We're going to scale things back a little bit on this edition of "Crowdfunding 201" and do kind of a remedial refresher course on how not to run a crowdfunding campaign, or how to avoid basic issues on your crowdfunding campaign.
This is exactly what we needed: an app that lets people react emotionally to a newscast and let everybody know about it:
The idea, as conceived in a beta product called Social Soundtracker, allows users to stream a speech by, say, President Obama, sign in using Facebook, and register emotions by clicking on five emoticons — clap, boo, laugh, gasp, and aww — in the app.
ABC News is pushing this brilliant idea that will surely save the Republic by creating a feedback loop of instantaneous response so powerful that no politician will dare do anything untoward ever again.
No word if there will be a sarcastic eye-roll button added in future updates.
Image via The Hollywood Reporter
Follow Noah Nelson on Twitter (@noahjnelson)
If you haven’t heard of Pheed yet, it’s probably because you’re not around my age (21) or younger.
After creating an account I realized Pheed was “thee” social network of social networks, possessing the qualities I love about Twitter, Tumblr, Soundcloud, and Instagram all in one. It even allows users to create a pay-per-view-type show that they can charge audiences to watch. While scanning Twitter yesterday, I saw that The Game tweeted a link to his Pheed channel. My jaw hit the ground when I found out that Pheed was at the top of the Apple charts for social networking apps, even beating out Facebook and Twitter.
Although it’s been out for half a year, Pheed just spiked about a week ago thanks to help from popular teens like Acacia Brinley (who?!?!) whose tweet “@Pheed sickest app,” sent thousands of teens to create their own channels. I have been ranting for quite some time now about how Facebook is becoming the preferred social media platform of my parents’ generation. With Pheed’s emergence, we finally have another one to claim as our own.
via LinkedIn
If you’ve been hit by end-of-the-week sluggishness, this high-energy video about upping your Facebook game (targeted at musicians, but useful for anyone trying to build their personal brand) might put a little more hustle in your step.
It’s basically a video tip sheet from a young entreprenuer who’s a relentless hustler himself, Hipset CEO Matt Schlicht. Hipset’s founders have Lil Wayne’s 40+ million Facebook fans under their belt, and have launched two new ventures on the strength of their reputation building musicians’ social media engagement. (more…)
Twitter unveiled their new project, Vine, today. It’s short form video with a twist: by recording only while you are touching the screen, Vine encourages quick-cut videos instead of long static takes.
Long being relative, Vine’s videos are all of six seconds.
While Buzzfeed and Gizmodo are being cynical “oh look, everyone’s first Vine is boring” and “people are just taking videos of their desks” I found myself inspired.
[This is where I'd embed the Tweet with the Vine but, you know, WordPress kinda sucks at that and I don't have an hour to kill today.]
Part of the reason we cover the Hollywood Fringe Festival is for the way that the organization embodies the spirit of innovation in the arts. Not just in the form of the performances, but in the way that the organization itself thinks.
Not only was last night’s first Fringe Town Hall of the year live-tweeted by the festival’s social media manager but there was some serious back-channel talk going on in the flesh and blood audience on Twitter. As the night zoomed along and festival founder Ben Hill gave the newbie orientation as quickly as possible the #ShitBenHillSays hashtag turned up on Twitter thanks to TheatreUnleashed.
“That made sense in some dimension.” – @ben_hill #ShitBenHillSays #HFF13
— Noah J Nelson (@areyouthatguy) January 18, 2013
Real quotes from Hill, taken out of context, in real time.
By morning there was a MemeGenerator ready to go. [UPDATE: The memegenerator is the work of Fringe social media manager Rachel Stoll Armstrong (@rachelstoll).]
None of this is earth-shaking, but HFF makes a good case study of what a modern arts festival can look like in our uber-connected world. It felt more like I was back at a transmedia conference than a theatre meet-up. That’s a GOOD thing, mind you.
I’ve been fiddling around off and on with Branch, a new take on online discussions, for a few months now. The company has finally removed the “beta” label from their site today and is official at release 1.0. They’ve kicked in some new features with the launch, but first let’s go over the basics of what makes Branch interesting.
Branch is a lot like what you get when you have an active moderator on a comment thread. Instead of being a free-for-all, every “branch”– what is what they call individual discussions– is moderated by the thread starter. Invites go out for discussion, and those who want to get added to the talk have to ask to join.
If Facebook is the reunion you can’t escape from and Twitter is a bar, then Branch is a dinner party. (more…)
Last night in Las Vegas the International Academy of Web Television held their second annual Awards show. There were almost as many categories as there are kinds of web shows: in other words a lot of awards were given out.
While you can check out the complete list here, I wanted to poke around a bit and pick out a few highlights from my point of view. Which is code for talking about shows whose creators I’ve had a chance to interview.
What? Have you ever counted the number of web series there are? Go ahead. I’ll be waiting right here. See you in 2113.
A cold wind has been blowing through the social media developer world over the last couple of weeks thanks to a blog post by Branch founder Josh Miller.
In the piece Miller shares the insights he’s gained about a variety of services while talking to his sister, who is in 10th grade. The news from the high school set is pretty bleak for the intrenched interests. Even Buzzfeed, which reposted the piece in it’s entirety, does not fair too well. (more…)
Niley Patel at The Verge beat me to the legalese examination punch, but there’s still a lot of lessons to be learned from yesterday’s Instagram PR disaster. As Patel points out, the new Terms of Service actually restricts the photo sharing service’s ability to use its users photos more than the previous set did.
Unfortunately for the service, any reason to examine the TOS of a social media company is always cause for panic on the part of the user-base. There’s inevitably some pretty henious stuff in there that was glossed over on the way to taking that first shot of the latte you were drinking when the app finally downloaded.
One thing I’ve found distressing in the past 24 hours is the reaction to the reaction, a fair amount of which has included a mocking tone from members of the technorati – developers and early adopters whose default cynicism has led to a lot of “well what did you expect” posts on Twitter. There’s something rotten in the state of social media, and after the jump I’m going to drag the problem screaming into the daylight.
