jjprojects: our social web » video

Can we move as one using social media? Twitter’s Biz Stone thinks so.

John Johnston — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 01:59:26 +0000

Here’s an interesting recent video interview with Twitter co-founder Biz Stone.

One point grabbed me as I was listening to the interview. He says:

One particular event opened our eyes to what we had on our hands. That was in March of 2007 at a festival called South by South West….We had about 75,000 users at that point and many of the people at the festival were using Twitter, and this was the first time we were able to see Twitter in the wild, so to speak. And there were a couple of things that happened at that festival that made us realize that people were using our service to come together and move as one…We rushed right back to San Francisco and formed Twitter Incorporated.

I find this interesting in the light of my recent thoughts on what a global civilization, aided by an increasingly social web, might start to look like. Is it possible that sometimes (only sometimes) we may be able to use the social web to come together and act as one, on a larger scale than anything previously achieved? Twitter has certainly become a lot bigger since then.

The future is already here: amazing wearable interactive technology.

John Johnston — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 00:33:04 +0000

One of the criticisms I often hear from people about the web (even social media) and computing in general, is that it tends to divorce us from the ‘real world’. The main criticism seems to be that as we spend more time interacting with screens, we are less present and attentive in the physical world, and with the people around us.

However, it could be argued that with the recent development and popularisation of mobile devices such as smart phones and touch screen tablets, we are increasingly able to interact with the world of data while being more ‘present’ in the physical world. We are no longer stuck in one room in front of a screen. Increasingly, the worlds of computing and digital connectivity are going mobile.

There are also many new applications being developed in response to this new digital mobility. One such development is Google Googles, which just today has been released onto the Google iPhone app, in addition to the existing Android platform. Another example is the recent proliferation of augmented reality apps for mobile platforms.

The embedded video however, shows something on a whole new level in terms of the possibilities of the physical world interacting with the world of data. It’s nothing short of amazing. In the video Pranav Mistry demos his SixthSense wearable device, which allows an incredible degree of interaction between data and the physical world. And to my mind, two of the great things about his invention are that he’s making the technology open source and surprisingly, it’s not expensive!

Are we seeing the future of popular mobile technology here?

Hat tip to David Hood

How to get people involved in climate change action: blow up children [video]. Hilarity ensues.

John Johnston — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 00:26:51 +0000

Dear oh dear. Here’s a lesson in how not to get people involved in taking action on climate change. The embedded video, which is no doubt supposed to be hilarious, depicts some sceptical people including school children being blown up for not wanting to participate.

I’m not sure how or why the makers thought this might help to convince sceptical people to participate. Apart from being in really poor taste, this kind of thing only gives ammunition to those who are vocal in their opposition to action.

The video was written for the 10:10 campaign by Richard Curtis of Love Actually, Blackadder, Four Weddings, Bridget Jones’ Diary and Notting Hill fame. Epic communication fail this time, Richard.

Needless to say, the organisation involved has removed the video from their website and replaced it with an apology. But hey, this is the internet, so it can still be found pretty easily.

How social networks can predict epidemics, from ideas to flu viruses [Video].

John Johnston — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 01:08:46 +0000

Here’s an interesting TED Talk from 2009 by Nicholas Christakis. It’s about how social networks of many kinds, not just online social networks, can be used to detect epidemics a lot earlier than previously.

We’re not just talking flu epidemics here, although he does discuss a study of the H1N1 virus they conducted within the student population at Harvard. We’re also talking about the spread of ideas and behaviours within networks.

While watching the video, I couldn’t help but think about the book The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (Amazon Assoc. link) by Malcolm Gladwell, which addresses similar ideas about the spread of ideas and viruses. If you’re interested in human social networks in general, it’s well worth a read too, if you haven’t already.

Needless to say, I find this stuff pretty interesting. Do check out this (20 min) TED Talk if you do too.

20 reasons why Earth Hour social media has worked so far.

John Johnston — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 02:43:45 +0000

Last Monday evening I gave a presentation at Social Media Club Sydney, along with another presentation by Dae Levine, Head of Communications with Greenpeace. The topic of the event was “Lessons Learned from Not for Profits: Local Effort, Global Effect”.

I’m not going to give you a summary of the whole event here, as there are already decent summaries here and here if you are interested. As has been noted by various people, the two different campaigns demonstrate how quite different approaches can yield successful results, depending on the objective of the campaign.

One of the most obvious and perhaps biggest differences in the two approaches is the ‘more party than protest’ approach taken by Earth Hour, compared to the more confrontational protest approach taken by Greenpeace.

Yesterday I blogged about another Greenpeace campaign which takes a similar approach in confronting Facebook. The campaign takes aim at the company’s inadequate measures in relation to addressing its growing carbon footprint. After the success of Greenpeace’s Nestle ‘Killer’ campaign, it’ll be interesting to see how this turns out.

For those of you who might be interested, I thought I might break down my presentation into a list of points identifying the approach taken by Earth Hour, especially in relation to social media. In short, this is how and why I think it has worked so far.

Good timing: climate change action is needed and wanted by many people all over the world.
It’s a simple Idea and message. It’s positive, fun and hopeful. It’s more party than protest, which encourages a lot of people to get involved.
Turning off lights is a powerful visual to help deliver the message worldwide.
It involves people power, with a grassroots driven campaign.
Earth Hour is an open source brand. It’s available for anyone to use.
The use of social media and user generated content fits well with the grassroots driven and open source nature of the campaign.
For Earth Hour there are thousands of events organised worldwide, both official and unofficial.
Earth Hour social media started organically and has grown as social media has grown since 2007. In 2007 Twitter was not mainstream, Facebook was smaller, YouTube was only a couple of years old.
Earth Hour has access to, and the support of the global WWF Network to help with campaign organisation. For instance, in social media there are numerous official and unofficial social network profiles worldwide, in multiple languages and on multiple networks.
The network is asked to respect the open source nature of the Earth Hour brand, to let go of the brand so anyone can use it.
There are numerous unofficial Earth Hour supporter profiles and an overwhelming amount of supporter generated creative content, which organisers encourage worldwide.
Local agency generated creative content is encouraged worldwide.
Numerous official and unofficial partnerships are developed with companies and organisations worldwide, to help spread the word and lend support.
Throughout the year, bloggers are engaged and encouraged to write about Earth Hour – from popular, influential blogs to environmental bloggers, to regional bloggers (in different countries and languages) to any and every bloggger. Earth Hour assets such as videos, images and logos are made available for use by bloggers when possible.
The rewards of an open and available brand have so far, far outweighed the risks of letting it go.
The approach by organisers to social media conversations is mostly “hands off”, letting conversations flow and letting supporters argue the case when there is criticism.
Interventions are based on highly ‘offensive’ content only.
Traditional and social media have worked together to make the campaign a success – from print to radio to tv to websites to mobile to social.
Supporter–made creative content is showcased through official Earth Hour networks.
On–the–night image and video uploads, live blogging and status updates are encouraged, to help support the event itself, in real-time.

Here’s the official Earth Hour 2011 video if you haven’t seen it yet :)

Greenpeace campaign takes aim at Facebook’s coal–fired servers [animated video].

John Johnston — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 00:49:08 +0000

Following the recent social media driven succes s of Greenpeace’s campaign to get Nestlé to stop using palm oil linked to the destruction of rainforests, it seems the activist organisation is now taking aim at Facebook’s massive new data center. Apparently, the new facility is not powered by clean energy.

Greenpeace wants Facebook to “drop coal and commit to 100 percent renewable energy, cutting its carbon footprint and helping in the struggle to prevent catastrophic climate change”

Greenpeace has released the embedded animated video, which is a bit of a spoof on the new feature film The Social Network – another movie Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg will not be particularly happy about.

Earlier this month, Facebook responded (in the comments section) to a Greenpeace open letter to Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, maintaining that their massive, new Oregon data center is quite energy efficient, although not run on renewable energy.

Perhaps Greenpeace feels Facebook is a good target for this kind of campaign as it’s getting pretty huge, with over 500 million users now. In addition, Facebook is increasingly in competition with the likes of Google, which is doing substantially more to address its carbon footprint, and even making investments in renewable energy technology.

What are your thoughts on what Greenpeace is asking Facebook to do? Could Facebook be doing more, given its huge size and growing revenue? In any case, It’s certainly going to be interesting to see how this one turns out.

Connectivity equals productivity, here’s a powerful reminder.

John Johnston — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 02:18:48 +0000

I think this TED Talk by Iqbal Quadir is a poignant and powerful reminder that connectivity equals productivity. For those of us who use the web and smart mobile devices daily, it’s easy to forget just how much these enable greater productivity, even if some of our time is spent on more trivial or entertaining activities.

In this inspiring, embedded video, social entrepreneur Iqbal Quadir tells how his experiences as a kid in Bangladesh, and later as an investment banker in New York, led him to start a mobile phone operator connecting 80 million rural Bangladeshi.

In the process, he became a champion of bottom-up development, rather than giving increasing amounts of aid money to top down development, which seems not to be working very well, if at all. In fact, he maintains that it only empowers authorities to maginalise citizens. Even in countries that have grown rich from oil reserves, autocratic regimes have grown hugely wealthy, while poverty among citizens remains entrenched.

Enter Iqbal Quadir. Not long ago in Bangladesh, only one in 500 people had access to a telephone. Quadir points out that “Vasts amounts of wasted time results. The only way people can depend on each other is to connect to each other, which leads to productivity.”

Watch the video to find out how he overcame the significant hurdles involved in what turned out to be a massive connectivity project and business. How could poor people afford to use mobile phones? Who would invest in such a project in such a poor country? This video is a must see.

via Entrepreneur

New and improved Google Realtime Search.

John Johnston — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 03:00:45 +0000

Google has actually had real-time search for a while now, and has been improving it periodically. You may have read my previous post from May comparing 10 different real-time search engines, which included Google’s offering.

To recap, as they say in the embedded “How to” video, Google Realtime allows you to search real-time content from across the web. Sources include news stories, blog posts and social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz and Friendfeed. The real-time stream constantly and automatically refreshes, feeding in live content as it’s posted to the web.

Google Realtime features now include:

The ability to look back in time to view updates from the past.
The ability to refine your search by location – by town, state or country.
The ability to browse a conversation (on Twitter for instance), to see how it developed over time.
The ability to set up Google Alerts for real-time updates.

Personally, I really like the addition of being able to refine search by location. As in my previous real-time search engine comparison post, I searched under a favourite topic of mine, cleantech, and then refined the search just to Australia. It came up with some interesting and useful results for me. I’ve previously said, as it’s not a new feature, that I also like the ability to be able to search historically. This remains true.

What are your thoughts on Google Realtime Search? Have you found yourself using it yet? Is it useful enough for you, or do you use another real-time search engine? Do you use real-time search at all?

Check the embedded video for the full set of new features in more detail and how to use them.

Thanks @warlach via @andrewsayer for the heads up this morning.

Facebook launches Facebook Places.

John Johnston — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 00:54:13 +0000

In Silicon Valley just a few hours ago, Facebook held a event to announce the launch of the much anticipated Facebook Places. The embedded video is a full launch video replay from the live event, if you’d like to see what was said by Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook Places team and various partner companies.

For international users, it should be noted from the outset that Facebook Places will only be available in the US at first. Users outside the US will be able to see US Places posts on the web.

Amongst others, partner companies include Gowalla, Yelp and Foursquare. A representative from Gowalla detailed how Gowalla posts will be integrated into Places via the Places API. You can choose to attach an image to a post, as you can in Gowalla now. You’ll also be able to see Gowalla stamps in posts.

The Foursquare representative was less specific about how Foursquare will be integrated, to say the least. In fact you’d have to say he looked a little less than enthusiastic about the whole thing. But hey, how can you refuse to participate in having access to a location-based service that has access to a user–base of more than 500 million users, right?

It was explained at the launch that it is hoped that Facebook users will begin to discover serendipitous moments by checking in to places and finding that other friends are at the same location or nearby.

At first, Facebook Places will only be available on the Facebook application for iPhone and can also be accessed by “advanced mobile browers” (meaning those supporting HTML 5 and geolocation) at touch.facebook.com. Mark Zuckerberg said at the launch that there are not Android or Blackberry apps available yet. There are plans for these but no timeline.

In fact, Zuckerberg stated that there are quite a lot of things they aren’t doing with Places yet, including integrating Places with Facebook Events, which seems like a very obvious thing for them to do, especially as they have recently acquired Hot Potato. Zuckerberg said that they want to get things right before launching additional apps and features.

Facebook Places seems to be quite focused on including images and being able to tag friends who are with you when you check–in. You can also post a text update along with your check-in, as you can with most other location–based services.

There’s not a lot that’s new here, but it’s not really about that, is it? What’s significant is that it’s Facebook launching this location-based service. It’s going to be interesting to see just how many of the hundreds of millions of users start using this regularly. Not everyone has an iPhone or a mobile device capable of using the service, so there will be limited numbers to begin with, but still, Five. Hundred. Million. Users, and still growing.

For a full run–down of the features, check out Facebook’s blog post on the subject.

HaHa, Twitter Movie Trailer! [parody video]

John Johnston — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 02:28:21 +0000

Well by now you’ve probably seen the trailer for the much anticipated, and apparently quite dark, movie about the founding of Facebook, The Social Network. Now comes a new spoof (there are others) of The Social Network trailer, complete with an excellent parody soundtrack.

The Twit Network trailer relentlessly lampoons Twitter’s flood of minutiae from people’s everyday lives. It begins with Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey having a conversation with a friend which goes “I need to create a way to blog that is as random and incoherent as writing on a bathroom wall”. “Why”. “Because normal blogging is tedious and dumb and leads to fully formed ideas”. I’m sure you get the picture. It’s funny :)

The parody trailer also begs the question, if The Social Network turns out to be a box office success, will we one day see a feature film about Twitter too?

On a side note, as you can see from the tweet below, which is a quote from the video trailer, Twitter Co-founder Biz Stone seems to think it’s funny too.

via Mashable

jjprojects: our social web » video

Can we move as one using social media? Twitter’s Biz Stone thinks so.

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