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August 22

Yahoo TV Widgets, An Important Convergence Milestone?

An interesting announcement hit the press yesterday.  Yahoo and Intel are partnering to combine web offers with broadcast TV content.  Here’s the story, straight from the horse’s mouth: Intel to build Yahoo widgets into new TV chips. The delivery vehicle is widgets built on top of the Yahoo Widget Engine, and the enabling hardware is the Intel CE3100 chip.  So this further elevates the importance of widgets as a vehicle for disseminating content and functionality across the Internet.  A number of important players, like Twitter, are lining up to deliver their services and information through this technology.  Here are some questions Does anyone else see this as an important milestone in convergence?  Will it breath new life into broadcast TV advertising?  There are 1.3 billion households with TV.  The number that receive the chip will determine adoption.  What are some ways that Intel can drive adoption?  Business models?  Incentives?  What do people think?

August 11

Brand-jacking

Twitter - ExxonMobilCorp

Twitter - ExxonMobilCorp

Last week I received an email notification that “Janet at ExxonMobil (ExxonMobilCorp) is now following your updates on Twitter.” Normally, I would block an unknown user from following my Twitter updates without much of a thought, however, after a cursory look at Janet’s public page, this seemed a bit more interesting than the standard “OMG I made a zillion dollars  click here to find out how!” business

I saw conflicting things:  the poor branding (a lossy, tiled background of gas stations and stock art) spoke to this as clearly not an official ExxonMobil outlet.  However, the tone and content (at first blush) of the seemingly reasonable and informed updates made me think twice.  Discussing the challenges faced by an oil company balancing energy needs with research?  I’ll accept that.  Maybe Janet was, as she statesan employee of ExxonMobil, who has decided to put forward her pride in her own company.”

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August 7

Bacon, Brands, and Social Networking Success!

Bacon is more than the smoky, salty, savory strips of deliciousness that garnish our breakfasts and more refined cocktails (the Mitch Morgan). It’s the subject of deep and meaningful philosophical debate (just ask Sir Francis Bacon or Thomas Bacon), the center of the acting universe (Kevin Bacon), and the bane of well meaning but conflicted vegetarians everywhere (A friend of mine in engineering and strict veggie calls it “the gateway meat”).  It is also an example of how a brand can actually succeed on a social network, using it to drive retail sales and build awareness.

Now, I’ll be honest.  I really have some questions about social networking as a brand platform - it’s not right for everyone, and in some cases is worse than a waste of money, it’s a public failure.  But, the makers of Bacon Salt, a line of seasoning salt that makes all food taste like bacon (and is kosher, to boot!), it was the cornerstone of their success.

They launched their business by finding users of MySpace and Facebook who said that they love bacon on their profiles.  There are at least 35,000 people who say that on MySpace, and the I love bacon group has almost 2500 members.  While some would scoff and say that’s not much, others would point out that 2500 is far better than the majority of branded fan pages do.   And in the case of Bacon Salt, it propelled them from zeros to heroes in no time.

“We basically launched the product on MySpace and Facebook… the week we launched, we had orders from everywhere” said Dave Lefkow, co-founder and bacon genius. So many orders, in fact, that they couldnt handle the volume of work.

Now, obviously, anything with bacon is going to succeed wildly. (possibly with the exception of the bacon flavored tuxedo available at archiemcphee.com).  What is interesting in this case, is how social networking helped this particular brand, and why. The only brands that will do well on a social network are those that people want to align themselves with.   Social networks are about branding oneself to friends, colleagues, and that ex-girl or boyfriend from college.  Bacon is not only universally adored, it’s a little campy and fun, and it’s something that people want to associate with.

So if you’re thinking about bringing your brand into the social networking space, dont just think about the costs, and risks.  Stop for a moment and think about if the brand is something people can relate to, and want to identify themselves with.  It might save you a lot of hassle, and give more time for the eating of delicious, hickory smoked bacon.

June 16

Tangible Communities - online meets offline

Over the weekend I ran my first 10K race. It was pouring rain, the course was very hilly but it was all worth it at the finish line. The event was terrifically well organized and it was for a good cause - to benefit the Cape Ann YMCA and the Wellspring House. I had my trusty miCoach with me - this time collecting data on my first real long distance race outing.

So what does this race have to do with communities? Well, as I thought about it during my commute into work this morning, it was a great example of the fusion of online and offline communities. More importantly it was a great example of what makes online communities successful.

My wife had heard about the event at the local YMCA and had signed me up after she had found the ability to register for the event online. She was able to submit my information through the North Shore YMCA website. I turned up to the race and was able to simply pick up my race bib number and warm-up for the event.

The event itself was a great example of a real-world community where the participants created a melting pot of regulars, newcomers and one-timers. The inclement weather and the occasion (Fathers Day) all made for a lot of discussion and information sharing - about the course, about warming up in cooler conditions, about race strategy and about motivation.

At the end of the race, I was very impressed to see the results being immediately entered into a computer by the race organizers. By the time I had changed and made my way to find out about results, the complete roster of participants and times were already posted on a wall. Little did I know that these same results were also being posted to the CoolRunning.com website. Offline goes online!

This morning I checked out the results of the race and was surprised to discover how robust the online community around running actually was. Within hours, the results from hundreds of events and thousands of participants across the country were posted to CoolRunnings.com. As I browsed the online community I was able to find a wealth of information on upcoming events, tips on running, nutrition, schedules and injury recovery. So I signed up for Active.com where I was able to complete a comprehensive online profile that also allowed me to register associate the results of my recent run.

Suffice to say that within 36 hours I have become part of a community that transcends the offline and online paradigms. It occurred to me that a key characteristic of communities is the this trait. Attempting to create online only communities is in fact foolhardy. The most successfully online communities are successful because they are inextricably part of our offline world. Think about Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn etc. Without direct correlation and information being generated from the offline world, these communities will become stagnant… or even worse - will die.

So as we think about how to take advantage of social media and online communities, we must attempt to thing of them in light of how users interact with their offline communities. The ability to port and enhance offline communities into the online rhelm is what creates vibrant interaction, discussion and value to those who use participate in these communities. It is critical for us to divorce ourselves from the technologies and techniques that focus primarily on the online because without our offline daily lives, there will be nothing to take online.

Cool Runnings!!

June 14

Molecular brings home a Stevie award

On Thursday night we were very honored to receive a Stevie Award for the Nikon USA redesign, in the category of Web Site: Product Information.

Myself and fellow Molecular representatives Raph Chun, Josh Manton, Adam McIntyre and Thomas Becker were at the ceremony in Times Square, NY to celebrate the win.

Congratulations to all the Molecular peeps involved in making this project extremely successful, and also a big thanks to our Nikon client Joe Ventura, for giving us the opportunity to work on such a cool brand.

Find out more information on the The American Business Awards (Stevies).

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