Making Money Without

Social products are an interesting bird. For even the most experienced product designer, social products prove an elusive lover. While there are many obvious truths in social products, there are also alot of ways to design them poorly. Especially when you are deep in the moment making pixel-level decisions trying to remember what’s important, things may not be so clear.

The only magic I’ve found in designing compelling social products that have the best shot at breaking through the noise and capturing people’s time and money is in being extremely clear on how your social product meets a few key design principles.

1. Design your product to matter in a world of infinite supply. In 2010, people are inundated with an overwhelming number of people, applications, requests, alerts, relationships, and demands on their time. You love your product. The benefits of it are totally obvious to you. However, if you and every member of your team can’t crisply articulate what emotional benefit someone will get from spending 15 minutes on your social product that they can’t get on Facebook, LinkedIN, or Twitter, you’ve got work to do.

This isn’t touchy feely stuff. Neither I nor the prospective people who may use your social product care about your features, your game mechanics, or how amazing your application will be when there are millions of people on it. I’m selfish with my time and you’ve got seconds to hook me in with something new. And I’m not alone.

To successfully use the fleeting moments you have, you need to orchestrate everything under your control to work together seamlessly under a single brand with a single reason for existence. Make it emotional. If your team can’t tie back every decision they are making to the emotion you want people to feel when they are using your social product, then your reason for existence isn’t strong enough to serve its role, which is to guide your team and the product decisions you are making.

2. Be the best in the world at one thing. To put an even finer point on the focus required of any social upstart, you need to be best in the world at one thing. For Lululemon, they’ve built a $450 million annual revenue business by focusing on the black yoga pant. For Twitter, it’s the 140 character message. For Facebook, it is connecting you to the people you already know. Everything these companies do ties back to a specific thing they are going to be best in the world at doing.

It’s not always obvious upfront what should be your best in the world focus and enshrining the wrong thing can be a problem. However, it is much worse to build a social product without guiding principles. When you are focused on the one thing your social product is going to do better than everyone else, all you need to launch is your one thing and no more.

Ask yourself and every member of your team what you are best in the world at every week. Even better, define it, agree on it, print it out, blow it up, and put it on the wall. This should be the filter by which everyone is making product decisions.

3. Seek out uniqueness. Today’s social platforms and applications are fantastic at meeting people’s need to belong. But equally important – especially in a world of infinite supply – is what makes us feel different and special. People want scarcity. People want exclusivity. This doesn’t mean your social product should be limited to a niche. Frontierville was built for mass appeal – so that I could play with ALL of my friends – but it still finds ways to bring uniqueness into its social experience via neighbors, customization of your plot, and collections.

When people talk about exclusivity and scarcity these days, discussions of game mechanics are never far behind. I love game mechanics as much as the next person. However, if you are implementing game mechanics in the exact same way as everyone else, you’ve got a problem. It goes back to the issue of infinite supply. If there is an infinite supply of points, badges, and levels because they exist on every single social product out there, the minute you use them without being thoughtful, you are losing your shot at exclusivity and scarcity. A better approach is to figure out what makes people feel unique and special on your service independent of any specific game tactic. Then, selectively cherry pick the features that reinforce your emotional reason for existence for people. For uniqueness to work, you have to lead, not follow.

4. Focus on your most important interaction until you have it right. Once you have the critical features defined, there is typically one interaction that is clearly the most important to get right. It’s the interaction that if you get right means someone comes back and, if you don’t get it right, you can’t realize your full potential. Take this interaction and be maniacal about it. For Twitter, this is the Twitter stream. For Polyvore, this is the set page. For Facebook, this is the news feed. For YouTube, it’s the video page. For Dailybooth, it’s the live feed page. It’s the interaction where your magic happens, so give it the care and feeding needed to make it a star.

5. Choose your words carefully. The earlier you are as a social product, the more your word choice should be different and distinct from everything else out there. Early on is the time to have something important and different to say. In fact, all the great brands of the past 30 years have started out appealing to the passionate and rebellious first. Virgin? Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Apple? The 1984 commercial. Nike? The subculture of intense runners sporting moustaches. Facebook? A few still remember the original Scarface logo.

There are things to copy from other services and there are things to make uniquely your own in social products. Layouts? Do your best but pay attention to what is already working. Colors? Hard to be original here, but blue is pretty played out. Icons? A toss up. Terminology? Own it. Your word choice is the primary place for you to have a point-of-view and present not only what you want your brand to emotionally mean to the people using it but the kinds of relationships you want people to have as a result of using your social product.

6. Create a party, not a museum. Great social products are clean, simple, and fast. The successful ones have little design flare, so that the people, photos, videos, text, and comments are front and center. The more design you add from colors to treatments, non-web-fonts, and graphics, the less your social application will feel like a party and the more it will feel like a museum. Or a magazine. Neither are a great goal. You want your social product to feel like it is a living and breathing party, not expensive furniture you’re not supposed to sit on.

7. Develop relationships, not features. Today, we have multiple personalities and different types of relationships with people in the real and virtual worlds. If you are going to design a new social product, it’s not enough to just offer a feature, like photos, videos, or events. You need to look at how the relationships on your social product will be important and different from the relationships you and others have already on Facebook, LinkedIN, and Twitter.

Most people will say that Facebook Connect handle the whole “people” thing for any new social product. I would argue that Facebook Connect is a start but if you can’t quickly show someone a new relationship dynamic or similar people in your social product in a way that is unique to your application, the value of people interacting in your new product will accrue back to Facebook and not you.

For example, I’ve found that on most new social applications I join I have the same 10 Facebook friends – typically my most prolific friends on Facebook already – on this new service too. In most cases, because these new social applications are just an extension of the things I’m already following them do on Facebook, such as sharing photos, events, lists, and videos, I don’t have a reason to come back to this new application a second time.

For a new social product, you need to think about how your social product expands, deepens, and changes the relationships people have today online and in the real world. This isn’t easy to achieve. The best example of a social product doing this well is Quora. Originally seeded with Facebook’s social graph, it has quickly differentiated itself by showing you people you may care about because of their thoughtful commentary, experience, and expertise displayed on topics that are important to you.

It takes alot for people to care about new people in the context of a new social product. Spending your time and energy on what constitutes similarity or what new relationships you want people to have as a result of your application is time worth spent.

As I think about what’s going to be created, discovered, invented, and re-imagined with social software in the next six months let alone the next five years, I can’t help but be excited. These principles shine a light on the first few feet in front of us, but, with every new social product success there will be new ones. As Alan Kay timelessly put it, “the best way to predict the future is to invent it.” I, for one, can’t wait to see what’s next.

Gina Bianchini is the founder of Ning, the leading online platform for the world’s organizers, activists and influencers to create their own social experiences with over 80 million unique users each month.

This guest post is by Roman from how this website makes money.

Two years ago I stumbled across the concept of blogging for money.  Instantly it hit me as the perfect thing: sit behind a computer, design a site, write, be my own boss, work from home, what could be better? I knew nothing about traffic, SEO, backlinks, Pagerank, or keywords.  I knew nothing about how to make money with a website.  So what did I do next?  I registered the domain name howthiswebsitemakesmoney.

Looking back all I can do is laugh at my arrogance.  Like thousands before me and thousands who will come after me, my first attempt at blogging was a site about making money online.

Two years later, I know how to start a site, I know how to write content, I know about SEO, I know about backlinks, I know how to add advertisements … but I still do not know how to make good money online.  The site makes dimes a day, not dollars.

The site has been two years of disappointment.  Two  years of waking up in the morning and seeing the same green egg in AdSense.  Two years of waiting for a four-digit affiliate check with my name on it.  Two years of working without pay.  Two years of scratching my head.

So I asked for advice, and every time the reply was the same: create a site about something else. Create a site about what you know and what you enjoy.  Do not create a site with the intent to make money, create a site with the intent to help people by doing something you enjoy doing.

What happened when I changed my intent

Six months ago I created a new site.  This time my intent was pure pleasure.

I live in Prague and I love it here.  So I made a little site about how great Prague is and what people should do when they come for a visit.  It was built in a month.  In a gust of activity I designed the site and wrote the content.

It was so easy.   I did not agonize over what to write about.  The content flowed effortlessly from my head to the keyboard.  I did not have to take long walks with the dog or waste water standing dazed in the shower coming up with new ideas.  I just sat down at the computer and wrote about what I know.  It was so easy I actually looked forward to it.

As an afterthought, I created a simple page where people can order a real postcard from Prague.  Visitors select a picture of Prague and fill out a form indicating what they want written on the postcard.  After they hit the Submit button I get the request by email.  I grab a postcard and, like an ancient scribe long before computers, lick the tip of the pen and write.  After pounding a Prague stamp on the postcard I toss it into the mailbox on my way to work. I charge $4.00 for this five minutes of work.

I created this site with no aspirations of becoming rich, no day dreams of shaking hands with Oprah, no imagined scenes of telling my employer to find some other donkey to kick around. I created the website because it was easy for me to do and I enjoyed it. I made it because I needed a break from my ‘real’ website. I expected nothing to happen.

Again, I was wrong.

My hand is ink blue from all the postcards I have written.

I wrote a postcard from a son playing a trick on his mother: “Hi, Mom!  Sorry for not calling in last few days.  But I am in Prague with friends.  Having a great time and the beer is sooo cheap.  Say hi to Dad.”

I have written postcards to countries all over the world.  Some of them in languages other then English—I have no idea what I am writing. Fortunately, the order form does not allow Chinese characters!

I get emails from people thanking me for the information they found on the site, thanking me for the postcard, asking for more information.

I feel like I am making the world a better place.  I made a website about something I know about and am interested in and people are thanking me. Emotionally it is a soft, warm, fuzzy ball.

And yes, I am making money.

Intend to enjoy and you might make money

I learned a lot about making money online not from my site about making money, but from licking postage stamps.

New arrivals to the make-money-online scene go through the same initiation—they start out with the intent to make money, then fail to make more then a pile of pennies.  For some it means the end and they quit, but for others this brutal introduction teaches them that their intent needs to change.

Of course, making money is about traffic, clicks, affiliates, backlinks SEO, but it’s also about finding something you enjoy doing.  If your intent is only to make money the odds are stacked against you: you will probably quit.  But if your intent is to do something you enjoy then you will keep moving forward until one day, you will be surprised to find that you are making money.

What’s your intent?

Roman intends to figure out how this website makes money.  He has been trying to do that for two long years, so when he needs a break and do something fun he goes onto his other website to send a real postcard to his mother who misses him very much.

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Weekly Climate and Energy <b>News</b> Roundup | Watts Up With That?

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Challenging the Orthodoxy 'Cool it' with all the research dollars. Solution to climate change is planning, not spending. By Robert Carter and Paul Driessen, Washington Times, Nov 22, 2010 ...

European Apple <b>News</b>: Amsterdam Retail Store, iPad to Scandinavia <b>...</b>

Several items of interest to certain European Apple fans have surfaced over the past few days, including news of a forthcoming retail store in Amsterdam that would be the company's first in the Nether.

Simpsons Fox <b>News</b> | Simpsons O&#39;Reilly | Simpsons Fox <b>News</b> Joke <b>...</b>

Last night, for the second week in a row, The Simpsons took a shot at corporate cousin Fox News. However, if you're clicking over to Hulu or Fox's websites to check out this week's helicopter gag, you're going to be disappointed.

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Making Money Quickly

As part of the ongoing Mashable Awards, we’re taking a closer look at each of the nomination categories. This is “Must-Follow Personality.” Be sure to nominate your favorites and join us for the Gala in Las Vegas! Sponsorships are available. Please contact sponsorships@mashable.com for more information.

In a world where social media and pop culture collide, 2009 might’ve been most remembered for a certain race to 1 million followers. While 2010 has had its share of popularity contests too, we’ve also seen a myriad of innovative uses of digital media that have both catapulted some previously unknowns to “must follow” status and re-invented the careers of others.

Whether it was playing a key role in shaping the news, creating online personas that went viral and became much more, or using the class='blippr-nobr'>Internetclass="blippr-nobr">Internet to connect with fans in new ways, several personalities stood out in terms of leveraging social media in irresistibly catchy ways.

Below, we take a look at some of those people who have made a major splash in the online world in the past year.

1. Ben Folds

While it looks like Chatroulette’s 15 minutes of fame might be up, no one was a bigger part of that 15 minutes than musician Ben Folds.

Inspired by chatroulette improv piano guy “Merton,” the singer-songwriter began broadcasting improv piano tunes from his concerts onto the random video chat site, and quickly saw himself become a big part of one of the year’s top memes.

Because Merton rather closely resembled Folds, speculation ran rampant that the two were actually the same guy. Numerous YouTube videos — some of them originating here on Mashable — added fuel to the fire, though the fable was ultimately disproved once and for all (we think) in a video that the two created together last month.

What started as a clever play on a pop culture phenomenon ultimately became a blueprint for sustaining social media buzz.

2. Conan O’Brien

When Conan O’Brien took over as host of The Tonight Show in mid-2009, one of his first sketches poked fun at Twitter for its banality. Little did he know at the time that mere months later, he’d become the center of a massive user-created digital movement (“Team Coco”) as NBC pivoted to shift Tonight Show hosting responsibilities back to Jay Leno.

Following his ouster, Conan quickly moved to capitalize on his Internet momentum, establishing a Twitter account that would serve as his comedic outlet while he sorted out his next career move, which he ultimately decided would be a new show on TBS.

Whereas Conan’s Tonight Show played the traditional willfully ignorant-of-technology card, Conan’s new show has made social media the centerpiece of a campaign to try and get the masses to shift their late night viewing habits to cable. As a result, we’ll soon find out if digital loyalty translates to television ratings.

3. BPGlobalPR

This year’s BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was one of the biggest environmental catastrophes in recent times, and the company’s much-maligned handling of it had some speculating that bankruptcy might be imminent for the petroleum giant.

Providing comic relief through the whole ordeal, however, was @BPGlobalPR, a satirical Twitter account pretending to be BP’s public relations department. With updates like “Sadly we can no longer certify our oil as Dolphin Safe,” the account quickly amassed tens of thousands of followers.

As for his inspiration, the man behind the account, “Terry,” told Mashable in an interview that “They pay people like me a TON of money to make it look like they’re doing stuff, but really we don’t have to do much except talk. Our talking buys them time to figure out how they are going to sweep it all under the rug and go back to making lots of money.”

While BP eventually closed the oil leak and activity on the @BPGlobalPR account has slowed, the feed served the dual role of both entertaining and reminding the world that BP was not doing a very good job at either closing the leak or communicating effectively with the public.

4. Dan Savage

In recent months, one of the most prominent social issues in America has been the bullying of gay teenagers. In response, sex advice columnist and gay rights activist Dan Savage launched the “Its Get Better” YouTube channel, where everyday people have uploaded hundreds of videos providing encouragement and inspiration to gay teens, telling them they have much to look forward to.

It didn’t take long for the channel to go viral with openly gay celebrities like Neil Patrick Harris and Ellen DeGeneres contributing video messages. Within about a month of launching, the channel attracted a video from President Obama broadcasting the “It Gets Better” message.

The campaign has been nothing short of inspiring, and we will be following Savage to see how he uses his various social media channels –- which also include a popular blog, Twitter feed, and podcast –- to raise awareness for important LGBT issues going forward.

5. Darren Rovell

It’s been a spectacular year for stories about the business of sports, and sitting at the center of it has been CNBC’s sports business reporter Darren Rovell.

There was simply no better feed to follow on Twitter than Rovell’s as the world of Tiger Woods came crashing down following a car-accident-turned-sex-scandal turned tens of millions of dollars in lost endorsement deals.

Then, when LeBron James made the universally mocked decision of broadcasting “The Decision” on ESPN, Rovell again was the point man for assessing brand and consumer response as one of the world’s most highly paid and previously admired athletes suddenly became one of the sporting world’s biggest villains.

In between, Rovell’s Twitter feed and blog has broken news on everything from TV ratings to jersey sales to free agency moves. To an extent, he’s also made the business of reporting on sports sexy, as evidenced by some of the competitors he’s now attracting.

What’s Your Take?

Which personalities do you follow via social media? Let us know in the comments or nominate them for the Mashable Awards.

The Mashable Awards Gala at Cirque du Soleil Zumanity (Vegas)/>

In partnership with Cirque du Soleil, The Mashable Awards Gala event will bring together the winners and nominees, the class='blippr-nobr'>Mashableclass="blippr-nobr">Mashable community, partners, media, the marketing community, consumer electronics and technology brands and attendees from the 2011 International CES Convention to Las Vegas on Thursday, January 6, 2011. Together, we will celebrate the winners and the community of the Mashable Awards at the Cirque du Soleil Zumanity stage in the beautiful New York New York Hotel. The event will include acts and performances from our partner Cirque du Soleil Zumanity. In addition, there will be special guest presenters and appearances.

Date: Thursday, January 6th, 2011 (during International CES Convention week)/> Time: 7:00 – 10:00 pm PT/> Location: Cirque du Soleil Zumanity, New York New York Hotel, Las Vegas/> Agenda: Networking, Open Bars, Acts, Surprises and the Mashable Awards Gala presentations/> Socialize: Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook, Foursquareclass="blippr-nobr">Foursquare, Meetup, Plancast, Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter (Hashtag: #MashableAwards)

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We used the University of Colorado, Denver. The rooms were free. We had three rooms, each could seat between 50 and 125 people depending on the room and each had speakers, projector, lights and so on. You can find similar venues very easily, just ask around. We had the rooms from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. or so on the quietest day of the week for this particular campus and they were booked something like two-three months in advance.

Food

We used Einstein Brothers for breakfast and lunch. We planned food for about 100 people and it worked out very well, with food taken to the after-party too. We simply booked online, chose a ton of food and it arrived at 8:15 for breakfast and 11 a.m. or so for lunch. Breakfast consisted of bagels with various schmears, coffees (remember decaf too) and some bagel poppers (think donut holes). Lunch was boxes of bagel sandwiches (remember vegetarian option), iced tea, lemonade, cookies (three kinds I think), chips (including chips that don't suck, like Sunchips) and gherkins.

Set up was very easy, there were a couple of fold out tables and a few people volunteered to set up the boxes, etc., along with the staff from EB. At the end of the day I asked everyone in the room to help clean up one item (we had boxes, empty cups, etc., etc.) and it was done very quickly.

Breakfast mingling took from 8:30-9 a.m. or so. Lunch was one hour: noon-1 p.m. It was a nice enough day that people wandered outside, chatted and so on.

Website

As a hangover from last year, I happily used Google Sites to host www.wherecamp5280.org for free. It has a super simple editing interface. I only built a couple of very simple pages listing the details upfront as you can see.

Tickets

Eventbrite was pretty awesome. You set up your event, add ticket types (with different prices), link to it and you're done. It's entirely free to use if your tickets are free. For wherecamp, the majority of the tickets were free. You can also use their iPhone app to scan peoples tickets if you like, but I didn't do this as it's free and it would have just been a hassle for very little benefit. Tip: tell the attendees this so they don't print out the paper ticket! Also see sponsorship next:

Sponsorship

I used Eventbrite again. This worked out fantastically. Usually people spend a ton of time setting out sponsor levels, making a brochure and all that stuff about what a sponsor gets for their money. What I did instead was set up Eventbrite "tickets" that were priced as powers of two. So $16, $32, $64... $1024. Sponsors could then simply go in to Eventbrite and buy a ticket. This was wonderful for me as I didn't have to screw around with checks and bank transfers.

It was wonderful for sponsors as they could buy a "ticket" and expense that, whereas sponsorship is sometimes a much harder thing to get and has to go through other channels. One big thing to learn from though is that powers of two is a cute way to get sponsorship, but it doesn't match very well to what can be expensed. Often people can expense things with some rule like "so long as it's less than $1,000." Next time I will price things like $190, $490, $950 and so on.

As for "what do the sponsors get," I didn't produce a brochure or have anything particularly in mind. I've run conferences before which do do this and that's fine but this was a volunteer event. If the sponsors didn't come through, all I had to do was not order food (the major cost) and instead point people at nearby cafes, etc. It helps that I've run conferences before and therefore have a level of trust from the people sponsoring to not fuck it all up. I was asked a couple of times, but simply said it was a volunteer conference therefore time was short and we couldn't really produce brochures, etc.

Next page: How about actually getting the sponsors?

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No Batmobile in Arkham City <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our news of No Batmobile in Arkham City. ... Batman: Arkham Asylum 2 teaser 14 December, 2009. Latest News. Batman: Arkham City details emerge . Batman: Arkham City revealed, dated . Batman domains name Arkham sequel? ...

Real Estate <b>News</b>: Home Mortgage Rates Stabilize - Developments - WSJ

Here is a look at real-estate news in today's WSJ:

Can Mobile Phones Think?: Tech <b>News</b> «

Nokia's Beta Labs today released a new experimental application called Situations, and it portends a future where context awareness drives the mobile experience, and points to a time when our handsets will do the thinking on our behalf, ...

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No Batmobile in Arkham City <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our news of No Batmobile in Arkham City. ... Batman: Arkham Asylum 2 teaser 14 December, 2009. Latest News. Batman: Arkham City details emerge . Batman: Arkham City revealed, dated . Batman domains name Arkham sequel? ...

Real Estate <b>News</b>: Home Mortgage Rates Stabilize - Developments - WSJ

Here is a look at real-estate news in today's WSJ:

Can Mobile Phones Think?: Tech <b>News</b> «

Nokia's Beta Labs today released a new experimental application called Situations, and it portends a future where context awareness drives the mobile experience, and points to a time when our handsets will do the thinking on our behalf, ...

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As part of the ongoing Mashable Awards, we’re taking a closer look at each of the nomination categories. This is “Must-Follow Personality.” Be sure to nominate your favorites and join us for the Gala in Las Vegas! Sponsorships are available. Please contact sponsorships@mashable.com for more information.

In a world where social media and pop culture collide, 2009 might’ve been most remembered for a certain race to 1 million followers. While 2010 has had its share of popularity contests too, we’ve also seen a myriad of innovative uses of digital media that have both catapulted some previously unknowns to “must follow” status and re-invented the careers of others.

Whether it was playing a key role in shaping the news, creating online personas that went viral and became much more, or using the class='blippr-nobr'>Internetclass="blippr-nobr">Internet to connect with fans in new ways, several personalities stood out in terms of leveraging social media in irresistibly catchy ways.

Below, we take a look at some of those people who have made a major splash in the online world in the past year.

1. Ben Folds

While it looks like Chatroulette’s 15 minutes of fame might be up, no one was a bigger part of that 15 minutes than musician Ben Folds.

Inspired by chatroulette improv piano guy “Merton,” the singer-songwriter began broadcasting improv piano tunes from his concerts onto the random video chat site, and quickly saw himself become a big part of one of the year’s top memes.

Because Merton rather closely resembled Folds, speculation ran rampant that the two were actually the same guy. Numerous YouTube videos — some of them originating here on Mashable — added fuel to the fire, though the fable was ultimately disproved once and for all (we think) in a video that the two created together last month.

What started as a clever play on a pop culture phenomenon ultimately became a blueprint for sustaining social media buzz.

2. Conan O’Brien

When Conan O’Brien took over as host of The Tonight Show in mid-2009, one of his first sketches poked fun at Twitter for its banality. Little did he know at the time that mere months later, he’d become the center of a massive user-created digital movement (“Team Coco”) as NBC pivoted to shift Tonight Show hosting responsibilities back to Jay Leno.

Following his ouster, Conan quickly moved to capitalize on his Internet momentum, establishing a Twitter account that would serve as his comedic outlet while he sorted out his next career move, which he ultimately decided would be a new show on TBS.

Whereas Conan’s Tonight Show played the traditional willfully ignorant-of-technology card, Conan’s new show has made social media the centerpiece of a campaign to try and get the masses to shift their late night viewing habits to cable. As a result, we’ll soon find out if digital loyalty translates to television ratings.

3. BPGlobalPR

This year’s BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was one of the biggest environmental catastrophes in recent times, and the company’s much-maligned handling of it had some speculating that bankruptcy might be imminent for the petroleum giant.

Providing comic relief through the whole ordeal, however, was @BPGlobalPR, a satirical Twitter account pretending to be BP’s public relations department. With updates like “Sadly we can no longer certify our oil as Dolphin Safe,” the account quickly amassed tens of thousands of followers.

As for his inspiration, the man behind the account, “Terry,” told Mashable in an interview that “They pay people like me a TON of money to make it look like they’re doing stuff, but really we don’t have to do much except talk. Our talking buys them time to figure out how they are going to sweep it all under the rug and go back to making lots of money.”

While BP eventually closed the oil leak and activity on the @BPGlobalPR account has slowed, the feed served the dual role of both entertaining and reminding the world that BP was not doing a very good job at either closing the leak or communicating effectively with the public.

4. Dan Savage

In recent months, one of the most prominent social issues in America has been the bullying of gay teenagers. In response, sex advice columnist and gay rights activist Dan Savage launched the “Its Get Better” YouTube channel, where everyday people have uploaded hundreds of videos providing encouragement and inspiration to gay teens, telling them they have much to look forward to.

It didn’t take long for the channel to go viral with openly gay celebrities like Neil Patrick Harris and Ellen DeGeneres contributing video messages. Within about a month of launching, the channel attracted a video from President Obama broadcasting the “It Gets Better” message.

The campaign has been nothing short of inspiring, and we will be following Savage to see how he uses his various social media channels –- which also include a popular blog, Twitter feed, and podcast –- to raise awareness for important LGBT issues going forward.

5. Darren Rovell

It’s been a spectacular year for stories about the business of sports, and sitting at the center of it has been CNBC’s sports business reporter Darren Rovell.

There was simply no better feed to follow on Twitter than Rovell’s as the world of Tiger Woods came crashing down following a car-accident-turned-sex-scandal turned tens of millions of dollars in lost endorsement deals.

Then, when LeBron James made the universally mocked decision of broadcasting “The Decision” on ESPN, Rovell again was the point man for assessing brand and consumer response as one of the world’s most highly paid and previously admired athletes suddenly became one of the sporting world’s biggest villains.

In between, Rovell’s Twitter feed and blog has broken news on everything from TV ratings to jersey sales to free agency moves. To an extent, he’s also made the business of reporting on sports sexy, as evidenced by some of the competitors he’s now attracting.

What’s Your Take?

Which personalities do you follow via social media? Let us know in the comments or nominate them for the Mashable Awards.

The Mashable Awards Gala at Cirque du Soleil Zumanity (Vegas)/>

In partnership with Cirque du Soleil, The Mashable Awards Gala event will bring together the winners and nominees, the class='blippr-nobr'>Mashableclass="blippr-nobr">Mashable community, partners, media, the marketing community, consumer electronics and technology brands and attendees from the 2011 International CES Convention to Las Vegas on Thursday, January 6, 2011. Together, we will celebrate the winners and the community of the Mashable Awards at the Cirque du Soleil Zumanity stage in the beautiful New York New York Hotel. The event will include acts and performances from our partner Cirque du Soleil Zumanity. In addition, there will be special guest presenters and appearances.

Date: Thursday, January 6th, 2011 (during International CES Convention week)/> Time: 7:00 – 10:00 pm PT/> Location: Cirque du Soleil Zumanity, New York New York Hotel, Las Vegas/> Agenda: Networking, Open Bars, Acts, Surprises and the Mashable Awards Gala presentations/> Socialize: Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook, Foursquareclass="blippr-nobr">Foursquare, Meetup, Plancast, Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter (Hashtag: #MashableAwards)

Sponsorships are available. Please contact sponsorships@mashable.com for more information.

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We used the University of Colorado, Denver. The rooms were free. We had three rooms, each could seat between 50 and 125 people depending on the room and each had speakers, projector, lights and so on. You can find similar venues very easily, just ask around. We had the rooms from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. or so on the quietest day of the week for this particular campus and they were booked something like two-three months in advance.

Food

We used Einstein Brothers for breakfast and lunch. We planned food for about 100 people and it worked out very well, with food taken to the after-party too. We simply booked online, chose a ton of food and it arrived at 8:15 for breakfast and 11 a.m. or so for lunch. Breakfast consisted of bagels with various schmears, coffees (remember decaf too) and some bagel poppers (think donut holes). Lunch was boxes of bagel sandwiches (remember vegetarian option), iced tea, lemonade, cookies (three kinds I think), chips (including chips that don't suck, like Sunchips) and gherkins.

Set up was very easy, there were a couple of fold out tables and a few people volunteered to set up the boxes, etc., along with the staff from EB. At the end of the day I asked everyone in the room to help clean up one item (we had boxes, empty cups, etc., etc.) and it was done very quickly.

Breakfast mingling took from 8:30-9 a.m. or so. Lunch was one hour: noon-1 p.m. It was a nice enough day that people wandered outside, chatted and so on.

Website

As a hangover from last year, I happily used Google Sites to host www.wherecamp5280.org for free. It has a super simple editing interface. I only built a couple of very simple pages listing the details upfront as you can see.

Tickets

Eventbrite was pretty awesome. You set up your event, add ticket types (with different prices), link to it and you're done. It's entirely free to use if your tickets are free. For wherecamp, the majority of the tickets were free. You can also use their iPhone app to scan peoples tickets if you like, but I didn't do this as it's free and it would have just been a hassle for very little benefit. Tip: tell the attendees this so they don't print out the paper ticket! Also see sponsorship next:

Sponsorship

I used Eventbrite again. This worked out fantastically. Usually people spend a ton of time setting out sponsor levels, making a brochure and all that stuff about what a sponsor gets for their money. What I did instead was set up Eventbrite "tickets" that were priced as powers of two. So $16, $32, $64... $1024. Sponsors could then simply go in to Eventbrite and buy a ticket. This was wonderful for me as I didn't have to screw around with checks and bank transfers.

It was wonderful for sponsors as they could buy a "ticket" and expense that, whereas sponsorship is sometimes a much harder thing to get and has to go through other channels. One big thing to learn from though is that powers of two is a cute way to get sponsorship, but it doesn't match very well to what can be expensed. Often people can expense things with some rule like "so long as it's less than $1,000." Next time I will price things like $190, $490, $950 and so on.

As for "what do the sponsors get," I didn't produce a brochure or have anything particularly in mind. I've run conferences before which do do this and that's fine but this was a volunteer event. If the sponsors didn't come through, all I had to do was not order food (the major cost) and instead point people at nearby cafes, etc. It helps that I've run conferences before and therefore have a level of trust from the people sponsoring to not fuck it all up. I was asked a couple of times, but simply said it was a volunteer conference therefore time was short and we couldn't really produce brochures, etc.

Next page: How about actually getting the sponsors?

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No Batmobile in Arkham City <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our news of No Batmobile in Arkham City. ... Batman: Arkham Asylum 2 teaser 14 December, 2009. Latest News. Batman: Arkham City details emerge . Batman: Arkham City revealed, dated . Batman domains name Arkham sequel? ...

Real Estate <b>News</b>: Home Mortgage Rates Stabilize - Developments - WSJ

Here is a look at real-estate news in today's WSJ:

Can Mobile Phones Think?: Tech <b>News</b> «

Nokia's Beta Labs today released a new experimental application called Situations, and it portends a future where context awareness drives the mobile experience, and points to a time when our handsets will do the thinking on our behalf, ...

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No Batmobile in Arkham City <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

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Real Estate <b>News</b>: Home Mortgage Rates Stabilize - Developments - WSJ

Here is a look at real-estate news in today's WSJ:

Can Mobile Phones Think?: Tech <b>News</b> «

Nokia's Beta Labs today released a new experimental application called Situations, and it portends a future where context awareness drives the mobile experience, and points to a time when our handsets will do the thinking on our behalf, ...

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WASHINGTON -- The Fox News channel has been something of a safe haven for Sarah Palin, the type of outlet that provided the former Alaska Governor not only with a friendly audience but similarly kind questions.

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Fox <b>News</b> President: Jon Stewart Is Crazy And NPR Is Run By Nazis <b>...</b>

The second part of The Daily Beast's interview with Fox News president Roger Ailes is out today, and Ailes' encore doesn't disappoint. He responded harshly to Jon Stewart's pervasive criticism of cable news and had some tough, ...

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Movie <b>News</b> Quick Hits: Leonardo DiCaprio to Star in New JFK <b>...</b>

Do you find Wall-E and Eve so adorable you just want to eat them? Now you can thanks to Charm City Cakes. - Warner Bros.

Fox <b>News</b> President: Jon Stewart Is Crazy And NPR Is Run By Nazis <b>...</b>

The second part of The Daily Beast's interview with Fox News president Roger Ailes is out today, and Ailes' encore doesn't disappoint. He responded harshly to Jon Stewart's pervasive criticism of cable news and had some tough, ...

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Movie <b>News</b> Quick Hits: Leonardo DiCaprio to Star in New JFK <b>...</b>

Do you find Wall-E and Eve so adorable you just want to eat them? Now you can thanks to Charm City Cakes. - Warner Bros.

Fox <b>News</b> President: Jon Stewart Is Crazy And NPR Is Run By Nazis <b>...</b>

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Do you find Wall-E and Eve so adorable you just want to eat them? Now you can thanks to Charm City Cakes. - Warner Bros.

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Fox <b>News</b> Commentators Caught On Camera Mocking Sarah Palin&#39;s Show <b>...</b>

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Do you find Wall-E and Eve so adorable you just want to eat them? Now you can thanks to Charm City Cakes. - Warner Bros.

Fox <b>News</b> President: Jon Stewart Is Crazy And NPR Is Run By Nazis <b>...</b>

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Do you find Wall-E and Eve so adorable you just want to eat them? Now you can thanks to Charm City Cakes. - Warner Bros.

Fox <b>News</b> President: Jon Stewart Is Crazy And NPR Is Run By Nazis <b>...</b>

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autosport.com - F1 <b>News</b>: Rosberg: Pirellis won&#39;t help Mercedes

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Sarah Palin on Fox <b>News</b> Watch | Palin Attacked On Fox <b>News</b> | Video <b>...</b>

The Fox News Watch crew better learn to watch when the camera is rolling from now on, because they might soon feel the wrath of the Mama Grizzly. Nevermind that Sarah Palin is their Fox News co-worker and a likely contender for the ...

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Sarah Palin on Fox <b>News</b> Watch | Palin Attacked On Fox <b>News</b> | Video <b>...</b>

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Fox <b>News</b> Commentators Caught On Camera Mocking Sarah Palin&#39;s Show <b>...</b>

WASHINGTON -- The Fox News channel has been something of a safe haven for Sarah Palin, the type of outlet that provided the former Alaska Governor not only with a friendly audience but similarly kind questions.

Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: Green <b>News</b> Report: November 18, 2010 <b>...</b>

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Sarah Palin on Fox <b>News</b> Watch | Palin Attacked On Fox <b>News</b> | Video <b>...</b>

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WASHINGTON -- The Fox News channel has been something of a safe haven for Sarah Palin, the type of outlet that provided the former Alaska Governor not only with a friendly audience but similarly kind questions.

Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: Green <b>News</b> Report: November 18, 2010 <b>...</b>

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Sarah Palin on Fox <b>News</b> Watch | Palin Attacked On Fox <b>News</b> | Video <b>...</b>

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WASHINGTON -- The Fox News channel has been something of a safe haven for Sarah Palin, the type of outlet that provided the former Alaska Governor not only with a friendly audience but similarly kind questions.

Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: Green <b>News</b> Report: November 18, 2010 <b>...</b>

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Tea Party: Smart development is really a global conspiracy; EPA: Major US cities violate lead standards; UN, World Bank say act now on climate change or pay much more later; Illinois Spending $2M ...

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Sarah Palin on Fox <b>News</b> Watch | Palin Attacked On Fox <b>News</b> | Video <b>...</b>

The Fox News Watch crew better learn to watch when the camera is rolling from now on, because they might soon feel the wrath of the Mama Grizzly. Nevermind that Sarah Palin is their Fox News co-worker and a likely contender for the ...

Fox <b>News</b> Commentators Caught On Camera Mocking Sarah Palin&#39;s Show <b>...</b>

WASHINGTON -- The Fox News channel has been something of a safe haven for Sarah Palin, the type of outlet that provided the former Alaska Governor not only with a friendly audience but similarly kind questions.

Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: Green <b>News</b> Report: November 18, 2010 <b>...</b>

IN 'GREEN NEWS EXTRA' (see links below): Tea Party: Smart development is really a global conspiracy; EPA: Major US cities violate lead standards; UN, World Bank say act now on climate change or pay much more later; Illinois Spending $2M ...

personal finance budgeting

If you die owing money, that means you won the game of life. But some folks harbor a silly fantasy of actually clawing their way out of the imploded Chilean mines of debt they've created for themselves. They put themselves on a budget, hope for job security and the eventual reinstatement of raises and map out exactly when they might taste the financial freedom all too few get to taste.

Personal Finance blogger Girl with the Red Balloon, who is chipping away at more than $16,000 of student loan debt on a $24,000 salary says she'll be out of debt June 1, 2013. She uses the far-off date as encouragement to stay focused on her frugality.

How much debt are you in, and if you plan on getting out of it one day, when do you hope that will be?

Debt Free Date [Girl with the Red Balloon]

Conduct a Financial Fire Drill to Assess Financial Health

We conduct fire drills to ensure fire warning systems are functional and that building occupants know what to do in the event of a fire-related emergency. Apply that same type of stress test to your money with a financial fire drill.

Photo by Steve Snodgrass.

Finance and frugality blog Frugal Dad urges us to take stock of our financial health by conducting a financial fire drill. Just like a real fire drill helps you run through a dangerous scenario without risk—"Who put the file cabinets in front of the fire exit?"—a financial fire drill shows you how effective your escape routes are and how big your safety net is.

You'll need to gather up all your bills, take stock of your savings and emergency fund, and head over the Frugal Dad to run through their financial fire drill checklist—which includes great tips like making a slash-and-burn list of non-essential services you can cancel the minute you get laid off or in other financial trouble.

alpine payment systems scam

<b>News</b> Corp. iPad Venture Fishing In Wrong Pond | paidContent

Another day, another hire at News Corp.'s super-duper secret iPad venture dubbed The Daily—and another reason to question whether this is going to be yet another wobbly Rupert Murdoch digital-news enterprise. ...

<b>News</b> - Tixdaq

Foo Fighters have been confirmed to headline the final night at Isle Of Wight festival 2011.

Eva Longoria Files for Divorce from Tony Parker | TMZ.com

MAKE TMZ MY HOMEPAGE; TMZ RSS/XML � iPHONE APP � ANDROID APP � TEXT ALERT � FACEBOOK � MYSPACE � TWITTER � YOUTUBE � TIPS � Sign In | Sign Up. HOT SEARCHES: Sebastian Bach | Princess Diana | Brittny Gastineau � TMZ AOL News ...

<b>News</b> Corp. iPad Venture Fishing In Wrong Pond | paidContent

Another day, another hire at News Corp.'s super-duper secret iPad venture dubbed The Daily—and another reason to question whether this is going to be yet another wobbly Rupert Murdoch digital-news enterprise. ...

<b>News</b> - Tixdaq

Foo Fighters have been confirmed to headline the final night at Isle Of Wight festival 2011.

Eva Longoria Files for Divorce from Tony Parker | TMZ.com

MAKE TMZ MY HOMEPAGE; TMZ RSS/XML � iPHONE APP � ANDROID APP � TEXT ALERT � FACEBOOK � MYSPACE � TWITTER � YOUTUBE � TIPS � Sign In | Sign Up. HOT SEARCHES: Sebastian Bach | Princess Diana | Brittny Gastineau � TMZ AOL News ...

alpine payment systems scam

<b>News</b> Corp. iPad Venture Fishing In Wrong Pond | paidContent

Another day, another hire at News Corp.'s super-duper secret iPad venture dubbed The Daily—and another reason to question whether this is going to be yet another wobbly Rupert Murdoch digital-news enterprise. ...

<b>News</b> - Tixdaq

Foo Fighters have been confirmed to headline the final night at Isle Of Wight festival 2011.

Eva Longoria Files for Divorce from Tony Parker | TMZ.com

MAKE TMZ MY HOMEPAGE; TMZ RSS/XML � iPHONE APP � ANDROID APP � TEXT ALERT � FACEBOOK � MYSPACE � TWITTER � YOUTUBE � TIPS � Sign In | Sign Up. HOT SEARCHES: Sebastian Bach | Princess Diana | Brittny Gastineau � TMZ AOL News ...

Making Money Marketing

 


Lead singer of Jamiroquai frontman has laid down the gauntlet by calling Lady Gaga a “money-making freak.” Bitch, dem fighting words!

As you can see from the photo above, perhaps Jay Kay is just jealous that Gaga has better hats than him? Also, could he just be jealous that she is a money-maker, whereas we really only remember Jamiroquai for this once-cool video?

But Gaga isn’t the only one he’s launched verbal daggers at as of late…


Kay’s rants have focused on pop star Cheryl Cole and Australian singer Dannii Minogue, throwing shitty remarks just hours before he performed on The X Factor – on which they are both judges.

“Lady Gaga is a money-making freak for her label. We (Jamiroquai) are not like that. We do music, not marketing. Lady Gaga is obviously a phenomenon. The world loves a freak. If the record companies see that they can make money with them, they will do anything. Don’t worry, next time we’ll come dressed in asparagus. And with tomatoes too,” he recently said.

I hope he knows that he is now on a Little Monsters death list.


Sorry Mods
Source

Pedro Sorrentino is the first international student to attend Boulder Digital Works, a graduate school based in Boulder, Colorado that exists to build the next generation of digital professionals. Prior to moving to the States, he was the head of marketing and PR for Mediamind (Nasdaq: MDMD) in São Paulo, Brazil, his homeland.

Although startups and Madison Avenue agencies are perceived to have little in common, coffee shop-hopping entrepreneurs and modern “Don Drapers” actually share more characteristics than you might think, and they can learn a lot from one another.

The most valuable assets for startups are time and team. When working on a big idea with little money and a short time to make it real, Mark Zuckerberg’s corporate mantra “move fast and break things” is particularly a propos. Getting user feedback and making (and then fixing) mistakes as quickly as possible can help startups avoid bigger problems and bring home the bacon in the long run.

It seems that now, more than ever, it’s time for “Mad Men” everywhere to heed the advice of the entrepreneurs setting up shop in basements and coffee shops around the world.

Here are five lessons Madison Avenue can learn from startups. Add your own thoughts in the comments below.

1. Be T-Shaped

Big multinational advertising behemoths that hit their stride before the rise of the web often struggle to deliver high-quality digital and interactive work. In many cases, a hesitance to move forward or a lack of technical knowledge within a company’s talent base are at the root of this.

“Startups are most likely to have a small team. Consider eight people and a situation where four or five of them are programmers. They are not just going to do technical stuff. There’s a demand to have a broader line of thought, since there’s no one else around to do the work,” says John Keehler, principal at ClickHere, the digital division for The Richards Group.

Marketers should strive to be T-shaped professionals. This concept was born inside the creative agency Ideo and is about professionals with versatility and the ability to think like a designer or a programmer, even if you work with marketing.

T-shaped professionals have a broad view of things. In startups, this is a reality, but when it comes to big agencies, people tend to be divided in silos.

Advice for Madison Avenue: It’s important to have a wide vision and understanding of everyone who’s involved with the campaign that you’re working on. This versatility saves time and brings more ideas to the table.

2. Test, Fail and Learn

Brent Daily is the COO and co-founder of RoundPegg, a Boulder-based TechStars startup that provides online HR solutions for discovering professional personalities. He thinks that a good startup culture is one that believes “it’s OK to make mistakes and be a spectacular failure.” On the other hand, he agrees that agencies can’t easily bring this acceptance of failure into their ecosystems — after all, if they fail, their clients also fail and that can represent a huge loss of money.

Agencies should consider testing marketing campaigns and products on the web as “beta tests.” Getting feedback from users via the web is a low cost way to get a feel for how the community will take to ideas. After optimizing based on user feedback, campaigns would then be better prepared to launch on other mediums, such as TV or print. When it comes to digital, users tend to enjoy sharing their opinions and giving solid feedback. “There are so many places to go and test advertising rather than doing expensive focus groups, that the result is usually a pretty low-cost test bid for them,” says Daily.

One good example of open innovation is the startup UserVoice. The service positions itself as “customer feedback 2.0″ and allows companies to ask for feedback on an organized web platform. Perhaps some day more companies will substitute the traditional focus groups for this lower cost web alternative.

Advice for Madison Avenue: Before starting a huge ad campaign and spending millions of dollars on media, use the web as your test arena and get quick feedback from your customers.

3. Leverage PR 2.0

PR 2.0 is the art of using social tools to reach and communicate with key stakeholders. There used to be a time when public relations was all about relationships with journalists and sending out press releases. Taking clients to lunch, picking up the check and smiling was the way to go. This method still exists, but is on its way out.

Public relations is now about the art of dealing with, well, the public. Journalists are still very important, but nothing beats the credibility of your customers, and they are probably already talking about your product. The question is: Are you listening?

Fortunately, there’s less and less space for companies with bad products to succeed by deploying exceptional marketing. We as consumers just don’t accept that anymore. Product quality is the true advantage — attaching that strength to a sound PR strategy enables companies to listen to what consumers are saying, engage them and build brand awareness.

Startups take advantage out of this. When a startup offers a great solution with its product, normally there’s an engaged early adopter community ready to give free feedback. Agencies should take advantage of it, too. What better way to improve your business and its product than getting direct feedback from your core users? Initiatives like Starbucks’s customer feedback and idea generation site mystarbucksidea.com are the right way to go.

Advice for Madison Avenue: Remember that having a great product is key. But listen and allow your early adopters to influence the next meeting with your client’s R&D department.

4. Bootstrap It

If a startup can run for months (or years) without without getting funded, Mad Men can dabble in testing and running campaigns without buying media. Agencies could learn a lot by testing out the old startup method of bootstrapping; that is, getting by without external help and being cautious with expenses.

Startups, for example, use free social tools like Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter, Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook and YouTubeclass="blippr-nobr">YouTube all the time to save money and still reach large, influential, highly-targeted audiences. Increasingly, agencies and large advertisers are beginning to catch on and test them out; the Old Spice guy campaign is a very good example of this.

As that campaign proved, a Twitter account and some YouTube videos can go a long way. What’s better is that using these tools is cost effective, even if you count time invested. We know that the Old Spice guy videos were not a simple production, but this campaign was comparatively inexpensive because starting with social media is much cheaper (and oftentimes more powerful) than a TV commercial.

Advice for Madison Avenue: Remember that you can do more with less when you have a good idea and a strong plan for execution.

5. Open Up to Feedback

Good startups spend a lot of time crowdsourcing opinions and getting feedback from their communities and mentors in order to improve their products. Agencies, on the other hand, usually won’t share copy or ideas with one another or their communities until a campaign is ready to launch.

Some agencies though, are finding that it doesn’t hurt to ask others for creative or production input — that’s what Victor & Spoils is all about. Based in Boulder, Colorado, the ad agency calls itself “the world’s first creative (ad) agency built on crowdsourcing principles.”

John Windsor, Victor & Spoils CEO and former VP of strategy and innovation at CP+B, understands how disruptive new technologies can be, especially when they relate to the ad world. “We’re moving from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance. The rise of the curator class has a new generator of social creative/digital directors,” says Windsor.

This is a company that has tapped into the startup principles and made its business faster, global (it has people from all around the world giving input) and without the legacy issues that you see on Madison Avenue. As time passes, we can draw a line between businesses that embrace change and the ones that fear new ways of doing things.

Advice for Madison Avenue: Embrace change and don’t fear the unknown. Others can help your cause if you give them the right opportunity.

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- What’s the Value in a Brand Name?/> - HOW TO: Run Location-Based Google Ads/> - HOW TO: Get the Most From a Small Business Social Media Presence/> - Top 5 Qualities to Look for in Startup Job Candidates/> - Why the Best Online Marketing May Be Headed Offline

Images courtesy of MadMenYourself & class='blippr-nobr'>Flickrclass="blippr-nobr">Flickr, jolien_vallins

For more Startups coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Startupsclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Startups channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

benchcraft company scam

NPD: Big debuts for Fallout, NBA 2K11 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our news of NPD: Big debuts for Fallout, NBA 2K11.

Small Business <b>News</b>: Entrepreneurs and The Economy

Entrepreneurs and small businesses are important to economic recovery. This we hear on the news regularly. But it is also important that entrepreneurial efforts.

Small Business <b>News</b>: New Business Rules

The rules for business keep changing but a few things stay the same. First impressions matter, technology keeps changing the game and costs keep rising as.

bench craft company scam

 


Lead singer of Jamiroquai frontman has laid down the gauntlet by calling Lady Gaga a “money-making freak.” Bitch, dem fighting words!

As you can see from the photo above, perhaps Jay Kay is just jealous that Gaga has better hats than him? Also, could he just be jealous that she is a money-maker, whereas we really only remember Jamiroquai for this once-cool video?

But Gaga isn’t the only one he’s launched verbal daggers at as of late…


Kay’s rants have focused on pop star Cheryl Cole and Australian singer Dannii Minogue, throwing shitty remarks just hours before he performed on The X Factor – on which they are both judges.

“Lady Gaga is a money-making freak for her label. We (Jamiroquai) are not like that. We do music, not marketing. Lady Gaga is obviously a phenomenon. The world loves a freak. If the record companies see that they can make money with them, they will do anything. Don’t worry, next time we’ll come dressed in asparagus. And with tomatoes too,” he recently said.

I hope he knows that he is now on a Little Monsters death list.


Sorry Mods
Source

Pedro Sorrentino is the first international student to attend Boulder Digital Works, a graduate school based in Boulder, Colorado that exists to build the next generation of digital professionals. Prior to moving to the States, he was the head of marketing and PR for Mediamind (Nasdaq: MDMD) in São Paulo, Brazil, his homeland.

Although startups and Madison Avenue agencies are perceived to have little in common, coffee shop-hopping entrepreneurs and modern “Don Drapers” actually share more characteristics than you might think, and they can learn a lot from one another.

The most valuable assets for startups are time and team. When working on a big idea with little money and a short time to make it real, Mark Zuckerberg’s corporate mantra “move fast and break things” is particularly a propos. Getting user feedback and making (and then fixing) mistakes as quickly as possible can help startups avoid bigger problems and bring home the bacon in the long run.

It seems that now, more than ever, it’s time for “Mad Men” everywhere to heed the advice of the entrepreneurs setting up shop in basements and coffee shops around the world.

Here are five lessons Madison Avenue can learn from startups. Add your own thoughts in the comments below.

1. Be T-Shaped

Big multinational advertising behemoths that hit their stride before the rise of the web often struggle to deliver high-quality digital and interactive work. In many cases, a hesitance to move forward or a lack of technical knowledge within a company’s talent base are at the root of this.

“Startups are most likely to have a small team. Consider eight people and a situation where four or five of them are programmers. They are not just going to do technical stuff. There’s a demand to have a broader line of thought, since there’s no one else around to do the work,” says John Keehler, principal at ClickHere, the digital division for The Richards Group.

Marketers should strive to be T-shaped professionals. This concept was born inside the creative agency Ideo and is about professionals with versatility and the ability to think like a designer or a programmer, even if you work with marketing.

T-shaped professionals have a broad view of things. In startups, this is a reality, but when it comes to big agencies, people tend to be divided in silos.

Advice for Madison Avenue: It’s important to have a wide vision and understanding of everyone who’s involved with the campaign that you’re working on. This versatility saves time and brings more ideas to the table.

2. Test, Fail and Learn

Brent Daily is the COO and co-founder of RoundPegg, a Boulder-based TechStars startup that provides online HR solutions for discovering professional personalities. He thinks that a good startup culture is one that believes “it’s OK to make mistakes and be a spectacular failure.” On the other hand, he agrees that agencies can’t easily bring this acceptance of failure into their ecosystems — after all, if they fail, their clients also fail and that can represent a huge loss of money.

Agencies should consider testing marketing campaigns and products on the web as “beta tests.” Getting feedback from users via the web is a low cost way to get a feel for how the community will take to ideas. After optimizing based on user feedback, campaigns would then be better prepared to launch on other mediums, such as TV or print. When it comes to digital, users tend to enjoy sharing their opinions and giving solid feedback. “There are so many places to go and test advertising rather than doing expensive focus groups, that the result is usually a pretty low-cost test bid for them,” says Daily.

One good example of open innovation is the startup UserVoice. The service positions itself as “customer feedback 2.0″ and allows companies to ask for feedback on an organized web platform. Perhaps some day more companies will substitute the traditional focus groups for this lower cost web alternative.

Advice for Madison Avenue: Before starting a huge ad campaign and spending millions of dollars on media, use the web as your test arena and get quick feedback from your customers.

3. Leverage PR 2.0

PR 2.0 is the art of using social tools to reach and communicate with key stakeholders. There used to be a time when public relations was all about relationships with journalists and sending out press releases. Taking clients to lunch, picking up the check and smiling was the way to go. This method still exists, but is on its way out.

Public relations is now about the art of dealing with, well, the public. Journalists are still very important, but nothing beats the credibility of your customers, and they are probably already talking about your product. The question is: Are you listening?

Fortunately, there’s less and less space for companies with bad products to succeed by deploying exceptional marketing. We as consumers just don’t accept that anymore. Product quality is the true advantage — attaching that strength to a sound PR strategy enables companies to listen to what consumers are saying, engage them and build brand awareness.

Startups take advantage out of this. When a startup offers a great solution with its product, normally there’s an engaged early adopter community ready to give free feedback. Agencies should take advantage of it, too. What better way to improve your business and its product than getting direct feedback from your core users? Initiatives like Starbucks’s customer feedback and idea generation site mystarbucksidea.com are the right way to go.

Advice for Madison Avenue: Remember that having a great product is key. But listen and allow your early adopters to influence the next meeting with your client’s R&D department.

4. Bootstrap It

If a startup can run for months (or years) without without getting funded, Mad Men can dabble in testing and running campaigns without buying media. Agencies could learn a lot by testing out the old startup method of bootstrapping; that is, getting by without external help and being cautious with expenses.

Startups, for example, use free social tools like Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter, Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook and YouTubeclass="blippr-nobr">YouTube all the time to save money and still reach large, influential, highly-targeted audiences. Increasingly, agencies and large advertisers are beginning to catch on and test them out; the Old Spice guy campaign is a very good example of this.

As that campaign proved, a Twitter account and some YouTube videos can go a long way. What’s better is that using these tools is cost effective, even if you count time invested. We know that the Old Spice guy videos were not a simple production, but this campaign was comparatively inexpensive because starting with social media is much cheaper (and oftentimes more powerful) than a TV commercial.

Advice for Madison Avenue: Remember that you can do more with less when you have a good idea and a strong plan for execution.

5. Open Up to Feedback

Good startups spend a lot of time crowdsourcing opinions and getting feedback from their communities and mentors in order to improve their products. Agencies, on the other hand, usually won’t share copy or ideas with one another or their communities until a campaign is ready to launch.

Some agencies though, are finding that it doesn’t hurt to ask others for creative or production input — that’s what Victor & Spoils is all about. Based in Boulder, Colorado, the ad agency calls itself “the world’s first creative (ad) agency built on crowdsourcing principles.”

John Windsor, Victor & Spoils CEO and former VP of strategy and innovation at CP+B, understands how disruptive new technologies can be, especially when they relate to the ad world. “We’re moving from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance. The rise of the curator class has a new generator of social creative/digital directors,” says Windsor.

This is a company that has tapped into the startup principles and made its business faster, global (it has people from all around the world giving input) and without the legacy issues that you see on Madison Avenue. As time passes, we can draw a line between businesses that embrace change and the ones that fear new ways of doing things.

Advice for Madison Avenue: Embrace change and don’t fear the unknown. Others can help your cause if you give them the right opportunity.

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- What’s the Value in a Brand Name?/> - HOW TO: Run Location-Based Google Ads/> - HOW TO: Get the Most From a Small Business Social Media Presence/> - Top 5 Qualities to Look for in Startup Job Candidates/> - Why the Best Online Marketing May Be Headed Offline

Images courtesy of MadMenYourself & class='blippr-nobr'>Flickrclass="blippr-nobr">Flickr, jolien_vallins

For more Startups coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Startupsclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Startups channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

benchcraft company scam

NPD: Big debuts for Fallout, NBA 2K11 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our news of NPD: Big debuts for Fallout, NBA 2K11.

Small Business <b>News</b>: Entrepreneurs and The Economy

Entrepreneurs and small businesses are important to economic recovery. This we hear on the news regularly. But it is also important that entrepreneurial efforts.

Small Business <b>News</b>: New Business Rules

The rules for business keep changing but a few things stay the same. First impressions matter, technology keeps changing the game and costs keep rising as.

benchcraft company scam

bench craft company scam

bench craft company scam

NPD: Big debuts for Fallout, NBA 2K11 <b>News</b> - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net

Read our news of NPD: Big debuts for Fallout, NBA 2K11.

Small Business <b>News</b>: Entrepreneurs and The Economy

Entrepreneurs and small businesses are important to economic recovery. This we hear on the news regularly. But it is also important that entrepreneurial efforts.

Small Business <b>News</b>: New Business Rules

The rules for business keep changing but a few things stay the same. First impressions matter, technology keeps changing the game and costs keep rising as.

benchcraft company scam

 


Lead singer of Jamiroquai frontman has laid down the gauntlet by calling Lady Gaga a “money-making freak.” Bitch, dem fighting words!

As you can see from the photo above, perhaps Jay Kay is just jealous that Gaga has better hats than him? Also, could he just be jealous that she is a money-maker, whereas we really only remember Jamiroquai for this once-cool video?

But Gaga isn’t the only one he’s launched verbal daggers at as of late…


Kay’s rants have focused on pop star Cheryl Cole and Australian singer Dannii Minogue, throwing shitty remarks just hours before he performed on The X Factor – on which they are both judges.

“Lady Gaga is a money-making freak for her label. We (Jamiroquai) are not like that. We do music, not marketing. Lady Gaga is obviously a phenomenon. The world loves a freak. If the record companies see that they can make money with them, they will do anything. Don’t worry, next time we’ll come dressed in asparagus. And with tomatoes too,” he recently said.

I hope he knows that he is now on a Little Monsters death list.


Sorry Mods
Source

Pedro Sorrentino is the first international student to attend Boulder Digital Works, a graduate school based in Boulder, Colorado that exists to build the next generation of digital professionals. Prior to moving to the States, he was the head of marketing and PR for Mediamind (Nasdaq: MDMD) in São Paulo, Brazil, his homeland.

Although startups and Madison Avenue agencies are perceived to have little in common, coffee shop-hopping entrepreneurs and modern “Don Drapers” actually share more characteristics than you might think, and they can learn a lot from one another.

The most valuable assets for startups are time and team. When working on a big idea with little money and a short time to make it real, Mark Zuckerberg’s corporate mantra “move fast and break things” is particularly a propos. Getting user feedback and making (and then fixing) mistakes as quickly as possible can help startups avoid bigger problems and bring home the bacon in the long run.

It seems that now, more than ever, it’s time for “Mad Men” everywhere to heed the advice of the entrepreneurs setting up shop in basements and coffee shops around the world.

Here are five lessons Madison Avenue can learn from startups. Add your own thoughts in the comments below.

1. Be T-Shaped

Big multinational advertising behemoths that hit their stride before the rise of the web often struggle to deliver high-quality digital and interactive work. In many cases, a hesitance to move forward or a lack of technical knowledge within a company’s talent base are at the root of this.

“Startups are most likely to have a small team. Consider eight people and a situation where four or five of them are programmers. They are not just going to do technical stuff. There’s a demand to have a broader line of thought, since there’s no one else around to do the work,” says John Keehler, principal at ClickHere, the digital division for The Richards Group.

Marketers should strive to be T-shaped professionals. This concept was born inside the creative agency Ideo and is about professionals with versatility and the ability to think like a designer or a programmer, even if you work with marketing.

T-shaped professionals have a broad view of things. In startups, this is a reality, but when it comes to big agencies, people tend to be divided in silos.

Advice for Madison Avenue: It’s important to have a wide vision and understanding of everyone who’s involved with the campaign that you’re working on. This versatility saves time and brings more ideas to the table.

2. Test, Fail and Learn

Brent Daily is the COO and co-founder of RoundPegg, a Boulder-based TechStars startup that provides online HR solutions for discovering professional personalities. He thinks that a good startup culture is one that believes “it’s OK to make mistakes and be a spectacular failure.” On the other hand, he agrees that agencies can’t easily bring this acceptance of failure into their ecosystems — after all, if they fail, their clients also fail and that can represent a huge loss of money.

Agencies should consider testing marketing campaigns and products on the web as “beta tests.” Getting feedback from users via the web is a low cost way to get a feel for how the community will take to ideas. After optimizing based on user feedback, campaigns would then be better prepared to launch on other mediums, such as TV or print. When it comes to digital, users tend to enjoy sharing their opinions and giving solid feedback. “There are so many places to go and test advertising rather than doing expensive focus groups, that the result is usually a pretty low-cost test bid for them,” says Daily.

One good example of open innovation is the startup UserVoice. The service positions itself as “customer feedback 2.0″ and allows companies to ask for feedback on an organized web platform. Perhaps some day more companies will substitute the traditional focus groups for this lower cost web alternative.

Advice for Madison Avenue: Before starting a huge ad campaign and spending millions of dollars on media, use the web as your test arena and get quick feedback from your customers.

3. Leverage PR 2.0

PR 2.0 is the art of using social tools to reach and communicate with key stakeholders. There used to be a time when public relations was all about relationships with journalists and sending out press releases. Taking clients to lunch, picking up the check and smiling was the way to go. This method still exists, but is on its way out.

Public relations is now about the art of dealing with, well, the public. Journalists are still very important, but nothing beats the credibility of your customers, and they are probably already talking about your product. The question is: Are you listening?

Fortunately, there’s less and less space for companies with bad products to succeed by deploying exceptional marketing. We as consumers just don’t accept that anymore. Product quality is the true advantage — attaching that strength to a sound PR strategy enables companies to listen to what consumers are saying, engage them and build brand awareness.

Startups take advantage out of this. When a startup offers a great solution with its product, normally there’s an engaged early adopter community ready to give free feedback. Agencies should take advantage of it, too. What better way to improve your business and its product than getting direct feedback from your core users? Initiatives like Starbucks’s customer feedback and idea generation site mystarbucksidea.com are the right way to go.

Advice for Madison Avenue: Remember that having a great product is key. But listen and allow your early adopters to influence the next meeting with your client’s R&D department.

4. Bootstrap It

If a startup can run for months (or years) without without getting funded, Mad Men can dabble in testing and running campaigns without buying media. Agencies could learn a lot by testing out the old startup method of bootstrapping; that is, getting by without external help and being cautious with expenses.

Startups, for example, use free social tools like Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter, Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook and YouTubeclass="blippr-nobr">YouTube all the time to save money and still reach large, influential, highly-targeted audiences. Increasingly, agencies and large advertisers are beginning to catch on and test them out; the Old Spice guy campaign is a very good example of this.

As that campaign proved, a Twitter account and some YouTube videos can go a long way. What’s better is that using these tools is cost effective, even if you count time invested. We know that the Old Spice guy videos were not a simple production, but this campaign was comparatively inexpensive because starting with social media is much cheaper (and oftentimes more powerful) than a TV commercial.

Advice for Madison Avenue: Remember that you can do more with less when you have a good idea and a strong plan for execution.

5. Open Up to Feedback

Good startups spend a lot of time crowdsourcing opinions and getting feedback from their communities and mentors in order to improve their products. Agencies, on the other hand, usually won’t share copy or ideas with one another or their communities until a campaign is ready to launch.

Some agencies though, are finding that it doesn’t hurt to ask others for creative or production input — that’s what Victor & Spoils is all about. Based in Boulder, Colorado, the ad agency calls itself “the world’s first creative (ad) agency built on crowdsourcing principles.”

John Windsor, Victor & Spoils CEO and former VP of strategy and innovation at CP+B, understands how disruptive new technologies can be, especially when they relate to the ad world. “We’re moving from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance. The rise of the curator class has a new generator of social creative/digital directors,” says Windsor.

This is a company that has tapped into the startup principles and made its business faster, global (it has people from all around the world giving input) and without the legacy issues that you see on Madison Avenue. As time passes, we can draw a line between businesses that embrace change and the ones that fear new ways of doing things.

Advice for Madison Avenue: Embrace change and don’t fear the unknown. Others can help your cause if you give them the right opportunity.

More Business Resources from Mashable:

- What’s the Value in a Brand Name?/> - HOW TO: Run Location-Based Google Ads/> - HOW TO: Get the Most From a Small Business Social Media Presence/> - Top 5 Qualities to Look for in Startup Job Candidates/> - Why the Best Online Marketing May Be Headed Offline

Images courtesy of MadMenYourself & class='blippr-nobr'>Flickrclass="blippr-nobr">Flickr, jolien_vallins

For more Startups coverage:

class="f-el">class="cov-twit">Follow Mashable Startupsclass="s-el">class="cov-rss">Subscribe to the Startups channelclass="f-el">class="cov-fb">Become a Fan on Facebookclass="s-el">class="cov-apple">Download our free apps for iPhone and iPad

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