Thursday, September 29, 2011

OMMA Global New York, September 26 – 27, 2011: You should have been there!

"It's here. It's everywhere. And it's also all the time. Media has gone hyper-connective." -- OMMA Global New York City

See what you missed by reading some highlights of the OMMA Global New York
On Monday, September 26th, advertisers, agency, online media, and marketing executives gathered at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City for the Bi-Annual OMMA Global Conference. The event proved to be one of the most exciting conferences and provocatively focused on all things digital marketing, media and advertising.

Known by many as being the only, “two-day intensive that combines all of OMMA's single online marketing conferences into one,” the event included extensive overviews and presentations of the hottest trends and technologies in Social Media, Mobile, Display, Direct and Video for the Internet.

Google's workshop, "The Human Factor: Common Sense Ways to Foster Brand Engagement" featured a wealth of information including the following online-marketing-worthy tips:
► inclusion of your brand and message in every frame of your presentation connects the customer to your brand
► mobile advertising sparks even higher rates of interest
► use expansion panels only for extra info, not the main idea of your message

The Global General Sessions during Monday afternoon were top notch and provided innovative approaches and perspectives of our ever-evolving, hyper-connectivity, web-centric, world.

Digital marketing is indeed changing the way it interacts with consumers. Dermott McCormack, EVP Digital Media, MTV Networks, spoke about "The New Rules of Digital Content Currency" and the importance of becoming a trusted source of information by building on knowledge of your audience, content curation, the re-purposing of content for new mediums and the idea of wrapping your content in "value"

The web has a huge effect on advertising and marketing. Next up was Denise Warren, Senior VP and Chief Advertising Officer of the NY Times Media Group. Her talk opened with a description of how TIVO changed the TV landscape forever, giving viewers the power to program TV to their liking. Ms Warren then went on to illustrate how this customer/consumer now drives the innovation at the NY TIMES. They analyze their customer relationships and tailor their offerings to them relatively.

A very interesting point Warren brought up was that the "after hours" usage seemed to be increasing with desktops and laptops being used in the daytime while tablets and smart phones, etc., seemed to be increasing in the evening. Warren also spoke about "interstitial moments." An interstitial space or interstice is an empty space or gap between spaces full of structure or matter- think commute time, standing in line, waiting for the doctor, etc. These "in-between" times are being used by consumers and customers to consult tablets and smart phones.

To tackle the effects the web will have on advertising, marketing, consumer targeting and reach, the Tuesday afternoon presentation included a debate on Social Media sponsored by Webtrends titled, “Is Social Media ROI for Real, or is it a New Oxymoron?"

Topics included a lively debate on the rising importance of Facebook or not, the importance of drilling down into other social networks where your customers might be hanging out and the question "Do 'Likes' translate into Sales?" Participants included Jonathan Bellinger, Digital Strategy Director, JWT, New York; Brandon Evans, CEO, Crowdtap; Mike Germand, President, Carrot Creative; Morgan Simonson, SVP of North American Sales, Efficient Frontier; Michael Lazerzon, CEO, Buddy Media.

Round and round the web goes, where she stops, no one knows. So who do you think will dominate the webosphere? There are quite a few contenders -- Apple, Facebook, Google Android, Microsoft Mobile, and Twitter.

I enjoyed the 2 day conference. I was especially interested in the implications of social media and the new habits and modes of interaction people are starting to use. I came away with some new insights.

By Carol Nissen
Writer, AllThingsDigitalMarketing.com
Digital Advertising and Marketing Director, Rhythm Dynamics


OMMA GLOBAL is the two-day intensive tour de force of all our separate conferences rolled into one. It is for those advertisers, agency executives, brand managers, marketing managers, media planners, buyers, creative directors, sellers and marketing services suppliers who aim to be leaders of the interactive marketing revolution. For more information visit: OMMA GLOBAL NEW YORK

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Happy 13th B-Day to Google

Another B-Day surprise!
Did you know that today, September 27th, 2011, Google celebrates being a teen? Happy 13TH B-DAY again! Many of us have already celebrated 23 days earlier (September 4th). Although Google officially became incorporated on September 4th, they decided to have their official B-Day on September 27th. Check out their adorable Doodle, more suitable for a baby shower than for a 13th birthday, but still adorable.
More information including all of Google's past B-Day Doodles can be seen at this SearchEngineWatch article.


Here's my earlier blog celebrating Google's 13th.
Surprise to Google who turned 13 years old today (9/4/2011). And I am surprised that Google didn't post its very own Happy 13 B-Day doodle! Since I couldn't find one on the internet, I thought you'd enjoy my "Google Rocks 13th B-Day" doodle rendition (below).
So let's all celebrate the day Google became a teen. Ever since Google was born (September 4, 1998), there have been whirlwinds of internet momentum, controversary, and innovation. Google rocks and doesn't appear to be slowing down any time soon.
To think it took Larry Page and Sergey Brin less than 2 years to incorporate Google -- in 1996, both were PhD students at Stanford University, working on a research project when Yahoo! and AOL were the major search engines.

Thirteen years later Google has embarked on hundreds, if not thousands of innovations, ventures and acquisitions. Below is a brief timeline of my most notable Google milestones (note clicking on the table below, and then once again, will enlarge for viewing):


This chart will be updated regularly, do bookmark and visit frequently.

For more information visit these links:
Google Turns 13: A History of Google's B-Day Doodles by Danny Goodwin

Happy Birthday Google: Making Sense of the Web for 13 Years
by Stephanie Buck, writer at Mashable.com

Friday, September 16, 2011

Facebook Friend List Feature Gets Smart

"I get by with a little help from my friends." ~ John Lennon, English musician and singer-songwriter, and founding member of The Beatles













Did you know that Facebook added another feature, “Smart Friend List?”

The basis for this latest enhancement is that more and more Facebook users resist sharing content because they are connected to hundreds, if not thousands, of people with different interests. However, a user may be more likely to share more if they could segment their posts by their respective professional, family, friend, and community content. Also, this new feature can motivate visitors to be more engaged in their fellow friends’ respective content -- essentially, providing more of a solution to the existing, hardly-ever-used, “Friends Lists."

According to TechCrunch, Facebook already released this new feature but I just checked my Facebook, and couldn’t find it – I’m surmising it’s either still in Beta or still counter-intuitive. “Smart Friend List,” is conceptually similar to Google+ Circles, but different. “Smart Friend List” automatically builds upon a Facebook user's respective friends' profiles and enables the user to manually sort designated “Smart Friend Lists” or allow Facebook to automatically group. Another element is that “Smart Friend Lists” can be selected within privacy settings.

For example, when you opt in to the “Smart Friend List,” Facebook will automatically create "Smart Friend Lists" based on the demographics/geographics that you designate – e.g., colleges, employers, associations, cities, etc. Users have flexibility to manually edit these lists and also publish and filter to specific lists. Users will also have the ability to manually create 3 relationship levels within privacy settings -- “Close Friends,” “Acquaintances,” and “Restricted.” Connections you place in “Close Friends” will see everything you post; “Acquaintances” functions more like filter for news feed, allowing you to control what type of news feeds you want from a Facebook friend (e.g., new job or wedding announcements, etc.). This solves the issue of overloading your news feeds with excessive mundane posts from friends. “Restricted” are for those connections that you wish to be only allowed to view your public information (can be a competitor, relative, boss, etc.)

So is there really a need for "Smart Friend List?" According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, there really wasn’t much of a need because categorizing friends is difficult and less than five percent of Facebook's 750 million users, still a significant audience size, utilize the original Friends List tool. Facebook’s enhancement will certainly have plenty of feedback -- about 37 million potential “Smart Friend List” users. It will be interesting to see the growing reactions of “Smart Friend List” posted on Facebook blogs.

Many may choose to not welcome "Smart Friend List" for various reasons including the resistance to expose relationship information to Facebook’s interface. I'm OK with school, neighborhood, company, etc., But why would Facebook users want the world to know who their "Close Friends" are? There are all different sorts of predators on the internet, and this piece of information we can do without. Many more may prefer to leave their settings as is since it is time consuming to set up who should receive what and end up prefering to receive everything and post to everyone.

On the other hand some may have interesting information that would be dull for many of their Facebook friends, but truly amazing for another segment of friends. This new tool just might be the perfect solution to fulfill that communication need.

I have a concern for the children who are still using Facebook without parental permission or adequate parental monitoring their usage. A tool of this nature in the wrong hands may contribute to an already serious Facebook issue. According to an article on ConsumersReports.org on May 2011, there were 7.5 million children under 13 with accounts, violating the site's terms [1].

More information at the following Web sites:

• The Facebook Blog - Improved Friend Lists https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=10150278932602131
• Facebook Smart Lists Automatically Group Friends With Shared Characteristics for Use With Privacy Settings http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150366908140560
• Inside Facebook http://www.insidefacebook.com/


SEARCH RESULTS STATS

SEARCH TERM           EXACT     BROAD
smart friend list         13,400    60,200,000


Here's another notable quote about friends:

"Your friend is the man who knows all about you, and still likes you." ~ Elbert Hubard, American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher


1. Five million Facebook users are 10 or younger". ConsumerReports.org. May 10, 2011. http://news.consumerreports.org/electronics/2011/05/five-million-facebook-users-are-10-or-younger.html. Retrieved May 15, 2011

Sunday, September 11, 2011

September 11th, 2001 – The Day The World Cried. Ten Years Later!

Can you believe it's been 10 years?
Photo below, "The Falling Man," by Richard Drew.

haiku ═ 911 ten ═ years later falling man is ═ still provocative

pin-straight
Falling Man

endless time still shows
the world

our
land, brave and free


by
Gloria
Buono-Daly


Emotionally charged, mixed feelings - 2001 to 2011. From Poet Laureate, Billy Collins' prose commemorating all of the 9/11 victims, "The Names," posted below, to one of the most provocative, unforgettable images by Associated Press photographer Richard Drew, of a man falling from the twin towers, positioned perfectly in the middle. The photo was taken at about 9:41 am on 9/11/01 -- 15 minutes before the 1st building, the South tower, collapsed. Videos would show that the falling man was actually a tumbling man in the air and this is one moment in his time that was captured. Note how perfectly straight, positioned in the middle and parallel to the burning towers the falling man is. The above photo was branded distasteful and voyeuristic -- never to be shown again, yet the incredible "falling man" is still around.

According to many articles and documentaries, there were about 200 people who jumped to their deaths, some were able to be identified only for the victim’s families and to provide closure for them. But there was no time to recover or identify those who were forced to jump prior to the collapse of the towers. We lost almost 3,000 lives that day.

Where were you on 9/11/2001?
I was working on Wall Street( on the corner of Wall and Water Streets). It was a beautiful, clear skied morning. I arrived early as I usually do and was at my desk on the computer when I heard a loud bang and felt rumbling underneath my desk at 8:46 a.m. I shouted "What was that?" Then 15 minutes later another bang, as some fellow employees arrived - initially we thought it was from a missile. Hard to imagine it would be the biggest single attack on American lives. I still keep on asking myself "how could this be?" I was curious and ran outside to see what was happening. As I was walking on Water St. and reached Liberty St., it was at about 10:00 am, I saw large billows of gray smoke, appearing to turn day to night, enveloping hundreds if not thousands of people running for their lives – apparently heading towards the river. I asked some folks what is happening and most were in such shock. With all the commotion, all they could say while they were running was “it’s down, it’s down.” At that moment, I thought another plane came down. I ran back to the office and learned from colleagues that the South tower collapsed (incidentally, this was the 2nd building hit). The North tower (1st building hit) collapsed at about 30 minutes later. And the world would never be the same.

"The Names" poem by Billy Collins posted below:
Yesterday, I lay awake in the palm of the night.
A soft rain stole in, unhelped by any breeze,
And when I saw the silver glaze on the windows,
I started with A, with Ackerman, as it happened,
Then Baxter and Calabro,
Davis and Eberling, names falling into place
As droplets fell through the dark.
Names printed on the ceiling of the night.
Names slipping around a watery bend.
Twenty-six willows on the banks of a stream.
In the morning, I walked out barefoot
Among thousands of flowers
Heavy with dew like the eyes of tears,
And each had a name --
Fiori inscribed on a yellow petal
Then Gonzalez and Han, Ishikawa and Jenkins.
Names written in the air
And stitched into the cloth of the day.
A name under a photograph taped to a mailbox.
Monogram on a torn shirt,
I see you spelled out on storefront windows
And on the bright unfurled awnings of this city.
I say the syllables as I turn a corner --
Kelly and Lee,
Medina, Nardella, and O'Connor.
When I peer into the woods,
I see a thick tangle where letters are hidden
As in a puzzle concocted for children.
Parker and Quigley in the twigs of an ash,
Rizzo, Schubert, Torres, and Upton,
Secrets in the boughs of an ancient maple.
Names written in the pale sky.
Names rising in the updraft amid buildings.
Names silent in stone
Or cried out behind a door.
Names blown over the earth and out to sea.
In the evening -- weakening light, the last swallows.
A boy on a lake lifts his oars.
A woman by a window puts a match to a candle,
And the names are outlined on the rose clouds --
Vanacore and Wallace,
(let X stand, if it can, for the ones unfound)
Then Young and Ziminsky, the final jolt of Z.
Names etched on the head of a pin.
One name spanning a bridge, another undergoing a tunnel.
A blue name needled into the skin.
Names of citizens, workers, mothers and fathers,
The bright-eyed daughter, the quick son.
Alphabet of names in a green field.
Names in the small tracks of birds.
Names lifted from a hat
Or balanced on the tip of the tongue.
Names wheeled into the dim warehouse of memory.
So many names, there is barely room on the walls of the heart


Additional information at the following links:

║See CBS video, “The Passionate Eye,” http://www.cbc.ca/passionateeyemonday/video_player.html?fallingman&playerType=wmp

║Video “911 The Falling Man”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EFvGuIXIJc&feature=related Images of bodies hanging out of windows, holding on across the steel across windows, leaning out for air.

║Google Blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/ten-years-later.html


My two 911 haikus:
║ 911 ten ═ years later falling man is ═ still provocative

║ pin-straight Falling Man ═ endless time still shows the world ═ our land, brave and free

Search engine stats for the term 911
Match type    Broad         Exact
Google   981,000,000     431,000,000
Yahoo     246,000,000     240,000,000
Bing       245,000,000     242,000,000

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Happy 13th B-Day Google - on 9/4/11 Google became a teen!

Surprise to Google who turned 13 years old today (9/4/2011). And I am surprised that Google didn't post its very own Happy 13 B-Day doodle! Since I couldn't find one on the internet, I thought you'd enjoy my "Google Rocks 13th B-Day" doodle rendition (below).
So let's all celebrate the day Google became a teen. Ever since Google was born (September 4, 1998), there have been whirlwinds of internet momentum, controversy, and innovation. Google rocks and doesn't appear to be slowing down any time soon.
To think it took Larry Page and Sergey Brin less than 2 years to incorporate Google -- in 1996, both were PhD students at Stanford University, working on a research project when Yahoo! and AOL were the major search engines.

Thirteen years later Google has embarked on hundreds, if not thousands of innovations, ventures and acquisitions. Below is a brief timeline of my most notable Google milestones (note clicking on the table below, and then once again, will enlarge for viewing):


This chart will be updated regularly, do bookmark and visit frequently.

For more information, visit:
Happy Birthday Google: Making Sense of the Web for 13 Years
by Stephanie Buck, writer at Mashable.com