For many years Google was one of the last companies avoiding mass media advertising (though they’ve done it outside the US). That stronghold ended the last SuperBowl, with the now famous (and parodied) Parisian Love ad:

Even web companies with true fans reach a point when branding becomes necessary to grow a market that’s getting crowded. With many people starting to explore Google’s products and services, an ad that is relevant and tells a powerful story only helps to conquer more users, responding to needs that later get extended to their professional choices (think AdWords or Google Apps).

This need for branding for web companies will become even more evident the next few years, as startups try seduce advertisers by getting more reach and visibility. But instead of using the eyeballs approach, we’ll have a more combined branding approach.

Foursquare, the location based game, and their recent partnerships with Zagat or Marc Jacobs is an example of this sponsorship leveraging a web brand, . Other examples include ExecTweets with Federated Media and Microsoft or even more tactical approaches like the Let It Shine commercial for Honda and Vimeo.

Larger brands should take notice of these opportunities, by teaming up with web brands on relevant, win-win partnerships. As for web companies, Branding, even on a different form, is one step to leave their Beta label behind.

Being lazy on a rainy Sunday has its payoffs, like finding these two great documentaries:

PBS Frontlines’ Digital Nation: from information overflow to virtual worlds, Rachel Dretzin and Douglas Rushkoff do a great job on highlighting some of the challenges of the Millennial generation.

Also engaging was BBC’s 3D Documentary Explorer for “The Virtual Revolution: How 20 years of the web has reshaped our lives”.

Even with the 3D eating the CPU, the videos (with plenty testimonials of key web figures) are worthy of your next lazy Sunday. Beats watching American Idol anytime.

When discussing social web and how it relates to marketing, the focus is mostly on consumers and the communities formed around products and services. Engagement, immediate feedback and responsibility, empowerment of fans, flexibility and having a human voice are the blueprint for companies when interacting with consumers.

Photo by Julia Manzerova, under a CC License

The discussion on how these values translate on a Business-To-Business scenario is quite recent, with companies like Dachis Corporation or recent initiatives by SAP exploring these brave new waters. But one thing is to have a 10000 feet view on social business, another is having to deal with day-to-day operations, from procurement to human resources.
We all have heard stories about greedy managers or other forms or corporate assholes, that don’t care about the latest social technologies and are usually control freaks, oblivious about our oh-so-noble concepts of social capital, long tail or crowdsourcing. And worst, they push businesses into a new form of Prisoner’s dilemma.

The prisoner’s dilemma is a fundamental problem in game theory that demonstrates why two people might not cooperate even if it is in both their best interests to do so

Even if we have the best intentions and try to collaborate with other business, the fact is that the amount of effort we put on using social technologies isn’t returned with the same level of commitment by other companies which we deal on a regular basis. Much to blame is the selfish need for maximizing shareholder value that still prevails on many companies (despite having caused the recent economic crisis), forcing stakeholders not to invest in values and technologies more supportive of innovation and social responsibility.

Unlike Business-To-Consumer markets, the reason why i find this dilemma still stands on B2B is because of low adoption of public publishing platforms. Even if we consider Yammer or Linkedin, most of business conversations are shielded by corporate guidelines with a veiled interest on lack of transparency.
When will we see the corporate equivalents of Facebook and Twitter? Where companies cooperate in their best interests, with no hidden payoffs and in a transparent market, where the conversations are regarded with the same importance as in consumer markets. It’s time to replace the traditional industrial complex of pushing goods for the markets with a more design and socially responsible model, where hidden agendas are hard to maintain under public scrutiny.

Yes, i know it’s a dream. But so was landing men on the moon.

Just noticed today that ComScore started measuring Internet audience in Portugal, and the numbers do look solid.

The study points to more than 3.8 million people age 15 and older, spending an average 1.9 hours online per person during the month, numbers that will probably be discussed the next 26th November at CAEM i-com National Roundtable (on Twitter @icomglobal).

The last few months i’ve also noticed a renewed interest on giving solid data about Internet behavior, as the market grows bigger with droves of new users consuming more bandwidth (either broadband or mobile).

The data on social networks is finally shedding some public light (disclaimer: Fullsix Portugal has also some panel data on user behavior), with no surprises on the top place for Hi5.com. Facebook numbers show some solid growth, but i’m still a bit far on my prediction that Hi5 would be surpassed by the end of 2009 (even if i seriously suspect that already happened in terms of active users). Twitter is a lot bigger than i expected, and something that most marketeers in my country have been ignoring.

Source: ComScore

Crossposted at The TrendWatch

Yesterday, the quintessential online ad resource BannerBlog featured two ads for Smart. Both pulled dynamic data — weather and maps — to build a display ad unit. I could be wrong, but the data source was probably some sort of API. For those not so versed in acronyms, Wikipedia to the rescue:

An application programming interface (API) is an interface that a software program implements in order to allow other software to interact with it; much in the same way that software might implement a user interface in order to allow humans to interact with it.

Flickr Mosaic: Crayonbox, constructed with Flickr API. Released under a CCommons license by krazydad

Like digital bridges, API’s request standartized information from public (and sometimes private) web services. From USA Spending to Fedex tracking, from Flickr to Google Maps, the interest for APIs has been traditionally confined to B2B/ERP and the Social Web. But lately the concept is extending beyond these areas: with developers creating exciting and unexpected uses with the new data available, and with consumer brands and the ad industry starting to let go of their closed silos, in essence “letting one thousand flowers bloom“. A good consumer brand example of this trend is the UK grocery chain Tesco, who announced a new API at TechForTesco and invited developers to tinker with its data, search for nutrition facts or send ‘ideas’ to the customer’s ‘ideas inbox’.

Web development frameworks have long been using these large building blocks to enable rapid development by a larger interested audience. They not only ignite the engine of innovation, sometimes stalled by internal corporate politics, but also allow brands to have a comfortable degree of control. With new data sets available, we could start thinking of new kinds of mashups, such as business data built directly into communication solutions, CRM programs feeding custom content or display ads with real-time data, as mentioned in the beginning.

Before a brand dips into this space, it’s challenge is to question which data set respects legal and privacy issues, while at the same time being interesting enough for developers and consumers to act upon. What they shouldn’t be asking is if an API is useful (it’s useful when the data is right).

If you’d like to know more about what’s being done with such web services, I highly recommend checking out the website Programmable Web. It’s a useful resource with over 1500 APIs that have been used in thousands of mashups.

Noah Zerkin gives AR a touch of awesomeness, with his Zerking Glove.

The low-cost data glove (under $300) allows 3D interaction with virtual objects in augmented reality (AR) environments, with accurate 1-to-1 tracking of ones entire arm from shoulder to knuckles without external reference infrastructure .

Despite all my pet peeves with all the hype surrounding AR, i’ve been lately more thoughtful of the subject and there’s a few interesting projects being hacked, like this one from @noazark, who’s looking for investors.

The Charlatans – Oh Vanity

On other related stuff, millions of Users and Businesses Register Facebook Usernames in First 24 Hours of Landrush.

I’m with Chris Messina. We really need to stop this namespace race and just stick with a plain old
TLD.

2009 has been abuzz with Augmented Reality, and what was once novelty is now on the verge of becoming a fad, a “Me Too” marketing strategy. As i still think there’s a lot of bright people researching new ways of interaction, here’s a short selection of videos collected in the last few months, featuring the best augmented reality examples used for marketing purposes.

1. Mini.de

   
   One of the first AR examples used in advertising, by Mini.

2. GE Smartgrid

   
   Papervision meets FLARToolKit for a digital hologram of GE’s Smart Grid technology. Developed by North Kingdom.

3. Wear Your World

   
   The Fluid Interfaces group from MIT showcased their work on a recent TED Talk, with Pattie Maes demoing the sixth sense, a step towards the ubiquitous computing vision of Mark Weiser.

4. Topps 3-D Live cards

   
   One of the quickest ways for AR reaching a mainstream audience is definitely sports. With Topps 3-D Live cards by T-Immersion, you can bring life to players, with the help of a webcam.

5. Wikitude AR

   
   The iPhone might get all the buzz, but one of the promising AR integrations is on Google’s Android, with Wikitude, a mobile travel guide based on location-based Wikipedia and Qype content.

6. Augmented Reality Geocaching

   
   Ok, this is really just a concept, but as an occasional GeoCacher, i really loved this idea. Oh the possibilities for augmented ARGs (see also Map Tracking and MARQ).

7. Dynamic Wine Labels

   
   Dynamic Wine Labels. An Adegga.com innovation, a company co-founded by Twinelis buddy Andre Ribeirinho. Wine information on the go, using QR codes with AVIN (think ISBN for wines).

8. Augmented Reality Tamagotchi Maid

   
   A virtual toy, with their 64 page instructional manual, with all the Japanese idiosyncrasy, developed by Geisha Tokyo Entertainment.

9. Sekai Camera

   
   Mainly a mobile technology, but with a promising marketing future, the Sekai Camera is a system for using online data to navigate the real-world, featured on the latest Techcrunch 50TechCrunch 50.

10. Augmented Magic

    
    Augmented Reality Magic 1.0 from Marco Tempest on Vimeo.
    You didn’t think I’d forgot the coolest video of them all, where Zach Lieberman and Theo Watson mix technology with magic, didn’t you?

While this kid of experiences has all the eye-candy, the real trend that interests me is “The Internet Of Things”, with technologies like Arduino or companies like TikiTag and Violet.

For related information, check out this great resources:

• Johnny Holland, about the interaction between people and products, systems or processes.
• New Ways Of Interaction, a Vimeo video channel.
• DigitalExperience.dk, where Jonas Petersen writes about innovative uses of new technology in an experience-oriented context.
• Augmented Times, true believers of AR as vision of the future
• One of the main AR development companies, Metaio,
• More great demos by Total Immersion
• Curious Raven, Neogence’s CEO blog, a company working on Augmented Reality Gaming
• And you can start building most of this stuff with Flash using Papervision and FlarToolkit

There’s a recurring theme on some mainstream media that the Internet and social media are some kind of dark force, that only does bad things to your kids and those who spent too much time online don’t have anything useful to do with their lives.

As i’m never short of passion of explaining to regular “offline” folks the outstanding opportunities that the web has brought to us, let me share one of my central arguments that you can also use to bring more people in to the conversation.

The Third Place

The Third Place refers to social surroundings separate from the two usual social environments of home and the workplace, or as i call it the private and professional spheres. The concept was created by Ray Oldenburg , arguing that these places were central on their community building role on a society.

A monthly meeting of twitter.com users in Lisbon, © twittlis

The web pushed this whole concept further, as citizens increasingly rely on digital tools to stay connected, with social media becoming their main third place. With shopping malls and other consumption temples getting emptier in a year of crisis, this trend will deepen and it’s up to us, early adopters, to show the Yellow Brick Road to newcomers.

Show your friends the best community tools available so we all can build a better society. From Kiva.org to Twitter.com, these are not only tools for digital democracy but effective agents of change.

So when those folks tell you to get a life, just reply: “Get a Third Place”.