What do you get when you cross Facebook with Flickr? Pinterest, the hot new social networking site that lets users collect and share photos across the Internet.
Mashable, the source of all things digital, describes Pinterest as a “digital pinboard,” a place where users can connect to others through shared tastes and the images that fascinate them. Users create category-based boards and then pin images to them. They can populate those boards by finding media online or uploading their own artwork. The boards are visible to all users, who can repin images on their own boards, “like” those images and follow other users.
So what does an image-based social site look like? Let’s take a look at my boards. I started by collecting images in some of the preset categories such as “Favorite Places & Spaces.” After that I created a few categories like “Design” and populated them with Pinterest user images I thought were worth sharing. Finally, as a bruising cold spell swept across the Northeast, I uploaded a few original photos I’d taken last winter after a snowstorm. (I’m trying to go beyond the share-the-misery idea and find something positive about a foot or more of snow.)
A few hours after the photo went live Cassandra Gouws from Pretoria, South Africa repinned it for one of her collections labeled “Travel.” I’m returning the favor and following that board and one more called “Amazing Photography.”
What impact Pinterest will have on the social and business community is anyone’s guess. Mashable only started covering it last October. And at this point participation is by invitation only. But as of late last year some 30,000 people had downloaded the Pinterest app from iTunes. And Mashable has written a primer on its use.
Participating takes more work than Tweeting and yields a smaller audience than Facebook but the site may appeal to people who prefer visuals to text. And since one of the default categories involves favorite products, Pinterest is positioning itself for companies in the fashion and design industries.
As part of its 12 trends for 2012 Trendwatching.com has published a list of tech products that enable the monitoring, tracking and sharing of an individual’s health information. It’s called DIY health and it’s going to be big this year.
With the aid of a smartphone users can monitor and potentially diagnose issues with complete privacy, without visiting a healthcare provider. The irony is that the software will allow users to share that information with friends, family and physicians — and possibly device-makers and mobile-phone carriers.
What technology gives, technology takes away.
The gadgets include a wristband that tracks a user’s moving, eating and sleeping patterns; a cuff that plugs into an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch and takes the user’s blood pressure; and a trio of apps from Ford that allow in-car monitoring of chronic conditions such as diabetes and hay fever.
In case you think DIY health monitoring is a passing fad, Trendwatching says Apple’s App Store now offers 9,000 mobile health apps, a number that is expected to rise to 13,000 by the middle of the year.
BtoB firms plan to follow their BtoC cousins and spend more on social marketing over the next three years, according to a white paper by the American Association of Advertising Agencies.
The study quotes Forrester in predicting that by 2014, BtoB spending in social media will reach $54 million, up from the $11 million spent in 2010. BtoB magazine’s survey, “Emerging Trends in BtoB Social Marketing: Insights from the Field,” found that 93% of B2B marketers are involved to some degree in social media. And in BtoB’s “2011 Outlook” survey, 62.6% of marketers reported plans to increase their spending in social media channels this year.
“Although B2C and B2B companies use social media differently, many of its functions, such as monitoring competition, gaining customer feedback and building brand awareness really do apply to the marketing goals of both types of companies,” the 4As wrote.
“Of particular importance to BtoB marketers is determining if their social media efforts are paying off.” Marketers are tracking leads by looking at click-through rates and number of downloads, among other metrics–although fewer than half measure their efforts, according to a survey by BtoB magazine.
You think writers are the only ones concerned with telling a story? Listen to this.
Earlier this month three of six agency owners and recruiters interviewed by blogger Arik C. Hanson said the ability to tell a story was the leading trait they want to see in PR professionals. They believe storytelling reflects the facility to identify themes and execute a strategy. Yet when many of their peers screen applicants, they ask for experience that exactly matches the job they’re offering. They’re focused on the product, not the process, like the ability to build social networks, negotiate for information or get along with others.
For those in marketing communications, here’s the wake-up call: financial planners have discovered the power of story. In a column for MarketWatch, MIT’s AgeLab Director Joseph Coughlin said the traditional model of financial planning won’t work in these unsettling times. Neither will an appeal to reason through a recitation of statistics. He believes advisers who tell stories that elicit emotion and inspire people to act will achieve greater success–for their clients and themselves.
“We’ve got to be good storytellers to get that emotion, to make us relevant, responsive and realistic for what the consumer needs today to plan for tomorrow.”
Let’s hope the people who hire are willing to make that investment.
Today we find information directly through search engines or indirectly through social media contacts, but those processes narrow the chute from the beginning. Larsell says browsing offers value in that it opens us to chance and opportunity before we dig too deeply. “It allows an information seeker to expand organically upon an initial vague, often unarticulated need.”
In a phrase, browsing gives readers the big picture, not just the details, a critical advantage when starting a project. “Browsing gives information seekers a high-level sense of what exists within a collection, while presenting easy entry points to explore the unknown. It also allows for lesser-known works to stand alongside — and compete with — the more canonical ones they resemble.”
Online retailer Amazon.com said today that it’s selling more electronic books than printed versions. The company says it sells 105 e-books for every 100 physical copies it sells.
Next Tuesday rival Barnes & Noble will ratchet up the competition when it introduces a new generation Nook e-reader to compete with Amazon’s Kindle.
B&N chief executive William Lynch told the Wall Street Journal that despite a late start his company has captured 25% of the digital books market. It has also grabbed a good chunk of the market for electronic magazine subscriptions. “We’ve also sold more than 1.5 million magazine subscription orders and single copy sales on the Nook newsstand.”
The irony of Tuesday’s announcement (or maybe the marketing strategy) is that it happens during the week of BookExpo America (BEA), which bills itself as the largest publishing event in North America. It has traditionally promoted paper copies. This year BEA will co-host a session on electronic publications with the IDPF Digital Book Conference 2011, at the Javits Center in New York City.
Tom Wujec stands before the crowd at this year’s TED conference and talks about a tool that restores balance to the team-building process. As he says on his website, the Marshmallow Challenge is a “fun and instructive design exercise that encourages teams to experience simple but profound lessons in collaboration, innovation and creativity.”
But it’s more than that.
The task looks simple: in 18 minutes, teams must build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string and one marshmallow. The marshmallow needs to be on top. And after 18 minutes, it needs to stay there.
The real lesson has as much to do with creativity as with collaboration, as Wujec shows when he reveals who does well and who doesn’t during the challenge. The worst performers are recent graduates of business schools. The best performers are architects and engineers — no upset there. The surprise is that after that group, the best performers are kindergarten students.
Wujec is a fellow at Autodesk, which makes software for the design and engineering community, so he should know about visual collaboration and teamwork. So when he says that B-school grads do poorly because “they are trained to find the single right plan,” it’s time to re-examine the model. Kindergarteners do well because they build prototypes. They experiment. They have fun without latching onto a single solution at the beginning.
No right or wrong, at least not at first. Just an openness to explore the possibilities. Then we turn it over to the engineers. After all, we want whatever we’re creating to work.
When Dobie Gray sang about being in with the in crowd in 1965, could he have imagined how mobile devices would turn the world into one big high school?
First there was messaging and texting, which allowed you to send your thoughts to a single person. Then there were location-based services like Foursquare, which allow you to broadcast your location to whoever will listen.
The latest to join the my-business-is-everybody’s-business trend is Beluga, a service that allows you to message groups of friends, all at once. You can transmit photos to the group without having to send individual messages. And you can spot their location on a map, eliminating the need to constantly check their availability.
Beluga is a cross-platform rival to Kik, GroupMe and Blackberry’s BBM. Whether it catches on is anyone’s guess but attendees at the uber-hip SXSW music and digital festival in Austin, Texas this week are burning up the wireless space about the service. Clue number two: Beluga’s been acquired by Facebook.
Writers and other creatives might want to use these services to extend their existing marketing tools. One application for group chat is your informal ambassador’s program, that coterie of friends and fans who evangelize for your brand. You might use Beluga to give the group some visibility, along with the cachet of exclusivity—join the group and be the first to receive information and invitations to private events.
Who knows, you might get to run with the in crowd. Or relive high school, one of Dante’s nine circles of young adulthood.
Simon & Schuster Digital has created a site where authors can respond to reader questions through webcam videos. Called Ask the Author, the site gives readers a direct way of interacting with writers.
As of March 7 the website listed 10 authors who are willing to talk with fans. They range from Brad Thor, author of The Athena Project, to Lisa McMann, author of Cryer’s Cross; Goodnight, Tweetheart‘s Teresa Medeiros, and music and sports author Chuck Klosterman.
Here’s how it works. Visitors click on the “talk to” button below an author’s photo and type their question. Then they check back for a response. No word from S&S on whether the system will offer live chat at a future date.
Writers with their own websites might consider doing the same in real time.
Eight percent of adult Internet users say they use Twitter. The greatest percentage of users are college-educated Hispanic women aged 18-29 who live in cities. Those are the results of a first-ever survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project that focuses exclusively on users of the microblogging service.
Twitters users differ on how frequently they check the service to monitor material from their networks. A little more than a third check daily while a comparable number say they rarely check the site.
Most users post a mix of personal and work-related information. A majority say that they post “humorous or philosophical observations.” And if your business is interested in tracking down these users to serve them messages and ads, the study reveals that 24% of respondents use the service to tweet their location, with 7% of them doing so on a daily basis.
