These are my links for April 30th through May 3rd:
- Wooshii – the new place to buy, sell and view rich media and online video – Another 'marketplace' service where you can specifically buy video, animation, music and rich media services for web. Looks like there's a good spread of international producers active here – couild be useful if you're producing rich media product on a tight timescale and budget.
- Emotional Interface Design: The Gateway to Passionate Users – Another super articles from the web development gurus over at Carsonified (a rare example of an international, outward facing UK digital co) looking at how personal branding and positive emotional connection can be made through good design, including examples like 'Feathers', the tweeting bird that changes colour as your reach your character limit. Relating online user needs to Maslow's Hierachy of Needs, we need to be reaching not just functional but pleasurable services for users.
- Audio Hosting Sites for Web Series Producers – Audio doesn't have that one stop 'destination' feel like video has with the mighty YouTube, which makes it hard for audio producers to know where is the best place for them to host (or podcast) their audio. Storygas gives their view on the benefits of several audio hosting services with demo videos (the irony!). It seems far more nowadays that audio producer have to create their own audiences, although there is still demand on YouTube for audio only streaming (or 'radio with pictures' as I heard one radio producer call it).
- What can TV’s Embarrassing Bodies teach the healthcare industry? – Here's an article I wrote for the Healthcare Engagement Strategy e-journal about the Channel 4 TV show and website Embarrassing Bodies, which was extremely successful at engaging TV and web audiences in important medical issues. I interviewed Channel 4 Commissioner Adam Gee and Maverick Television's Jonnie Turpie.
These are my links for April 16th through April 18th:
- (Infographic) What Musicians Get Paid In The Digital Age – This is seriously depressing stuff. It shows how much a musicians needs to sell if relying on online physical sales and digital distribution alone to earn their keep just to the minimum wage. The greatest gap is the multi-million streams needed on services such as Spotify to achieve less than a few pence in revenue – clearly not achievable if you do not have some trigger from 'mass media' to generate it. Further evidence that musicians need to develop a mix economy of live, work-for-hire, licensing to survive.
- Near2Home – The local business finder – Here's a new service that may be interesting to hyper local businesses: it's a link you put on your site so if businesses are far away from the areas you serve, you can route them to the Near2Home network. For every three you send, you get two referrals back. May work for more generic types of businesses.
- Healthcare Engagement Strategy Awards 2010 – Case studies and presentation from yesterday's healthcare engagement strategy awards organised by Creation Healthcare – great examples of how the healthcare and pharmaceutical sector are finding imaginative new ways to communicate important public health and marketing messages to patients and customers.
These are my links for January 25th through January 26th:
- Revealed: The most effective Healthcare Engagement Strategies in the world – Creation Interactive are a digital engagement specialist agency, who have a lot of clients in healthcare. I've started working with them recently in the emerging field of digital engagement (which I predict will become big in 2010). Their recent healthcare engagement awards list some interesting approaches global businesses are using in investing in community content and services using social media settings which benefit both users and increases business reach. The win-win of digital engagement.
- Finding The Long Tail In Music – More interesting US led discussion on the long tail – does it work in music? Can musicians succeed without the music machine's marketing muscle? My own research showed a lot of pros and cons, and was inconclusive. Mike Masnick from Techdirt is firmly a new media evangelist, but the overall discussion here is varied.
- HarperCollins Publishers Expands Its Digital Strategy With the Launch of Inkpop, an Interactive Writing Platform for Teens – A somewhat interesting diversion: teen publisher divison of major publisher launches a platform for teen writers (and those writing for teens) to publish short stories, poems etc. and uses community and user rating to seek out fresh talent. The platform itself for me was somewhat drab but functional, but it shows a new openness in publishing to putting editorial out to graze, and letting the market talent scout (thus saving time and money).
- Twitter User Growth Slowed From Peak of 13% in March 2009 to 3.5% in October – Hubspot's latest report on Twitter shows a slow down in new user registration, but an increase in user activity. It's actually really difficult to track Twitter as most people use third party apps to access their Twitter feed (I use TweetDeck). This article shows the average tweets, followers and following which is the baseline means of measuring the success of Twiter. Looking at the graph, it looks like the media spark gave Twitter an almighty boast in mid 2009, before a slow down to earlier, lower levels.
- Why Diversity Can Backfire On Company Boards – Article on how to successful manage the (usually unsuccessful) fusion of diversity in board membership. This applies equally to a corporate, independent small company, or an arts or non-profit board.
These are my links for January 11th through January 12th:
- Facebook Founder on Privacy: Public Is the New "Social Norm" – Intriguinging developments in social media network privacy land: as public edges towards being the new 'default setting' in how we use personal data online, users will need to make proactive choices to avoid sharing data (and some sharing, like friends lists, is unavoidably public). This is seismic shift not just in social networks, but how the internet is forcing a more translucent society. Lots of good, heaps of bad things here. Will blog about this soon.
- Why Most CEOs Are Bad at Strategy – A searing assault on why strategy is so damn bad (I'm humbled): strategy needs to combine a 'where to play' (markets) with 'how to win' (USP) approach – and rarely the two work together due to global market forces. "The majority of people who seek to become corporate strategists or strategy consultants do so because they are much more comfortable with analysis than what they perceive as guesswork."
Touche – however I like to think that people who are from a creative background (and not the typical corporate strategist) like myself can help make the links to combine strategic analysis with good creative ideas.
- How to Build a Digital Strategy with Edelman Digital Vice President for Interactive Solutions, Gary Goldhammer – An interesting podcast on growing a digital strategy (mainly big brand, US focus) with some comments on selective disclosure in public companies financial services and pharmaceutical industries and duty for response.
