Interactivity is a key element when it comes to successfully spreading web content, which is why the ARG or transmedia experience — which works across platforms to create a narrative that the user has to discover on his or her own — has become a much more visible part of the landscape. Enter a recently launched ARG created specifically for the web series community, one that celebrates it.
Created by producer Jenni Powell and No Mimes Media, Webishades launched earlier this month via an article posted on Tubefilter. That article included a link to the Webishades website, which had secrets to be unlocked with phone calls, emails and ads on websites for series including The Guild, Squatters, Compulsions and The Temp Life. “It was a lot insidery, but that was part of the fun of it,” Powell said via phone.
To be honest, I completed the Webishades challenge in about ten minutes, because I cheated. And while I cheated — with some help from the ARG forum Unfiction, where previous players have documented the complete path to victory — that low level of commitment is deliberate.
Webishades is part of No Mimes’ recent string of 10 Minute ARG projects, which are created to be self-sustaining in perpetuity. “People don’t do stuff when we want them to, necessarily,” No Mimes managing director Benham Karbassi said via phone. “So we want to give them the opportunity to do it when they want to.”
So far, by Karbassi’s estimations, “a few thousand” people have checked out the Webishades website, with “a few hundred” following up on the phone call. But every component of the Webishades experience is automated, and as long as the participating web series don’t remove the clues from their websites, the game will be playable for the foreseeable future.
Not that there’s a lot there, to be frank — Webishades doesn’t have much in the way of story, instead operating as a promotional engine for the shows involved, and the reward is relatively Spartan. “It’s not as narrative as other ARG games,” Powell said. “It’s very different because it’s advertisement-based: ‘Here’s this fun fake product, let’s talk about it.’ That’s more of the game. We could have blown this out more, but it was just a fun way for us to work together.”
One of the complications is that Felicia Day, who in the project’s original iteration played a much larger role, was cast in a multi-episode arc on the SyFy Channel series Eureka this summer, meaning that her involvement had to be scaled back dramatically. “As you go, you have to be really flexible — that’s why ARGs are so fun to design,” Powell said. “You have to be on your toes the entire time.”
No money exchanged hands in this project, with everyone instead donating their time to put the elements together (with the exception of performance fees for actors in the Webishades commercial). That’s because Webishades isn’t intended to be a moneymaker; in fact, a Crackle representative, during a call with Powell and the No Mimes team, directly challenged No Mimes as to why they were doing this project — because it was just going to cost them money.
Karbassi’s reply at the time was that it would be great advertising for them, and also give them access to the web series community. Which seems to have paid off, at least in regard to the latter point: The number of series which participated in the project does represent an impressive range of the talent currently making web narrative. And while the numbers are low on players who have fully engaged with the project, those Webishades ads do remain on all the respective sites. The game is still on.
Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): Shattering the Fourth Wall To Find Web Audiences
Newly launched shopping incentive platform Ifeelgoods today announced that it will help retail websites to give away Facebook Credits as rewards to customers. Users can earn Credits for making purchases, sharing with friends, clicking ads, signing up for email updates, or for redeeming loyalty program points. Facebook Credits have a low cost but a high perceived value, especially to social gamers who are often online shoppers, making them a more cost-effective incentive than discounts and rebates. These so-called “micro-incentives” could become a powerful way to entice customers to follow a call to action.
Retail websites first add some simple javascript code to display messages such as “Buy this dress and get 25 Facebook Credits” or “Post to Facebook and get 3 Credits.” Users then click a Facebook Connect button, allow the Ifeelgoods app access, and the Credits are automatically deposited in the user’s Facebook account. The integration will only be lightly branded as powered by Ifeelgoods.
The company is part of Facebook’s app2user program which enables apps such as ShopKick and Rixty to help merchants and loyalty program operators offer their customers Facebook Credits in lieu of other rewards. This effectively creates another payment method for Credits where users pay or create value for retailers who in turn pay Facebook. The Ifeelgoods team comes from Shop.org, PayPal, Google, and French media agency AGORAD, and has received $1.1 million in seed funding from Tugboat Ventures, Kima Ventures, Quest Venture Partners and angel investors. A number of undisclosed retailers are ready to implement the incentive program upon launch.
The company’s VP of Product Suchit Dash explains that Ifeelgoods has purchased a pool of full-priced Credits from Facebook, and one possible business model would be to sell them at-cost to retailers along with a set up fee for implementing the integration. Later, the company hopes to get discounts from Facebook for bulk Credits purchases, netting it a margin on each Credit sale.
Dash says ifeelgoods Credits incentives are similar to offering “free shipping where the perceived value to customers is seven or eight dollars, but the cost for retailers is three or four dollars. Five Facebook Credits are worth more than their actual value to someone heavily invested in FarmVille. We’re aligning ourselves with a currency which has potential. As users begin to be able to buy online books or music with Facebook Credits, the perceived value of the Credits expands.” By providing a low cost way to encourage users to spend money, give up contact information, and distribute marketing messages, Ifeelgoods shares the buying power of social gamers with online retailers.
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bench craft company rip off
ScribbleLive plans to reinvent the <b>news</b> article | VentureBeat
Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining VentureBeat in ...
Reese Schonfeld: Third Quarter Cable <b>News</b>: Bad <b>News</b> for All <b>...</b>
Could it be that the decline in news viewers is symptomatic of a general and genuine disgust by news viewers who are just fed up with the kind of news being fed to them?
Evri Expands Mobile Offerings Beyond Tech <b>News</b> to Sports, Music <b>...</b>
Evri is going mobile in a big way. The Seattle- and San Francisco-based information discovery website backed by Paul Allen's Vulcan Capital introduced an.
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Interactivity is a key element when it comes to successfully spreading web content, which is why the ARG or transmedia experience — which works across platforms to create a narrative that the user has to discover on his or her own — has become a much more visible part of the landscape. Enter a recently launched ARG created specifically for the web series community, one that celebrates it.
Created by producer Jenni Powell and No Mimes Media, Webishades launched earlier this month via an article posted on Tubefilter. That article included a link to the Webishades website, which had secrets to be unlocked with phone calls, emails and ads on websites for series including The Guild, Squatters, Compulsions and The Temp Life. “It was a lot insidery, but that was part of the fun of it,” Powell said via phone.
To be honest, I completed the Webishades challenge in about ten minutes, because I cheated. And while I cheated — with some help from the ARG forum Unfiction, where previous players have documented the complete path to victory — that low level of commitment is deliberate.
Webishades is part of No Mimes’ recent string of 10 Minute ARG projects, which are created to be self-sustaining in perpetuity. “People don’t do stuff when we want them to, necessarily,” No Mimes managing director Benham Karbassi said via phone. “So we want to give them the opportunity to do it when they want to.”
So far, by Karbassi’s estimations, “a few thousand” people have checked out the Webishades website, with “a few hundred” following up on the phone call. But every component of the Webishades experience is automated, and as long as the participating web series don’t remove the clues from their websites, the game will be playable for the foreseeable future.
Not that there’s a lot there, to be frank — Webishades doesn’t have much in the way of story, instead operating as a promotional engine for the shows involved, and the reward is relatively Spartan. “It’s not as narrative as other ARG games,” Powell said. “It’s very different because it’s advertisement-based: ‘Here’s this fun fake product, let’s talk about it.’ That’s more of the game. We could have blown this out more, but it was just a fun way for us to work together.”
One of the complications is that Felicia Day, who in the project’s original iteration played a much larger role, was cast in a multi-episode arc on the SyFy Channel series Eureka this summer, meaning that her involvement had to be scaled back dramatically. “As you go, you have to be really flexible — that’s why ARGs are so fun to design,” Powell said. “You have to be on your toes the entire time.”
No money exchanged hands in this project, with everyone instead donating their time to put the elements together (with the exception of performance fees for actors in the Webishades commercial). That’s because Webishades isn’t intended to be a moneymaker; in fact, a Crackle representative, during a call with Powell and the No Mimes team, directly challenged No Mimes as to why they were doing this project — because it was just going to cost them money.
Karbassi’s reply at the time was that it would be great advertising for them, and also give them access to the web series community. Which seems to have paid off, at least in regard to the latter point: The number of series which participated in the project does represent an impressive range of the talent currently making web narrative. And while the numbers are low on players who have fully engaged with the project, those Webishades ads do remain on all the respective sites. The game is still on.
Related GigaOm Pro Content (subscription required): Shattering the Fourth Wall To Find Web Audiences
Newly launched shopping incentive platform Ifeelgoods today announced that it will help retail websites to give away Facebook Credits as rewards to customers. Users can earn Credits for making purchases, sharing with friends, clicking ads, signing up for email updates, or for redeeming loyalty program points. Facebook Credits have a low cost but a high perceived value, especially to social gamers who are often online shoppers, making them a more cost-effective incentive than discounts and rebates. These so-called “micro-incentives” could become a powerful way to entice customers to follow a call to action.
Retail websites first add some simple javascript code to display messages such as “Buy this dress and get 25 Facebook Credits” or “Post to Facebook and get 3 Credits.” Users then click a Facebook Connect button, allow the Ifeelgoods app access, and the Credits are automatically deposited in the user’s Facebook account. The integration will only be lightly branded as powered by Ifeelgoods.
The company is part of Facebook’s app2user program which enables apps such as ShopKick and Rixty to help merchants and loyalty program operators offer their customers Facebook Credits in lieu of other rewards. This effectively creates another payment method for Credits where users pay or create value for retailers who in turn pay Facebook. The Ifeelgoods team comes from Shop.org, PayPal, Google, and French media agency AGORAD, and has received $1.1 million in seed funding from Tugboat Ventures, Kima Ventures, Quest Venture Partners and angel investors. A number of undisclosed retailers are ready to implement the incentive program upon launch.
The company’s VP of Product Suchit Dash explains that Ifeelgoods has purchased a pool of full-priced Credits from Facebook, and one possible business model would be to sell them at-cost to retailers along with a set up fee for implementing the integration. Later, the company hopes to get discounts from Facebook for bulk Credits purchases, netting it a margin on each Credit sale.
Dash says ifeelgoods Credits incentives are similar to offering “free shipping where the perceived value to customers is seven or eight dollars, but the cost for retailers is three or four dollars. Five Facebook Credits are worth more than their actual value to someone heavily invested in FarmVille. We’re aligning ourselves with a currency which has potential. As users begin to be able to buy online books or music with Facebook Credits, the perceived value of the Credits expands.” By providing a low cost way to encourage users to spend money, give up contact information, and distribute marketing messages, Ifeelgoods shares the buying power of social gamers with online retailers.
bench craft company rip off
ScribbleLive plans to reinvent the <b>news</b> article | VentureBeat
Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining VentureBeat in ...
Reese Schonfeld: Third Quarter Cable <b>News</b>: Bad <b>News</b> for All <b>...</b>
Could it be that the decline in news viewers is symptomatic of a general and genuine disgust by news viewers who are just fed up with the kind of news being fed to them?
Evri Expands Mobile Offerings Beyond Tech <b>News</b> to Sports, Music <b>...</b>
Evri is going mobile in a big way. The Seattle- and San Francisco-based information discovery website backed by Paul Allen's Vulcan Capital introduced an.
bench craft company rip off bench craft company rip off
ScribbleLive plans to reinvent the <b>news</b> article | VentureBeat
Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining VentureBeat in ...
Reese Schonfeld: Third Quarter Cable <b>News</b>: Bad <b>News</b> for All <b>...</b>
Could it be that the decline in news viewers is symptomatic of a general and genuine disgust by news viewers who are just fed up with the kind of news being fed to them?
Evri Expands Mobile Offerings Beyond Tech <b>News</b> to Sports, Music <b>...</b>
Evri is going mobile in a big way. The Seattle- and San Francisco-based information discovery website backed by Paul Allen's Vulcan Capital introduced an.
bench craft company rip off bench craft company rip off
ScribbleLive plans to reinvent the <b>news</b> article | VentureBeat
Anthony is VentureBeat's assistant editor, as well as its reporter on media, advertising, and social networks. Before joining VentureBeat in ...
Reese Schonfeld: Third Quarter Cable <b>News</b>: Bad <b>News</b> for All <b>...</b>
Could it be that the decline in news viewers is symptomatic of a general and genuine disgust by news viewers who are just fed up with the kind of news being fed to them?
Evri Expands Mobile Offerings Beyond Tech <b>News</b> to Sports, Music <b>...</b>
Evri is going mobile in a big way. The Seattle- and San Francisco-based information discovery website backed by Paul Allen's Vulcan Capital introduced an.
bench craft company rip off
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