Mutt Media | Daily Bone 10.27.09 Entering Second Life

Just registerd for what I think will be a really cool new media experience in Second Life. I will be attending an Event on The Power of Youth Voice. “What kids learn when they create with digital media”. You should sign up if you have children as I think this will be pretty awe-inspiring.

FYI – Second Life is new to me, too, so let’s learn together! Remember, Mutt Media was created to keep you plugged in to the latest trends, help you keep up and take the fear out of new technology.

My Second Life avatar name is Brooklyn Macpherson if you would like to attend. Let me know if this is of interest to you and if you have any questions about how to set up in SL….Here’s the link to Holymeatballs.org if you’re interested!

Mutt Media | Daily Bone 10.26.09 Teens and how they are contributing creative content online

According to a 2005 study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life project (Lenhardt & Madden,2005), more than one-half of all American teens—and 57 percent of teens who use the Internet—could be considered media creators.

For the purpose of the study, a media creator is someone who created a blog or webpage ,posted original artwork, photography, stories or videos online or remixed online content into their own new creations. Most have done two or more of these activities. One-third of teens share what they create online with others, 22 percent have their own websites, 19 percent blog, and 19 percent remix online content…some interesting statistics…

Here’s a piece that my son made awhile back that at last count had almost 90,000 hits on YouTube. Go figure. Topic? Call of Duty and his Top 10 Weapons. Kids these days!

Mutt Media | Daily Bone 10.14.09 Reprint of Clive Thompson on "Real-Time Web" thanks to Brian MacCormick

The following piece was sent to me by Brian MacCormick

Interesting, so take a look and consider how you are getting your information and ask yourself, “Is this the best resource?” Consider the timeliness of data collection and reporting the next time you go looking to “Google”.

Clive Thompson on How the Real-Time Web Is Leaving Google Behind
By Clive Thompson 09.21.09

When Michael Jackson died on June 25, millions of people flooded onto Google News to find the latest information about what had happened. The spike in traffic was so massive that Google suspected a malware attack and began blocking anyone searching for “Michael Jackson.”

It’s a funny story, but it illustrates how the Web is changing. People increasingly turn to the Internet for up-to-the-minute information about, well, everything—blog postings about celebrity antics, status updates from friends, and pictures and videos of political events as they unfold, like the protests over the Iranian election. Studies have shown that these types of search requests are on the rise.

Pundits call it the real-time Web. It’s upending the Internet as we’ve known it, and it’s not something that Google can easily dominate.

For more than 10 years, Google has organized the Web by figuring out who has authority. The company measures which sites have the most links pointing to them—crucial votes of confidence—and checks to see whether a site grew to prominence slowly and organically, which tends to be a marker of quality. If a site amasses a zillion links overnight, it’s almost certainly spam.

But the real-time Web behaves in the opposite fashion. It’s all about “trending topics”—zOMG a plane crash!—which by their very nature generate a massive number of links and postings within minutes. And a search engine can’t spend days deciding what is the most crucial site or posting; people want to know immediately.

So a new generation of search engines like Tweetmeme, OneRiot, Topsy, Scoopler, and Collecta are trying to redefine what makes a piece of information important.

Some of these sites offer a Digg-like indexed front page that displays hot topics, while others just include a simple search field. But most of them rely heavily on Twitter. When a burst of tweets citing a particular subject or URL emerges, it’s a “signaling event,” as Rishab Ghosh of Topsy puts it. To make sure they’re not just getting hoodwinked by spammers, these new search engines employ some clever tricks, like crawling tweeted URLs and discarding those that land on sites containing spamlike language. Most disregard Twitter users who behave like spambots—for example, ones that follow thousands of people but have very few followers themselves.

Other ploys abound. OneRiot has a toolbar that lets users flag an interesting post immediately. Collecta actively imports blog posts and tweets so they appear in search results less than a second after they go live, rather than the hours it can take regular search engines to catalog the same info. “We want to be limited only by the speed of light,” Collecta CTO Jack Moffitt jokes.

The result is something curiously different from regular searching. If you hunt for “Michael Jackson” on a traditional engine like Ask.com or Bing, the vast majority of the links remain the same day to day. Authority changes slowly on the “old” Web. But real-time search engines deliver different, updated results almost every time.

The creators of these new engines argue that their goal isn’t to answer questions— à la Google—but to organize experience into a keyhole glimpse of what the world is doing at this very moment. “It’s exactly what your friends are going to be talking about when you get to the bar tonight,” OneRiot executive Tobias Peggs says. “That’s what we’re finding.” Google settles arguments; real-time search starts them.

Edo Segal, a pioneer in real-time search, thinks the field is going to explode as updates become more automatic, with our devices autoreporting where we are, how we’re feeling, and what we’re doing and seeing. Old-school search will never vanish, but real-time news will create a society where we have an omnipresent sense of the moment. “Google organized our memory,” Segal says. “Real-time search organizes our consciousness.”

Mutt Media's Brooklyn Wants a Pancake!

Mutt Media | Daily Bone 10.8.09 On the Duane Reade redesign

Photo courtesy of NY Times blog

These days I’m into branding. Logos. Due to the nature of what I get to do for a living and in pursuing my degree, I get to really evaluate things that maybe one wouldn’t stop to notice. I do it for work, for inspiration or sometimes, just because I have to.

This week I’ve been asked to look at logo redesigns that don’t work. It’s a pretty subjective concept at first blush, but when you begin to research any subject, you find that people usually come down pretty hard on one side or another. There are two ways to look at this.

1. Examine the logo and react strictly upon your impression and whether it works for you.

or

2. Ask yourself (objectively), “Does this image still represent the brand I’ve come to know and trust?”, “How does the redesign change the image of the company?”

I’m going with #2 for this assignment because a logo redesign doesn’t have to just look pretty or appealing. It’s important that all of the positive traits of the company still be exploited, while bringing a fresh, updated look. I’ve spoken here about the bomb of Tropicana’s redesign, when the public outcry resulted in a rush back to the old packaging. (See Daily Bone 9.3.09)

After a bit of research, it seems that DR undertook not only a complete redesign of the logo and signage but an overhaul of their overall brand, their offerings and their approach according to an interview I read on Brandweek with DR Chief Marketing Officer Joe Jackman. The firm DeVito/Verde was hired to spearhead the project. Just this week, the store introduced a new line of private label products called DR Delish and paired it with the new slogan, “Your City, Your Store”. By December, the goal is to have 100+ new items for sale under the DR umbrella – all being glueten free with no trans-fats, reduced calorie and made with natural ingredients. Some of these will (or do) include fresh sandwiches, new cosmetics and a Doctor on Premises program.

Example of new products/packaging:

DR Delish

Thus far, 30 of their 256 stores have been remodeled including a shift within the store of their products and placements of various inventory.

Personally and aesthetically, I like the new design as I think it looks more modern and simple. However, when I ask myself the questions above, I have to agree with the popular consensus that the redesign does not meet the objectives of brand recognition. I couldn’t find a good image of the new storefront, which is a complete departure from the two images shown here, using all grays and silvers, giviing a pretty futuristic and cold effect.

In my opinion the old logo was outdated and in need of a redesign, but the brand is going to now have to fight a bit to win back some great traction that they had with their customers. They should’ve kept a greater portion of the elements in the old logo, such as color or the interlocking letters.

What do you think? Like it? Love it? Hate it? Does the redesign make any sense to you? These are important questions when undertaking the branding of a company, especially one that has been around for 40+ years.

Here’s a link to a great article that was posted on Brandweek.com if you’d like to get some insights as to why the brand was redesigned and the philosophy behind their new offerings.

Jackman maintains that the campaign thus far has been successful, however I have found comments posted online by Duane Reade customers who have a different opinion, stating that the relocation of products within their store has left them confused. Another big complaint is that the staff at Duane Reade is not knowledgeable, friendly or willing to help when asked. Customer Service seems to be a huge complaint and now that consumers have many other choices such as Walgreens and CVS, they are inclined to go elsewhere. Those are items that no amount of “redesign” can fix but maybe their new products and look will generate enough buzz to bring people in and make them want to remain there.

Time will tell.

Mutt Media | Daily Bone 10.2.09 Hottest Pages on the web right now 10:20AM

Letterman, Letterman, Letterman filling up the top 10 web pages according to Alexa.com.

Mutt Media | Daily Bone 10.1.09 Wall Street Journal Online runs a piece about outsourcing your Social Media outreach using companies just like Mutt Media

Thanks to one of our biggest fans for giving us a shout-out on Twitter

The Wall Street Journal online ran a piece about outsourcing your Social Media outreach. Take a look. Just click on the link below….and thanks, Rob – for calling attention to it.

@robdelman: Hire a pro like @MuttMediaNY! Firms Get a Hand With Twitter, Facebook – WSJ.com (http://ping.fm/1ItxZ)

Mutt Media | Daily Bone 10.1.09 My Woodbury Magazine Article on Social Media & Internet Security

Click here to read the article Beyond facebook ©2009

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