Monthly Archives: November 2009

Today, the Global Language Monitor in Austin announced that Twitter is the Top Word of 2009. What? Well, the GLM monitors these things. It used a Predictive Quantities Indicator (PQI), which is a “proprietary algorithm that tracks words and phrases in the media and on the Internet, now including blogs and social media. The words are tracked in relation to frequency, contextual usage and appearance in global media outlets, factoring in long-term trends, short-term changes, momentum and velocity.” Right. Well, it turns out we’re all saying Twitter a lot. (I wonder how “tweet” fared in all this.)

The Top 10 words were Twitter, Obama, H1N1, Stimulus, Vampire, 2.0, Deficit, Hadron, Healthcare, and Transparency. I’m sitting here counting how many times each of those has passed through my lips and I can’t really argue with the findings.

But Twitter. Twitter is becoming ubiquitous, I think. Back in September, a street in a Palestinian refugee camp was named after a Twitter handle: @arjanelfassed tweetstreet. Yep, the first street in the world to be named after a Twitter ID, showing that it’s not just here in the US: Twitter is a global phenomenon.

According to Brian Solis,  co-author of Putting the Public Back in Public Relations (http://bit.ly/prbook), blogger at PR 2.0 and publisher of bub.blicio.us, “Naming a street for a Twitter ID has revealed signs that Twitter has had a cultural effect within global society. This is something that many digital anthropologists will tie to the “me” aspects in Social Media aroused through Twitter and the relationships and conversations it fosters. It’s creating a network of digital extroverts who bridge online and offline interaction.”

The Global Language Monitor defined Twitter as “The ability to encapsulate human thought in 140 characters,” which is a rather wonderful definition, although I think it applies more to “to tweet.”

What do you think of Twitter’s effect on our society as a whole, permeating our language and even our street signs?

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Tweet Michelle @writetechnology, send her technology news at michelle[at]writetech[dot]net, visit her wine blog when you’re thirsty, and drop by her day job.

Public service announcements are getting all web 2.0 on us. That’s a good thing. With creative and financial support from JESS3 and AOL, the 56 year-old Ad Council will be making its PSA’s available for viewing and sharing across the social web.

The new project, entitled My Ad Council, looks to leverage current social media sharing techniques in order to spread their messages to a wider pool of people. One effective way of doing so is the use of online social media networks. Ultimately the My Ad Council project is looking to use social media towards social good, and we all know that’s a concept a lot of people latch onto.

Well-known examples of social media goodwill includes Causes, a Facebook application that gained a great deal of traction very early on. Causes and others, such as Kiva, have maintained their prominence in the social media space, using online social nudging and easy interaction options to spread love across the world.

Yet the Ad Council is still one of those organizations that is considered a part of the advertising industry more so than a non-profit group. That could be a major barrier for the Ad Council, as it looks to social media for pushing its content to online users. Other brands and members of the advertising industry have made similar moves in the past, receiving dismal results towards sharing from a user-to-user standpoint. The fact of the matter remains; commercials don’t always become viral videos.

Nevertheless, PSA’s from My Ad Council are well done and carry important messages. Even if the content does not go viral, it can have an affect on several individuals on a broad scale. The purpose behind PSAs is to utilize mainstream media channels in order to reach a large number of people in order to spread an important message. Online social media outlets have become additional channels for distribution in this way.

Another advantage My Ad Council content has is the presence of celebrities. They are often used for giving PSA messages, as they are influential members of our culture. Since many of these celebrities have active accounts across multiple social media networks, the dual points of access for celebrities’ PSA’s means additional opportunities for followers to at least view a given message, even if they choose not to share it with their friends.

by Jacob Morgan

Every year there are a few must attend conferences and Supernova is one of them.  It’s one of the most unique and eclectic conferences you can attend.  Per the Supernova website:

“Supernova is the only forum to examine all of the opportunities and challenges created in the Network Age. With thought-leaders from business, technology and government, we’re building the most powerful human capital network about networks. And, we not only look at what’s happening today, we’re the first to prepare you for what’s coming tomorrow.”

The theme for this years event is: Change Networks and change is something that is taking place on a global scale from both and individual and from a corporate level.  Things are possible now that were simply unheard of even 5 years ago, but what do we do, how do we do it, and how can we get ready for what’s coming next?  These are all key issues that the Supernova conference will address.

The tracks for the conference are going to be broken down into 4 areas:

• Changing Networks: The evolving infrastructure
• Networks For Change: Public policy and social impact
• Strategic Change: Business implications
• The Changing World: Daily life and online experiences

Take a look at some of the folks they have speaking at the event:

• Chris Anderson (Wired Magazine)
• Eric Bradlow (Wharton)
• Paul Brigner (Verizon)
• Sean Ammirati (Read/Write Web)
• Jonathan Christiansen (Skype)
• Peter Guber (Mandalay Entertainment)
• Chris Kemp (NASA Ames Research Center)
• Dave McClure (Founders Fund)

The event is taking place in San Francisco at the Mission Bay Conference center from December 1-3.  You can register here and if you use the code “gen01″ you will receive $200 off of the registration price.  There are going to be plenty of amazing folks to network with and learn from so come prepared.

I hope to see you there!

At the time of year when the airports are busiest, FlightCaster has announced $1.3 million in funding. FlightCaster launched a service that predicts the probability of a flight leaving on time, reporting up to 6 hours before the airline will announce a delay. Combining data from air traffic control, airport information, airline information and countless other parameters, FlightCaster emerged earlier this year as a nifty but questionable tool.

FlightCaster’s applied use cases were in question, as calculating the probability of a flight delay does not always give a flier the guarantee of making their flight should they change their plans accordingly. A lack of integration with other major travel-planning tools also isolated FlightCaster in its service provisions.

However, The funding of FlightCaster shows interest in its product, though details regarding plans for FlightCaster growth have not been released. Increased features for usability will improve the FlightCaster service based upon its existing functionality. Furthered integration with other services, especially those that are related to travel planning and alerts. Additionally, trending personal concierge services with well-integrated mobile features are targets for FlightCaster integration as well.

According to TechCrunch, FlightCaster has already begun discussions with companies for future inclusion of its predictions services. From airlines and airport information hubs such as RSS feeds and mobile apps to travel planning tools that already offer similar alerts, FlightCaster may have found itself in a nice position.

Whether this is indicative of a future acquisition for Flightcaster or not is too early to determine. The funding of Flightcaster, however, shows the potential behind niche services such as this. Many others that were too far advanced for their time have missed opportunities in not being able to integrate with the services and methods already employed by the average consumer.

As mobile phones make concierge services even more prevalent in our lives, the necessity for personalized updates grows accordingly. With larger companies creating robust mobile apps to connect more directly with consumers, startups such as Flightcaster have more opportunities to become integrated features promoted through these apps, accessing consumers on a broad level.

What ever happened to Joost? The company that was hailed the bridge between the television and Internet worlds, Joost came out of the gate with a strong founding team and several millions in investment funding. Joost went on to gain the support of major media companies and, finally, the content distributors themselves. Yet every step of the way Joost seemed to end up one step behind.

Joost’s inability to ultimately take the lead on the web-based, premium content service providers reflected a unique state of purgatory in dealing with technology. This failure was emphasized with today’s announcement that the Adconion Media Group has acquired Joost for its assets. The financial details around this acquisition were not disclosed.

After Joost continuously found itself in a place of missed opportunity, the forces behind the company struggled to look for a way out. Joost went from a desktop video software provider to an online streaming video service, eventually taking a focus on the production of white label video streaming tools. Joost has also turned to pre-clip advertising methods, moving far from its initial plan of a more formally integrated advertising scheme. Things could have been worse for Joost, but one thing was for sure; Joost never reached its full potential.

Was it the fault of over-funding, or was there merely a gap between the vision of Joost and its execution? Joost had slid in under the radar just as web-based companies were starting to regain a foothold in the consumer market. With so much support from such a wide array of investors in the media industry, Joost carried a great deal of hope for monetizing the web’s ability to more successfully and efficiently stream video.

Taking a top-down approach to implementing such a service on consumer’s desktops meant gaining the respect and financial support of nearly the entire media industry. This was long before the days of $1.65 billion YouTube acquisitions or broadcast network-run services such as Hulu.

Yet there was so much hype generated around Joost that the product was never able to be brought to the market per its initial expectations. By the time major media companies rallied around Joost the model of downloadable software had been replaced with YouTube-like streaming and embedding. Joost had to shift gears, taking on a new model and a new competitor. At each stage, Joost’s vision was again misaligned with the current market.

Nevertheless, all was not last with Joost. Under Adconion Joost will continue on its re-focused path to develop white label video services. Moving forward the need for such services will be merged with other forms of software services, cloud computing and enterprise necessities.