Posts Tagged ‘twitter’

Beyond Gaming: A full interactive experience

Posted by Justin Shimp

May

2011

Filed Under: Design

A new gaming experience on iOS has taken interactive to a new level, and it’s SuperBrothers’ Sword and Sworcery EP. Beyond angry birds or slicing fruit, Sword and Sworcery EP delivers a multimedia experience you can’t have on any other system.

I cannot say that I have played such a rich and original game since the Team ICO games on the PlayStation. Heavily influenced by Jungian viewpoints on mythology and storytelling, Sword and Sworcery EP puts in your pocket an entire world that you can carry around and jump into anytime. The graphics are nothing short of breathtaking. Beautiful pixelated graphics with amazing painstakingly rotoscoped animation, in the same vein as Price of Persia for the Apple II. This game fits my ideal aesthetic of graphics in games. I am more a retro type of gamer and feel very unimpressed by big fancy 3D cinematic sequences. I would much rather have dazzling and fine attention to detail that creates a world that is not realistic but I can still place myself inside of it.

What’s different about it?

A Game with a Soundtrack

The music, scored by Jim Guthrie, is the biggest reason why the game is so powerful. The game was created alongside the music, a rarity in the creative process of game creation. Music and videos were traded back and forth to get the perfect aesthetic for the game and it shows.

What is also great about the music is that the entire score is released on 180 gram vinyl LP. It’s titled “Ballad of the Space Babies.” So cool! This just adds another layer to the concept of the game. The combination of tangible and digital allows you to revel in the sweet EP goodness that comes out of your iDevice, as well as enjoy the physical release of the album and its distinct artwork.

Built for Social Sharing
Directions and Dialogue in the game are all presented in short sentences, all under 140 characters. Any text you encounter in the game can be immediately tweeted to your twitter followers with the hashtag of #sworcery. In fact, they purposefully went with a unique spelling so that #sworcery stream will only have mentions relevant to their game.

The hashtags works well in their case especially because the content is so great. I wouldn’t mind someone tweeting every single thing in the game and flooding my twitter feed mainly because the writing is top notch and humorous. You can tell the writing team are fans of Tim Schafer and the Monkey Island Series.

The Verdict: If you game, get it.

Needless to say, this is one of the best reasons to own an iPad or iPhone and at five bucks it is a steal of an experience. Cerebral, funny and dark, this one is going to be in multimedia history for sure.

I didn’t even tell you about the story. And I think there is a reason why, it’s best to be experienced on your own. So go get it!

Viva la Twitter: Social Media and Global Revolutions

Posted by thomas

Jan

2011

2
Comments

Filed Under: Culture Everything Else Social Media

Tweeting, Facebook invitations, and self-immolation: all over North Africa and the middle-east, people are setting themselves on fire. In Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria and now in Mauritania and Saudi Arabia, people are immolating themselves to protest corrupt regimes. They have also been using Twitter and Facebook, apparently. The uprising in Tunisia started spontaneously after the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, who–frustrated by unemployment and lack of opportunity–set himself on fire after the fruit from his fruit stand had been confiscated in Sidi Bouzid, Tunisia in late December. This set off protests all over North Africa and the middle-east, most notably in Egypt. The degree to which Twitter and Facebook can be credited as tools which sustained and helped to culminate these uprisings has been a matter of intense debate.

In the early stages of the uprising in Egypt last week, 90,000 people signed on to a group page on Facebook inviting people to a mass-demonstration last Monday. Thanks to some savvy organizing, partly carried out on Facebook, 200,000 people showed up to meet the 20,000 police arrayed to meet them. Last Friday Egypt’s government shut down the Internet to dampen the tide of agitation and protest that was occurring on that bandwidth.

As the protests in Egypt drag out, and the fortunes of the parties involved in the conflict sway this way and that, it is time for us to review the discussion about the role that Social Media has played in revolutions and emerging democracies in the past few years. Iran, China, Tunisia, and Egypt–regimes all over the world have been effected by the availability of Social Media. Everyone is asking: is this the age of internet revolutions? Will Facebook, Twitter and text messages provide essential ingredients in democratic change? Or, as the ongoing protests in Egypt perhaps show, is the internet only one tool in this process — nothing more than the modern version of the telephone? Opinions vary, but its hard to argue that–while they may not have been the main ‘catalyst’–Twitter and Facebook have been major players in getting these movements off the ground.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article about the role of Social Media in activist causes and revolutions in the New Yorker last October. Here’s a long quote from that article, where he paraphrases the buzz:

“The world, we are told, is in the midst of a revolution. The new tools of social media have reinvented social activism. With Facebook and Twitter and the like, the traditional relationship between political authority and popular will has been upended, making it easier for the powerless to collaborate, coördinate, and give voice to their concerns. When ten thousand protesters took to the streets in Moldova in the spring of 2009 to protest against their country’s Communist government, the action was dubbed the Twitter Revolution, because of the means by which the demonstrators had been brought together. A few months after that, when student protests rocked Tehran, the State Department took the unusual step of asking Twitter to suspend scheduled maintenance of its Web site, because the Administration didn’t want such a critical organizing tool out of service at the height of the demonstrations. “Without Twitter the people of Iran would not have felt empowered and confident to stand up for freedom and democracy,” Mark Pfeifle, a former national-security adviser, later wrote, calling for Twitter to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Where activists were once defined by their causes, they are now defined by their tools. Facebook warriors go online to push for change. “You are the best hope for us all,” James K. Glassman, a former senior State Department official, told a crowd of cyber activists at a recent conference sponsored by Facebook, A. T. & T., Howcast, MTV, and Google. Sites like Facebook, Glassman said, “give the U.S. a significant competitive advantage over terrorists. Some time ago, I said that Al Qaeda was ‘eating our lunch on the Internet.’ That is no longer the case. Al Qaeda is stuck in Web 1.0. The Internet is now about interactivity and conversation.”

Connectivity vs Serendipity: Going off the Grid at SXSWi

Posted by Jeb

Mar

2010

6
Comments

Filed Under: Everything Else

On arriving in Austin for South By South West Interactive the first thing I noticed was everyone walking around looking at their phones. Mostly iPhones as you might expect. Legions of geeks bumping into each other and random objects while trying to walk while checking in on Twitter, Facebook FourSquare, GoWalla, Gmail, etc. It was kinda hilarious and frightening at first.

Seeing all these tech zombies, and being one myself, woke me a up to how fast we are adopting new technology and related gadgets without any consideration for their potential negative impact on our lives.

Are our brains wired for this? Is mobile facilitating meaningful conversations or just more conversations? Was something broken that mobile technology has fixed?

Is connectivity superior to serendipity? Remember serendipity? That’s when you just go and let things happen. No SMS/Tweets/Emails/Calls to guide you. Remember about 10 years ago? That’s what I’m talking about. Somehow we all survived and had a pretty good time back then, at least I did.

After a couple days of trying to keep up with the crowd I realized I was approaching borderline OCD about my phone, even more than normal- what’s happening, who’s sending me a text/email/dm, what’s the hottest thing, gotta check out GoWalla, gotta tweet what this guy just said, gotta download this app, visit this site, take this picture/video… on and on.

I was spending more time interacting with my phone than I was with the real live people around me. And this was pretty much the same with them as well. We all came to this event hoping to connect with each other but instead of having conversations we were retweeting each other’s comments. We sat in fascinating sessions run by some of the most interesting people in the world paying half attention while we fiddled on our phone, deceiving ourselves into thinking we could effectively multitask and get meaning from the session at the same time. Total BS.

I felt like I was getting a glimpse of augmented reality and it kinda freaked me out. Are we meant to be part robot? Shouldn’t we check back into our blank state and see if it was really so bad that we needed to add all these gadgets and services to it?

So I decided to go without my iPhone or computer for 24 hours. I wanted to see how a day at SXSWi without technology (at least personal technology) would compare with being constantly connected. I decided to give “old school” serendipity at try. The experiment started on Sunday morning and ended Monday morning. I wanted to throw myself on the waves and see where they took me.

So I checked in with my family, posted a notice to some friends via Twitter and SMS and turned off the phone. Then I gave my phone to John Wechsler (@wechsler) from FormSpring (FormStack now I think since they are rebranding the parent company due to the Formspring.me explosion which is awesome) who I was hanging out with at the Exact Target/CoTweet event at WholeFood’s headquarters Sunday morning when our conversation lead to this decision. John’s a great guy and although I haven’t known him long I liked and trusted him with my “precious”. Then I was off the grid. It felt a little like a trust fall and I was really nervous at first.

Without going into the minute to minute details of the day I want to touch on some of the key experiences and take aways. After getting over my initial freak out over losing my phone I started loosening up quickly. It was really liberating. A sense of real freedom overtook me at times. I felt like a dog off the leash. I wandered around, got lost, met people, hooked up with friends and then followed them until I would run into other friends and then followed them. I went to about 5 parties and ate some of the best barbacue in the world. I drank a lot of free beer. I made deeper connections with people I already knew. I had a great day, probably the best day of the conference and every day has been excellent (so far).

But it wasn’t all good. I felt lonely and disconnected at times, even confused and disoriented. I had phantom vibrations in my legs and would reach for my phone. I would have seconds of panic thinking I’d lost it. I kept reaching for it when uncomfortable, lost, curious to look something up or just needed to know the time (see side thought on clocks below).

I felt a little like I’d lost one of my senses. It took a little while for my other senses to strengthen to accommodate for the loss. If we can consider connectivity a sense I wonder if our human minds can accommodate the use of this sense at the increasing rate we tech zombies are employing it. Maybe that’s the real cause of so-called SXSW SARS? Perhaps a question for another blog.

The general take away from the experiment was that we don’t need all these gadgets and services to communicate, congregate and experience life. Seems a little obvious, doesn’t it, but why are we so hooked? Life can happen without them and can actually be a richer experience. Sure, they add value at times but maybe not as much as we think. Sometimes I think they take more than they give. Sometimes we need to impose and embrace constraints. We need to value quality of experiences over quantity.

In discussing my experiences I got a lot of feedback that this might be a movement to pursue for next year- a “Leave The Phone At Home” Sunday next SXSWi. I think many people resonated with the reasons for me undertaking the experiment and guess what, nothing horrible happened! In fact I would argue many people would have a better experience on account of embracing this constraint. I would love to hear people’s thoughts on this idea. I could have our Small Box team put together a website and help coordinate an effort to encourage people to take a day off, give serendipity a shot, see how things go. Why not go off the grid for a day at SXSWi 2011?

Technology is moving so fast. Yes, it is fun and exciting but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s take the time now and then to hit the reset button. Our human nature is not, and cannot, change as fast as the technology we are plugging into our “system”. Before we get too far down the path and adopt technology that could be harmful let’s remember to take time out and reflect on what all this means.

Shout Out- SXSWi is a completely unique and amazing experience. I highly recommend anyone with an interest in web/interactive/social media etc check it out next year. I consider it a life changing experience.
The Indiana crew here has been a complete blast and loads of fun to hang out with. Big shout outs to Kristian Andersen Associates (the reason I went in the first place, lunch with Kristian), Blue Lock, Sprout Box, Exact Target/CoTweet, PocketTales, CauseLab/Scott Henderson (awesome roomie), MediaSauce/Mitch Maxson (also awesome roomie), FAWM.org/Burr Settles, James Paden/Vibrant Solutions, Blast Media, FormSpring and I’m sure I’m missing some others. Would love to see an even bigger Indiana presence next year (holla ChaCha!). Indiana is definitely on the map here and people know it. I love that.

Side Thought- Not knowing the time was the most unexpected byproduct of not having my phone. Since everyone has a phone now there are fewer public clocks, like fewer pay phones- it would be interesting to do a study to see if they have declined at a similar rate- on top of that I started this right after DST had taken place and many clocks (the hotel clock for instance) hadn’t been changed. I missed a panel on company culture, showing up right on time, at least according to the hotel clock, to see it was wrapping up.

Fanvertising or To Fanvertise

Posted by Jeb

Mar

2010

2
Comments

Filed Under: Internet Marketing Marketing Social Media

I was hanging out on Musicalfamilytree.com, a Small Box project focused on archiving Indiana music and conversations about it, and one of the members, Kevin D. McCollough, used a term I hadn’t heard before- “Fanvertise”. He asked if it was ok to “fanvertise” on the site and then linked to something he liked. Sure, I said, and hey, that’s a really cool word! I did some searching and it appears that it has been used a few times but not much. Right now if you Google fanvertise the post from Musical Family Tree shows up near the top of page one and the comment was just left yesterday. That means it’s not in widespread use in my experience.

So I wrote up a quick definition of Fanvertise and posted it to my Twitter account. Here it is as well:

Fanvertise- when a person or “fan” promotes third party goods or services without direct compensation.

I would consider it a sub-category of Viral Marketing but mostly I just like the word better. Viral has a nasty, sickish sound to it, right? Fanvertise sounds fun and captures what people are really doing.

So how do you get Fanvertising? It is obviously much more desirable than traditional advertising since it’s free and the other is, uh, not. It’s also cheaper than traditional PR since PR agencies can be pricey too. Both advertising and PR are often needed and are usually effective if executed correctly but they don’t have nearly the ROI of real and mostly free (not counting your time) Fanvertising.

I see Fanvertising as a 3 step process:

Fanvertising Step #1. Be awesome at what you do, you cannot suck. You have to have the happiest customers on earth or at least in your industry. In being the best you will give your customers the emotional foundation for singing your praises via every channel at their disposal.

Customer service should be treated as a marketing expense not an afterthought. Happy customers will bring you more customers. This is true in the B2B and B2C worlds.

Instead of focusing on selling your product or service, focus on making your current customers happy. They will then do the selling for you. This is the core of Fanvertising. Don’t think about new customers until you have taken care of your current ones.

Fanvertising Step #2. Be an enabler. Give them the tools to tell their stories, not your story. Your story doesn’t matter that much on its own. It only has really impact when combined with a customer’s story- “I’ve spent years looking for a good carpet cleaning service and now I’ve found it in XYZ Company, check out their website, Facebook page, etc- here. Highly recommended!”. If you don’t have easy ways for your fans to Fanvertise your company then they will most likely move on and not get around to it. Make it super easy.

Fanvertising Step #3. Say “thank you”. Don’t ignore feedback, good or bad, acknowledge it, engage in a conversation if it’s bad, spread it around if it’s good. Remember what the Bible says- “Let others praise you”, just don’t forget to say “thanks!”.

In the brave new world of Social Media there are so many opportunities for Fanvertising. Make sure you are following these three steps and Fanvertising will start growing your business.