The spotlight grabbing squirrel – yet another “Meme” for our times?

– or marmot, or was that a gopher?

OK, it’s so ‘last week’ now, but we are all the way down in New Zealand, and I only just noticed it. The following picture first appeared on the National Geographic’s site in the Photo section, and soon after it captured the imagination of the world, taking the blogosphere and global media by storm. <-I can’t believe I just wrote that.

According to Melissa Brandt, this is what happened, “My husband and I were exploring Lake Minnewanka in Banff National Park-Canada when we stopped for a timed picture of the two of us. We had our camera set up on some rocks and were getting ready to take the picture when this curious little ground squirrel appeared, became intriqued with the sound of the focusing camera and popped right into our shot! A once in a lifetime moment! We were laughing about this little guy for days!!”

There are numerous arguments and debates popping up as to whether the original pic had been photoshopped or not, and even some very serious discussion on the taxomy of said ‘rodentis’h creature – is it a squirrel or gopher? Boing Boing has some hilarious and heated comments posted under their item on the little rascal.

However, it doesn’t end there. The photo-crashing squirrel is now popping up everywhere…….

For even more of this furry frivolity (and if you really don’t have anything better to to do), check out Buzzfeed where you can see more of the little bugger than you could ever want in a whole lifetime.

So, it looks like the squirrel is this month’s ‘Susan Boyle‘ and wins the global internet sensation, ‘Meme of the Moment’ Award.

I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns up on it’s own syndicated TV show called “Squirrel’s got Talent” singing a duet with Ms Susan Boyle!

Trent Reznor 1, Mojo Magazine 0

Love him or loathe him, Trent Reznor is a genius. Nine Inch Nails has been around for years now, and although too dark and ‘industrial’ for some, his work has always been original and exciting. However, his vision extends well beyond pure music and includes the wider digital realm.
NIN’s Year Zero 2007 concept acted as a beacon of hope for a music industry desperately attempting to keep alive a terminally ill business model.
Year Zero was a total multi-media experiential project, incorporating an ARG, live events, merchandise and social media – however, the actual CD was a key artifact, a central piece of the expanding phenomenon that was Year Zero.
It was also acknowledged as one of the great marketing campaigns, picking up a Cyber Grand Prix at the 2008 Cannes Advertising Festival – I had the privilege of judging the campaign at that event.
Since then NIN have experimented with different distribution models, allowing fans to download the album The Slip from the NIN Nails website (free of charge), and an EP to coincide with their current tour.

Trent Reznor’s status as a digital pioneer is already well known and well documented, so why am I writing this post?
Well, I’m a big fan and long-time reader of Mojo, the Music Magazine, as it has well written news, interviews, and reviews – and in the July 09 issue there was brilliant interview with Trent Reznor. The article provided some real insights to an older and wiser Mr Reznor. I was so impressed by the piece that I wanted to ‘tweet’ about it and provide a link to the interview on the Mojo website……..
There was just one small problem – there was no sign of the interview on the Mojo site – there are other interviews on the site, but ironically, of all the musicians Mojo interview, they didn’t choose to upload their interview with one of the music industry’s internet gurus!

To add insult to injury, I emailed Mojo and asked whether they intended uploading the piece to their site so I could link to it. This was their reply:

Out of Office AutoReply: Trent Reznor interview – are you going to put it online?

Hello,
Thank you for your email.
Please note that you have come through to MOJO editorial. The team will only deal with queries specific to the editorial content of the magazine, including competition entries, letters and complaints.
However, if you have an enquiry relating to subscriptions you can call 01858 438 806 and they will do their best to answer your question. Advertising queries should be made to the ads team by calling 020 7295 5000.
Thanks for your support,
MOJO

An auto-response – Gosh, I feel special, thanks Mojo, very ‘social media’ of you!

Social Media For Dummies, or think before you act!

I’ve just been emailed this Facebook item, and by now it’s probably bouncing around all corners of our networked world.

Is it genuine? Who knows, but either way it’s another timely reminder to those people who seem to use their social media accounts as a broadcast ‘Dear Diary’.

Firstly, employment agencies and potential employers now routinely search online to find out more about a prospective employee – they can gain some great insights from various social media streams into the person behind his or her glowing CV.

Next, once you’ve acquired ‘friends’, at least make sure you’re aware of the potential consequences of your actions if you say something negative about them in your ‘stream of consciousness’, especially if those ‘friends’ you’ve accepted into your social networking life also happen to be your your boss or superiors.

Thirdly – even if those you insult are not signed up as your friends and you think you’re telling others behind their back, remember that things can have a funny way of getting back to those you don’t want to know – especially with so many readily available ‘cut & paste’ tools around.

Finally, use some common sense, and if you aren’t willing to say something to someone’s face – don’t say it online, well at least not if your name and account clearly identifies you. That applies equally to divulging that you’re a stoner, regularly drink and drive, covet somebody else’s partner, or have questionable exotic sexual preferences etc.

We may live in a world where we like to think our privacy is protected, but all of that stands for nothing if you choose to advertise all your innermost needs, wants, desires and other secrets to the wwworld!

For what it’s worth, in this example, I thought her boss was very clear in his reply, and showed remarkable restraint 🙂

What the f**k is social media – one year on

In September last year I put a link to a terrific presentation called “What the f**k is social media” and I made the point that while a great ‘primer’ for social media, with the speed things are changing, it would soon be out of date.

Well, the authors of that presentation, Espresso, obviously agreed, and have released “What the f**k is social media: one year later”. Excellent, and just take a look at some of the updated statistics!

Facebook – how are they using your pics?

I’m not naive and totally understand that Facebook and other social networking sites need to be able to find ways to monetise the millions of eyeballs, engagement (and server space) they’ve accumulated, but I think they’re in danger of betraying the trust millions of users have placed in them.

Apparently, Facebook has agreed to let third party advertisers use your posted pictures alongside their ads, without your express permission.

Facebook could easily make the effort to properly inform each and every one of their registered users about any changes they intend making to the terms of service. Yes, I accept that you can opt out of this change if you actually know about it, and once you do, it is easy to do – however, many users will be oblivious to this change – not good enough Facebook!

So, unless you’re happy with Facebook using your own personal pics in this way (not just on your behalf, but also your family and friends in your pics), you may want to exercise your rights to ‘opt out’ and preserve your privacy. Here’s how:

Log in to your Facebook account.

Click on “Settings” up at the top where you see the “Logout” link.

Select “Privacy”.

Then select “News Feed and Wall”.

Next, select the tab that reads “Facebook Ads”.

In the drop down box, select “No One”.

Save your changes.

There, all done!

Do it now, and you may want to let your friends know as well.

The power of tribes Vs the mass market

A few months old now, but Seth Godin‘s terrific video presentation from Ted Talks explains how the power of tribes and the Internet change everything we know about advertising, media and “one to many” communications.

The Genie is out of the bottle and it’s too late to try and put it back again.

Embrace change, form or join a movement, or die!

Vodpod videos no longer available.

So, Twitter’s now mainstream – Time Magazine covers it

It’s taken a while, but it looks like Twitter is now a bona fide, mainstream phenomenon, because this month, Time Magazine’s cover story is all about Twitter.

Well done to Twitter, and let’s hope this isn’t a sign that the Twubble is about to burst as early adopters ‘jump ship’ to look for the next cool, edgy, big thing. Probably not this time, because recent research shows that Twitter has (with the exception of ‘Celeb Followers’), got where it is without a lot of support from either Gen Y or the Millenials, probably the most fickle of all groups. No, Twitter has become the SM tool of choice of Gen X and Boomers.

It has become invaluable to users as an ‘interest and link resource’ – once you’ve found key people to follow ( based upon your own interests), you can post and read tweets, and send  interesting links to each other and the group. In effect, these fellow Tweeps become part of your ‘global hive research brain’. The  power of global micro-bloggers in real time!

Anyway, check out the Time article.

TweetStats – we know what you’re doing, and when!

For those twitterers out there, there’s a cool little site that tells you how many times you’ve tweeted, and breaks down what day and time of day you’re twittering. This is just the start though, the site mines lots of useful information about your twittering patterns and on one tab displays it as a serious of cool graphs, on another tab it creates a word cloud of your tweets and tells you your top 5 used words!

However, what makes this really cool is that you can use TweetStats for any twitterer as long as you have his or her user name.

Did I say cool? I guess it could also be used for evil……

Watch out if your employer is small minded enough to have an anti-social media policy at work.  I can already see the news headlines now, “XYZ Limited used TweetStats to prove that employee John Smith was twittering during normal office hours”

Word Art – how cool is this?

I only came across Wordle in the last few weeks.

Described as a way of  “generating word clouds from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text”.

There are three ways of doing it – you can paste in your own words or a passage from a book; or enter the url of any blog that has an Atom or RSS feed; or finally, enter the del.icio.us user name of anyone and see their tags as clouds.

I ‘created’ the example above by merely pasting in the url of this blog and hitting ‘Submit’. You can choose from a variety of fonts, layouts and colour palettes. Very cool and very addictive!

2nd Digital Media Summit

I’ve been asked to speak at the 2nd Digital Media Summit in Auckland on the 11 – 12 March.
Focusing on ‘the challenges and opportunities a digital future brings’, I’ve been asked to speak about the opportunities and threats of UGC and Web 2.0 for marketers – all in 45 mins!

Other subject areas include:
Trends & Directions – Regulation – Virtual Worlds – Social Media & Social Networking – Content – Consumer Needs, Behaviours & Expectations – and Creative Commons.