and television we've consumed over the past twenty years to see if a clearer picture of what's happening might emerge.1

Read & see more:

http://www.newfangled.com/contentmgr/showdetails.php/id/21681

Happy Happy Happy this Power to the Pixel Talk is online! 'A perfect storm: the social web, storytellers and brands'

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By Mel Exxon

Last week was Pixel Lab, Power to the Pixel‘s (@powertothepixel) cross-media workshop.

I joined a group of tutors and producers, half with film/transmedia projects in development, half not, from around the world for the latter half of their week away in Wales.

By way of introduction, Power to the Pixel are an organisation dedicated to supporting film and the wider media in its transition to a digital age. Ben and I are both lucky to be on their Advisory board.

My brief was to shed some light on brands and cross-platform/transmedia storytelling, which, if I am honest, initially felt a little awkward. Brands and agencies may be embracing cross-platform creativity and integration per se, but true transmedia… not so much. The likes of Campfire with their Frenzied Waters work for the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week last year, Audi Art of the Heist and – back in the day – Beta 7 for Sega; as well as Ivan Askwith at Big Spaceship (who was generous and interested enough to chew the fat with me late one evening) are two, honourable exceptions.

With this in mind, my presentation focused primarily on what brands and their agencies are learning about integration, interaction and new partnerships in the hypersocial environment we find ourselves in. I also attempted to explain why brands may be reticent about taking a step further into building deep, immersive, narrative worlds. Along the way, telling the story of a (failed) BBH Labs joint venture and what we took from it… and finally, ending with a proposal.

That proposal was simply this: that producers should look beyond viewing brands as “promoters” (cf the current raft of Toy Story 3 and The A-Team tie-ups) and consider them as partners instead. Develop stories together that add value to the overarching narrative (think Jeep for Lost Experience) AND stay open-minded to the idea of engaging audiences through collective creativity. I summed up this approach via an adaptation of Chris Anderson’s “3-Party” model [see above]:

read more!

http://bbh-labs.com/a-perfect-storm-the-social-web-storytellers-and-brands

Interview with Dan Light, Part III: The role for brands in transmedia « BBH Labs

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"In the past decade we’ve seen that the music industry had to get screwed before it would change, the newspaper industry is struggling and the film industry is being forced to reinvent itself. Can entertainment industries transform themselves? Where do you see the film industry going?

I think the film industry is going to polarise. I think you’re going to have your Avatars – they will be big 3D events that will be 15-year projects and will command bigger and bigger sums of money.

At the other end will be the classic independent films, built around a good story but also written from the ground up, with a view to all the ways in which that story can be told, developed and audiences be found."

read more!:

http://bbh-labs.com/interview-with-dan-light-part-iii-the-role-for-brands-in-...

Interview with Dan Light, Part II: the intricacies of creating transmedia content « BBH Labs

Excerpt:

"Last time we left off talking to Dan about the role of transmedia in extending the relationship between entertainment properties and audiences. As expected we soon moved onto Dan’s favourite topic, creating transmedia content for today’s multimedia world. This was just after Dan managed to pour an entire cup of fresh coffee all over himself.

In marketing, we’re often looking for case studies demonstrating the ROI delivered by transmedia. Do you ever get asked questions like that, or has the question already been answered based on your previous work?

In terms of pure marketing ROI, I think there are questions to be asked. The videos we created for WATCHMEN, or for the IRON MAN 2 Stark Expo films, that’s true transmedia, extending into nuanced corners of the broader universe, but they were also very accessible.

The WATCHMEN videos generated over a million views on YouTube, and maybe the same again through other channels. For content with little or no paid media support, that’s a very solid return, especially when you factor in the number of tweets and blog posts they solicited. Not to mention the fact that they also doubled up as DVD extras.

It’s also important to try and understand that engagement qualitatively, as well as quantitatively. If somebody is sufficiently excited by what they’ve seen to share it online, it’s reasonable to think that their advocacy and enthusiasm will extend offline as well. And offline word of mouth still counts for a lot."

read more!

http://bbh-labs.com/interview-with-dan-light-part-ii-the-intricacies-of-creat...

Interview with Dan Light, Part I: engaging online communities « BBH Labs

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Excerpt:

"Transmedia. It’s becoming a buzzword of 2010 and was certainly one of the most talked about topics at SXSW back in March. Your last piece of work at PPC was for the latest Iron Man film – what role can transmedia marketing play for an entertainment property?

DL: Like film itself, it’s about guiding people through an experience, and a sequence of emotions. With a movie like Iron Man it starts with intrigue, which is a really powerful motivator for people ready to take a flight of fancy. Film is also about escapism, especially a movie like Iron Man – part of that is not knowing what’s next.

It’s worth saying up front that when we’re talking about transmedia as marketing, it’s not suitable for all films, probably not for the majority of films, but that there are those where there’s an opportunity for a film maker and their marketing team to do something a bit different.

The communities that exist around films; are you focused primarily upon creating a deeper experience for them individually, or do you view them as a means to propagate content amongst and beyond their network?

DL: Both really. By its nature online marketing has become a process of exploitation – in a non-sinister sense of the term. It’s about getting that core group to germinate these seeds of intrigue into wider awareness, so that they continue to permeate through other communities. That said, it’s always hard to be certain how much wider it does permeate out. It’s a mistake to assume that by reaching that audience you’re going to reach the popcorn moviegoer.

What a good transmedia campaign does achieve is that it anchors core fans in your campaign. At the same time you need to find ways to make it as accessible as possible to the mainstream, reaching the audience who aren’t living their lives in the Unfiction forum.

One of the best things about The New Frontiersman (the WATCHMEN online campaign) was that it made truly integrated use of YouTube, Flickr, Twitter and Friendfeed, all of which made it easier for a wider audience to access the latest content as it went live. We brought in a consultant on the project, Annie Ok, specifically to help us make sure that we weren’t just paying lip service to social media the way a lot of campaigns still do."

read more:

http://bbh-labs.com/interview-with-dan-light-part-i-engaging-online-communities

Reports of blogging's death have been greatly exaggerated | Cory Doctorow | phew!

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'Science fiction writer Bruce Sterling says: "The future composts the past." There's even a law to describe this, Riepl's Law – which says "new, further developed types of media never replace the existing modes of media and their usage patterns. Instead, a convergence takes place in their field, leading to a different way and field of use for these older forms."'

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Shantell Martin's Hidden Oras Live Drawing Project Turns You Into Living Art

Hidden_oras



Hidden Oras began as a live drawing project within various music clubs in Japan before moving to NYC. Shantell Martin an artist and VeeJay armed with her projector, and trusty digital drawing tablet, turns members of the audience into living art. When an audience member steps up against the projector wall Shantell creates a unique and original drawing that engulfs them. Fusing technology and art at every turn, Hidden Oras is just the first step of many towards the next wave of Live Art.


source: http://www.babelgum.com/5006585/radar-twentysix-hidden-oras.html