Jason Thibeault's Blog: From My Pen, page 65

The Underbelly Business of Social Media

There’s a simple equation of social media effectiveness:

social media posting + link to page + viral uptake = success

The reasoning is simple: social media networks is where users hang out. Hence, it’s the perfect place to target.

Unfortunately, it’s that third part of the equation, viral uptake, that has caused a lot of consternation among marketers. How do you get something to be viral? Marketers have tried contests, promotions, promises, and everything in between to get a social media user ba...

The Followers Can Sometimes Lead the Way

In a previous post, I lamented the birth of Google+. I mean that’s all the world needs is another social network. But a recent interview of Esther Dyson by TechCrunch points out something very important about this: Google is a follower.

In any industry, there are two types of companies. Those that pave the way and those that follow. In some cases, the company that gets out first stays out first. But more often than not, the companies that follow often overtake and eventually bury those origina...

Photos: Truly God’s Country

If you haven’t been to the SouthWest or experienced it raw, harsh, and unabashed beauty, you are truly missing something where skies can stretch for eternity punctuated by puffy white clouds or storms of ferocious intensity. Nat Geo recently put up a nice gallery of SouthWest images:

http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/trips/southwest-united-states/southwest-photos/

Market Insanity Rears Its Ugly Head

In the first week since launching Google+, Google’s market cap has risen a paltry $15 billion dollars:

http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/10/google-plus-20-billion-market-cap/

Yup, that’s right, $15 billion.

That’s more that most countries entire GDP.

But I want to know what analyst can justify that increase? What about Google+ makes it worth almost $15 billion? Yes, as the link posted from Techcrunch indicates, there are other factors involved, but, ultimately, the increase in share price is really b...

Why Storytelling is So Important to Marketing

I recently wrote an exploration about Transmedia Storytelling as the future of digital marketing. A lot of the thinking behind this piece was related to my work at Limelight Networks and our recent pivot towards becoming the leader in digital presence management. The gist was this: our emerging multi-device behavior coupled with a growing “always on” existence requires that marketing messages are consistent across the devices. Transmedia storytelling is simply a vehicle by which to enable tha...

Photos: Blurry Images a Thing of the Past?

Everyone has shot a blurry image or two. But that’s not the worst part. It’s finding out later, after the shot has long passed, that it’s out of focus.

Thankfully, new photography innovation may make those blurry shots a thing of the past:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/9568340.stm

In short:

The device allows all depths of a scene to be recorded in one image, allowing anything to be put in focus after it has been taken.

There’s a great video talking about this innovation (sorry...

The Ease of Creating More Data

We talk about the increasing amount of data that is being produced each and every day through blogs, tweets, and status updates. But that’s only the half of it. A variety of electronics are enabling us to create more data that even though we may not sure adds to a number of information-related issues with which we are struggling.

Take cell phones for instance.

Although their primary modality is to enable us to communicate with each other, every cell phone today includes a digital camera. In mos...

Photos: Duck, Duck, Goose!

Great waterfowl pictures from NatGeo:

http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/photos/waterfowl-photos/

Photo: Just How Small Are We…

Thinking about how big the Statue of Liberty is and how small it looks in the picture from National Geographic below, makes you realize just how massively tall this lightning bolt is and how, in the presence of nature, we are insignificant. Very sublime. Lots of other great pics too in the Flash slideshow through the link.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/visions-of-earth/visions-earth-2011

[image error]

Pitching Your Startup? Keep These Tips in Mind!

Whether your believe your startup is unique (and trust me, it’s not) or that your product is something that people can’t live without, getting noticed is paramount to success. And when you get that chance to get noticed, you have to make sure your pitch is effective and impactful.

The Next Web (TNW) gets the chance to meet lots of startups all around the globe. And, as you can guess, they get pitched a lot by startups looking for some coverage on their blog. Based on that, they have put togeth...