Planetaki Planet KWWphoto Insight

What is Google Chrome OS?

2011-08-28T07:06:13Z

I favorited a YouTube video: Telling the story of Google Chrome and how it inspired an operating system. Produced by Epipheo Studios. Sign up to get updates about Google Chrome OS: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlechromeossignup/ More info: http://www.chromiu...

Zinfandel - Paso's Wine

2011-08-18T10:39:40Z

I favorited a YouTube video: It's not Primitivo. It's not Crljenak Kaštelanski. It's Zinfandel - Paso's Wine. Learn more at www.pasowine.com

Tim Ferriss on "The 4-Hour Body" at NEXT Conference

2011-07-16T07:25:22Z

I favorited a YouTube video: Footage shot on May 18, 2011 in Berlin. Video courtesy of http://nextconf.eu/next11

Napa Valley Film Festival: Highfalutin' with Jamey Whetstone

2011-07-03T10:13:30Z

I favorited a YouTube video: Join Jamey Whetstone on his journey to make fine Napa Valley wine, for tasting at the Napa Valley Film Festival. Festival details: http://bit.ly/NapaFilmFest

TEDxSoMa - Leah Busque - From Social Networking to Service Networking

2011-07-03T10:13:30Z

I favorited a YouTube video: In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection ...

Jester BASE Arrest

2011-06-21T03:59:56Z

I favorited a YouTube video: He fought the law... AND THE LAW WON!! Music Credit: Green Day - I Fought The Law *IF YOU LIKE THIS VIDEO PLEASE DONATE $1 TO THE JESTER LEGAL DEFENSE FUND*

SOUR '日々の音色 (Hibi no neiro)'

2011-06-06T00:40:48Z

I favorited a YouTube video: This music video was shot for Sour's 'Hibi no Neiro' (Tone of everyday) from their first mini album 'Water Flavor EP'. The cast were selected from the actual Sour fan base, from many countries around the world. Each person and scene was filmed pur...

Subscribed to Imagination

2011-05-25T21:30:06Z

I subscribed to Imagination’s channel on YouTube.

How Much Traffic Does a Google Doodle Drive? The Data Says, A Ton

2011-05-27T08:32:49Z

The Google Doodle is - arguably - one of the biggest PR coups in the world. Not only does it include a prime placement on the single most popular landing page on Earth, but it also can drive a ton of traffic to sites that rank highly on the search term Google ties to it. Just how much traffic? How about 2M page views or more if your web page is the top result. Let's take a closer look at the data.

Most Google Doodles are tied to holidays, historical events or iconic figures from history. Some are regional in nature, others are global. You can find a list of them here. Given their broad nature, most of the searches that the Doodles link to tend to rank Wikipedia articles very highly. Therefore, if we look at the amount of traffic these Wikipedia pages get on Doodle Day, we can get a sense for just how powerful they are as a traffic driver.

That's where stats.grok.se comes in. The tool, which was developed by Henrik - a loyal Wikipedia user from Sweden, uses publicly available data to chart the daily traffic that any article on Wikipedia receives. Using this site, if we compare traffic on Doodle day vs. the monthly norms, we can get a sense for the power of the Doodle.

Here's a random sampling that examines the traffic to three recent Google doodles and how they fared in driving traffic to Wikipedia articles that ranked first, second and third - at least on my screen...

May 9, 2011 - Roger Hargreaves (Wikipedia page is the first result)

3,500 article views for all of April 2011

1.9M article views on Doodle Day (and another 200k the following day!)

April 26, 2011 - John James Audubon (Wikipedia page is the third result)

14,491 article views for all of March 2011

1.1M article views on Doodle Day

April 3, 2011 - Ice Cream Sundae (Wikipedia page ranks second)

10,366 article views for all of March 2011

481,000 article views on Doodle Day

As far as I know, you can't convince Google to create a Doodle for you. However, should you get lucky, you better be ready to turn on the bandwidth. All hail the Doodle.

Permalink | Leave a comment »

Subscribed to TEDtalksDirector

2011-05-05T02:39:18Z

I subscribed to TEDtalksDirector’s channel on YouTube.

Subscribed to steviedove

2011-05-05T02:39:18Z

I subscribed to steviedove’s channel on YouTube.

Subscribed to TEDxTalks

2011-05-05T02:39:18Z

I subscribed to TEDxTalks’s channel on YouTube.

Subscribed to joemcnallyphoto

2011-05-05T02:39:18Z

I subscribed to joemcnallyphoto’s channel on YouTube.

Learning To Fly: The Four Stages of Social Business

2011-04-27T09:07:43Z

Time to talk about social business planning again. My mother always told me, you have to "walk before you run" and as it turns out, the same is true for organizations looking to move from social media as a set of un-connected, chaotic collection of skunk work initiatives to a coordinated and purposeful initiative that works through the entire organization. Of course, this will take time—years most likely. But it's inevitable in my estimation. As I've said before—the end game is integration. The above chart is generic—it can be applied to some organizations (especially large ones with a global footprint). If your company wants to learn to fly and integrate a social "layer" into everything you do here are a few thoughts as you plot your own roadmap:

Crawling: People, Process, Procedure
In the initial stage of the evolving your business into one that not only leverages "social media" in one function (such as marketing), an organization must come to the point where it realizes it "has a problem". Then the first stage can begin on the right footing. "Crawling" involves putting in the right infrastructure which includes some organizational re-design. This is when the center of excellence should be formed and where education, standardization and active listening is put in place.

Walking: Managing Your Properties
With some basic infrastructure in place, an organization must now "take stock" of all the social properties which either exist or need to and devise the appropriate strategy to get these properties moving in the right direction. In this stage assets like content are especially important as it's lower risk than really diving in deeply and over-engaging. However, this is also the stage where an organization really defines its engagement strategy across multiple business functions, from employee to customer care to outward marketing and more.

Running: Ecosystem Engagement At Scale
At this stage, an organization has put in the internal and external designs in place and are running multiple social initiatives at a global scale with an established degree of efficiency. Most importantly an organization has evolved into one that can engage with multiple stakeholders to the level that works for its business (regulated industries will have unique challenges here). At the running stage, multiple ecosystems are also connected—for example the process and tools for managing scores of social networks have been formalized.

Flying: Social Innovation & Organizational Integration
Organizations at this stage have not only integrated "social" ito most everything they do—they are using the intelligence to improve their business, create new products and services and can digest data in ways that predict potential future outcomes. Organizations which "fly" have embedded a social mindset into much of what they do and have re-tooled entire business functions. For example, an organization which has completely overhauled its customer service function to work as effectively as it does in channels such as a call center (at scale) are at the flying stage in some degree.

From my experience talking and working with large global brands—very few are even close to flying but most seem to have a desire to get there at some point, understanding that the process will be a long and winding road. I've found this model resonates both at the CMO, CEO and senior management levels. Where do you fall on the spectrum?

Empire Avenue Provides Social Gaming Opportunities –and Challenges– for Brands

2011-05-05T09:27:42Z

The one liner: Empire Avenue is Farmville for Social Media.

Gaming: A Native Behavior to the Social Web
Remember, gaming is nothing new to social media, from influencing the most popular Digg users, to Twitteratti, top contributors at Techmeme, or brands with the most Fans on Facebook –this is a native behavior. After signing up for Empire Avenue last night (here’s my account), I met with the CEO Duleepa Wijayawardhana, aka “Dups” to understand his vision, about the company and opportunities for brands. While I’m still experimenting with this platform, it’s worth noting initial reactions on how this tool will impact consumers and the opportunities for brands and threats for other vendors. The tool offers an open API where 3rd party developers have already created an app, that I purchase for 99cents for use on iPhone, it works decent.

How It Works: A Social Game Where Your Friends “Buy” You
Empire Avenue is a social game. Each user is valued at a set share price around $9 “Eaves” (their currency) and the value will increase as others purchase their shares, or as the user does social behaviors on other sites, and also participates in Empire Avenue such as actions, unlocking features, or dividends from virtual goods or ownership in other members. As users gain more net worth, they’re able to purchase virtual goods, on a quest to be the richest player in the game. The net result? This is a highly addictive experience that is similar to stock market gaming of your own social network.

[Virtual goods, like real world Jewelry are the same --they offer little utility, but social prestige]

This small team of about 5 is based in Alberta Canada and has a mere investment amount o $300k although they are already starting to generate revenues from users buying the “eaves” currency using real world dollars. Founded in Sept 2009, although they had a first version by Dec, then restarted in Jan 2010, and launched to friends and family last year. They launched this iteration about a month ago, and it’s starting to get activity in the social influencer community that I closely monitor for trends.

The team has developed some advanced algorhythems to understand the behaviors in the major social networks that users can connect their accounts to such as Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Linkedin, Facebook Pages, and Empire Avenue Itself. Unlike my critique of Klout, they don’t look at just ‘interactions’ but seek a higher degree of interaction to fold into their analysis. In fact, because there’s a user behavior of buying and selling of stock of other players, the game won’t suffer from the Klout issue of Kenneth Cole’s Klout points rising during his debacle. Each user has up to 100 points for their Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and other accounts which is roughly equivalent to Klout scores.

Threats to Klout and Social Analytics Firms
Empire Avenue is a threat to Klout (and competitor Peer Index), as it aggregates data and evaluates from multiple social networks –Klout only uses Facebook and Twitter data. Social Analytics firms that try to understand the engagement of social media accounts are also at threat as Empire Avenue aggregates content from several locations and involves data from their game mechanics.

[Empire Ave has a built in Advocacy Loop. If you 'own' shares in a company, it's in your best interest to get others to buy it, and to tweet and FB about them to increase over value]

Opportunities for Brands
There are a handful of immediate opportunities for brands which I’ve listed in a maturity roadmap:

Getting Started: Create a company account. You can create a business account or a personal account, and your fans and advocates can interact with the account, buying and selling your content. There is no cost to build this account, so those that are seeking to innovate and stay ahead of the curve should do this now. They will verify business accounts (like Twitter did for a while) by looking at which accounts you’ve linked to your profile, you can request verification by our Empire Avenue team by e-mailing verification at empireavenue.com. For some examples see Sears, Oreo (login required)
Leverage your existing social media investments: the game is fueled on it This game rewards social media interactions from third party accounts like FB and Twitter, using their connections tools you can tap into your existing investments. As a unique behavior, the top members (influencers) will do the same, suggesting this is a refined group of highly engaged influencers.
Glean intelligence on who’s an influencer, see how they behave. This platform can help identify interests of users (by pulling in interests from Facebook profiles) that will help brands find those that are the most engaged by a particular topic. They look at each channel differently as each social media tool has a different type of behavior type.
Utilize Game Mechanics as a Reward Mechanism. Expect brands to ‘reward’ their fans by buying their shares in this game for doing certain achievements like interacting with the brand on other social networks.
Engage in Conversations with Influencers. This tool has a stream of content, and the ability to leave comments, shoutouts, notes, and other features. As a result, Community Managers can engage with influencers. Secondly there is a VERY active chat room that’s provided on the tool that enables rapid dialog.
Advanced will Deploy Virtual Branded Goods from Empire Avenue. Brands love to put their logo on just about everything, so expect branded virtual goods to quickly fill the inventory within the game and other branded experiences. Right now, they offer some virtual goods from rafts to luxury boats that users can earn by spending their hard earned virtual currency. Also see how there are cost per actions, where brands can have users opt in to watch commercials or get involved in marketing to earn Eaves points. Update: I’m told by founders that they are going to be doing branded items soon. They also have a system to convert Eaves to real world offerings (maybe coupons/discounts) etc.
Expand by Leveraging the Open API The platform offers an open API and 3rd party developers have already created a mobile application on iPhone which I bought for 99 cents (yes, real money) brands can quickly tie this data into CRM systems, loyalty programs, SMMS systems, and potentially even email marketing systems to integrate.

[Opportunities of Social Gaming Platforms: 1) Engagement with brands, 2) Loyalty program tie-ins, and 3) Advocacy through social media with engaged consumers]

Risks and Challenges for Brands
No platform comes without challenges, in fact, the more I probe around, the more challenges and hurdles I find, among them are:

Engagement may not have direct tie to purchase point. Same arguement against rest of social media, where’s the ROI? While engagement and advocacy are high, a tie back to the top line revenues or reduced costs isn’t clear. If eaves can convert to special deals, this will be negated
The User interface is very confusing. For first timers the overwhelming set of features is daunting. The team tells me they are removing features every day to streamline
Game will be flooded when mainstream pile in Expect the Social media elite will flood the tool, although they set some policies in place to reduce gaming, such as making sure people’s share value doesn’t get too high so it’s still affordable. Once celebrities get wind of this tool, expect more flooding, quickly followed by brands, the it will start to normalize after a dip in activity.
While the game fosters advocacy, consumers may not have affinity for the brand Concerns over why consumers will join and purchase from brands. Is it because they love the brand, or because they think the company will be more social and increase net worth? It’s not clear if this is true advocacy or just game mechanics (or a little of both)
Lack of features for brands to reward their consumer shareholders. Right now, other than the increasing value of a share, there’s little reason for consumers to want to keep value of share. In fact, if dividends start to slow down, consumers may sell the brand stock and purchase an up and comer.
Gaming of the system. This, like all other social sites becomes a system to beat, and loses value, and we move on to the next.

Caveat: I’ve updated this post quite a bit, since posting it, as I’m learning new things.

The Drug Of "Next"

2011-05-07T09:37:40Z

The ability to focus is an ability laden with complexity.

I'm staring at my iPhone 3GS and wondering why I didn't bite the bullet and get an iPhone 4. Because I didn't line-up for an iPhone 4 and waited so long, it seems silly to get one now. What's the point? I'm sure the iPhone 5 is just around the corner, right? To my left is my iPad. I should probably get an iPad 2 at this point as well. Right?

Do you see what's going on here?

While it's not as destructive as a heroine addiction (and not nearly as important in terms of something that needs treatment), Moore's Law seems to be picking up pace and our ability to focus on what's currently in-market (and how it's working) is being clouded and confused by our constant pursuit of what's coming next. It's becoming a huge issue for Marketers. For those who lead the brand and for the agencies that lead them, the great marketing divide between the tried and true traditional marketing tactics is very much clouded by the new and emerging channels. It wasn't that long ago when Marketers truly believed that the Internet and online advertising would be/could be a fad. Some might still argue that it's still unproven when compared to traditional mass media advertising.

Nearly twenty years into the Internet and it's still new media?

The struggle is very real. Make no mistake about it. Last week, I attended the Mirren New Business conference in New York City. It's a very niche event where marketing agency owners converge for three days to talk about new business development. What it takes to win new business - from credentials and presentation skills to dealing with procurement and adding new services into your agency model. As you can imagine, the real discussion and interest was about what's coming next. What can an agency do be viable and profitable in the coming years? What's the next "iPhone" of the advertising agency model?

Everyone was tapping the vein.

The three big revelations about the what's next for advertising agencies were around:

Digital innovation - the ability for agencies to not only offer digital marketing services but being able to deliver them with award-winning results. And, while the conversation is no longer about websites and more about Facebook and iPhone apps, it's still the same conversation about relevance and context.
Pricing models - how can these services-based industries move from an hourly rate to one that truly encompasses the actual value that this marketing work brings to the overall economic value of the companies that they serve?
Product development - no longer beholden to selling big ideas to a brand, now agencies are both developing their own products to put into market or they're creating venture capital funds to both invest in new product development or newer companies developing unique advertising solutions.

So, how's that working out for you?

With some of the hottest advertising agencies and some of the most talked about up n' comers in the room, the answers were quite startling (and yet, not surprising at all): there are still no new models that work. Agencies are - for the most part - struggling with their digital marketing success when compared to the traditional results they were delivering when this whole Internet thing didn't disrupt the model of people passively sitting by and letting TV, radio and print wash over them. They're struggling with finding a groove where their digital marketing work and results can be compared to the excitement that a Superbowl ad delivers. While some agencies are adding in additional fee structures based on sales results (or other metrics), the majority of marketing agencies are still working by headcount and the hours-per-day that their employees are working. Lastly, there has been no proven example of a marketing agency that has developed a product with tremendous success in the market.

We should not stop trying.

While some may read this and shake their heads, the message should not be taken as all doom and gloom. We're an industry that is trying. We're willing to look at all of of our sacred cows and question them. This is a good, moral and right way of being progressive in business. We have the most creative, irreverent and thoughtful people working on these problems, but true success in the real world often looks very little like our thoughts or pontifications. We also need to be very cautious of spending too much time on the drug of "next." The answer will, inevitably, be simpler than anyone of us could have ever imagined. We're quick to say that Quora is the next big thing. We said this about Cuil too (remember when Cuil was the Google killer?). We're sometimes right... but we're often wrong.

The answer?

Have a passion for the present.
Solves real world business problems.
Add real economic value to the brands you serve.
Create platforms that truly allow people (brands and their consumers) to come together.
Be interested in innovation (allow for a small percentage of the overall brand budget to tinker with new channels and tactics).
Recognize what success looks like.
Use the analytics available to you to truly drive new directions and opportunities.
Let people from all angles of the agency think and create new ideas.
Technology must be a critical part of the process (along with the creative and client services department).

This may not be as fun as chasing the dragon, but being a "Presentist" in a world of this much opportunity, diversity and room for change seems much more future-focused than trying to be a pure "Futurist."

Tags: advertising innovation apple brand business development business model cuil digital innovation digital marketing facebook google ipad iphone iphone app marketer marketing agency mass media mirren new business moores law new media online advertising presentist pricing model product development quora technology traditional marketing venture capital web analytics

Rober Ebert's TED Talk 2011: Finding His Voice Through The Internet

2011-04-14T00:32:50Z

This March, Roger Ebert presented at the TED 2011 Conference. Check out his Talk below, in which he tells the courageous story of finding his voice through the internet after battling cancer.

Roger Ebert predicted the future of the movies in 1987

2011-04-14T00:32:50Z

It would be hard to find anyone who would argue with the notion that Roger Ebert is perhaps the most influential film critic of our time (and with all of his tweets, blog posts and freelance essays, one of our most prolific too). But it turns out that Ebert has also had an uncanny knack for predicting film's technological future too. Paleofuture dug up this fascinating excerpt from a 1987 interview with Ebert and the late Gene Siskel from Omni magazine, where Ebert weighed in on just how radically different the delivery and distribution of movies would be in the not-so-distant future.

Nearly a quarter of a century ago, inhabiting a primitive world where the biggest movies of the moment were such cinematic fossils as "Three Men and a Baby" and "Beverly Hills Cop II," Ebert took a pretty impressive stab at swami-like crystal ball gazing:

We will have high-definition, wide-screen television sets and a push-button dialing system to order the movie you want at the time you want it. You'll not go to a video store but instead order a movie on demand and then pay for it. Videocassette tapes as we know them now will be obsolete both for showing prerecorded movies and for recording movies. People will record films on 8mm and will play them back using laser-disk/CD technology. I also am very, very excited by the fact that before long, alternative films will penetrate the entire country. Today seventy-five percent of the gross from a typical art film in America comes from as few as six --six-- different theaters in six different cities. Ninety percent of the American motion-picture marketplace never shows art films. With this revolution in delivery and distribution, anyone, in any size town or hamlet, will see the movies he or she wants to see.

OK, so the CD became DVD and 8mm didn't really go anywhere, but otherwise, Ebert got it pretty much right on the money. He also predicted that by 2000, people could be making movies for as little money as it costs to publish a book or make a record, which also turned out to be true, at least as long as you didn't hire James Cameron or Michael Bay as the director.

Ebert's ideas look especially sagacious when you compare his prognostications to much-heralded futurists like Herman Kahn, who promoted the idea of a winnable nuclear war or Paul Ehrlich, whose famous "Population Bomb" doomsday thinking warned that hundreds of millions people would have died of starvation by now. As it turned out, most of those hundreds of millions of people are on Facebook helping overthrow their governments and watching cruddy Hollywood movies and TV shows on their smartphones. Maybe Afghanistan isn't Vietnam, maybe Newt Gingrich is really finally happily married and maybe "Arthur" won't be an unbearably pale imitation of the original, but isn't it funny how the future often turns out to be tacky and dispiriting, but rarely as awful as we think it will be?

--Patrick Goldstein

Photo: Roger Ebert at work in his office at the WTTW-TV studios in Chicago. Credit: Charles Rex Arbogast / Associated Press

Malcom Gladwell, Your Slip is Showing

2011-02-05T20:54:46Z

Solidarity

Time is always limited, but in these historic times, I wished to add perspective in the hopes of moving this important conversation in a productive direction.

Malcom Gladwell continues his march toward ignorance with his latest installment in the New Yorker about social media vs. social activism. Honestly, Gladwell is more than welcome to share his thoughts as it is a democratized information economy after all. I do find it alarming however, that he is wielding his influence through an equally influential medium to spin intellectual and impressionable minds in unrewarding and pointless cycles. Is he not listening to opposition or consulting existing research?

In that case Mr. Gladwell and the like, this is not for you. This is for the people who read your work and who knowingly and unknowingly contribute to the evolution of media and culture so we can better understand our role within this information revolution + evolution.

In his piece in the New Yorker he asks, Does Egypt Need Twitter?

Right now there are protests in Egypt that look like they might bring down the government. There are a thousand important things that can be said about their origins and implications: as I wrote last fall in The New Yorker, “high risk” social activism requires deep roots and strong ties. But surely the least interesting fact about them is that some of the protesters may (or may not) have at one point or another employed some of the tools of the new media to communicate with one another. Please. People protested and brought down governments before Facebook was invented. They did it before the Internet came along. Barely anyone in East Germany in the nineteen-eighties had a phone—and they ended up with hundreds of thousands of people in central Leipzig and brought down a regime that we all thought would last another hundred years—and in the French Revolution the crowd in the streets spoke to one another with that strange, today largely unknown instrument known as the human voice. People with a grievance will always find ways to communicate with each other. How they choose to do it is less interesting, in the end, than why they were driven to do it in the first place.

Indeed. In the end, it is not how revolutions are organized, it is why they arise and what they change that matters to the world. Without organization however, the revolutionaries of the future will will be faced with either progress or defeat. As I’ve always maintained, this current information (r)evolution that we are experiencing at varying depths globally is less about the technology and more about sociology and how it is changing our behavior and society as a result. To ignore it or discount it is absurd and irresponsible.

Good friend Mathew Ingram published a very compelling argument to Gladwell, “It’s Not Twitter or Facebook, It’s the Power of the Network.” In this thought provoking post he cites Zeynep Tufecki, a professor of sociology, who studied the revolution in Tunisia and documented how to produce outcomes through “material,” “efficient,” and “final” causes.

The source of the debate is also its weakness, relationships and technology.

Gladwell questions the alliance between deep roots and strong ties. Ingram and Tufecki argue for the the power of the networks…they are not wrong. The only side not demonstrating authority is also its strongest voice. To which I point to a prospective slipping point and say with concern, “Gladwell, your slip is showing.”

As someone who has greatly studied how movements ranging from causes to commercial can and can’t be organized through social media, I would like to move the discussion away from tools and ties.

This is perhaps where the story gets convoluted and debatable. Technology aside, it’s our ties that dictate how information travels and to what extent. But, it is also the spontaneous fusion of strong, weak and temporary ties that align around interest or emotion that propels information across vast distances with far greater velocity. This impetus is the spark, the catalyst necessary for organization, communication, and also for engendering support. You need a powerful network for this to occur…

Why?

If unity is the effect, density is the cause. But to achieve density, bonds must be formed regardless of strength or longevity quickly around a shared mission or purpose. Density can not be achieved if the network can’t supply the necessary resources. Well, as Ingram and Tufecki point out, the potential for activation exists within Facebook and Twitter. Social networks aside, the trigger for social activism is unquestionably built-in to the internet. It’s not a switch however.

Stowe Boyd is a social philosopher, webthropoligist and a dear friend. He recently spoke out against Gladwell to teach, but also remind us about the importance of density in a network effect:

Trufecki and Ingram are on to something, but they — and Gladwell — miss something very basic about the nature of Twitter and other social tools, something critical to revolution. Ideas spread more rapidly in densely connected social networks. So tools that increase the density of social connection are instrumental to the changes that spread.

At its core, Gladwell’s arguments are not about the way revolutions work, but a denial of the strength of social culture: the culture that the social web is engendering, wherever it touches us. Wherever we connect.

This is again, not about tools or ties, but the capacity for alliances to form based on connections and how information spreads across them. I would like to share with you some very interesting research from the Department of Computer Science at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. In early 2010, the research team performed a multi-part analysis of Twitter. In their conclusion they found that Twitter is a highly effective way to filter and spread relevant information. It was the rapid fusion of ties within a densely populated network to activate the density required to trigger a network effect.

The research team used the unfortunate incident of the doomed Air France flight to visualize density and distribution.

This is a demonstration of how strong, weak, and temporary ties connected for a moment to ensure that the world united around this devastating news.I’m sure we would see similar maps if we analyzed the Iran and Egypt events where Twitter played a pivotal role in unification and dissemination.

In my work, I’ve found that it takes an exceptional incident to activate density in powerful, yet expansive and distracted network. But, it is possible, and to varying degrees, it happens every day. In instances where planning and design around action and outcomes were orchestrated, the results of proven incredibly promising and replicable.

This strength of social culture is only increasing in prevalence to the point where each day, it changes our behavior online and offline incrementally. For some, the behavior is advanced while it is starting to bloom with others. This is nothing new. But, it is this culture that we are learning to embrace that over time, moves us from our “comfort zones” in the middle to the edge until finally, the edge becomes the new middle.

This is a culture shift and a culture shock. Those who embrace their role as student in these times will earn the ability to lead us toward a new era of solidarity.

Connect with Brian Solis on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook

___
If you’re looking for a way to FIND answers in social media, consider Engage!: It will help…

___
Get The Conversation Prism:

___

Top 10 Super Bowl Brands With the Most Twitter Pre-Buzz [Infographic]

2011-02-05T20:54:46Z

Want to know which Super Bowl brands are already stirring up the Twittering masses? Here’s an infographic that’ll give you the scoop on the latest pre-buzz on Twitter.

Super Bowl XLV is still a day away, but there’s already intense interest in the commercials that will be interrupted from time to time by a football game. Many of those ads have already leaked out on YouTube, and some have pulled out in front of the pack, certain to be standouts in tomorrow’s game.

This data is from the Meltwater Group, using its Meltwater Buzz social media monitoring tool to calculate volume of tweets generated by each one of these brands since last Friday, more than a week ago.

However, this is the pre-buzz on Twitter. A study from marketing technology and research firm Alterian shows PepsiCo’s Doritos leading the pre-game buzz bowl, but it’s not all positive.

Take a look at the top 10, and then at the bottom check out the clever video that spurred the most pre-buzz for its brand in this contest, Volkswagen with its Star Wars-themed masterpiece.

Image courtesy Meltwater Group

More About: infographic, Pre-Buzz, Super Bowl ads, Super Bowl XLV, trending, twitter

For more Social Media coverage:

Follow Mashable Social Media on Twitter
Become a Fan on Facebook
Subscribe to the Social Media channel
Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

Chinese version available!

2010-06-22T08:08:08Z

ni hao ma?

We just released a Chinese version of Planetaki. You can switch to Mandarin from the "preferences" link on the top right of your planet.

Check this video for more info.