Our Favorite Things About New Imagined Myspace
Bringing Sexy Back!
You may have caught wind of Justin Timberlake’s recent single with Jay-Z, “Suit & Tie” quickly climbing to #1 on iTunes just after one day. The song is a perfect segway to introduce the brand new Myspace, now open to the public and ready to turn heads. Back in September, Myspace announced a revamped, re-imagined platform for users and artists. According to the CEO of Specific Media, Tim Vanderhook, the new MySpace would be available to everyone by the end of 2012. By his side, the one and only superstar and part owner of Specific Media, Justin Timberlake would see it through.
MySpace has been under the radar for the past months in invite-only mode. Years before, the abandoned social network felt like a city demolished by a zombie apocalypse. Users were finding shelter in smarter social networks while the platform slowly ate away at every revenue generating opportunity until nothing was left.
Once a pinnacle, it was only a matter of time before the music-driven social site got a makeover. Here are our favorite features:
Synced with user’s Facebook & Twitter accounts
MySpace will not be trying to persuade current Facebook and Twitter users to solely use the new MySpace. The new MySpace will allow users to sign in to the site using their Facebook and Twitter logins. This will be easier for people to start using MySpace because “it integrates with Facebook and Twitter to be able to pull over your social graph and pull over your identity of who you are” says Tim Vanderhook the CEO of Specific Media in an interview with ABC News. It is one less step and social media site that users have to manage. MySpace will find connections from the user’s current friends and followers. MySpace allows users to post to multiple sites in one step.
Focused on Music, Artists, and Fans
The new MySpace will be a site that gives filmmakers, photographers, various artists, and musicians a place to express their creative talent on their profiles. Tim Vanderhook expressed to ABC that, “the idea to create something unique and drive a connection with a fan base has a lot of equity”. Artists’ pages will feature a “music catalog”, songs and videos by the artist. These songs can be dragged and dropped to a fan’s playlists. Fans can see upcoming concert events and read more about the artists’ background. The new MySpace will give users the ability to build playlist, add photo albums, and connect with artists in a visually appealing format that will have users in awe. For artists MySpace allows them to gain insights and demographic information about their fans.
Minimal Design of the page
After watching the video for the new MySpace, there is a definite difference between the late Myspace and the new. The sleek, minimalistic design is intriguing, clean, and aesthetically pleasing. When asked about the design inspiration Chris Vanderhook, COO of Specific Media, said, “We wanted to build for today and for the future. A lot of the elements from the design is built for widescreen formats for tablets and smartphones”. The new MySpace will allow users to explore the site in a visual way, while streaming music from the site. The new MySpace browsing is horizontal, rather than the popular vertical format used by other social media sites.
The Stream
The Stream that the new MySpace features is similar to the format of Pinterest boards. The Stream allows users to see their own recent activity, their friend’s activity, and updates from artists. Mixes and photos that are posted by connections on MySpace can also be seen on the stream. People may post comments on the Stream as long as they say it in 140 characters or less, like Twitter. This adds to the minimal design, it will eliminate long comments and statuses to be posted on the Stream.
Mixes & Navigations
One feature that has not changed with the new MySpace, is the music. Users can use a drag and drop feature for adding songs to playlists and mixes. People can create a list of songs and collage of photos called mixes. A user’s connections can comment or share it with others. The new MySpace has a navigation bar at the bottom of the page, out of the way from all the photos and videos users can view. The discover tab allows users to access trending topics, search people, search radio, and find events going on.
Will the buzz of the new design and features be enough to drive traffic to the once forgotten site? We highly recommend you spend a little time using the features above and decide for yourself.
The New Myspace: How to Get Started
Startup Spotlight: Youtoo Can Be On TV!
By Frank Jabati
Your favorite shows are interesting enough to keep your attention right? With all that is infinitely accessible via smart phones, laptops, and tablets, you might want to think again. With the incredible spike in popularity among coming social media and television, it appears we enjoy watching our beloved reality sitcom drama documentaries with others who love them too. Now with the rise of social TV, Youtoo.com has made tv even more social.
Youtoo is a Social TV network that allows millions the opportunity to be on TV with a mere click of the mouse. Users can record and upload 15sec videos called “Fame Spots” with smartphones, tablets or personal computers, and be chosen to air during national shows such as The X-files. For those new to Social TV, let’s take a look at similar applications.
Other social TV networks making a splash include GetGlue, which lets users “Check in” to TV shows and movies they are watching to socialize with friends, get recommendations and earn rewards. Yahoo’s Social TV baby IntoNow gives users a Shazam-ish option to check in via a live broadcast and create an interactive TV experience to discuss and dissect shows in real time. Other sites such as Viggle partner with brands to reward viewers with movie tickets, gift cards to Target, or cups of coffee from Starbucks.
It seems only natural that social networking and technology would make a natural transition to better integrate with TV, and provide a proactive way to interact with fans, reach new audiences, and drive viewership. Haven’t heard of shows using Social TV to reach fans? “True Blood”, “Walking Dead”, and “WWE” which announced earlier this year they were teaming up with Tout, are all great examples of shows and brands exploring the benefits of Social TV and scoring big.
Youtoo also has the potential to reach a large amount of viewers, because let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to be on TV? It’s the perfect example of Social TV, using the real allure of being on screen, via whatever device they have in their hands.
Getting Social at Fashion Week #NYFW 2012
by Kristen Kassab
With New York Fashion Week coming to a close we thought it only appropriate to do a social media round up of this year’s festivities. As always the fashion world is at the fore front of using social media. Every editor, blogger or celebrity sitting front row can be seen at any given moment holding at least 2 mobile devices. From the blackberry for emails to the iPhone and iPad for instagram and Twitter updates, social media is a constant at New York Fashion Week. You almost wonder how they have time to watch the shows? But don’t worry these guys practically invented the word multi-tasking.
Some of the hottest people to follow this year included:
Derek Blasberg @DerekBlasberg - Fashion writer and Harper’s Bazaar Editor
Billy Farrel Agency @BFA_NYC - Everyone knows they always have the inside scoop
Women’s Wear Daily @womensweardaily - So many updates from them it’s hard to keep up
Refinery29 @refinery29 - Great for trend spotting and up close runway shots
Leandra Medine, Man Repeller @ManRepeller - The hottest blogger around in my opinion. You can always count on her for her witty commentary and a good laugh.
For most people sitting front row at New York Fashion Week is never going to happen. But lucky for us social media has made it where we get the front row experience while sitting at home in our sweatpants with a laptop and a glass of wine! (No painfully high stiletto heels or week long fasts so you can fit into the perfectly fashionable outfit necessary)
Here are some of the best ways to follow the action of #NYFW:
YouTube: LiveFromTheRunway- check out the schedule and catch live video streams of all your favorite designers shows as they are happening. You get to feel like one of the chosen few sitting front row and you won’t miss a thing (like the model who fell at the Dennis Basso show, OOPS!)
Twitter: Follow the Hashtag #NYFW (disclaimer: it can be overwhelming). You might also consider following some of your favorite designers, models, or fashion editors instead.
Facebook: Like Mercedes Benz Fashion Week as well as any of your favorite designers Facebook pages. Many of them will have links to live streams of their shows.
Instagram: This is probably one of my favorite ways to follow the action. Designers post photos from backstage and people sitting front row will be snapping pictures of almost every look as it passes them by.
Pick your poison. Whichever social media source you prefer there are endless amounts of #NYFW updates at your disposal. If you were late to the game this year don’t worry there will be plenty of recaps to come and there is always next year!
DFW Event Spotlight – Live Music, Food Trucks, Beer, and Dogs?
by Harrison Blum
Grab your four-legged furry friends and get ready for the first-annual Barkfest September 15th! From 6-9PM Dallas non-profit Paws in the City will transform Deep Ellum’s 1.2 acre dog park to create a neighborhood party you won’t forget, all to benefit a good cause. Experience live music from local DFW artists, the city’s best food trucks, and local craft beer with a committed goal to raise money and awareness to end overpopulation, abuse, neglect of Dallas area dogs and cats. The event is free to the public and canines of all sizes are invited to join the party as well. If you’ve yet to experience this wonderful park read all about it here. If you don’t have a dog of your own, then your in luck. Barkfest will have plenty of adoptable dogs there looking for their forever home!
Pet-friendly vendors will be out in the masses including a pet photographer, a gourmet pet bakery, and Community Pet Outreach who will be offering low cost vaccinations and micro-chipping for only $25 with lifetime registration.
Bring some cash* and your friends and know that your partying for a great cause!
Does London 2012 Get the Gold for Web Design?
by Isaac Hellemn
Most bad websites are merely annoying. They may load slowly because of too many scripts. They may have loud and obnoxious music. They may rely on flash or java, which don’t work well over slow connections and on certain computers.
Some bad websites, however, go beyond “annoying” into the realm of the truly infuriating. These websites are so poorly designed and cumbersome that prolonged exposure can actually ruin the user’s day. One such website is London2012.com.
Upon googling “Olympics”, a prominent banner on the results page leads us to the official Olympics site. The site is incredibly busy (Figure 1), and if you don’t speak either English or French (particularly likely given that it’s the Olympics) you’re out of luck. The best way to illustrate the website’s problems is to actually look for something.
Figure 1: Busy, busy, busy.
Let’s say we want to find all the medals up for grabs today. Our first instinct is to click where it says “15 medal events today” in the “Latest Gold Medal” box. But there’s no link there, so we click the name of the most recent medal winner. This takes us to the results for that particular event, weightlifting. Dead end. We’ll either try the “Medals” or “Schedules & Results” tab next, but “medals” also leads nowhere, so let’s try “schedules”.
We arrive at a page that is incomprehensible (Figure 2).
Figure 2: What does it mean??
Let’s try the “List View”. We get a very long list of every event today (prelims, quarterfinals, everything) that we must scroll through to pick out the finals (Figure 3). What about the “Latest Results” tab? Another complete list of events that we must scroll through to find finals.
Figure 3: It’s even worse if you expand everything.
Actually, the tab with information on today’s medal events in the most accessible form is “Full Schedule” (Figure 4), the least likely (from a user perspective) to contain such information.
Figure 4: Ah-ha.
What if we want to see how athlete Ryan Lochte has been doing? We click over to “Athletes”, search his name, and find his profile (Figure 5). What medals has he won? Clicking on the medals icons won’t work, nor does it say anything in the long text-only profile. We have to click over to each event he’s swimming in (some of which haven’t occurred yet) and search each results page for his standings.
Figure 5: And be careful, because this profile “has not been confirmed”.
Want to see what medals Team USA won today? There’s no way to do this, other than by visiting the pages of every event the USA has placed in and finding the ones whose finals were today. Want to look up the 100-meter dash? Hope you know that it falls under “Athletics” sports, because there’s no way to search for specific event.
It’s important for a website to look good and appear in search results, but it’s even more important that it actually works. The official Olympics site is a classic example of a site that values form over functionality. It’s difficult to use even for patient, web-savvy users, and impossible to use for non-English or French speakers. It does, however, teach us a valuable lesson: Even the most high-profile organizations in the world could sometimes use help with their websites.
Success and Failure in Social Media: The Story of Skittles
by Isaac Hellemn
I’ll start with the Facebook page. It’s actually pretty typical of corporate social media (albeit with penguins). There are embedded commercials from YouTube, photos, upcoming contests, etc. Interactive content is minimal, and posts by fans aren’t responded to. But this is all okay, because where Skittles really shines is Twitter.
Most marketing departments don’t know what to do with Twitter. They don’t get it, so they typically just tweet their Facebook posts, with links to the Facebook page to compensate for the character limit. Before I explain what makes Skittles tweets amazing, check out the screenshots below.
See what I mean? Skittles even responds to stupid tweets from random fans, and far from being bureaucratic about it (“Thanks for being a fan Jenn”), their responses are creatively quirky. What Skittles has recognized is that Twitter is all about “one-liners”, brief messages that are both funny and sharable. Twitter users are much more likely to follow you if they can re-tweet your tweets to their own followers.
And finally, the Skittles YouTube page contains all of the brand’s famously bizarre commercials.
This level of involvement in social media is far from the norm among candy makers. M&M’s website requires you to be 18 to enter (which is just a little baffling) and comes with this charming legal notice right on the homepage.
If you want Skittles’s (bottom right) legal disclosures, just click on the bowtie link
Anyway, the numbers speak for themselves (ironic, given that Mars Inc. owns both brands).
The takeaway is that Skittles doesn’t just have an active and creative online presence. Its social media pages, commercials, and website complement each other, working together to present a quirky, fun image that stops just short of being corny (your mileage may vary here).
But even the best aren’t perfect.
In 2009, Skittles replaced its homepage with its Twitter page, that is, tweets with the word “skittles” in them were posted directly to the brand’s website. Skittles’s mistake was underestimating the depravity of internet users, who quickly realized that nobody was screening the tweets for objectionable content. This miscalculation was ruthlessly punished as the Skittles homepage was flooded with obscenity and profanity (here’s a fairly tame sample). There were so many tweets that Twitter briefly went down.
And then there came Trayvon Martin. The Florida teen was shot while walking home with a bag of Skittles and a bottle of Arizona Iced Tea. The Arizona Beverage Company was largely spared any controversy, but Skittles became a symbol of the Trayvon Martin incident. Protestors pinned Skittles wrappers to their hoodies; activists sent bags of Skittles to the Sanford Police Department. With increased sales came demands for Skittles to donate its profits to minority groups or Martin’s family, and Skittles became a convenient target of anger for some. It remains to be seen whether the crisis will have a long-term effect on the Skittles brand.
To sum up, Skittles is one of the best brands out there at managing social media. But even it runs into trouble sometimes. Even companies with a strong online presence have to be diligent, proactive, and quick-thinking to maintain that presence. The price of failure can be irreparable damage to a company’s image and business.
Principles of Hipster Marketing
By Isaac Hellemn
We can all tell who they are: they’re the ones hogging the good chairs in the (free trade) coffee shop, using their MacBooks to update blogs about income inequality. There’s no real definition of a hipster (unless you use dictionary.com’s “a person who is hip”); instead, hipsters are defined more by a constellation of shared qualities. In general, hipsters are young, liberal, and trendy. Their affluence makes them attractive to marketers, but their mistrust of corporations and conventional advertising makes them notoriously difficult for those marketers to reach.
And yet some have pulled it off. Ray-Ban, Pabst Blue Ribbon, and Converse were all aging brands in decline before what I’m going to call “hipster marketing” propelled them to new heights of popularity and profitability. And contrary to popular belief, hipster marketing works just fine for major corporations. Ray-Ban is owned by European conglomerate Luxottica Group S.p.A., the largest sunglass maker in the world. Converse is owned by Nike. So how do you make hipster marketing happen?
- Don’t Advertise. There aren’t many demographics that enjoy advertising, but hipsters are one of the few that will actually hold it against you. Pabst spends most of its marketing budget sponsoring hipster enterprises (independent publishers, art shows, music festivals, even bicycle polo tournaments). But they’re careful to keep it small-scale; Kid Rock approached them with an endorsement deal, and they turned him down. The one time they tried a formal campaign (advertising on alternative radio stations) the response was “mixed”.
- Involve the Hipsters (or pretend to). Hipsters love to feel like they’re making a difference. Pabst often holds contests for fans to design its ads (they don’t call it that of course, it’s “consumer-designed art”). Converse opened a recording studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (the hipster capital of the world) for “undiscovered artists” to use. Ray-Ban did things a little differently; they put this video on YouTube. It never actually pitches Ray-Bans, and it looks like a fan-made video (and it also happens to be pretty cool). But it was commissioned by Ray-Ban’s ad agency, and a lot of thought went into it.
- Embrace Social Media. In fact, move in with social media. Get engaged if possible. Converse has three times as many FB likes as its parent company, Nike. One reason: Nike fills its page with pictures of pro athletes while Converse has user-submitted photos, singles from indie music acts, and “101 things to draw on your Converses” (#26 – Mini Animals, #72 – Monsters). Pabst has a full-time social media manager. Ray-Ban used Foursquare and Twitter to hold a national hipster scavenger hunt; fifty locations (clubs, comic stores, vintage music shops, etc.) were given limited edition posters to display. The most active tweeter or Foursquare(er?) at each location won the poster displayed there, and the location with the most active fans won a party paid for by Ray-Ban.
Ambitious brands cannot afford to ignore hipsters (and their cousins, yuppies) as a consumer group. The most effective, and possibly only, way to reach this group is through social-media-driven hipster marketing.
And while you’re digesting all this, here are some more hipster cats:
