Author Archives: Jacob Morgan

by Jacob Morgan (re-posted from my blog)

Sliderocket is an online based presentation platform that is going to change the way you share and present information. From the ability to include audio sound tracks, to the ability to embed hi resolution images, Sliderocket really does have it all. Imagine powerpoint but 10X better. Sliderocket is currently in private beta but you can request an invite and hopefully you will receive one soon. Check out the Sliderocket demo tour below, I’m sure you will be just as impressed as I was when I first saw it.

Now one of my favorite things about Sliderocket, apart from the amazing UI, features, and affects, is the methods of sharing the presentation. You can share your presentations via a link that people can click on.

Not only that but you can also control how the person you send the link to, disstributes and shares the presentation themselves. Let’s say for example that you don’t want the presentation to shared with anyone else except “Chris” well, you can control that and make sure that Chris can’t send the link to anybody else. You can also set an expiration date for the presentation i.e. you can only view it today.

Finally, you can view statistics about the presentation to find out who has been viewing it, how many people have been viewing it, etc. This is of course is a powerful feature because you can actually see how much activity is going on around your presentation. The statistics feature is not very in depth yet, but I’m sure the folks at Sliderocket will build it out into a more robust analytics tool.

Here is what the admin screen of Sliderocket looks like

Each section on the right hand side can also be expanded to reveal all sorts of effects and slide styles. Several of these features can be seen in the product overview tour above. This really is a robust platform to use and it caters to the new technology era of doing things online. Why send someone a powerpoint presentation when you can send them a link to a presentation online that looks much better, not to mention that back end data that you can gather.

Now, I did mention that Sliderocket was an online based presentation tool, so what happens if you are going to a meeting and don’t have wifi? Well, Sliderocket also has an offline presenter that allows you to show the presentation straight from your desktop without needing any connection to the the internet.

If you’re still using powerpoint then sign up for the beta of Sliderocket, you won’t regret, it. I actually use Sliderocket for many of the presentation I give, and people love it!

What do you think of Sliderocket? Are there any other neat tools out there that you would recommend?

UPDATED: If you want a sliderocket invite let me know!

Thanks for reading

Follow me on twitter

Connect with me on linkedin

Connect with me on facebook

by Jacob Morgan

Microsoft has decided to go the social media route in order to help push its e-mail and instant messaging services. Those of you familiar with the “I’m Initiative” may already know that Microsoft is giving money to charities based on the amount of users that begin using some of the Microsoft services. The more users, the more money charity will receive. From what I understand, the users even get to pick the charities the money goes to.

So what exactly is this social media strategy Microsoft is trying to employ? Let me first introduce you to Parker Whittle, he’s in his 20’s and going through somewhat of a crisis, he wonders if he has done enough over his 20+ years of life to help others and realizes he hasn’t. So what does Parker decide to do? He decides to see how many people he can get to use Microsoft Live Hotmail and Messenger in 30 days (so he can raise the money for charity). Sounds like a noble cause right? Well, there is only one problem, Parker is a fake character created by Microsoft’s marketing agency.

Now Microsoft’s agency said that they are making it blatantly clear that Parker is a fake character, however, it’s hard to tell from the website. So where is the transparency? Does it matter if it’s for charity?

Thanks for reading

Follow me on twitter

Connect with me on linkedin

Connect with me on facebook

by Jacob Morgan

Have you heard of Spore yet? If not, then you are in for a treat. Spore creature creator is a software program that allows you to create your own creature from scratch. You can make it look like anything you want, the possibilities are literally endless. Once your creature is created, you can then go forth and conquer by creating your own civilizations and Spore colonies. Spore creature creator was released recently and is causing quite a stir. You can download a trial version of Spore creature creator here

Several celebrities have already created their own little spore creatures and have uploaded them onto a site that let’s visitors vote for their favorite Spore creature. The winning Spore creature creator then gets 15k to donate to the charity of their choice. The creatures are uploaded onto Sporevote. Some of the celebs participating are:

Elijah Wood
Carlos Santana
Richard Branson
Craig Newmark
Gary Vaynerchuk
Adam West
David Arquette
MC Hammer

…and many others

Even Robin Williams has a Spore creature, check out the video below to see Robin create his creature live, it’s hilarious!

Thanks for reading

Follow me on Twitter

Connect with me on facebook

Connect with me on Linkedin

by Jacob Morgan

June 26th there is a blogger meet-up with the social media club of San Francisco and the American Marketing Association of San Francisco. The event is going to be held in the 750 lounge at the Hilton Hotel in…you guessed it, San Francisco. The event is going to start at 5pm and is going to be a valuable networking event. The AMA session follows immediately at 6pm.

The AMA session is broken down as follows:

6-7 registration and networking
7-8 program with Q&A

Andy Sernovitz, the president of the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, will be sharing a few valuable word of mouth strategies during the event. I’m sure many industry experts from social media and from marketing are going to attend and this is going to be a great opportunity for you to meet many of them.

I have found that meeting people in person is by far the best way to increase one’s knowledge of a particular field, and those of you interested in Word of Mouth Marketing or social media would be doing yourselves a favor by attending, if anything, show up for the free meet-up at 5pm and grab a few drinks ? More information about the event can be found here.

Hope to see all of you there.

Thanks for reading

Follow me on Twitter

Connect with me on facebook

Connect with me on Linkedin

by Jacob Morgan

You remember the Dallas Cowboys right? You know, that NFL team? Well today the Cowboys announced that they are going to be partnering with Pluck to create a social media site for fans. The social networking platform is going to span across several of the Cowboys web properties including their home page and their site devoted to the Cowboys cheerleaders.

Players are going to be encouraged to engage with and interact with their fans which should make the social media experience quite unique. I’m actually curious to see what their sites are going to look like once Pluck is implemented. Not only that, but I am also curious to see if the Cowboys are going to do anything to encourage adoption. Oftentimes it’s not enough to just create a social media platform and then hand it off to the masses.

Those you not familiar with Pluck, Pluck allows companies to create their own social networks. I don’t know if I would exactly call them “white label” but they do offer a host of features, my question is, why not go with something like Ning?

Thanks for reading

Follow me on Twitter

Connect with me on facebook

Connect with me on Linkedin