Archive for the 'Video' Category

My good pal Susan Macaulay posted this video on Facebook, asking if it was real or fake.

Wouldn’t it be cool if it were real?

I’m afraid it’s not. It’s a clever viral add in the German market for Microsoft Office Project 2007 - see the Mach es Machbar (Make it Possible) site. The Google transalation of the German text is below:

Bruno Kammerl `s point landing:

Make it possible - with Microsoft Office Project 2007
The man without fear of big ideas - is it really?
Bruno Kammerl Even if an invention is. The time is ripe for new heroes.

Product Shoot Microsoft Office Project 2007 Make it as Bruno - realize your plans:
With Microsoft Office Project 2007.

Often, when I talk with businesses or organisations about blogging and social media, whether in the formal context of a presentation, or informally at a drinks party or over dinner, a common reason why they have not engaged in social media - say they never will - is because it is an open and interactive space and people could leave negative comments about their company/ products/ services on their blog.

In response, I usually explain that the reason that people would usually leave negative feedback publicly is that there is no other recourse easily available to them to express their grievance to the business/ organisation in question. This is usually because access to that organisation’s customer services is non-existent or difficult to find or once it’s found, the layers of bureacracy or telephone press-button options are designed to deter access. In fury and frustration, that customer will want to express themselves in the strongest possible way as much to hurt the company as to obtain redress for their grievance because the inaccessibility has added to their unhappiness and most likely fueled it into rage.

All a customer wants is for your business to show that you care and a simple complaints procedure where you actively address their problem will do more for your company’s reputation in the long term than saving a bit of money on refusing a refund or some form of recompense. Handled right, an aggrieved customer could be transformed into an evangelist for your brand. Handled wrong and you’ve not only made an enemy for life - that enemy will also co-opt many more antogonists into their camp with stories about how badly you treated them.

The other point I usually make is that whether or not your organisation is engaging in social media, your customers will be talking about you online. They may be praising your produce or servicess or they may be badmouthing you to anyone and everyone.

United Airlines found out to their detriment the high cost of not addressing one customer’s problem. He was a musician whose costly, specialist guitar was apparently damaged on a flight he took with them. As his YouTube page explains, he tried to get recompense from them and was passed from pillar to post to no avail. In frustration, he finally wrote a song which he performed on a YouTube video about his bad experience with the airline.

The video became a viral sensation across the internet and has so far had over 4 million viewings. The press (including Chicago Tribune and The Guardian) picked up the story. According to The Guardian, “Days after United Breaks Guitars went viral on Youtube, United changed course and offered compensation, Carroll said. He declined and suggested they donate it to charity.”

How might United Airlines have avoided this PR fiasco? By ensuring that they have a proper and authentic process for dealing with genuine complaints in a timely way. It seems so simple and obvious, doesn’t it?

So for any business, whether or not you have a blog, in today’s connected world, your customers will find a way to badmouth you if they want to - they don’t need to wait for you to create a blog so they can leave negative comments. The answer to dealing with negative feedback online is not avoiding blogging and social media but putting in place an easily accessible and genuine complaints procedure to show your customers that you care. Who knows, if you address their grievance effectively, they might actually be singing your praises instead of singing about how rubbish you are…

~~~

Thanks to Moyra Weston and Michael Spencer for first telling me about this video.

YouTube, the video sharing site, sent out a call for musicians from around the world to audition for the first internet symphony orchestra in the world. Performers sent in videos of themselves playing a piece by a Chinese composer Tan Dun, specially composed for the event. The winners were selected, based on their YouTube performance and the winners were invited to perform the piece live at Carnegie Hall in New York.

This is one of the many reasons why I love the internet and social media!

Here is a mashup of the symphony made up of clips from the audition “tapes”:

This is the performance at Carnegie Hall:

You can also find out more and watch videos about the whole process at the YouTube Symphony site.

Barack Obama continues to use social media with confidence and style. Within weeks of becoming President-Elect, he is maintaining his presence online with the ease of a 21st century man, reaching out to Americans - and the world - via a weekly YouTube address.

Previous US presidents and the leaders of other nations have used radio and television - was it Roosevelt who instituted a weekly radio “fireside chat” with the nation? Today, social media allows anyone to deliver their message to a national and global audience unmediated by the press or advertisers. It makes sense for Obama to use YouTube during the transitional months - there can only be one President at any given time so he cannot broadcast a weekly address on the traditional broadcast media without undermining the sitting President. YouTube is the perfect alternative, enabling him to continue communicating his agenda in this hiatus period while connecting with the younger demographic his campaign was so successful in capturing via a thoroughly 21st century, up to the minute, “hot” medium.

Here is his Thanksgiving address.

More to explore

The Social Media President

Barack Obama’s ChangeDotGov YouTube channel

If anyone is still sceptical about the power of social media, all you have to do is take a look at its role in the making of America’s first African American president. Of all the candidates, Barack Obama has probably been the most socially connected online throughout the Democratic nomination race and also in the last year going head to head with John MCain. So, what platforms was he using and what effect did they have on the outcome of the election?

Back in the summer of 2007, I spotted that Obama had signed up for a Twitter account so that his fans and followers could keep up to date with his every movement. As of this week, you can see the “tweets” alerting his followers of the last frenetic activity on his campaign trail as he tried to squeeze as much face time with the public as possible.

The tweets link to live video on his very own social network my.barackobama.com, developed with the input of Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes. Obama also has a Facebook page with over a million “friends” and a Facebook application as well as a presence on MySpace. TechPresident.com gives a good analysis of these three social networks in “You’ve Got a Friend in Barack Obama”.

There is an official Obama Blog on his website, run by staffers and with a range of multimedia content, including live video such as his victory speech streamed via social networking video site Ustream, as well as YouTube videos.

Beyond this handful of tools, you can see on his blog links to “Obama Everywhere” - other platforms where he has an online presence, including interactive opportunities via mobile phone.

But a bunch of social media tools in themselves are not going to make a president all by themselves. The key is how they were used by the Obama campaign. Supporters, fans and followers were encouraged to take an action to show their support for the campaign - whether by organising local events or giving a donation, however small or large, or raising funds. According to the BBC, Obama’s online campaign “attracted more than three million donors. They donated about $650m (£403m) - more than both presidential contenders in 2004 combined.” With an overflowing war chest, he could out-do McCain by buying more airtime in the traditional broadcast media and also extend his own on-the-ground real world contact through more local outreach offices than the Republican campaign.

The BBC also reports that “Mr Obama had an unprecedented level of support among young people and new voters in the 2008 election. He won the votes of those under 30 by an impressive 66% to 31%, much higher than in any previous election. He also has a huge majority of those who voted for the first time, who supported him by 68% to 31%.” The Washington Post comments that the Millenials (those under 30) “are migrating toward each other, regardless of race or ethnicity. … (They) may have found their first president — one who engages them in their own space.”

Obama’s success was not entirely due to social media but he used it smartly in conjunction with other communication tools. Broadcast media is still hugely influencial and there’s nothing that will replace face to face human contact whether it’s through speeches at rallies or simply walking amont the people and kissing babies. But social media broadened his reach to those people he might not have otherwise been able to connect with and it also enabled ordinary people to do small things which came together as a whole to contibute to an enormous win.

Picture: screenshot of the official Obama website

Following up from my post the other day on my blog FusionView.co.uk about using the live streaming video application, Qik, it looks like the Singaporean Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, is also a Qik fan:

The Singapore Straits Times reporting on the event, wrote, “Mr Lee’s candid camera moment held a serious point. Anyone can now be an amateur film-maker, capturing politics on film, and people will do so.” The PM’s use of Qik indicates a relaxation on the ban of political films that had been in place for 10 years, according to the report, and is welcomed by local filmmakers.

Interestingly, Singapore’s satirical blogger “mrbrown” is also using Qik . The tagline of his blog is “L’enfant terrible of Singapore” which hypes up his reputation as the country’s “badass” blogger. In 2006, he hit the headlines for “hit[ting] out wildly at the Government and in a very mocking tone”, as reported by Asia Media. He was allegedly suspended from his position as a part-time columnist for a local newspaper for this, according to Vnunet.

As new technology empowers citizen self-expression globally, these are going to be interesting times for countries like Singapore which have traditionally preferred their citizens not to engage in outspoken public debate about political matters or matters that are deemed culturally sensitive by the powers-that-be.

You don’t have to be glued to the telly this summer to follow the Olympics. You can watch it online from your desk at work or on your mobile phone anywhere you can access the mobile internet. According to Fierce Mobile Content, an up to the minute study by NBC Universal reports that, “74.6 million viewers tuned in for Friday’s Opening Ceremonies–while television accounted for 94 percent of the audience, online viewing represented 5.7 percent, mobile TV accounted for 0.03 percent and only about 36,000 viewers (0 percent) watched via video-on-demand.”

This is likely to be the first time that many people are using their mobiles to watch TV, according to the report, and no doubt a lot more people are watching online who cannot get to a TV. So the increased viewer numbers overall is good news for the US TV channel NBC as they are one of the key US broadcasters offering live coverage of the Olympics online and via mobile - once people get the hang of using new technology and get used to having that universal access, they are likely to want more. Increased access to content via a variety of media means, of course, increased viewer numbers overall and that’s good for advertising revenue - and may even translate into people willing to pay in the future for the convenience of, say, mobile content delivery.

The NBC online site offers viewers the option to be alerted when an event starts as well as “video to go” if you missed it. There are also downloads of highlights, results and medals listings, information about competing countries and online games to play. And, evidence of the growing Hispanic demographic in the US, a Spanish version of the site.

In the UK, the BBC also offers live video coverage of the Olympics online with a live text commentary. You can receive video masterclasses on your mobile phone - eg explaining the art of tae kwan do - and also take part in a live streaming discussion via text (Text 81111 with “OLYMPICS” as first word - UK users only). You can also receive text alerts for the events you want to watch live. For the mobile site, type http://news.bbc.co.uk/mobile/ into your phone’s browser. Like the NBC site, there are medal and results listings. There is also a section featuring BBC Sport’s Olympics Monkey - a cartoon mascot of sorts derived from the Chinese mythic hero Monkey - with games and quizes.

In fact, checking out the BBC mobile page opened up to me a whole world of mobile BBC content beyond the Olympics - including previews of the thriller series Spooks, text recipes from a cookery programme and the chance to share your snapshot of a newsworthy event direct from your mobile phone.

In China, too, mobile coverage of the Olympics is ubiquitous, according to Reuters. The report quotes Yun Weijie, president and chief executive of Telegent Systems, a Silicon Valley semiconductor maker: “TV will become a standard feature for cellphones in China by the end of this year, just like cameras.”

Over the last couple of years, I’ve been watching how video dramas have been taking off online and engaging audiences in a different way from how film or TV dramas have traditionally engaged viewers.

Up till recently, movies have relied on audiences going out and gathering at a given time at a given place and all sitting down together to watch a film, munching popcorn and drinking soda. TV dramas need their audiences to gather at a given time, though they can stay home to do this, in front of the telly, munching whatever comes to hand from the fridge. Technologies such as DVD and recording devices changed those behaviours to the extent that we can now choose the time we watch a film or TV drama but we are still bound to the place we do that ie usually a living room with a telly in it. We still settle down for a stretch of 40-90 minutes, sometimes more, to watch an episode of a TV drama or a movie - and it is sociable in so far as we are there in the same space with our friends or we talk about it later with our mates or we text / chat on the phone during the programme.

There are a number of online video dramas that are changing the rules of engagement. One example is Sofia’s Diary, which is being shown on the social network, Bebo.com. The episodes are uploaded twice a week and run for around 2-3 minutes. It’s an online soap opera around the life of a 17 year old girl, her family and friends with the occasional to-camera video diary. You don’t have to sign up to Bebo to watch it but if you do sign up, you can interact with the “Sofia” and the Sofia’s Diary network of “friends”. You can become a “fan” so you can receive email alerts when the site is updated eg with photos or another episode. You can opt to receive text alerts twice a week to be kept up to date with what’s happening. You can also add comments to each episode - many comments are inane but in respone to one episode where one of Sofia’s friends dies, many of her Bebo friends shared their own experiences of bereavement and grief.

The production quality is high - and, no wonder, as it is backed by Sony Pictures, developed from the original Portuguese online hit. The show is also the first online series to make the transition across from the internet to good old fashioned broadcast TV, having been bought by UK’s Channel Five.

I think that this is likely to be the future of drama series - not being tied to TV or film or the internet but across many platforms, including mobile (and books, too), with added features such as interactivity with the show, its characters as well as other fans. As the teens and young adults who are the current fans of Sofia’s Diary grow up, they will be used to this kind of interactive relationship with their entertainment and media, and no doubt come to expect it.

For writers and creatives, it’s becoming increasingly relevant to think beyond the medium you are currently used to working in, whether it’s print, TV, film or radio and to start experimenting with other media and to think about building in interactivity. For businesses who are interested in engaging with a public that is growing ever more multi-modal, it’s time to explore multi-platform, multi-media ways of grabbing - and holding - the attention of your customers and clients. Sure, not every different media is going to suit every kind of narrative or every kind of customer and certainly, a frenzied spray gun approach is not going to work either. But if you don’t explore new ideas and fresh ways of doing things in a strategic considered way, you could miss out on opportunities to expand the reach of what you have to say.

For more on interactive online dramas, take a look at What happens next…? where “Each of our show’s episodes ends with a decision for you to make and your vote determines the direction of the series itself.”

This post is part of my occasional series on Digital Narratives. If you are a fan of any online dramas or other digital narratives/ stories or if you’d like to share your views/ reviews of online storytelling, please add a comment and let me know.

dignar

What if we were to hook up with old friends in real life the way we do on Facebook? What if we related to our friends in the real world as if we were on Facebook?

This video gives us a taste of what may lie ahead for our friendships…

I wrote about the dangers of the omnipresent mobile phone camera last week in my post “Losing Control”. In the same week, a video posted on YouTube.com shows a cop in Baltimore losing it with a teenager, physically manhandling the kid without good cause and abusing him verbally in an intimidating and vicious manner. The kid’s offence? Calling the officer “dude” instead of “Officer” seemed to be the trigger.

Watch the video and be appalled.

Officer Salvatore Rivieri was suspended several days after the video hit YouTube, according to the Baltimore Sun.

In cases such as these, when bullies are caught red-handed and red-faced on camera - particularly those who are in positions of trust and authority - it can only be a good thing. However, as the Baltimore Sun report says, we do not know what took place before or after the recording so caution and proper investigation is always needed in these cases.