Archive for June, 2008

WHY YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT CELLBLOCK

To answer that, you first need to know what Cellblock is. In their own words, Cellblock writes, “Cellblocks are ubiquitous content albums that can be viewed and contributed to from just about anywhere at the Cellblock owner’s discretion.”

In English:

Cellblock.com is a website that allows you to immediately add photos and videos to an album called a “Cellblock” by sending the multimedia right from your phone or through email.

Why not just use Flickr?

With Cellblock, your pictures and videos play in a viewer that can be embedded into your social network profiles, blogs, or personal and commercial websites, just like you can with YouTube videos. But probably the coolest feature about Cellblock is this:

You send all your pictures and videos to a unique email address, for example mghwom@cellblock.com. And, because you’re simply sending your pictures/videos to an email address, you can give that address out to friends, family, co-workers, heck, even enemies. Point is, now you have a photo album with potentially hundreds, or thousands of contributors.

You can set your Cellblock to post those pictures immediately or you can select to preview them before adding them to your photostream. So there’s no need to worry about those pictures from last night appearing on your company’s homepage.

Here’s a Cellblock we made for MGH WOM:

So, Cellblock is the coolest thing you’ve ever seen. Now what?

Use it. Everywhere and for everything. Start a Cellblock for your family, your hobby, or better yet, your business!

WWW SMACKDOWN: BLOGS vs. E-NEWSLETTERS

08 12 2007n1a 12wrestlinggld274mpo1 WWW SMACKDOWN: BLOGS vs. E NEWSLETTERS

Over the past few years there’s been debate over the best way for companies to deliver content to their audiences. In one corner, there’s e-newsletters and in the other, blogs. It’s not a simple choice; each has their strengths that make them great word of mouth vehicles. Your final decision should depend on your audience and the type of message you wish to convey.

We, at MGH, are here to help make your decision a little easier by uncovering the strengths and weaknesses of each contender. Here’s the low-down:

chart43 WWW SMACKDOWN: BLOGS vs. E NEWSLETTERS

So what’s your best bet?

Utilize both. Here’s why:

    1. Your audience will have more options. Readers who are short on time can quickly read through the highlights in the newsletter. If their interest is spiked, they can click through to the blog to receive more detailed information on a topic and participate in the conversation. This is also a great way to expose your blog to late bloomers. Not everyone knows how to use an RSS feed to get regular blog updates, but everyone can read the highlights in the newsletter and click-through to your blog.

    2. You’ll get the best of both worlds. You’ll still be able to deliver tid-bits of info, updates, and customized or exclusive subscriber information through the newsletters. You’ll also be able to be able to discuss a topic in detail, create regular updates, and engage your audience in a two-way dialogue through your blog.Talk about win-win.

TOP 10 THINGS THAT WILL COME OUT OF A GOOGLE / YAHOO! PARTNERSHIP

yahoogle TOP 10 THINGS THAT WILL COME OUT OF A GOOGLE / YAHOO! PARTNERSHIP

With today’s official announcement that the Microsoft/Yahoo! talks are off, speculation of a possible search partnership between Google and Yahoo! has gained some traction.

So, we here at MGH WOM decided to do a little speculating of our own.

Here’s our Top 10 list of things that could come out of a Yahoogle! partnership:

10. John McCain will choose Yahoogle! as his running-mate. He will come in a close second to the Obama-Apple ticket.

9. Yahoogle! will dispel all myths, thus making the show MythBusters completely obsolete.

8. A search through the companies’ advanced 3-D mapping system will find that Osama Bin Ladin has secretely been hiding in a Wildwood, New Jersey Starbucks.

7. Yahoogle! will dethrone the blue whale as record holder for largest penis on Earth.

6. Rick Astley will begin Yahoogle!’rolling his friends.

5. Your Yahoogle! avatar will run your errands for you.

4. You won’t do online searches. Online searches will do you.

3. The Amish culture will begin to encourage the use of electricity.

2. Chuck Norris will be appointed the new CEO and Yahoogle! Will go on to win a gold medal in the summer Olympics without even competing.

1. Yahoogle! will email you the things you want to search for 2 days before you even know you want to search for them.

Leave your own suggestions in the comment field.


DOWN GOES AMAZON

amazon DOWN GOES AMAZON

Question: What happens when the nation’s top online retail site goes down for a couple of hours?

Answer: The world ends.

At least that’s what one could have assumed by the panic that flooded the web after 1:30PM today.

It was around that time that Amazon.com’s homepage began displaying a message that read “HTTP/1.1 Service Unavailable.” Almost immediately, forums, blogs, Digg, Twitter, and every other social website was filled with messages announcing the downtime.

Emotions ranged from anger to confusion to sheer laughter, as people discussed the implications for the retail giant.

It’s estimated that the site lost nearly $31,000 for every minute that it was inactive. And the impact was seen almost instantly on the company’s stock value, down 2.7% in early afternoon trading.

The site is back up now (and was really only down for about 2 hours), but the damage has already been done. In my time on the web (and believe me, I spend a lot of time on here), I’ve never seen a site receive so much negative customer attention within such a short time period.

But if Amazon needs advice on how to restore relationships after today, they should just ask Twitter. They seem to have mastered the art of rebounding after regularly failing e-service.

Okay. That was harsh. I still love you Twitter. And Amazon, too.


YO QUIERO, USER-GENERATED CONTENT

Have you seen the Taco Bell commercial with two guys rapping their order into one of the restaurant’s drive-thru windows? Pretty clever, huh?

Nope. Not even close.

An almost identical user-generated video, “Big Mac DriveThru Rap“, collected millions of online views over two years ago. The overnight viral sensation also spawned tons of copycat videos, including one called the “Taco Bell Drive-Thru Rap“. Sound familiar?

Taco Bell’s blatant “borrowing” of this internet meme has created a new level of national buzz for the brand, and unintentionally (or maybe intentionally) prompted users to begin creating their own drive-thru rap videos. It’s enhanced their search optimization on video sharing sites, and has made ordering unhealthy food through a window - dare we say it - kind of fun.

This is a nice example of a brand tapping into a viral video sensation, while doing it in a way that shows respect to the original creation, rather than completely exploiting it.

My only question is….how funny will this movement be when you’re stuck behind the next Dr. Dre of Chick-Fil-A or Wendys’ ?

The original Taco Bell rap:

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The commercial:

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