People Staring at Computers

"If we could see what our computers see, would we stare differently?"

- Kyle McDonald

Track the project on the People Staring at Computers Tumblr page.

Google+ Could Change PR and Influencer Marketing

It's been awhile since I've written in, mainly because Cannes eats all will to live. Since recovering I've been fooling around with Google+, trying to decide where it fits into my life.

The super-short first impression: Google+ goes right where Google Wave went wrong. This time around, it's hitting all the right buttons, especially where privacy and ease of use are concerned.

Early on, adding random people to "Circles" (the idiot-proof version of Facebook's wildly complex Privacy settings), I got the sense it would change my web experience. Enough time has passed since that implications for marketers remain speculative but generally agreed-upon:

• The +1 feature may change the face of SEO, tilting it further away from black-hat marketing tactics and more in favour of content usefulness.
• Its ease of use and potential to scale will make the data accrued on it increasingly important for social media monitoring.
• Content engagement is significant. It's easy enough to +1 something, but it's also re-enlivening comment culture. I made one comment today on a totally innocuous post and people from all over the sphere are leaping onto the stream, adding value to an article that would have gone unnoticed on Twitter, or that wouldn't have received much response on a blog.
• This is a new avenue for influencer marketing. And while influencers may remain roughly the same, its unity of multiple useful Google properties will change how we treat content being shared there. To wit:

In terms of feel, posting on Google+ is about as easy as on Twitter, with a final publishing result that more resembles Tumblr or Posterous. Images and videos are beautifully presented.

It also has an advantage over such platforms in the sense that you don't have to work so hard at outset to build your community -- nearly everybody uses Gmail and is hankering for an in. (In Early Adopter-land, anyway.) Days after joining, over 100 people added me to their streams -- well before I'd posted anything, and most were people I knew and had already engaged with previously. That's a good figure.

As previously mentioned, Google properties like Picasa and YouTube are automatically integrated -- so if you're not already a user of these services, they are instantly more accessible. I generally favour Flickr and Vimeo but have already tested the photo-upload feature, which is ridiculously simple. Presentation is great and privacy settings are intuitive. This has basically made me a Picasa user overnight, and I'll probably use this for quicker video uploading and sharing, too (which will likely resuscitate my dead YouTube account).

I said in the title of this post that this could also change PR. When you write about ads and technology, you're heavily reliant on imagery and videos -- tools that help illustrate the merits of a product, service or campaign. Email is the traditional darling for getting PR messages across, but it isn't great for scrolling through imagery or videos in an intuitive way -- you usually have to leave your email client. And then there is the question of organising PR notices that you mean to cover, but never do, because it gets lost in your email.

These problems don't exist with Google+. (Not yet, anyway.) PR folks can write a quick piece, add imagery and videos in a snap, and publish only to a circle of journalist contacts (or the wider public). The publishing style feels like Facebook but is less ephemeral -- it is easy for people to skim, copy/paste from and return to later, making it more like Tumblr but in a closed ecosystem with great scale.

Then there is the "Hangout" feature, which enables you to video chat with up to about 10 people. Nice option for briefings, meetings ... or hell, just hanging out.

The main reason I think Google+ is interesting is because the barrier to entry is low, potential to scale is high and usability is fantastic. I can see people compulsively using this the same way they compulsively use Facebook, except they don't necessarily have to leave universes that are important, like Gmail or Google Docs. This is a bit like what Rockmelt tried to do except you had to download a new browser -- a small but irritating obstacle to use, which Google has the luxury of being able to skip.

It's also directly linked to the identities of most people via their email, connecting their social activity to their existing Google profiles and producing a broad picture of who you are and what you're doing on the Web. This also minimises spam inside the platform.

One critique thus far. My impression is that you can upload to your Google+ via mobile, but only from Android. That's not necessarily bad news, given that Android adoption is exploding, but it does cut out tech-savvy compulsive socialites who are anchored to iPhone or other smartphone platforms. Google's attitude is historically more open than its peers, so I hope this changes once confidence in the viability of Google+ grows.

Technology, Solution Transfer + Changing Human Expectations

If you don't know what this is, my heart weeps for you.

A few people have expressed concern about me going off the political deep-end.

I want to clarify something very important: Egypt at present is a topic of political relevance, but that's a little bit too simple. What's happening there is also a story about people manipulating a code that they were not intended to control. Crucially, they feel like they have the right to do it.

That teaches us important - and critical - lessons about how today's mainstream technology is affecting us and our expectations as hackers people. You know that this is true; you see it in enterprises that increasingly believe "getting" social media, or at least seeming to, is a dealbreaker, and it is. You knew that too.

Two days ago I was asked whether I agree Twitter can be considered "the voice of the people," and if so, whether I believe "Twitter" can construct a government. It's a question that immediately brings to mind the arbitrariness and disorganisation of the social networks that we frequent so often.

But it's condescending to leave it at that. Why have these particular social networks become so integral to communications?

Humor me ››

The Andes Friend Recovery Robot

Del Campo Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi follows up on last year's epic Teletransporter effort with the equally appealing Friend Recovery robot from Andes.

Its head even turns!

I can't wait for the day we can do this same thing, but with branded holographs. There must be a way. Free enterprise, make a way.

The Revolution, In Your Newsfeed

One of the most curious things Sandmonkey said during this week's AdVerve was that the Revolution in Egypt was posted as a Facebook event before it began.

In the same spirit, an apartment in the middle of Cairo has become a crashpad for young Egyptians taking a break from the protests (16 days and counting) to broadcast everything happening on the ground floor to Facebook. The Group on which they leave their daily testimonials is called Tahrir Square, and the "About Me" section says plenty in three small words: "The misunderstood movement..."

The page is cool because the perspectives are so diverse. It's also another example of what vocal social media users in Egypt have tried painstakingly to do: correct misunderstandings about what is happening, emphasise their unity and reiterate their why's.

This is an articulate revolution, composed of people who thought about their reasons, and the consequences of their failure, before committing themselves.

For more ongoing up-to-date information, balance whatever news you're reading with Al Jazeera English. It's updated daily and providing good coverage of day-to-day developments and the significance of small occurrences. I also highly recommend you follow @sandmonkey on Twitter: he's publishing and RTing information near-compulsively. What he's seeing and writing about have served as eyes for many who can't be in Egypt.

If Your Platinum Grill Isn't Blinding Enough...

...I guess you could always put LED lights in your mouth.

It's not like we have anything better to do than report about it. And think how frightened Großmutter will be!

Developed by Japanese designers Motoi Ishibashi and Daito Manabe, the idea hatched when Ishibashi saw a video of LED throwies, little lights that can be fixed to a magnet and thrown onto metal surfaces, basically the gadget bastard of confetti and graffiti.

The LED smile devices affix easily to teeth and glow different colours when you smile. The colours can be changed wirelessly with a computer interface (as appears above).

Humor me ››

'A Life on Facebook' Sweeps 3.65M Views in a Week

Longtime CG artist Maxime Luère recently struck gold when he recently uploaded his second YouTube video of all-time: "A Life on Facebook."

On the creator: Remember that Lacoste Future video from '08, where the tennis player had that mask thing on his face and digital ads in his shoes? That was Luère's doing. You can see more of what he's done, and his specialities, on his website.

On the video: Set to a toe-tappity beat that builds, the film depicts the story of a coed-cum-man, told from the narrative frame of Facebook. He finds love, burns it, razes rather publicly through a pile of girls, lifts a glass to his lips fairly often, and finally finds love again. (On Facebook, of course.) But that's only half the yarn.

Its resonance to users raises interesting conversations about where Facebook is going and its place in our lives. "Very cool," said reader Atif Chaudhry of the video (on my Facebook wall, no less!). "BUT will we really be using 'this' facebook in 5, 10, 15, 25 years from now? We'll all have moved on to something better..or facebook will evolve to suit [our] needs better..."

In our minds, this is just an expression of the phases of life on Facebook today: that forming couple, your drunk coed neighbours, a young bachelor fooling around, that chick who's constantly posting pictures of her pregnant stomach. There's our parents, and those new parents who are so into their babies that they flood your feed with his colic, gas or compulsive thumb-sucking. There's the wanderlusters who do their best to turn every historic piece of scenery into a backdrop for their own enviable selfhood.

It's everybody's story, told on one of the most relatable narrative devices today. And it's okay if that device is ephemeral; that doesn't make it any less pertinent to the culture, much of which is sustained by the data-vomit and voyeuristic lurking that happens in that endless sea of violet blue pages. (Luère makes that very banality look deliciously rock-'n-roll, even epic. That's the talent of the storyteller.)

Since its appearance last week, "A Life on Facebook" has garnered 3.2 million views on YouTube and another 450,000 on vimeo (plus 3005 vimeo Likes). The wise Luère concluded it with a clever little signature inviting users to Like him on his own Facebook page, and as of this writing he's now the beloved of about 11,588 people.

That's a lot of visibility from a guy who's operated mostly under the radar.

Trust

Him: I need something to organize my spending and show where all the money goes.

Me: I use Mint. It's magic!

Him: What is that, a website?

Me: Yes! The interface is beautiful, it links to all your accounts and credit cards, everything is updated automatically and organized by expense type...

Him: You gave a WEBSITE all your financial account details?

Me: Well ... yeah. When you think about it, public sites are more incentivized than private persons to maintain security--

Him: I'm not like you. I can't just trust the internet.

Image credit: kloniwotski.

When Identity's à la Carte, Will There Be Room for You?

In "Drop Out," a doll struggles with who s/he is in a genetically-engineered world. A teeny watch, not too detailed, but trippy thought food nonetheless.

Also see the making-of chez The Curious Brain.