Posted by Manuela Barreto @ September 5th, 2008 in Viral Marketing

Michael Moore, the liberal filmmaker is not one to keep his mouth shut about making political statements. Oh, that much we know. Among the many efforts he’s made in addressing America on what he thinks should be the ways of politics, his second to last being: Mike’s Election Guide 2008 available at Amazon.com.

Today, the new buzz sounds more like, “Slacker Uprising,” Moore’s new major film to be released online for FREE!

“This is being done entirely as a gift to my fans. The only return any of us are hoping for is the largest turnout of young voters ever at the polls in November.”
– Michael Moore

Inspirational I would say. The movie will be released this Sept. 23rd and will be available to everyone for a free download, plus, a DVD will be released as well, available at Amazon starting in October.

Let’s go back to the movie one second. It’s the first ever major feature-length film to be released for free on Internet,- not a YouTube streaming-, it’s an actual movie download.

“Slacker Uprising” traces Moore’s odyssey during his 62-city tour of the swing states during the 2004 US Elections and on this tour he recorded the thrilling response he received across the country.

The documentary features Moore trying to persuade and convince the ‘young America’ to give up couch-potatoism, referred by Moore as ’slackers,’ and give voting a try. To encourage these impossibly-to-convince slackers, he offered free Ramen Noodles and promised there would be absolutely no politicians featured during his tour.

His big hope- all slackers to get up and vote in this year’s Presidential elections.

Demand is going to be huge for this, so go ahead and book your download TODAY!

Posted by Marco Corsaro @ September 4th, 2008 in Search Engine Optimization

I don’t remember exactly when or where I heard or read the expression Universal Search for the first time. I believe it was in a meeting at one of the Google offices a few years ago and it was just the confirmation of something that I had long hoped would happen…meaning, Google finally finding a way to filter out a lot of the irrelevant results, mainly generated by spamdexing and provide users with a better service overall.

I ran a check and discovered that Google officially first announced its new attempt to evolve and increase the quality of its results on May 16th, 2007 calling it Universal Search.

Reading their press announcement they also claimed Universal Search is based on a “model that will offer users a more integrated and comprehensive way to search for and view information online”.

Explained in simple words Google is trying to provide users what they are looking for not just by focusing on website content but by including results from different data sources that could briefly be summarized in Videos, Maps, Images, Wikipedia, influential blogs (Technorati), and influential libraries (IMDB).

Let’s take a look at one example which shows the results on Google.com for a user searching for “madonna”:

As you can see, Google is aggregating the most relevant results as an attempt to interpret users needs and prioritizing results taking them from established sources that specialize in a specific category.

In my example, Google has already learned that Madonna is a singer and a user searching for a singer is most likely looking for:

1. the official web site
2. biography
3. discography
4. news/gossips
5. video
6. images
7. lyrics

And look at the results:

1st.  madonna.com – the official site

2nd. madonna entry on wikipedia: the most trusted encyclopedia on the web

3rd. madonna entry on imdb: the most trusted movie library on the web – she’s a singer and an actress

4rd. latest article with Madonna’s picture from one of the major newspaper aggregators- news.google.com

5th. Madonna’s MySpace page: including the most relevant info on Madonna from her profile in one of the top 3 social media on the web

6th. Madonna’s Videos on YouTube

7th. Madonna’s songs on LastFM: the most established online radio network

My example could be replicated with any other artists, celebrities, etc…but could be generalized and extended to ANY established brand.

What will change is the library of established sources that Google will refer to. Most of them we already know and can expect to find:

1. Wikipedia
2. YouTube
3. Images.Google.com
4. News.Google.com
5. MySpace
6. FaceBook
7. Linkedin
8. Imdb
9. Technorati
10. Digg

But if Universal Search implies better, more relevant results from established sources, it also opens an opportunity for what I call Universal SEO.

Universal SEO is extending its efforts and attention in seeking 1st Page positioning on Google by working not just on the client’s website but also by establishing, controlling and improving its presence within the pool of sites we know Google treats as priority and preferential sources within its ranks.

One example: whilst Madonna owns her MySpace profile and what Google is displaying is the official Madonna MySpace page, in YouTube the result is “a” video that happens to be tagged as Madonna where I would have expected to find the official Madonna YouTube channel instead.

My article is really to explain how SEO is now a broader area of competency and work that goes well beyond the traditional optimization of a site.

I call this new way of maximizing your site’s visibility and brand across a multitude of social media/blogging/…: Universal SEO.

I’ll be writing more on this topic in the future…

Posted by Guillame Foutry @ September 3rd, 2008 in Video Advertising

Owning a TV channel was out of reach for the vast majority of people, except for Silvio Berlusconi- likes. However, the internet today enables you to become a TV mogul easily and at no cost. Over the last two years, several online live broadcasting tools have appeared and have triggered the creation of thousands of channels by internet users.

Who’s who?

In the end, what it all boils down to is having a broadband connection, a web cam, a mic and some imagination to produce your own content. Having all of the above you can then broadcast from the operator’s website or export your video onto your blog, personal page, corporate website, etc.

Justin.tv, UStream.tv and Mogulus are three of the main actors in this industry, the first one having over a million members. Kyte and Qik differentiate themselves by offering the possibility to broadcast from your mobile phone, a functionality that greatly enhances the reactivity of this medium. There is plenty of room for growth especially since YouTube announced it will not move to live broadcasting. However, this sector is still in its infancy because all the protagonists are till looking for a valid and sustainable business model.

So what is the potential for marketing use?

Above all, it is important to keep in mind that it is a cheap and easy tool to use that can reach a massive online audience. Firstly, its nature makes a perfect fit into a viral marketing campaign because you can “spread the word”. Secondly, due to the community dimension of this tool, marketers can use it to detect new trends and behaviors, consequently adapting their marketing campaigns to customers. Thirdly, a brand could have its own TV channel or encourage its customers to develop a program regarding their products.

TV Channels biased?

A TV channel is a double edged sword that can either impact your sales or perhaps damage your image. But it is a tool that marketers can no longer ignore, in the end, marketing is all about controlled-risks, isn’t it?

Posted by Manuela Barreto @ September 2nd, 2008 in Media News

Google Chrome is the Big G’s new open source web browser that should be reachable at http://www.google.com/chrome, however, it doesn’t seem to have gone live yet.

Anyways, it should be up anytime soon. In the meantime, I’ll fill you in on the wonders of this new browser.

It is designed to be faster and more practical for users. It claims among other features to offer improved speed and responsiveness together with a more powerful JavaScript engine adaptable to today’s web applications, which is not exactly the case with existing browsers.

Another prominent feature as explained by Mark Hendrickson from TechCrunch , is that of the multi-process design , which naturally requires more memory, however, the chances that your browser will freeze in the middle of a search will decrease immensely.

So if you’re a multi-task person or one who loves to have a million windows open at once, Chrome allows you to have all tabs open as needed since each tab will have a memory of its own and processes won’t be slowed down.

Also, the browser gives you a starting page that records all your recently viewed pages, plus all recently stored bookmarks and search engines visited. The ‘Incognito’ is another feature that opens as a window and it serves basically to isolate all your activities within one given space; no activity is recorded there.

Some other improvements Google has made for its new browser to make it quasi flawless is refining the security process. Chrome is malware and phishing sites- immune. It will continually download a list of phishing sites and malware sites to your computer, which will be used to warn you every time you visit them.

To get the full story behind Chrome and the reason for its existence, check out the Official Google Blog.

To know more about the actual performance of this new browser, keep posted on Matt Cutt’s upcoming blogs, where he will be discussing his personal experience using Google Chrome.

And finally, for more on the comic book that has been virally spreading on the web, check out the Google on Google Chrome Comic Book.

Posted by Manuela Barreto @ September 1st, 2008 in 77News

As of today, 77Lab can join your iPhone’s main gadgets and applications. The 77Lab webclip is now available for an iPhone-friendly version of the website, this way you can always get the latest new media scoop from us no matter where you are.

This new icon can be installed into your iPhone thanks to WordPress which in turn allows you to directly access our homepage from which you can also choose the category or article you wish to fully read by simply clicking ‘more’. The link to the WordPress plugin is http://www.bravenewcode.com/wptouch/.

To add the 77 webclip to your iPhone simply go on lab.77agency.com, from your phone, then choose + then select ‘add to home’.

Once you’ve got our 77Lab webclip on your touch screen, (sort of like the website shortcut that goes on your desktop), all you have to do is select it, and you will be instantly redirected to our homepage, which will look something like this:

So, if you have an iPhone, now you know what to do :-)