Altoids pays tribute to your friends on Facebook

The curiously strong candy brand and ad agency The Evolution Bureau have released a song on Altoids’s Facebook Page, intended as a tongue-in-cheek “Curiously Strong Award” to “the stars of your social network.”

The archetypes include “The Like-A-Lot,” who “likes everything you do” and “The Friend Tycoon,” who tries to friend everyone he meets. “Let me tell you about The Oversharer,” goes another lyric, “treating that rash with aloe vera. Did he get it from hiking in the High Sierras or from a girl named Sarah? Yo, we don’t care-ah.”

Yes, it’s funny stuff, but as AdFreak notes, it’s also “a canny admission that while Facebook interactions can often be completely frivolous, for millions they’re also enjoyably meaningful diversions.”

Many writers have tried to catalog the various Facebook archetypes before, but none have been quite as catchy as this.

One qualm, however: What does this have to do with mints? On Facebook, after all, no one can smell your breath.

*INCEPTION SOCIAL MEDIA MASHUP [* theOfficial Trailer ]

Not long ago, while I was waiting in the airport and watching Inception on my PSP, I was infatuated with the notion that the plot echoed the emergence of social media.

Think social media. Now think of it as an idea. It would appear that the introduction of this idea [of social media] into our collective consciousness is something boarding on inception; and this idea has taken hold in a very real way. The everyday lives of millions have changed.

Ever wonder how this idea was introduced to you? Was it email? How about the first time you read about 'WEB 2.0'? Or was it instant messaging? Chat room? Fact is this idea [social media] has taken hold and is now influencing societal trends and has made information a viable, profitable, commodity.

Social media has become consensual policy.

Are we unnerved or giddily horrified that the premise of inception and the ends of social media are fundamentally the same? So what's the kick?
Anthony Chiles

SERENA WILLIAMS TOP SPIN 4 2K SPORTS NEW GAME WOW

Social media rules. And Ms. Serena Williams is a social media darling.

Color’s Ambitious Photo App Seeks to Reinvent Mobile Social Networking

Color Demo from Color Labs, Inc. on Vimeo.
Say hello to Color, a new mobile photo-sharing application with a star-studded list of entrepreneurs and an eye-popping $41 million in funding. Its goal is nothing less than to become the ultimate local discovery tool.

The app, which made its debut just a few hours ago on iPhone (and very soon on Android), is best described as public photo and video-sharing app for groups. Yet it doesn’t have the typical friending or following that you’ll find on Facebook, Twitter, Path or Instagram. Instead, Color chooses which pictures you see based on your location and how often you’re sharing photos with someone else. Every photo and video is public, not only to the people you consider your friends, but to any stranger within your proximity.

When you launch Color, the app delivers a stream of content from anybody within 100 feet of your location, as well as anybody within your “elastic network.” In Color, you don’t choose your network; instead, the app determines your social network by figuring out who you’re hanging out with on a regular basis. Every time two friends use the app near each other, Color’s algorithms detect it and use it to essentially rank your friendship. You can also curate your elastic network through actions such as asking the app to “Show More” of a particular friend or liking/commenting on a friend’s picture.

Keeping your elastic network takes work, though; if you don’t see a friend for a while, his or her pictures start to lose their color until that person eventually disappears from your network.

The result is that whenever you fire up the app, you can see what pictures are being taken around you, as well as the pictures friends in your elastic network are taking. Not only that, but the app will show you the pictures being taken by others within 100 feet of your friends. The app even has the ability to pull pictures that your friends took in the past, so long as you’re standing in the same location in which the pictures were taken. Imagine visiting the Statue of Liberty and then being able to magically see your best friend’s pictures from a different trip three year ago.

It’s the ultimate voyeur app for those who simply want to know what’s happening with their close friends or that cute neighbor that just happens to live next door.

from Mashable by Ben Parr

Yet again Facebook @ the center of another flawed social media strategy [but don't blame Facebook]

Social Media is made for dummies. Social Media MGMT, not so much. And clearly the people behind the efforts of Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty are not really in the know when it comes to maximizing social media impact. In case you missed it [and you probably did] Tim Pawlenty yesterday became the first bona fide potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate to announce the formation of a presidential exploratory committee. First bona fide potential?

He made this announcement on Facebook. You know Facebook. The Facebook with the 500 million users, etc.

Pawlenty told Fox News the decision to announce his committee on Facebook came from a desire to be on the "cutting edge" and called the social networking site "the wave of the future."

Mr. Pawlenty you've just wiped out. The Tim Pawlenty for President Exploratory Committee, never mind, this guy will never be president. I like Facebook. Yet, Facebook is not exactly the social mediasphere platform Mr. Pawlenty should be launching from right now. Let's face it; Perez Hilton has more fans than Mr. Pawlenty.

The big problem here is message, or the absence of. The video posted on Facebook is boring, trite, GOP rhetoric greased down in old school Madison Avenue slick. Announcing an "exploratory committee" is simply lame. If Mr. Pawlenty and his PR team think they can out maneuver President Obama in the social media arena with their current approach, they're crazy. The Obama social media machine is focused on message, not medium. Love him or not, President Obama's presence in the social mediasphere is the blueprint on how to deliver "the message."

Yo! Pawlenty! What's the message?! Hometown? Road trip? Ronald Reagan?! During a nearly 2min. video Mr. Pawlenty never even mentions his own name. Guess he's going on face recognition. Mr. Pawlenty and the rest of the GOP are going to have their collective asses handed to them by the juggernaut of Obama's Media Machine because they don't understand how social media really works. They [the GOP] will spend millions of Taxpayer-Funded dollars to achieve subpar results in the social mediasphere. They've been seduced by the aura of a medium they have no clue how to use effectively. For the record, Sarah Palin knows how to use social media [one of her fans did attempt the assassination of a U.S. Congresswoman, lest we forget.] Her message though is unintelligibly convoluted and xenophobic. Note to self: No one ever promised social media would be used for good.

Lesson learned here, commit to your message when entering the social mediasphere and don't be all wishy-washy like Mr. Pawlenty. So while your plotting your company’s next big social media gambit, remember this; on the long and wonderful road of social media the message drives the medium, so map out the message, this way you know where you're driving the medium.

FACT: The 3 GOP "exploratory committees" of businessman Herman Cain, former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer and Mr. Pawlenty have a combined fanbase on Facebook of less than 150,000 as of this blog post. The First Lady, Michelle Obama, has 4,112,104 fans on Facebook. Just saying...
Anthony Chiles

The Question is... can Buffer helps you tweet more consistently

Introducing Buffer from Joel Gascoigne on Vimeo.
Buffer helps you Tweet more consistently.


There are just 3 simple steps:

1. Choose times to tweet.
[For example, 3 times a day at 9:30, 13:30 and 17:30]

2 Add tweets to your buffer.
[Manually or with our handy browser extensions]

3 Buffer does the rest. Relax.
[We tweet for you. Just keep that buffer topped up]

Sign up for free at bufferapp.com

SXSW 2011 - Adam Hirsch - COO Mashable

Browser Test: Chrome 10 vs Firefox 4 vs Internet Explorer 9 vs Opera 11 ...

webcam demo for darling kara xoxoxo

Have you looked at Blogger lately?

Does Broadband Create Digital Ghettos?

Australia’s Special Broadband Service has warned that the steady increase in broadband speed, and its increasing availability, may lead to “digital ghettos.” The premise is simple: faster and more reliable broadband means that more and more people can participate effectively online. As affordable broadband access spreads to different ethnic groups, argues the SBS, these communities could form tight-knit “communities” online—ghettos, in other words. Instead of broadband, and more generally the Internet, bringing people together, it threatens to further separate different groups of people from each other.

The SBS warned, in speaking about Australia’s plan for a national broadband network, that broadband will encourage different ethnic groups to “retreat inward,” rather than embrace different peoples and ideas.

Such a phenomenon could also be described as narrowcasting. Rather than create programming that attracts a wide audience, you instead create programming that appeals only to a small niche. There are networks that only show sports, networks that only show movies, networks that only show reality TV, networks that only show the news. The same principle applies online: Web sites that only cover sports, Web sites that only cover tech, etc. Sirius XM has discrete channels that appeal only to a certain audience: I doubt very much that fans of The Boneyard listen to BPM all that often. (I listen Sirius XM, but I primarily only listen to The Virus. I have no idea what happens on the several hundred other channels on the platform.)

The danger, of course, is if this separateness moves beyond simple pastimes and becomes part of a community’s larger identity. Group A only visits Web site A for news, while Group B only visits Web site B. What happens if these sites have different editorial slants? Group A and B may see the very same story in two totally different lights, which could lead to problems down the line.

The point, I suppose, is that increased broadband availability won’t automatically solve the world’s problems. Just because you give people access to greater communication doesn’t mean they’re not going to use it as an extension of their already present communication channels or biases. And if people only see their opinion online, and see it constantly reinforced and validated, well, that could be problematic.

I understand this all sounds somewhat backwards—give people greater access to communication and they’ll merely turn inward—but let’s not pretend we can’t already see that happening.

[INFOGRAPHIC] Who’s Scanning All Those QR Codes?

QR CODES are everywhere these days — in fine art exhibits, some cities’ building permits, wrapping paper and every imaginable kind of marketing campaign. QR code-focused startup JumpScan was kind enough to send along a graphically organized representation of some data they’ve gathered about QR codes — who’s scanning them, what kinds of devices they’re using and what brands are running QR code campaigns.