This led to a lot of discussion around how tweet should be constructed, and whether we should be more commonly using something like “Headline / Link / Info”, rather than the more conversational “Headlne / Info / Link” model.

Dan’s heat map of clickthroughs

This puzzled me at first, because I couldn’t I couldn’t think of any examples of anyone ever placed a link in the middle of a tweet.

But then I began to think about the old-school retweet and recommendation – where you retweet content, but add a personal recommendation on the end of it. The more commonplace model for this is “Headline / Link / Personal Comment”.

A recommendation-style tweet from the rad Danielle Warby.

 I began to wonder if in the original data used in Zarella’s study, we would be able to see see whether a lot of the tweets involved retweets or links where personalised recommendations are added?

If this is the case, I think this really cements the power of social recommendation: irrespective of someone’s  reach or influence, this data clearly shows that someone personally recommending something is far more effective in creating clickthroughs, than simply by sharing a link. Brand advocates, from a marketing perspective, have a very important role to play in the way that new people approach or see a brand for the first time.

However, in the context of our decentralised media environment, I believe that it’s this structure of personal recommendations is also very important. I think it could be taking the first steps in addressing the challenge of ‘how does quality content rise to the top?’: because people actually talk about it, not just share it.

I suspect if we experimented with a “tweet this article” combined with “what did you really love about it” would see a significant increase in page views and traffice over a simple “tweet this” model. Only content which people really love will they add the extra effort to personally recommend to their friends.

Our media landscape is changing – but so is the way were finding and recommending what is the best content. We should keep an eye on how people are finding the best content as the mediums we use change: because this could be the centre point of how our media is found and consumed in years to come.

It was that time of year where we chose our year 12 subjects, which would, of course, we were told, define the rest of our lives. I wanted to code, but that involved joining Computer Studies. Our computer studies class was full of those socially awkward boys who could only converse with you about Pokebattles or, on a good day, something more pop-culture centric like The Simpsons. I would have been the only girl in the class, and, more importantly, at 16, none of my friends were doing it. On top of this, I had no idea what careers I could get into outside becoming a programmer: which was something I could barely comprehend in a world pre-MySpace. In fact, most people expected me to become an English teacher. I didn’t know what I wanted to do – but I knew I would be safe in the arts. And, honestly, I didn’t think that I was smart enough to code – so I scratched that secret craving off my to-do list. So I took Society and Culture.

In a small country town, with all my friend on farms, I’d taught myself HTML from websites online, because the only other thing to do was cultivate weed, and gardening was never really my style. I didn’t know anyone else who build websites and a hobby so it kind of fell into the ether as something I did sometimes to relax (like beating that level of Angry Birds that has had you stumped for hours). It was the challenge to create this thing that was in your head into the real world. It, of course, never occurred to me that I was probably doing the exact same thing that those socially awkward kids in Computer Studies were doing.

At the time, I didn’t think it was really acceptable for girls to code. I know it was all “pro gender equality” and all that, but when you’re a teenager, no one really paid attention, especially when then most important thing your friends were concerned about was the dress they were wearing for their deb ball. Its been only a few years on where I’ve realized that, actually, girls can code – and no one cares if a girl wants to code. I’ve discovered that people actually really like a girl who can code – because there isn’t as much as a language barrier as compared with boys who chose to sink into a code-centric world, who discuss the universe is references to Skyrim or, if we’re lucky, The Simpsons.

I’d dabbled in code on and off for a few years , but never really knew how to get back into it – to learn more coding languages that meant I could play with the web 2.0 world. I want to create mashups with twitterbots and google maps and haul information from across the web to create new ways to connect ideas – but I don’t even know where to start. To counter the dusty, unopened l javascript textbooks on my bedroom floor, I’d briefly considered doing a TAFE course on web mashups – but that’s a pretty huge commitment. It only occurred to me how long it’s something I’ve been craving to do when @mikey_pants tweeted: “new years’s resolution to learn to code? Sign up now to free weekly courses.”

It was like Christmas. I was so excited. I signed up and I’ve been working through the Codecademy courses like there’s no tomorrow. It’s been incredibly empowering. I can’t wait to fumble though the lessons and write my own code beginning with the dorky “hello world”. As for where to go from here – I don’t know. Maybe I have a base understanding to crack open my textbooks. Or maybe I’ll need to learn another language or two. I guess time will tell – either way, I can’t keep limiting myself from doing something I really enjoy simply because of something that, as a teen, I thought I couldn’t, or shouldn’t, do.

If you have any tips for rad sites to teach programming, hook us up. I’d love to know what else out there.

I began to wonder whether this could lead to a linguistic divide between those who speak lolspeak, and those who don’t, mirroring the digital divide which we can see in Australian society, with the poorer of less computer-literate groups of society falling behind.

Every generation has it’s slang, but this is the first generation where one form of slang has created it’s own language structure, which is written, and in turn, formalized for that group who use it. In fact, there are kids who could have been raised being exposed more to lolspeak than traditional English.

I think there is already a shift in which younger generations struggle to be as traditionally grammatically-sound as older generations, which may be due to a combination of shifting standards in education systems, combined with leisure activities which don’t necessarily rely on the written word. Will lolspeak become a language which is adopted more naturally by the iGeneration? Will this cause a barrier to communication with older generations? I think it already is on the microscale in families, but probably not on a macroscale.

But then again, the media will taunt us with the fear that young people’s vocabulary is being drastically stunted by electronic mediums (where a teenager of 16 should know 40,000 words, and, instead, only knows 800.) So maybe teens will just throw the towel in and stick with the language they know. Long live Ceiling Cat!

What do you think?

I can has language play: Construction of Language and Identity in LOLspeak

I can has language play: Construction of Language and Identity in LOLspeak from Lauren Gawne on Vimeo.

* Hat tip to the rad Kate Fenerty for the link to this!

Or in the local barn.

Or on the houses in the village.

Because there isn’t enough room on the noticeboard.

Because there are 13,000 fans. And its still growing.

When I first heard of the Facebook Page, I’d seen this YouTube video – showing that this tiny village’s Facebook Page had higher engagement rates than the Lady Gaga and Coca Cola Facebook Pages. While their Fan page is still relatively small on the scale of things, smaller pages often struggle to get any interactions at all.

I decided to check out the page and see just why this page was so popular – beyond the novelty of being frozen in time on a noticeboard on the other side of the world – and the answer is simple.

It’s honest.

Unashamedly, the townspeople share snippets of their world. My favourite posts have included updates from the townspeople making a video of recent fog, there is a post dedicated to the town dog, and the Mayor’s daughter knitted a scarf for a Facebook Fan. Between these updates are posts of the villagers attaching photos of their Facebook Fans across the town and updates of how many fans they have – including posts when they have fans from a new continent or country.

Obermutten Town Dog. Image Source: http://on.fb.me/tVfRrH

When you scroll right to the first post, the first update rather charmingly says “test”, followed by the Mayor (I think!) opening the Facebook Page officially. The page is learning to walk as it goes along and it certainly doesn’t have any grand plan. However, that is the most refreshing part about it. Facebook Pages often feel so commercial that this kind of community is pretty rare. Other examples of similar real-world communities drawing on the masses of Facebook (such as “Rename the town of Speed to SpeedKills“) feel far more orchestrated, even if the same strong community exists in both towns.

One of the most interesting aspects is that the Page posts each updated translated into  multiple languages – sometimes very roughly! Responses come from all over the globe, in every language, which evidently not all of which can be appreciated. One Danish article discussing the town’s social media efforts was posted on the Wall; met with the response of “Thank you for this link. Unfortunately, we can’t understand it, but we can read a lot of times “Obermutten”! Kind regards and see you soon.”

So what makes the Page so popular? I can’t really put my finger on it – but it might simply be curiosity of how this town lives. The Facebook Page of Obermutten almost feels like a transference of the genre of reality television: this is a town letting us into their world, into their lives. And it feels pretty damn special.

I do wonder if this is the start of a new realm of tourism: where towns begin telling their stories in real time. What do you think?

–

*Yes. I know you want to know. I am also on the town noticeboard in Obermutten. ;)

I admit that when I went to check out Outpost, I was a little hesitant. An exhibition of streetart was precicely what I believed streetart was not about. Streetart is a statement which invokes the entire context of the environment around it: the culture, the history, the memories associated with place. It’s probably only music which draws as much on place as streetart does. So, in taking the art from it original location and putting it an exhibition, it’s robbing it of the very statement it’s making.

So I wanted to see just what they did with it.

Cockatoo Island for those who don’t know, is an island in the middle of Sydney Harbour. It is a former imperial prison, industrial school, reformatory and gaol. The first of its two dry docks was built by convicts and was completed in 1857. It feels like it’s a haunted house at the best of times. But, I discovered, it’s also the perfect place for streetart – quiet and desolate, and the entire island is a canvas.

The exhibition itself was actually really brilliantly done. It had a really interesting balance between streetart as ‘place’ and streetart in a gallery. There were entire buildings which had been painted, or covered in pasteups. And there were rooms dedicated as galleries, with art behind glass. There were exhibitions of cuprocking, of tshirt designers, a graffiti covered bus, video art, and one of the tunnels became an exhibition space. There was chalk littered at the entrance, and a free drawing space for you to add your own creation.

One of the things I really liked the most was the very cheeky play on place, especially in the pasteup exhibition, which toyed very much with the exhibition space, with pasteups proclaiming: Coming Soon To This Location Charming Ruins.

But, in the end, these lines really are blurred. In 2009, Banky himself held an exhibition in Bristol City Museum. “This is the first show I have ever done where taxpayers’ money is being used to hang my pictures up rather than scrape them off.” Banksy said. Tim Adams, from the Guardian writes that “Confined to a gallery, this energy looks very flat indeed.”

Maybe in hindsight, Bristol Museum will consider in the future taking a leaf out of the Outpost exhibition’s book. Outpost didn’t rob the artwork of it’s original statements, but it turned Cockatoo Island into a living artwork itself.

–

My photos which I took on my phone from the exhibition are below. A full list of the artists involved is on the Outpost website.

You probably aren’t wondering why it’s my favourite ad – it’s all kinds of hilarious, great script, great timing, not to mention brilliant quotes (that I will now use whenever someone offers me chips) and it doesn’t hurt that it’s for a good cause.

But maybe you’re wondering why I have a favourite ad.

Something I’ve thought is quite interesting of late is that people now have favourite ads. I was talking to my perpetually nineteen-year-old flatmate the other day about the ad above – and then she told me about her favourite ad, which, honestly, stunned me. I have a favourite ad, because I’m interested in advertising. But she likes Hannah Montana. And a band called LMFAO. So why would she have a favourite ad?

Could it be due to a shift in the way we relate to brands – where it doesn’t matter that our likes, loves and lives are branded (and Coca Cola’s “Share a coke with…” campaign certainly doesn’t dispute this theory) or is it simply that we are now making better ads which are targetting it’s audience via YouTube, where people will share an ad with their friends because it is an effective ad?

It’s said that people don’t hate ads, they hate bad ads – so maybe it’s a case of survival of the fittest in this new media landscape? Advertising must connect with the target audience, who will then pass it on, in order to have an impact.

I think that if it’s the former and we have changed the way we relate to brands, then this most certainly is the perfect time for Facebook’s rollout of it’s verb-based buttons – where all our actions are now branded. But I’m not sure if this is the case – are we happy that brands are part of our identity?

I see this self-branding happening a fair bit with my work, as I see a lot of teenagers on twitter. One thing I’ve noticed with their handles, is that a large percentage of them have usernames which are identifying themselves as a a follower of a certain brand: whether that’s a “Justin Bieber’s Wife”, “Big Brother 4 Eva” or “Mac fanboi” – teenager’s identities seem to be branded more than they used to be. Or is that just being a teenager, and weaving things you love into your life however you can – since we’re not simply limited to putting posters on our walls?

What do you think? Is this just a case of a favourite ad? Or is this a shift in the way we see ourselves?

Imagine if static ads in print or billboards could be flexible like this: it might be a generic ad for a brand, but AR can update with the latest sales, nearest locations, as Tesco has done, or even with films or TV shows, what the next episode is on an EPG. This could even pull in social data – such as ’5 of your friends like this brand’.

Looks like a pretty awesome opportunity to me!

-Rach.

Mashable reports: “This is especially true for owners of tablets and smartphones in the U.S., 40% of whom use their devices while watching TV on a daily basis, according to data from Nielsen. 

What are we doing on those devices? More than half of smartphone or tablet owners are checking email during programs and commercial breaks, while around 45% are surfing the web for unrelated information.”

Could this be an opportunity for television networks to take advantage of this trend and revitalize the dying art of the e-newsletter? What if it incorporated second screen activities relevant to the episode, or competition keywords?

What do you think?

- Rach.

Ps. This was blogged from my iPhone. Forgive any epic fails on quotage.

Zuckerberg announcing new profile at the f8 conference (photo source)

However, what I’m most interested in in a rundown of their new features as they affect Brands running things like Facebook Pages or Apps. Most information will come out in the next few days as people experiment with the features, but these appear to be the highlights:

For Fan Pages

Top Posts vs Most Recent: Posts with more engagement may enter the ‘top posts’ section, with ‘most recent’ being below it. The old News Stream would often hide a breaking news post until it had enough engagement (likes+comments) to warrant becoming part of the “Top Stories.” (via Lost Remote)

Does this mean that a Fan page with less interaction is more likely to be seen? Brian Carter from All Facebook says: “I am waiting for more data to see if yesterday’s changes will reduce the visibility of Facebook page posts to fans. I’ve heard anecdotally that this has happened for some, but we need more data to be sure.” Brian also says: “And the blending of recent and top news means that posting more often may give you an advantage. However, this is dangerous — don’t let the anxiety to post more make you post less engaging content, because that will hurt your feedback rate and could keep your posts from getting into Top News. The idea that posting more frequently will help you assumes that you are hitting an EdgeRank threshold that makes you visible to fans.”

It’s also worthwhile highlighting that Facebook’s algorithm is updated around ‘top posts’ and ‘most recent’ - this adjusts according to how recently people visit Facebook. A post with high interaction for the week might be what appears in someone’s newsfeed if they visit weekly, but they might be more likely to see daily or hourly updates from a Brand if they return multiple times a day.

For Apps

The new OpenGraph:

According to Mashable: Facebook is launching a new Open Graph for developers to build apps that allow users to share whatever they are doing without overwhelming their friends. It has three key components:

- Apps no longer have to ask for permission to post content to Facebook over and over again. Instead, a new Facebook permissions screen explains exactly what type of stories will be shared the first time you give an app permission to post to your Facebook. Once completed, it will no longer have to ask for permission

- Updates through the new Open Graph appear in the ticker automatically, but do not appear in the News Feed unless it’s an important event. This makes it easy to discover new content from your friends in real time.

- Users can share experiences, such as listening to music, through the new Facebok Open Graph and the ticker.

Facebook divided the types of apps that will be built on its platform into four buckets: Communication, Games, Media and Lifestyle.

All app notifications enter the stream: once you authorize this new level of sharing within an app, everything you do within that context will appear in the real-time ticker on Facebook. Your friends will see these updates in their real-time tickers. There is no ‘share’ button. (via Lost Remote) It also appears that apps may have their own widget with updates on the profile: or so it appears in this video and in the image below –  a screenshot from the new profile  demo.

Introducing Timeline – Apps

Experiencing online content in realtime: Hulu, Netflix and Washington post have apps which when notifications come up in that a friend is viewing content, the friend can watch the same episode themselves, chatting along with you on Facebook while they watch. Same goes for music (Spotify, etc.) and news (Washington Post, etc.) (via Lost Remote)

The Social Graph has verbs other than ‘Like’: Now you’ll be able to eat a meal, hike a trail, and so on. This means Facebook is adding verbs to the connections — verbs in the social graph, says Mashable. We’ve seen this in the video demos where if a friend is listening to music, you can hit ‘listen’ and listen also. This is pushing word-of-mouth messaging of brands by interacting with content to the forefront – not just Liking status updates.

GraphRank is EdgeRank for Apps: if your friends interact with an app, you’re more likely to see it in your newfeed. (Or at least, this is the way I interpret the post from EdgeRank Checker.)

The verdict?

We just don’t know yet how these changes will impact the way we can communicate with Fans. There if certainly a push towards more realtime app intergration – so will brands without apps be left in the cold?

Brian Carter says about the changes to Facebook: ”Fundamentally, these ranks serve to tell Facebook when to tell your connections about your activities (either as a profile or a page). So if you continue to do things that cause interest and engagement, you will continue to get visibility.”

So at the moment, continue to engage fans and keep track of what is working via analytics and we’ll understand how Fan Pages are affected on Facebook more in time.

Got an update or a better way to explain some of the changes? Chuck em in the comments.

-Rach.

While the video views and celeb involvement from celebrities tweeting in will call this campaign a success from  a numbers perspective, and the zany story arcs (including time travel) will definitely push it into meme-territory, I felt it really didn’t live up to expectations (and I’m not talking about Fabio’s awkward acting.)

I felt that this campaign very much dove into the “interactive fiction” realm – wherein the plotline could be dictated by the audience, with parallel stories which didn’t matter which order they were watched in, the only aspects which are concrete to plot are the beginning and end (and in the world of social media where videos are shared independently of each other, ideally, these aspects wouldn’t matter so much or would be easy to access).

However, this second Old Spice campaign didn’t quite pull it off in regards to linking relevant videos together, especially as the ‘related videos’ really wasn’t doing it’s job. I felt that in it’s execution it really struggled to create an easily consumed order to the videos, and it seemed more like putting the videos online in a short turnaround time was more important that any coherency for the audience.

I found it really hard to find the original challenge video and the response, which genuinely felt like I’d walked into a movie in the final scene. There was no promotion or hotlinks to the beginning of the challenge, and it very much felt like if you’d missed the beginning, it didn’t matter, because there’s not turning back now. And while there was a playlist created where the first three videos did reference the beginning of the challenge; it omitted the very first challenge-call by Fabio, which was part of an on-air advertising campaign in the States.

It took me a fair while of searching to actually find the Fabio videos, which didn’t come up as related videos organically, which also meant that challenges couldn’t be compared (for example, the very awesome “I challenge you both to see who can paint a portrait of a kitten with Old Spice body wash the best. Go!” (embedded below. ;)).

I was surprised there wasn’t a microsite to put challenge videos side-by-side, and even more surprised that there was little-to-no hotlinking between videos, and where there was hotlinking, it looked very much like an afterthought (and only on some videos – and not necessarily on each pair, and hotlinks in different videos had different information – some linked to voting, some didn’t).

It was also very hard to tell which videos had both an Old Spice Guy version and a Fabio version, or which ones were standalone because of this lack of navigation between videos.

I understand that the power of this campaign was in the user interactivity and the somewhat stunning production turnaround time of the video creation, so I understand the shortfall when it came to the usability design.

However, as this is one of the most successful versions of a new kind of interactive fiction, I think it’s a pretty disappointing. There’s a beginning, a whole stack of rich paths to find in the middle, and an end. But finding that beginning, end, or even two related videos in this rich middle is a fair struggle.

I think that having a strategy around adding hotlinks at the end of each video really could have made this a lot more successful. Having the consistant information across each video would have made it a lot easier to navigate, such as ‘see the original declaration of war’, ‘see the related challenge’ and, possibly ‘vote on twitter here’.

I think it would also be great to have something to cement the longevity of it, such as ‘see the winner here’; or as a placeholder prior to the winner being announced, ‘see the winner announced on youtube.com/oldspice on the [date]‘. A link at the end of each video to ‘check out all of eg. Fabio’s videos’ could have also have created a lot more organic traffic, or, even a more effective video tagging on the YouTube videos.

I think it’s a really interesting time for experiments in storytelling across mediums, but I think that we need to set the bar a little higher when we consider the organic nature of sharing on social media and that context is robbed from a video when it is shared on Twitter or Facebook, which, I think, needs to be somehow reintegrated into the standalone products.

Maybe this integration wouldn’t work best as hotlinks; but as a cue, whether it’s a line in a script, a title bar in the video or even in the background graphic of YouTube channel, we need to consider the consumption of these videos both as a whole piece in it’s long-form story arc and also individually in it’s episodic components.

I’d like to think that Old Spice paves the way for more campaigns and storytelling of this kind, however, I’d hope that future stories also learn from what’s missing from a navigation or user-experience perspective.

So, if you missed it, here’s an overview of the whole story arc, which I haven’t seen anywhere on the web yet. Do check out the exceptionally acid-inspired ending to the finale – it’s pretty awesome.

The Intro

1) Fabio’s original challenge callout (Part of an on-air campaign)
2)  The Old Spice Guy accepts the challenge
3) The ad highlighting the duel
4) The Rules for Challenge by Old Spice Guy
5) The response to Rules for Challenge

The duels begin!

Check out the Old Spice YouTube channel for them all, but here’s one of my faves:

I challenge you both to see who can paint a portrait of a kitten with Old Spice body wash the best. Go!

I challenge you both to see who can paint a portrait of a kitten with Old Spice body wash the best. Go!

The Finale

6) The finale, with the winner (as voted by the public)

So, what are your thoughts on this campaign?

-Rach.