von Roland Hachmann | Jan 8, 2011 | Blog, Digital Culture
It’s a great advantage to have a cousin and best friend who travels a lot. I have spent quite a few vacations just visiting my cousin Gerhard in whatever location he lived at that time.
It’s also always interesting to listen to the stories of my cousin. Travelling most of Latin America, he has experienced many interesting and quite a few peculiar things and knows a lot about what to do, where to go, what to try, etc.
It gets even better now, that my cousin decided to share his travel stories, adventures and travel tips with a wider audience, i.e. everybody. Here is his way of sharing: He just recently created the blog „Vagabond Life„:
The blog offers tips of every sort. Things as in the screenshot above: „The drink of choice in Buenos Aires„, but also „Running in Buenos Aires„, „how to use facebook as a traveller„, as well as simply stuff like „Foreign Currency Exchance„.
These tips will soon cover many countries in Latin America, since my Cousin usually travels to at least 3-4 different countries a year, with Costa Rica, Guatemala, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico being amongst the most often visited.
If my cousin keeps up pumping out about 2 posts a week, as he plans to, this could soon turn into one of the most valuable ressources for travel information on latin america on the web!
von Roland Hachmann | Jan 5, 2011 | Blog, Digital Marketing, Marketing, Marketing Trends, Social Media Marketing
Steve Rubel and David Armano of Edelman just released 11 trends to watch in 2011. Most are to be expected, when reading the tech / social media blogosphere. But still a good curation, as they call it themselves:
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The trends overview:
- Attentionomics – Marketers begin to realize the value of attention and not just reach in driving conversion
- Digital Curation – The plethora of content will give rise to digital curators who can separate art from junk
- Developer Engagement – Marketers typically don’t try to court developers, but that’s all about to change
- Transmedia Storytelling – If there’s one constant it’s that humans crave stories. Technology creates new expectations
- Thought Leadership – Companies recognize they must activate credible individual expert voices who can create content
- The Integration Economy – Social media efforts can no longer exist in fragmented, non-formal initiatives. They begin to integrate
- Ubiquitous Social Computing – As competition heats up mobile devices, consumers closer to being socially connected anywhere
- Location, Location, Facebook – If 2010 belonged to solely Foursquare, it’s likely that Facebook will rain on their parade in 2011
- Social Media Schizophrenia – Social overload is no longer a problem for tech mavens, but a broader population
- Google Strikes Back – Google proves that the best way to beat Facebook & Twitter is to do what they do best: index them to pieces
- Viva La Social Web Site – Businesses realize that integrating social functionality into their existing web sites is what users now expect
(Taken from Dave Armano’s blog)
With respect to the German landscape, here are some of my takes on it:
- I really hope that the discussion moves away from „reach“ towards „attention“, and that we will find adequate KPI. But somehow I doubt that either will happen in 2011 already.
- I am sure we’ll see a lot more transmedia storytelling (which I like),
- as well as more integrate approaches, at least within the bigger and more advanced companies, after having done their baby steps on the social web in the last years.
- Facebook will increasingly dominate the social web in Germany, with nearly 14 Million Germans having joined the network. It will also dominate marketing efforts and agency briefings. One should hope that users won’t get fed up by too many lame marketing approaches.
- Location, Location: this will get bigger every year. However, whether or not Facebook will make the run really depends on their next updates to „places“. In it’s current state (in Germany), Places is simply boring.
- Social Websites: this has already started well in 2011 in Germany, it will just be a strong continuation.
von Roland Hachmann | Jan 4, 2011 | Blog, Digital Culture, Digital Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Social Media Marketing
Mashable features the top 10 apps to watch for 2011. While some don’t seem to be too interesting for me and some to be just „me too“ apps that need to proove that they offer never seen additional value, one looked rather interesting to me: GetGlue
It let’s you checkin into Movies, Books, Shows, etc.
Somehow people got used to „checking in“ to things. And they also got used to sharing experiences. Weird concept though, that you check into a book. But the social aspect is great, because (as with foursquare) you can leave tips, comments, see who also checked in to that particular medium, etc. Does this need to be a „mobile“ app? Think not, as there does not seem to be any location aspect to it.
It also seems to be a cool recommendation engine. I wonder what else people will get the chance to check into? Meals, drinks? And who has the time to constantly update their checkin status for every single detail of life? I already keep forgetting to check in with foursquare all the time.
von Roland Hachmann | Jan 2, 2011 | Blog, Digital Culture, Marketing Trends
It’s time to take a look at the best memes of 2010. Rocketboom shows 6 Minutes worth of Memes and on MySpace someone published the following infographic:
Check out more awesome videos on Myspace
I definitely missed some of these, but I guess they are very much focused on memes from the US. I would not want to leave out the #blumenkübel meme we had running on twitter here in Germany, which made it to the international trending topics. It was so popular, that people from the US asked on twitter, what the hell #blumenkübel means…
Happy new year 2011!
Wo ich sonst so bin...