This BusinessWeek article, How Companies Use Twitter to Bolster Their Brands, made me think. At first, I didn't get much further than the subtitle:

The “creepy trend” part is slightly confusing. What’s so creepy about attentive customer service? Monitoring Twitter feeds that mention your brand is one thing, and a no-brainer at that. Like any social network, online or offline, this is an environment in which brands are expected to be sociable. Tweeting back to the offended party might be a more appropriate response than no response at all.

Sure, the potential is there for brand voices to come off as creepy, awkward or forced when venturing into emerging social situations such as Twitter feeds – but brand voices face the same challenge in every medium. The anxiety expressed by the BusinessWeek article reflects the hesitation many marketers have for social networks like Twitter.

There are good reasons for that hesitation. Twitter is new, and therefore a little scary for some. Like blogs and other social networks, it demands dedicated resources. Twitter is unreliable, now notorious for repeated outages and network down time. Twitter is instantly public – whatever you do is out there for everyone to see, right away. Sounds intimidating.

There are good reasons to be brave, too, because it’s pretty cool when it works well. GM used Twitter in an attempt to help a ready-to-buy customer at a Saturn dealership who couldn’t find a salesman. Jet Blue uses Twitter to monitor customers in need of information on flight delays or cancellations. Brands like Dell, Comcast, and Whole Foods recognize the Twitter user as an “influencer” of a target audience, and pay attention accordingly. The potential for evolving customer service is huge. The immediacy can work to a brand's advantage, enabling real-time responses that reach a consumer wherever he or she may be. This is a new means for brands to prove their usefulness to consumers, but it's probably not for everyone.

Still, what’s so creepy about it? The article points out that “not all Tweeters want Corporate America following their Tweets” -- yet they continue to post Tweets for everyone to read! That’s a conflicting message, but it’s also a defense mechanism. These influencers are still getting used to the personal transparency that, in many ways, resembles the same transparency consumers want from their favorite brands. Transparency can be a scary thing, because there's no hiding once you have it. Right now, these conflicting messages keep corporations guessing about how best to socialize their brands.

Personally, I’m fascinated that people who willingly and publicly broadcast their lives, 140 characters at a time, are so surprised to learn that the likes of Jet Blue or Zappos are reading Twitter feeds. Because, really, which is creepier: microblogging your every move for the entire world to read, or responding to a single post that implicates your brand or business by name?

Trolling through the Red Ferret Journal today, I came upon a post about a new video enhancing technology that augments video with still photography (to over-simplify it). The implications for advertisers are potentially huge: you could replace products in video you’ve already shot, polish user-submitted videos for a campaign, or tailor elements of a single video to different geographic locations or audience segments. Below is the demonstrational video created by the team developing this software. For you video editors, they’ve posted most of the source code, too. Here’s what they had to say about the qualities their technology can lift from a photograph and apply to a video:

The ten things include the origins of the Internet, from a 1963 memo about an "intergalactic computer network" to ARPANET (pre-cursor to the Internet we have today), to the first instances of spam and web logs. Not an exhaustive list, as made clear by a few of Neatorama's commenters, but an enlightening look at the origins of a technological evolution that helps pay our bills. From the post:

... how much do you know about the Internet? Did you know that you have the Soviets to thank for this wonderful invention? Or that despite the flack that he got for inventing the Internet, Al Gore actually did play a major role in the creation of the Net?

It's easy to take for granted a lot of technology that wasn't available just ten years ago (when a few of us started working here). But understanding where the Internet came from can help us understand where it's going next, which can be a huge advantage in our line of work.
 

It's worth noting that this is not just a Radiohead promotion. This is a significant marketing move for Google, tying a major international rock band to a variety Google properties like YouTube, iGoogle, Gadget Ads, and Google Code in one succinct effort. Smart stuff.

When was the last time you pitched Google Code as campaign tactic?

Social networking news site Mashable and MIT's Adverlab are both excited about SpongeCell's new bookmarkable banner ads. Perhaps you and your clients will be, too. These screengrabs spell out the functionality these ads are capable of. Top left is the native state, other panels are the respective actions available to the viewer.

SpongeCell seems primarily geared toward event-oriented initiatives. The example shown is for a concert event; we might also use this for a new product trial event, or a limited-time retail event (I wish AT&T was using something like this to schedule appointments to purchase the 3G iPhone). A glance at the success stories listed on their site shows two musical acts and one film premiere. This new bookmarkable rich-media banner ad hasn't been available long enough to have success stories yet. But it's easy to see the potential for brands and marketers who want to foster community and make messaging that's more useful.

At this stage, SpongeCell rich-media ads are compatible with Facebook and MySpace, Outlook, Google Calendar, iCal and Yahoo!. Among the actions you can make available to the user are email and SMS reminders, invite friends, RSVP, subscriptions (RSS feeds, podcasts, newsletters), comments and more (see "buy tickets" in the screengrabs above).

This new bookmarkable banner is part of their SpongeCell's Add to Life suite of offerings. Visit SpongeCell for more information.

Worlde might be a fun app to use to add a little life to your next presentation. As LifeHacker put it: “It makes for nice backgrounds and icons, but it can also be helpful for students and anyone trying to parse a text for emphasis.”  

It took seconds to create this graphic above – but using information I’ve built up for about two years. That’s a cloud of the tags I use to sort the bookmarks I keep sorted via del.icio.us. Wordle is not a del.icio.us add-on, per se (though as you can see by the link at the left side of this post's footer, we kinda like del.icio.us around here). You can paste in whatever text you want and watch Wordle sprout a word-cloud based on frequency of individual words in your text. You've got options to change the number of words displayed, layout, color scheme, and font.

Imagine a creative brief in this format.

Here’s the United States Declaration of Independence, in word-cloud form (the most prominent 150 words, anyway): 

I had no idea I needed a dog tie. I don't even own a dog... but now maybe I will buy one. Now that I know dog ties exist. 

Welcome to my new latest addiction -- Etsy.com 

Etsy (pronounced like "Betsy") is the world's largest collection of artisans selling their wares of all things handmade. Products run the gamut from clothing and jewelry to some really inspiring works, like this puking E.T. painting on wood by artist LegendaryTigerHero. 

Many retail products today feel homogenized, mass-produced, but Etsy provides a breath of fresh air with ALL original items for sale, and usually for affordable prices. It also gives a great outlet for artisans wanting global exposure.  

In the last 12 months, my wife has bought itmes from sellers in Spain, Italy and Australia. So, now she is shopping globally, which scares the crap out of me.
 

Shoot 'em dead with your brilliant ideas and this revolver handgun tie by Toybreaker in your next pitch.   

Not only is the concept behind Etsy great, the site offers some really intuitive ways to search and browse products. Sure, the more traditional forms of navigation are there, but say you bought some curtains that are a really weird color of mauve (quite possible?), and you need some artwork to match? You can browse items through a color picker and it will pull items of a similar shade. You can also shop locally (support local artists!), or even shop products through the Treasury section, which are items handpicked by Etsians. 

What's the point? Besides the fact there's a bunch of weird stuff I want to buy? It's yet another example how technology can level the playing field and give independent artisans a strong voice and a place to sell their work. So before you buy something mass-produced, think about buying something handmade instead. 

And I'm definitely buying this comb by Makool. And then I'm growing a mustache.  

Engadget spin-off blog Switched posts about a new browser-based version of Google Earth. This means no more leaving the browser to open a seperate desktop application, a step that has more than once prevented me from doing more spur-of-the-moment sightseeing. This also means that Google Earth can be embedded on web pages now. This certainly opens up new opportunities for interactive experiences.

The browser version isn't as full-featured as the desktop application, but it shouldn't be long before the feature-sets even out. So far, the Google Earth plug-in supports Firefox 2.x, IE6 and IE7 on Windows (sorry, Mac folks). Download it here. Of course, you may need to ask IT to install it on your work machine.

Well, the top ten as chosen by Veronica Belmont, in an interview with the social network watchers at Mashable.

1. Brightkite
2. Dropbox
3. Pownce
4. Remember The Milk
   
5. Friendfeed
6. Rupture
7. Trulia
8. Downforeveryoneorjustme.com
9. Qik
10. Seesmic 

I'll let you read Mashable's post to see Belmont's reasons for selecting each application - while I set myself a reminder to check this list again in six months to see what panned out and what simply was panned.

Anyone tried any of these apps yet? Other suggestions that didn't make the list?
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