This Christmas, and thanks to my sister's French family, I've discovered the viral video series of Remi Gaillard, a very funny comedian, whose clips on YouTube are viewed million times.
As a sample, see Remi Gaillard's real-life version of the classic Nintendo video game "Mario Kart".
He drives a go-kart at high speed through the streets and stores of Paris.
Remi Gaillard started doing pranks after losing his job as a shoe salesman. Now he is a French celebrity: he has appeared on several TV shows, sport events, and political rallies, where he got in trouble with security employees.
See here all Remi Gaillard's videos thematically categorized.
Social media continues to move forward toward business integration.
According to a Booz Allen and Buddy Media report, 57 percent of businesses plan to increase social media spending, while 38 percent of CEO's label social as a high priority.
But what can we expect in 2012?
Some emerging trends I've collected:
Social media will further integrate with "real life"
Score of digital influence movement -Klout style- will expand
Rewards for participation is a growing trend
More social sharing in e-commerce or web transactions
Television is about to become a social experience in bigger and broader sense.
More social approach to solve business problems through micro-economy solutions and crowdsourcing platforms like Kickstarter, Quirlky or Air Bnb
As a way to protect students from inappropiate content, YouTube has opened YouTube for Schools. This is a new network that allows access only to content that can be used in the classroom.
Schools' network administrators sign up with YouTube EDU and direct request to the school's YouTube portal. They also automatically disable certain features, including the ability to make comments on posted videos, and other distrations to student learnng. It is interesting to examine the technology behind it.
YouTube EDU has a half million videos for educators to choose from at the kindergarten to university level, as well as specialized content on specific topics in subject like mathematics, biology, ancient history or even TED talks. Teachers are also invited to populate the subject categories.
Note that this service is only available in the United States and Canada.
This popular tool for easily adding your video content to the social stream is turning its site into a community for sharing all web video, user-created or not.
It's starting with YouTube, Vimeo and Twitvid videos.
Each user now has a stream that can be followed by other users. In addition, users can create topic-specific "subchannels" and restrict posting privileges to just themselves, a small group or anybody.
Twitvid already has media celebrities on its services, including Justin Bieber, Al Gore, John McCain and Tyra Banks.
A New York based Web site has mapped all the storefront business in the City's streets and keeps them current.
CityMaps.com is a great tools for brokers to determine what retailers are in the neighborhood. Also it lets investment buyers to get a real flavor of the surrounding blocks.
Users are able to filter by type of business. Some brands, like Starbucks, pay to have their own filter.
His creator, Elliot Cohen, developed the concept while working at Vornado Realty Trust, one of the largest owners of commercial real estate in the U.S.
The company, which has about 10 full-time employees, has mapped Manhattan and Brooklyn and expects to finish the remaining boroughs in the next two months. CityMaps is also preparing to go live in the next six weeks with maps of San Francisco and Boston. The company is negotiating millions of dollars in financing for an expansion of its maps to cover 20 to 30 cities by the end of 2012.
iPad is associated with time to relax on the sofa; iPhone is for people who have only a few minutes.
This idea has brought to iPad app developers like Zite, Flipboard and Google Currents to create personalized versions for the iPhone.
The new Zite iPhone app lets people flip more quickly through articles, eiather by swiping from left to right or flipping through a section carousel.
On Zite, users choose topics or publications, and then they see a variety of online sources. On the other hand, Flipboard is mainly used for browsing social networking fees.
YouTube's largest redesign in history seems to be working fine so far.
Last month YouTube introduced a revamped Web site seeking to create an alternative to cable, with millions of channels that can be seen on screens of any size, whether phones or computers or televisions.
Channels can be created by professional bands, bloggers, amateur video creators and curators who do not upload their own videos but select their favorites from YouTube.
“We are trying hard to marry the best of TV with the best of online, so you get regular programming and come back often, but the new home page ensures you can take channels you care about and interact with them in ways you couldn’t do on TV,” YouTube explained.
On the new site, YouTube hopes people will take the time to select and subscribe to their favorite channel.
Every time users visit YouTube will see, on the left, their top 10 channels and a feed of the most recent videos created by those producers.
In the middle is a feed of the most recent videos, and on the right are recommended videos based on the user's preferences.
The look is more pleasing and user friendly: gray background instead of white, a more modern logo, and a less cluttered layout.
The same log-in works for Gmail, Google+, YouTube and other Google products.
People can choose videos posted by their friends on Google+ as a channel and can share videos by giving them a +1 and start hang-outs directly from YouTube
More ads letting people chose whether to watch ad and more skippable ads. Skippable adds now account for more than half of the ads that show in videos on the site.
I attended a couple of weeks ago the Business Insider Ignition conference in New York. Among all speakers, Twitter's chief revenue officer Adam Bain explained the truth about how truly his company is making money... believe it or not.
Twitter is making a bunch of money from promotions, advertising campaings and organic users interest.Sponsored tweets are really working. And advertisers are using Twitter in their campaigns.
Social media is all about connecting with people and engaging with the community.
This may sound challenging for financial insitutions, accostumed to traditional platforms of communications.
However, some brands are starting to develop dynamic ways to engage with their customers.
How? Avoiding talking just about banking, hosting contests, offering career advice, being cool, showing off their good work...
Some samples:
Citi uses its Facebook presence to build community by posting content not expected from a bank. This creates friendly conversation and interaction that is not otherwise naturally facilitated by a bank.
For example, Citi asks questions (often location-themed) like "Has your city hosted any major sporting events?" .
Also, this banks ran an exclusive Beyonce video that could only see on its page.
The bank invited students to submit 90-second videos about how they intend to make their mark on the world. After enormous community participation, including 3,000 comments on videos and 40,000 votes, the bank awarded eight students with $25,000.
J.P. Morgan's Facebook Page offers career advice to financial industry newcomers and posts tips on going through business recruitment.
Students and young people on Facebook, who are hoping to enter the financial services industry, come to associate J.P. Morgan with its helpful career tips.
Wells Fargo speaks like our friends do, wanting to be part of our community. This bank uses casual "Hey People" greeting and tries to be cool, avoiding press release-style posting.
The Page servers as a forum to discuss community projects and strenghten the brand in the process. A sample of post is "What kind of job trainning programs are in your area?"
Social media managers are faced all the time with the challenge of creating content that will attract readers, engage them in conversation and cultivate a persistent and positive relationship with them.
But what content is interesting enough to keep people coming back? What in the world do you write or broadcast about?
"How customers can get the most from your customer service department
What can your customers do if they would like to recommend improvements to your products
Letters from customers: actual suggestions from customers on how you can improve
Impressive things your competitors are doing – and how you’ll get even better than they are
Your growth plans for the next X years
The commitments you’ve honored and the promises you’ve kept
What makes you unique (you can end this piece with a question: “Do you agree?”)
What you’ve learned from ______ (This will be an analysis of a recent company or product failure, or a customer relationship snafu, with an accompanying discussion of the lessons learned from it)
The values you stand for, and how your products and services show this
What is it like to work for your company?
Current events in your industry and how this affects your company
Customer focus: How customers use your products and how your products help these customers
Why didn’t we think of that? How customers modify your products and find novel ways to use them
Ask people to twitter a question, to which you provide answers
Tell people what’s really cool about how you use your social media tools – Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.
Share your company’s history
Myths about your products, company or industry
What keeps you up at night?
Tell a story (or make it a couple of stories) about your company What do customers need to consider when selecting products similar to yours, and what makes you different from the rest, and the best fit for the customers’ needs."
In addition, here are some ways to generate ideas to use for your corporate blog and social network outlets:
"Compile the latest information about your industry.
Invite guest authors – colleagues in the company, vendors, industry thought leaders, customers, etc.
Check your mail, customer complaint desks, etc. and compile a list of questions you can answer.
Express your opinions on controversial topics in your industry.
Think beyond text; just because a blank blog page begs to be written on doesn’t mean you’re constrained to text content. Scan through YouTube videos, relevant infographics, DocStoc or Scribd documents, white papers, audio files and other content formats you can embed in or link to your blog. You can then write a commentary about it."
Tumblr.com microblogging network has grown a staggering 900% in the past year and eclipsed competitor WordPress. Now it hosts over 35 million blogs.
Since 2007, Tumblr's valuation has increased from $3 million to approximately $800 million.
It has gotten signfiicant funding (see above's graphic), although it has not yet announced a viable business plan. It just has some revenue from the sale of premium themes and content partnerships.
In my view, its success is based mostly in its usability. It beats Blogger, WordPress and other blogging platforms.
