This is, hands down, the most cracked version of Jingle Bells ever produced. Quoting Huffington Post, “It’s like they took the classic song, soaked it in a tub of LSD, then took a match to it.” Who could come up with such a thing? Well, at the end of the clip, it has the “NICK” [...]

Posted under Online Marketing, Online Video, Viral Marketing

For five minutes last Monday, the bread aisle at Gourmet Glatt became an avant-garde musical theatre.
Customers were surprised, to say the least, when 7  students broke into a song and dance routine to the tune of “Be Our Guest,” from Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. They did it to help drum up online publicity for [...]

Posted under Online Marketing, Online Video, Viral Marketing

What Happened?
Today I was invited to join the Twitter Retweet Beta Group. Twitter just told me that I’d be “part of a beta group receiving this feature, which means [I] may start seeing retweets in a new way. People who don’t ave this yet will see your retweets prefaced by “RT”.” Naturally, I feel special, [...]

Posted under Online Marketing, Social Networks, Tech2.0

Brands and businesses are using video, but few are realizing video’s true value as the ignition point of a targeted social media marketing campaign or, the spark. Likewise, many brands and companies are embracing social media but not getting as much out of the experience as they could. With a “videocentric” approach, video serves as [...]

Posted under Online Marketing

What is happening is that the consumption of unauthorized content appears to be moving out of dorm rooms and into the living rooms of average Americans. Here is what you’re up against:

A 28-year-old woman I’ll call Alexandra (she asked for anonymity) grew up in Missouri, graduated from college, attends church every Sunday, and told me that she watches episodes of the hit cable show “Mad Men” at least twice a week at Surfthechannel.com, a site that hosts links to many unauthorized clips. She gleefully said that visitors can find almost any TV show they want and not pay a dime.

Alexandra said a friend told her about Surfthechannel.com a year or two ago and she watches shows there because she doesn’t want to pay for a cable subscription, or a TV and because it’s so easy.

She explained that she is not a bad person and that “everybody is doing this.” She says one of her professors told her “he and his wife sit at home on the weekends and enjoyed movies they downloaded (illegally) off the Web.”

I ask her if she has tried Hulu, the popular video site created by News Corp. and NBC Universal. The site offers a few feature films and lots of TV shows free to viewers and pays for them by serving ads. She said she had visited Hulu but added that “there’s more of the stuff I want at Surfthechannel.com.”

Alexandra’s statements about Hulu come at a time when the site’s backers are mulling whether to build a pay wall around some of its content. Alexandra and people like her aren’t even accepting Hollywood’s offer of free content because unauthorized sites offer better selection.

What do you think will happen if Hulu begins charging?

Don’t get me wrong. I understand that the returns at Hulu are probably much smaller than what the studios are accustomed to getting. There’s also the problem of growing dissatisfaction among the cable operators. How long will they continue to pay big bucks if more of their customers dump their subscriptions in favor of sites such as Hulu? Leaving a business that generated billions for one that makes far less would be hard for anyone.

But the possibility that studio chiefs must consider is what if the money offered by iTunes, Hulu, and Netflix is all that a digitally ravaged media world offers.

Eric Garland, CEO of Big Champagne, a company that tracks file-sharing usage and sells the data to the studios and major record labels said: “Hulu may be doing immediate harm to elements of your business, but waiting right behind Hulu in the shadows, are things that do so much more harm.”

File-sharing put a dent in the music industry, blogs/online publishers is shutting down print publishing and sooner or later, Hollywood will face the same scare. They are “headed for the same meat grinder that has chewed up the recorded music sector and print publishing.” ( Greg Sandoval, CNET.com).  Is this true? Can it be? It [...]

Posted under Blogs, Online Marketing, Online Video, Social Networks, Tech2.0

The game is called World of Goo, and it’s really an awesome game. Normally it costs $20 to buy the game but right now they are having a promotion that allows you to pay anything you want for the game. Let me repeat that…PAY WHATEVER YOU THINK IT’S WORTH!
It’s not free…but they’ve found a new [...]

Posted under Blogs, Viral Marketing

Kevin Rose – The name should be familiar to you, considering he’s the founder of Digg.com. The domain “digg.com” attracted at least 236 million visitors annually by 2008  and has continuously been growing for the past year (Compete.com). The best part is….THEY NEVER EVEN PAID FOR MARKETING! Every technique they used was free and available [...]

Posted under Blogs, Events, Online Marketing, Online Video, SEO/SEM, Social Networks, Tech2.0, Viral Marketing

My friend just sent me an e-mail with a link to BlastoffNetwork.com and simply said “Yah, its going to be big. Its all over the internet already.” Intrigued, I probed further…
What Is BlastOff Media Group?
Not to be confused with the domain name BlastoffMedia (which I can imagine is going to get a lot of free [...]

Posted under Online Marketing, Social Networks, Tech2.0