How The Arts Can Use Social Media
David Moore is evidently quite the hip hop dance teacher. In fact, after watching about a dozen of his videos on YouTube, I think he’s damned amazing. There are dance classes in my town. I have a six year old daughter. She might enjoy this.
Look where my head goes when I look at someone’s class. I investigate because it’s visual (and you could do this with audio, too. Don’t forget my friend Grace Nikae). I get excited, and I start thinking about me, and my family, and things that might relate to me.
If this moves me to spend money (and it might), why wouldn’t you consider this for your small business, especially if it’s visual.
Watch David. Then tell me what you think.
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Why Pirates are Necessary
Superstar pirate chronicler Matt Mason has released a video bit to go with his nifty book. Check it out here.
If you’ve yet to read it, I strongly recommend picking up The Pirate’s Dilemma. Thank goodness for Whitney Hoffman, else I wouldn’t have read this book. She’s a great book recommender.
Making Money Isnt Evil
This is the “jolt” presentation I gave at PAB2008 this year. WARNING: LOTS OF SWEARING and I apologize for that, because I had just listened to Neil Gorman’s presentation and he swore a lot, and well, I took it into my ranting exploration of the fact it’s not evil to make money. It’s just under 10 minutes, captured on Ustream.tv via Christopher S. Penn.
Basically, pay attention to this one thing: it’s not evil to want to make money, but be very wary how you try to do this off your community.
Weezer Gets it All Right
This is brilliant. Check out just how many of the popular Internet videos get wrapped into this video. Like we’re not going to spread the hell out of this thing FOR them. That’s the take away point. Make something we love, and we’ll do your work for you.
Look for Tay Zonday, Peanut Butter Jelly Time, Chris Crocker, Numa Numa guy, and so many more.
Hat tip to Andrew Baron , where I first saw it.
Music News
My musical friend from the north, Jay Moonah, shared proof that his legacy will indeed be passed to his beautiful child. Believe me when I say that this has everything to do with the power of social media on the way our lives are shaped.
And if you disbelieve, it’s just a really cute baby video. Either way, I wanted to share.
Magnify Goes to the Blogs
Magnify.net, known for their ability to collect and curate video content into groups on their own site, have brought some really intriguing features to Movable Type and WordPress in their new Magnify Publisher application.
It’s all in the little orange button in this pic (click to see bigger):
I’ve tried it live. You click the button, throw a search term into the box, and pow, out comes video options from multiple platforms, including YouTube, Blip, etc, etc. Tons. Want a photo? They’re integrated with Flickr. ( Not sure how it handles Creative Commons issues, now that I think about it, but that’s fixable, if not already on board). I think more photo integrations come next.
So, imagine this: you’re writing your blog post, decide you want a recent video of Obama talking about economic issues. Search, select, click embed, and pow. All done inline. I think it’s cool. Oh, and if you want to record video on the fly, there’s an inline tool that lets you do that, too. No jumping off the page. Just works right there, on site.
I saw this quote from Anil Dash from SixApart in the Press Release:
“Bloggers in our Movable Type community have consistently told us that their readers respond to posts with relevant videos and photos, so we’re always looking for ways to make rich media easier to find and share” said Six Apart’s Anil Dash. “Magnify Publisher makes that process extremely easy, providing an integrated application that lets bloggers discover, share or even create multimedia content right from within the familiar Movable Type interface.”
Friends of mine, like Justin and Eric from GimpTV really swear by Movable Type as a publishing platform, and because they’re video guys, maybe this works out even better for them. Me? I’m a WordPress user, and Steve Rosenbaum told me they’re pretty much ready to go with the same tool for WordPress, so I’m looking forward to getting that up and running on my site.
Nothing specific is up on the site yet, or I missed it, but hey, swing by Magnify.net and look for yourself. Say hi to Steve for me.
Off Topic- This Robot Scares the Christmas Out of Me
My robotics friend, David, sent me this video. In his typically soft-spoken way, he also agrees this looks spooky.
How does this relate to social media? I’ll stretch it. Because of YouTube, I didn’t have to see this in the news. I can share it with you. You can share it with others, re-blog, etc, etc. Portable media. Hmm. Now that would make a great expo, wouldn’t it?
Jeff Pulver Launches PrimeTimeRewind
Serial entrepreneur, visionary, friend, and previous boss of mine, Jeff Pulver formally launched his new venture, PrimeTimeRewind.tv, from the floor of VON.x, his IP communications conference. The goal of the new site is to make it easier to find the Internet equivalent of the major TV shows right on the web. There’s already a pretty decent bunch of content up on the site, and I find spinning that cube (pictured above) to be a very interesting interface.
Jeff and I worked in and around the Internet TV space over the later part of 2006 and all through 2007, and I’m really excited that this project has launched. It’s in Alpha, but I think it has the potential to appeal to people seeking mainstream TV content. It will be interesting to see where the site goes next, but I’m excited to see it launched and off the ground. Amit Shafrir, former president of premium services from AOL, is serving as CEO. I wish the whole team well.
PrimeTimeRewind.tv <- go spin the cube yourself.
Five Levels of Social Conversation
Friend, deep thinker, and prolific email friend, Bill Cammack and I were talking about how people use things like Seesmic and other media to make conversations. I told him my theory that I like to believe there are five general categories of conversation out there. Bill asked me if I’d blogged about it, so here it is.
Five Levels of Social Conversation
I believe there are roughly five levels at which we communicate on tools like Seesmic or Utterz or Twitter (to a lesser extent):
- My Dog Has Fleas - baseline social conversation. No different than what would be said in line at a grocery store, and not usually that interesting.
- Let’s Talk About X - conversation, but hit or miss on real insight.
- Hacks and Energy - lots of good stuff, still a little hit or miss, but with more engaged/engaging types. (Not sure why I call it hacks, but I mean when you suddenly get into a bit of fast energy flow).
- Production - people who understand the medium and are “making” something, but who aren’t into conversation, per se. (like Internet TV shows.)
- Serious and Deep - rarest of the rare.
Most of my conversations probably fall into 2 and 3. Sometimes I produce something, too, but not so often. Am I serious and deep on the web? Not usually in video.
What do you think? Am I missing anything? Is this silly?
Thanks for the email, Bill. I’ll reply on that a little later.
Photo credit, Bill Cammack.
OoVoo- Video Chatting for 2008
OoVoo is a desktop software application that allows people to chat with up to five others (six total) using video, text, and I believe audio (though I didn’t try an audio only connection). Yesterday, I took part in My OoVoo Day with a bunch of other bloggers and media makers. It was basically a bunch of scheduled chats with people using the technology.
My first thought was that it was like Stickam and/or maybe like PalTalk, only with a slightly different mindset. It’s shiny. There are lots of buttons to push. There’s a fairly simple (fairly) social communication tool.
It worked okay for a six way chat early on. The errors people experienced were mostly bandwidth related, it seemed. I think Mac users get a slightly less robust experience (grumble, grumble), but otherwise, it worked-ish. Jeff Glasson from PerkettPR (on a Mac) had a rough time, but I think that’s him. : )
What I Don’t Like
- Client-side app made it one more communications box open (like Skype, AIM, etc). But hey: video *ON* the net is tricky stuff. That’s why there’s a conference about it in May. (plug plug for Jeff).
- I didn’t like that PCs can record and Macs can’t. Parity, folks. Especially in the hungry blogger crowd. We’re all (okay, mostly) using Macs.
- I don’t know why I’ll use it. I mean, I get it, but I’m not sure how often I’ll use it. (But that’s me.)
What It Will/Can Do
Videobloggers can use it as a way to hold video interview panels easily. People can do ad hoc face-to-face moments. It’s much less expensive than pro conference services.
My vote? It’s okay. Not sure I’m an adopter, but that’s not saying it’s bad. I just need to find the right use case for when I need a group video platform.
What did you think?
(Oh, and props to Scott Monty of Crayon for really rocking the campaign and getting lots of people into the experience. THAT was a raging success).
