MOTHERBRAIN

Make yer head asplode

(Via Amber)

Vote with your Dollars—How Companies Have Donated Politically

I've been meaning to post about GoodGuide for a few months now, ever since someone at work first emailed out the link. The basic gist of the website is that it helps you make more better purchasing decisions based on "what is important to you." It rates products on health, environment and social performance. Anyways, I just went there for the first time in a while and noticed that they've created an embeddable app that maps out political leanings (Rep. or Dem.) of companies based on their donations. I've had to temporarily increase the size of my middle column ... which is annoying, but I couldn't get it to fit otherwise. See below:

Democratic

Republican

GoodGuide.com political contribution data for over 100 companies
View data for other companies at GoodGuide.com

Best Practices in Social Media - Get Over Yourself, Embrace Others

So Gareth was nice enough to tag me on a social media meme that’s been going around despite my leaving him stranded in PowerPoint Hell for the past couple of weeks.  Here goes...

Last spring I worked with my good friend and super-engagement strategist Ellis Reavey to better understand what social media is and how best to be a social brand, mostly because we wanted to be ready for when clients started asking to stick a TV spot on Facebook to check-off the Social Media box on their new media checklists. 

I think one of the best practices that came out of that exercise that hasn't been mentioned yet in the meme is to not start a social media group centered around your brand.  Most marketing folk don't work on brands that a lot of people want to be friends with on the internet.  Let's face it.  I drink a lot of Diet Coke, but I have no desire to write on Diet Coke's Wall.  Maybe some people would, but they are probably into boy bands and Notre Dame football and I probably wouldn't get along with them. 

I think a better way to go about this is to find communities that already exist and figure out a way to help them do what they do. If there's not a group specifically for your brand, find a tangent.  If you're a couch company, find a social network of people who want to sit down.  If you're a toothpaste, find a social network of people with one remaining tooth.  If you're a country artist, find a social network of people who hate music. 

I've worked on brands in the past that have had HUGE enthusiast communities that they completely spurned in favor of creating their own social media type thing, and lets just say that it didn't quite pay off in the end. 

So maybe a pithy awkwardly worded shorter way to say it is this:  Help relevant communities exist better on their terms and on their turf.  

I'ma tag Seth, Clay, Eric, Johanna and I'm going to go way out on a limb here and try my best to tag Raph even though he doesn't know who I am.  We'll see if it works.

Telephono

Listening to NPR the other day, I came across an interview with a guy by the name of David Matysiak talking about a music project he put together called Telephono.  Knowing that most of his musician buddies now had access to home recording software and the Internets, he decided to see what would happen if he sent some basic song ideas out to friends for them to add whatever they wanted to it, and then had them forward the songs on through a whole chain of musicians to see what it sounded like when he got it back. 

"Telephono is an audio experiment that allows musicians to communicate with one another by manipulating audio files. Inspired by the classic children’s game “Telephone,” my interpretation involves sending a unique audio file to a musician via the internet. That musician then chooses whether to edit the piece or simply pass it on to the next person in the chain."

"Telephono is about the process, not the product."

I love it because it's "about the process". I worry sometimes that we as a culture have become so used to mashing things together that we have lost touch with the craft that goes into bringing original ideas to life.  Technology has made it easier than ever for anyone to make stuff, but usually it does so by eliminating the need to understand the bits and atoms that go into making original creative things. It's usually done using some kind of shortcut web app, which naturally have their own limitations.  Some people have done great things with what is out there, but I think it can be a bit limiting.  

What you don't often hear about is Web software designed to help the masses of prosumers.  You know, people who actually know how to make stuff.  I'm a little surprised about the lack of attention, especially from music recording software companies, paid to trying to make the internet more readily useful for people who already know how to make music.  I would love to have some kind of collaborative Web based recording or writing tool good enough to go mainstream ... and I'm hoping that things like Telephono inspire companies to start moving in that direction. 

My personal battle with information overload and nerdery

Coming back from being in Mexico for a week and a half followed by a week of focus groups has left me tremendously behind on my RSS feeds.  So far behind that I'm not even looking at them because I know the only effective way of dealing with the problem is to mark them all as read, and I feel like I'm going to miss something vitally important.  I hate this feeling.  Especially because I know full well that while there is surely some good stuff I'd be missing out on, there is nothing vitally important in there.  (or is there?)

What it has done however is once again raised the problem of trying to deal with RSS overload.  I did have my feeds set up in categories (Advertising, Sports, 16th Century Norwegian Ship Paintings) when I realized that that system doesn't really help anything.  So I did some digging online and found the current system I'm using:

Daily - read daily, no matter what
Volume - try to read daily
Bulk - try to read eventually
Probation - feed tryouts, more or less

So now I've usually got my daily feeds under control.  But Volume has over 300 unread items while Bulk and Probation each have over a thousand unread items.

The other problem has been sites that are good, but are so frequently updated that they clog things up.  I don't always want to look through 5,000 Boing Boing entries in a row to get to Mr. Gaffney.   So I've now started removing those sites that spew forth incredible volumes of content from folders so I can just see them and browse through them if I have time.  But now I don't ever feel the inclination to open up Volume or Bulk or Probation.  Maybe I'm just subscribing to too much stuff that I'm "supposed to" instead of the stuff thats actually good. Or maybe there is a better way.  (is there?)

Burn the Rope

One of the great things about the internet is the ability of people to make incredibly stupid things (read: brilliant and simple) and share them with people who enjoy such things.  This is one of those things, and I enjoyed it.  Stay for the credits...

Burn the Rope

(via Raph (like most everything else lately...sorry!))