I came across the site of one of the people who has ventured upon our blog here and decided to check it out. The site is called ThoughtOffice<—Dispel any notions you might have of the “thought police”. This site is essentially an incubator for your ideas.
Here’s a blurb…
In their quest to reduce the amount of what little reading people do, News Corp. and NBC launched “YouTube Killer,” Hulu, in beta Monday. While the site has been in development for months and suffered much criticism, it is finally finding some friends in the interactive world.”The technology they’ve put together on this short notice is not only adequate, it’s also better than most of what else is out there,” said James McQuivey, a TV and media technology analyst for Forrester Research. “I think they have moved a couple of steps forward compared to their competitors in the industry.”
According to the Associated Press, users can watch content from News Corp., NBC, and more limited content from Sony and MGM for free on Hulu.com or partner sites such as AOL, Myspace and Yahoo!
“When you aggregate great content together, it makes things easier for the user,” said Hulu chief executive Jason Kilar.
Great news for librarians, Barnes & Noble and Borders, don’t you think? Soon we will be a content starved nation craving videos of anything! The final version should be out in a few months
I just came across a pretty cool tool to help shuffle through all the clutter that will be heading our way between now and the election of our next president. Neighborhood America has provided this free tool to any and all, and you can find it here Connect2elect
Taking branding to the next level and the fact that her name was searched on a cumulative 14 million times last month. Britney has released her new album art. A quick note. a) albums don’t exist anymore and b) CD jewel case art is almost non-existent as well. So having said that, we can always steer towards a crotch shot if need be. So without further ado, here are the titles of her new songs. Beware the spelling and the emotional depth of these tracks amazing. In parentheses are the authors comments.
1. Gimme More (Of what? )
2. Piece of Me ( which part, we’ve seen most of it already)
3. Radar ( Something she could use for her camera friendly friends)
4. Break The Ice ( Something needed when she sees her kids)
5. Heaven On Earth ( The current state of her affairs?)
6. Get Naked (Enough already)
7. Freakshow ( Any time she leaves the house)
8. Toy Soldier ( Her perception of the war)
9. Hot As Ice (Seemed like a good idea for a song title)
10.Ooh Ooh Baby ( Seemed like a really cool title for a song, dontcha think?)
11.Perfect Lover (KFed?)
12. Why Should I Be Sad (Let us count the ways)
If you haven’t already heard, Facebook has a valuation of $15 billion. That’s fifteen billllion dollars, I’m quoting Doctor Evil there. Why is it valued so high? Every day Facebook adds another 100,000 users. It has 35 million active users and underneath that it has over 6 million active user groups.
According to the WSJ, Facebook is going to make close to $30 million this year. More incredibly Facebook costs nothing to use. So this begs the question, how is it going to make 30 mill and why is it valued so high? The answers are traffic, data, and advertising. Similar to what Google has done with AdWords, Facebook has the built in luxury of 35 million users with deep data points to pitch. The other reason why the valuation is so high is that what makes Facebook so attractive is that the data is essentially user data.
Google Adwords relies on keyword contextual data but Facebook can get down and dirty. If it wants to go after sophomore high school students in Trenton, New Jersey, it can. Or lets say, college graduates from UCLA from 2004, that hail from Long Beach, it can do that too. It has the ability right now to target by age, gender and location. Eventually it will be able to automatically target its users based on the personal information that users have supplied.
What we don’t know is what the finished product of Facebook will eventually be. Mark Zuckerberg has stated that it could be 30 years before we finally see what the last iteration of Facebook could be, and that it could be very different from what it is now. It’s amazing that when he started Facebook, he was 19. His initial intent was to create a site that showed you who was in certain classes at Harvard, so that you could make a more than educated decision of what classes you wanted to take and with whom. Amazing how something that started out as a mere tool or app for a college campus has turned into a social networking phenomenon. It reminds me of Napster.
I’m sure what a lot of people are thinking, or rather a lot of marketing people are thinking, is how they can get in the slipstream of Facebook. What this means is, how can a marketer create a business that is a direct result of the creation of Facebook? Google has spawned the creation of 1000’s of companies that are around because of Google. I’m sure we can expect the same thing with Facebook.
What do you think will happen with Facebook? Are you a part of Facebook? Do you use it regularly? What will the landscape of social networks look like in 2 years?
I came across a subject and a website recently that is near and dear to my heart. It is called the Childrens Educational Network. I did not know about it prior to this post though. But the topic has been on mind a lot lately. The reason it is important to me is that I think it is imperative to us, as adults, that we shield children from everything that is bad and wrong with the internet. Given the amount of facetime that pedophiles and internet porn is given, less is given to what is being done about it. Which leads me to this site. I am going to quote liberally here, but I don’t think they will mind…
The Children’s Educational Network (CEN) is a software company developing and marketing a fully integrated suite of Internet software products that empowers parents to provide children a safe platform and meaningful tools to accelerate their children’s education, entertainment, and exploration of the “Information Superhighway” free from hate, violence, pornography and online predators.
Club TUKI is the newest web site community for kids designed to teach kids how to be safe and responsible internet citizens.
The TUKI Browser (The Ultimate Kids’ Internet) combines the most fun and safest content on the web for kids, deemed child appropriate based on our content policy. It features interchangeable themes, Internet filter, parental safety controls, safe email, chore reminders, encouraging words and talking animated characters.
You can download the FREE TUKI Browser from the TUKI.com website. Once installed, you can easily swap themes that appeal to different ages, genders and are fun and educational.
What makes this so important is that the alternatives are using a browser that allows children to go almost anywhere. Even with filters on you can still go through doorways and websites and search engines that will provide content to children that is just unacceptable and leads to questions that parents should not have to answer. What ultimately happens is parents are stuck explaining the “why” and the “how come people do things like this” and the “who are” etc etc..Thus, I think it’s unfair that children have to be exposed to these things at such an early period of their lives when instead it should be about being a child, first and foremost. If you agree, help me out and forward this post or at least Digg it.
Direct Marketing Observations 