Capitalism Turning Socialized
From the birth of the internet, pornography was rated the single most popular activity on the world-wide web, making millions for companies that took it mainstream. But now there is a new phenomenon heating up the web. In a span of less than four years, social media has overtaken porn as the number one activity on-line. And this dramatic shift is shaking the very foundations of the media industry, causing an epic change in how marketers pitch to consumers.
Think about this. It took the medium of radio 38 years to reach an audience of 50-million listeners. Television took 13 years to reach that many viewers and the internet reached its user base of 50 million in just 4 years. But 200 million of us signed up for the social media site Facebook in less than a year. That is an audience so huge even politicians are taking note, and getting in on the social media action.
Just last month, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev used Twitter, not television or newspapers, to get out his message to world leaders at the G-8 summit. On his Twitter account he gave information to the world using brief words and pictures that he snapped himself. President Medvedev now has 26,000 followers on Twitter and counting.
Social Media is indeed changing the way we communicate so dramatically that corporate America is beginning to understand how it can help the bottom line. Already we see companies from Wall Street to Main Street asking their customers to share their pitches with friends and family via facebook, twitter and MySpace. And this business phenomenon is growing virally, allowing companies and organizations to grow their own social networks and expand their brand awareness.
Want some proof? Just check out the bottom of web pages from CBS or Lufthansa. They offer links that encourage you to share their news and information with your friends on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and MySpace. Doctors are using social media to connect with patients, and food vendors are using twitter to tell customers where their food trucks will be by the hour.
Chase is using Facebook to promote its Chase Community Giving campaign to help give $5 million dollars in donations to favorite charities. People vote and then encourage their friends to vote via Facebook. Almost three million people have signed up so far. People use their social network to win, and Chase looks like an altruistic corporate citizen at a time when financial institutions need all the PR they can get.
Online women’s apparel retailer ModCloth just secured a $19 million round of financing to support its plans to “democratize” fashion by using social media to blur the lines between retailers, customers and designers. The company lets its customers decide what styles and designs are produced and sold by allowing them to vote for and comment on designs. Those with enough votes get produced, cutting the inherent risk in taking new clothing to market.
It is viral marketing through voting on the social media platform. The word goes out to their 21,000 twitter followers and 58,000 Facebook fans. People can submit names for a “Name It and Win It” contest that keeps customers engaged. I call that smart “social commerce”, using their engaged Facebook base. And my own experience proves viral campaigns do indeed work when implementing a social commerce platform.
San Francisco based start up fizwoz, where I serve as Chairman, is combining a common consumer activity, entering photo contests, with a crowd-sourced voting mechanism. Called “SocialEyes”, the service is designed to provide companies the platform to encourage active participation among their social media audiences by combining a photo and video contest with social sharing tools. Contestants submit their images to a contest via the widely available fizwoz mobile phone application. When entries are approved, contestants are encouraged to get their social network to vote for their entry. The mobile application verifies that all submissions are original and owned by the contestant, a common problem for many photo and video contests.
The most successful campaigns employ an opted-in, highly-targeted, email marketing database. Here’s how the numbers can work, assuming an email database of 100,000 recipients and using standard response statistics. 25% will open the email, 5,000 will click on the contest, and 25% of these people will submit an entry in the photo and video contest and then invite 12 of their friends to vote for them.
This means that 15,000 additional people will get an invite from a friend to vote, bringing more traffic to the contest site. Experience shows that 15% of these people will decide to participate themselves and invite 12 of their friends to vote for them. Now 27,000 more folks will get a personal invite to vote, which means that we now have 42,000 extra people who have virally seen the contest and many will have engaged with the brand.
And so the viral marketing cycle continues. And if the reward or prize is compelling enough, participants will be more aggressive in getting their friends to vote for them.
Consider this: if Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s third largest. So why wouldn’t companies maximize their social media contacts on such social media platforms? And it can be a lot cheaper than producing and airing a major TV ad campaign.
BRIAN BANMILLER
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Assignments for the Week of May 3
UK Daily
Assignment: British Elections
Description: Polling Activities – people voting, the activity around the polling stations, local politicians and/or celebrities turning out to vote.
Image: $5
Video: $15
Ends: 2010-05-09
UK Daily
Assignment: Politicians out canvassing
Description: In the run up to the general election in England on May 6th we’re looking for photos and videos of candidates out canvassing in their constituency
Image: $10
Video: $20
Ends: 2010-05-06
celebloft
Assignment: Celebrity images for new blog
Description: We are a new blog looking for images of celebrities in normal situations..shopping, filing car with gas etc, we don’ want galm shots, preferably gap jeans and little make-up!
Image: $100
Video: $200
Ends: 2010-05-31
15,000 Registered Users for fizwoz
After being live for only 3 months, fizwoz.com has just registered its 15,000th user, known as “fizers”, and is growing rapidly.
fizwoz.com™ is the first a
nd only online auction site that allows you to make money off pictures and videos you take with your cell phone! fizwoz connects “photographers” (consumers) not just with thousands of individuals, but with more than 45,000 media professionals worldwide. Within seconds of your image being captured, professional organizations can start bidding on your content. TV networks, newspapers, magazines and blogs are competing to see who can be first to use the images, so don’t just give your content away, make money off it.
For the full press release, please visit PRWeb here.
Assignments for the Week of April 19th
Daily Cal
Assignment: Video reviews of Berkeley Restaurants
Description: Looking to write about how camera phones are changing the art of travel photography. I want to buy pictures of spectacular travel destinations. Please include the location in the description.
Images: $5
Videos: $5
Ending Date: April 5, 2010
Music Choice
Assignment: Karaoke Videos
Description: Capture a video of someone (even yourself) doing a Karaoke sing-along and submit it to the Music Choice Assignment under the Assignment Category on the fizwoz mobile application
Video Price:$ 20.00
End Date:2010-08-31
John Wilson
Assignment: Earthquake Videos
Description: I am looking for videos of earthquakes and their aftermath.
Video Price: $5
End Date: 2010-05-01
Bay Area Media
Assignment: People driving while using their cell phone
Description: Take a photo or video of someone driving while using their cell phone and submit it to the Bay Area Media assignment under the Assignment Category on the fizwoz mobile application
Photo: $50
Video: $75
End Date: 2010-12-31
UK Daily
Assignment: Politicians out canvassing
Description: In the run up to the general election in England on May 6th we’re looking for photos and videos of candidates out canvassing in their constituency
Photo: $10
Video: $20
End Date: 2010-05-06
Nokia N900 Camera Review
Mark Jaremko
At fizwoz, many interesting phones pass through our labs, but one of the more interesting ones to date is the Nokia N900 (Maemo). This phone certainly has a lot going for it, with a touch user interface capable of challenging the iPhone. That aside, a phone’s camera capability is something that we pay close attention to at fizwoz. So how does the Nokia measure up?
In this first part of our two-part review, we’ll take a close look at the N900’s camera features and capabilities. We’ll follow up in part two with a detailed comparison of the image quality of Nokia compared to our current benchmark, the Apple iPhone 3GS. We love the iPhone’s clean and automatic camera app, but something the lack of any manual controls can be rather limiting. How does the N900 compare?
Without even turning the phone on, it’s clear that the camera is no afterthought. This phone is serious about its picture taking. A dedicated Camera button on the top drops you directly into picture taking mode. The sliding lens cover on the back is more reminiscent of a more serious point-and-shoot than a mere cell phone. This ensures the lens and LED flash are clear and clean (one of the best ways to take better cell phone pictures is to make sure the lens is wiped clean before you shoot). The Nokia sports a 5MPixel sensor with a Carl Zeiss 2.8 autofocus lens. And like a real camera, a half press on the shutter engages the autofocus operation, quickly bringing the image on the screen into sharp focus. The N900 can go from standby to full capture in under two seconds, just by sliding the lens cover to the open position.
Contrast this with the iPhone, which takes many taps, and at best, seven seconds to launch the camera app. While the iPhone does not have a dedicated shutter button, nor a dedicated autofocus engage, it does constantly focus on the image in front of the camera, and does a rather good job of it. Chances are, by the time you’re ready to take a photo, the iPhone will have already focused on what you’re about to shoot.
From the Camera app itself, the N900 gives you several touch areas in which to control the camera.
The N900 has enough camera control to rival any mid-tier point-and-shoot camera.
One nice feature that we liked about the main screen is that any custom setting that you might have enabled show up as small icons in the bottom left part of the screen. This not only acts as a reminder that the camera is not on full auto mode, but also lets you tap on them to quickly change that setting.
The Camera Mode setting allows you to pick from four different shooting styles. In our tests, Automatic did a reasonable job of switching the camera into the correct mode.
Macro mode managed to focus down to about 4” from the subject, a little further than the iPhone. Where the N900 really shinned was indicating focus lock. When the subject is in focus, the focus area turns green with a slight audible click. The iPhone has no such confirmation. The 3GS will tell you what it’s trying to focus on, but it might fail and still allow you to take an obviously blurry image. This is rather frustrating when trying to take any macro photography, as you won’t know if you got the shot until you download the photo. Not with the Nokia, you know before you take the shot if you have a focus lock or not.
Both Landscape and Action change how focus works. You no longer see the camera hunt for the correct focus, as its now optimizing for either infinity focus in Landscape, or fast action shooting in the Action mode.
Action mode also sets the camera’s ISO setting to the top speed, ISO 400, to bump the shutter speed to the maximum speed.
In the Capture Settings menu, you have a host of custom controls to manually set the camera.
White balance gives you the standard set of preconfigured settings to pick from, although missing is any ability to set a custom white balance. Still, this is a far cry from the iPhone which gives you nothing. Having some White Balance setting is more important on a camera phone or point-and-shoot since these numbers are baked right into the JPG file that the camera creates. With a high end DSLR, you can change this after the fact if you shoot RAW, but not so with JPG.
ISO gives you a set of options from 100 to 400, but the phone has a far greater range in Automatic. We’ve seen recorded ISO values anywhere from 100 all the way to 800 during a night time shot. The iPhone 3GS, on the other hand, automatically sets the ISO based on the image, with no manual settings and typical values are anywhere from 70 all the way to 1016, giving the iPhone a slightly greater theoretical sensitivity in low light environments. However, the N900’s LED flash can make a far larger impact on image quality.
The LED Flash on the N900 can make a huge difference in low-light photography. Common settings include On, Off, Automatic and Red eye. In the Red Eye mode, the N900 will flash the LEDs three times before taking the actual photograph. Unfortunately, the iPhone has not such flash.
Exposure setting, something very useful in a regular camera, allows you to change, in real-time, the exposure setting of the image. You actually see the image in front of the camera get brighter or darker as you drag the slider to the left and right. This is invaluable in cases where you’re shooting into the sun or into the shade.
As for exposure speed, the top exposure time for the N900 seems to be 1/1000 second, which should be fast enough for most action conditions. The iPhone 3Gs seems to top out at around 1/623 second.
Finally, Resolution gives you two options, the standard 5 Megapixel default, or a lower resolution 3.5 Megapixel widescreen. This option is a little puzzling, as the widescreen format doesn’t actually give you a wider photograph, it’s merely the 5 Megapixel photo with the top and bottom cropped off in order to fit the Nokia’s screen. Still, this is a far cry from the iPhone’s 3.1 Megapixel sensor.
Finally, there is a General Settings area in the N900 which allows you to set your name, LCD review time and memory card location.
So how good is the quality of the N900 photo, and how well does it compare in the field to the iPhone? We’ll take a close look in the second part of our review.
Assignment for the Week of March 29th
Travel Blogger
Assignment: Looking to Purchase Photos of Popular Travel Destinations
Description: Looking to write about how camera phones are changing the art of travel photography. I want to buy pictures of spectacular travel destinations. Please include the location in the description.
Images: $5
Videos: $5
Ending Date: April 5, 2010
Afghanistan Captured Through An iPhone
David Guttenfelder, an AP photographer, used an iPhone to capture amazing photography of the largest military operation in Afghanistan since 2001. To check out his iPhone photography of this event, please visit Depth of field: Afghanistan.
This type of photography shows how powerful of a tool camera phones have become in the past five years. No longer are people limited by their traditional camera. Instead, people more often than not now have a camera with them at all times in the form of their cell phone.
Cell Phone Camera’s Soon To Be Rated On Image Quality
The International Imaging Industry Association will soon be testing all of the Cell Phone Cameras for overall image quality.
“The score is based on measurements of a variety of factors. First came basics such as sharpness, color uniformity, and lens distortion. Now the group is tackling image noise, white balance, sensitivity, blur, and other attributes” according to the article Help Coming for Judging Phone Camera Quality by CNET.
As cell phones continue to evolve, this rating system will make it much easier for buyers to distinguish between the different levels of quality in future mobile phones. The ratings will be displayed as a 5 star rating, accompanied with a more detailed chart for the more advanced users.
We at fizwoz think that this rating system will continue to encourage the innovation of the camera phone market, especially with Nokia, the iPhone and the Nexus One competing in the market.
Introduction to Visual Journalism by Nieman Reports
The team at Nieman Reports have just put out their latest edition. It is all about visual journalism, with the theme of “Fresh Approaches and New Business Strategies for the Multimedia Age” I thought it would be of interest to this group.
Here is how the editor Melissa Ludtke describes the focus:
“Photojournalism is changing, propelled by newsroom budget cuts, multimedia possibilities, and the ubiquity of digital images. In Visual Journalism, photojournalists write about emerging digital business strategies and their efforts to expand the reach of their photographs online and on gallery walls. They also share ideas about how to fund projects of personal passion and societal value. Their words tell vital stories about how they do their work; slideshows of their photographs—exclusive to our Web site—and multimedia presentations convey their visual stories. Read and watch as the future of photojournalism unfolds.”
Check out the Nieman Reports Introduction to Visual Journalism.
