links for 2006-12-27
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Jeez... I hope we never wind up here.
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'Sup, decagon bicycle wheel.
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Know anyone?
Job: Social Media Instigator - Online Marketing for Virtual Character Company
Please pass this on to anyone you think would be appropriate. It is a fulltime position for someone with great internships up to a couple of years of experience. To me, this is just about the coolest marketing job I could imagine someone having out of school and it is a real opportunity to make a name for yourself and be a part of something big.
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You lead a full and exciting life, both online and off. You know nightlife, art, sports, politics and lots of different kinds of people. They’re all on your IM buddy list, MySpace, Facebook, LiveJournal, blog, Xanga, Friendster, MyYearbook, etc., etc.
You know these sites like the back of your hand because you actually use them. Your profile has the coolest bling and you’re the first to find the latest stuff. How many online friends do you have? 50? 100? 500? 1000?
Ideally, you also have experience, either at an internship or fulltime, with more traditional media and PR as well as experience in an internet or web-based role, including online organizing, website development, implementing online campaigns. Blogging experience, effective writing skills, marketing, journalism, RSS and HTML knowledge are a huge plus.
You work with a product manager and help generate buzz for Oddcast’s new talking avatar product. (Example: www.myspace.com/ceonyc not final product ) This is not sales. It is a free product where you will lead by example. You will need to find creative ways of using the product and stay connected and tuned in to key influencers.
Responsibilities:
1) Live out loud online and be yourself. Build real and authentic relationships with key influencers in social networks.
2) Pitch use of online talking characters to target audience. Get initial users signed up.
3) Create a platform specific communications and feedback program that informs users of best practices, new features, use cases, and collect bugs, suggestions, etc.
4) Create fun product pages on various social networks and keep up-to-date. Post relevant information in forums and message boards.
5) Monitor buzz, news, growth, and create appropriate reporting for tracking.
6) Help plan and execute creative guerilla marketing campaigns. Pay attention to entertainment news to help generate topical pop culture references and stunts to generate buzz.
SUBMISSIONS: Please submit your resume and links to wherever you live online, your Facebook, AIM, MySpace, blog, etc. to jobs@oddcast.com.
(Don’t clean up your profile for us. We want you “as is”… we swear!)
No phone calls will be accepted. Due to the volume of applicants anticipated, we will not be able to respond individually to each applicant and will only be contacting those applicants that we feel best meet our criteria.
ODDCAST IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER. WE CAREFULLY CONSIDER APPLICANTS FOR ALL POSITIONS WITHOUT REGARD TO RACE, COLOR, RELIGION, CREED, GENDER, NATIONAL ORIGIN, AGE, DISABILITY, MARITAL OR VETERAN STATUS, SEXUAL ORIENTATION, OR ANY OTHER LEGALLY PROTECTED STATUS.
If you don't live socially online, you're not going to get social media
Was having a conversation with a friend today who feels a lot of pressure from her PR firm to learn about all of these new social media tools so that her clients can take advantage of them.
She's also given 10-20% of her emerging media time for education, and her emerging media time is only 50% of what she's supposed to be working on for her clients...the rest is on traditional media.
Meanwhile, the folks that make social media attractive... the movers and shakers of MySpace and the blogosphere... they're doing it fulltime. They're tagging and reblogging and connecting and pasting cool widgets into their pages everyday.
Anyone who doesn't live in that world everyday, not as work research but recreationally, because they love connecting and discovering new things online, is simply going to fall behind.
It's actually pretty funny, that a lot of these young people who are social network junkies don't realize that the skills they possess are highly sought after by marketing and PR firms. They have an innate understanding of what flies in this world.
Whether you work for a VC firm, PR firm, in marketing, for a brand, a media company, etc. you need to find a way to integrate these tools into your real life, otherwise it's always going to be something "extra" that you never get to or don't fully understand because you're just a casual user. There's no blog you can read to get all the answers. No conference that will help you get it. What also won't work is hiring a bunch of interns that you think are "cool", because no single intern is going to be representative of anyone else. Unless you live in this social media world, be prepared to watch it pass you by like an outsider.
Christmas of Straw and Camels
Yesterday, Christmas broke for me.
I stood in the Staten Island Mall ready to check of my list of phones and sweatshirts and DVDs and scarves and I watched the mobs. People shoving, kids demanding, crying, couples arguing. I had just come from lunch at my grandmother's... a sparsely attended lunch that was supposed to be about mending our family. I sat with her afterwards, while she cried about what had happened to our family... decade plus long grudges, death, distance... We're so much smaller than we used to be that the holidays are a downer for both of us.
And then I looked back at my list. Phone, DVDs, scarf, sweatshirts, etc... and stared into the masses who cared a lot more about Wii than "We".
I walked out. Actually, I nearly ran out. I couldn't get away from it fast enough. I peeled out of the parking lot, went home, and just started calling friends to vent.
Somebody moved around their own plans last night to make time for me to just go to the movies and when I got home, I made a list of all of the charities that people in my life cared about and started clicking away.
So instead of giving gifts this year (except for the webcam thing, which was meant to bring together family anyway) I donated a thousand dollars among the following charities:
The ALS Association (in memory of my grandfather, Elisio Piro)
The Guild for Exceptional Children (in memory of my uncle, Arthur Piro)
St. Rose's Home (in memory of my other grandmother's husband, Louis Mello)
MS Society (because of parents of two close friends and a biker raising money)
Cystic Fibrosis Foundation (friend's sybling)
Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk (friend's charity of choice)
American Foundation for the Blind (friend works there, two friends' parents are blind)
Save Darfur (because the US doesn't seem to want to do much here)
So that's it... I'm not giving anything, nor do I want anything. This makes a lot more sense to me than buying people stuff the don't really need or can just buy themselves.
One day, I'll have kids and a family and Legos and a tree and all that stuff... 15, 20... 40 people at my house... squeezed in, extra tables, kiddie tables, eating on the roof... wherever there's a spot... and still too much food... and we'll all appreciate what it means and look forward to it for weeks. For now, though, I'll just try to help someone else accomplish that.
Entrepreneurial Gathering - Last of 2006
Unless someone is having a NYE party, I think Darren's got the last tech event of the year just about locked up... Check it out.
"Le Pain Quotidien on 77th between 2 & 3rd Ave (Subway: 6) on Wednesday, December 27 at 3pm EST. The get-together will have 1 hour of formal discussion and then a schmooze fest. Feel free to spread the word but please RSVP by leaving a comment on [Darren's blog]. Since I’ll be hosting (coffees, teas, pastries), I’d like to know how many folks will be coming… also, no egos please as ideally there will be serial, parallel, and brand spankin new entrepreneurs and I’d like there to be a level playing field for all to participate. Online folks and offline folks welcome!"
links for 2006-12-22
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I'm teaching "Management for the MySpace Generation" in the Spring semester at Fordham... this is really helpful.
Blog Tag, Which I kind of already did, without the tag part...
So, two days before Jeff Pulver came up with the blog tag game, I posted some stuff you might not have known about me. Of course, I didn't do tags, so it wasn't much of a game, so now I'll just repost some of that stuff and tag, b/c I've now been tagged twice. Plus, I'd like to take the opportunity to link to some of my favorite bloggers.
1) I have no sweaters.
2) I bounce my right leg up and down when I'm sitting without even noticing it.
3) I hate soccer.
4) I do not trust the snooze button... I reset the alarm even just five minutes from now just to be on the safe side.
5) I have a fear of heights.
Ok, I am tagging Eric Nehrlich, Scott Adams, danah boyd, Niki Scevak, and Brooklyn Met Fan.
The Kaneva Virtual Carrot on a Stick
So I signed up for yet another social network, Kaneva, and *yay* my avatar plays in it. And what's cool is that I'm not the only Oddcast avatar in there... check out this cool use of SitePal for this movie review page. One interesting thing going on in there though is that all the users are obsessed with friending, commenting and "raving" (giving a thumbs up) each other. Why? Because Kaneva has built a 3D virtual world that is in closed beta and only available to its most active users. Everyone seems to want in. It's fascinating to watch and I'd bet that they couldn't get that kind of usage if they paid people in cash. The only issue is, how long can you keep the donkey from getting the carrot? Do people give up after a while? I sort of feel like you need a disincentive here to balance it out... like some kind of measure of authenticity. So, for example, I shouldn't count as a very good connection. I'm new, I have no other connections. I have no previous contact with these people. People like me should count against them and real relationships, or at least real-looking relationships, should count more.
If anyone at Kaneva is listening, I'd love to see the beta of the virtual world and discuss how to make the site more authentic. It's a good site... pretty responsive... nice creation tools that are helpful, but still flexible... but I think this carrot might be fleeting in the long run.
Right phone, wrong OS
So, I've been eyeing the new LG phone that Verizon is selling, the "V". Here's a question. Why the heck would you make a phone that has a QWERTY keyboard if it wasn't a smartphone?
I'd love to find a way to get Windows Mobile on this phone, or at least Microsoft Word and Outlook, because I love the form factor. It's great because it looks and acts like a real phone on the outside, with real numeric buttons and such, but then flips open for advanced usage.
Is there any way to hack this?
Fun with branded, but non-paid, avatars
So, I needed a new schtick for my avatar and came up with something this morning. Starting today, for the next few weeks, I will update my avatar and deck him out with Jamba Juice favor colors depending on what I drank that day. Today's avatar is purple. Click through and click the play button at the bottom to hear what today's flavor was.
Just so you know, I was not paid for this... I just really like Jamba.
Well, check that, I did get a free smoothie for putting $25 on my Jamba Card, but anyone can take advantage of that offer until the end of the year, I think.
Webcams for everyone this year
So I just ordered a webcam for my nieces in Tampa and one for my parents. I have one, too. This will either be a completely game-changing way for my family to increase the amount of interaction it has with each other or be a total failure. Should be interesting nonetheless.
Now I just have to get my Dad off AOL dial-up and on broadband.
Let's not start sucking each other's blogs just yet: On Time's Person of the Year
So Time picked you and me... the users, as its Person of the Year, holding out YouTube as its shining example of a community driven media revolution.
I have two reactions to this.
First, I don't need old media telling me I'm special. Like Jarvis wrote, it has always been us. Only now, it seems to be fashionable and profitable to say so. Old media giving us a pat on the back reminds me of that line in Pink Floyd's Animals:
"You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to
So that when they turn their backs on you
You'll get the chance to put the knife in."
So, to Time, I give a big fat thanks but no thanks... the same reaction I have to blogging "A-lists". We're just people, living out our lives and talking. That's not special, that's just real. Unfortunately, it took the web a long time to get this close to reflecting real life.
That being said, my bigger issue is that it really doesn't reflect real life for most people. Most people aren't blogging or posting on YouTube.
And, in the year where it became obvious that we weren't going to "win" in Iraq, I have to admit, that I feel a little sickened that we're being so self-congratulatory about taking over the web. We're nearling 3,000 US military deaths in Iraq, now more than the number of civilians killed in 9/11... and we're talking about... YouTube? Are you serious? PS... Newt Gingrich pointed out something interesting today... 60% of young Iraqi males are out of work. He suggested fixing things over there by instituting an FDR-sized civil works program. Instead of paying soldiers to shoot people who have nothing better to do than to shoot at us, how about paying citizens to fix their own country and go to work.
Look, I'm impressed and awed by user generated media as much as the next guy. I mean, hey, I work for an avatar company.
But, let's reserve this award for the year that bloggers and YouTubers end the War in Iraq, Save Darfur, rebuild New Orleans, address global warming (I'm going to bike into the city today, December 17th and it's going to be 62 degrees in NYC), push voter turnout over 80%, fix our education system, ban Paris Hilton from all media, start getting states to fall like dominos on gay marriage, or all of the above. Right now, I think we're still doing a little too much talking to ourselves to deserve the proverbial reach around. We still have a lot of work to do.
Youre Not In The Movies
Fordham graduation is this Saturday, so in honor of that event, I thought this would be a fitting time to put up what might actually be my favorite movie--definitely one in my top five. Ben Braddock has just graduated and the only thing he's got planned for himself is a little "drifting here in the pool." Ideas? Well, everyone's got ideas for him... from "Plastics" to meeting with older women in hotels to taking out their daughters when they come down from Berkeley. Everyone thinks they've got him pegged, too. "Track star." "Agitator." (Gotta love the Normal Fell bit there as the landlord in Berkeley. Obviously, that got him the Mr. Roper gig.)
Its tough though. The one thing college doesn't really prepare you for is figuring out what to do with yourself after you're done, and so any graduating senior can relate to what Dustin Hoffman goes through in this movie. For one thing, its just a bizarre situation to be back home from college after you've lived four years on your own and now, all of the sudden, you're thrust back into their world. Your whole college life comes to a screeching halt, and now you're hanging out with people in their 50's. (At least my parents didn't buy me scuba gear and make me test it in our pool on my birthday in front of all their friends.)
The music (this seems to be a theme with me...) from Simon and Garfunkel is classic, as is the whole movie... Its tough to get more memorable than Hoffman's ride in his Alfa Romeo down to Santa Barbara to search for Katherine Ross's wedding, touched off by the "Mrs. Robinson" track.
So watch this, or go back and watch it again. Listen to every line. There are too many good ones that Hoffman's deadpan style might lull you past, but so many of the short ones are funny. He tells his parents that he's getting married, and then they realize that he hasn't even asked the girl yet.
"Benjamin, this whole idea seems rather half-baked."
"No, I assure you, its fully baked."
Anne Bancroft, who is like a million years old now (and married to Mel Brooks) rasps and smokes her way into Dustin Hoffman's world for the summer, culminating in a train wreck of a standoff towards the end. She "controls" much Ben's life, and the movie, until he finds what he actually wants and goes after it. So take some time off if you need, but not too much, to find your Elaine, and go after it like a track star. You'll learn why wood is better than wire, and how to keep a crowd at bay with a crucifix.
"Doesn't he seem like the kind of guy that needs to fight them off with a stick?"
Benjamin Braddock. Class of 1967.