LSQHA Blog Reviews

Our selection of the 10 most popular YouTube videos about the Web is of course based on page views. But we also filtered the results for videos that are most true to explaining the big-picture version of what the Web is. The selection includes some of the most creative ways the growth of the Web has ever been explained. The fast paced growth of the Web too often keeps us focused on the latest and greatest, to the point were we lose perspective for how the Web has changed over time. So let's take a step back and get a more culturally-oriented overview of the Web. From a 1969 film about an internet that didn't have a name , to the most recent video on the Future of Publishing - as both nostalgia and analysis, we offer you these videos to help you reflect. Sponsor Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us 10,892,454 views Internet People! 3,316,195 views History of the Internet 1,944,479 views Social Media Revolution 1,734,985 views Internet Party: When Google's parents leave town... 841,295 views 1981 primitive Internet report on KRON 643,333 views The Internet in 1969 567,941 views Web 2.0 544,862 views The Internet Stars Are Viral 434,424 views The Future of Publishing 431,759 views Discuss

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Top 10 YouTube Videos About The Web

Next time you hear about your city council looking to pass a law, make sure to check out their blog, Twitter and Facebook accounts. The Office of Management and Budget issued a memorandum yesterday that should make it easier for government agencies to both communicate with citizens and receive feedback by way of the Internet and social media. Sponsor The memo, entitled "Social Media, Web-Based Interactive Technologies, and the Paperwork Reduction Act" addresses the bounds of the Paperwork Reduction Act , a law first passed in 1980, and again in 1995, that regulates the ways in which government agencies can collect information. Yesterday's memo identifies a number of online activities, according to some rather specific criteria, that can now be considered outside the realm of the PRA - and therefore allowable without prior authorization by the OMB, something that could take several months. This Memorandum identifies a series of other activities that, consistent with the text and purposes of the PRA, OMB has determined may be excluded from its purview. Such activities include many uses of wikis, the posting of comments, the conduct of certain contests, and the rating and ranking of posts or comments by website users. This Memorandum applies whether agency interactions are occurring on a .gov website or on a third-party platform. The memo is in response to a January 21, 2009 memorandum by President Obama, which called for the establishment of "a system of transparency, public participation and collaboration." The memo notes that government "agencies are increasingly using web-based technologies, such as blogs, wikis, and social networks, as a means of 'publishing' solicitations for public comment and for conducting virtual public meetings" and that "certain uses of social media and web-based interactive technologies will be treated as equivalent to activities that are currently excluded from the PRA". Online media that simply "facilitate interaction", such as wikis and simple communication via social media, are likely to be excluded from PRA regulations, which requires government agencies to submit authorization requests to the OMB. The memo also states, however, that "if an agency takes the opportunity of a public meeting to distribute a survey, or to ask identical questions of 10 or more attendees, the questions count as an information collection" and will be held to PRA requirements. The memo goes on to list several distinctions between simple interaction and information collection and more structured information collection, the latter of which falls under PRA jurisdiction. So, if you find that you can't ever make it down to the City Hall for those public hearings, we'd advise getting on Facebook, Twitter and whatever else you can and find your local government on there . It's likely they will begin soliciting public input in a more informal manner on these sites in the near future. Discuss

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Memo to Gov Agencies: You May Now Tweet, Blog and Facebook

Brands confused by choices on how to deploy social media programs I recently spoke to the global marketing team at a large technology company, and one of the questions being wrestled with was deciding if social media efforts should be setup by brand, vs product teams wanting to create their own unique pages and experiences.  A specific question emerged “Should we setup our efforts by product type or by brand?” There are drawbacks and upsides to each of these, and I wanted to layout the ramifications. Brands who choose poorly risk community backlash -those that do not choose risk worse Companies that choose poorly will have wasted internal efforts and resources, set up false expectations for customers and may struggle with trying to redact a program in public where customers are already assembling. In particular, social failures like Wal-Mart’s branded community ‘The Hub’ have now become a case study of doing it wrong. Yet having no strategy means that product teams, regional teams, and individual regions will do whatever they want –causing clean up for corporate late. Matrix: How To Choose Social Media Programs by Brand, Lifestyle, Product or Location What it is: Benefits: Drawbacks: What no one tells you: Brand Companies often created their own Facebook/Twitter/Blog site focused on the company logo, brand, and corporate news.  See early pioneer Direct2Dell , Sony Electronics Twitter , GM’s Fastlane Blog On brand. One stop shop for all things related to the brand.  Easy place to find company news, product announcements.  Often, corporate teams can support an ongoing program Less trusted. Will often lack engagement, personality, and as a result decreased trust.  If brand doesn’t allow customers to talk to each other or self-express, it’s odd talking to a logo. It’s important to set expectations on the type of communications that will happen, be sure to have a community policy in order to enforce. See Nestle’ case example Lifestyle Brands created lifestyle communities such as communities for Wells Fargo’s teen , Amex’s small business owners , or even by cultures like  Asian Avenue or BlackPlanet Staying power. By joining customers in the way they already self-organize you’re matching their existing needs –beyond your product push Off message. Less control over the conversation which may extend beyond your brand and products and talk about what matters in their life.  Product focused teams may not have right mindset ‘customer-first’ mindset. First, find where they may already exist and consider joining. Create your own lifestyle deployment only to meet an unmet need.  Often this is at the mouth of the marketing funnel. Product Building a Facebook, Blog or Twitter feed for a specific product or product line.  See the Playstation blog , Doritos Facebook page , Specific info. Meets the needs of the Product Marketing Manager to give tight information about a product Granular and insular. Lack of customer focus and risk of investing in a community that could become irrelevant if the product reaches end of life. Lack of solution sell to lifestyle as consumer may want to purchase several products. If your product has staying power and a thriving community around it (like Xbox , PS3 ) with sub products around it it may make sense.  Consider this towards the bottom of the marketing funnel, or even customer support. Location Restaurants, hotels, and retail stores may want to create their own Facebook, MySpace, Yelp experience. Or specific regions may have different product sets and create their own communities to meet a unique culture.   See Four Seasons Twitter index Hyper targeted. Local markets may benefit from geo location marketing as location based social networks like GoWalla, FourSquare, MyTown, and Yelp grow.  Provide unique local experience. Lack of control. These individual pages may be setup by the managers daughter and lack true long term resources or ability to fend of sophisticated situations. Danger in these sites becoming abandoned over time, with no clear way to retire them without community backlash. Likely, this is already happening. Get ahead of it and provide the right training, processes, and hotlines for these disparate groups to have autonomy –but within clear set of guardrails protecting your brand. How to Choose The Right Mix: First, be customer focused. Companies should first identify the social graphics of their customer base to understand where they are online.  Secondly, they should understand their social behaviors, who influences them, and how they influence others.  In most cases, customers have already assembled their own communities and analysis should be done on how to join them where they already are . For best results, use in combinations. Rarely is the world an ‘or’ but an ‘and’.  Companies should know when to use these in an orchestrated combinations.  Sophisticated social strategists are mapping all of their programs against marketing funnels to know which tool should be used during what customer phase. Think long term –not just by campaign. Don’t launch short term social efforts unless it’s just around a single event and the expectations are clearly set up front.  Grown fans, followers, or subscribers is an investment that will cost you, so plan on doing this for the long term –not a short one-off campaign.  Remember, in most cases, customer communities have been here before your brand was on the social web, and likely they will be here after your brand.

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Matrix: How To Choose Social Media Programs by Brand, Lifestyle, Product or Location

mDialog , a four-year-old Canadian-based video platform company, is announcing the launch of their new Apple-focused service, an " HTML5 adaptive video streaming service with dynamic ad-insertion." In a nutshell: it lets you stick ads into videos that work on the iPad and iPhone. The ads can be pre-roll, post-roll, mid-roll and precisely geo-targeted to fit an advertiser's needs. They can also be swapped out and replaced in real-time. The service's ad-insertion features put mDialog's platform more on par with that of Adobe Flash, a plugin-based technology that doesn't run on Apple's mobile devices. Sponsor The mDialog service uses Apple's adaptive streaming specification in combination with the mDialog ad platform to deliver targeted videos to mobile device owners, whether they carry an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad. And by the second quarter of this year, the same technology will be made available to the Android mobile OS as well. For advertisers, the necessary features for managing an advertising inventory are present. On the back-end, you can customize settings like device frequency capping (how many times an ad is delivered to a unique device), time restrictions (when an ad should be played), a target impression goal (how many times a video is served), ad placement (pre-, post- or mid-roll) and geo-targeting. That last feature is incredibly easy-to-use thanks to an integrated Google map. Drop a pushpin, set the radius in miles. There's also DoubleClick integration for those who use it. With mDialog, advertisers can get almost creepily specific, similar to the way Facebook ads seem to know far too much about you. Imagine targeting all the people attending a game at a football stadium, Greg Philpott, mDialog's President and Founder, suggests. Or watching an automobile ad that directs you to the dealership nearest you...and by "nearest" you, we mean not just those in your hometown, but those nearest to your precise location at this exact moment. As an aside, Philpott tells us that, in fact, the auto industry is very interested in just this sort of thing. HTML5 Video vs. Flash: Ads and Analytics Needed mDialog's Apple angle is due to the fact that it's focused on HTML5 video, both live and VOD (video-on-demand). For those who have somehow missed the news: the iPad doesn't play Flash video. This has put advertisers in a quandary since HTML5, the upcoming but still-not-solidified standard for web markup language does not currently support in-stream advertising and real-time analytics features in its video feature. But when there's a hole to be filled, the industry will fill it. Brightcove, for example, has advertising and analytics on their 2010 roadmap , MeFeedia's platform allows for HTML5 video and ads , entertainment community Break Media announced the same and white label platform Ooyala offers real-time analytics, advertising and live-streaming tools. Others are sure to follow. A few of mDialog's features, including CPC and interactive overlays have yet to arrive. This detailed chart shows them as "coming soon." Philpott tells us "soon" means within the next 60 days, so advertisers won't have to wait too long. In the meantime, developers can use mDialog's application SDK to get started on their video integrations. Interested parties can get in touch with the company via their website . Discuss

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Want to Insert Ads Into Your iPad-Enabled, HTML5 Videos? There's a Service for That

Some new owners of Apple's slate computer, the iPad, are having issues with the device's Wi-Fi connection. Multiple forum postings, both on Apple's own support site and elsewhere , have users reporting that they're experiencing weak signals in an area where their other Internet-connected devices have no issues. Another common complaint, which appears to be related, is a dropped connection. Some iPads lose their connection to the Wi-Fi network, then prompt the user to re-enter the network password. But doing so doesn't work. The only "fix" seems to be either shutting Wi-Fi off and back on again via the settings, or worse, rebooting the computer...err...iPad. Sponsor Network Password? There doesn't seem to be any determinable factor connecting the users experiencing the problems - different models of the iPad are in use, different routers, different security settings, etc. However, one name came up dozens of times in the forums: Verizon FiOS. A number of the complaints came from customers of Verizon's high-speed, fiber-to-the-curb service known as FiOS. Along with TV and phone, Verizon provides Actiontec-branded Internet routers to establish the home's Ethernet (cabled) and wireless networks. We got in touch with the company, who had yet to hear of the problem at the time. After much research on Verizon's part, including speaking with members of their hardware teams and call center operations, it appears the issue has simply not crossed their radar. According to Verizon's Media Relations Director, Jim Smith, the call center has not received calls from iPad owners about failed connections on the iPad, although some have phoned in for help setting up WEP security connections on the devices. He did, however, hear from one person on his team who said Apple had advised iPad owners to turn off WEP security. We could not confirm this to be the case, but it does match up with some of the recommendations found on user forums. Those forums are hosted on Apple.com, so this is where the confusion may lie. For example, a customer reading the forums may have mistakenly assumed these were suggested fixes from Apple itself, and not from other affected users. Smith also told us that, as of now, Verizon has no evidence that the connection issues iPad owners are experiencing are related to Verizon's broadband services in any way. iPad users among the company's own employees have also not reported any trouble, he says. Apple Bug Resurfaces We typically believe that statements like these are just PR gloss-overs of an issue, but in this case, we tend to believe Verizon. The reason? This Wi-Fi bug is not a new issue. It happened to iPhone users, too, when the iPhone 3.0 software, a mobile operating system upgrade released via iTunes, was launched a year ago. Some iPhone owners then experienced issues that mimic those now being reported by iPad users. In July 2009, owners of the latest iPhone, the iPhone 3GS, which had launched the prior month, also reported similar issues . Despite rumors that the fix would be included in iPhone OS 3.1 in September 2009, the issues remained. There have even been three additional minor OS upgrades since then, to no avail. Apparently this is a bug that Apple just can't quash. As far as we can tell right now, some people are having limited success by either disabling WEP altogether on their wireless network - not a good idea from a security perspective as it opens up your home network to public access - or by setting their routers to "G" only, when formerly set to B/G or "mixed" mode. (To the non-technical, those letters refer to wireless networking standards. "G" routers are newer than "B" routers, but older than "N" routers. Routers can broadcast in B mode, G mode, N mode or a "mixed" mode where they support connections to devices of varying ages and supported standards.) For what's it worth, neither of those workarounds resolved the issue in my tests. Unfortunately, adjusting router settings isn't something everyday, mainstream users would think to do. Many of them buy Apple products because they're marketed as devices that "just work." Hopefully, Apple will soon live up to the image they've created for themselves and fix the Wi-Fi bug for good. In the meantime, learn how to reboot your iPad . Discuss

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iPad Hits a Bump: Wi-Fi Woes Point to Apple Bug