Twittering Mumbai

Twitter is often criticized for being a forum to air the pointless details of our personal lives.  But Twitter also proved to be an astounding source of real-time reporting about the tragic terrorist incident in Mumbai.  Citizens on the ground in Mumbai not only reported and posted links to external news stories, they also shared helpful information like hotlines for people who want to inquire about the welfare of loved ones in Mumbai.  A search for Mumbai on Twitter uncovers a number of citizen journalist accounts unfolding and Razorfish’s Shiv Singh also links to a Mumbai news feed in on his Twitter page.

via David Deal

Social Media: Strategy, Stats, State of

How-To: Using Social Media Strategically

This how-to was syndicated from a four-part series on social media created by Leigh Householder.

Social Media Statistics

An interesting blog trying to pull together the many statistics that surround Social media sites.

State of the Blogosphere 2008
Technorati’s take …

Light Relief: Earth News Feed, Make me Super

“Earth’s News Feed”

Susanna Wolff on CollegeHumor

Make Me Super
In the vein of Toy New York’s Ari Merkin and Justin Gignac’s “Elf Yourself”, Kodak have created a viral campaign “Make Me Super“

Ambient: Economist Pizza

Economist-branded pizza boxes
The Economist did something interesting in Philadelphia, USA recently. They branded pizza boxes that went out from 20 pizzerias in the city with global statistics of food consumption – like the amount of wheat consumption or cheese imports. Apparently, most of the pizzerias were near universities or colleges, so they had the aim of getting young people interested in the magazine. I hope the disproportionate buzz outweighed the wastage …

Social Media: Get Them In

Get Them In
It may be better to give than to receive, but for those on the receiving end, there’s no doubt real-world gifts are better than virtual ones. No surprise, then, that we’re seeing the emergence of more and more ways for online friends to give each other offline presents. The latest? GetThemIn, which allows UK Facebook users to send each other real alcoholic beverages.

Experiential: Uniqlo Vending, Mama Shelter iMac

Uniqlo Heat Tech Human Vending Machine

Uniqlo’s Human Vending Machine for their HEATTECH apparel line is set up inTimes Square on a narrow concrete island. Prior to reaching the booth, there is a ’scanning station’ manned with a Uniqlo associate with a hand held thermal camera. Each person’s heat image showed up on an adjacent screen and identified their core body temperature. After that, visitors proceeded to either a male or female dispenser who were giving away the HEATTECH gear. The reasonably priced line claims to offer warmth from a very thin material. Shirts cost just over $10.

Hotel puts an iMac in every room
Located in the Saint Blaise neighbourhood of Paris’s 20th arrondissement, Mama Shelter has equipped each of its 172 rooms with a 24-inch Apple iMac multimedia center. Gone is the oft-seen (but rarely enjoyed) web access through TV; rather, guests can enjoy HDTV, music, radio, CDs, films, DVDs and of course internet, all through their in-room computer. Computer monitors are also built into an oversized table in Mama Shelter’s entryway, as well as into columns throughout the hotel; wifi, of course, is freely available too. Through a partnership with French tech provider DirectStreams, meanwhile, Mama Shelter offers what it calls the iBooth—also based on the iMac—giving guests the opportunity to make their mark on the hotel by taking instant pictures and seeing them distributed in the lobby and rooms.

The Ten Most Irritating Phrases

Someone at Oxford has compiled a list of the top ten most irritating phrases:

(These are from the UK, but have universal anglophone resonance…)

1 – At the end of the day

2 – Fairly unique

3 – I personally

4 – At this moment in time

5 – With all due respect

6 – Absolutely

7 – It’s a nightmare

8 – Shouldn’t of

9 – 24/7

10 – It’s not rocket science

Procter & Google

Interesting piece in the WSJ about P&G and Google swapping staff:

A New Odd Couple: Google, P&G Swap Workers to Spur Innovation
At Procter & Gamble Co., the corporate culture is so rigid, employees jokingly call themselves “Proctoids.” In contrast, Google Inc. staffers are urged to wander the halls on company-provided scooters and brainstorm on public whiteboards.

Now, this odd couple thinks they have something to gain from one another — so they’ve started swapping employees. So far, about two-dozen staffers from the two companies have spent weeks dipping into each other’s staff training programs and sitting in on meetings where business plans get hammered out. The initiative has drawn little notice.

Social Media: Waste of Time, Waste of Money, Kills Campaigns?

… just a few things that came up today …

Is Social Media Marketing A Waste Of Time?
Well, someone thinks so: “Social media is the next big thing! No, it’s the big thing! It is here, now, and it is big! Let’s face it, if you’re not aboard the cluetrain to social media marketing city, you’re sitting on that station alone!”

P&G’s McConnell Not Sure Marketers Belong on Social Networks
Ted McConnell, general manager-interactive marketing and innovation at Procter & Gamble Co., said social networks may never become a natural advertising medium — in part because the content on social nets and what is in general characterized as user-generated media may not be media at all. In a talk at the Digital Non-Conference in Cincinnati, McConnell said: “Media is something you can buy and sell. Media contains inventory. Media contains blank spaces. Consumers weren’t trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody.”

How Twittering Critics Brought Down Motrin Mom Campaign
Johnson & Johnson did manage to offend some mothers with an online and print campaign for Motrin that implied moms carry their babies as fashion accessories. But was it a genuine groundswell that felled the effort — or an alliance of the few, empowered by microblogging service Twitter? Two days after a new ad push for Motrin triggered an online backlash, J&J’s McNeil Consumer Healthcare unit is pulling the campaign, from the New York office of independent shop Taxi, and begging a vocal mommy-blogging nation for forgiveness. The campaign, which was featured on Motrin’s website, as well as in several magazines, was an attempt to connect with moms through the common experience (and pain) of carrying a child. But the implication felt by some of the campaign’s more vocal critics was that moms wear their babies as fashion accessories, or because it “totally makes me look like an official mom.”

Motrin: How Not to Make a Video Viral

Pain reliever Motrin recently sparked a firestorm of controversy over an advertisement which attempted to be humorous, sympathetic and perhaps edgy but ended up insulting the very consumer group they were targeting. The offending video portrayed the practice of carrying a baby in a sling as an uncomfortable fashion statement, something that makes a mother look more “official”. The ad copy also implies that such baby carrying causes back and neck pain – which Motrin will help alleviate.This point of view did not sit well with the “baby wearing” mothers of the internet. Over the weekend, Twitter exploded with negative commentary and blog posts racked up attacking the ad. In their defense, Motrin acted quickly and took down the video, but the damage may already be done.

Snippets: Cheap Cigs, Web 2.d’Oh, Robotgalaxy, How ’bout dem Apple Apples?

Financial Crisis Spurs Smoking Increase and Switch to Cheaper Brands
More than three-quarters (77%) of current smokers in the US report that they have increased stress levels because of the economic crisis, and two-thirds of those smokers say this stress has had an effect on their smoking behavior, according to a survey from the American Legacy Foundation, conducted by Harris Interactive. The data indicates that stress over the economy is causing some smokers to delay attempts to quit, increase the number of cigarettes they are smoking, and/or switch to a less-expensive brand instead of quitting. In addition, the survey found that seven percent of stressed-out smokers who had quit are now smoking again, while nine percent of former smokers said the financial situation had tempted them to start smoking again.

Sprint does Web 2-point-DOH!

Sprint’s out with a new site to promote their mobile broadband product. They attempt to show users how awesome the web is by doing their best to shoehorn every time-sucking thing on the web into one page.

ROBOTGALAXY

Brothers who have endured endless hours waiting while their sisters shop happily at the American Girl Store will soon have their revenge: with the launch of ROBOTGALAXY’s personalized robots, boys will also get to engage in the interactive shopping experience.

Unofficially Released Apple Apples

A Japanese super-fan has grown Apple-branded Fuji apples by adhering stickers to the still-ripening fruits a month before picking. Apple has yet to comment about the unofficially-logo’d Fuji’s, but we doubt they will. That is, unless they don’t taste good. (Or constantly crash.)