COACHELLA CONTINUES!

Coachella is back. It’s not a double take, but part two of the first-ever two-weekend span for the largest music festival in the country.

AT&T has basically turned the entire space into a giant WiFi hotspot (they cover the space of 45 football fields!).  So if you are headed out for some festival action this weekend, here's a few tips on how to maximize your experience.  

CHECK THE WEATHER

If you don’t yet have a weather app on your phone, download one now and keep tabs on weather predictions for the festival.  Add “Coachella, CA” to the locations you follow to keep up-to-date.  Temperature predictions for this weekend are currently upwards of 100 degrees!  

CHECK OUT THE SONGS

Look up bands ahead of time on YouTube to see if you like any music that you may not have heard before.  Better yet, check out a Spotify playlist.  Many users have created Coachella playlists so you can get in the mood before the shows!

CHECK YOUR BATTERY

You don’t want to be halfway through the day and run out of charge on your phone!  Make sure you head to the festival with a fully charged phone.  Don’t forget to bring a charger with you, or invest in a solar charger so you can fuel up without an outlet.   You can also take advantage of the charging stations at the festival, some of which even provide chargers for you. 

CHECK OUT COACHELLA APP

Of course, there’s an app for that!  The Coachella app is available on iPhone and Android.  You can see the performance schedule, look up the venue and parking maps, view the shuttle maps and even create Coachella postcards!

The Wonder of Caine's Arcade

Caine’s Arcade isn’t the first small business that has benefited from social media.  It certainly won’t be the last.   But there is something so enchanting about this Cinderella story that it has touched hearts around the world.  Maybe it's the energy of the 9-year-old owner.  Maybe it's the homemade product, built from duct tape and cardboard.  Maybe it reminds each of us of the magic of being young.  How we played, imagined and dreamed. 

I got shivers watching this video.  Caine's Arcade Video

9-year-old Caine used his summer vacation and the space in his father’s auto body shop to create his own arcade out of the extra cardboard and scraps from the shop.  Opening up “Caine’s Arcade” to the public proved to be a challenge because customers were hard to come by.  As fate has it, his long-awaited first customer, Nirvan Mullick, is a filmmaker and was so taken with Caine’s creative business that he set out to bring it new life.  Through Facebook groups like Hidden LA, Nirvan rallied so much interest in Caine’s story that it ended up on the front page of Reddit.  The support was overwhelming and Nirvan organized a surprise flash mob to go to Caine’s Arcade.  His short film that captures the flash mob has blown up online, tallying over two million views on Vimeo and Youtube in two days.

What is it about the story that so moves us?  

It’s Caine’s sense of wonder, his ingenuity, his resourcefulness and his passion.  These represent elements of life that make any business better, and that’s what they did for Caine.  His story gives us tangible examples of these characteristics, with touches of youth naiveté that are simply charming.

I want to look a little closer at my personal favorite aspect of Caine’s Arcade, his Fun Cards.  I really love the parameters he put on them.

The whimsical pricing strategy: How’s this for a customer incentive to ‘trade up’.  $1 for 4 games (single purchase) or $2 for 500 games (Fun Card) 

They are time sensitive: The Fun Card expires one month from purchase.  Just another detail that is wonderful.

Fun Card Verification system: Obviously put into place so that no one who comes in with a falsified Fun Card can get away uncaught.  Each pass has a code on the back that corresponds to the square root of that Pass’s PIN number.  A calculator is duct taped to each machine so that Caine himself can verify the card’s authenticity before usage.   

He really has thought of everything.  

How about you, what’s you’re favorite part of Caine’s story?

THE TIME(LINE) IS HERE

The time has come.  For all you not-soearly adaptors, Facebook is finally making the full blown plunge into Timeline.  With the imminent and mandatory switchover looming, the time to make the changes to what will be published on your Timeline is now.  

Timeline won't show any previously private information, but the new format makes all information much more accessible to

 the casual user.  Additionally, Facebook will use an algorithm to determine which stories to showcase within your Timeline.  This means that old pictures previously buried beneath hundreds of more recent images may now be upfront for all to see.  Same goes for all your old “likes”, every comment you’ve posted, and location you’ve checked into.  Yikes!

Follow these steps to help navigate your switch to Timeline.

Privacy: 

Make sure your Timeline privacy settings are to your liking.  Under ‘Privacy Settings’, click on ‘Timeline and Tagging’.  This will allow you to customize who can post to your Timeline, who can see posts you’ve been tagged in, or review settings to approve posts from friends before they appear on your Timeline.

Hide Posts: 

To veto a post from being shown on your Timeline, hit the pencil icon at the top of the post and select “Hide from Timeline”.  The post is still in the archives of your Facebook account (in your activity log), but won’t be visible to others on your page. 

Prioritize Posts: 

You can make sure your favorite image, quote or post gets the “above the fold” treatment by highlighting it.  Click the star icon in the top right corner of the post and it will take up two columns instead of one in your Timeline. 

Double Check:  

Before going public, check your work from the perspective of a specific friend or the general public.  In the edit tab on your profile (it looks like a gear icon), click ‘view as’.  If you can see things that you don’t want that person to see, you’ve got a bit more editing and hiding to do!

LET FACEBOOK DO THE DIRTY WORK FOR YOU!

You may remember in September of last year, Facebook was improving the “Friends Lists” features so that you only saw certain people in your news feed.  That was wonderful.  Except if you have a huge guilt complex, as I apparently do, and you don’t want to label your Aunt Sue or your old project partner from Health Class as an “ACQUAINTANCE” rather than a “FRIEND".

Have no fear, last week Facebook launched a new update that automates your ‘acquaintance’ list for you!  Algorithms compute the friends with whom you communicate the least and offer those as suggestions to be added to your acquaintance list.  Simply approve the list (or remove the people you are secretly stalking first) and you will see less updates from these users in your newsfeed.  Its all based on facts and usage, so no guilt needed.

And, a few bonuses, because I know you are wondering: 

- Acquaintances won't be told they're on this list

- You'll still see the most important updates from Acquaintances - if they move or have a baby - thanks to Facebook algorithms

- You can share posts with "Friends except Acquaintances"

If you are signed in now, just click here: https://www.facebook.com/friends/organize?source=acq_suggestions

SXSW LITERALLY GOING TO THE STREETS!!

The latest buzz on the streets of Austin is centered around those who live there.  Homeless Hotspots is an experiment employing 13 homeless in the community to carry 4G wireless routers and serve as hotspots for SXSW visitors.  Users can get connected in exchange for a donation- $2 for 15 minutes- payable directly to the homeless host himself over paypal.

The campaign, launched by ad agency BBH Labs, was intended as a “charatible innovation initiative” (according to their website homelesshotspots.org).    Mass sentiment, however, seems to view the campaign as dehumanizing rather than inspiring.  

One key flaw here is the t-shirts.  Each Homeless Hotspot host is wearing a t-shirt that says: “I’m (fill in his/her name), a 4G hotspot.”  The wording of this implies they are a product.  Why not, “Need a 4G hotspot? Ask Me!”  Switching around a few key words makes the message much more empowering.

What do you think?  Is this program helpful or harmful? 

Kony 2012

Have you been on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube in the past 24 hours?  If so, you’ve seen at least a glimpse of one of the most pervasive social media campaigns in recent history.   Going beyond the typical ‘Trending Topic” or Fan Page status, the Kony 2012 campaign has completely taken social media sites by storm.  

• YouTube video posted Monday night now has 7 MILLION views. (update: by the time I posted this, its up to 10 million views)
• Trending worldwide on twitter and making up over of half of current Twitter US trending topics.
• About every third post on my Facebook newsfeed right now.

This campaign has made its voice known with a viral video produced by filmmaker Jason Russell.  Russell’s mini documentary brings light to Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) leader Joseph Kony, and his brutal practices of abducting young children and forcing them into his army.

Before I get into the video’s content, I want to touch on one specific fascinating piece to me.  The video is 27 minutes long!  If social media minutes had some alternate timing, like 1 dog year = 7 human years, it would be something like 27 social media minutes = forever.  In the world of 30 second pitches and 140 character updates, 27 minutes is a long time to ask someone to focus.  For me, that makes this campaign’s success even more staggering.  

But - as the documentary states - “Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”  And with that, the video calls for action from the world to continue to put pressure on the US government to keep aid in Central Africa to help them find and capture Joseph Kony.  The plan to achieve this is to “Make Kony Famous”.  Hence, the Kony 2012 campaign.  

Its better to watch the video for yourself than to read about it in an article.  Links to the postings are below.  No matter if you are counting with regular time or ‘social media time’-  its worth your 27 minutes to watch.

http://www.kony2012.com/

http://www.kony2012.com/

"Super Tuesday" - Did Social Media Call It In Advance?

4 Ways Social Media Predicted Super Tuesday Results

1) T-SHIRT SALES:  Online T-shirt retailer CafePress says sales of their custom made mechanise can predict election winners.   Because their sales are user-generated, CafePress considers itself a cultural barometer.    In 2008, CafePress correctly predicted Barack Obama to win the presidential election.   We will soon see if their prediction success continues.

CafePress Prediction: Mitt Romney will win 5 of 10 states. Rick Santorum will win 2 states.

2) TWEETS: Through tallying how many times a candidate is mentioned in tweets, predictions have been made on several political elections in the past.  The technique has been streamlined to consider positive or negative mentions and number of followers, but has still wavered in prediction success, and gathered up much criticism from experts.  

Twitter Predictions:  No official predictions from Twitter.  There are far too many independent predictions using tweets to name, but the vast majority predict Romney or Santorum.

3) FACEBOOK INTERACTION: By focusing specifically on Facebook, social media analytic group Socialbackers believes they can predict results for Super Tuesday.  Their analytics include candidate's Facebook exchanges, page posts and fans.  The big question here is if Facebook user intentions will mirror the intentions of actual voters.  

Socialbackers Predictions: Mitt Romney

4) DASHBOARDS: SocialMatica, a social media analytics firm, goes far beyond just tallying online mentions.  The firm created an algorithm that analyzes context, sentiment and the influence of the person posting across web channels.  Their results include not only predictions for Super Tuesday winners, but also insight into what the hot topics are to voters in each state.

SocialMatica Prediction: Mitt Romney will win 7 of 10 states.