1. Travel + social discovery – great blog post by one of my buddies @pkattera. I was going to write about Adioso and Hipmunk as well, and his insights into how social serendipity and your social networks can influence your travel destinations are quite interesting. Yes, you should blog more!

2. Dear Mom and Dad – The first one is by Zach Klein, who founded Vimeo (think Youtube for HD videos). His current project is Boxee. If you know me, you’ve probably heard me talking about Boxee – great program. The blog post above is about social discovery, well Boxee helps you discover online video content and organises your media. Dear Mum This Is Why I moved To New York is another blog post by an employee of Boxee, Nick Crocker. He’s actually an Aussie who moved to New York. He co-founded We Are Hunted (another website I like).

3. Promote concerts using Posse – Came across this site a few months ago. It allows fans of music artists to promote concerts to their friends. You can generate money by selling tickets. In a way its like crowdsourcing promoters for concerts and generating a groundswell. The selection was initially quite limited, but it looks like its expanding. Win win for the artists and fans. The tech startup firm Pollenizer worked on this and Mitch Malone who I’ve met at Cebit is one of the devs at Posse.

4. News Corp to create iPad only newspaper. Magazines and newspapers have translated really well to this form factor. Question is whether an iPad only newspaper will get enough traction. As most of the iPad newspapers generally have an offline offering, but is also available through other online channels, predominatly a website.

5. I thought this was pretty funny – MySpace forced to offer FaceBook Connect. MySpace capitulated to FaceBook, but did they really have a choice? They had to allow it –  its the biggest social network. As has been written by many people smarter than me like Mark Mulligan, MySpace needs to reposition itself as a music social network not as a cool place for early adopters which aggregates your social information. Embrace it MySpace or die like Friendster. Oh, and the new logo sucks as well.

I’m out like Friendster,

Matt Ho

Video editing is def something I want to learn and get better at in the future. Enjoy!

HALFSLEEVE 3ON3 BASKETBALL CLASSIC from HALFSLEEVE.NET on Vimeo.

I’m out like NBA Jam at the arcade,

Matt Ho

I must admit I have a pair of Cloverdale Park 25th Anniversary Edition Air Force 1′s. They are actually a bit tight, making them a bit uncomfortable and they are kinda heavy. But that’s more a sizing issue as they only had limited sizes when I bought them at the Nike Factory.

There’s a lot of documentaries about Nike Air Force 1. This particular documentary is part of WBF (World Basketball Festival) in New York which is sponsored by Nike. This looks like an awesome 4 days of celebrating the best sport in the world (MMA/UFC is second).

Nike also created this series of online docos called 1Love, which highlights the 5 boroughs in New York (Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, Bronx, Manhattan). They also have a video for Harlem, but I don’t think Harlem is a borough, and there’s no video for Manhattan. But enjoy nonetheless!

If you want to check more video’s look here:

Air Force 1, Part 1
Air Force 1, part 2
Top 100 Air Force 1 (Prolly my most favourite video, especially part 2)

I have been meaning to write about this topic for a long time. The linchpin has been discovering this presentation via Mark Cuban’s blog, who knows a thing or two about online video himself given he is the chairman of HDNet and sold Broadcast.com for a bajillion dollars.

This slide deck is from Netflix. Its very honest and insightful into where this company is going, the opportunities, the threats and the future of entertainment. Check it.

My own personal thoughts

What’s really pissing me off at the moment is my data limit on my ISP and the random wi-fi disconnections. It happens when someone in my family yells out:

“hey we’re reaching our limit! We’re X% over, stop watching online video!”

Clearly, we do not have the infrastructure or the networks yet that can cope with high usage, fast internet speed. Nor am I on the correct data plan. YET. I do hear there’s this thing called the NBN being built and WiMax.

I love watching movies and tv shows. I love watching stuff on Youtube, tvshack, from blogs, friend’s videos on facebook, Hulu, etc… I smashed “How To Make It In America” in like 3 days (8 episodes makes it easy). I’ve just watched Book of Eli, A-Team, Hot Tub Time Machine, Zombieland, Invention of Lying, one episodes of Gruen Transfer in the past 2-3 weeks.

On average I watch several videos a week. I’ll also throw in some UFC action, NBA (in season), worldcup, Masterchef, Underbelly, etc… The majority of these I watch from my computer or from my tv.

I’m telling you – the future is going to be streaming. If I miss an episode of Masterchef or Underbelly on tv, I watch it streamed online. It gets posted up by the Network the following day. It’s just so much easier watching it online when I want to.

The alternatives in Australia suck

I can’t say that I’ve watched many movies online. Because the better services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon are not available in Australia. There are ways around it, but I can’t be bothered. Its too much effort. The ones that I can access for streaming do not have great quality. Plus my wifi connection will drop out at some point and I do not want to stream it again from the start or lose my point in the video.

Theoretically speaking, downloading means that I can’t watch it immediately. I would have to wait til when the download finishes (which could be the next day). But sometimes, you have a hankering for a certain movie or tv show. You don’t want to wait. So you have to settle for an alternative. We, well me specifically, are dreaming of a world where this stuff is on demand and affordable.

Currently, Netflix has a leading position in the consumer market in the US. It charges $8.95/month for unlimited streaming of its catalogue. It is focusing on the long tail – not the new releases. This is partly because the studios do not want Netflix to be showing new releases before it is in DVD rental / sales, as it could cannibalise those sales and they probably have existing arrangements that Blockbusters, etc… would have first release.

In Australia, we also have Telstra which has a online streaming consumption model and also iTunes. But these are either too expensive, alacarte and not subscription based.

Parrallels with music

With my music, I do not have a collection on my laptop anymore. I have some music on my phone. Now, I just stream music online. One of my favourite sites is 22tracks, where the music is available to be streamed and has been curated into the newest tracks and by genre.

I occasionally do download music such as free mixtapes or free albums which the artists or music blogs give out. I haven’t purchased music in a long time. The last time was in the States when I bought some mixtapes from Amoeba in Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles 3 years ago. Before that, it would be several years again when I was working down the road from Dirt Cheap CD’s. I’d wander into there and pick up a few hip hop CD’s during lunch.

For me, music has become a commodity. I still love my music. But I no longer want to purchase it or have the need to. I don’t even really download it anymore. I can stream it on demand. I can usually hop onto Youtube and find the songs that I like. There are lots of paid music services out there like Spotify, LaLa, etc… but I think its EXTREMELY difficult to get people to pay for music now, even if its unlimited streaming and storage in the cloud. As consumers are simply used to free. And many of them are not prepared to pay. The horse has bolted.

Back To The Future

I feel that movies and tv shows are also going down this path. We have so many movies available via P2p networks. People have more movies than they can watch. Because they have so many movies, it also devalues them, turning them into commodities.

The future is streaming movies. A mix of tv, cable and online streaming. The question is whether people are prepared to pay for this on demand access. Or will we simply shove better ads into them to entice purchase of goods/services.

I’m out like Australia in the world cup,

Matt Ho.

Now, I’ve just seen the demo video and I really dig it!

A service that lets you find “Any moment from any film ever made”. That’s a very powerful tagline. Kinda like the Bill Gates vision “A computer on every desk”.

Watch the entire video for the demo and the questioning.

FYI the guys on the judging panel are:

- Scobelizer (Robert Scoble) is a huge tech blogger, former Microsoft guy

- Sean Parker, founding president of Facebook and co-founded Napster, Plaxo and Causes. And now joined Yammer!

- Reid Hoffman, once an aspiring Academic and Rhodes scholar (i think), founder of Linkedin and mentor to many of the top web 2.0 CEO’s

- Dick Costas, founder of Feedburner, Head of Google Social Products, and now COO of Twitter

- Mike ?, he used to be chief engineer at Mozilla Firefox, now Chief Engineer @ Facebook.

As you can see, its the who’s who of Silicon Valley.

Essentially they:
1) Aggregate short form video (less than 4 mins)
2) Allow people to metatag and categorise
3) have monetization models so you can buy the video or download or rent it

There are valid questions around legals, getting buy-in from the studios re content and also discovery.

Discovery is a good point, because that’s how I find a lot of interesting content on youtube from browsing other videos. I also think its going to be an incredible challenge getting the studios on board. But they did it with Hulu via a JV.

Ultimately, the guys behind it are right suggesting that it reinvigorates our love of movies. By me watching that scene from the Big Lebowski, I wanted to go to the video shop and rent it immediately. It might encourage others to go find the torrent, but they were never going to buy it anyway.

My other question is that can’t Youtube do all of the above? Youtube’s biggest problem at the moment, is that the most watched videos and biggest traffic driver is amateur videos. Not professional. If the anyclip guys have figured out a way to automatically tag, categorise and scale it, that could be a winner.

I’m out like long form video,

Matt aka Inspiredworlds

Anyhow, this is pure co-incidence – but at work we did a creative exercise where we created online display ads for a fictious energy drink, Fuqu. Then I came across the new Redbull website. I really like what Redbull is doing with its video content. They are positioning it with an adventure / extreme sport image. Redbull is associated with skateboarding, BMX riding, flying planes etc… It’s very cool.

I don’t really drink redbull these days (as they are bad for your health!). However, their videos are very slick and their marketing strategy is very good, particularly with social media. Check out their facebook page and integration with twitter. Redbull sponsored athletes provide Twitter updates and the feed is aggregated onto the facebook page.

I’m out like major wipeouts,

Matt

A few weeks ago I went to TEDxSydney. One of the videos we watched was the one above from Seth Godin. It’s quite good. Its about how change no longer comes from mass marketing, cheaper labour & faster machines, but rather tribes. Tribes can be used to start movement and connect people.

Very inspiring video. There’s more here. I’ve been watching them all night. There’s lot of really cool videos on music, design, technology. Other diverse topics include health, education, etc.. It’s more about innovative ideas. 

I’m out like tribes,

Matt

At 6.30pm when I arrived, the place was pumping. They had two levels booked out, and the bottom level where the main arena was, was absolutely packed. Standing room only! (Well bars are made for standing room).

Man with the $349 jacket

Adam Ferrier went first and spoke about their infamous “girl in the jacket campaign”. This campaign was created for Witchery to launch their mens range and they had a budget of zero (emphasis) and wanted to generate a lot of buzz. So they created a fictious story where girl sees boy in cafe she fancies, boy leaves jacket, girl wants to find boy. Girl then goes to the enormous length of posting a video on youtube. The story then got amplified as the main stream press picked it up and they showed that Sunrise breakfast program, newspapers, etc… Their intention was to get the brand noticed and get people talking about Witchery Man. Check it:

As of now, 212,100 views in youtube. Pretty impressive for a budget of zero. I’ve watched the video for the first time, and although I have the benefit of hindsight, I would have been highly skeptical of it at the time. The way that she goes to great lengths to describe the jacket and how the “perfect guy” would be wearing it. In fact its not a bad jacket. Subliminal advertising must work on the weak.

Then the press started asking who is this girl, is this a marketing campaign, who is behind this? They eventually got outed. Naked & Witchery came clean and posted a video response saying yes it was us. I’ve only seen the videos now (after the talk) so here it in all its glory:

Man, I cringed when I saw this. It could have been executed a lot better and definently with more class – the way that Heidi turns it into a ad for the jacket. In fact, the only time I cringed even more in the last 24 hrs was when I heard Adam Ferrier’s response as to whether Naked was arrogant.

Its all about generating conversations

It seemed that for most of the night Adam was defending Naked’s actions. He even had stats to back himself up. But at the end of the day, I think he was convincing and I agree with Tim Burrowes comments on Mumbrella that he did help to sway the crowd onto his side.

Honestly, I don’t have a problem with this tactic of creating a false story or building a mysterious story to get customers engaged and talking about a brand. Brands do it all the time. It’s what we do as marketers. Can Jordan really fly? (Wait, there is doubt?), are pure blondes really made from pristine rivers? Brands make up stories and fantasies all the time to get customers talking and excited. All they want to do is generate buzz. If that’s the objective, then Naked slam dunked it.

Was the public misled about Girl in the Jacket. I have no doubt they were. Was their a line that was crossed? Yes – only when they made that cringeworthy followup video. If Naked did not do the followup video like that, I think it would have been a great campaign. Consumers are smarter than what we give them credit for.

Was it groundbreaking? Of course not. In fact some guy in the audience asked “Did the Witchery Man campaign helped increase the popularty of social media?” – dude are you kidding me? They posted a youtube video about a fake story and it got picked up by the press. It’s not as if they created Twitter. When the story was being told, I immediately thought of the real life campaign of NY girl of my dreams, the cybersearch by one NYC man for an aussie girl he met on the subway. I came across this when I was travelling in the States, and I had actually thought about it when I started reading about this campaign and the connection became even more clearer last night. 

I agree with Adam’s insight that social media is a communication channel. It could be more than that, but at the end of the day that’s primarily what it is. Yes it is democratizing media (see Ashton Kutcher). However, it does make it a lot harder for brands and marketers to do something similar now because people think they got screwed over.

It nots really Stephen Conroy?

I love Leslie’s work as the fake stephen conroy. Dude is funny but a walking PR disaster. He didn’t have a lot to say on the night and Tim was trying to involve him as much as possible by asking him questions as well. But he definently had a couple of good insights – that not everything created by companies on social media is great. Everyone does go nuts when they see a brand do something on social media. 

If you want to see more of the Witchery Man campaign check the video from the night.

I’m out like the man in the jacket, 

Matt

Enjoy!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMOnqYZjZDE]

I’m out like running in Tokyo, 

Matt Ho

Yuri Narciss, Head of Technology Industry Sales talks Innovation.

The event was held on Thursday 12 March 2008.

This is Part 1 of 4.

Slides will be coming soon.

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