Influencers You Should Know: William McBee at remove the labels
When you think about influencers in the world of tech a few big names most likely spring to mind. But below that tier of huge tech blogs breaking every new story in the world of consumer electronics and gee whiz gadgetry is a layer of bloggers producing in depth, quality content consisting of personalized news, reviews, speculation and opinion.
One such blogger is William McBee, the man behind remove the labels, a valuable influencer in our Multiloguer database and to whom MSL has been pitching for several years. We caught up with William recently and asked him what motivates him and how agencies can better work with him.
Blogworks: You built a laser so it’s no surprise you started blogging. What got you started? I’m assuming you were active online at message boards and the like before the birth of remove the labels?
McBee: The laser came as a project as a kid. My father and my uncle, who just recently retired from IBM after 40 years of working with them, fostered my inner-tinkerer as a kid, which lead to my love of gadgets, computers and technology that continues today. My first time really doing anything on the Internet was the Sony PSX FAQ that was released way back in 1994 via Usenet when I was at the University of Colorado and I’ve been online since.
- Date: 04.08.2011
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Arcade Fire, Video and HTML5
What happens when a band, a director and Google collaborate to create a modern music experience? Arcade Fire’s “The Wilderness Downtown,” a project by Chris Milk that uses HTML5 and Google Maps to create a music video customized to each viewer’s childhood.
Best viewed in Google Chrome, the site prompts users to enter the address of the home in which they were raised and images of their neighborhood appear in front of them played to the band’s The Suburbs single “We Used to Wait.”
The multi-browser movie ends with the opportunity to draft a letter to your childhood self. To begin the hyper-personal and somewhat creepy experience, visit thewildernessdowntown.com.
- Date: 09.02.2010
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Not So Fast …
Earlier this week, we discussed JetBlue’s silence in the wake of the Steven Slater incident. Turns out maybe there was more of a social-media method behind the company’s measured response. Charlie Kondek, MS&L Digital’s director of new media relations, takes a closer look.
There’s a great piece on Bulldog Reporter by JetBlue’s Director of Corporate Communications, Jenny Dervin, on how the company is navigating its recent crisis. Last week, one of JetBlue’s flight attendants fulfilled every working stiff’s fantasy of telling off his customers and walking off the job site – in this case, grabbing a beer and sliding down the airplane chute! Dervin nicely recaps both the praise and criticisms of JetBlue’s PR response and reveals the company’s strategy before ending with a request from feedback from the corp comm community at large.
Applause for Dervin and Bulldog Reporter, and I’d add this is required reading for anyone in our industry. Weightier minds than mine with more experience than I have in crisis PR would better serve this topic but my one quibble with JetBlue’s performance so far is that they should have moved quicker, something Dervin admits. Crisis 101 for social media teaches us that since news is real time companies should issue a statement immediately, even if it’s only a statement that says they can reveal nothing pending an investigation and that a more detailed statement is forthcoming. Maybe another lesson is that since air travel is an industry fraught with emotions the company should have had a faster response time in place – although who could have predicted this?
I gotta admit, grabbing the beer was a nice touch.
- Date: 08.19.2010
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When a Social Media Leader Goes Silent
JetBlue Airlines has a reputation for customer service, transparency and a social media savvy.
So when JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater made his dramatic exit from a company plane this week – taking to the intercom and berating passengers before deploying the emergency-exit slide and deplaning with a Heineken in his hand – the airline found itself in an unusual position.
Advertising Age looked at JetBlue’s curiously quiet response to the story.
While the Internets are ablaze with the story, JetBlue has remained almost entirely silent. There’s no mention of the incident on the company’s Facebook page and only a vague reference to it on the JetBlue corporate blog. Meanwhile, the only tweets it’s issued about it are of the “no comment” variety.
“One of the difficulties they are facing is they have to reconcile the contradiction between the public’s expectations that they are going to get the full story from JetBlue immediately, especially based on JetBlue’s history,” said Jonathan Bellinger, VP-social media strategy at Omnicom Group’s Ketchum said.
It should be interesting to see how JetBlue reacts to the story over time.
- Date: 08.16.2010
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The Birth of the Fail Whale
Mashable recently published an interview with Yiying Lu, the graphic artist responsible for the image now known as Twitter’s infamous “Fail Whale.” Lu created the illustration, named “Lifting a Dreamer,” as a greeting to her friends across the ocean and posted it to iStockphoto.
Developers at Twitter found the stock image and decided to use it on their 404 page. The Twitter team thought it was a fitting depiction of their efforts to solve scalability issues, replacing their former 404 image – an LOLcat.
Unfortunately, the Fail Whale has become an image of frustration for many, which was never Lu’s intention.
“I hate the name Fail Whale,” she said. “Really, I do hate it … I’m like, ‘It’s not a Fail Whale, it’s like, originally, just a message for my friends far away and it has absolutely nothing to do with failure.’ ”
- Date: 08.03.2010
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Amazee: A Winning Alternative to Ning for Cause-based Communities
In April 2010, custom social network service Ning decided that it is going to start charging and do away with its free service. Beginning August 20, Ning will charge for usage of their custom social network platform:
As you can imagine, this decision by Ning caused (and is still causing) quite a stir among users and administrators of such networks. Even if it’s only $2.95, many administrators of smaller groups are unwilling to pay for it, and many are struggling to find effective Ning alternatives, especially nonprofits and “cause” networks.
Well, have no fear, activists — Switzerland-based Amazee is stepping up the plate and offering FREE Ning migration service to its platform.
What is Amazee, you ask? Though it hasn’t caught on in the United States (yet), it’s a popular custom platform for projects and reaching goals, whether it’s fundraising or non-monetary aspirations. It’s very popular in Europe, South Africa, and elsewhere in the world.
Here’s a quick video Amazee made explaining the benefits of migrating to their platform:
Welcome, Ning refugees! from Amazee on Vimeo.
From Amazee’s blog:
- First of all you’ll get a lot of the features on Amazee which you’ve been accustomed to on Ning: You’ll be able to post blog entries, upload pictures and embed videos, you’ll have your own forums for discussion, and have a good overview over who’s doing what in your group and on the platform.
- Next to that we are taking your Ning experience to the max: There is no limit to the number of members a group can have (Ning only allows for 150), there are no limits on storage and bandwidth (Ning only allows you for 1GB and 10 GB respectively), you’ll be able to set up events and have people rsvp directly in your group (this is not possible at all at Ning) and you can add an unlimited number of RSS feeds and content boxes to your group (Ning has 1 and 3 respectively).
- Furthermore we allow for maximum online collaboration and promotion by supporting a solid Facebook integration: You can easily recommend your group on Facebook, if you like you can even sign in to Amazee with your Facebook account. And the icing on the cake: You’ll get a reliable and competent community management on top of all that. For free, of course.
I’ve had an account at Amazee for over a year and have been (minimally) involved on this platform with a few projects in South Africa, and absolutely love the functionality of it. There are other Ning alternatives, like GroupSite and Mixxt, but personally, I don’t find the others very conducive to the needs of collaborative activism. Amazee, on the other hand, was designed for that very purpose.
So if you’ve got a cause-based community on Ning, don’t fret — head on over to Amazee and they’ll make migration easy, painless, and free.
- Date: 07.27.2010
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Warning: Possible Career Damage Ahead
Checking Facebook at work is about to get a whole lot easier for users of Outlook, as Microsoft prepares to launch new social integration features of the email client. If you’re willing to link your company email address to your account (which many people must in order to join professional Facebook networks), your status updates and profile image will appear along with any e-mail correspondence.
The ability to glean Facebook-housed information about a media contact or client could potentially be a great tool for public relations professionals, but it will have to be used carefully. The more public your profile becomes, the more carefully it’s content must be crafted (or censored).
For more information, read the Mashable exclusive here.
- Date: 07.20.2010
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The Outside-of-the-Box-Websites
In July of 2008, Google announced on its blog that it had indexed more than 1 trillion (yes, that’s 1,000,000,000,000) unique URLs. Here we are two years later, and the number is sure to have climbed further.
So what does one have to do to stand out in a crowd of billions and billions? That’s a great question without a great answer. However, we did attempt to investigate it by scouring the Web high and low to pick out a handful of sites that have something on their site that really stuck out. Indeed our hypothesis was correct; there is, in fact, no magical formula to creating a killer website. But check out some of the ones that really stood out to us below. Are there any that you’d add to the list?
Cpbgroup.com
Why is this site so cool? It’s clean, it’s simple and yet packs a lot of cool and fun stuff into one location. Since most of the site is aggregated from various other sites, CP+B have very little control over it, calling it a “digital experiment.”
Almost.at
Why is this site so cool? Because it allows people to experience and “attend” events when they can’t physically be there. David, the site owner, picks random popular events/conferences/games/etc. and pulls in tweets, photos, videos and links related to the event. Cool part is, even if you miss the event live, you can relive the event at a later time using the timeline feature.
BooneOakley.com
Why is this site so cool? The site is a series of clickable YouTube videos. Not sure how that’s even possible, but try it out for yourself.
Prioritymail.com
Why is this site so cool? At first glance, you may be thinking…uh why? But, we put this on the list because it’s one of the first sites to integrate augmented reality, and for a good useful purpose too. Basically you use your webcam to pick out the right box size for the item(s) you’d like to ship. Genius.
DontClick.It
Why is this site so cool? Because it has no buttons! You literally use your mouse to navigate around the site, hovering is similar to clicking. Neat idea, but can you resist the click?
Pilothandwriting.com
Why is this site so cool? Ever wished you personally had your own font? You know, one that resembled your actual handwriting? Well, this site allows you to do just that. Using a print out that you write on, plus your camera you can type using your own handwriting as a font…and send handwritten notes as e-mails. The blend of traditional and digital is fantastic.
- Date: 07.14.2010
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Empires of Transformation: Can a Naked Chef School the Trainer?
Last week during a cursory tour of “foodies online,” I began to wonder how two very different personalities are handling digital and social: Jamie Oliver and Jillian Michaels. What does a Naked Chef and British food crusader have in common with a Biggest Loser trainer and badass extraordinaire? They’re not apples-to-apples, but both are aiming for transformation and empowerment, either at the individual or community level. How are they leveraging social and how strong are their presences online?
At first glance, Jillian’s readership seems to dwarf Jamie Oliver’s, with Compete.com estimating unique monthly visitors for May at 646 K vs. 221K, respectively. Moreover, it’s likely that some readership cannibalization exists between Jillian’s home site and The Biggest Loser’s digital properties. Similarly the official Facebook pages show Jillian in the like-lead, with 418,375 likes to Oliver’s 326,296 – and Jillian fans have posted 884 photos (vs. 305). The branded Jillian page has also done a good job of cross-posting Tweets, which garner comments in the thousands.
But here’s a wrinkle: though the trainer and the chef, have generated roughly the same number of tweets Jamie has over three times more followers than Jillian (515K vs. 158K).
A key difference is the number of Twitter accounts they’re following: Jamie follows close to 4,000 feeds. Jillian follows 60. I’m not naïve. I don’t suppose Mr. Oliver is endlessly reading Tweets. But it speaks to reciprocity and to a more multi-faceted model of engagement that has thankfully replaced the one-to-many model.
And this is where I think Jamie excels online. Calls to be social on Jillian’s site consist largely of the usual badges to FB, Twitter, etc.; otherwise, calls to buy DVDs, branded products or watch the show dominate. While the website’s focus is on individual empowerment, it doesn’t carry that idea through to encouraging online community.
By contrast, the home page of Jamie’s less-traveled-though-successful site is highly interactive and social: readers can sign the petition promoting better nutrition in schools, become one of 300k+ forum members or 2K linked bloggers, share recipes, read the latest about Jamie’s cooking initiatives, follow him on Twitter etc. and yes, naturally buy any of his books, DVDs, etc. Across all platforms, Jamie (or the Oliver brand) encourages active participation—and I would argue this thorough use of social media is a reflection of the chef’s long-term focus on community development and empowerment. This is something Jillian (and her brand) would do well to embrace more fully.
But enough about what they’re doing. How much are people talking? Volume-wise, over the past 6 months, Jamie is the hands-down leader across blogs traditional, tweets and overall total web hits, while Jillian is mentioned much more frequently within message boards (see Sysomos for more data love; subscription required).
Additionally, out of approximately 321K Jamie-related tweets (with a reach of 389 M impressions), 26 percent were retweets, vs. a 10 percent retweet rate for Jillian’s 64K tweets (64.2 M impressions) — showing a higher level of engagement. Eighty-three percent of blog posts portray Jamie favorably (includes 39 percent neutral), besting Jillian’s 72 percent favorable portrayal (includes 40 percent neutral); the higher percentage of negativity could certainly be attributed to people’s love-hate relationship with exercise.
But wait! There’s More! The thing is, there’s always more. An initial dip into site traffic tells one story, but there are always more layers to examine. Both personalities are successfully engaging millions offline and both clearly know the importance of engaging online. At this point however, Jillian could learn a few tips from Jamie Oliver’s more integrated use of social to grow his “Food Revolution” (and his empire).
- Date: 07.13.2010
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Blogoshpere all a-Twitter About King James’ Tweets
Whether or not you’re an NBA fan, you have probably heard that league superstar, LeBron James, is a free agent. The sports blogosphere is abuzz with keeping tabs on the rumors, speculations, and high drama surrounding James’ decision to remain with the Cleveland Cavaliers or move to the New York Knicks, New Jersey Nets, or Chicago Bulls.
The current free agency frenzy has cast a spotlight on the NBA, with eleven other high profile players making decisions about where they will sign. Even though it is hard to escape news on James, the NBA decided to promote LeBron fever by sponsoring the trending topic “LeBron James” on Twitter. If you click on the trending topic, you will be forwarded to this sponsored tweet: “For all your LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and other NBA Free Agency updates check out Decision 2010 on NBA.com.” This is one of the newest examples of Promoted Trending Topics, the first being Disney/Pixar’s promotion of Toy Story 3 last month.
Several NBA stars are active on Twitter and maintain healthy social media presences. James has a limited presence in social media but that will change with the launch of LeBronJames.com. It’s speculated that James will announce his decision via the site—when you register, you are greeted with a screen that reads “Getting Closer” over James’ eye and “You’ll Be The First To Know.”
James will assuredly keep basketball fans waiting with bated breath for his announcement, which is now speculated to be Wednesday, July 7. You can follow him on Twitter @kingjames.
- Date: 07.06.2010
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