while usually i am the one trying to express how parties are social media, here’s a fun little slideshow about how your online community is a party waiting to happen.
eventually are we heading towards an understand that any platform which facilitates interaction, community (and identity) development, and experience creation is a social medium?
just yanked this bit of rad from jeremiah owyang:
my favorite part is where she goes, “you don’t know anything about me.”
and he says, “i know everything about you sweetheart!” and starts spouting off all sorts of demographic statistics. perfect case in point about the difference between knowing your demo (defined by the market), and understanding your user’s identity (defined by the user).
and speaking of identity…. i found it particularly curious that the creator of this video is european. if you know anything about the european stereotype of the “american male” (insensitive, egomaniacal, daft) it’s kind of hilarious to consider the role of the “advertiser” being based on that stereotype.
ok, i admit it, i totally love reebok’s new ($30 million, multi-platform) 
campaign announcing their community site www.goruneasy.com. i’ve been seeing their billboards all over town, and even just watched an ad on their site, and it’s so fucking clever and cute and makes me laugh every time i see some new bit of their creative.
here’s one of my favorite images from the campaign:
best jab at nike ever!
from: thirdwayblog.com:
The Run Easy campaign is a breath of fresh air from Reebok in a category obsessed with an obsessive attitude towards athletics. Nike has been successful positioning its brand to serious athletes, thus attracting millions of other consumers who admire but do not imitate this level of dedication. Too often both Reebok and Adidas ad campaigns have looked like pale clones of the original Nike strategy. This new multimedia campaign from Reebok aims to position Reebok squarely with casual athletes. It is a risky but worthwhile endeavor.
way to draw the running-shoe consumer identity line, and fucking stake your claim, reebok!
interestingly, here’s nike’s community site: www.joga.com. a site for hardcore soccer enthusiasts, and with a definitvely non-english url… what is it? i’m guessing like…. portuguese for “game”? (it’s juego in spanish… anyone speak portuguese?)
could the community sites of two companies that sell essentially the SAME freakin’ thing be ANY more different?
good to keep that in mind, that the community strategy approach can be just as varied as any other aspect of a campaign, and depend just as much on the kind of user you’re aiming to engage.
yet another question to throw into to the cauldron where that “how to measure the effectiveness of social engagement” mess is stewing: well, did your strategy engage the right audience in the right way?
one shoe doesn’t fit all, remember?
Grateful Dead Fan Site Reborn as Social Network
At their peak, rock legends “The Grateful Dead” attracted an estimated community of 40,000 self-proclaimed “Deadheads
” trailing them as they toured the country. The movement had originally spawned from fans meeting at concerts and networking on mailing lists. Mailing lists turned digital with the launch of Dead.net
prophecy #987:
i give thedolab.com 2 years from social network relaunch to beat 4ok.
..our motto ain’t go small.
i am actually blogging about blogging. i really didn’t want to be, but it’s come to this. at the moment i find myself with three different urls–which is 2 more than i want–and, of course, none function properly.
first there’s this one. which won’t allow anyone who doesn’t have a blogger account to comment. which is laaame. this was the problem that started it all.
then came #2, which is way cooler looking (at least on the top. thanks, kris). i kind of have a bone to pick with how uselessly narrow the actual BLOG part of the blog is. especially once you start scrolling down, it’s kind of got the feeling of long trail of snot running down a large white napkin.
which is, you know….. the kind of imagery you want to be conjuring with your self expression, obviously.
but i was told this is something that can be fixed in post. post being an upgrade. i was also told that post would be where i could get it to play all that video content that worked just fine with the po’ html blog #1, but which apparently css won’t deign to chill with unless it gets all blinged out with plugins or some shit.
so i figured, if i’m gonna have to get an upgrade, i may as well just get some kind of respectable domain to go along with it. this is how i ended up with social-creature.com, and that’s right about the point at which all hell broke loose, as is evidenced by the catastrophe happening at #3.
(that, there, may yet be grosser than snot AND blogging about blogging put together).
oh, and i might mention that in the meantime, #1 decided to just up and have some kind of anxiety attack where it can’t figure out whether it’s supposed to put the current post first, or instead maybe one from sometime before may 24, so it does this psychotic thing where tries to sort of smash them together in this nonsensically horrifying coding breakdown that i swear, i SWEAR, i didn’t do! (and can’t figure out how to fix :(. )
now…. this would not even be worth mentioning normally, because i’ve got a couple friend who, under normal circumstances, would take care of it for me. however, when i say a couple, i actually DO mean only two, and one of them is off being a monk at a 1o-day silent meditation retreat (aka LIB detox) which started a few hours ago, and the other one is off being a rockstar on a mini-tour with his band somewhere between l.a., vegas, and austin for the next two weeks.
in the meantime, i have no idea WHERE i’m supposed to write anything anymore. i know i’ve been with #1 for a few months now, and things were going ok, but it was kind of boring. then i met #2 which does all that kind of stuff for me that #1 wouldn’t. ultimately tho, you can’t tell your friends that you’re with a skanky hoodrat url like that. #3’s the one that’s gonna be in it for the long haul, but it’s all, like, got SERIOUS issues to work out before i can commit.
all i know is i can’t handle two more weeks like this. i’m just not cut out for having blogs on the side. i need some stability. i need some answers. i need some tech geeks to tell the internet to stop picking on me.
i’m allowed to have a blog even if i do start to zone out when people start speaking in consonants. why do i gotta know shit about css or html to be able to write, goddamnit?? they don’t make programmers know how to wield alliteration or analogies or allusions to do what they do.
side note:
our LIB street team leader in portland just turned our poster into a blunt!
how cute is that!?
ok, seriously. i need help getting my wordpress blog over onto the social-creature domain–i can trade you either in prophecies or literary devices–your pick. anyone know how to get this done?
