Month: July 2009

Social Media Marketing – Moth Style

themoth

Chris Brogan recently had an interesting post on what it takes to tell people a good story (which is basically the essence of social media/inbound marketing). While Chris’ points are very relevant, I think the best way to learn how to tell a story is to go to a Moth event.

The Moth is a storytelling showcase with regular events in New York and LA and special events around the country. It’s open to everyone and any attendee can sign up for the chance to tell a story at that night’s event.

Of course, to do so they need to abide by a few simple rules: Read more

 

Entertaining Interactions

watchmen interactive header Entertaining Interactions

I’m a comic book fan. Have been since I was a kid. I like to think that it guided me to where I am today. Looking at things in a creative and innovative way can definitely be attributed in some small way to my early love of fantasy, comics & video games. What’s all this rambling have to do with the interactions part of this blog post’s title? Well for starters the I a high level of interaction in video games (duh!). Secondly people don’t always give comics the credit – artistic or otherwise that they deserve. Comic books require the user to let go. They demand that you continue reading them. Some even have created fake ads to further drag you into their world.

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What Should Al Gore Invent Next?

Al Gore

That’s a facetious question based on the old misinterpretation that Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet (while running for President in 2000). The real question is what should the government invent next?

It’s a question that came to mind recently when some colleagues and myself were discussing the City of New York’s call for ideas for applications development. As you might expect (especially if you live in NYC) the majority of votes were for an iPhone application that would tell people when subways weren’t running on time. But it does lead to bigger questions about how government can actively encourage and fund innovation.

We often forget that IT WAS the US government who developed the basic structure for what would evolve in to today’s Internet. And as I recently posted, NASA has a long history of creating products that would later have significant consumer applications. And the current administration certainly understands the power of the Internet and Social Media.

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Just the Facts – A View of the Road Ahead

While we often worry about data manipulation and what metrics really mean, there are some simple numbers that can’t be argued with. While this vdeo has been around for a few months, it’s still a sobering wakeup call for anyone working in business in the US.

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Apps We Love -TripIt

air travel image

It’s been a couple of big travel weeks for the folks here at Zemoga. Members of our team are scattered in a number of diverse locations around the world, including Montauk, San Diego, Chicago and Barcelona. That’s in addition to the regular team locations of Wilton, New York and Bogota.

How do we keep track of everyone’s movements and itineraries? More and more, we’re relying

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User Experience Beyond the Desktop

In the rush to Web 2.0 and even Web 3.0, we sometimes forget that we can improve the little things that directly impact customer  experience.

Seth Godin has railed in the past on this subject. His pet peeve? Pull down menus for filling in State information on standard form software. Seth is right. It takes far less time for me to enter in a two stroke state name abbreviation than navigating a pull down menu with fifty items on it. For that matter, zip code finders have been online since the early 1990’s. So why can’t there be a simple plug in or piece of code that allows a form to populate my form by entering in my zip code?

As users experience digital content across a number of different platforms (desktop, laptop, mobile, video game console, and more every day) these legacy issues become more prominent. Here’s another example for you. The NEW YORK TIMES is justifiably proud of their digital design initiatives (specifically designing sexy interfaces for their mobile and desktop applications). But the TIMES (and most other print publications) haven’t thought about the user experience beyond the initial platform. Here’s what a TIMES article looks like in the desktop interface:

article-screenshot

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Douglas Rushkoff on Local Communities

If you’re at all involved in social media, Doug Rushkoff is one of the guys you should be reading/listening to. We may not always agree with his political agenda but he always has something interesting (and important to say). Check out the Vimeo site for more videos from Rushkoff. Personally, I can’t wait to read Life, Inc. Expect a review on this site in the near future.

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Shoot For The Moon-the Payoff for Innovation

moon landing Shoot For The Moon the Payoff for Innovation

We often talk in this space about innovation and advances in technology in this space. So it’s only right that we pause today to honor what remains an unparalleled achievement in the annals of human technological progress, the first moon landing. 4o years ago today, Neal Armstrong took his “One small step” and forever changed our world. The moon landing remains

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The New Creative Paradigm – Jon Dale and Warren Ellis

jon-dale

I had an interesting lunch a few weeks back with Jon Dale. I had met Jon at the MediaBistro Circus event and we both wanted to follow up on our intial discussions about social media and ciommunity building. Jon was in new York for the summer as part of Seth Godin‘s MBA program. But his main trade was teaching authors how to fully exploit social media and build communities online. Jon’s belief (and one he is putting in to practice everyday) is that leading a community (or tribe if you use Godin’s term for it) not only has social and personal benefits but leverages your own business. By building a following in the digital space, Jon’s authors are able to better promote and market their product, leading to increased sales and higher royalty rates from publishers. The ultimate next step, of course, is for these authors to cut out publishers completely and begin directly marketing to their product to their communities (something Keith Ferrazzi was talking about at the conference as well). Read more