Sometimes you like to watch certain brands, because you have high expectations of them. On my watch list is the revolutionary social investing network Zecco.
Zecco started aggressively in the US market a year ago with 0$ trading commissions and giving away free lunches in the heart of the Wall Street. See this CNBC video about Zecco’s launch (free lunch).
I like the Zecco’s rebellious approach. They look at the same online trading world with a new and innovative view. But I also like Zecco since it has embraced and integrated forums and blogs in it’s website. And the bloggers like Zecco back. Also I like the Zecco Friends Program. It’s an old fashioned member-gets-member program which you unfortunately do not see much anymore on the internet.
But most of all, I like the smart ZeccoShare Program. At ZeccoShare traders can join and create a group with like-minded investors and share ideas. With permission you can even share portfolio holdings and previous trades with friends. Well isn’t it that specific thought what makes people love social networks?
This social media approach at least brings Zecco lot’s of Buzz and Free PR. I do expect Zecco to launch some compelling virals in 2008. What do you think, will they?
Although Christmas is still 2 months from now, several holiday virals are already being announced. This morning I got a short e-mail with a movie attached from Sam Stone with subject “Santa Kidnapped” and message “Is this the beginning of the end?”. After watching the viral the endscreen says “santakidnap.com.au 01.11.2007″. Is this the end of Christmas? Are these guys anti-Xmas extremists? No presents for all the children in the world? Will Santa escape? Stay tuned! To be continued …
Abstract tasks like image recognition are trivial for humans, but continue to challenge even the most sophisticated computer programs. This talk introduces a paradigm for utilizing human processing power to solve problems that computers cannot yet solve. Traditional approaches to solving such problems focus on improving software.
For the people that love social media, the wisdom of crowds or tag clouds, you should really see this great video of professor Luis Von Ahn. Luis describes very fast, but very funny, how games with a purpose help to create smart tags and how they can collect common-sense knowledge.
If you have seen the video, also try a tagging game at Peekaboom. It’s helps determine the location of objects. Or Verbosity the 2 player word guessing game, which collects common-sense knowledge. (Matthijs at Pixel Industries thanks for your tip)
We have invited Paul Beelen to become a guest blogger at ViralBlog. Why? Just read his social media whitepaper Advertising2.0 and you will probably understand!
Have you sniped other great social media or viral whitepapers? Let us know and we will help out traditional marketers. Viral experts from the US or Asia, join us as co-blogger or guest blogger.
After “Viral SuperStar” by Current.TV and Dan Meth’s great animated tribute to 66 Internet People, Cakke Team created another “internet meme” video called “The Internet Stars are Viral”, to pay homage to … all the viral internet super stars out there. TechnoViking, Miss Teen South Carolina, Chris Crocker, Borat, John West and many many others are starring in this homage clip. (via Colmeia.tv)
Two weeks ago I posted a thorough study and analysis of the phenomenon Facebook by FaberNovel Consulting. This weekend I came across a lot of other interesting Facebook buzz. It all started with Valleywag’s rumor of Google snapping up Facebook for $15 billion (7,5% of Google’s $200 billion value) and this great Q&A interview of John Battelle with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, California.
My PC and notebook are loaded with viral videos and viral commercials. Last year I’ve been spicing up PSP and iPod Video with these virals. It is just for fun on the go. Or handy at sudden presentations, since I don’t like to bring my notebook all the time.
Lately I have been using software TubeHunter to download videos from YouTube, MySpace, Metacafe, Dailymotion, iFilm, Flurl, Bebo, Break.com, VSocial, Grouper, Revver (and more) to my PC. But also to save them directly to my iPOD or PSP. Downloaded videos can be converted by TubeHunter to other video formats including MPEG, MPEG4 AVI, iPOD MP4, MOV, Flash SWF, M4A, PSP, MP3, WAV, OGG, 3GP and 3G2.
Seems that TubeHunter does not poison your PC with spyware or adware. It also does not install any browser plugins or hijackers. Please let our community know, what smart software you like to use.
Since the start of the internet I have been a die-hard community believer. It seems that smart eCEO Michael Dell has read this great community marketing book: Communities Dominate Brands as well? Just take a look at Michael Dell’s video where he announces two new digital community tools, designed to foster two-way communications with customers.
Dell IdeaStorm allows customers to participate in the development and enhancement of Dell’s products and services by sharing their ideas online. IdeaStorm contains already 7599 community generated ideas.
At StudioDell Consumers, SME’s and IT Professionals can upload their own home-grow videos. This smart and interactive Dell approach could really create a better ‘user generated’ helpdesk.
I will write about other smart brands that shout less and facilitate more. The question to our ViralBlog community: will you help us to find lot’s of great examples? Muchas gracias!
Viral Friday is the weekly viral video chart of ViralBlog, showing the 10 most popular viral videos, commercials or user-generated videos, carefully selected and ranked by popularity, viral impact & spread.
This week’s Viral Friday #1 position goes to Get The Fuck Out Of My Office. New York city councilor James Oddo feels ashamed after an interview with Norwegian TV show Rikets Røst. Interviewer Pia Haraldsen asked him a few comical questions, leading to a furious, cursing James Oddo. The runner up spot is for the ‘A Vision Of Students Today’ video by Michael Wesch. The video starts with a Marshall McLuhan quote from 1967 and sums up some of the most important characteristics of today’s students. The ‘A Few Creative Men’ viral completes this week’s top 3. In the beautifully made ‘A Few Good Men’ spoof we see Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson making fun of todays advertising agencies.
Do you want to see this week’s list from 1 to 10? Go on then, and have a look! We’d like to hear your opinion about the virals. Have fun!
Since a few months a flash my iPhone to anybody that wants to see it. To be honest, I also ’spam flash’ my iPhone to people that didn’t even give me permission to be exposed to it!
Although GPRS is slow, and the US iPhone is not suited for Europe yet, it’s a great contact alibi and it brings great storytelling to many tables. I also bought it since I like Steve Jobs passion for his iPhone.
But if you had to chose. Would you buy the Apple iPhone or the ‘new’ Google gPhone? Because the San Francisco Bay Area is buzzing about this new Google gPhone. I think suddenly flashing your gPhone would be great storytelling too! But sorry guys, the gPhone is science finction. But Sergey Brin tells us that Google launches it’s open source platform Android for mobile phones.
But both the iPhone and the fictional gPhone gave me thoughts. These kind of products are so buzz worthy and viral. If you need loads of advertising budget to get your products across, isn’t something totally wrong about your product?
Isn’t advertising putting lipstick on a pig? So marketers around the globe: no matter how much lipstick you will put on your pig, it will remain just another pig, right?
Maybe marketers should put product marketing back at the top of their marketing value chains again? That would protect consumers from a lot of your irrelevant and interruptive TV commercials. Try to be more innovative in your product marketing, and consumers will massively buy your compelling products. And tell their friends about being a customer!
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