Archive for October, 2010

A Viral Video Story

One of the neatest stories on social media today is that of Matt Harding. He was born on September 27, 1976. He was a video game developer in Westport, Connecticut. Not enthused by his career prospects, Matt quit his job and started traveling. One of Matt’s trademarks was a dance that he was known for. So, while traveling in Vietnam, a friend suggested he do his dance and they put it on video to upload and show his friends at home. So they did it. His friends loved it when they saw it on the web.

YouTube Posting

He recorded the dance at many more locations on his trip and ended up creating a video that contained 15 of the dance scenes. The video was passed around the internet. Matt’s video was being viewed thousands of times a day, prior to YouTube. Once YouTube came into being, Matt uploaded it there.

Stride Gum Sees and Opportunity

After the YouTube upload, viewership exploded. Stride Gum approached Matt and offered to sponsor his trips. When they saw the viewership the videos were getting, they saw an opportunity. So, with Stride’s sponsorship, Matt was able to organize another trip and completed a second video. This consisted of Matt dancing alone in from of famous monuments around the world.

In the middle of the second trip, while Matt was in Rwanda, the idea of dancing with people from the area presented itself. So he decided to do a third video, this time dancing with people. The video took 14 months to create and involved travelling to 42 different countries. It contains shots from 70 different locations. This trip was far more complicated because it involved much more organization. But it was well worth it.

As I am writing this article, YouTube reports that the video has been viewed 32,110,083 times. It has a 5 star rating and has been rated 102,559 times.

The Subtleness of the Promotion

When you watch the video the first thing you see is a black screen and then the word “Dancing” appears. From there the cut goes to an alleyway in Mumbai, India. And Matt begins to dance. The video cuts from location to location with music and other audio from the scenes. At the 4 minute 25 second mark of a 4 minute 29 second video, a special thanks to Stride Gum appears with their web address. Five seconds of exposure! Matt didn’t even wear a Stride t-shirt!

The video has generated all kinds of spinoffs. Just google “Matt” and you will see several links related to his videos. Most of those take you to YouTube, where there are more spinoff videos.
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Click here to get to his website ( http://wherethehellismatt.com/ ) and view his latest video. Then Google “Matt” and see where it takes you.

I was leaving a ballroom dance class recently with a friend of mine that works for one of the big banks that survived our recent economic debacle. I asked her to go see the “Social Media Revolution” video that I have linked to on my home page. She told me she couldn’t respond to “blogs” and other social media from work. I thought she was joking!

Email is on the way out

One thing I pointed out to her was that email is soon to become a dinosaur. It has been a wonderful tool, but it has had its shortcomings. The main one being that anyone can send you any message at no cost to them. This allowed spammers to send 100 billion emails PER DAY in April of 2008 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_email). Internet users have become sick of this and they are starting to do something about it.

The YouTube video I was referring my friend to points out that in 2009, Boston College stopped distributing email addresses to incoming freshmen. So that means that students and professors are communicating another way. Things like blogs and other social media that can be closed to unwanted participants.

Services like facebook are going to take the place of email. To get a message to someone on facebook you must have their permission to send them one. And after you are allowed in, you can always be “black balled” if the receiver doesn’t like what she is receiving.

Promotion will have value

So, does this mean that a company can’t send out a blanket message anymore? Will they not be able to get access to contacts via social media services? No, it does not. But, they will need permission to send these messages. And before the facebook contact is going to allow the sender access to his time, he will need to see value in the contact.

Businesses must now offer an incentive to get the facebooker to allow them in as a “friend.” That could come in the form of a coupon for free goods or services. And once that business has gained access to the facebooker, they must be very careful about what they send. At any time the facebooker can terminate the contact.

Businesses can contact their clients, and potential clients, with messages that have value. And they work like never before to maintain trust. Otherwise, the receivers of their messages leave them in the dark.

I think there are some big bank managers out there that need to learn to deal with social media. They need to encourage their employees to use it. And they need to develop methods of using it as a tool for promotion and communication.

A new day is here!

The Mark Zuckerberg Story

I went to see “The Social Network” a couple of days ago and found it to be a very fascinating story. While there has been some debate on what is fact and what is fiction, the basic Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook story is presented in the movie.

Movie’s Impact On Facebook

There is speculation that the movie could have a negative impact on Facebook. But I don’t think that will be the case. I am a believer in the statement that “any publicity can be turned into good publicity”. Discussion surrounding the movie has certainly made Facebook a common subject lately.

In this movie Mark is made out to be a nerdy little squirt. But when you follow the story you see that it goes through the process that a brilliant entrepreneur takes to create a once in a generation venture. He took the ideas of several other people and created what is Facebook today. In the process he passed on around $100 million dollars, via lawsuit settlements, to many who he has been associated with. Everybody wins!

Building The Dream

Our story book mindsets have many believing that revolutionary ideas come from one person dreaming them up and then building the dream. That is hardly the case. The real catalyst is the individual who takes brilliant thoughts, whether their his or not, and makes things happen with them.

I am constantly reading books and articles on Social Media. But today you can’t find an updated book on Facebook. The reason is that by the time one gets printed it is outdated. Facebook is constantly making significant changes to their wares. And it is consistently improving. With it’s launch taking place in February of 2004 and it reaching over half a billion users by 2010, who’s to say where it will be in the next 10 years.

Einstein said: “The only way to escape the personal corruption of praise is to go on working.”  I think this movie is a major praise for Mark. He will escape the personal corruption.