Written by Mihai Dragan on Friday, April 30th, 2010 ( Start discussion )
Tags: digital elections, intenet, politics
IAB UK publishes a fine report on the state of politics and elections in the Internet Era.
It’s interesting to see that the web brings power back to the mases and politicians down to ground level in the fight for power. What will the future bring? A total democracy? Rise of social power? Who knows…
What we do know is that the internet is changing all aspects of human interactions. Including structures of power and long lasting written and unwritten laws.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Tuesday, April 27th, 2010 ( One response )
Tags: growth, Mobile, search, social networks
If you are anything like me you check your Twitter DM’s and Facebook news before you get up in the morning. Aaand…I guess you are. Most of the millennials are. They spend so much time online that they cannot be disconnected. Enter: the mobile.
Mobile traffic has had an extraordinary growth in the past years. It grew so fast that it is estimated to exceed it’s current value 66 times by 2013. Yes, that would be 6600%. Not only that but it will account for almost 64% of all online traffic. In the world.
This has huge implications on all kinds of business. It affects advertising, it affects consumer behavior (no more over-priced tags as one could easily check online with friends or recommendation services). It also affects individual behavior and social norms.
But where did it came from?
Blame Facebook for this one. Not just Facebook actually. Reports show that most searched for terms are names of social networks. While this may be inconclusive I would ask you to analyse user behavior post-Google. Users search instead of tapping URLs. It’s easier and faster.
We are not just looking at correlation here. We are looking at the cause of the mobile growth. Peer pressure, constant need to update and stay in touch with online friends and followers pushes the mobile traffic forward.
Therefore - ask not what the mobile traffic can do for you, but where can you actually find this traffic useful. And the answer is – social networks.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Thursday, April 15th, 2010 ( Start discussion )
Tags: cfw, cluj fashion week, finlandia
Finlandia decided to endorse Cluj Fashion Week. We thought about the Pure Vision concept turning interactive. The Pure live stream is now the connection to the fashion week for all those at home.
Want more interactivity? Tweet using #CFW, Cluj Fashion Week, and #CFW2010 and we make sure your tweets are seen live on the interactive screens in the location. Here’s a preview. More like a visual type of guy / gal ? Add a Pure Photo on the Flickr Group and get your picture shown on the wall.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 ( Start discussion )
Tags: experiment, facebook, myoritza, share, social media, twitter
My friends, today we made art. Mixed art. Transmedia art. Call it whatever but we took one of the oldest Romanian poems (Miorita – romanian for The Sheep – an allegory of life and death, crime and betrayal), mixed it with a little twitter API voodoo, added some cool and fresh design, social media sharing features and made it sparkle: I give you Myoritza 2.0.
The four characters in the Poem were given Twitter accounts and through a little programming magic we made sure they say their part just when they were supposed to.
It was really successful but stay tuned for this result. We had fun doing it, I know people had fun watching it.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 ( 2 responses )
Tags: incentives, interactive, maslow, online marketing
Having a look at Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (check it out on the right) I’ve noticed that the internet related advertising usually works on upscale needs such as self actualization, esteem, love, belonging, safety etc.
The finer the choices, the more the internet advertising can answer and relate to this needs. The two – way communication works best with upscale needs and probably upscale individuals: the influencers, the early adopters, the few.
The self actualization need, the “be all you can be”, the “discover your inner power” works best on the internet and it’s actually believable in a world where class, color, race, religion or income don’t matter. This is something the real world option can’t actually offer.
John Gerzema states that the recession has hit each and every one of us. “The times of leisure class marketing are behind us and the focus msut shift to addressing our essential needs” says John. While I cannot debate that I think that maybe, just maybe, it’s just the real world that won’t provide means of reaching higher ambitions to people. The internet will.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 ( Start discussion )
Tags: martie, martisor, social media, viral campaigns, widgets
There is a Romanian tradition called Martisor. It celebrates the coming of spring, rebirth and others. Men buy women little (usually hand made) jewels and flowers. You can read a little more about it here.
We got inspired about the red and white thread that accompanies this tradition. So we made a little widget people can post on their blogs and web pages. I use one on the blog too. Check it out in the right upper area. If you visit the minipage you can read the text saying “We wish you many new years. Tangle our thread around your website. It doesn’t have any magical properties, bringing you countless visitors to the website but it’s pretty good at showing what this celebration is about: new beginnings and fulfillment. All you have to do is copy the html code below in your template files.”
It was pretty fun doing it and it really caught up. Up to 400 websites, blogs and social media profiles adopted the virtual “Martisor”. In just 5 days we’ve served around 250 000 virtual “Martisoare”. And counting.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010 ( Start discussion )
Tags: internet, new-age, social system, utopia
Or rather … the country. The continent. The world of the Internet.
A rather interesting idea crossed my mind last night. I was thinking about the global challenges that humanity is facing today. The ones we all know about: global warming, crash of the economy as we knew it, globalization, unequal distribution of wealth (read some about it here) and many others.
I thought about the ants. As individuals they are insignificant. As a group they are amazing. They construct structures we are not able to (maintaining the proportions). They are organized and act as a whole organism.
So do humans, but with one big issue – the communication. We worked pretty well in tribes, cities but now we have to communicate globally. Our social structures are expanding. The rules we use to organize do not apply any longer. What rules should we establish now?
The mind of the many
The internet is a chaotic and at the same time a self organizing thing. A brain if you like. Its neurons are the people that use it. The connections – its synapses. We started thinking globally and not just as a metaphor.
We might now use this concept and develop it. We could create a new country, a new continent, with new rules that apply to new times.
This structure would not be one led by governments but by the best performing citizens, just as our brain controls our body. There won’t be any taxes that we don’t already pay. The economics would be self balancing and self adjusting.
Social status would not matter. What would matter would be the outcome of one’s efforts. The best intellectuals, the best concepts would rise to the top, no matter the race, sex or ethnicity.
The system would be called Internetism, the social system that gathers the best of previous ones.
Is it an utopia or a reality we are yet to accept?
Written by Mihai Dragan on Monday, January 18th, 2010 ( Start discussion )
Tags: infrastructures, Interactive Advertising, new media, social media
I have been studying the whole concept behind Zynga’s recent success (Farmville, Mafia Wars etc.) and I just can’t stop thinking about how interesting it is.
Basically all of the other online games used to draw users to a social infrastructure (user accounts, social networks etc.) build on their own. The great thing about Zynga is that it targets already built social infrastructures (like Facebook, the iPhone AppStore). It lowers costs and it increases exposure and potential revenue.
What if brands would use the social networks to market products just like Zynga markets their games?
Written by Mihai Dragan on Saturday, January 9th, 2010 ( 3 responses )
Tags: advertising, brands, interactive, interactive vs conventional, media, startups, website
The website as we know it, at least as a concept, is dying. It has been for the last 5-8 years and now its death is even closer. Let me explain.
A site on the web
If you think about the term it is composed of two words that explain what the concept represents pretty good. A place on the web. It was the perfect way to introduce the concept to the general public. People were already accustomed with the concept of “site”: be it a store, library, house – each of these were built upon a “site”. People would access this site using a address or, in the internet world, a URL.
As with physical address users would visit a certain (or more) sites, based upon their previous experience, friends recommendations and more. In the economic world brands got used to “kindly invite” (or not so kindly as some interactive advertising techniques show us) to the homepage and the user would browse around, consume content and hopefully come back.
The shift in user behavior
That was the case back in the day when the websites count reached numbers of, let’s say, tens or even hundreds of millions of pages. A lot you say. “A more recent study, which used Web searches in 75 different languages to sample the Web, determined that there were over 11.5 billion Web pages in the publicly indexable Web as of the end of January 2005″ states Wikipedia. And that, my friends, was 2005.
What is a user to do in such an environment. Browse? To hard. Visit the same websites? Extremely limiting.
The first big online brand to address this issue was Yahoo that started as a recommendation website founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo. For a short period they had a boom and people would relate to what Yahoo! as a helpful resource in the online jungle.
Things got bigger and bigger. The internet expanded and users needed even more. They needed answers, they needed something to guide them to what they were looking for. Thus Google started a long and successful journey that led to a multi-billion enterprise. Google helped by pinpointing exactly the website on was interested in. And people were thrilled.
Has the internet stopped there? Hell, no.
More and more information hit the interwebs. What was once a resource for mainly text and image documents had turned into the worlds biggest collection of data. Be it photos, documents, books, videos – the world started storing its information in the big reservoir that we call Internet.
So many options, so little time. What to choose?
Going back to basics
People relate to their closest human peers in times of doubt. Not even the mighty Google could replace a kind word or the warm advice a friend is able to offer.
But our friends were already there. People gathered in online social networks and interacted. They would recommend the things they liked asked for advice when needed.
It started with forums, continued with blogs, hit new heights in human interaction with social networks such as social networks and now we have Twitter, the global phenomenon that let people tell one another what are they doing (be it watching TV or fighting a dictatorial regime). Under 140 chars.
Follow the users
The fact is no one ever needed websites. They needed “stuff”. They were on the look for data, a nice gift to buy grandma on her 76th anniversary, a fun video to watch, the coolest hit to download. Never for a simple website.
Being focused on the industry of interactive advertising I will focus on brands and maybe offer good advice. Brands need to realize that their users and potential consumers don’t actually need another website. They need what they want. They want fast answers, they want brands to “follow” or “befriend” them, not the other way around. They have the options and they have the power to select.
Brands are not what they used to be. At this moment the vast majority of Brands are still the big Advertisers that still expect to spend money on big media advertisements and have consumers lining up to their store or website (notice I use the terms pretty close to one another. They are.).
This is not the way. Huge opportunities await those that will follow their users, build presence around their users and still maintain brand awareness and a coherent communication plan.
A short example and some advices
I reached Zynga Poker on Facebook. Played around a little bit on the Facebook app they’ve built. Downloaded the application on my iPhone and bought virtual upgrades with real money. Until today, I have never visited their website. Zynga is a startup that has revenues in the orders of tens of millions of dollars (and growing).
I will leave you with some advices I consider helpful:
- Think outside the website.
- Be present in the social media.
- Stop thinking advertising. Think relationships.
- Build mobile applications.
- Study your market. Close. Closer.
- Develop intelligent applications.
- Let people play with your brand.
- Cut the TV ad budget. Cut the radio and print ad budget. Move online.
- Let people find you on the search engines.
- Follow your consumers and let them follow you.
Written by Mihai Dragan on Friday, August 21st, 2009 ( Start discussion )
Tags: art, interaction, longest poem in the world, social media, twitter, ugc
My colleague, Andrei Gheorghe (@idevelop), got featured on CNN and The Telegraph with his latest social media experiment, The Longest Poem in the World.
The experiment gathers status updates from Twitter users, mixing them in a 347430 verses (so far) piece of art.
“I soon found that people were very excited to be part of this and consider it some form of artistic expression of the collective consciousness of Twitter.” declared Andrei for the Telegraph.
This is not the first time Andrei experimented with social media interaction. His Quizoo game was a hit when launched.
If you find the idea interesting, don’t forget to digg it.
