Mobio joins MMA

Mobio, a company that delivers movie times to mobile users, has announced it has joined the Mobile Marketing Association.

That might not sound like big news, but I do think it’s important that content providers and companies like this are joining groups for a number of reasons. First, trade groups are a great way to amass knowledge and share what’s worked and what hasn’t with others. Second, organizations like this are out there trying to create standards in new fields that too often have none. That’s important, especially for something like mobile marketing, because standards can help increase user adoption rates.

Let’s look for good things from both Mobio and the MMA out of this.

Letting go

This eMarketer story is focused around how 30 percent of American homes now have DVR functionality but it contains a quote that is applicable to any media, not just TV.

By letting go of how, when and where content is accessed, content providers can reach a greater audience that is able to consume more of its content.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re a TV network, movie studio, newspaper publisher or anything else. People – at least the young, tech-savvy crowd that marketers are going after – are becoming used to reading, watching or listening to media at a time that’s convenient to them. It’s going to be important for everyone to adjust to this model sooner rather than later to avoid being left in the dust.

LOTD: November 28

• Earlier in the week, Mashable’s Pete Cashmore pointed out that Break.com is going to be dropping some coin for good video content that it publishes to the homepage. [via]
• For those of you who thought Vault was a potential issue for your business, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Check out jobberwiki. [via eHub]
• Research that eMarketer is talking about today is saying that the DVR will be in about 30% of American homes by 2009. Statistically that might look like the trend from right now, but I think that the cable and satellite co’s will make this statistic way off by that point.
• YouTube vids will now be seen on the phones of V Cast subscribers on Verizon’s network

LOTD: November 27th

• I think it’s important that we all remember that while we might know what Web 2.0 means, not everyone does, even just in the marketing profession. Those who do, though, are seeing their knowledge and practices pay off.
• As proof that sometimes we’re likely to out-clever ourselves, all those URLs with “your” and “my” in the title that are used for specific campaigns might not be as easy to remember as we think they are.
• The practice of recruiting college students to spread the word about social networks on campus is one that not everyone is thrilled about, with some feeling that students, because they’re so sought after, actually need to be protected from the practice.
• Video sharing site Break.com has upped the price it pays to people who upload videos to $500 for live-action and $2,000 for animated shorts.
• Ben McConnell nicely analyzes a recent New York Times story on word-of-mouth and engagement and reminds us all that it’s not necessarily enough just to be talked about. It’s better when people feel an emotional connection to a brand or company that spurs them to action on behalf of that brand or company.

Embeddable video is the way to go

I have to agree with Lost Remote regarding posting video online. If you have video on your site, it should be embeddable. LR brings this up because of Comedy Central now allowing people to embed video from “The Colbert Report” and more from their site. Whenever I want to pass along a video now I always not only link to the source (likely Apple’s Quicktime or some other such site) but will also make an effort to search it out on YouTube. If it’s there I’ll grab the code and put it up as well, giving people the option to either view it directly on my site or go to the high-quality version.

But so many video producers don’t get that allowing people to easily pass on the video is a good thing. There might be a “tell a friend” link to email the video to someone but as more and more people are creating content themselves, allowing for embeddable video lets them add some spice to their site. It’s an easy way to let people spread the word in a way that builds brand loyalty for both the publisher as well as the video creator. I’m actively disappointed when I see someone has lots of video on their site and none of it is embeddable, even if I don’t plan on using it. Someone might be and that’s one less tool they have to talk about the product or brand in a compelling manner.

Stocking the endcaps with new media

If you’re a new media fanatic (and who here isn’t) then the page Target has setup for its upcoming 2-day sale will probably be of interest to you. The page is setup to promote not only the store’s sale but also the latest stunt from magician/performance artist David Blaine. Blaine appears in an ad for the store that Tom seems to love but which I’m lukewarm toward. That may be because I’m lukewarm on Blaine in general but we’ll leave that issue for another day.

The site features RSS, a downloadable widget for you to track Blaine’s stunt and code for you to put the promotion on your own website. Those are really nice tools to give people that let them spread the word organically, a favorite topic of mine. And it’s all wrapped up in a pretty nifty mobile-device looking format that makes the page a lot of fun to play around with.

Is it Friday?

Finally.

[via MWWer Clayton]

Chicago Coffee Meetup #1

Goodness, what fun it is to get out from in front of the computer screen occasionally and remind yourself that it’s real people writing some of your favorite blogs. Clay Parker Jones, David Armano, and Gabby, a colleague of David’s at Digitas and I got together at a downtown Chicago Intelligensia to talk blog and such. It would have been an enjoyable morning as it was but it turned out to be even more so with the arrival of Kelly Komp.

Kelly, you see, works for a small design firm named Tandemodus here in Chicago and has not yet begun a blog of his own. He had heard about the meetup via what he described as a series of clicked links it would impossible to recreate or describe. His presence was more than welcome because, as I’m sure all of you know, the thing bloggers love to talk about the most is how they started blogging and what kind of experiences they’ve had. So we all shared with each other and Kelly how we all came to dive into the online world, what worked for us, what didn’t and other such war stories. We probably overloaded him with information and suggestions but also hopefully gave him some things to think about. I’d look for a blog from tandemodus soon and sure it will make my daily reading list.

We all decided this should be a regular thing and hopefully will get more and more people to turn out as the word spreads. Clay has setup a page dedicated to the Chicago Coffee Meetup that he’ll be posting updated dates and times to as well as a Flickr Group where we can be embarrassed by how we look in the morning.

In the meantime you can check out the write-ups of this morning’s get together complete with pictures from both Clay and David.

News from AOL

Hot on the heels of Jon Miller was out at AOL and had been replaced by Randy Falco comes this report from TechCrunch that Jason Calacanis has resigned from AOL.

I’m not going to speculate on this since Tom and I both work(ed) for Jason at Weblogs, Inc, but if this is true, then wow. Just wow. You can read Jason’s thoughts on Miller’s leaving the company here.

LOTD: November 15th

Everyone just sit back and think of the turkey you’ll be eating next week while you enjoy these tasty links.

• TechCrunch has been YouSued, with lawyers claiming that a program they made to download YouTube vids to your iPod violates the TOS. I initially didn’t why they would do this but now I’ve figured it out: YouTube loses online ad revenue if people can download a hard copy of the videos.
• Brian Oberkirch calls making corporate announcements in Second Life “the new webcasting.”
• Ann Handley has some good advice on how to treat everyone in the blog world as an equal.
• Blogs are now more trusted than TV ads. Maybe that’s because they’re not overt attempts at selling stuff.
• Not that I claim to be an expert in the matter, but saying only one percent of the internet is devoted to porn seems like saying only five percent of the world’s oceans is devoted to water.
• Mark Cuban says he’d get into the newspaper business since they really do make money, just not in a way that makes shareholders happy. Someone go check to see if Jeff Jarvis just had a stroke.
• The Weinstein Co. seems to be solving cash-on-hand problems by signing a deal making Blockbuster the exclusive rental outlet for its movies on home video. That means you’re out of luck if you’re a Netflix user. Does no one else get that exclusivity agreements are what’s killing the theatrical movie industry? And now we’re replicating that for home video? This makes my head hurt.
• I’m not sure exactly what “hockey” is but the league has signed an online video deal with YouTube.
• I can’t believe that anyone is seriously considering embargo windows as a way to shore up the financial futures of newspapers.
• Over at my personal blog I try and show that marketing hyperbole can’t fool Technorati.