Mike Arauz

Links for 2009-07-17 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 00:00:00 PDT

The Future of Search: Social Relevancy Rank - ReadWriteWeb
What was once called social search is now called real-time search, but this time it will really happen. First, it will be applied to streams and then to the Web in general. What we are about to get is a Social Relevancy Rank. Whenever you search streams of activity, the results will be ordered not chronologically but by how relevant each is to you based on your social graph. That is, people who matter more to you will bubble up. How does this work? Well, there will be a formula, just as there is a formula for Page Rank.
When objects become people and vice-versa. | From The Head Of Zeus Jones
Things like Twitter and Facebook, flatten out the distinctions between people, objects, companies and ideas as all of these things (and more) now have the ability to create a profile, collect friends/followers, describe their tastes, preferences and affiliations and generally build data that describes them and their social graph.
Breakdown: 4 Ways Brands Are Earning –and Buying– Followers on Twitter « Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang | Social Media, Web Marketing
Companies who don’t have iconic brands with millions of adoring fans, often have to resort to other ways to get the attention of the market. This isn’t evil, nor is it uncommon, it’s just business, and was here before the web, and will be afterwards. Don’t get mad or emotional about it, let’s break it down to understand how it’s going to work, if you’re a concerned user, use this post to figure out how to beat it. If you’re a marketer, figure out what works –and throw away what doesn’t.
Rock Band to Get its Own Music Marketplace - Mashable
Put the Rock Band Network on your radar right now. Whether you’re a music maker or Rock Band groupie, this brand new MTV initiative is about to change the hit game for the better so that everyone can get a piece of the pie. Rock Band Network, currently in closed beta, should launch to the public in August (with in-game sales later in the year), and allow for any wanne-be or tried-and-true beat master, music mixer, or soulful singer to add their music to the Rock Band catalogue for user purchase and game play.
Primal Information - Jonah Lehrer
These experiments elegantly demonstrate an essential feature of the human mind, which is how evolution bootstrapped our penchant for ideas to the same reward circuits that govern our animal appetites. In other words, the political activist on hunger strike might still be relying on his reward circuity, even though he's actually denying himself caloric treats: the cause is simply more important than food. That's what makes ideas so powerful: No matter how esoteric or ethereal or abstract they get, they are ultimately plugged back into the same system that makes us want sex and sugar. The end result is that we can crave knowledge and facts just like a thirsty person craves water.

Best of Tumblr Fridays!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 04:15:57 PDT

My favorite links, photos, and videos from the week on my Tumblr blog.

Yesterday, July 16th, was the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon mission. The Big Picture has some beautiful photos from the trip.

New York City artist Dash Snow died this week at the age of 27. Snow was a close friend of photographer whose work you may recognize from the new Levi's ad campaign. I first heard about Snow is this NYMag profile from January 2007. I can't help but think that we'll look back on this as a marker in The Death of The Hipster.

This collection of photos gives you taste of Snow's life/work. (Some images NSFW)

An oldie, but a goodie. In 1976, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a camera on the front of a sports car, and had a race car driver friend of his speed through the streets of Paris at dawn. This is real and amazing.

C'etait un Rendez vous

3 references on Swoopo.com and the psychology of gambling.

The Crack Cocaine of Auction Sites, by Mark Gimein

Swoopo, by Jonah Lehrer

The Dollar Auction Experiment, Wikipedia

This article in The Atlantic looks at how the internet, drugs, and artificial intelligence, as ways to evolve human intelligence: Get Smarter, by Jamais Cascio

Pandemics. Global warming. Food shortages. No more fossil fuels. What are humans to do? The same thing the species has done before: evolve to meet the challenge. But this time we don’t have to rely on natural evolution to make us smart enough to survive. We can do it ourselves, right now, by harnessing technology and pharmacology to boost our intelligence. Is Google actually making us smarter?

Links for 2009-07-16 [del.icio.us]

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Secret Underground Rock Climbing Speakeasy - PSFK.com
These are the remaining images from an article posted by the New York Times (later taken down) that uncovered a different kind of speakeasy in Brooklyn, New York. In the deleted piece, a writer explored an underground rock climbing club hidden in a basement below Fort Greene. Reportedly, the space has been open in one form or another for 20 years. The secret spot is different than most artificial climbing walls - here they are only 12 feet high, whereas normally they can go 40 feet or higher.
Twitter’s 1,928 Percent Growth and Other Notable Social Media Stats
Similar to Compete, Nielsen shows huge growth for Twitter and Facebook. According to the firm, Twitter grew a massive 1,928 percent in the US from June ’08 to June ’09, now reaching a total of 21 million monthly unique visitors. Facebook, which Nielsen recently reported sucks up more time than any other website, leads all social networking sites with 87.3 million unique visitors in June. MySpace – which HitWise says is losing its grip on music and entertainment – actually showed strong growth at MySpace Music, from 4.2 million to 12.1 million unique visitors year-over-year.

Propaganda By The People

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 05:02:05 PDT

What happens when the tools and skills of propaganda are available to everyone?

Rob Walker's article on the evolution, rediscovery, and recent remixing of this British poster keeps echoing in my thoughts.

Digital technology and the internet have made writing, publishing, journalism, photography, and video-making mainstream abilities. You no longer have to be schooled or experienced in order to do something that makes a significant impact on our culture.

And now, a generation that grew up hacking and customizing their MySpace profiles and creating lolcats is now re-purposing the skills once reserved for trained advertising professionals, and spreading their own messages.

The ability to combine words and images in affecting ways to communicate meaningful, powerful, and often humorous messages to a wide audience is going mainstream. Most importantly, people now have the ability to spread messages about things that are personally important to them and their own community.

(Remind you of a recent Levi's ad campaign?)

Links for 2009-07-15 [del.icio.us]

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 00:00:00 PDT

your.flowingdata
We make tiny choices every day. Those choices become habits, and those habits develop into behaviors. your.flowingdata helps you record these choices. Use your.flowingdata (YFD) to collect data about yourself and your surroundings via Twitter. Record what you eat, when you go to sleep, how much television you watch, or whatever else you want. What you track is completely up to you.

Facebook.com Is Not Important

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 04:41:11 PDT

Our job is to design for behaviors, not for websites.

(via Faris' Transmedia Presentation)

We need to be careful when we talk about digital media, that we don't get the tools mixed up with the behaviors. Obsessing over the significance of one site over another, or arguing the importance of participating on a site while not even considering what you're going to do when you get there or if it's even the right place, is a waste of time.

Facebook.com is not important. What's important is that more and more people are actively building and managing a personal network of relationships that can be accessed at any time via digital technology.

YouTube.com is not important. What's important is that more and more people are sharing original videos with other people all over the world at will.

Twitter.com is not important. What's important is that more and more people are developing a habit of broadcasting every experience and piece of information that they think might be of interest to their network.

As these tools evolve (and capabilities and uses merge), let's remember that the tools we use aren't as important as the behaviors they create.

(Click for full size image)

Auctions, Games, and Psychology

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 03:46:06 PDT

My friend Brian Fountain told me about Swoopo. This auction site must be the most clever and innovative - albeit ethically dubious - idea I've heard of in a long time.

Swoopo hosts auctions, much like eBay, on tech-ish stuff like laptops, TVs, game consoles, and digital cameras. These items are new, and get sold on Swoopo for a small fraction of their regular retail price. The difference is that the bids go up at $0.12 increments automatically, and it costs the user (player) $0.60 for each bid that they place. So, essentially, the users are buying $0.60 lottery tickets that give them a chance to win a huge discount.

Mark Gimein has a great overview of the site, and why it's so brilliantly devious, "The Crack Cocaine of Auction Sites: Swoopo.com is the most efficient, addictive way to separate people from their money."

There's some serious psychology driving the success of this site. Jonah Lehrer adds his thoughts about what Wolfram Schultz's experiments have to do with Swoopo.

His experiments followed a simple protocol: He played a loud tone, waited for a few seconds, and then squirted a few drops of apple juice into the mouth of a monkey. While the experiment was unfolding, Schultz was probing the dopamine-rich areas of the monkey brain with a needle that monitored the electrical activity inside individual cells. At first the dopamine neurons didn't fire until the juice was delivered; they were responding to the actual reward. However, once the animal learned that the tone preceded the arrival of juice -- this requires only a few trials -- the same neurons began firing at the sound of the tone instead of the sweet reward. And then eventually, if the tone kept on predicting the juice, the cells went silent. They stopped firing altogether. Schultz calls these cells "prediction neurons," since they are more concerned with predicting rewards than actually receiving them.

What's interesting about this system is that it's all about expectation. Our dopamine neurons constantly generate patterns based upon experience: if this, then that. They realize that the tone predicts the juice, or that betting on the laptop might get us a discounted reward. This means that our dopamine circuitry isn't just titillated when we win the auction - those predictive cells are excited every time we bid, as they wait to see whether or not the reward will arrive.

More on the neuroscience of gambling here on Mind Hacks.

And finally, what is the Dollar Auction?

The dollar auction is a game created by economist Martin Shubik, in which an experimenter auctions off $1 to two competing bidders. The catch is that they have to pay for each bid. Each penny you bid, actually costs you a penny. The bidding starts at $0.01, and each bidder thinks that they can walk away with a deal, paying some fraction of a dollar and getting $1 in return. But, then they hit $0.99, and things start to get really interesting. Each bidder has now already payed $0.99 just to be in the game (and the auctioneer has already recouped his initial investment of $1). And at this point the players start to chase their investment. "I've already spent $1 to get $1, but if I back out now, I'll have spent $1. On the other hand, if I win, then I've only lost a few cents, over $1."

Links for 2009-07-13 [del.icio.us]

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:00:00 PDT

The New York Review of Ideas
In bad times and in good, New York City is the idea capital of the world. Here is where commerce intersects with what Lionel Trilling described as “the bloody crossroads where literature and politics meet.” The new york review of ideas will report on that intersection, telling the stories that will shape the future of American culture.

Links for 2009-07-12 [del.icio.us]

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Swoopo : Jonah Lehrer
I think the real appeal of the website is the sheer uncertainty. As an item nears the end of bidding, a big countdown clock appears. At any moment, someone else can come up in and bid on the item, which then resets the clock to twenty seconds. The process repeats and repeats, until the price gets to a point that discourages other bidders. (It's probably less discouraging to you, since you've already sunk $50 in bidding fees.) But here's the dirty secret of the site: after placing a bid, you're forced to wait and watch. You have no way of knowing if your bid will win, or if someone else will swoop in and bid on the laptop at the last possible second. In other words, it's just like a slot machine: you put in a quarter and wait for the wheels to whirr. With swoopo, the random number generator is other people.
The Crack Cocaine of Auction Sites: Swoopo.com is the most efficient, addictive way to separate people from their money. | The Big Money
Consider the MacBook Pro that Swoopo sold on Sunday for that $35.86. Swoopo lists its suggested retail price at $1,799; judging by the specs, you can actually get a similar one online from Apple (AAPL) for $1,349, but let's not quibble. Either way, it's a heck of a discount. But now look at what the bidding fee does. For each "bid" the price of the computer goes up by a penny and Swoopo collects 60 cents. To get up to $35.86, it takes, yes, an incredible 3,585 bids, for each of which Swoopo gets its fee. That means that before selling this computer, Swoopo took in $2,151 in bidding fees. Yikes.
Dollar auction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An auctioneer who volunteers to auction off a dollar bill with the following rule: the dollar goes to the highest bidder, who pays the amount he bids. The second-highest bidder also must pay the highest amount that he bid, but gets nothing in return. However, a problem becomes evident as soon as the bidding reaches 99 cents. Supposing that the other player had bid 98 cents, they now have the choice of losing the 98 cents or bidding a dollar even, which would make their profit zero. After that, the original player has a choice of either losing 99 cents or bidding $1.01, and only losing one cent. After this point the two players continue to bid the value up well beyond the dollar, and neither stands to profit.

Links for 2009-07-11 [del.icio.us]

Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:00:00 PDT

The Information Needs of Gamers: A User Group Analysis » Cyber Anthropology
Video games have evolved quite a bit over the last 30 years as have the cultures surrounding them. Not only are games entertaining, but they are also methods to ‘promote various types of information literacy, develop information seeking habits and product practices (like writing), and require good, old fashioned research skills, albeit using a wide spectrum of content.’ (Squire and Steinkuehler, 2005) All of which will be analyzed in the following pages of this gamer user group analysis.
Gizmodo Gets Bested By Best Buy: Pics, Videos, Links, News
After posting their list of The Seven Types of Employees You Meet at Best Buy, Best Buy's CMO, Barry Judge, responds with “The One Type of Gizmodo Blogger” — an ode to the couch-ing, ironic t-shirt-wearing, and Brooklyn-living techie blogger stereotype.
Shopping for Gamblers - Freakonomics Blog - NYTimes.com
How can Swoopo, the online auction site, rake in $2,151 selling a laptop for $35.86? Easy: set an opening price of $0.01 (almost free!), then let each new bidder top the last by only a penny, and extend the auction each time someone places a bid in the final seconds. Oh, and collect $0.60 from each player for each bid they place. The winner of the auction might walk away with a good deal, but the losers will have racked up big fees chasing their sunk costs. The house always wins.
Is Google Making Us Smarter? - The Atlantic
Pandemics. Global warming. Food shortages. No more fossil fuels. What are humans to do? The same thing the species has done before: evolve to meet the challenge. But this time we don’t have to rely on natural evolution to make us smart enough to survive. We can do it ourselves, right now, by harnessing technology and pharmacology to boost our intelligence.

Links for 2009-07-10 [del.icio.us]

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 00:00:00 PDT

Mutton Busting [VIDEO] - Buzzfeed
Mutton Busting is like the rodeo, except instead of adults riding livestock, it's the children of negligent parents riding sheep until they fall and get trampled. Additionally, the sport sheds light on the timeless ethical dilemma that asks what's more pressing: the welfare of children or the welfare of sheep? Take your sides!

Best of Tumblr Fridays!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 02:34:24 PDT

Collecting my favorite links, photos, and videos from the week on my Tumblr blog.

Good Magazine has all the important days covered.

Rob Walker covers the story behind this internet-famous poster in last Sunday's NYTimes Magazine.

New York Magazine has the story behind the P.S. 22 chorus. - How Staten Island's P.S. 22 Chorus Got Famous With a Little Help From Perez Hilton

The kids dissolve into giddy laughter. “Poker Face” has become a predicament for Mr. B, now that high-profile fans like celebrity blogger Perez Hilton, Ashton Kutcher, and Mikey Way of My Chemical Romance have helped catapult the P.S. 22 chorus from pride of Staten Island to the best-known elementary-school chorus on the planet. Hilton adopted the group after seeing one of its handheld videos of another Tori Amos song (like Breinberg, Hilton is a Tori-aholic); he later requested a version of Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide.” That video, released in May, attracted more than 300,000 YouTube hits and an invitation from Stevie Nicks to sing the song for her, in person.

I made this. Will someone put it on a t-shirt?

This is one of the most beautiful stop-motion videos I've ever seen.

Information + Graphics

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 05:41:52 PDT

(Click to view full size original)

This is the greatest infographic of all time. Designed in 1869 by Charles Joseph Minard, it tells the story of Napoleon's march to Moscow during the War of 1812. The tan line shows the invasion of Napoleon's army, and the black line shows the retreat. Key dates are annotated across the bottom. And (the most brilliant part) the width of the line shows how many people in Napolean's army were still alive. When they started, their army was 422,000 strong. When they finally returned, defeated, they only had 10,000 soldiers left. And this whole story, the battles, the weather, the frozen rivers, it's all here in this single image.

Have you noticed that you've been seeing more infographics lately? As digital technology floods us with information, and the graphic design tools become available to everyone - not just professionals - the visual display of information is becoming the next frontier in communications talent.

Here's a few inspirational bits I've seen lately. Please list your own favorite sources for learning and inspiration in the comments.

NYTimes.com has been doing a lot of fantastic interactive infographics lately. This one, about economic cycles, was one of my favs.

Nicholas Feltron is a New York designer, who produces his own personal annual report each year. I love this super simple graphic from his 2005 report.

I love this beautiful and effective graphic by Density Design depicting statistics about the poor population of Italy.

(Click to view full size original)

For further reading, I recommend buying one of Edward Tufte's books. Tufte's the master.

And some great blogs:
flowingdata.com/
infosthetics.com/
visualcomplexity.com/vc/

What do you recommend?

More Augmented Reality + Social Networks

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 04:27:29 PDT

(Check out my face-recognition concept from June 22nd here.)

This is a new concept, and I'm predicting that we will see in the near-ish future.

The basic functionality of this is similar to other recent augmented reality apps that show you dynamic information about the places around you. But, what if you combined that location aware capability with all of the opinion and status broadcasting all of your friends were doing across the web?

The user receives information about the places around them filtered through the lens of their social graph.

This is obviously a good fit for urban environments; but could work well in more rural areas, too. Wouldn't it be great to have this in your car's GPS as you drive cross-country? Discover the local favorite diner of a Twitter friend that you've never actually met in real life.

References/Inspiration:

London Tube Info App

Layar, worlds first mobile Augmented Reality browser

Foursquare to Twitter

Yellow Arrow Project

Today's Inspiration

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 03:46:24 PDT

(via the always inspirational booooooom.com)

Collaborating isn't the easiest thing to do; but, when it's done well, with this much creativity and imagination, it pays off.

Best of Tumblr Fridays!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 07:05:30 PDT

A few of my favorite links, photos, and videos from the week on my Tumblr blog.

Noah Brier linked to this fascinating article about how the human brain teeters on the edge of order and chaos, in a good way.

They build on the observation that when a single neuron fires, it can trigger its neighbours to fire too, causing a cascade or avalanche of activity that can propagate across small networks of brain cells. This results in alternating periods of quiescence and activity - remarkably like the build-up and collapse of a sand pile.

I finally finished watching The Sopranos, and I completely agree with this interpretation of the ending: "If you look at the final episode really carefully, it’s all there.”* These are David Chase’s words regarding the finale of the Sopranos. He is right, it is “all there”. This is the definitive explanation..." (SPOILER ALERT)

A great satirical piece on McSweeney's by Frank Ferri, "Welcome to our Branding House"

You sure look the part. Short beard, tight-fitting thrift-store shirt, slim-fit jeans and large-framed glasses that scream "I'm hip!" I should hire you on appearance alone. But legally, I can't. Besides, there's a lot more to our shop than how we look and dress.

Wonderful and strange paintings by Scott Listfield.

Trailer for a documentary about how digital technology is changing how we live.

Us Now from Banyak Films on Vimeo.

Rob Walker talks about the phenomenon of the surge in sales of Michael Jackson songs and albums.

Yesterday evening, Cult of Mac predicted a surge in sales of Michael Jackson music. Correct. Indeed as I type this 9 of the top 10 albums, and six of the top 10 singles, on the iTunes chart, are Jackson material. Not exactly. It’s not the death but the “high-profile” part of the equation (the attendant media/web coverage and chatter) that matters. This is for the simple reason that it makes such figures highly salient. Salience is certainly not the only element in a consumption decision, but it’s an essential one.

The Ludology vs. Narratology Debates

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:46:59 PDT

Yesterday, as I was poking around the Game Studies page on Wikipedia, I came across this articulation of a very significant debate within the game studies community:

This disagreement has been called the ludology vs. narratology debates. The narratological view is that games should be understood as novel forms of narrative and can thus be studied using theories of narrative (Murray, 1997; Atkins, 2003). The ludological position is that games should be understood on their own terms. Ludologists have proposed that the study of games should concern the analysis of the abstract and formal systems they describe. In other words, the focus of game studies should be on the rules of a game, not on the representational elements which are only incidental (Aarseth, 2001; Eskelinen, 2001; Eskelinen, 2004).

This made my brain happy. I love a good debate. And this sounds like a great one. It's a healthy debate in which both sides have valid points. On the one hand people love a good story, and many people get sucked into games because they're enthralled by the story. Yet, where would any good game be without rules? And isn't it the structure of the game that ultimately makes us feel like we're actually playing something?

Debates, arguments, discussions, can be an essential part of making our work better. The key is to seek out the most worthy debates, and not argue about inconsequential details.

UK Campaign Causes Riots

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 04:46:28 PDT

Sometimes we learn as much from failure as we do from success. Today's lesson comes to us from a UK newspaper called the Weekly Dispatch.

Attempting to stave off extinction, the paper launched what they hoped would be the greatest puzzle hunt of all time. Wrapped in a Sherlock Holmes-type story, each week the paper revealed clues about treasure medallions hidden in cities all over the country. Readers were supposed to buy copies of the paper (increase readership and circulation!), solve the clues, and finally go out and find the treasure medallions. Well, the paper got more than it bargained for, as crazed readers all over the country started digging up roadways, public squares, and neighbors' flower beds in an effort to uncover the medallions. Thousands of people were arrested for destroying public property. And finally, the paper had to quit the treasure hunt early after getting sued by the state for being an accomplice to the rampant destruction.

You may not have heard about this because it didn't happen recently. It happened in January of 1904.

The full story is here in this account by British journalist Paul Slade, Trench Warfare: London's Treasure Hunt Riots. (via Metafilter)

There are many incredible things in this story - and I highly recommend reading the whole thing - but, what stuck out to me was how much this sounded exactly like the kind of "viral" or "guerrilla" campaign we might try to create today.

Embedding a puzzle into a print publication to increase sales? (Wired anyone?) Hiding stories inside of stories to give people a reason to dig deeper? Creating something so remarkable that it captures the curiosity and imagination of an entire country?

Let's not be precious about the format we choose. It's all been done before. Human nature hasn't changed. And the kinds of experiences that people find compelling haven't changed. Our chance to be creative lies in the stories we create and the tools we use to tell them (e.g. any Pixar movie). So, rather than patting ourselves on the back for reinventing the wheel, let's celebrate the moments when we use what's unique about digital media to create an experience for people that they never imagined was possible.

Thinking About You

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:07:54 PDT

YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other digital media tools, have claimed a new and powerful role in transforming shared awareness into shared experience.

Click for full size image

As of Monday morning, Michael Jackson is the king of iTunes, claiming 9 of the top 10 albums and 7 of the top 10 songs.

Rob Walker wrote a great post over the weekend about the significance of being salient. When your brand is on everyone's mind, it can have a powerful impact on your sales.

Michael Jackson and his untimely death is the latest example. The same thing happened with Tim Russert's books on Amazon following his sudden death. And before that, the video of Michael Richards' racist tirade during a stand-up performance lead to a huge spike in sales of Seinfeld DVDs.

We can't always know what's going to precipitate a spike in attention. But, what's interesting to me in the Michael Jackson example, is the newly powerful role that tools like YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter play.

At the height of the buzz, tweets mentioning Michael Jackson reached 22.61% of all Twitter messages.

If your experience was anything like mine, you were inundated with links to Michael Jackson videos on YouTube, embedded videos on blogs and Tumblr, blip.fm links on Twitter, and just mentions of his name over and over again.

The oversize newspaper headlines and lead stories on every news and entertainment program on TV certainly played a key role in raising awareness. Digital media, though, transformed that awareness into a world-wide shared experience, by sharing reactions, emotions, videos, music, and personal stories.

Best of Tumblr Fridays!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 03:42:34 PDT

My favorite links, photos, and videos from the past 2 weeks on my Tumblr blog.

Michael Jackson Billie Jean live

An excellent anonymous first-hand account of the June 15 rally in Tehran, Iran from The New Yorker Magazine.

On June 14th, two days after the election that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is alleged to have stolen from his main challenger, the reformist Mir-Hossein Moussavi, I hurried back to Iran from a trip abroad. The next day, the day of the Azadi Street march, I had lunch with a journalist friend. In view of the election fiasco and the coverage that it had received abroad, my friend told me, the authorities were now trying to curtail the activities of the Western media. “If you want to write for a foreign magazine,” he said, “do it without a byline.” The authorities were refusing to extend the visas of most visiting foreign journalists; several Iranian journalists had been thrown in jail.

Clay Shirky talks about how tools like Facebook and Twitter have changed our world.

Mos Def is releasing his new album as a T-shirt.

Mos Def is releasing his latest album, The Ecstatic, as a T-shirt. How does that work? The T-shirt has The Ecstatic Killer of Sheep-interpolating cover art printed on the front, song titles on the back, and a download code for the album on the hang tag.

Henry Jenkins talks about Transmedia:

PS22 Chorus “JUST DANCE” by Lady Gaga

Photos by Cristin Sloan.

Anti-drug PSA starring a young Helen Hunt + Keyboard Cat + Hall and Oates =

The "I'd Rather Be Watching Porn" Test

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 04:18:20 PDT

Since I posted Your Competition is Everything On the Internet, I've been throwing around this challenge for people who are trying to create compelling experiences for people on the web:

Does this idea pass the "I'd rather be watching porn" test? Or if you prefer the safe for work option, Does this idea pass the "I'd rather be looking at pictures of kittens" test?

So, I decided to make a couple images to help remind us.

Click for full size image

Because both of these compelling experiences are merely a click away from whatever it is that you're creating. So don't think that your only competition is your competitor's website or video. Your competition on the internet is everything else on the internet.

Clay Shirky and the Hierarchy of Digital Collaboration

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:11:05 PDT

This excellent video has been making the rounds. In it, Clay Shirky tells a few quick stories about how digital technology has changed our world.

It inspired me to put together this little diagram outlining the three main modes of digital collaboration outlined in Shirky's fantastic book, Here Comes Everybody. In order of difficulty, they are: Sharing, Cooperation, and Collective Action.

Click for full size image

In the next year we're going to see brands start to think about these challenges. "We've earned hundreds of thousands of Facebook fans, and tens of thousands of Twitter followers, what now?"

Once you've brought people together around a shared interest, how can you help them to take action? Or as Henry Jenkins likes to say, you need to both bring people together and give them something to do.

Augmented Reality + Social Networks

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 04:23:03 PDT

Jake Bronstein

What if you combined existing face recognition software with access to Facebook and other social network sites on a mobile device?

This image is a concept I sketched up for a mobile app that would identify faces via the phone's camera. Then, using face-recognition software, the app would look for matches to that face in profile pics within the user's Facebook and Twitter networks. Once the app has found a match, it would display the most recent updates, identify mutual friends, and could even access the person's blog or website if it was linked to from Facebook or Twitter.

The technology for this already exists. Apple is already using facial recognition in iPhoto, and Google is using it in Picasa. As long as the mobile device can browse images on Facebook or Twitter, it's just a small leap to start matching real-world faces to online profiles.

I've been trying to think about how Augmented Reality technology can be useful. This seems like a good example. There were a couple other recent interesting examples including gaming and a real-world browser, that were pretty impressive.

I'm probably not the first person to think of this, so if you've seen something like it before, please link it up in the comments.

And if you know anyone who has the ability to make this, please tell them about it.

Best of Hall and Oates ... .com!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 02:43:08 PDT

Ladies and gentleman, the website you've been waiting for your entire adult contemporary life is finally here: BestofHallandOates.com!

If you dig it, please tell your friends. Post it to Facebook. Tweet about it. Help me spread the word.

(By the way, there are a bunch of hidden Easter eggs in the site. Don't miss the "Did You Know?" section ; )

A little over a year ago, I had several run-ins with the iconic duo in several settings - new memoir that had recently been published, a house party in Williamsburg, someone developing a cartoon about Oates' mustache - and I decided that there was something in the cultural zeitgeist. Although not often mentioned publicly, there is a strong undercurrent of love for these guys. And this site was waiting to be made.

I lost a little steam when I ran into trouble sourcing the videos. But, the music kept on popping up over and over. I had to finish the site.

So, at long last, here it is. Please enjoy.

What does Born Digital mean?

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:09:45 PDT

The term "born digital" is something that we often use at Undercurrent; this is how I define it.

Born Digital is a term we use to describe an exploding segment of society that is defined by a symbiotic relationship to digital technology. Born Digitals are the people who are constantly relying on the internet and mobile devices to access information, to communicate with each other, to entertain themselves, to organize social action, and to document their lives. They are also powering everything that the internet has to offer by constantly contributing their ideas, opinions, and knowledge to the network. As recently as a few years ago this segment was assumed to be a subset of the youth demographic; now, however, we see that it is quickly permeating all ages of the general population. Born Digital no longer describes a native familiarity with digital technology, but rather a common behavior and mindset in which digital technology plays a pervasive and integrated role in our day-to-day living.

Fans Are For Everyone

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 08:02:10 PDT

Every brand should be using the web to attract and connect with their most ardent fans. And they should do it by cultivating a distinct personality.

UPDATE: Changes have been made from the original post to better reflect Alan's feedback.

Alan Wolk likes to use the term "Prom King Brands" to refer to brands like Apple and Nike that people wear as a badge without irony. ~~And if you're not one of these brands that already has an established fan base, then you should think twice about how you talk~~ And you should acknowledge that you may not be as well-loved as these brands, yet, before you start talking to people in places like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Few things frustrate me more than the very false notion promulgated by many working in the social media space, that all brands are Prom King Brands. By that I mean the countless calls to “engage your hardcore fans” and “energize your base.” As if all brands actually had hardcore fans. Or any fans, for that matter. I mean seriously, do you think that Acco staplers (it’s the brand on my desk right now) has “hardcore fans”?

I disagree. I believe any brand that makes a great product has fans out there waiting to be identified and collected. That's what all these social tools offer. You don't need to be a famous brand or a revolutionary product in order to have fans. It's not the fact that Acco makes staplers that's preventing them from having fans (although they probably do), it's the fact that they don't have any personality.

In order for a brand to earn fans, you just need to know how the way you see the world is different than the way other people see it, and be willing to tell people about it in everything you do.

Case in point, British-based Innocent Fruit Smoothies.

A recent blog entry about Wombat poo, posted to their brand blog:

Talking about having cake for lunch on Twitter:

It's personality like that, that enables a brand to have fans like these:

Innocent didn't see the fact that they just made fruit smoothies as an excuse to get out of making friends on the web. Rather the opposite happened, they used their product as an excuse to bring people together.

I don't think it matters whether you make fruit smoothies or staplers or iPhones, every brand deserves fans. You just have to be willing to earn them.

Click for full size

How do you think brands should behave online? Do you think Facebook fans, Twitter followers, and YouTube subscribers are for everybody? Comments welcome.

Best of Tumblr Fridays!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 05:12:57 PDT

A few of my favorite links, photos, and videos from the past week on my Tumblr blog.

In Twitter news, @delloutlet just passed $2 million in sales. How's that for ROI?

Jax de Leon created beautiful graphic visualizations of Sufjan Stevens' album "Come On Feel The Illinois!"

Helge Tennø wrote a great post about the importance of context over product.

Products are just stuff, and represent nothing of value on their own. It is first when they are introduced to a situation (or context) of importance to the customer they become valuable. It is the situation surrounding the product that is important, and it’s in this situation companies are real experts at adding great value.

This incredible stop-motion animation has been making the rounds.

And The High Line park opened: Michael Surtees and NewYorkology

Working on a new website...

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 05:06:01 PDT

Pardon my absence. I'm finally getting around to finishing the design and development of a little website that I started over a year ago: Best Of Hall And Oates.

It's not quite ready, yet. (It's currently hiding at a very obvious undisclosed location...) But, you'll be the first to hear about it when it officially launches.

Best of Tumblr Fridays!

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 03:47:41 PDT

Rounding up my favorite links, photos, and videos from the past week on my Tumblr blog.

Have you seen the video about the controller-less next generation of the XBOX? (via Faris)

Awesome photos by Max Dworkin

Charlie Todd, creator of Improv Everywhere, pointed out that Best Buy accidentally (or maybe on purpose?) used a photo from his Best Buy prank as a photo of real Best Buy employees on their website.

I've been meaning to write this same post for years: Tomi T Ahonen, From Utilty to Futility: Demographics in Marketing

Our friend Peggy Ann Salz over at M Search Groove mentioned the diminshing utility of using demographics in marketing segmentation and targeting. I wanted to return to this topic, and argue loud and clear, that the evidence is overwhelming, that we (marketing professional) have experienced in the past few years a total shift where customer demographics have gone from utility to futility. Yes, futility. They are now counter-productive. You, reading this blog, need to start to remove all references to demographics in all of your company marketing.

And Bud Caddell was on fire this week, so he's bringing us two links:

and Keyboard Cat, Acrylic on Canvas

The Currency of Online Sharing

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 06:05:52 PDT

Content doesn’t spread on the web because of its inherent qualities. We choose to share content because of its value within a network.

Click for full size image

In yesterday's post I argued the importance of designing for networks instead of just groups of individuals. In order for a piece of content to spread on the web, individuals from one network have to choose to take what they've discovered and share it with new networks.

The principle underlying this behavior is that the people who decide to introduce a video or image or message to a new community need to perceive some value in taking that action. Taken from Henry Jenkin's Spreadable Media, there seem to be three elemental sources for this kind of social value.

How will sharing this... strengthen my bond with the other members of this network?

How will sharing this... define our collective identity, helping us to identify who's in and who's out?

How will sharing this... give me status within this network?

If you're creating something that you hope will spread on the internet, you have to identify specific networks of people pursuing shared interests. Then make sure that the people within those networks can answer at least one of these crucial questions affirmatively.

For people who are in the business of creating stuff to spread on the internet (maybe we can start saying that instead of internet marketing), are you already trying to answer these questions with your ideas? Comments welcome.

Design For Networks, Not Just Groups of Individuals

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 04:15:56 PDT

Too often we design experiences for groups of individuals, when we should be designing experiences for networks of connected individuals.

If you want your ideas, creations, and branded messages to spread on the internet then you have to build your message, and the experience in which it's delivered, with an understanding of the interest networks who will spread it. Bringing together a large number of people to see what you've done is meaningless unless you take advantage of their connections to each other and their connections to new people beyond your reach.

One of the weakest aspects of online display advertising (aside from the fact that no one likes it and everyone ignores it) is that it doesn't engage networks, it engages individuals. It actually takes people out of more familiar contexts where they are likely to be connected to their networks, and drags them into new environments where they are often cut off.

One of the things that I saw in my diagram was how important these different networks are. We are each connected to many different networks (defined by our curiosities, interests, passions, and life experiences). We have varying levels of intimacy and loyalty to different networks. And we travel fluidly from one network to another.

We need to evolve what we learn about our desired audience to a new level, in which we understand the culture, social practices, and behaviors of a network of connected individuals pursuing a shared interest.

Which leaves us with the crucial question of why any person chooses to share anything with anyone else in their networks? Why do things spread on the internet, a la Henry Jenkin's Spreadable Media (or read my notes on Parts 1 and 2, 3 and 4, 5 and 6, 7 and 8). More on this tomorrow.

Websites vs. Content

noreply@blogger.com (Mike Arauz) — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 19:25:04 PDT

I accept that people and brands are going have a use for their own websites (I still do). Given that, the important questions are: What role will your website be playing within the overall context of the internet as a whole? Are you spending an amount of money, effort, and time that is appropriate to that role? Would you be better off putting that money, effort, and time into developing content?

One of the first things I realized after I published my post yesterday, was that the diagram over-emphasizes the importance of websites. Ironic, because I've been arguing against the importance of websites. (BooneOakley showed us yesterday that there are some very smart alternatives to the branded .com with their new site entirely within YouTube.)

Most brands aspire to be wildly popular at the top tier of the web. A smash success would be becoming a hugely popular and well recognized internet phenomenon. But, then they turn around and spend a ton of money on a flashy branded microsite that is going to live down in one of the bottom tiers of the web. And after they put it up, they spend even more money on display advertising in order to beg people to leave that top tier of the web and come down to visit their site.

On the other hand, a discrete piece of content is not bound by these different strata. It can live and travel fluidly around all the different environments of the web. Videos, images, text, and even single words or phrases, can be easily taken and re-posted in more personally relevant places. And replicated over and over. All facilitating the spread of the original idea, and making it more likely that new people will discover it.

If you're going to build a website, you should at the very least think of it as a loose aggregation of portable content. Reveal the network that your brand is a part of by sharing other people's content (and showing your personality through this content). Make all of your own content easily sharable: use YouTube to host your videos, use JPGs in HTML so that they can be copied and pasted, use standard blogging platforms to make it easy for people to take and link back to your message.

The .com is only dead if you cut it off from the network. The more connections you can enable, the more chances it will have to thrive.