experience matters

Today, we have a video blog post from an old friend of mine, Aaron Goldman, sharing one of the “Googley Lessons” from his new book. Lesson #5: Be Where Your Audience Is…

I hearken back to when Aaron was an intern for me at a traditional media agency. If I had known he could rap like that, well, he still would have been an intern.

But get past the terrible rhythm and sideways visor and listen to the message. Great experiences happen anywhere and in order for brands to enable consumer interaction those experiences have to be easy to find. Isn’t that the most important lesson Google teaches? If the greatest piece of content in the world is never seen or shared, is it still the greatest piece of content in the world? Google built a model that ensures it can be found. A model, by the way, that means they are the gateway to the Internet regardless of how people enter. As such, they are friend to brand and consumer alike as they match content with consumer.

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Alan Dodaro | Critical Mass Chicago

With summer musical festivals there’s still a lot to look forward to on the music scene in 2010. But this isn’t a collection of up-and-coming artists or a rant about Ticketmaster. Instead, it’s a collection of upcoming developments that will how we obtain and consume music- coming soon to a digital device near you.

Sharing all of your music across the internet to any device

Earlier this year, Google acquired Simplify Media in a move that will open digital syncing services to the masses. Simplify Media provided a service that let you seamlessly share music and photo libraries through the web.

Read More about music services in the cloud

Jessi Odenbach | Critical Mass Chicago

The quest for who should “control” a social media campaign seems never ending. This is a debate that I’ve had with friends working across the communications industry. And while this should never turn into a personal attack, it absolutely turns into a battle big enough for the WWE. Not only are is this power struggle happening internally between departments, but externally between digital agencies, PR firms and social boutiques all vying for the social slice of the client’s business.

The importance of figuring out this debate once and for all reminds me a lot of Duane “the Rock” Johnson’s eyebrow–they’re both on the rise. Think about the training, the tone and the niche audience. It’s a battle royale, locked in a cage with a ladder, and only one competitor is coming out alive. Maybe it’s not that extreme, but from where I sit, the stakes are pretty high.That’s why I’ve set out to moderate this discussion at SxSW 2011. Bringing in perspectives from Pizza Hut, Infiniti, and Mashable, we can look at all of these considerations and more to help us decide, once and for all… Who owns social?

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Scott Shamberg | Critical Mass Executive

SxSW is months away still, but the big ideas that make up the big weekend are already up and ready for votes! There are so many awesome ideas out there that sometimes it’s hard to choose which to vote for! Let me help you. Breaking News: Front Page or Top Tweet is a panel idea discussing the issue of how breaking news should be announced. For anyone who is intrigued about WikiLeaks, loves discussing breaking news on Twitter, or fancies themselves a “Citizen Journalist,” this panel will be right up your alley.

While many people are accustomed to their daily doses of CNN, New York Times or your local news source, the twitter-sphere seems to be finding it easier and more exciting to get it from social networks of choice. With the myriad digital channels that exist today, nearly every traditional consumption pattern has changed in some way. We’ve all grown quite satisfied with the complete control we have over information.

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Jeana Anderson | Critical Mass Chicago

Trying to increase your Facebook fans, Twitter following or even charitable donation numbers? Give something away.

Brands make a habit of promising that if YOU follow or like they’ll give things away to a varying number of followers. Life as a Community Moderator has by no means made me immune to this. In the past year, I’ve become a fan of Einstein Bagels—even though I don’t eat bread. I’ve voted on my favorite feature of a Ford Explorer and “liked” the page—even though I have no use for a car in the city, and I’ve followed Chicago Food Critic Steve Dolinsky for the chance to go to dinner with him (and won)—even though (I’m sorry, Steve) I had no idea who he was. Why? Because these brands were all giving stuff away and even though I didn’t necessarily need this stuff, I did what these brands and people asked for a chance to win.  Was I bought or was I earned? Short answer: I was bought in all cases except for Steve Dolinksy, he’s great. I don’t fit the other brands’ profiles of a model community member, and I’m a useless fan.

Upon realizing my own affinity to follow the directions of those who will buy or give me things, I started to think through successful contests and giveaways for branded communities. Thus, my proposal for a SXSWi panel, Fans for Freebies, was born.
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Case Study from the CM Chicago office.

Critical Mass recently launched a redesigned website for United Mileage Plus®. The site features a new look and feel, and offers a more personalized, intuitive experience for members of the United Mileage Plus loyalty program.

Read More about The Ask, The Strategy, The Insight and The Solution

Richard Deede | Critical Mass Chicago

Last night I had the pleasure of speaking to the Chicago Interactive Design and Development group (CIDD) about SEO.

The audience was made up of a wide variety of people with diverse knowledge and backgrounds, so tailoring the discussion towards one particular skill set was not possible. Instead I started by talking about the foundation of SEO and how the search engines work and a brief history of what the search engines algorithms are based upon.

The primary content of the presentation focused around the basics steps someone should take when trying to optimize their website, but the fun part came once we took at look at the future of SEO.

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Richard Tseng | Critical Mass Toronto

There’s an old statistic my dad used to say to me. “The Saturday edition of the Toronto Star contains more knowledge than a person living in the 16^th Century got in their entire lifetime.” It made no sense to me why anyone would want this much information. The funnies were about the only section useful to my sixth-grade self. Everything else just seemed to get in the way.

Today you can access the Saturday editions of every major newspaper in the world online. You can also get near-instantaneous Wikipedia entries, tweets, blogs, RSS updates, and tons more, all of which makes it even harder to separate information you want from information you don’t. Enter Web 3.0, a.k.a. Semantic Web.

Web info overload and why Web 3.0

This iteration of the web promises to better serve users with a smarter search system. In addition to 2.0’s content creation and 1.0’s system of content delivery, 3.0 aims to manage content as well.

What are the implications of 3.0? Read More

Lindsay Renwick | Critical Mass Toronto

Flickr announced a new suite of features last week, including a larger photo display size, navigation upgrades and a slightly altered look and feel. In the immediate aftermath of the announcement, user reaction was  fairly predictable. Some jumped to the beta version weeks ago by clicking the jaunty “Take me to the future!” invitation and never looked back.  Some users avoided the change until the last minute and then seemed both shocked and upset once there was no turning back.

Looking at comments on message boards and on Twitter, it’s fair to say that this upgrade has been a success for Flickr, with encouraging comments outweighing the negativity. User experience experts worldwide must be applauding the fact that one of the world’s largest photo hosting sites has finally added a simple “< previous | next >” link adjacent to the image display, a feature that was conspicuously (and obnoxiously) absent from the previous version. The site is now considerably lighter too – according to CNET, Flickr will double upload speeds.

So why are people getting riled up and how should Flickr respond? Read More

Diane Heun – Critical Mass Chicago

There are two words that can instill fear in most people associated with new business efforts or existing client reviews:

1) Procurement

2) eSourcing

And, typically these go hand-in-hand.  An organization’s procurement department puts out a request for information (RFI) or request for proposal (RFP) through an electronic sourcing system such as Ariba or SAP.  It’s a scenario that’s becoming more and more common and as a member of the Critical Mass New Business team for over eight years, I’ve certainly participated in my fair share.

Should Procurement just stick to buying pens? Read More