9/22/09

 

Richmond New Media Weekly Roundup

• We are very excited to announce our submission for permanent, public art in Richmond won the InLight legacy category. You may recall my talking about last year's InLight, Richmond's first "Art, Turned On," and raving over Scott Kyle's solar sidewalk.
  
  This year, Scott Kyle of Fullscale Architecture, Damon Pearson of Tektonics and our prefab Green Cabin Kits, Lisa Taranto of Tricycle Gardens and myself spent the summer concepting on The Tree. Set to be displayed against Richmond's Convention Center downtown, this solar tree reminds us of nature past, present, future. We hope to continue to add solar trees throughout the city, providing light and architectural dimension to our urban landscape.
  
  
• I am loving the new TweetDeck. I think the most valuable feature I'm noticing is the drag & drop, and automatic shortening of urls.
  
  
• I enjoy reading client Google Analytic statistics because I evaluate and think about our economy accordingly.
  
  For example, as I reviewed analytics for our client accounts this month, I saw growth in jewelry/accessories, real estate/architecture, and culture / museum accounts.
  
  Now I am no financial expert (I'll leave that to The Naked Portfolio Manager), but reviewing this data always makes me think... and I think these are good signs for our economy.
  
  
• The Taylor Swift / Kanye incident also had implications on how average people are using the web.
  
  
• Posterous has themes! But I am trying to dig up an article not two weeks ago on why using tools like Posterous can hurt your seo in posting duplicate content in multiple places. Can't find the article (yet)... But be aware. Useful tool, but caution if seo is of major importance (and for myself, seo is always king)...
  
  
• The New York Times has big plans for twitter... more aggregation, more search, more sorting of content to keep an eye on.
  
  
• Google launched Sidewiki. Sidewiki is like a Universal Commenting System http://om.bit.ly/81fgM I can't help but be reminded of AddATweet, which I mentioned a few weeks back.
  
  
• But don't forget: At the end of the day...
  Your Social Media Strategy Won't Save You.

Thanks for listening!
...If you note any trends or local media items of note, feel free to send 'em on!

I'm Copeland Casati, of Copeland Casati Media,
the original C3 in Richmond media since 1999.

You can reach me at copeland@copelandcasati.com, or on twitter, @copelandcasati. If you are a Facebook user, we can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Copeland-Casati-Media-C3/52352550685

Labels: advertising, awards, c3, google, social media, twitter

1/23/09

 

The Shorty Awards: Comin' Up Short?

How many begs for Shorty Award Votes did YOU get today?
Over the past weeks?

I have a question: Am I the only one wondering about the relevance of The Shorty Awards?

Apparently the awards are for
"The best producers of short* content in 2008
*140 characters or less, on Twitter"

From ALL the nominations on Twitter (and how many people are on twitter now?), the top five in each category are culled to nominee status, at which point we're supposed to vote for the best of those five.

I had become annoyed as several people's streams turned into vote begs.
And watched their employees in turn implore their followers to vote for a nominee.

I shook my head: Where's the content? Where's the value? Where's the shiny haiku that would floor me in 140?

So, today I finally sauntered over to The Shorty Awards to see what the fuss was about, since it's all these people could bray about.

And I noticed... that...
Go through the categories.
They have the person with the most votes listed first, the second most popular, then the fifth most popular, on (supposedly) ALLLLLL of twitter, last.

Are you kidding me?
THESE are the top five in every category and the most popular only garnered an average of 100-300ish votes? And the least of the TOP FIVE NOMINEES had about 6-20ish votes?

Of all of Twitter?
Of all of their followers? And their minions followers?

I noticed the Social Media category had only 4 Nominees... of ALL of Twitter... that says...
everything.

Sounds like another pointless bloaty conference where the "honorees" pay travel and lodging (and fees?) to sit around and... tweet?

Labels: awards