Here is a list of mid-late week items that your DSA Online team found interesting:
From Kathryn:
I’m sure you all know that I’m about promoting the NABS west Shindig tonight. However, just because I’m focused, it doesn’t mean that I haven’t found a few gems online this week
From the Clikz vault this week, I found an excellent article explaining why viral isn’t social (a common misconception). I feel smarter having read it because I know that I slide into vocabulary explaining viral as leveraging a social community and that’s misleading and technically wrong. I strongly suggest you give this one a read.
The dare: “The Great Shindig Popularity Contest” I have challenged two of my industry peeps to get the Shindig to sell out before Thursday. We’re each trying to encourage people to buy 2010 Shindig tickets (hosted at the LUX lounge downtown). Once at the event, the three of us are challenged to take as many photos shoulder to shoulder with attendees & post them to our twitter accounts (via twitpic). She who posts the most photos from the event is named the 2010 SHINDIG TWITTER QUEEN.
Settling the challenge: She who collects the LEAST photos is named the Shindig Twitter #fail The twitter loser will have to express their sorrow via the internets the next day apologizing for her lack-luster job at encouraging ticket sales and networking at the event (expect multimedia). The final #fail published parametres will be defined by the 2010 Shindig Twitter Queen.
What do I need from you? I need you to buy Shindig tickets and attend. Then, I need you to send this article to other advertising, marketing & communication peeps who should come to the Shindig.
Follow my twitter account at @kathryn_slater and watch the fun published live this Thursday.
While I want NABS to make money, I would prefer to try and encourage ticket sales to make the event better. If you’d like to support NABS but cannot make Thursday’s Shindig – please feel free to donate to NABS here: http://www.nabswest.org/donate_main.html
NABS is very important to the communications industry. The more support we can garner from the industry, the more support we can give back to industry people who need it. Not sure who NABS is or what they do? Check out this link: http://www.nabswest.org/about.html
Please pass this along to everyone in the industry and encourage them to buy tickets before Thursday. Please help me support NABS and sell this event out. Then help me KICK JENN & TRICIA’S MOBILE/PHOTO BUTTS!!
I love Jacquie’s cross section of articles on the Netflix launch in Canada. While saddened that Netflix left a bitter taste with the Cdn community after their TO hijinks (great local blog post with links to the latest Netflix creative), I am hopeful that they have learned their lesson. Honesty & transparency wins online. How many times do I need to say it? I have been hooked up to my netflix since yesterday and believe me, it’s changed my viewing habits. Not having cable for the past 8 years, it was a special kind of surprise logging into the streaming system. I turned on my TV, I selected a movie, it started. That easy. Even better – the app access is through my PS3, so I don’t have to buy into any other TV streaming system. I am getting caught up on Heroes season 3 as I cannot get back-issues from most local TV station sites. Honestly, I don’t see any reason to return to the station streams. They have not upgraded their service and the ads are still atrocious (loud, repetitive, message burn-out, limited selection). Sorry traditional TV. I believe you’ve lost online. Time will tell if Netflix will continue to provide new and timely content to Canadians, but with a launch complete with MadMen, I’ve got some catching up before I start complaining.
I also don’t think that Netflix is trying to compete with local TV viewership. They are definitely going to woo over the non-traditional viewing crowd and establish a young/tech-saavy viewer audience that will never go back to cable (why buy forced content you don’t care about or support a system that has exclusive deals, ie Canucks + Rogers?). While the TV stations are fighting against each other, negotiating proprietary content lock-outs and worrying about ad dollars, the content is being aggregated in a different way online and users will come. Traditional TV does have some time before they see online erode at their big hit shows, but if Hulu comes North, I officially call local TV streaming dead in Canada.
It’s been a week (or two) of great musical contributions online. It might just be that our network is super conscious of musical videos these days because we’re working on a musical contribution of our own (see the DSA Media blog for future updates), but whatever the cause, I’m happy to bring you this week’s musical link contribution:
I still believe that OK Go’s departure from the traditional label distribution agreement was one of the best things to happen to the internet. I have lost count of how many videos they have released from their Of the blue colour of the skyalbum (score extra points for the spelling of colour). Each video they put out, I imagine them celebrating their decision:
Finally, what’s more encouraging than a call from industry professional asking the world of digital media to pick up it’s socks and start working as a community? This AdAge article encouraged the crap out of me this week and gave me hope that we, as a group, can clean up the mess that has become online advertising. Give this a read and then head over to the IAB Canada website. Do you have an idea? Do you want to change the online ad community for the better? Speak up! Currently the IAB is pretty focused in the East and unless you like getting up at 5:30AM PST to be on any of the councils, you’ll likely be frustrated with the process currently in place. But, don’t be discouraged. Send your ideas directly to the IAB Canada council and have your ideas presented by proxy.
UPDATE: Read the excellent first comment below from the president of the IAB Canada inviting western Canada advertisers, publishers & agencies to attend the upcoming Mixx Roadshows in Calgary & Vancouver and be updated on some new developments out West!!
The big news on the interwebs today is the launch of Netflix in Canada. www.netflix.ca
For those that don’t know, Netflix is an internet movie subscription service that allows viewers to watch unlimited* TV shows and movies for $7.99 per month. These movies/shows can be watched on your computer, or streamed on TV through PS3, Wii, and several other internet-connected devices. (Access through XBox 360 is coming this fall, but will require an paid Gold level account – boo-urn Microsoft, boo-urns!) You can even watch Netflix on your iPad or iPhone.
The catalog listed on their website has a wide selection of movies, but not much in the way of new releases or Will Farrell movies. Not many movies I searched for were available, but there are a few gems mixed in with the plethora of B-rate garbage (Seven Samurai, Primer & Gattaca).
Netflix also won’t be showing a lot of new TV shows, but again, there is still a few goodies available from the last few years. (Mad Men, Justified) and apparently Canada will be getting at least one new show that the US won’t: Running Wilde.
There is certainly enough good stuff in their current catalog to merit the very low price of $7.99 per month, which is about the same price as 1 HD movie ordered through Shaw’s Video-on-demand movie service.
For those of you like me that don’t care much about watching sports or Dancing with America’s Fattest Survivor, Netflix is a great alternative to the bloated wallet-sucker that is packaged cable. But before you cut your cable entirely, keep in mind that your internet provider caps your monthly download limit. A good rule of thumb is 1 hour of programing = 1 GB; my current internet package caps at 75GB, which means I’m limited to about 2 hours a day (excluding my other online habits).
Personally, between Netflix and streaming TV on local website, I’m not really seeing the need for cable anymore. I’ll let you know how it goes.
* some sources are putting quotes around ‘unlimited’ and I’m not sure why – its either unlimited or its not?!
Here is a list of mid-late week items that your DSA Online team found interesting:
From Kathryn:
Did you pop in to check out the live-twitter event? Mashable hosted a live-feed of Twitter’s announcement of their revamp of Twitter.com. Did you know that 78% of Twitter users use Twitter.com as their client (vs. Tweetdeck, Hootsuite, etc). Be sure to check out Twitter.com and the Mashable’s Twitter changes announcement page.
About a million years ago a brave young pioneer leveraged her online popularity into a Hollywood career, and demonstrated that being popular on the internet is no small thing. Since then, the internet has launched the careers of bands, redefined comedy, and now in the pinnacle of internet achievement, Paul “Bear” Vasquez has become a Microsoft spokesperson for a single reason: A lot of people watched his epic home video “Double Rainbow”. Kudos to Microsoft for quickly turning an internet meme into an advertising campaign.
That capitalization of a meme was light years faster than Honda’s Bangs endorsement. At this rate we’ll soon see meme ads before the meme itself!
San Luis Obispo police are the internet equivalent of an old guy that refers to telephones as “new-fangled technology”:
Seriously, these are the people that protect the citizens of San Luis Obispo? I’d be terrified to encounter someone with a gun that can’t differentiate the difference between satire and pedophiles.
Did you know that the typical searcher takes more than 9 seconds to enter a search term? Well now with Google Instant, that number can drop to 4 – 7 seconds. Talk about a technological revolution. No seriously; it took 15 new technologies to produce this functionality.
Since Google Instant isn’t in Canada yet, I can’t say first hand that this is a good or bad thing; what I can say is that the amount of time and energy and money that went in to saving me a couple of seconds is a little over the top.
DSA Online endeavours to stay connected by publishing the DSA Online blog: Birds on a Wire. With such features as a mini comic, vlog series, regular features on trends & memes, the Bird on a Wire blog is a fun way to stay connected to the industry. Specifically seasoned with western Canadian information, the blog is intended to show that we can have fun while we navigate this tangled world of web.
