Blog Archives
Make Your Mark On History – Life In A Day Project
This morning, I came across this post on ReadWriteWeb touting an upcoming YouTube project called Life In A Day.
By now, you’ve probably heard about similar projects such as Flickr’s Project 365 which plays off the same crowdsourcing model to encourage users to submit a new photo each day throughout the calendar year. The New York Times did a similar effort around their “Moment In Time” photo project which has the added integration of some nice social sharing features and a great interactive map.
What I love about the Life In A Day project is that it’s a simple ask and carries through with a tangible reward for strong submissions. Partnering with LG as a sponsor, the project team will also select 20 contributors to the film to attend the film’s premiere at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival (which I’m a HUGE fan of).
Aside from having an incredibly slick YouTube channel for the project, the films directors and coordinating team are keeping the ask very simple. Shoot some creative footage about what you love, fear or makes you laugh. Shoot yourself, family, strangers…it’s a blank slate for creativity. According to YouTube’s product marketing manager, Tim Partridge:
“You can film the ordinary — a sunrise, the commute to work, a neighborhood soccer match, or the extraordinary — a baby’s first steps, your reaction to the passing of a loved one, or even a marriage.”
Check out the promo spot below and get ready to do some shoot’n on July 24.
-Scott
Social Media Case Study – U.S. Navy
On the heels of a previous post about government and social media and in light of one of my former jobs as a Naval Officer I thought it would be good to take a look at how the U.S. Navy is currently engaging the social Web.
Helena Dobbins from over at Campbell-Ewald (U.S. Navy is a client of theirs) connected with me last week to provide some insight on various ways the Navy is utilizing social media. Turns out, a lot more than I had originally known about. Currently, the Navy has a presence on YouTube, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and Ning.
Assessment:
* There is strong branding and a solid approach on their YouTube channel, dividing video content into various topical playlists. Though some of the videos tend to be quite long, the Featured Careers playlist provides nice insight into some of the various job opportunities the Navy has to offer. In addition, the Navy Visual News Service is definitely working hard to make sure their content is present on as many platforms as possible.
* I also like how they’ve drilled down to using a Facebook page to focus on providing information and answering questions about medical careers in the Navy with this U.S. Navy Healthcare page. For a number of reasons, brands are struggling to maximize use of Facebook but this works because it focuses specifically on targeted, niche recruitment and providing a channel for easy, immediate feedback.
Navy for Moms Networking site
* Double kudos to the Navy for their Ning-hosted Navy for Moms networking site. Moms are of course a key online demographic and Navy Moms in particular happen to be the most passionate people out there (believe me, having a father that was a Navy pilot and an older brother that was a Navy submarine officer, I can attest…they’re passionate). With nearly 13,000 members and an open forum for communication and easy networking among Moms, this site is only going to continue to flourish.
If you’ve ever used Ning, you know it can be an incredible resource for feedback and input. In particular, I found this discussion thread to be quite interesting in helping the Navy get feedback on how members have found out about their Navy Moms site. This information will certainly help them focus on key areas of the Web to bolster promotion and drive traffic back to the site.
As more and more content creators surface on the social Web, new communities similar to Navy Moms will continue to evolve. Already, random people have taken it upon themselves to create Navy Wives, Navy Dads and Navy Veterans sites. It will behoove the Navy to embrace these existing communities and engage in exisiting conversations without trying to branch off and recreate the same communities on their own for the sake of message control.
* Aside from the tools above, kudos to the Navy for setting up social media guidelines from the start to guide service members’ online engagement practices. This is an important first step that can otherwise cascade into a host of problems if not addressed from the very beginning.
All around, this is a solid approach for such a large government organization and I look forward to tracking the Navy’s future online endeavors.
-Scott
What’s Your 2009 Social Media Tool of Choice?
Here we are, 2009 and an exciting year ahead. Before we jump in on what your social media future holds, let’s take a quick look at where things stand with respect to social networking site traffic.
Last week, TechCrunch posted about the Top Social Media Sites of 2008. Not surprisingly, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and WordPress were all included in the top 10 with Facebook taking second with 200 million unique visitors.
I was surprised to see sites such as hi5, Orkut and Six Apart rounding out the top 10. I’m personally only vaguely familiar with any of these sites, but it’s a good reminder of how many different social networking/blogging sites exist and are actively put to use on a daily basis.
Low and behold, Friendster cranked in at the number 11 slot with 31 million visitors. Wow, I’m amazed that site even still exists. Maybe it’s become the hipster version of social networking for those that are too cool to give in to Facebook.
Pulled from Techcrunch’s post above, here’s the full rundown on the Top 20 sites:
Top Social Media Sites (ranked by unique worldwide visitors November, 2008; comScore)
- Blogger (222 million)
- Facebook (200 million)
- MySpace (126 million)
- WordPress (114 million)
- Windows Live Spaces (87 million)
- Yahoo Geocities (69 million)
- Flickr (64 million)
- hi5 (58 million)
- Orkut (46 million)
- Six Apart (46 million)
- Baidu Space (40 million)
- Friendster (31 million)
- 56.com (29 million)
- Webs.com (24 million)
- Bebo (24 million)
- Scribd (23 million)
- Lycos Tripod (23 million)
- Tagged (22 million)
- imeem (22 million)
- Netlog (21 millionn)
It’s also quite interesting to take a look back at TechCrunch’s 2007 analysis of the top social sites to see how things have changed.
So, with that in mind and a fresh year ahead, which social networking sites do you think will sneak into the Top 20 this year?
Additionally, which of the following social media tools do you plan to use the most in 2009?
