Archive for March 2009
These 5 Articles were Worth Reading during the Last Few Days
Been swamped with work lately, which has allowed for very little blogging time. These are the links I've found most interesting the last few days.
- ReadWriteWeb writes about how Flickr users tend to use the most restrictive Creative Commons license. I would think it's still a learning process for many, so I'd say the future of sharing and being creative on the nets is brighter than ever.
- Ever dreamed about being able to recall a sent e-mail? Now you can in Gmail - for 5 seconds (Mashable).
- Jeremiah Owyang thinks PR agencies could be representing communities rather than brands in the future. Crazy maybe?! An important part of Owyang's thoughts is the respect for the community – I'm certain that the PR industry needs to put a bigger focus on understanding communities than it is today.
- Seth Godin says that a social media site needs 5 pillars to be successful. Over simplified? Probably, but still worth a read.
- The White House put up a site, OpenForQuestions, where people could post questions and vote which question they thought was important. Another brilliant example of increasing the democracy (ReadWriteWeb).
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Jung at Home #1
Today we're hosting the first volume of a series of breakfast seminars about digital media. The topic of today is how a digital presence helps you avoid online crisis. (The seminar is in Swedish.)
Do You Service Your Customers Enough?
Photo: Ben30
Customer support is hotter than ever before, something I repeat like a broken record when I present about digital media. The key message is that an organization's digital presence is a main foundation to their customer relations. The digital presence could be of many different shapes and sizes, however a presence is needed even if it only consists of a monitoring service.
There are several recent examples of the trend as well.
- Salesforce recently added Twitter to its customer support tool, something both Steve Rubel and Jeremiah Owyang wrote about. With customers communicating faster and more often, organizations need to be present in new platforms. (Swedish search engine Twingly posted about the microblogging topic on their blog.)
- The CEO of US shoe company Zappos, says customer service is the foundation of their business model. With that in place they could be selling anything – like plane tickets.
- Swedish travel organizer Fritidsresor offers a money back guarantee to people who have lost their jobs. They won't make money off it initially, but they will build a closer relationship with their customers who will want to come back.
What are your best customer service cases?
Sheep LED Display
We took to the hills of Wales armed to the teeth with sheep, LEDs and a camera, to create a huge amazing LED display. Of sorts. For more info search for Samsung LED TV or visit samsung.com/LED
Best/most unconventional flatscreen-display ad since the Bravia masterpiece?
These 5 Articles Were Worth Reading during the Week
- Blogger of Bloggers Robert Scoble leaves FastCompany
- British newspaper Independent writes a story about why Sweden rules the web (don't miss the angry Danish comment on the piece).
- Google Reader launches comments. Another place to comment? More the reason to learn Friendfeed...
- Steve Rubel writes about how Twitter search could soon be bigger than blog search.
- British newspaper The Guardian launches an API to get 3rd party developers to use their content. NY Times did it earlier. Now, these guys are trying to find new business models.
Jung Digital Featured in Swedish Marcom Magazine Resumé
Swedish marcom mag, Resumé, today has a feature on Jung's digital crew. There is still no online version available, the above screenshot is from the PDF version.
Readability - Another Reason for Online Newspapers to Look For New Biz Models
Readability is a service to make online text more readable by extracting the text from a blog or news site, thereby removing cluttering objects such as banners. The popular ad-blockers have been around for a while, and Readability creates yet another threat to online newspapers. The existing ad-centred business models are being attacked from all ends, and as I've said before – online users do tend to do whatever they want with content.
Adblock Plus has been downloaded 43 million times, at a pace of 500,000 times per week. It is still a minority of internet users that disconnects the content from the ads through ad-blockers or services such as Readability. However, I'd suggest that media that wants to keep making money online start thinking about how that could be done when more people are finding out about these ad removing services.
There is an ongoing discussion about whether or not it is moral to remove ads. Hoping for people to stick to good manners could be sufficient for some online media that has an incredibly tight relationship with their readers, but it will certainly not do it for your everyday online news paper.
The Second Life Fever — R.I.P
The most interesting community hype this century — no questions asked — is the Second Life fever.
It swept like a freezing november storm thru-over the Seas of Internets. Some were more fascinated than others, and Swedish record company manager Bert Karlsson got totally into it. Bert started his own, Swedish, Second Life clone. And then, made the most ambitious promotion trailers ever.
Touché!
ICYou. Swedish Promo, featuring Bert Karlsson.
ICYou. "Cinematic" in English.
Mark Cuban goes Wikinomics
Internet billionaire (and b-ball fan!) Marc Cuban on 9 February launched a venture capital initiative he calls Open Source Funding. Cuban's description of the initiative:
"You must post your business plan here on my blog where I expect other people can and will comment on it. I also expect that other people will steal the idea and use it elsewhere. That is the idea. Call this an open source funding environment."
The post has to this date received 1,948 comments and around 1,400 proposals. Cuban posted an update on the project a few days ago, naming four projects he is pursuing.
Open Source Funding is a great example of Wikinomics in action, and could be inspiring business leaders around the world to open up their organisations towards a culture of sharing.
There is a Magic Check Icon in my Google Reader
For some time I have been wondering what the check icon is doing in my Google Reader. There is no apparent function when clicking it, expect making the icon red.
Lately I have also noticed that some posts don't get the magic check icon, also for no apparent reason. These posts are from the same feed as posts that do get the magic check icon treatment.
Anybody got a clue what the function is or why some posts don't get marked with the icon?
[Update] I received the answer by @Eskapism on Twitter. And the answer is not flattering for me. The check mark is from the Firefox extension Read It Later that I installed some time ago (yep, I'm a Firefox junkie). Having looked into the functions of RIL, it is brilliant. Mark posts that you want to read when you have time for it - online or offline.
Skittles Consumers Became Their New Copywriters
For years, Skittles has encouraged consumers to "Taste the Rainbow." Now, the candy brand wants people to "Chat the Rainbow."
The new Skittles.com features content about the candy created by its consumers on a host of social media sites, including Google’s YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo’s Flickr photo site. On Monday, the content of the site was pulled from Twitter. Any Twitter user who mentioned the word “Skittles” was featured on the Skittles home page.
Flickr Culture Triology pt. 1: Minor Urban Disasters Are Everywhere
Photo: Ariel Chico
Do you remember the times when people asked you about your favorite website? Ten years later and in the sign of the chunkified web, this question feels quite outdated. But — there is one single site out there, that unquestionably is my second home, and that's Flickr.
The world's best photo and multimedia community has got so much love to give. The people creating the brilliant content has resulted in a unique atmosphere.
This is the first episode of Jung's Flickr culture trilogy. Today we are going to take a look on Minor Urban Disasters, and that's a phenomena a whole lot more fun than it seems to be at first sight.
London based Sascha Pohflepp started the Flickr Pool (that is sort of a "group" in general community terms) Minor Disasters about two years ago, and it's a little tribute to those small everyday failures. Subtle and amazing in a witty way.
Visit the MinorUrbanDisasters Pool on Flickr.